Jan. 19, 2011 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:37:23
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Boom! | ||
| And we're live. | ||
| Jean-Jacques! | ||
| Joe Hogan! | ||
| Pull this up. | ||
| It's been quite some time, but we made it. | ||
| Yeah, we made it. | ||
| We made it happen. | ||
| People still, to this day, all my friends call me Joe Hogan because of you. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| Joe Hogan! | ||
| That's a funny Brazilian thing, you know, the Portuguese translation of R's to H's. | ||
| I think when we speak English, you have to use your tongue in a way that in Portuguese we are just flat out. | ||
| But you use Rio. | ||
| You don't say Rio, right? | ||
| Do you say Rio or Rio? | ||
| No, I say Rio. | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| Somehow, in Portuguese, the first two letters are the strongest ones in the world. | ||
| But Hickson and Hoyce and... | ||
| Say Hickson. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it's not Rickson, but it's Rio. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How's that work? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| When it comes to a name, it's different than when you say a city name. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| It's funny. | ||
| Rio, it's more something for... | ||
| And when you say personal, it becomes a little, I don't know, Hexon. | ||
| So with people it's an H, but it can be an R, like an R sound with objects and things? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Or just places? | ||
| I think more places, and it's funny because in each region in Brazil is a different accent. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, that makes sense. | ||
| Kind of like America. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Each place, like, what country is that? | ||
| Because it sounds very different. | ||
| But it's a beautiful language. | ||
| Portuguese has, like, especially Brazilian Portuguese, has, like, a sing-songy, like, a flow to it. | ||
| It's the bossa nova, carnaval. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's not the way you guys talk. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
| It sounds good, you know? | ||
| It's more almost like singing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How many Americans have put on a fake Brazilian accent once they started really getting into Jiu Jitsu? | ||
| Must be. | ||
| Man, I think in a way when Jiu Jitsu established their flag outside Brazil, It's funny in a way that people, our goal is to make that area become more Brazilian than any other place. | ||
| It's not that we're trying to speak more English, but we'll make the English become more Portuguese. | ||
| And almost every student that I have, maybe probably because of my accent, they're listening and speaking very similar to the way we do in every Jiu-Jitsu school. | ||
| Yeah, well, we used to see that in Taekwondo too. | ||
| Guys would have fake Korean accents. | ||
| And in each school, the instructor has a different accent and different vocabulary, which even extended more. | ||
| It becomes like another language. | ||
| In the jiu-jitsu community. | ||
| So jiu-jitsu is huge in Rio, but what other parts of Brazil, it's very strange, if you stop and think about the history of martial arts, which is something that's always been very fascinating to me, jiu-jitsu is the most fascinating, because until 1993, very few people understood how potent Brazilian jiu-jitsu was. | ||
| When I started to understand jiu-jitsu and became a teenager time, Jiu-Jitsu is basically in Brazil, has that amazing era of my Uncle Helio and Carson, the whole first generation of the family, which Brazil is all over. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu is all over Brazil. | ||
| As a teenager, I remember that Jiu-Jitsu is basically established in a very... | ||
| Wealth area in Rio de Janeiro only. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| That's basically you have all the schools used to call Gracie schools by the neighborhood. | ||
| You have a Gracie Humaita, you have a Gracie Copacabana, you have a then future Gracie Barra, but everything was almost Gracie school everywhere. | ||
| And it was wealthy people? | ||
| Only in the wealthy area of Rio. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Then slowly, because keep in mind, we used to have one, maybe two tournaments sport of jiu-jitsu a year. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| We always practice jiu-jitsu mainly at that time for self-defense. | ||
| We want to get ready for, protect ourself. | ||
| We never had much chances to try in a tournament because there's no tournament. | ||
| Every train we do is based in defend yourself. | ||
| What year did tournaments start coming about? | ||
| By the beginning of the 90s, I think the Jiu Jitsu tournament started catching up more. | ||
| There's a crazy video of your brother, Hegan and Hickson, competing at a tournament once. | ||
| It was the biggest tournament of the year. | ||
| 300 competitors. | ||
| Oh, that's crazy. | ||
| That was the biggest one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's crazy. | |
| That's so small, but that was the biggest one. | ||
| 300 people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Now there are thousands and thousands. | ||
| Oh, now the big ones is like 5,000 people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, when this happened, what year was this with your brother? | ||
| I think it was in the 80s. | ||
| Not sure which year. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Really? | ||
| It was something... | ||
| I don't think today, looking back, is something that I didn't like personally, because there was no need for that. | ||
| Everybody's to train together. | ||
| And later on, I find out there was behind the scenes People involved with the organization, they wanted something more of the tournament, and they end up making something like that happen. | ||
| Oh, so you mean because Hegan and Hickson had trained together, having them compete against each other was not a good idea? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Hickson was teaching us. | ||
| He's our instructor. | ||
| Why do you think they wanted to have him compete against Hegan? | ||
| Even this happened on the day of the event. | ||
| There was no planning of having that fight or anything. | ||
| They just made that happen there. | ||
| And today I realized that the promoter of the tournament, the sponsor, was talking to someone involved in the promotion. | ||
| Hey, man, I'll give you more money if you make something like that happen. | ||
| In our time, if my instructor tells me I want you to go and do that, I don't even question. | ||
| I just go and do it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the way we were in the whole family. | ||
| And our instructor said, I've got to go and do this. | ||
| Even though I don't like it, it's wrong, I should not do it, we'll do it. | ||
| So what would be wrong about it would be that you were all training partners, and in fact, Hickson was your instructor. | ||
| So for one of you to go up against Hickson, it's just... | ||
| I will give you, in the 90s, early 90s, we have a Sambo Wrestling Tournament in San Diego. | ||
| And when we moved to America, there was no jiu-jitsu events at all. | ||
| And we are in search of something similar that we can do to keep the edge. | ||
| And we went to some judo tournaments, we went to wrestling tournaments, not knowing the rules of anything. | ||
| And we end up in a sambo wrestling tournament. | ||
| Sambo, for people who don't know, is a Russian martial art. | ||
| They wear the judo jacket, but they wear wrestling shoes and shorts. | ||
| Yeah, it's kind of a mix of both. | ||
| Different rules. | ||
| I still don't know exactly the rules. | ||
| But here we are, and myself, and I would go there, and I saw Hickson in that event. | ||
| And when it comes towards the final match, it was me and him in the final match. | ||
| Back at that time, we had some conflict inside the family. | ||
| I'll keep that in four walls. | ||
| But the relationship wasn't as well as it should be. | ||
| Then when the referee called me, he said, I'm not going to fight my instructor, my coach, my hero, my idol. | ||
| And I told the ref, no, I'm not fighting. | ||
| And even Hickson was like, look at me, and I think in a good way, he knew I would not ever compete against him. | ||
| But at the same time, he realized that I would never turn myself against him. | ||
| I would fight for him for the rest of my life, and period. | ||
| And I think it was the point that I was able to engage back our family things together after this date and showing him that it's all my respect and I will fight for him, never against him. | ||
| Well, there was a time where people were trying to use the Gracie name. | ||
| And many people were opening up schools that weren't necessarily really, that wasn't their birth name, Gracie. | ||
| Whereas you guys went in a different direction and used the Machado name, and the Machado name became enormous too. | ||
| So there was like, from what I remember in the 90s, when I first started training with you, I started out at Hickson's Place, and I only trained there one time, and then I went from Hickson's Place to Carlson's Place just because it was closer. | ||
| I didn't know any better. | ||
| I thought Gracie is Gracie. | ||
| Oh, Carlson Gracie, Hicks and Gracie. | ||
| I didn't know anything. | ||
| And I was a white belt. | ||
| And I was like, oh, another Gracie. | ||
| Oh, this is like 10 minutes closer to my house. | ||
| I'll just go here. | ||
| But that's how it used to be in Brazil in the 80s. | ||
| It's all Gracie schools. | ||
| But then when that place went under, Carlson lost that place. | ||
| It was on Hawthorne. | ||
| That was when Vitor Belfort made his UFC debut in 1997. And that place went under, I started training with you. | ||
| And when I started training with you, it was like 97-ish, right? | ||
| Somewhere around there? | ||
| 98? | ||
| Somewhere around there? | ||
| I think it was right before Fear Factor? | ||
| No. | ||
| Something a few years before. | ||
| Yeah, a few years before. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because Fear Factor was 2001. News Radio's time. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I was still on News Radio when I was training with you. | ||
| But I remember there was like, oh, you're Machado now. | ||
| I'm like, what are you talking about? | ||
| I was like, I didn't understand. | ||
| Like, oh, there's like Machados and then there's like two different like... | ||
| The thing that happened at that time was this. | ||
| My mother, older sister, she's married to Carlos Gracie Sr. I mean, he had seven wives. | ||
| Holla! | ||
| His last wife was my mom's sister. | ||
| And that's, we grew up with the family. | ||
| We don't have the same last name. | ||
| But I feel like I am, and all my brothers, the same thing. | ||
| We represent the Grace family the best way we can, forever, you know? | ||
| And every day, you have a big family, you have cousins that you relate better than others, but it's still a family, you know? | ||
| And back at that time, two of my brothers were teaching at the Grace School in Carson with Higgins and Carlos, and I think by that time, Chuck Norris was no longer training with Horian at the Gracie School there. | ||
| Not sure what happened and he stopped training. | ||
| Then one day, Chuck Norris showed up at our house, at our garage. | ||
| We used to teach in our garage in Redondo Beach. | ||
| And we opened the door, suddenly look, it's like, man, that guy looks like Chuck Norris. | ||
| Then this gentleman was with him, boy, this is Chuck Norris. | ||
| And we look like, what? | ||
