Jan. 13, 2011 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:20:07
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| And boom! | ||
| Right when you take a drink of water, that's when we go live, always. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's when we go live. | |
| What's up, my friend? | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| Thanks for having me, bro. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| I'm a big fan. | ||
| I've been a fan for a long time. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And I'm very excited about this Badr Hari rematch. | ||
| So we were just talking about it. | ||
| That's going to be in December. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's going to be huge. | ||
| I think it's going to be the biggest fight in kickboxing history. | ||
| I think it's already. | ||
| I mean, you were just saying that the tickets go on presale today, I think? | ||
| yeah today or tomorrow so yeah um where is it going to be held is it in holland yeah it's going to be in holland yeah so it's um it's called the the gelder dome and how many seats is that I believe around 25,000-30,000. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| It's crazy how big kickboxing is in Holland as opposed to America. | ||
| Yeah, but Holland, Europe, it's a lot bigger than it is here. | ||
| So I do not, for the life of me, understand why it hasn't taken off in America. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| Well, I think... | ||
| The step of going to MMA than to kickboxing is so much closer. | ||
| For example, from high school, it's so much more logical. | ||
| When you do wrestling, you do a little bit of boxing, well, let's jump into MMA then because it's so close to each other. | ||
| And when you go to kickboxing, it's totally different. | ||
| It's totally different. | ||
| So many people in America, when they watch MMA, they want guys to stand up. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| That's why it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| But still, I think every country is very patriotic. | ||
| They want their own guys to be very good at something. | ||
| Sort of, but when Anderson Silva was at the top of the heap in MMA, everybody wanted to see him fight. | ||
| It didn't matter that he was from Brazil. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| In America, they still wanted to see him fight. | ||
| They want to see high-level stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everyone here is such a fan of knockouts and striking, high-level striking. | ||
| I just don't understand it. | ||
| Muay Thai, too. | ||
| Muay Thai doesn't sell at all. | ||
| There's no big Muay Thai events. | ||
| They had a pro Muay Thai league event here, and it was Nikki Holtzkin fought on it, and Bokau, and a few other big-name guys fought on it. | ||
| But it was like, you know, nobody in the crowd. | ||
| No, but also Muay Thai is also with the clinching and they hold too long. | ||
| I think it's a little bit boring. | ||
| What we do with Glory now is more commercial. | ||
| You can hold just for three seconds and then break and then continue fighting. | ||
| In the end, that's what people want to see. | ||
| I get that, but I like clinch work too and I like elbows. | ||
| Elbows and knees in the clinch. | ||
| You don't like it? | ||
| I like the knees, but the elbows... | ||
| Too many cuts? | ||
| That nasty, yeah. | ||
| Very nasty. | ||
| Cuts are nasty. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you think about how the amateur Muay Thai guys have elbow pads? | ||
| Yeah, I think that's good. | ||
| And all that's preventing for people who don't understand what we're talking about. | ||
| It's weird that, like, you can see with bare-knuckle boxing, there's a lot of bare-knuckle boxing matches now, and you see these guys' faces are just getting destroyed. | ||
| I mean, they're just ripped apart. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's not healthy. | ||
| No, it's definitely not good for the longevity of your career. | ||
| No. | ||
| And so in amateur Muay Thai, they have these elbow pads that they wear. | ||
| And that would mean you still can knock guys out just as easily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, for sure. | |
| But you're not going to get the cuts. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So I think that's a good thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I'm just not a big fan of the elbow work. | ||
| But I love to see it, but I don't like to get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I remember. | |
| I remember. | ||
| I was, where was I was? | ||
| I think I was training with the Black Zillions like years ago. | ||
| I think it was even before I became champion. | ||
| And I was training there, doing a little bit of MMA, helping some guys out. | ||
| And I was training, and somebody just, he said on accident, he just, pop, threw an elbow right on the nose. | ||
| And he just opened it up just a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I was like, What the hell are you doing? | |
| Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just an accident? | ||
| Yeah, an accident. | ||
| So, I gave him a few extra low kicks after this. | ||
| In MMA, I mean, it's such a staple technique. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, it's probably hard to not do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You've had a couple MMA fights, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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One. | |
| One, just one? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you mounted the guy. | ||
| That was what was crazy. | ||
| He took it to the ground. | ||
| I was like, let's give it a try when we're in there. | ||
| We've got to try everything. | ||
| But when I saw it, I was like, damn, if he makes his way to MMA, because the heavyweight division, particularly in the UFC, is extremely shallow. | ||
| Extremely shallow. | ||
| I mean, you have some great talent, but there's like four or five really good fighters. | ||
| You know, it's like, there's obviously Cormier, there's Stipe, Francis Ngannou, there's a few other guys, but it's, you know, with a couple of wins, you're in the mix for a heavyweight title shot. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, have you ever thought about doing that? | ||
| I thought about it. | ||
| Thought about it? | ||
| You're still young, right? | ||
| How old are you? | ||
| Yeah, 30. Yeah, see, which is crazy because you've had a lot of fights, right? | ||
| Yeah, I had about 60, 70 fights. | ||
| Yeah, that's crazy. | ||
| But the thing is, as a European, fighting in glory, that's what people don't understand. | ||
| It is enormous overseas. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's hard for people in America to be like, what? | ||
| Kickboxing? | ||
| But if you go to see those events, I mean, I watch all of them. | ||
| You watch the events on television, it's like fucking crazy packed crowds. | ||
| Yeah, it's always full. | ||
| The first fight you had with Botter, holy shit was that crowd hot. | ||
| That was a wild crowd. | ||
| They even jumped to the ropes and everything went crazy. | ||
| Well, it ended in a fucked up way. | ||
| Botter said his arm was hurt. | ||
| Did he get an MRI or anything like that? | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| Not from the organization or something. | ||
| Yeah, he did some bandage or something over his arm because that's what he posted on Instagram. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| For me, it was... | ||
| Yeah, you know, it was like an anti-climax. | ||
| That wasn't the way I wanted to end that fight. | ||
| But I think for the rest, for him, this was the perfect way to end the fight because this is the way you could get a rematch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because if he would have lost... | |
| No point in doing a rematch. | ||
| If you would get knocked out, no point in doing a rematch. | ||
|
unidentified
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So... | |
| Unless it was a really close fight and then you eventually won. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, but for my feeling, everybody's like, yeah, but Rico walked into the jabs the first round and everything. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| but i was pressuring him i was pressuring him the whole time and i was trying to feel like where is my distance where i can hit and where i can where i get hit so of course that's right you get tagged yeah you get tagged sometimes so my my nose was already uh during training my nose opened up so when he hit it it opened up again so i was like yeah it is what it is you know i'm not really bothered by it so i was pressuring pressure and i was like okay Now I got it. | ||
| So after that first round, then we jumped into the second round. | ||
| I was fit. | ||
| I was ready for this fight. | ||
| And that's what I like to do. | ||
| I like to drag people into the deep waters. | ||
| Well, you're very fit for a heavyweight. | ||
| You have crazy cardio. | ||
| That's one of the things that I've always admired about your fighting style. | ||
| You put insane pressure on guys. | ||
| For a heavyweight, because heavyweights, bigger guys tend to fight at a slower pace and with less volume. | ||
| But you push a pace, and when the fight gets to the third, fourth, and fifth rounds, you fucking pile it on, man. | ||
| Yeah, because I've been training with light guys for my whole career. | ||
| So when I started at the gym, I started it with the Super Pro Sports Center. | ||
| With Dennis Carrello, he had Albert Kraus. | ||
| He was the first K1 Max champion. | ||
| And he had Alvier Lima, like multiple middleweight champion, world champion. | ||
| So I was working with those guys, like every day. | ||
| And they just kept on pressuring me. | ||
| I was getting my ass whooped like almost every day by like guys that weigh like 75 kilos. | ||
| So, I was like, I can keep hitting those guys hard or just go with less power and pressure them like they try to pressure me. | ||
| And of course, in the beginning, it's like, still you get tired, but at a certain moment, you get like, hey, this is going better. | ||
| And just don't try to hit them hard, but just try to keep the work like a machine gun. | ||
| Is that something that happens in a fight as well, where you have to balance out how hard you swing versus, like, not going full blast, but going technical, knowing that you can start unloading in the third, fourth, and fifth rounds and you start to see them fade? | ||
| I'm playing a game. | ||
| For me, we always say, fighting is a thinking man's game. | ||
| Because fighting, everybody can fight. | ||
| When they have to, everybody can fight. | ||
| It doesn't matter what person, when you put them in a corner and it's life or death, everybody can fight. | ||
| But it's so much more than that. | ||
| It's so much more than just fighting. | ||
| And that's how I try to step into the ring with that mentality. | ||
| People don't understand that, who've never competed. | ||
| The managing of the resources is a big factor. | ||
| When do you decide to hit the gas? | ||
| In MMA you see it with a guy like Nick Diaz. | ||
| Nick Diaz is famous for not hitting guys hard. | ||
| He just stays on you. | ||
| He just stays on you with a lot of volume. | ||
| And then you get tired, and then he starts unloading. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You know, with big shots. | ||
| And that's what I like to do. | ||
| The biggest compliment I could get from an opponent, and I had it for my last six opponents. | ||
| I got it like three or four times. | ||
| They said, like, Rico, now I understand why you are the champion. | ||
| I fought everybody, but this I've never felt before. | ||
| And you're on a different level. | ||
| And that's the biggest compliment I could get because I'm in the ring for five rounds with this guy and they got every opportunity to do everything they've trained for. | ||
| With me for five rounds. | ||
| So I didn't knock them out. | ||
| We just fought for five rounds, but they just did not know what to do. | ||
| And that's, yeah, for me, the biggest compliment I could get. | ||
| Yeah, to be technical and to just play your game. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I really loved your rematch with Jamal Ben Sadiq. | ||
| That was one of my favorite fights of yours. | ||
| I believe that. | ||
| It was a great fight. | ||
| That was like the full Rocky version of a fight that people would love to see. | ||
| You get tagged in the beginning, and then you... | ||
| Overwhelmed him, and then when you put him away, I was like, holy shit, what a fight. | ||
| What a fight that was. | ||
| That guy's a big motherfucker, too. | ||
| Yeah, he's a big guy. | ||
| I lost against him back in the days when I was just a little kid. | ||
| And so this fight brought something with it as well. | ||
| He's like, yeah, he's the champion now, but I beat him. | ||
| But it was like six, seven years ago. | ||
| I'm a totally different fighter than I was back then. | ||
| So I said, let's go. | ||
| I'm ready for you. | ||
| So yeah, this was the best thing. | ||
| And he spit in my face during a press conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I got some extra motivation for that fight. | |
| Well, you played it out perfectly, too, where even when he hit you and hurt you early in the fight, you stayed calm, you didn't get emotional, you used good defense, and then once you got him into the deep water, you stopped him in the fourth? | ||
| In the fifth. | ||
| Fifth round. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Once you got him into deep water, then you piled it on and then put him away. | ||
| But then again, it's the same thing for me. | ||
| How did you do that? | ||
| You got tagged. | ||
| And I said, but then again, like I said, it's a thinking man's game. | ||
| So I got hit. | ||
| From my point of view, I made a mistake. | ||
| I switched the south pole, but instead of switching and stepping outside of his front leg, I was right in front of his leg, and he was just throwing a left-right, and I walked straight into that. | ||
| That's what happened. | ||
| It's not that, from my point of view, that he timed that. | ||
| So it happened, and from that moment, I can do two things. | ||
| I can think, okay, I can jump into the fight and try to get that point or whatever, that moment back, or just think in my mind like, okay, fuck it, you lost this round. | ||
| Take it and let's go fresh into the second. | ||
| That's what I did. | ||
| So just think about, okay, I lost this round, but I got four more to go, and I got back into the corner, and my trainer says, hey, you back? | ||
|
unidentified
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I said, yep, okay, he's tired now. | |
| Yeah, when he tried to unload on you, he emptied out a lot of the gas tank when he had you hurt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's the game, right? | ||
| Trying to figure out when you can finish and when you can't. | ||
|
unidentified
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Exactly. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Just stay focused, stay relaxed. | ||
| And, of course, he hit me with some good shots, but... | ||
| Well, he's a big, powerful guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's always a dangerous fighter. | ||
| That guy's huge. | ||
| What is he, like 6'9", 6'10"? | ||
| Yeah, something like that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, yeah, he's huge in, like, 200. 70 pounds, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That's a big motherfucker. | ||
| That's a big motherfucker. | ||
| So, and then he's like, yeah, now it's 1-1. | ||
| I said, come on, man. | ||
| You beat me like six, seven years. | ||
| I beat you less. | ||
| Oh, he wants another fight? | ||
| Yeah, he wants another fight. | ||
| How many fights has he had since then? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He won a tournament last year. | ||
| So maybe that fight is going to come. | ||
| But like I said, last year, the 31st of December, my contract was finished with Glory. | ||
| So we've been in negotiations ever since. | ||
| So, from that moment on, I said, in my last contract, you guys told me the butter fight was going to happen, and it didn't happen. | ||
| So, that's what I want first. | ||
| Give me the butter fight, and from that moment on, we're going to discuss. | ||
| Yeah, for people who don't know the sport, Badr Hari is one of the biggest names in the sport, like, forever. | ||
| He's... | ||
| He's a guy who... | ||
| He's stopped Alistair Overeem. | ||
| He's fought in K1. He fought everybody. | ||
| Semi-Shield, Peter Artz, whatever. | ||
| He's a fucking wild man, too. | ||
| But he hasn't fought in high-level competition for a long time. | ||
| And then he fought you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so the thing was, everybody was... | ||
| I was beating everybody. | ||
| I was champion and I was beating everybody. | ||
| People said... | ||
| Yeah, Rico's good. | ||
| He's the champion, but he hasn't fought better. | ||
| So our national television said, hey, if he wants to fight, let's go. | ||
| But he had been dealing with a bunch of legal troubles. | ||
| Yeah, he had a lot of problems. | ||
| He broke someone's leg in a club. | ||
| Yeah, a lot of shit. | ||
| Crazy shit. | ||
| There's a video of him slapping some guy's face in a hotel. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Imagine that guy slapping your face. | ||
| You're some poor dude working behind the counter. | ||
| Bonner comes in like, yikes! | ||
| Yikes, yeah. | ||
| Do whatever you want. | ||
| Here, take the keys, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
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Which room would you like? | |
| The hotel is yours. | ||
| So yeah, he had a bunch of problems, but then eventually the fight happened because that's the fight that people wanted to see. | ||
| But for me, it was just like another fight. | ||
| And then the fight ended that way. | ||
| Yeah, that was too bad. | ||
| But now we can do it again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the fight was quite a while ago. | ||
| How long ago was that? | ||
| 2016. Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why did it take so long for the rematch? | |
| Yeah, there was a bunch of stuff going on in between. | ||
| And, like, last year he fought Hesdy Gerges, also a good kickbox. | ||
| I believe he's now doing MMA in Bellator. | ||
| And... | ||
| He's fought Hesdy before, right? | ||
| Yeah, he fought Hesdy before, but got disqualified. | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| He stomped him with him on the ground? | ||
| Yeah, stomped him, yeah. | ||
| But after that fight... | ||
| He's so crazy. | ||
| Yeah, he's crazy. | ||
| He's such a wild dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then after that fight, they both got caught. | ||
| With using whatever. | ||
| Oh, steroids. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| So they both got suspended. | ||
| I believe Hestie wasn't suspended. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But he got suspended until December this year. | ||
| So that's why. | ||
| How did the fight go when you fought last year with Hestie? | ||
| He won. | ||
| It wasn't easy, but he won. | ||
| Was it a loss? | ||
| I mean, a decision? | ||
| It was a decision, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so for him, that was the first fight since your fight with him in 2016? | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because he's had a bunch of leading problems. | |
| And now he's not training at Mike's gym anymore as well, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no, no. | |
| Do you know who he's training with? | ||
| Yeah, I don't know his name. | ||
| I know the guy, but... | ||
| Don't know who he's training with. | ||
| Well, he looks good on Instagram. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Looks very fit. | ||
| Jacked. | ||
| A lot of people look good on Instagram. | ||
| You know that. | ||
| When you see him in real life, he looks totally different. | ||
| Well, I'm sure he looks the same. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But what's interesting is when you're in high-level competition like he was, of course, in the days when he fought Alistair, before Alistair made the transition full-time to MMA, Before he came to Strikeforce and all that stuff, that's a long time ago. | ||
| It's probably hard to get back and to jump straight into top-level competition like Headsy or especially like fighting you as a champion. | ||
| That's a big leap, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, but that's the thing now, we both have, so he fought last year, March, and I fought last year, September. | ||
| So, because I was in negotiations, and still am in negotiations with Glory for a new contract, so it's both been a while for us, but I've been, before that, I was like in a crazy, crazy active flow. | ||
| Yeah, you definitely have much more momentum, and just, there's a thing about fighting, too, when guys take a long time off, it's almost like, They lose the feel for it. | ||
| Obviously they know how to kick, they know how to punch, they know what to do, they're in shape. | ||
| But there's a feel that they have for the ring. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Where people don't understand, like, hey, you step in the ring and that's what you do. | ||
| That's what you were born to do. | ||
| That's true, but you need that tension. | ||
| You need that vibe of walking towards the ring, stepping into the ring. | ||
| All those people looking at you at that moment, that's a certain type of feeling that you get. | ||
| You got to be comfortable with it. | ||
| Yeah, and that's exactly what it is. | ||
| You got to feel comfortable. | ||
| And the only way you can... | ||
| Be comfortable and stay comfortable is being active. | ||
| Yes, being active is so critical for a fighter. | ||
| When a guy takes a year off or two years off, the more the time is, the more it becomes problematic. | ||
| And the older you get. | ||
| How old is Baader now? | ||
| 35 I think. | ||
| Does Glory drug test? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They do? | ||