| And he brought him to train. | ||
| He did train a few years back at the Great C School and blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And it's a long story. | ||
| Then he started training for us. | ||
| And when he started training for us, we became very good friends. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| Like something right away, he invited us to his house. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| Man, amazing person. | ||
| He started hanging out. | ||
| And by that time, I remember he used to make a movie, one movie a year. | ||
| He worked for six months to make a movie, and he had six months off. | ||
| When we met him, he was six months off. | ||
| Literally, he trains every day. | ||
| But when he trains, he doesn't go home. | ||
| We have lunch, he hangs out, we go to a movie, then suddenly become good friends. | ||
| Then one day, after a few months after training with us, he invited us to the valley where he used to live in Encino and said, look, I have a surprise for you guys. | ||
| Then he took us to a shopping center right on Ventura Boulevard, and he shows, I have a gift for you guys, and he shows one of the Unity's mats, right? | ||
| It's like a school. | ||
| Then he said, look, this is for you guys. | ||
| That's your school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Then we look at him like, Ventura Boulevard, right on the street. | ||
| I said, Chuck, I don't think we can afford that. | ||
| He said, no, don't worry. | ||
| That's my building. | ||
| You guys don't have to pay anything. | ||
| I just want to make sure I don't have to drive the 101 and 405. You guys drive. | ||
| That's a hell of a drive, that Redondo drive. | ||
| And he gave the school to us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Then he's like, what can I tell more about this guy? | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| And that's why we have this school in the Valley, because he used to live in Encino. | ||
| The school was in Encino. | ||
| Then we start coming here, then here we are. | ||
| Joe Hogan. | ||
| Tarzana. | ||
| Come back to our school. | ||
| Yeah, that's amazing. | ||
| Wow, what a great guy. | ||
| But the point on that conversation was that... | ||
| Our school, when we opened our school, is to call Carlos Gracie Jiu-Jitsu because of our uncle. | ||
| Because when we came in, we had the Gracie School, and I remember the family is big, and everybody has your side of story. | ||
| Everybody is saying something about your uncle, your cousin, and we want to make sure that this side of the family that we were representing in a way was Carlos' side. | ||
| A lot of people when we did the grand opening, Chuck Norris were with us doing the self-defense and demonstration in the grand opening of the school. | ||
| And that was on Sunday. | ||
| On Monday, we're not even ready for the amount of people that show up at our school. | ||
| And we have a small place with the amount of people. | ||
| But a lot of people start calling the other school asking where our school was. | ||
| Because we're not even on the book. | ||
| Yeah, we are not even on that. | ||
| And people are calling the other schools. | ||
| Hey, do you know where the other school is? | ||
| And that created a little situation back then. | ||
| And we got some calls from other cousins. | ||
| And they said, hey, you guys cannot use the name. | ||
| Then for the first time, using the name of our family, we realized, like, what? | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Because you don't have the last name. | ||
| You can't use it. | ||
| Then, for us, we grew up fighting for the family, doing everything for the family. | ||
| We still do. | ||
| Nothing changed. | ||
| But then, their suggestion was, yeah, you can call Machado. | ||
| Why do you call Gracie's name? | ||
| My family. | ||
| Was this because of Horian? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Horian was a lawyer. | ||
| And so he was the one who kind of copyrighted it and wanted to make... | ||
| He was trying to sue Carlson at one point, right? | ||
| Man, but do you know the crazy thing was this. | ||
| We have one of the students, and as we learned Jiu Jitsu, the most important thing for me as an instructor was everybody can learn how to fight. | ||
| How can you translate what you learn on the mat to implement in your personal life? | ||
| That's how we learn Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| The impact that Jiu Jitsu has on you. | ||
| To succeed outside the academy. | ||
| I know you can fight. | ||
| But can you fight on your life outside? | ||
| Then it's a different ballgame. | ||
| It's a lot bigger. | ||
| And a lot harder. | ||
| And we have a lot of students that came to us when we have our garage time that changed their life. | ||
| And coincidentally, one of the students... | ||
| Happens to be son of the biggest lawyer in California. | ||
| And we have no idea. | ||
| Because we end up getting sued by one side of the family. | ||
| Then we have no money. | ||
| We turn to the show and say, guys, I'm sorry, we're going to have to leave. | ||
| So you thought you were going to close down the school? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Then we had this guy, which his father was very grateful to us, show up, say, look, I'm this hotshot lawyer. | ||
| I can represent you guys like, wait a minute to pay. | ||
| No, you guys are ready. | ||
| I owe you because my son was saved by you guys. | ||
| And who's your son? | ||
| And his son was 21st for quite some time, became very good in Jiu Jiu to change his life around. | ||
| He was a drug addict. | ||
| Now he's one of the best yoga instructors out there. | ||
| A jujitsu addict. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| And changed his life. | ||
| And that lawyer protected us. | ||
| Made sure that we stay here fine. | ||
| Protected. | ||
| And that was in the past. | ||
| Today, all our families. | ||
| We have our difference back then. | ||
| It's less now. | ||
| Oh, it's nothing now. | ||
| Well, there's enough for everybody now. | ||
| I think everybody realizes. | ||
| In the beginning, jujitsu was so new and so powerful. | ||
| And that Gracie name was so huge. | ||
| Do you remember when Vitor, they used to call him Vitor Gracie? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They would call him Victor for some reason. | ||
| It was Victor, V-I-K-T-O-R, and then it became Vitor. | ||
| I was there when they were calling him Victor Gracie. | ||
| Man, do you know the amazing thing? | ||
| I, as a fighter, and in my generation in Brazil, everybody wants to be part of the family. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Everybody wants to feel that you're in that big circle because there's so much history. | ||
| The name is so huge. | ||
| I think it's August 12th at your birthday, right? | ||
| August 11th. | ||
| August 11th, they're going to have a statue of Carson Gracie being in Copacabana in Rio. | ||
| I mean, a lot of recognitions happen now. | ||
| But Jiu-Jitsu, and especially the great Jiu-Jitsu, because anyone that does Jiu-Jitsu today, you're doing great Jiu-Jitsu somehow. | ||
| Maybe second generation, third generation, a student of this guy who his instructor was a student of. | ||
| I mean, I think everybody should be, and they are grateful for what their family has done. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's the most important family in the history of martial arts by a long shot. | ||
| Man, it changed the world. | ||
| Changed the world. | ||
| Changed the world. | ||
| Changed my world. | ||
| I remember when the UFC came out and I watched it. | ||
| And I had been a striker my whole life. | ||
| And I had done a little wrestling in high school. | ||
| But no jujitsu, no submissions, no nothing. | ||
| And I watched Hoist Gracie just run through everybody and I felt so vulnerable. | ||
| I was like, oh no, I don't know any of this. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| I was watching him take guys down and just strangle them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, shit! | |
| And these guys were killers. | ||
| They were stand-up killers. | ||
| And Hoist was just dominating everybody. | ||
| I mean, when I was in Arizona, I remember the first one, the show on the pay-per-view, and I was in Denver, right? | ||
| The first UFC. And I was teaching a seminar, and I think back to those days, the guy paid me $1,000 for the weekend, and I was watching a group of guys, and they were not even sure. | ||
| And I put them on the table and said, hey, who wants to make a bet that the skinny little guy, like, look like a doctor, is going to win everything? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And everybody's like, no, no. | ||
| Okay, put the money down. | ||
| Nobody put the money down. | ||
| And here we are because we knew what Jiu-Jitsu is. | ||
| We knew that Jiu-Jitsu works. | ||
| And I think Jiu-Jitsu brought a lot of reality into the martial arts world. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| We made a lot of enemies that today are our friends because we showed something that people refuse to learn until they have no other choice. | ||
| They have no other choice now. | ||
| They know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Man, we have UFC, the biggest fighting show in the world. | ||
| Where'd that come from? | ||
| Came from Horian. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Came from the streets in Brazil to the world. | ||
| And Horian Gracie, who we all owe a huge debt to, he wanted to prove the effectiveness of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| So he established the Ultimate Fighting Championship. | ||
| And that's where it came from. | ||
| It came from that guy's imagination and his desire to spread the word of his family. | ||
| That's what jiu-jitsu do for people. | ||
| Make you believe. | ||
| Imagine if you did not believe in what he has and what he learned. | ||
| None of us will be here talking today. | ||
| We're probably still doing something else and maybe not as happy as we are today. | ||
| It's amazing, man. | ||
| The whole story is... | ||
| It's hard for people to understand, too, that have never practiced how fun it is. | ||
| And it makes your mind a better thing. | ||
| I was telling some of the students, jiu-jitsu... | ||
| It's a health way for you to be bullied by someone. | ||
| You're in a school environment, and you have the high belts playing with the white belts. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Day in, day out, the white belts come in. | ||
| It's literally being bullied in a health way because it's in our safe environment. | ||
| Well, it's not bullying where you're not getting picked on, but you're getting manhandled. | ||
| Then, the thing is, they get smashed daily, they come back for next class. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Next class. | ||
| Until soon, they're going to be able to do the same thing. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And that little step they do, they realize, like, well... | ||
| I'm being picked by someone. | ||
| Now I stand by myself and I'm able to, and he turned the table around. | ||
| It's a very healthy way to be picked up, smashed every day, that if you stay there, stick there, you're going to use that, you're going to reverse that. | ||
| You get choked, pretty soon you're going to be choking someone. | ||
| You're going to unbar someone. | ||
| And as I'm walking up in the stairs, And that's how we grew up. | ||
| We go to the schools, we get beat up by the older cousins. | ||
| Oh man, I don't think that's for me. | ||
| But then we come back one more time. | ||
| Then we come back one more time. | ||
| Then 40 years later, we're still coming back for one more time. | ||