| That's how they got caught. | ||
| Was it him or was it an athletic commission? | ||
| I mean, was it Glory or was it... | ||
| No, it's not Glory. | ||
| It's a local Dutch athletic commission. | ||
| And so they're going to drug test for this fight as well? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| So I got tested like every time. | ||
| Is it like water testing, like the same standards? | ||
| A world anti-doping agency? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So they like wake you up like 7 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| Hey, Rico. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| That's not the testing. | ||
| They just test at the events. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| I would even rather have that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They just wake up and random come test, but that's not what they do. | ||
| But they test like really strict when you're there. | ||
| Yeah, that's a little bit easier to pass though. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| No, that's a lot easier to pass, I should say. | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| I don't know what to do or what ways there are to. | ||
| I'm not on it. | ||
| I don't want to stay busy. | ||
| I don't want to think about it. | ||
| But whatever, you know, I just jump in there and just do what I got to do. | ||
| But that's why I told Glory now again after this whole issue because a lot of people were caught last year. | ||
| And they didn't expect that. | ||
| I was like, hey, we got to keep doing this because this is the way we make the sport clean. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I think that's what we deserve because we... | ||
| Yeah, we are a good sport. | ||
| We are all athletes. | ||
| But I want to be safe in the ring. | ||
| And what do you mean with safe? | ||
| You're going into a fight, I understand, but... | ||
| Somebody that uses whatever can maybe just punch a little bit harder in the beginning of the fight or whatever. | ||
| Have a little more endurance. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Hit you with some punches they wouldn't be able to hit you with. | ||
| They're not on some shit. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So that's what I mean with telling Glory I want to be safe when I'm in the ring. | ||
| Well, for sure. | ||
| I mean, if one person's on it and one person's not, that's, you know, it's a giant advantage. | ||
| Anybody who says it's not is just lying to themselves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But in the end, I just go in there and I'm not even thinking about it. | ||
| Well, it is the fight to make in kickboxing, too. | ||
| And if there's a fight that I can tell people, hey, you really want to know what kickboxing is all about? | ||
| Watch this fight. | ||
| That is the fight. | ||
| Because Bodder is such a wild man. | ||
| He's such a knockout artist. | ||
| And you're obviously one of the most successful heavyweights ever. | ||
| I mean, your kickboxing record in glory, just the highlight reel is amazing. | ||
| You've had so many great fights over there. | ||
| Yeah, I've been doing so good. | ||
| I really enjoy myself. | ||
| And that's what I said. | ||
| I want to bring kickboxing to a new level. | ||
| Especially when you go now in Holland. | ||
| Normally, in Holland, it was like soccer or whatever, cycling or ice skating. | ||
| That's where parents would bring their kids to and do that, do kickboxing. | ||
| And now, they're like, hey, kickboxing, this is cool. | ||
| When did that change? | ||
| I think like... | ||
| Two, three years ago. | ||
| What made it change? | ||
| I think because of the barter fight. | ||
| So we were getting more air time and after the barter fight and everything that happened around him and it was surrounding him, like the things you said, what happened outside in the club and this and that. | ||
| He was like the national asshole. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I was like, the national good guy. | ||
| And that was like the perfect clash. | ||
| And then, of course, I beat him. | ||
| So everybody was like, oh, shit, he's our hero. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So that's how everything a little bit exploded. | ||
| But again, for you, it's unsatisfying the way it happened, though. | ||
| He gets his arm injured. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In whatever way, reason, or whatever he thinks happened. | ||
| But... | ||
| Because you're suspicious about it. | ||
| I'm suspicious about it. | ||
| Because he's looking at one arm, then looking at the other arm, and it's a fake thing for me. | ||
| But that's what I have with this whole thing that he tries to create. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| When he's getting announced and everything, he's like, yeah, butter, hurry, 110-something fights and 90 knockouts. | ||
| But I'm obsessed with what I'm doing. | ||
| When I fight and when I have an opponent and I'm fighting, I'm looking for everything. | ||
| I want to know everything about you. | ||
| And everything these days you can find on the internet. | ||
| So when I'm looking on the internet, for example, you look at Wikipedia and you're looking at all the fights from back in the days, K1 days and even before that, you maybe get to 60, 70 fights. | ||
| So, where are the other fights? | ||
| Does that mean like when you were younger, in the youth period, you did like 40-something fights? | ||
| Did you knock everybody out? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| My trainer's been there for years, even before that, and he doesn't know about it. | ||
| So, that's strange because everything is documented on the internet. | ||
| Everything you can find on the internet. | ||
| So, you think his record's inflated? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| He's got some crazy knockouts, though. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's Stefan Leco, the wheel kick. | ||
| Yeah, the wheel kick's crazy. | ||
| But that's what I said. | ||
| He's got that. | ||
| He's got amazing records, but I think it's not as crazy as they make it to be. | ||
| Which is crazy because the reality is pretty crazy. | ||
| I mean, you don't need to hype it up any more than it really is, right? | ||
| No, but it's been there for years. | ||
| Like, hey, you did 100-something fights and so many knockouts. | ||
| But when I look at it, I can't find it. | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| But maybe it's there. | ||
| Maybe it's there. | ||
| Maybe it's from years ago or whatever. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But that's all that I'm looking at. | ||
| You're suspicious. | ||
| I'm suspicious about it because when I look at Wikipedia and I'm looking at when he was around... | ||
| It starts from when he was around 16 till now. | ||
| It's like 60-70 fights. | ||
| It's funny when you look at him in the early days too. | ||
| He was so skinny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like even when he fought Stefan Leco. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then now he's just fucking jacked. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But he put so much time into strength, strength and conditioning workouts. | ||
| You can see like he's always doing some crazy strength routine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So do you do a lot of strength and conditioning? | ||
| Like what are your workouts like as opposed to like how much skill work do you do and how much strength and conditioning work? | ||
| I think it's pretty even balanced out. | ||
| I think I train strength like three times a week. | ||
| But even my strength routine is so balanced out with doing strength and in the same muscle group I also do conditioning. | ||
| So first I do low reps and then I do a lot of reps. | ||
| Because these muscles for me aren't supposed to be big. | ||
| They need to be strong, and they need to be making the same punch 50 times with the same strength. | ||
| So not 10 times really hard, no, 50 times on the same strength, the same level. | ||
| So that's how we approach that. | ||
| And then, yeah, we got skill training like two, three times a week, like pad work. | ||
| I got explosive training, so I try to always look also at different sports. | ||
| At soccer, at American football, at ice skating. | ||
| And they all have a certain type of explosiveness that they train in a certain way. | ||
| So I tried to pick everything from everywhere and work with that. | ||
| So we created a training that we just used for being explosive. | ||
| So it has nothing to do with endurance. | ||
| Because it's maybe like 45 minutes and it's just a few seconds. | ||
| You go. | ||
| Go back. | ||
| Go! | ||
| You come back. | ||
| Because logically, for a big guy, you're slow. | ||
| When something is big and heavy, it's slow. | ||
| That's what we try to do. | ||
| We try to be as fast as possible for a big guy. | ||
| So a lot of plyometric type stuff, explosive type stuff. | ||
| Speed letters and stuff like that. | ||
| Okay, yeah. | ||
| So when you do this kind of stuff, when you were saying that you lift low reps and then high reps, so you do heavy weights first to try to max out or get the muscles very tired and then really wear them out with reps? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but we never go max, max. | |
| So you don't go to failure with heavy, heavy weights? | ||
| What kind of stuff are you doing? | ||
| Are you doing like dumbbells, kettlebells? | ||
| A lot of dumbbells. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As much loose weight as possible. | ||
| Like a few with the barbell, but as much with the dumbbells because that's when you got to keep in balance and work on that core and stuff like that. | ||
| So what about sparring? | ||
| How often do you spar a week? | ||
| Normally like twice to three times a week. | ||
| And when you do it, are you doing hard sparring? | ||
| You're from Holland. | ||
| Those fucking Holland guys like to spar hard, man. | ||
| Do you do a lot of hard sparring? | ||
| Is it more technical? | ||
| How do you balance it out? | ||
| It depends. | ||
| It depends on who's in. | ||
| Because now, in preparation, we're going to fly guys in. | ||
| Yeah, it's going to be pretty tough sparring because that's what you get the guys for. | ||
| But in the end, I'm always thinking about, hey, we do hard sparring, but we don't want to injure each other. | ||
| There's no point for me in knocking guys out during sparring Because then I don't have any sparring partners anymore. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I do hard sparring, kick him hard on the legs, kick him hard on the body. | ||
| And of course, people get knocked down. | ||
| Not knocked out, but knocked down. | ||
| But you don't go full blast to the head. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's a Holland thing, right? | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of Dutch guys. | ||
| A lot of guys do it, yeah. | ||
| Spar like that, yeah. | ||
| We go pretty tough. | ||
| We go pretty tough to the head, black eyes, bloody nose, but I'm always like 90%. | ||
| I'm always looking at like, hey, when I'm making a move and I can make a head kick, I always try to, when I see I'm going to make a full hit, Try to keep it back just a little bit. | ||
| So I think, yeah, but just being controlled, I think it's very important. | ||
| So I train with all the guys, all the heavyweight guys from Glory I trained with, and of course we do hard sparring, but we do not. | ||
| From my point of view, I don't want to injure them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it only makes sense. | ||
| I mean, that's one of the most valuable things, right, is to have high-level training partners. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And if guys think you're going to put them to sleep all the time, they're not really interested in sparring with you. | ||
| No, for example, I trained with Benny Adekbui. | ||
| He's like the number two and number three in glory. | ||
| And I fought him twice. | ||
| But we trained together. | ||
| He's now at my gym. | ||
| And I try to make him better. | ||
| I say, hey, try this, try that. | ||
| Because if he's better, you're better. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And people are like, no, no, no. | ||
| I don't want to train with competition because then they know what I'm going to do. | ||
| That's true, but you also know what they're doing. | ||
| So it just depends on how you approach things. | ||
| Every negative thing has a positive thing at it as well. | ||
| I'm always looking at the positive things and always trying to surround myself with people that are positive. | ||
| Yeah, that's the vibe that I'm going with, because that's what works. | ||
| Well, that's also the mark of a confident fighter. | ||
| You know that you're the best, so if you help him, he's just going to help you become even better than you are currently. | ||
| Yeah, but you've got to be... | ||
| You've got to be comfortable with that because you also see a lot of guys that are like, hey, no, I'm not going to do that. | ||
| I'm not going to do this. | ||
| I'm not going to help that guy. | ||
| I'm not going to tell him whatever because it's not going to be good for me. | ||
| But in the end, everybody that gets better can help me get better as well. | ||
| So I always position myself as a sponge to try to get this. | ||
| Much info in wherever I am. | ||
| So, for example, I'm now really going into acting. | ||
| I want to act. | ||
| Now, Kevin was on your show as well. | ||
| Kevin Hart? | ||
| Yeah, I saw you were training with him. | ||
| Yeah, so it was a lot of fun. | ||
| The first kick he ever threw, he threw with you. | ||
| Yeah, so it was crazy. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| Yeah, he's such a good guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But so much... | |
| positivity and he has such a great vibe and he's such a great mentor and i was just sitting there we were talking and like i said i was just positioning myself as a sponge i was just trying to get as much information in there as possible and yeah now i've been i'm here now in l.a for about a month I've been training with Mark Wahlberg and also the same thing. | ||
| And Anthony Hardonk is here. | ||
| And Anthony Hardonk is here. | ||
| So it's amazing because when you're in LA and you want to do Dutch kickboxing, that's the place where you've got to go. | ||
| Hardonk's awesome. | ||
| I love that guy. | ||
| Yeah, he's amazing. | ||
| So every time I'm in LA, I'm going to... | ||
| We should tell people where he goes. | ||
| Dynamics MMA, which is in Santa Monica. | ||
| He just said they're opening up another one that he's going to run in West LA. When he used to fight in the UFC, I used to love watching him fight because he was probably one of the best leg kickers ever in the heavyweight division. | ||
| He would just fuck guys' legs up. | ||
| So technical. | ||
| Yeah, so much fun. | ||
| Last Saturday, we started sparring a little bit. | ||
| Yeah, I'm looking for a little bit of sparring. | ||
| He said, I didn't do anything for 10 years, but I want to do it. | ||
| Just want to help you out. | ||
| I said, it's good, but I just want to move around. | ||
| I don't want to kick nobody's ass. | ||
| I just want to move around. | ||
| So that's what we did. | ||
| We had a lot of fun. | ||
| And then you still see he has that feeling, has that Dutch kickboxing touch. | ||
| So it's amazing. | ||
| Yeah, no, there's not a lot of, like, real high-level Dutch kickboxing that you can get in California, especially out here. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He's definitely the guy to go to. | ||
| But just heavyweights is difficult. | ||
| Heavyweight sparring is hard. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Good level heavyweight sparring, so... | ||
| Yeah, we just keep going around, and that's why I love being here. | ||
| So actually, I'm here for a vacation, but when I'm here, I got to work as well. | ||
| So the fight is in December, you were saying, right? | ||
| Yeah, it's going to be in December. | ||
| When, December? | ||
| The 21st. | ||
| Ah, okay. | ||
| So right before Christmas. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So that's what I said. | ||
| They said, yeah, maybe we'll do it in January. | ||
| Fuck, I wish it was in America. | ||
| I wish it was in America. | ||
| I would love to see that shit. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Well, I don't want to go to Holland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why not? | |
| I'm busy. | ||
| I love Holland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm too busy. | |
| I don't want to go to Holland. | ||
| That's not that I don't love Holland. | ||
| I'm just busy. | ||
| You want to come to Holland. | ||
| That's a lot of fun. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| But if it was in Chicago or some shit, I'd fly out. | ||
| Oh, that's a lot of flying. | ||
| Yeah, it's a lot of time. | ||
| 11 hours, yeah. | ||
| 11 hours on a plane, you can jet lag, stay for a couple days. | ||
| I don't have a week to spare. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No? | |
| I wish. | ||
| You're a busy man. | ||
| So you're out here trying to act too? | ||
| That's what you're going to try to do? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So you get an agent and meeting with people and stuff like that? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| So I'm with Paradigm. | ||
| It's my American management. | ||
| Now, you obviously speak fluent English, but are you taking lessons to get better at it so you can act and all that jazz? | ||
| So that's your next goal. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So I'm still an active athlete, but I'm still looking at like, hey, what can I do next? | ||
| Because I can't and I don't want to do this for like 10 more years. | ||
| When do you want to retire? | ||
| Do you have a thought in your head? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It depends on what... | ||
| Well, right now you're in your prime. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it depends on what comes on my route. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm still looking at... | ||
| So now I'm in negotiations with Glory. | ||
| How is Glory doing as an organization? | ||
| Are they doing well? | ||
| Yeah, they're doing... | ||
| Because I know they were struggling a little bit in America. | ||
| They were trying to... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But do they still have events here in America? | ||
| Yeah, but less. | ||
| Less than in the beginning. | ||
| Because Europe is so much more successful. | ||
| So there we fill up like arenas. | ||
| Here we can get like... | ||
| I went to the last man standing in LA when Joe Schilling was there. | ||
| Holy shit, was that crazy. | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| But I always tell people, you want to see real high-level striking. | ||
| You see high-level striking in MMA, but with MMA, there's all the other variables. | ||
| There's takedowns and small gloves, the whole deal. | ||
| You really want to see high-level kickboxing. | ||
| Glory's where it's at. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So that's for me now where I'm at. | ||
| I'm still in negotiation with Glory for a new contract. | ||
| And if we, in what way or the other, we can't get out of it, so maybe I'm going to do something else. | ||
| Or, I don't know, I'm looking at the sport like a totally different way. | ||
| I think the sport can totally be elevated in all certain ways, in all different ways. | ||
| Because how crazy would it be to do mixed fights? | ||
| It's fun to go from one guy, go to the other sport. | ||
| But how cool would it be that the other guy would go to the other sport as well? | ||
| So someone from MMA coming to kickboxing? | ||
| And the other way around. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, the other way around... | ||
| See... | ||
| I mean, I could see, like, Francis Ngannou. | ||
| I think he would do really well in kickboxing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think so, yeah. | |
| Because he's such a fucking ridiculously powerful striker. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He would do really well. | ||
| But I don't think there's a lot of other... | ||
| Well, I mean... | ||
| Obviously Alistair, if Alistair really dedicated himself to it, but he's chasing the goal of being a UFC heavyweight champion. | ||
| The only other organization is ONE, and ONE has, they do kickboxing as well now. | ||
| They do kickboxing and Muay Thai, and they do Muay Thai with little gloves, which is kind of crazy. | ||
| That was pretty crazy. | ||
| Have you thought about doing that? | ||
| No? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| You like the big gloves? | ||
| That's crazy, yeah. | ||
| But I don't mind doing the small gloves, but kickboxing with small gloves is pretty insane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How come? | |
| Pretty intense. | ||
| Because there's no way to block anything anymore. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Stand up and fight. | ||
| You can just put the gloves out and just do bare knuckle fight because it's almost the same. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So in terms of like, for people who don't understand, when you have big gloves on, there's more, you can protect yourself more. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You can shell up better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And defensively, you know Liam Harrison? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He fought in one with little gloves in Muay Thai and he was like, holy fuck. | ||
| He sent me a message like, fucking brutal, man. | ||
| He's like... | ||
| He's like, I can't believe how hard it is. | ||
| It's so much different. | ||
| Yeah, it's totally different. | ||
| You can't clinch, you can't do whatever. | ||
| So, yeah, that's pretty insane. | ||
| So, but like I said, you know, it's so much fun. | ||
| I don't know why one's doing that. | ||
| I mean, because I know they do have some matches where they wear big gloves, too. | ||