| Well, it teaches you not just resilience, but how important it is to just keep showing up. | ||
| Man, it's fun. | ||
| The whole thing. | ||
| You get choked. | ||
| You go home like, how did that guy choke me? | ||
| I thought I knew how to defend that. | ||
| How did he make me turn in the way that he got the choke? | ||
| Then it's intrigue. | ||
| Then you keep... | ||
| And back in the 80s, we had no videos. | ||
| We had to try to memorize and see how this actually happened. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's... | ||
| It was a lot more challenging because you have to try to remake it, not sure if that's what actually happened to you. | ||
| But the amazing thing, I remember a lot of times I'm looking around the mats, I have all my brothers, all my cousins. | ||
| It's no way someone in this room will not have the answer for the question that you have. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you have so many different views that it's impossible for you not to learn and not get good in Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have so many amazing fighters out there knowing more than you know. | ||
| Then I remember every time I ask something to the technique, I get five different answers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I use the one that works for me. | ||
| Well, that's what's interesting, right, is that everyone has a different approach. | ||
| That jiu-jitsu is almost like the way people talk. | ||
| It's like having conversations. | ||
| People use different words and different styles and... | ||
| And the amazing thing is, let's say we train and I do well with you. | ||
| Then you train with that guy, you do well with that guy. | ||
| In the theory, I should be doing well with that guy. | ||
| No. | ||
| Maybe his game does not fit with my game. | ||
| I might have a lot of difficulties against him, which I shouldn't. | ||
| But it's the match-up game. | ||
| It's very interesting. | ||
| It's nothing that is guaranteed, oh, that guy's gonna... | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| Maybe my game is used to yours, but not to his. | ||
| Well, that was the most amazing thing about Hickson, right? | ||
| Because Hickson was the one guy that everyone said was the best. | ||
| When I grew up, and I have to say, it was a privilege to watch. | ||
| For me, I have some guys from Carson School that were amazing fighters. | ||
| I used to watch them, and I remember one of them, Cassio Cardoso, for me was phenomenal. | ||
| We have definitely Heuler for his size, his weight. | ||
| Most accomplished. | ||
| Phenomenal. | ||
| Phenomenal, man. | ||
| What this guy did with his size against... | ||
| Opponents, people look like, no way. | ||
| And yes, it is a way. | ||
| And definitely, as you're going heavier, I have my brother Higan, which was an amazing fighter too. | ||
| And evidently, for me, my time was Hickson. | ||
| It's like you have the era of Hickson. | ||
| A lot of unbelievable fighters, but you're in the wrong decade to have Hickson there. | ||
| Could be you, but he was right there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You could have been number two under Hickson. | ||
| You could have been number one under anybody under Hickson. | ||
| And the amazing thing, you feel like a chameleon. | ||
| He can kind of make any game. | ||
| You train him, he can pretend to be you fighting me or anybody. | ||
| It's amazing that aspect, especially on the teaching process. | ||
| What was so good about him? | ||
| He used to go to our school, we have 30 of the best guys, all higher belts. | ||
| And he tells you, okay, choose how you want to start. | ||
| And you choose, okay, he's not going to get out. | ||
| He gets out, and he gets you in the position you ask him to start. | ||
| With everyone, I think the most, the best thing that he has on his game, on my view, and today I understand that, was his defense. | ||
| No way to get him. | ||
| He let your mom take his back. | ||
| Do whatever you want. | ||
| You can get him. | ||
| He used to start, like guys, take his back with a rear naked choke, fully locked in. | ||
| Black belts. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Start from here. | ||
| And then he would defend. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| And get you there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Then messes your mind up. | ||
| Like, hey, wait a minute. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How can he get out and he gets me here, can get out? | ||
| You know? | ||
| And I think the amazing thing was his confidence and belief on that. | ||
| It makes amazing. | ||
| Well, he was unusual in that he was really into physical fitness as well, like yoga, really into yoga, become incredibly flexible and strong, and really into breathing. | ||
| He had an amazing control of his body, as well as the knowledge of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Man, he brought a lot of elements to jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I don't think people realize how important it was. | ||
| Because people say, oh, I knew that. | ||
| No, you did not. | ||
| He brought in the breathing aspect. | ||
| The gymnastica that makes you come closer to the nature habitat. | ||
| Yeah, gymnastica natural is what we're talking about. | ||
| It's a style of... | ||
| Who invented that? | ||
| What was the man who invented that? | ||
| Orlando Coney. | ||
| And it was a Brazilian thing as well. | ||
| Brazilian guy. | ||
| He's still alive in his 80s. | ||
| And you look at him like, how can he do or still do that? | ||
| Really? | ||
| And the whole idea is move your body... | ||
| Like the animals. | ||
| Right. | ||
| To bring back to us the animal instinct that we end up losing by the generations. | ||
| You see some of that now with Ido Portal and a lot of these guys are training martial artists in these movement classes and movement styles. | ||
| And a lot of that is very similar to Gymnastica Natural. | ||
| Amazing, but the biggest difference, I think, was the concept that he used, the approach that he used. | ||
| It wasn't as just mechanical the way it is. | ||
| It was something that sometimes on the exercise you change the direction of your movements. | ||
| It's not certain kata. | ||
| You have to do one, two, three, four. | ||
| No, he goes one, two, jump for ten, go back to six. | ||
| You flow. | ||
| And Hickson brought that into jiu-jitsu. | ||
| And I remember training. | ||
| He goes, hey, get there. | ||
| Keep moving. | ||
| Keep moving. | ||
| Don't stop moving. | ||
| Keep the flow of the technique. | ||
| You're going to get it. | ||
| And he brought that movement into jiu-jitsu, which for me made a huge difference in the way I fight. | ||
| How did you fight before that? | ||
| We learn the technique, we do the drills, and it's more like you pause and wait for somebody to pause in this position. | ||
| When he came in, I understand that you learn how to start guiding people to where you want them to go. | ||
| I'm training a few. | ||
| I want you to go to my left. | ||
| There's no other way for you to go to my right. | ||
| I learned how to mold my body in a way. | ||
| The only direction you will have to go is on my left. | ||
| I know that, but you don't. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| I'm one step ahead. | ||
| Then when you go to my left, you're going to put your left hand on the ground instead of your right hand. | ||
| I know that too. | ||
| Then I'm two steps ahead of you. | ||
| I mean, when you're trying to defend something, you're already two steps behind. | ||
| Because the defense is always shorter than the offense. | ||
| You stretch your arm. | ||
| For me to get your arm, I have to put my hands and swing my leg. | ||
| For you, just bring your arm back. | ||
| It's always short. | ||
| It's quicker. | ||
| That's why when you have one or two steps ahead, you don't have the time To defend. | ||
| Right, you're blocking off the defense. | ||
| I'm already too far ahead for you to defend. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And that's what I learned with those movements that he brought into Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| You start learning how to guide and mold yourself to make you go to that direction. | ||
| Who was a challenge to him in the early days? | ||
| Because there was a lot of great guys, right? | ||
| We have a lot of great guys, and it's funny. | ||
| Sometimes I go to the internet and see some of the fights. | ||
| And you notice that a lot of guys, they can kind of hang out for until five minutes. | ||
| After five minutes, and great athletes, they're just done. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because of that movement, he keep going constantly. | ||
| Keep that rhythm. | ||
| People were not able to keep up with him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And he's not lifting weights and a bodybuilder, no. | ||
| And we learn how important for a human is to be in contact with nature. | ||
| Would you imagine yourself not going for hiking some days in the morning? | ||
| I mean, we need that. | ||
| We need that energy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We need to walk without shoes. | ||
| We need to be near the mountains, the water. | ||
| That's something that makes us healthy and stronger. | ||
| And that's why you see we used to go a lot up in the mountains and waterfalls and out of the city to try to get that in a halfway animal instinct that we have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're there, listen to the birds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Listen to, in the middle, oh, maybe it's a coyote there. | ||
| People that are in the city, they go in the mountains, they're going to get eaten by a mountain lion. | ||
| Not even hear the mountain lion. | ||
| But if you're walking there, quite often you understand that you develop and still have that, oh, I heard something there. | ||
| We're losing more of that. | ||
| As Jiu-Jitsu, we're trying to bring people into that environment. | ||
| Which is something that makes you better off, regardless. | ||
| Be more aware of yourself. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| More primal. | ||
| Also, the struggle of jiu-jitsu is so much different than what most people experience on a daily basis, where you're literally trying to stop someone from choking you. | ||
| And it's a friend. | ||
| Like a good friend. | ||
| Like you love them like a brother. | ||
| But they're trying to choke the shit out of you. | ||
| And you're trying to stop them. | ||
| And the amazing thing, you're trying to stop and you don't get mad at him. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| You say, thank you, man. | ||
| Slap hands. | ||
| And then I say, how'd you get me? | ||
| Like, oh, you forgot this. | ||
| Like, oh. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| It's the amazing thing. | ||
| One student said something like, do you know why Jiu Jitsu people are so friendly? | ||
| Because they hug each other at the time. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| There's something to that. | ||
| There's so much physical contact. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| There's something to that. | ||
| But I think it's the eye contact, the talking to each other. | ||
| In that exchange of information. | ||
| It's also humbling, which I think people need. | ||
| I think people have a distorted perception of what they can do in this life. | ||
| And I think sometimes you need to understand this is where you are. | ||
| And one of the beautiful things about the ranking system of jiu-jitsu is, you know, when you give someone a purple belt, you say, hey, this is real. | ||
| You're ready for this. | ||
| I've seen you. | ||
| I watch you. | ||
| I know. | ||
| You know 100% where they are. | ||