| Yeah, just to push the limit again. | ||
| Well, they have so many different kinds of matches over there. | ||
| They even have grappling matches, like straight grappling. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| Have you been to one at all? | ||
| No. | ||
| They're gigantic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah? | |
| In Asia, fucking huge, man. | ||
| You've been there? | ||
| No, but a bunch of friends have gone over there to coach and even to fight. | ||
| And a couple people from the UFC, Misha Tate, she has some executive position over there right now. | ||
| Rich Franklin does as well, who used to be the middleweight champion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| So they have a bigger audience worldwide than the UFC does. | ||
| They're huge in Asia, just gigantic. | ||
| And they keep getting bigger and bigger, and they got really high-level fighters too, so it's really interesting. | ||
| But I know they're doing a lot of kickboxing as well. | ||
| Yeah, so who knows? | ||
| More the better, right? | ||
| More competition, the better. | ||
| Yeah, exactly, exactly, because that's what brings the whole sport up to a new level. | ||
| So that's perfect, and that's cool. | ||
| But like I said, I just like to do different stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And now, like I said, I don't want to fight for another 10 years. | ||
| So let's see what's going to happen. | ||
| I'm going to make a movie either way. | ||
| So I'm going to start filming a movie in the beginning of next year. | ||
| So that's pretty cool. | ||
| What's the movie? | ||
| It's gonna be, it's like totally from blank we started it. | ||
| So it's been written now. | ||
| I got the first draft of the script and it's crazy. | ||
| Can you tell me what you do? | ||
| Yeah, so I'm like a black ops kind of guy. | ||
| But something happens during the operation and I stop. | ||
| Because I think what happens is crazy. | ||
| I told them not to do this and still this happens so I'm gonna stop. | ||
| But they bring you back. | ||
| I get back. | ||
| You gotta go back and kick some ass. | ||
| Shoot some people and kick them. | ||
| You get to kick people? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But that's the thing. | ||
| I don't want to be a fighter. | ||
| Because people already know me from fighting. | ||
| So I want to do something else. | ||
| I want to really show my acting skills. | ||
| So this is going to be so much fun. | ||
| And that's what I get my excitement from. | ||
| Because I love doing new stuff. | ||
| I'm doing kickboxing since I was six years old. | ||
| I've been doing this forever. | ||
| I want to do something else as well. | ||
| This is going to be a lot of fun. | ||
| It's a hard transition. | ||
| Not a lot of people have been successful at it. | ||
| Randy Couture is probably the most successful at it. | ||
| He's got a real career as an actor now. | ||
| He acts in a bunch of movies, man. | ||
| Obviously, he's in The Expendables, but he's always working. | ||
| In the end, when you look at the history, a lot of athletes did it. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| Not a lot. | ||
| We're, like, really good. | ||
| But in the end, we got, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlotte Van Damme. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| And I like the challenge. | ||
| Is there ever a worry of being, like, one foot in, one foot out with your fighting career? | ||
| Like if acting starts to take off, but you're still fighting, is there a worry about not being 100% all in? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, because then the thing we said, and I also discussed this with my trainer, because he's really cautious with that. | ||
| He's like, hey, when we focus on making a movie, that's what we're going to focus on. | ||
| And if we're going to have a fight, we're going to fully focus on that. | ||
| So no side things or, oh, let's do this for a second and then we go back. | ||
| No, just going to focus on that. | ||
| Because that's what does fighters in. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I mean, you've seen it like that. | ||
| That happened with Ronda Rousey. | ||
| It's happened with other fighters where they just get too spread thin. | ||
| They get spread too thin and they have too many different projects going simultaneously. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| People still say that about me now at this moment. | ||
| Like Rico's not focused. | ||
| He does everything. | ||
| I say, hey, but I train every day. | ||
| I'm focused in what I'm doing. | ||
| I'm focused in kickboxing, but I just like the acting part. | ||
| I just want to gain my knowledge and get better at it. | ||
| So you got to train it. | ||
| It's the same as kickboxing. | ||
| You just got to stay focused. | ||
| Do you ever do any jujitsu? | ||
| I did some. | ||
| I did some, yeah. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| It's a lot of fun. | ||
| But now the last two years have been so busy with kickboxing and everything that happens on the side. | ||
| It's just no time. | ||
| So you don't have any real designs of eventually transferring to MMA? Yeah. | ||
| you know like i said for me um when i look at it because people ask me ask me this a lot like rico would you why don't you go to mma yeah yeah it could be it could be possible but like from if i look at it honestly it's not my basic uh ambition to go there because my ambition my next ambition because when i look at it it's like if you jump into something different You should have | ||
| the will and want to be the best. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I don't necessarily have the will to be the best at MMA, but if you get a crazy Offer. | ||
| That's what I was going to say. | ||
| Someone comes along with the real shackles. | ||
| You can think about some stuff. | ||
| Starts laying some paper out. | ||
| Come on, Rico. | ||
| Okay, okay. | ||
| Keep it going. | ||
| Just a little bit more. | ||
| Okay, let's go. | ||
| I got this. | ||
| I'm motivated. | ||
| No, so that's exactly what you said. | ||
| But if you did decide to do that, how much time do you think you would legitimately need? | ||
| For like a real high-level opponent to work on. | ||
| A year. | ||
| Take down a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Take down defense. | ||
| I know what to do. | ||
| I've trained this for like two, three years. | ||
| So I know, but my body just needs to work on it, have a fight in between, maybe another fight, and then I'm going to be able to do a high-level fight. | ||
| Now, do you do any other kind of cardio? | ||
| Do you run? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Do you? | ||
| I hate it. | ||
| You hate it? | ||
| You have to do it. | ||
| But it's also for a big guy. | ||
| It's more of a pain in the ass, too. | ||
| What do you weigh, about 250, somewhere around there? | ||
| 260. 260. So when you're running, that's a lot of weight. | ||
| That's a lot of weight on your joints. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because of the pressure. | ||
| But in the end... | ||
| How much I hate it, it works for me because it's also for me a mental training because I hate it so much and I jump on the treadmill or I go outside and I just run and go, come on, come on. | ||
| You got to keep going, you got to keep going because when you have that feeling, like 90% of the people would stop. | ||
| But you're not that person. | ||
| You gotta keep going. | ||
| And that's what motivates me, just to do things different than everybody else does. | ||
| Being comfortable being uncomfortable. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| The grind. | ||
| The grind is... | ||
| I think that's the moment when it when it starts when you get that feeling shit is gonna hurt your body starts hurting and That's when like a lot of people give up and that's where we as champions we continue It's interesting too because a lot of fighters they'll do all sorts of high intensity training and interval training and all these different plyometrics and cardio and different things but Many of them will tell you that one of the more important things is just long-range running. | ||
| Because when you do this long-distance running where you're on 5, 6, 7 miles, when you do that, you develop this cardio base where you can just keep working and you recover faster. | ||
| I mean, that's one of the things that if you go back and look at old-time fighters... | ||
| You know, back to Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, all those guys. | ||
| Everybody ran. | ||
| Rocky Marciano, everybody ran. | ||
| There wasn't an option. | ||
| It wasn't like, you don't have to run, we could do a bunch of other things. | ||
| Like, no, no, no. | ||
| Fighters run. | ||
| Yeah, that's what we do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's just... | ||
| I always feel like running is not the... | ||
| It's not the base of your... | ||
| It's not most important, but it's like a really important factor of the total package. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So it's just your... | ||
| The oxygen you have for keeping the same pace for a longer time, then of course the explosiveness that we use during a fight is important, but also just your basic lung capacity should be big as well. | ||
| What about heavy bag work? | ||
| Yeah, we do it, but... | ||
| Not that much? | ||
| Yeah, I think like once a week. | ||
| So more pad work, more technical things? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's really interesting how different camps, different fighters, different trainers prefer different preparation methods. | ||
| And some swear by intervals on the heavy bag. | ||
| Some swear by doing rounds on the heavy bag. | ||
| You know, and some don't think it's that critical. | ||
| Yeah, I think for everybody it's different but like for me throughout all those years I've been trying different stuff and I think now I created the right combination of different trainings just polishing everything and I think I found the right way to get fit because I don't need to get I need to get better. | ||
| I'm always looking to get better, but you get better by putting in the work. | ||
| But I'm always looking at how can I change my training up? | ||
| What would be an add-on in what I already have? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So now I think I created the right combination and still I'm looking to add stuff on but I think I created the right way to get fit for a fight because I've shown that throughout all those years. | ||
| I've shown that I'm fitter than all the rest and that's a part but I still I think the biggest difference is that everybody is strong and everybody is fit and everybody can fight. | ||
| But the biggest difference is mentally. | ||
| What happens to you mentally when you get to the fourth and fifth round? | ||
| I think that's the most important thing. | ||
| How strong are you mentally to continue fighting? | ||
| For the people that do not understand what this fighting game is or what happens to you when you're in the ring or in an octagon. | ||
| I always compare it with driving a car. | ||
| You're driving a car and the last 40-50 miles the gas light comes on. | ||
| Hey, you gotta get gas. | ||
| That's the same thing that happens to your body. | ||
| When you get tired, whatever happens in your mind or your head, hey, you're tired. | ||
| When you're tired, you need to rest. | ||
| And we as athletes, we do not listen to that light that goes off in your car. | ||
| And even in my car, I don't listen. | ||
| I always go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I had a few times I was on the side of the road without gas, so I'm sorry, but... | |
| Is that psychological? | ||
| Do you do that? | ||
| Because you think of your car like a body? | ||
| Like you try to fuck your car. | ||
| Don't be a pussy. | ||
| Thanks, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Appreciate that. | ||
| But that's, yeah, I think that is what it is. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's like the same game you're playing. | ||
| You're playing that game with your car. | ||
| It's so stupid. | ||
| But for me, it works. | ||
| Because I... I always push my car to the limit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's funny. | |
| That's what I do to myself as well, you know? | ||
| And that's what I luckily have a great team of people around me for because even when everything is hurting and tired and I almost get overtrained, my people have to pull me back and say, Rico, there's no point in training now because you're going to get overtrained and you're going to fuck yourself up. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the fine balance, right? | ||
| It's hard to figure out. | ||
| I don't have the balance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I don't have it. | ||
| I try to have it. | ||
| And every time in preparation, I think I got it. | ||
| Now I got it. | ||
| I don't got it. | ||
| So you need other people around you that are objective, that can tell you. | ||
| Like, hey, Rico, you got to step back. | ||
| Because for me, in my mind, I don't know what it is. | ||
| But when I'm not working, I'm standing still or going down. | ||
| That's what happens in my mind. | ||
| So I gotta keep working. | ||
| I gotta keep grinding. | ||
| Right, but that's also because of your style, because of the fact that you do push such a tremendous pace that you constantly feel like you have to have your foot on the gas. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So you've been with the same coach for a long time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Since I was like 17. Oh, so that's great. | ||
| So they know you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When I come in, they know what's going on. | ||
| So critical, right? | ||
| And then the whole team. | ||
| So my power coach. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So the same team the entire time. | ||
| Can you imagine like in the beginning of when we were working for three, four years and then I come in Monday morning, power training. | ||
| And my trainer walks up to me and looks at me. | ||
| What the hell? | ||
| What the hell did you do this weekend? | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| What have you been eating? | ||
| Yeah, Saturday night I went to the McDonald's. | ||
| What's the problem? | ||
| Look at your blown head, man. | ||
| You know, fat holds the water in your fluid. | ||
| He could tell from one McDonald's meal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| That's how close we were. | ||
| He sees me multiple times a week. | ||
| So he saw me like Friday. | ||
| So he just knows you. | ||
| He just knows how it works. | ||
| He knows everything. | ||
| Did you monitor your heart rate or anything like that? | ||
| Yes, every morning I check my blood pressure, stuff like that, get my temperature. | ||
| Do you do it with a computer? | ||
| Do you have a program to run? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Just write it down? | ||
| Yeah, just write it down and then send it to the doctor. | ||
| So if your heart rate is a little bit too high in the morning, do you just do it like an active recovery day, just relax? | ||
| Yeah, we now check it more through the temperature than through the heart rate. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Temperature? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So, when my temperature is up, I gotta watch out. | ||
| So you might be fighting off a cold or something like that? | ||
| Something like that. | ||
| Fighting off a cold. | ||
| Or you still... | ||
| Your body is still recovering from... | ||
| From the last workout. | ||
| From last trainings. | ||
| So from that we can... | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I've been doing it now for a few years. | |
| And that's exactly when I feel like, hey... | ||
| When my temperature goes up and it goes there... | ||
| This doesn't feel good. | ||
| And then every time when we... | ||
| In the end... | ||
| We always look back at it and analyze stuff. | ||
| And then my trainer says, hey, exactly there. | ||
| Because this training was shit. | ||
| So you take... | ||
| Do you use this... | ||
| Do you make a log during your training and compare it to your last camp? | ||
| And you look at the numbers and make sure that everything lines up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So you kind of have to be, right? | ||
| At this point in time, if you want to really get everything dialed in, you kind of have to be scientific about everything, right? | ||
| Yeah, because... | ||
| There's so much more than just fighting and good training. | ||
| It's like good nutrition and this and that. | ||
| Everything has to be balanced out. | ||
| I was going to ask you about that. | ||
| Do you have a dietician or someone who cooks for you? | ||
| Yeah, in camp. | ||
| I think two years ago I started with that. | ||
| Do you eat horse meat? | ||
| Yeah, not necessarily. | ||
| Isn't that a big thing over there? | ||
| Alistair is a big horse meat guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that was a good excuse for the things that he did next to fighting. | |
| That's what everybody said, too. | ||
| Everybody was like, yeah, horse meat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, horse meat, yeah. | |
| Hey, it works! | ||
| Yeah, look at the size of him. | ||
| Gotta get him some horse meat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, no, so that's, no, I have no clue. | ||
| It's not like in my diet or something. | ||
| What do you eat? | ||
| A lot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A lot? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Multiple meals a day? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. | ||
| So, but that's the fun. | ||
| People are like, oh, How much do you eat? | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| But I burn a lot as well, so I have to. | ||
| For me, the fun thing with that is the fun and the strange thing when I tell people, when I get closer to the fight, I'm eating myself slim. | ||
| So the more I'm eating, the slimmer I'm getting because I'm training very hard and your body's just in a burning process. | ||
| And when the food is gone, it's going to start burning fat. | ||
| So I get slimmer the closer I get to the fight. | ||
| But when you see what I eat, it's like, how do you do that? | ||
| But it's just all... | ||
| Because you're just training so much. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what kind of foods do they prepare for you? | ||
| Do they have those pre-prepared packets and you just heat them up or something like that? | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like a meal prep company does? | ||
| No, it's just like a private cook. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| A private chef that runs with me. | ||
| And just make sure every day I get... | ||
| And they check the macros and make sure that you get the right amount of protein, the right amount of carbohydrates. | ||
| Yeah, so it's not really like everything is put on a scale or something like that. | ||
| We don't do that because, yeah, in certain things I just want a little bit more or I'm still a little bit hungry. | ||
| It's not like you need to lose weight or anything. | ||
| No, but still I have in my mind always a certain type of fight weight that I like to fight on. | ||
| What is that weight? | ||
| Like 118 and a half. | ||
| 118 and a half kilos. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| I think it's around 258, I think. | ||
| Well, it's 2.2 pounds, 2.2 kilos or 2.2 pounds per kilo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
118 is 260 pounds. | |
| 260. So that's right around there, huh? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, okay. | ||
| Then I'm lying. | ||
| Then I'm now a little bit heavier. | ||
| Guys, come on. | ||
| I'm in LA. Yeah. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I went in and out a few times. | ||
| How could you not? | ||
| So it's got to be around 265. Do you try to stay pretty healthy in terms of your diet, though, even when you're not in camp? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So for me, people are like, Rico, how do you do it? | ||
| I say, for me... | ||
| Fighting is a lifestyle. | ||
| It's not like when I wake up, this morning, I go to the gym, think about the fight, focus, focus, focus, go out to the gym, and my focus is all over. | ||
| I wake up with it, I go to bed with it, and when I'm in bed, I'm dreaming about it. | ||
| This is 24-7. | ||
| Every day, I'm thinking about it. | ||
| Every meal, every thing you do is just thinking about what's coming. | ||
| That's why you're the champ. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| But for me, it's like such a crazy thing that goes on in my mind because I train twice a day, and then at night when I'm at home, I think like, you know what? | ||
| I'm in front of the television with my wife on the couch, and I'm like, I'm going to do some stretching. | ||
| I'm just going to sit on the ground and just stretch or do some more ab work. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like I'm obsessed. | ||
| You have to be obsessed. | ||
| I mean, you're in one of the most dangerous combat sports in the world and you're the world champion. | ||
| So it's constantly that pressure and I'm just thinking, hey, my opponent probably now is resting or whatever he's doing. | ||
| I don't care, but I need to do something extra. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So constantly that's running through my mind. | ||
| Everything that I'm doing, he's not doing. | ||
| Now, do you take vitamins and supplements? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What kind of stuff do you take? | ||
| It's really like all natural stuff and I go to the doctor so he takes my blood and then from there on he always looks at how does it look. | ||
| Is it looking good? | ||
| Maybe you need some more iron or whatever. | ||
| So he fills it up whenever it's needed. | ||
| And during the period I'm training, I just take the normal stuff. | ||
| Magnesium, iron, whatever. | ||
| Vitamin C, stuff like that. | ||
| Just to keep everything on the right level. | ||
| And then once a month I go to him. | ||