| They're ready to get a purple belt. | ||
| And then it's this feeling like, okay, all this showing up day after day, drilling after drilling, coming in when I don't want to. | ||
| Is this paying off? | ||
| And I've reached a new place. | ||
| It sounds like when you promote someone as a flashback. | ||
| They go back like, whoa. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They realize all this time that I bring, in a very good way, suffering, going through this, it worth. | ||
| I'm right here, right now, feeling much better. | ||
| When you gave me my purple belt, I remember thinking, that was probably one of the happiest moments of my life. | ||
| Because to me, a purple belt was like, a blue belt was like you just kept showing up. | ||
| You kept showing up. | ||
| You kept showing up. | ||
| Now you got a blue belt. | ||
| But a purple belt was like, you could get a black belt. | ||
| You just have to keep going. | ||
| Even the top of the mountain is a purple belt. | ||
| You're right there with all the top guys. | ||
| There's no way down. | ||
| There's just up. | ||
| You're right there with all of them. | ||
| That was during the Fear Factor days. | ||
| I was more happy about getting that purple belt than I was about getting Fear Factor. | ||
| I have to mention something because I get a lot of messages from people like, oh man, is Joe Hogan good and Joe Hogan Jiu-Jitsu is good? | ||
| I say, man, come to my school anytime Joe Hogan shows up. | ||
| And he's back now training. | ||
| It's not about his power, man. | ||
| He doesn't care. | ||
| He wrestles everybody, anybody. | ||
| And I see him twisting people around there in the school. | ||
| And he's one, and this is real, he's one of the hardest student training partners that I have. | ||
| And I think one of the last time I wrestled him in my Malibu school, I think we trained maybe for half an hour, something like that. | ||
| I was there for, I don't know, 20 minutes just trying to sweep Joe, and Joe was right there. | ||
| I finished the training and said, man, my legs are sore. | ||
| And I don't remember if I did sweep him or not. | ||
| I just stopped training after half an hour. | ||
| And I want people to understand that anybody that I want to train, I will never, and I refuse, I never give a belt to anybody unless they deserve the belt. | ||
| And when I say deserve, I don't defer people from more famous, less famous. | ||
| No, everybody in Jiu-Jitsu world is the same. | ||
| You have to walk in the same road as everybody. | ||
| Because that's the only way you're actually going to learn Jiu-Jitsu for real. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And I don't remember you saying no to anybody, training, get hurt a lot of times, don't care, show up, and my neck is here, my knee is there, and training. | ||
| And you're out there that you listen. | ||
| Here's one... | ||
| The strongest, excuse my language, motherfuckers I have in my school training jiu-jitsu with. | ||
| And that's why I'm here. | ||
| I'm pushing him to get back and I'm going to show up. | ||
| Now that I know where he is, I'm going to show up here. | ||
| What's up, Joe? | ||
| Where's your gear? | ||
| This is it, man. | ||
| As soon as I heal this fucking gear. | ||
| That is amazing. | ||
| And I want people to know. | ||
| That is the real deal. | ||
| Another thing that people don't know is when he was back in the Fear Factor time, he had one idea to... | ||
| One of the challenges for the people would be training, fighting a cage with me in that cage, doing jiu-jitsu. | ||
| And then I realized, Joe, you don't need me. | ||
| You go there and do it. | ||
| You're going to mangle everybody there. | ||
| You don't need anybody to do that. | ||
| He... | ||
| We end up not happening. | ||
| They decided that it was too dangerous to do a person versus a person. | ||
| They thought that there was too many legal implications. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Meanwhile, they had people ride a fucking bull. | ||
| So the challenge was they were going to have to start with you on the ground, like in your guard or with you mounting them. | ||
| We had to figure out what it was. | ||
| And whoever survived the longest. | ||
| But I told the guy, I said, man, you don't need me. | ||
| You can use Joe. | ||
| Joe's going to do the same thing and going to twist whatever needs to do. | ||
| He has all the tools for that. | ||
| That was funny. | ||
| The point was, you can do it. | ||
| There was no need for me to do it. | ||
| How are you still fairly injury-free after all these years? | ||
| Because what's interesting about you is, you know, you've been doing jujitsu forever, but you can still roll and train with people. | ||
| A lot of other guys, after a certain amount of time, they really can't roll anymore. | ||
| They develop all these back problems, back problems in particular. | ||
| Neck problems? | ||
| I learned, I mean, more you learn jiu-jitsu, less chance you have to get hurt. | ||
| And my point is, I'm always under control. | ||
| I'm always controlling my opponent. | ||
| And I know how to avoid certain situations before the situation actually happens. | ||
| Because a lot of times people go for the kill... | ||
| But not concerned about them getting killed. | ||
| Sometimes they expose themselves to being in a bad position. | ||
| And they have to learn sometimes you do an arm bar on somebody and somebody put all the weight on your neck and I see people insisting in getting there. | ||
| No, you go back, give up, keep the control, then you do it again. | ||
| But not insist in some bad positions. | ||
| And every day it has to do, how well do you eat? | ||
| How well do you sleep? | ||
| Do you exercise? | ||
| I mean, a lot of the things are involved. | ||
| But exercise, you mean like lift weights? | ||
| Lift weights and run, you know, and swim. | ||
| You have so many things that you can do. | ||
| And people say, oh, no, everybody's going to die one day. | ||
| Sure, we can die tomorrow, but I want to make sure the time I'm alive, I'm healthy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And I don't see myself going to Jiu-Jitsu school teaching and not training. | ||
| But even Hickson can't train anymore. | ||
| Oh, now he's back training. | ||
| He's rolling? | ||
| Yes, he's rolling now. | ||
| When did he start rolling again? | ||
| I saw one of his students, they trained last week, just for an hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| He had an injury, and you got to understand a lot of... | ||
| He had a real bad back problem, right? | ||
| Yes, the back and hip, a lot of things, and a lot of those things happened more, not with Jiu-Jitsu, with some of the MMA fights. | ||
| You got to understand, back in those days, there was no protection at all, and people throw each other out of the ring, and that was something... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Very, very challenging and no weight class. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, he show up as a young age fighting some monsters over there and it's like, man, I don't know how he did it, but he did it, you know, showing up and... | ||
| Like Zulu when he was 18. Zulu is insane. | ||
| He was so strong. | ||
| But it was more from that time, the next Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu never got hurt in Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| Neck or nothing. | ||
| Then he's back training. | ||
| Man, I would love it. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu is amazing, man. | ||
| I don't see myself with eight years old not be able to train. | ||
| You got a cortisone shot recently? | ||
| Yeah, I'm not sure what happened. | ||
| My knee bugs me and I go there, have a little meniscus tear. | ||
| I'm still training, have a certain position that it's not comfortable. | ||
| I have the court zone shot, and so far, so good. | ||
| Not bothering you anymore? | ||
| Not bothering me. | ||
| You have a certain position that... | ||
| But the physical therapy that I'm doing is being very helpful. | ||
| What kind of stuff are you doing? | ||
| And lifting weights and every day on a bike, doing things that make your legs stronger. | ||
| Bike's great. | ||
| Oh, bike is amazing. | ||
| So good for the knees. | ||
| No impact. | ||
| I mean, I think we have everything we need. | ||
| If I don't have, I can learn how to do it. | ||
| But man, Jiu Jitsu is a lifestyle in general. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| It's almost like a philosophy, too, because there's a lot of people that they learn how to deal with life through the struggle of jiu-jitsu, because the struggle of training is so much harder than most of the struggles that you face in your daily life. | ||
| It makes you more accustomed to dealing with uncomfortable positions. | ||
| Man, I would tell you a funny story, what jiu-jitsu does for you. | ||
| My older daughter had some health issues, like at 2 o'clock in the morning, something like that, and called the doctor and said, look, I've got to go and get this inhaler or something at the pharmacy. | ||
| Man, I was wearing my pajamas, driving crazy to the pharmacy, and as I'm walking in, I have a guy walking out and bumping his shoulder in mine, and he said, hey, son of a dude, it's F you, and I said, man, 2 o'clock in the morning when I fight, go home, go to your wife, dude. | ||
| Then the guy, no, I'm going to wait for you. | ||
| Then he's outside, I go get the medication. | ||
| I put this stuff in, say, man, get the guy outside. | ||
| He's no longer there. | ||
| Several months later, the same guy show up at my school. | ||
| And I did not recognize him, but he keeps staring at me. | ||
| And I approach, hey, how are you? | ||
| Have you trained in JITS before? | ||
| I was like, do you remember me? | ||
| Did you train here before? | ||
| No. | ||
| I bump into you in the pharmacy. | ||
| And he goes like, thank you for not hurting me. | ||
| And I was like, man, what happened to you? | ||
| Oh, my father passed away a day before. | ||
| I was so depressed. | ||
| The point for me was, with Jiu Jitsu, I can walk away from something like that and I feel sorry for the guy. | ||
| I'm not concerned. | ||
| I'm afraid of him. | ||
| No, I'm not afraid. | ||
| It's just the fact that I'm saving him to get hurt. | ||
| Today he's one of my best friends. | ||
| He's my lawyer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| My dear friend. | ||
| He's been training jiu-jitsu since that time. | ||
| Almost has 20 years. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| But I remember that day walking in and the guy bumped into me. | ||
| I wanna fight. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And it's like, man, I walk away, no, no, no, you're too strong for me, man. | ||
| Go home and relax. | ||
| That's the difference, too, between jujitsu and kickboxing. | ||
| Because in kickboxing, you can only hurt somebody. | ||
| You can't really, like, hold on to them and go, hey, hey, hey. | ||
| You ever see the video? | ||
| He was already hurt, man. | ||
| You ever see the video? | ||
| Yeah, right, right. | ||
| He was already hurt. | ||
| Emotionally, right? | ||
| You ever see the video of Matt Serra? | ||
| Matt Serra was in an altercation with some drunk guy. | ||
| In a bar or a restaurant or something like that. | ||
| I think I saw that. | ||
| It's meanwhile. | ||
| Matt just took the guy down, mounted him, and was just holding on to his wrists. | ||
| And he was like, calm down, calm down. | ||
| And the employers are trying to figure out what to do. | ||
| He's like, he's fine, he's fine, calm down. | ||
| But Matt didn't hurt him. | ||
| He just held on to him and basically just mounted him and grabbed ahold of his wrists and was controlling him. | ||