| Or the closer we get to the fight, maybe go twice a month, and then you just check it, like, okay, it's good. | ||
| Or now, oh, you got a lot of white blood cells, so you're getting close to being, your muscles are tired, you know, maybe getting overtrained, so look at that. | ||
| Maybe get some more protein, you know, stuff like that. | ||
| So that's how we try to do that. | ||
| What else do you do for recovery? | ||
| Do you do any cryotherapy or things along those lines? | ||
| Yeah, so I've been starting that, like, one and a half year ago or something and it works i like it do you do it um do you do ice baths or like how do you what do you do no i just do literally the cryo the the machines oh something like frozen yeah yeah yeah so i did like uh two different uh in holland now it's like really starting to to to to be a hype so now they get like uh different uh places Do you go on the one that is from the neck down | ||
| or the one that gets your whole body in there? | ||
| Yeah, so first I started with the one with the neck down. | ||
| The whole body is the better one though, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a place out here, cryotherapy. | ||
| It's the fucking shit. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Yeah, it's nice. | ||
| It's 240 degrees below zero and you just get in there for three minutes, you motherfucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Motherfucker. | |
| But it's also free. | ||
| I'll get in there like a mental training. | ||
| I'm like, come on. | ||
| You gotta go. | ||
| So that's what I started with. | ||
| But I think the only one we have now is in Amsterdam, like the full body. | ||
| And Amsterdam is like two hours. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, from the neck down is good enough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So now I get one. | ||
| I get one in my own gym. | ||
| So just I can jump in, in and out, easy. | ||
| So just start with that. | ||
| And then from there, I'm going to see how it works. | ||
| What about sauna? | ||
| Yeah, I use it, but not too often. | ||
| So good, man. | ||
| I know. | ||
| So good for recovery. | ||
| You don't like it? | ||
| I like it for the first two minutes. | ||
| And then afterwards, again, it's like a training. | ||
| Mental training. | ||
| I know. | ||
| But my wife's enjoying it. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It's so nice. | ||
| Because you're playing a game with yourself. | ||
| You can't just enjoy it. | ||
| Your opponent will probably get out now. | ||
| You're not going to stay in. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| It's like really a sweat just dripping off. | ||
| It's like really a fight. | ||
| I was fucking myself up because I was trying to crank it up. | ||
| I had Laird Hamilton on the podcast. | ||
| He's a surfer, big time surfer. | ||
| And his wife, Gabriella Reese, was telling me that he cranks his up to 220 degrees. | ||
| So I did that for a little bit. | ||
| I got up to like 210, 218. But I think it was burning my lungs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think I was cooking in there. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I would feel like shit. | ||
| And then I would get out and I'd be so fucking tired. | ||
| I was like, I don't think this is good for you. | ||
| So then I dropped it down. | ||
| Now I do normal. | ||
| Now I do it like 180, which is normal. | ||
| 180 degrees Fahrenheit. | ||
| I don't know what that is, Celsius. | ||
| Yeah, I think like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like 80, 85. Yeah, but that's normal. | |
| That's like a normal hot sauna. | ||
| Good enough. | ||
| 20 minutes, I'm in and out. | ||
| It's pretty hot. | ||
| It's pretty hot for me. | ||
| It's hot, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's hot. | |
| But it's very good for you, those heat shock proteins. | ||
| And they did these studies that showed a 40% decrease in mortality for all causes. | ||
| Heart attack, stroke, cancer. | ||
| 40% decrease for people who use the sauna for four times a week or more. | ||
| That was in, what was that, Sweden, Jamie? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| Dr. Rhonda Patrick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| Nice. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| She was talking about it. | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah, it's phenomenal for you because of heat shock proteins. | ||
| It makes your body, reduces inflammation throughout your whole body, as does cryotherapy. | ||
| Anything where you're dealing with extreme cold or extreme heat, your body develops either heat shock proteins or cold shock proteins. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I also have... | ||
| So there was this place where I went for the cryo and he said, oh, we also got something else. | ||
| I don't know what it's called. | ||
| I can't remember. | ||
| So you just get like put in a cocoon or something and just go to sleep. | ||
| But you're in water, so you're like floating. | ||
| So the water is like... | ||
| You're floating. | ||
| Yeah, the water is floating. | ||
| It's called floating. | ||
| That's what it's called. | ||
| I was like, what the hell? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm floating? | |
| That's what the fuck it's called. | ||
| You mean like a float tank? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but it looks like a cocoon. | |
| Okay, I know what you're talking about. | ||
| And then they just close it and they put you in there for... | ||
| Sensory deprivation tank, yeah. | ||
| For an hour. | ||
| I have one right here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| I'm going to sleep for an hour. | ||
| It's a big one, too. | ||
| You can fit in it. | ||
| It's huge. | ||
| The one I have here is huge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| You're so small. | ||
| Yeah, but that's the best one they have. | ||
| I just wanted one that anyone can come in. | ||
| So it's like seven feet long and nine feet high. | ||
| Yeah, it's amazing. | ||
| And they said when you finally get to the point where you know how to work with it mentally and relax, it's the same as one hour, like four or five hours of sleep or something. | ||
| Of sleep, yes. | ||
| Yeah, you relax. | ||
| And it's also your body absorbs magnesium. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because it's Epsom salts, so all the salt that's in the water is a thousand pounds of salt in the water. | ||
| All that Epsom salts, the magnesium, gets through your skin into your bloodstream, so it's really good. | ||
| It's almost as good or better than taking a magnesium supplement. | ||
| Really good for your muscles, too. | ||
| Everything gets loose and relaxed, and it feels like everything stretches out. | ||
| What about... | ||
| I also tried that. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| I'll show you when you get out of here. | ||
| What about massage? | ||
| Do you get massage? | ||
| Yeah, like daily. | ||
| Daily, yeah. | ||
| So my physiotherapist comes in to the house and just keeps the blood flowing and just makes sure... | ||
| Yeah, everything. | ||
| Not just for recovery, but also just for the injuries. | ||
| Just keep checking, like, oh, what's this? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| What's hurting? | ||
| So, luckily, I've been doing pretty good. | ||
| Not too many injuries. | ||
| Yeah, having a good one, a good massage therapist to deal with injuries is just gigantic, right? | ||
| Yeah, it's so important. | ||
| They can prevent things, fix things. | ||
| Things that are starting to go south, they can stop it in its tracks and loosen everything up. | ||
| Because sometimes when you get an injury, everything around it tightens up. | ||
| And then when you're training, it gets even more fucked up. | ||
| But if someone can loosen that up, then it has time to relax and heal. | ||
| Yeah, or else it's just getting more tense and then you're going to rip something or whatever. | ||
| So, yeah, that's so important. | ||
| And I think that's... | ||
| One of the key factors in being a pro athlete is the people you have around you and the team that helps you balance everything out. | ||
| And they say, hey, Rico, yeah, you're the fighter. | ||
| I say, yeah, I'm Rico the fighter. | ||
| I'm Rico the champion because of all those people that are around me. | ||
| So still, in the end, you're doing an individual sport. | ||
| But you have a great team around you to be that person that you are in the ring. | ||
| And at the highest level, I think you have to have that. | ||
| You have to have all the ducks in line, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have to have everything in line if you want to be at the very top of the heap. | ||
| Yeah, you have to. | ||
| What about psychology? | ||
| Do you have a mental trainer or anybody who's like a sports psychologist? | ||
| Well, that's the fun thing. | ||
| I started off with the guy I was telling you about, Alvio Lima. | ||
| He's also kickboxing world champion in different weight divisions. | ||
| And I was training with him and he took me with his training. | ||
| He took me to his training and I was working with him in his prime. | ||
| And without him knowing, he was teaching me so much about mental training because I was training with him and he was never giving up. | ||
| And the moment when I just showed something like, He gave even more gas. | ||
| So when you started slowing down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was even pushing the pace even more. | ||
| And that's what I was seeing in his fights. | ||
| I was just studying him. | ||
| And from that I learned so much. | ||
| And I respect him. | ||
| I'm still so thankful for that. | ||
| And he's still my mental coach. | ||
| So, he's in my corner, and every time when he says something, I just think about, I don't want to disappoint this man because he knows how important this is. | ||
| And I think from the start of last year or something, I was really like a little bit skeptical about talking to people like a psychologist or something. | ||
| I was like, I don't know. | ||
| Let's talk about personal stuff, you know, that's pretty deep. | ||
| With somebody you don't know is... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe in my mind it just doesn't add up. | ||
| It doesn't feel good. | ||
| But still, I got in the situation that I had to. | ||
| I just had to. | ||
| And I went there. | ||
| And it actually felt pretty good. | ||
| So from that moment on, I just kept on doing it. | ||
| Just talk about it. | ||
| Just talk about stuff. | ||
| You're like no other. | ||
| Know how many things happen, everything that happens in your life. | ||
| And you just got to process all that stuff. | ||
| But sometimes you just... | ||
| So many things happen in your life that you just can't process. | ||
| And you put them away. | ||
| And you don't think about it. | ||
| And they're fucking with you in the back of your head. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And then when you just have the time or take the time to talk about this stuff... | ||
| It just feels a lot better. | ||
| It feels like a bag of bricks on your back. | ||