| Man, when we say jiu-jitsu is a gentle word, we mean that. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu will give you the choice to choose to hurt someone or not. | ||
| And I think more you're trying to realize that that person has something already going on in their life. | ||
| And we choose not to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, we grew up in our time and it's funny. | ||
| We're teenagers and no jiu-jitsu tournaments. | ||
| Then we go like, how are we going to test ourselves? | ||
| And back in the 80s in Brazil, we had some fun time. | ||
| We go to a nightclub and fight breaks through and here we are practicing our jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But not hurting anybody. | ||
| And not because we choose or somebody provoke. | ||
| No, we get people coming towards us because we're always little guys. | ||
| We're never the biggest guys in the place. | ||
| Then we just make sure like, man, we take them down, hold, choke somebody out, but no scratch. | ||
| And on the end, those people become students of our school. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All those little kids can do that to us. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's one way that's funny in the 80s that Jiu-Jitsu became even bigger. | ||
| With some of the altercations on the street, we convinced the person that we just fought, we just choked, to come and become our student. | ||
| Because you didn't hurt them. | ||
| And they end up coming and learn that. | ||
| They feel humiliated, but at least they feel thankful that you didn't injure them. | ||
| For sure, yeah. | ||
| In a fight, man, I think Jiu Jitsu gives you that sense of control, that you have that choice. | ||
| This is the way I always explain to people. | ||
| I say, if I'm in a street fight with someone and they're swinging, if it's a strong person, if it's a strong person, they're a good athlete, they have strong arms, and they're throwing punches at me, if I get hit, I'm in trouble. | ||
| No matter who you are, if you get hit, you're in trouble. | ||
| Most likely, I won't get hit if I know how to fight and I keep my hands up and I move right. | ||
| But if I get a hold of you, You're not doing anything to me. | ||
| There's a difference between someone who's untrained and someone who's trained. | ||
| If a jiu-jitsu black belt grabs a person and actually gets control of them, you're not going to luckily submit me. | ||
| It's not going to happen, but you can hit someone. | ||
| It can happen in a street fight. | ||
| If someone has a little bit of speed and they have power and there's a strong person, they can hit you. | ||
| It's much more dangerous. | ||
| And that's the only, and we always want to train, it was the only opportunity our opponent has is before we close the distance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That's the danger zone. | ||
| And if you think for a second, a lot of things that we do on the ground in Jiu Jitsu, you just bring those two people up in the close distance, it's the same thing. | ||
| And a lot of people today, they don't do the same. | ||
| They're trying to fight standing when they hold, different than when you're on the ground. | ||
| The way you move your legs, the way you play guard, it's the same thing when you're standing. | ||
| Work on the people's body as a hook, as a sweep to make somebody fall. | ||
| And we learn that when we get close to someone, we make the size not be affected as much as could if you have a distance. | ||
| Do you think that... | ||
| There was a transitionary period where a lot of jiu-jitsu guys were having a hard time because they didn't know how to take people down. | ||
| And then the wrestlers were learning how to keep them at distance. | ||
| They were learning to take down defense. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And that's the very challenging thing. | ||
| But if I'm fighting a wrestler, what are the chances that he's going to take me down? | ||
| It's higher than me actually taking him down. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And most of the things that we do in the jiu-jitsu... | ||
| What we see in the sports Jiu Jitsu today, we're not going to use it in a real fight. | ||
| Most of the Jiu Jitsu we see in tournaments, we're not going to use that in a fight. | ||
| That's the difference from that generation of the 80s to the generations from the 90s until up today. | ||
| It's two different kinds of Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| One is a sport which is very beautiful. | ||
| A lot of people do amazing techniques. | ||
| But the rules of the sport had the tendency to take to another direction. | ||
| And when you have the jiu-jitsu as the 80s, we practice using a lot of leverage with the arms, patience. | ||
| And when we play guard in the 80s, it's different than we play today. | ||
| Today we have a lot of gis wrapping around everything. | ||
| The gi became a weapon. | ||
| In our time, the gi was never a weapon. | ||
| The gi was almost like a paper. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We use a lot the neck, a lot the elbow. | ||
| Well, that's what helped you when you transitioned to no gi, right? | ||
| Well, definitely. | ||
| And also because you were born with no fingers on your left hand. | ||
| Man, for me until today, there's no difference. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I play exactly the same in both. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No difference at all. | ||
| But you were all overhooks and underhooks and grips around the body. | ||
| And whereas the guys who transitioned to MMA and their all game relied on grabbing collars and sleeves, those guys had a harder time. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| A lot of guys, that's why a lot of guys are trying to come in, they might be good in their top games, but when they go on their back, they are kind of a little lost until they understand how to play the game. | ||
| Yeah, that's why it's so impressive when you see a big guy who also has a great back, great off his back, like Fabrizio Verdeum. | ||
| I think if you notice, if I'm on the bottom of someone and I'm flat, I'm a target. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I have to change the angle. | ||
| If I don't change the angle, I'm going to get ground and pound. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like we've been seeing a lot. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you see some, oh, this is a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Then you go like, oh, he's flat on his back. | |
| That means all my weight now is affecting you. | ||
| I'm dropping you. | ||
| You have to learn that your legs should be in an angle. | ||
| This way I'm not able to hit you there. | ||
| Your legs are on the way. | ||
| And that's one thing that very few guys do. | ||
| Or you close the distance, or you change the angle. | ||
| But it can be look at him trying to hold his neck. | ||
| He's going to hit you hard. | ||
| Well, Eddie figured out a brilliant thing with rubber guard. | ||
| A brilliant thing with mission control and how to control from the back of the neck. | ||
| He closes the distance. | ||
| He closes the distance. | ||
| He changed a lot of people's games. | ||
| What some people... | ||
| Don't want to recognize, but they have to, is the idea that he had. | ||
| And I remember him coming up and trying some of the techniques and people, oh, this is crazy. | ||
| I said, no, man, keep going. | ||
| You're going to get somewhere. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't think not everybody can do that because you have to be a little bit flexible. | ||
| But once you learn how to do it, you save your life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How many guys that when they get a hold of their foot and keep their clothes, there's no gap or room for the person on top to hit you. | ||
| And as you're trying to move too much, your arm suddenly is stuck. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And there we go. | ||
| He closes the distance. | ||
| You can't be playing when my arms are free because I'm going to ground and pound you, especially the heavy guys. | ||
| You can hit once or twice, that's it. | ||
| Yeah, he figured out some very unique ways to use his legs. | ||
| And you notice that you close the distance or he change the angle. | ||
| Close the distance, change the angle. | ||
| Whoever is on top, you don't have space or you don't have the angle. | ||
| You're always in a weird position when they get a hold of your head and the leg the way he does. | ||
| It's interesting to see the evolution of Jiu Jitsu from 1993 UFC style to 2019 too. | ||
| There's so many new techniques, there's so many new approaches, but there's some guys like Haja Gracie, for instance, Who just use the basics honed to razor sharp edge. | ||
| You don't see a lot of crazy barambolo chokes or wild things from a guy. | ||
| A lot of the real rock solid traditional techniques guys. | ||
| The simple works all the time. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Whichever simple works all the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anything jiu-jitsu that requires more than three steps, you need to train a lot. | ||
| But even Hickson, right? | ||
| Like Hickson's style was just, it wasn't anything that no one knew how to do. | ||
| It's just he knew how to do it better than anyone. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| He's the way he moved. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You can't find him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And once you find him, he gets out and gets you. | ||
| He goes around your back. | ||
| It was amazing, man. | ||
| Triangles, arm bars, rear naked chokes, normal stuff, normal things that everybody knows how to do. | ||
| You get to his guard, you know you're going to fall on your back. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Simple as that. | ||
| Oh, I'm his guard. | ||
| I'm going to fall on his back. | ||
| He's going to sweep me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, I'm not going to sweep. | ||
| Oh, he's going to unbar me. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It's not much where you can feel safe. | ||
| And today you see a lot of In Jiu-Jitsu, you need something called transition. | ||
| You go from number one, beginning the position, transition, then you have the submission. | ||
| Today, they jump from number one beginning to the submission. | ||
| There's no transition. | ||
| The transition now has become muscle. | ||
| They have to overpower. | ||
| I've never seen so many injuries today in the Jiu-Jitsu competition. | ||
| Really? | ||
| So many injuries. | ||
| Shoulders, knee, foot, elbow. | ||
| Like, my God. | ||
| What do you think it's from? | ||
| Because it's no... | ||
| You're missing a lot of sometimes the finesse to get there. | ||
| They have to muscle. | ||
| Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about your longevity. | ||
| Because you are the best guy that I know of in terms of like you... | ||
| I mean, you have a little knee injury, a little meniscus, but that's it. | ||
| I've known you forever. | ||
| You've never had, like, a major surgery. | ||
| You've never had, like, a major problem. | ||
| And everybody I know gets hurt. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| Again, it's the way you train, the way you control the fight. | ||
| I think people got to understand is I'd rather get you once, but I get you well, than trying to get you 20 times. | ||
| Sometimes people try to go after each other and they're... | ||
| Injury will happen. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because they're clashing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| If I have somebody come very tense to me, I don't play tense back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I try to relax. | ||
| The more you relax, the more I'm going to be able to achieve against you. | ||
| I remember when you competed against Dean Lister and he was about 250,000 pounds. | ||
| T.T. was so fucking big. | ||
| He was so big. | ||
|
unidentified
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But you were able to use your technique. | |
| There was a very big frustration for me on that event because I remember I was training to be in my weight class below 170. And that year I was with Marcelo Garcia. | ||
| We had some good names, good guys to fight. | ||
| And I was training a lot for that. | ||
| And I think a week and a half before the event, Arona was supposed to fight Dean Lister. | ||
| But back in those days, I think his contract with Pride did not allow him to fight because their concern is an injury happened and he's going to be missing the Pride fight. | ||
| Then they come a week and a half. | ||
| To offer me that fight. | ||
| And I end up taking that fight, but I don't think I trained specific and focused to fight Dean. | ||
| And I think the fight was, honest for me, Dean was a monster, but it wasn't a good fight. | ||
| There was not much happening on the fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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It was mostly defense and stall, right. | |
| And I felt the difference. | ||
| I was so light. | ||
| And I did not train with anybody heavy because I was fighting on the 170. I was just training with people that weight class and lower to get the speed to be ready for those guys. | ||
| Then here we are, a week and a half, I don't think I was feeling ready for fighting somebody this big. | ||
| My strategy, I had no strategy back then. | ||
| I was like, okay, let's try to move. | ||
| But he was very smart, not moving much. | ||
| I have evidence to be worried about him grabbing a hold of my foot. | ||
| And I think it was 20 minutes, not much happened on the fight. | ||
| And for me, I was frustrated not to be ready for a fight like that. | ||
| Because I was training to fight in the lower class, I was so ready. | ||
| And I regret not doing that. | ||
| It would be amazing. | ||
| But for another reason, I ended up moving up and no problem. | ||
| Well, when you did do Abu Dhabi the first time, I think it was a wake-up call for a lot of people that, you know, because of, you know, being born with no fingers in your hand and your approach to jiu-jitsu being so overhook and underhook-powered, you know, you transitioned so smoothly into no gi, whereas a lot of guys from your era, they would go and transition into no gi, and they're missing so many tools because they're so used to grabbing the gi. | ||
| You know, I remember when I got a call to go in 99, and they said the rules would be 10 minutes, 5 minutes, first 5, nothing counts. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Then after 5, whatever the rules were, I don't even know today what the rules were anyways, what counts or not counts. | ||
| But then I realized, man, the first 5 minutes does not count. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So if people don't know what we're saying here, Abu Dhabi is a very strange rule set. | ||
| So for the 10-minute round, the first five minutes of it, there's no points. | ||
| It doesn't matter what happens. | ||
| If someone takes you back, if you get mounted, you get into a triangle, but you escape, there's no points. | ||
| And I just go, bring the guy to the ground, pull the guard right away, and let's go. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And I think it was a surprise for a lot of people because right from the bat, I keep going all the way. | ||
| And again, with the transition that for me, I have no transition, it's the same gear, no gear. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I feel at home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay, that's what I do every day. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I felt a lot of guys not sure how to behave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| But on my mind, the first five minutes, nothing counts. | ||
| It doesn't matter if he mounts me, take my back, or do anything. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Because realistically, the whole idea is to make people actually go after each other. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But when I get there, I see people waiting, standing five minutes, walking around. | ||
| Waiting for the five minutes to be up. | ||
| Waiting for the five minutes to be up. | ||
| So they get a takedown and then win on one point. | ||
| This is the opposite of what Jiu-Jitsu is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I said, hell no. | ||
| Let's go to the ground and see if he's better grappling than me. | ||
| Good. | ||
| If he's not, good. | ||
| But it was a wake-up call for a lot of people because they got to see you. | ||
| Who did you fight in that first year? | ||
| You fought Sakurai, right? | ||
| Yeah, I fought... | ||
| Who was a big-time MMA fighter at the time. | ||
| Sakurai, Kauno, I think they were well-known in the MMA world over there. | ||
| Also known as being really good grapplers, so it was very eye-opening for people to see you run through them. | ||
| If I'm not wrong, it was the first loss for Sakurai. | ||
| His first loss. | ||
| It was fine. | ||
| I think for me, it's my world. | ||
| Let's see if you're a better grappler. | ||
| Good. | ||
| If you're not, there we go. | ||
| Good for me. | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| I think it was very good for me to all the ADCC. I was able to be among the best three guys. | ||
| For me, it was a great accomplishment being able to stay up on the top of the game and Fighting the lighter guys, the heavier guys. | ||
| I was in special no-gi, which was something that it takes for a lot of people some kind of adjustment. | ||
| Because they're born in the gi world, basing their game on the gi, and they have actually some hard time to... | ||
| And a lot of them even gave up. | ||
| It's like, oh, forget it. | ||
| Now, in the early days of jiu-jitsu, there was a lot of no-gi guys on the luto-livre side, right? | ||
| For people who don't understand, there's a big rivalry in Rio between jiu-jitsu and luto-livre. | ||
| A lot of times you have people that come to our school and they don't fit in. | ||
| And they walk away. | ||
| And if I understood back in those days, those guys were some of these people that did not fit into the jiu-jitsu schools and they end up creating their own no-gi school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| But you got to understand that in the 80s, our generation, in Rio de Janeiro summertime, man, it's 110, 115, extremely humid. | ||
| And we did a lot of trainings. | ||
| We trained the gi, and after the gi session, take the top of the gi out, and here we go. | ||
| We trained no gi. | ||
| Since we're white belts, we've been doing that. | ||
| Because the intent were learning how to get out of a headlock, how to be on the bottom, somebody trying to slap you, what do you do? | ||
| And that was our training that generation. | ||
| That's why almost everyone from the 80s is still up-to-date teaching and making a great school. | ||
| All that generation still, the longevity of them doing jiu-jitsu is still out there. | ||
| A lot of guys that I see now, especially with the social media, they're all teaching, they're all doing very well. | ||
| A lot of them are too big. | ||
| Some of them are still in good shape and teaching. | ||
| But that generation, I think, for me, was a gold generation because he's still out there. | ||
| And the people that come from that generation, their students, they develop such a good jiu-jitsu roots. | ||
| Is there still lute or liver anywhere? | ||
| I think they still have there. | ||
| But it's not a rivalry anymore, right? | ||
| No, I don't think today passed that time. | ||
| And I think that the rivalry was a need for our generation to establish Jiu Jitsu as a very effective art. | ||
| And I think some of the MMA events that happened was the fight should be happening on the streets. | ||
| Then we're able to bring that into an arena. | ||
| This way only the two guys will be fighting. | ||
| Not innocent people get hurt on the streets. | ||
| And I think what people don't realize is a lot of those fights could be happening right on a nightclub or some people even get killed. | ||
| No, let's bring that fight into the arena. | ||
| Only you two guys, nobody else is going to get hurt. | ||
| And that's why a lot of those events happen. | ||
| No money, no prize money, nothing. | ||
| Just for pride. | ||
| There's some videos of some of them that still exist. | ||
| Just for pride. | ||
| There's no money involved. | ||
| Who did Hickson fight on the beach? | ||
| Who was that? | ||
| Hickson fight Hugo Duarte. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Hugo Duarte went on to fight in pride. | ||
| He fought Tank Abbott, right? | ||
| Man. | ||
|
unidentified
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He fought some different people in MMA. I remember that day. | |
| It was so funny because you have a point on the beach in Rio that is... | ||
| It's where most of the jiu-jitsu, where the pretty girls were. | ||
| And all the guys who go in that session on the beach, very famous people, and then everybody go in that session. | ||
| And we keep hearing that Hugo Challenge Hickson, Hugo Challenge Hickson, Hugo Challenge Hickson. | ||
| Here it is right here. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Smacked him in the face. | ||
| Hickson was like, no, he didn't say anything. | ||
| I'm right. | ||
| There's some walking right there in light shorts there. | ||
| My mission were Hickson look at me and say, hey, watch my back. | ||
| Where were you? | ||
| I'm the one, okay, I'm off the screen now. | ||
| Right on my left, you're going to see me standing there. | ||
| Oh, I'm right. | ||
| If I get up, I can show you. | ||
| So what year is this? | ||
| What year is this? | ||
| Man, sometime in the 80s. | ||
| And do you know who's filming that? | ||
| We have High and Gracie. | ||
| He was sitting on someone's shoulders with a camera. | ||
| Crazy to try to see. | ||
| Oh, no, man. | ||
| I was getting... | ||
| So many bodies. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| I was getting punched in the head on his back just because I was watching Hickson's. | ||
| But everybody didn't jump in. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| What we did was we made a circle, arms to arms. | ||
| And Hickson's the one with the green shorts, right? | ||
| Green stripes. | ||
| Yes, and he had long hair that day, which the guy grabbed his hair. | ||
| It doesn't look like his hair is that long. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| He's a ponytail there. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I knew he had a ponytail from a lot of... | ||
| Oh, see, now you see Hickson mounting him. | ||
| Oh no, he got tired of punching the guy. | ||
| We felt... | ||
| And so this is how it ended, him punching him? | ||
| Yeah, there we go. | ||
| And the guy tapped and, stop, please stop. | ||
| And he had a group of guys with him. | ||
| We want to make sure that nobody jumped on his back. | ||
| But the thing is, we have this, and don't get me wrong, I'm not telling people to go and do that, but in that time, in that generation, a lot of those fights that happened in the street was a need for jiu-jitsu to be established the way it should be. | ||
| And it was better than two guys fighting there, then that fight ended up in a bar, a nightclub, a gang fight, people shooting each other. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I remember what Hickson said, we got together in our first original Gracie Bar High School there. | ||