| You just fall off. | ||
| It feels good. | ||
| I think of it the same way you were talking about physical therapy. | ||
| If you have little injuries, nagging injuries, you get it massaged out and everything loosens up. | ||
| I think of it the same way. | ||
| If you're not taking... | ||
| A good account of what's going on in your mind, you can develop little mental injuries. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But for me, and maybe a lot of people have, maybe not nowadays, but from back in the days, people said, when you're talking to a psychologist, you're crazy. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Or you're weak. | ||
| Yeah, that's how people in Holland... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Approached it. | ||
| Well, for a long time here for fighters, it was the same thing. | ||
| Most fighters didn't need a psychologist. | ||
| That's not for winners. | ||
| Winners know how to win. | ||
| You just don't be a pussy. | ||
| Go out there and fucking fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's nonsense. | ||
| There's no pussies in professional fighting. | ||
| No. | ||
| But there is edge. | ||
| You can get an edge. | ||
| You can get an advantage. | ||
| Whether you get that advantage from getting massage or cryotherapy or from a sports psychologist, there's advantages to be had. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I think that's what I got from my dad is just... | ||
| Being tough. | ||
| Being tough and being hard on yourself in whatever situation you're in. | ||
| Just be tough on yourself and just... | ||
| Because that's what he was. | ||
| He was tough on himself. | ||
| And so that's what I got from him. | ||
| But now I just think like, okay, just do... | ||
| Tweak everything up and just get mentally imbalanced and especially when he passed away like almost two years ago. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| Yeah, it was tough. | ||
| It was tough, especially when the relationship we had wasn't like... | ||
| It was like on and off, on and off. | ||
| And when it was on, it was like a lot of discussion and it just hurts. | ||
| And then things happen in your life and you just try to process everything and give it a certain... | ||
| But it's hard sometimes, and you just need somebody outside of your comfort zone to talk about that. | ||
| That really worked and helped for me, so I'm very thankful for that. | ||
| I think always how I approach things is that everything in life happens for a reason. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Positive or negative. | ||
| And sometimes you know what happens and why it happened. | ||
| And sometimes you probably know it after like a few years. | ||
| And maybe you never know it. | ||
| But in my opinion, everything in life, positive or negative, happens for a reason. | ||
| And you just... | ||
| Yeah, it's on you. | ||
| Well, whether it does or doesn't, if you decide that it does, that it happens for a reason, and you can find benefit in good or bad things, then it does happen for a reason. | ||
| But you make that distinction that it's going to be for your benefit, that it can help you in the long run. | ||
| That's the difference between a person who takes Things that happen, adversity in life, and decides that the world is against them. | ||
| I can't catch a break. | ||
| The world's fucking me over. | ||
| Those people wind up becoming losers versus someone who says, you know what? | ||
| We're going to be fine. | ||
| This is going to make me better. | ||
| It's going to make me stronger. | ||
| This is going to make me understand. | ||
| Even though I'm more vulnerable right now, this is going to make me understand myself better. | ||
| It's going to ultimately make me better at everything I do. | ||
| If you decide that, then things do happen for a reason. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons I love watching your podcast because that's what you bring. | ||
| And especially what I think for people that maybe sometimes struggle with certain things or like to just explain in a situation where you think like, fuck, what the fuck did I do to life that constantly everything just backfires on me? | ||
| I always think like, you are responsible for the choices that you make in your life and nobody else. | ||
| You're also responsible for how you accept or how you focus on your life. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| How you think about things and how you process it. | ||
| You're responsible for it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And those are things that are so important to me. | ||
| And that's what I mean with, I try to surround myself with people that boost my flame. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I just look at my phone and go through it like, who did I text or who did I call? | ||
| Those people need to boost my flame. | ||
| They need to be important in one way or the other. | ||
| It doesn't mean that they have to be important in business or in work or it can be in love or in family or whatever. | ||
| They need to be important in some kind of way. | ||
| I just need to have Positivity around me because I've seen so many negative things from my family side that it's like it doesn't work. | ||
| It drains you. | ||
| It drains you and I believe like it's like karma. | ||
| If you're negative you will Attract more negative things. | ||
| If you're positive, all positive things will come your way. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I believe that as well. | ||
| Do you have a visualization plan when you go into a fight? | ||
| Like, say, this rematch with Badr Hari. | ||
| Are you going to sit down and visualize certain scenarios? | ||
| Do you train your thought process to go over scenarios or to have a game plan in your mind, execute the fight the way you would like to imagine it? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I think every fighter does. | ||
| Is this something you set aside? | ||
| Do you meditate and set aside time to do that or do you just do that all the time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| It just happens. | ||
| You're just doing it all the time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You're in the car or whatever. | ||
| It just happens when you're on the treadmill or whatever. | ||
| It happens when you think about what's going to happen in the upcoming months. | ||
| You just know that this is going to be next level. | ||
| But how are we going to approach this fight? | ||
| What is going to happen? | ||
| What might happen if he does this? | ||
| I do that. | ||
| But this could happen and that could happen. | ||
| And in my mind, before going into the fight, I fought it already like a thousand times. | ||
| Maybe even more. | ||
| Because you're thinking about this This person and this fight for so long and for like three or four months, that's a long time. | ||
| So that happens. | ||
| And what I always feel like what's fun for people to realize is that my confidence level during a period of like three or four months into a fight goes like... | ||
| Up and down, up and down. | ||
| And people are like, how is that possible? | ||
| You are the fucking best at what you're doing. | ||
| You're smacking the shit out of everybody in training and in camp. | ||
| And how does that happen? | ||
| I don't know, but that is what happens. | ||
| I think that happens to everybody. | ||
| So you just accept the process? | ||
| You just accept the process, but it's such a fucking frustrating process that when you're here, Just try to get back up there again. | ||
| But you know that is part of the process. | ||
| Because I've been doing this my whole life. | ||
| So I know it's part of the process, but still it's frustrating. | ||
| And that's what, for example, a mental coach and a psychologist can help you with. | ||
| Cope with that at that moment so that you don't stay here. | ||
| You do climb back up again. | ||
| And then you say, but where does that come from? | ||
| It can come from anywhere. | ||
| You know, from your body being tired. | ||
| Like, hey, why can't I cope with this training? | ||
| Or why is this training getting to me? | ||
| Or during sparring, why did I get hit five times with the right hand and didn't block or react or whatever? | ||
| So it can come from anywhere. | ||
| And then the monotony of training as well, right? | ||
| So now this fight that's going to be happening December 21st, how can people get it? | ||
| Is it going to be available on UFC Fight Pass? | ||
| Yeah, it's going to be UFC Fight Pass and I believe it's on ESPN as well. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is it ESPN2? I think so, but I'm not 100% sure. | |
| Well, I'll find out and we'll make sure we tell everybody when it's taking place. | ||
| So we'll make sure we get a bunch of people to watch that, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| I'm fucking very pumped. | ||
| This is going to be kickboxing history. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Like you said, probably the biggest fight in kickboxing history. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, of course, back in the days we had so many great fights and we had the K1 tournament. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| But this is just the biggest one-on-one fight from this time. | ||
| From this time, yeah. | ||
| In this era. | ||
| Yeah, from this era that everybody wants to see. | ||
| Well, I hope a million fucking people watch it or more. | ||
| And I hope it really does open up the door for bigger and bigger fights. | ||
| Because I think that it's... | ||
| Look, Glory's amazing. | ||
| You guys have so many incredibly talented fighters. | ||
| And so many high-level fights. | ||
| I fucking love it, man. | ||
| I'm just such a huge fan. | ||
| I don't understand why it's not... | ||
| Bigger in America. | ||
| I know it's bigger in Europe. | ||
| Yeah, but that's, yeah, for us the same thing. | ||
| So we just hope that during the years, you know, we just keep building it up, building it up, and hope, like, for example, with Anthony opening up more gyms, more great American kickboxers and American fighters will stand up and compete. | ||
| That would be amazing. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| This might be it, man. | ||
| This one might be the one that changes the tide. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Well, good luck to you, brother. | ||
| And thank you very much for coming in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much, man. | |
| Really appreciate you. | ||
| Appreciate your time. | ||
| Oh, let everybody know your Instagram, your Twitter. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| How do they get out? | ||
| My Instagram and Twitter, it's all the same. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just Rico Verhoeven. | |
| And spell it out for people so they just know how to spell Verhoeven. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So it's R-I-C-O. It says Rico. | ||
| And then V-E-R-H-O-E-V-E-N. All right. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Bye, everybody. | ||
| Thanks, guys. |
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