| Some members of all the Jiu Jitsu schools said, look guys, Hickson is going to go there, going to make a circle. | ||
| Only him and the guy fight. | ||
| Nobody else fights. | ||
| You understand that? | ||
| Because if everybody fights, then somebody's going to get really hurt because you're not going to be able to control anything. | ||
| We just made a big circle. | ||
| We hold hands. | ||
| Regardless of what happens, we will not interfere. | ||
| It's Hickson and that guy and that's it. | ||
| But I want to make sure nobody jumps in. | ||
| Then I remember Hicks, hey, you got to watch my back. | ||
| And I go like, okay, you got to watch Zach. | ||
| Don't do nothing. | ||
| You got to watch my back. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| I'm always behind him and getting punched, getting kicked from other people. | ||
| But the crazy thing was, that happened, and Hickson on his mind said, look, I'm going to go there, slap him on the face, and he's going to run. | ||
| Then we're like, okay. | ||
| He goes there, slap that guy, and the guy did not run. | ||
| Then we go, oh, shit. | ||
| Now, game on. | ||
| Then we hold each other, and I think it was... | ||
| This happened on Saturday. | ||
| Tuesday night, Hugo went to Hickson School with a lot of people there all carrying weapons. | ||
| Hickson wasn't there and they called. | ||
| He shows up in shorts and he quickly just slapped Hugo around. | ||
| Somebody called the police later on and they even shoot the ceiling, AR-15, whatever, just boom! | ||
| And they left, but then Hickson just smashed him quick because it was on the cement, not on the sand. | ||
| But that again happened in a way for us as a pride to prove the point. | ||
| Jiu Jitsu is the best style of martial arts. | ||
| We keep going strong. | ||
| And Hugo was a Lutalivre guy. | ||
| Hugo was a Lutalivre guy. | ||
| Very respected. | ||
| Real strong. | ||
| One of the best guys still today. | ||
| And they had a grappling style. | ||
| It just wasn't as comprehensive. | ||
| Back there, they were doing a lot of footlocks already. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're the ones that are doing a lot of footlocks, a lot of heel hooks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they have some quality fighters among of them. | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| Eugenio Tadeo. | ||
| Eugenio Tadeo. | ||
| I end up fighting one of the guys from there and one of the Abu Dhabi's there. | ||
| But as the time goes by, I think people get older, can understand. | ||
| And I don't think today has any conflict or any... | ||
| Bad feelings. | ||
| And they must have adopted a lot of the jiu-jitsu techniques too. | ||
| Everything was jiu-jitsu. | ||
| You should take the gear out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Today I'm training grappling. | ||
| Okay, what is the definition of grappling? | ||
| You're on the ground fighting, then it's jiu-jitsu. | ||
| What do you think about this new trend that you're seeing? | ||
| You saw it particularly coming out of John Donaher and Dean Lister with the leg locks. | ||
| Leg locks are so big in jiu-jitsu competition now. | ||
| When we learn Jiu Jitsu, and still today, we will not learn anything related to legs until we get our blue belt. | ||
| The main reason behind this were to be able to let you develop guard without concern anything. | ||
| Just learn how to move your hips and sweeps and hooks. | ||
| Foot lock is something very effective. | ||
| But if I show you right away, I might be stopping some of the evolution of your game or the other person that you train with that he can learn, which will make even better his footlock. | ||
| That's why we hold back until people get one year or two into jiu-jitsu to learn leg locks. | ||
| But today we have the no-gi, everybody's such in a hurry that a lot of no-gi schools, the first thing people want to learn, hey, I want to learn heel hook. | ||
| In jiu-jitsu with gi, I want to learn arm bar. | ||
| The no-gi wants to go straight to the leg, the gi people want to go straight to the arm. | ||
| But I think particularly because of the success of these leg lockers against high-level competition. | ||
| No, it's effective, it's amazing. | ||
| I think it's a portion of the game. | ||
| You know, and you will see the development of people that will have defending that, which also will force guys to pass also beyond the legs only. | ||
| But definitely, their work is very dangerous. | ||
| Let people wrap their legs around your leg, hook you there. | ||
| I mean, not everybody can get out of that. | ||
| And if you don't tap, you're going to get your knee ripped apart. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And that's the real problem with leg locks is that so many guys wind up with pretty devastating knee injuries. | ||
| In the 80s, the decision not to have heel hooks in jiu-jitsu was for safety. | ||
| We do, we did practice, but the competition does not allow. | ||
| You gotta understand that in the 80s, if you have a knee problem, your career is over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| There's no surgery that really would fix it correctly. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Today is different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| It's the evolution of the medical side make possible for you to put a brand new knee over there. | ||
| Yeah, but still to this day, meniscus tears and cartilage tears, those are still huge. | ||
| I mean, without stem cells, it's very, very difficult to fix those unless you get the meniscus. | ||
| Like, I had part of my meniscus removed in my left knee. | ||
| And then you see, I mean, you want to train for longevity. | ||
| And you got to understand, too, is I think some of those things should be kind of almost creating a pro league into the jiu-jitsu world. | ||
| Because a lot of people, they get hurt before even they learn what jiu-jitsu is. | ||
| That's why my only concern is the danger of... | ||
| All those heel hooks, leg locks. | ||
| Because if you get somebody who knows, he might tap or he might roll to the right side. | ||
| Even though a lot of guys still get hurt. | ||
| But if you hold somebody who doesn't have much experience in one of those traps... | ||
| It's for sure. | ||
| Injury. | ||
| They roll the wrong way and rip it apart themselves. | ||
| Even if you don't squeeze, it's because they don't know what to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's my view of as an instructor today on my school. | ||
| You're not ready for legs yet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Oh, I go to the no-get. | ||
| Don't go to the no-get tournament yet. | ||
| You have to learn first. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| For your own safety. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And also I want them to develop guard. | ||
| Because when we get tired, we pull guard. | ||
| When you get tired, you lie down to sleep. | ||
| You don't sleep standing. | ||
| You sleep when you lie down and jiu-jitsu is the same thing. | ||
| You get tired, you're going to pull guard. | ||
| And that's one of the ways I see some of my students in the tournament. | ||
| They get tired. | ||
| He's a top guy. | ||
| Suddenly he starts pulling guard. | ||
| He's tired. | ||
| And that's why you have to have a good guard. | ||
| Just to survive and rest to be able to continue. | ||
| Were you surprised though that this no-gi leg lock game started taking off the way it did? | ||
| I think because of the success, we have so many guys doing extremely well, and some of the guys that come from the no-gi originally doing so well, now some of the guys that come from the gi world doing no-gi, they've been finding some challenges to adjust to that leg. | ||
| I think, in a way, you have two ways that simplify, because if you get somebody in a foot lock or leg lock, There we go. | ||
| And at the same time, you complicate because you see a lot of scramble now and a lot of injuries. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because every day, I understand, people don't want to tap, then it's a position that something's going to get hurt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's the development and the evolution of the grappling world. | ||
| And I think it's amazing. | ||
| Sooner or later, somebody's going to find ways to protect better and better and better and better that will force people to move on. | ||
| Well, you've seen that I think now with a lot of the leg lock guys against each other, they're kind of stalemate. | ||
| And you see them winning by rear naked choke or arm bar again. | ||
| They're not using their leg locks against each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| They realize like, man, he knows as much as I do. | ||
| Now I need more than that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're using them to sweep or they're using them to set up other things. | ||
| They're trying to exploit other holes. | ||
| Like maybe they concentrate too much on leg locks so then they're open to arm bars or chokes. | ||
| I remember when I learned in the beginning we have foot lock as the last resource. | ||
| Let's see, I'm fighting that guy and I'm not able to submit him. | ||
| I'm going to footlock him. | ||
| That's how we used to have in the 80s. | ||
| Yeah, it was like a Hail Mary. | ||
| Footlock is, okay, this is my deadly weapon. | ||
| If everything that I do is not working, I'm going to footlock him. | ||
| Today is the opposite. | ||
| My first shot is footlock him all the way. | ||
| If it's not working, I'm going to choke him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You see so few footlocks in MMA. It's interesting, right? | ||
| You see so few figure four footlocks. | ||
| Because the danger is also for you to get hit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sometimes when you do the footlock, your face, your arms are both around the leg. | ||
| You can get a knock. | ||
| You're not defending yourself. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| What do you think about combat jiu-jitsu, Eddie's new invention? | ||
| Man, I think it's a way for people to step up to reality and understand and some guys make a decision. | ||
| Do you know what? | ||
| I might be able to go and do MMA too. | ||
| But that's the real world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you fight somebody, that's exactly what's going to happen. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And making people more aware of, okay, my jiu-jitsu for jiu-jitsu sport only is not going to work that well for this kind of a jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I have now to be aware more of my real fights. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think it will help more the evolution of... | ||
| That sport of jiu-jitsu to... | ||
| Transition to MMA. For people who don't know what combat jiu-jitsu is, Eddie Bravo invented a way where you do jiu-jitsu with slaps on the ground. | ||
| And you would think it's just, oh, it's just a slap. | ||
| But no, a palm strike, really. | ||
| I mean, you really can hit someone very, very hard with your palms. | ||
| I mean, I can do that with my hand on a table, and it doesn't hurt my hand at all. | ||
| But if I did that with my knuckles, it would really hurt. | ||
| So they can smack the shit out of each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We used to do that after. | ||
| We trained jiu-jitsu. | ||
| It's called in Portuguese taparia. | ||
| It's like slap each other after the train. | ||
| No shirts, yes. | ||
| And we used to train like that in Brazil. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yes, to be ready. | ||
| Again, we have no tournaments. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, after the train, let's see. | ||
| And we stand in front of each other and open hands and there we go. | ||
| Slap each other. | ||
| Make sure you don't get slapped on the face. | ||
| But on the end of the train, you have marks all over your body. | ||
| And you still shake your brother's hand. | ||
| They love you, but you're all over a mess. | ||
| Do you still lift weights? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| How often do you do that? | ||
| Two days a week. | ||
| Two days a week. | ||
| But I like to run a lot. | ||
| I like outdoors. | ||
| I run three or four days a week. | ||
| What, you're running trails? | ||
| I did try. | ||
| Now it's too hot. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Unless you go early in the morning, it's pretty. | ||
| Yeah, I go like 8 in the morning. | ||
| It's very hot right now. | ||
| It was hot this morning when I went. | ||
| It's very hot right now, but I like it. | ||
| I think I want to challenge my body always. | ||
| To bring the best off, the resistance. | ||
| Because I think I don't like to go and run the same street over and over again. | ||
| Somehow your body already gets just to that. | ||
| I'm always trying to find different trails. | ||
| This way is like in a fight. | ||
| Change is up and down the whole time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's something to... | ||
| The jiu-jitsu is my excuse to do all of this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I want to go and do better. | ||
| All my students are getting harder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| How can I switch that to make it not that hard? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I got to do a little bit more than I was doing. | ||
| Now, how do you mix up your weightlifting training with your jiu-jitsu training? | ||
| Do you do it in the morning and then train at night, or do you do it after you train? | ||
| Right now, I'm doing before teaching to the training. | ||
| My intention is when I show up to the academy, I'm already tired physically. | ||
| So that when you do train, you can be relaxed and just... | ||
| This way, my challenge is because I'm physically tired... | ||
| I make the level of my students higher because they have a lot of energy and they're good too. | ||
| It makes more challenge for myself to train with them because I don't have, okay, my energy now. | ||
| I have to purely use the techniques, the jiu-jitsu. | ||
| The techniques must be on time. | ||
| I intentionally do that. | ||
| They're tired to make a good training for me. | ||
| And that's what I've been doing now. | ||
| I show up and they don't know. | ||
| And hey, let's go and train. | ||
| Then I can tell that, man, I should rest before training this guy today. | ||
| I don't know if he's getting that good. | ||
| I'm too tired. | ||
| Everything's at the same time. | ||
| Next week I'm not going to do that again. | ||
| So when you do it twice a week, how do you mix it up? | ||
| What kind of training are you doing? | ||
| I work one day legs and lower upper body and the other day upper body. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| Always, yes. | ||
| So it's just to make you stronger? | ||
| Just to keep the joints healthy and evidently feel the muscles. | ||
| I think it's important for... | ||
| It's like prevent injuries. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's the main thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I've been using a lot the Iron Neck stuff. | ||
| Remember the guy from the Iron Neck? | ||
| He sent it to me, that equipment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Iron Neck, yeah. | |
| I'm using that. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| I've been using that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is. | ||
| I recommend any Jiu Jitsu guys. | ||
| Oh, for Jiu Jitsu guys, it's a must do. | ||
| Go and get it, man. | ||
| Keep your neck strong. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| Well, you said something to me once. | ||
| I'll never forget it. | ||
| I go, never trust your neck. | ||
| I still do not. | ||
| We fall out. | ||
| They're strong. | ||
| Once you get to the neck, you have to be very aware. | ||
| Start seeing little flashes. | ||
| After that, it gets dark. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Oh, I'm dizzy. | ||
| No, you're about to go out, my friend. | ||
| Don't trust your neck. | ||
| Never trust your neck, yeah. | ||
| But at least you could train it safely now with the iron neck. | ||
| There was always a bunch of different ways where people trained that were questionable. | ||
| There's a lot of people that don't believe in neck bridges. | ||
| They say it's actually kind of dangerous. | ||
| Man, our neck is, if you see the spine, it's so sensitive. | ||
| You've got to be careful when you work your neck. | ||
| In Jiu Jitsu, we don't use our head on the ground to base our body weight. | ||
| Never. | ||
| And I think that our neck is again is the maintenance of having your neck all well around because that spinning thing that you do, man, you work every angle of your neck. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I do a very simple exercise. | ||
| I have this. | ||
| I touch into a bar and go forward and turn sideways. | ||
| Very smooth movement. | ||
| Do you do the Ray Charles? | ||
| Or Stevie Wonder rather? | ||
| Very slow. | ||
| You have that bungee that keeps more or less tension. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, turn it sideways. | ||
| I love that machine or that piece of training gear. | ||
| It was a great addition to all the exercise. | ||
| Thanks to the guys because it's really, really helpful. | ||
| Yeah, I recommend it to everybody. | ||
| And for fighters that get hit in the head, it's so important to have a strong neck to resist the impact of shots. | ||
| It's the same thing with the muscles around. | ||
| This way the muscles take the first hit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Just like you're talking about building strength around your joints by lifting weights to protect your joints. | ||
| Exactly the same thing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, are you doing basic stuff like curls and dips and bench press? | ||
| Very basic. | ||
| Different than the time that you're training for competition, which is in heaven, a lot of explosions. | ||
| This way, just trying to maintain everything else I do in Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Some days I train pushing more, some days I'm pushing less, some days I just train in defense, some days I train, okay, I gotta finish everybody today, or I gotta mount everybody today. | ||
| You kind of make your training a goal for your training. | ||
| This way you're always excited to do it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, and not having the same thing every day. | ||
| You know, I select, okay, today I'm going to sweep everybody. | ||
| Then I pull guard and keep playing. | ||
| My goal is sweep. | ||
| And some guys are very hard to sweep. | ||
| Another day I just want to mount. | ||
| I can only finish people from the mount. | ||
| And I mean, you kind of make different goals. | ||
| And I think that keeps you... | ||
| And again, my students, Jiu-Jitsu is fun. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| You never know what's going to happen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's always a challenge. | ||
| Your goal is like, oh, man. | ||
| Then you realize I should sleep two hours extra. | ||
| I'm tired now. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| If you really want to find out where your body's at, go train. | ||
| Oh man, why I'm so sore? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Jiu Jitsu will test you in every level. | ||
| Now what about nutrition? | ||
| I grew up... | ||
| Did you follow the Gracie diet? | ||
| I grew up doing the Gracie diet with my uncle Carlos. | ||
| Could you explain that? | ||
| Basically, man, the diet would be the food that you combine. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Some foods, when you make their combination, you're not going to get what you're expecting from the food. | ||
| And that's how we learn. | ||
| I eat a lot of fruits. | ||
| Lots. | ||
| I don't drink juices anywhere. | ||
| I make my own juice. | ||
| That's the only way you can have a proof that it's actually fresh and juicy. | ||
| Very rarely I eat meat. | ||
| Fish and chicken and turkey more often than red meat. | ||
| I don't remember last time. | ||
| It's been a while. | ||
| But it's basically fruits is my... | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Papaya in the morning, cream cheese and honey. | ||
| Late at night sometimes, watermelon juice and tapioca. | ||
| I don't know if people know what tapioca is. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, tapioca pudding? | ||
| Yeah, not the pudding. | ||
| It looks like a tortilla. | ||
| You make that in a pan, and it's really healthy. | ||
| Making it in a pan? | ||
| Yeah, it's like a powder. | ||
| It's like a root, and they shred the root. | ||
| And you put it in a pan, and as the pan gets hit, it looks like a tortilla in the end. | ||
| Then you put a cream cheese, and it's a thousand times healthier than any kind of bread you eat in your life. | ||
| I mean, things that are good for your body. | ||
| But basically, fruits are my main thing. | ||
| Well, you're always burning off so much energy. | ||
| That's the other thing. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu burns off so much energy. | ||
| And evidently, the lifestyle you have, you burn more than you eat, you're going to keep your weight full. | ||
| I weigh the same thing for the past 10 years, the same weight. | ||
| Go up two pounds, go down two pounds. | ||
| Go up three pounds, go down five pounds. | ||
| Do you take any supplements? | ||
| I take maca, turmeric, pounder, and mix in all those juices that I make. | ||
| I'm more like preventive things. | ||
| And evidently learn, sometimes I'm going to train harder tomorrow. | ||
| I'm going to eat some carbs today. | ||
| The carbs will become a lot of energy tomorrow, my training. | ||
| And you're basically little things that you learn. | ||
| But for me, the main thing is to stay healthy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| I don't remember last time I was sick. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I don't remember last time. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| People have headaches. | ||
| Why do you have a headache? | ||
| You have many ways of having a headache. | ||
| You're not drinking enough water or eating too much sugar. | ||
| I mean, something that you're consuming right now gives you a headache. | ||
| And what about post-workout recovery? | ||
| Do you use sauna or ice bath or anything like that? | ||
| Man, the sauna is a must. | ||
| I mean, I love it. | ||
| I see you put a lot of things. | ||
| It's a must. | ||
| You eliminate so much and your body is always pure and clean. | ||
| I love my Epson South Jacuzzi. | ||
| Sit there for, I don't know, an hour and just forget about life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Feels brand new after. | ||
| I mean, you have a lot of things that we should do to keep the longevity of us being able to do what we want to do. | ||
| And stay healthy. | ||
| It's the main thing. | ||
| Stay hiking. | ||
| Stay close to nature. | ||
| Breathe. | ||
| Trying to breathe good air. | ||
| It's pretty hard in L.A., but... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You go up in the mountains, man. | ||
| You feel like... | ||
| It's even on your mind. | ||
| You already changed the whole thing of... | ||
| And that's basically, stay healthy. | ||
| How can I teach or tell my students to do something if I'm not doing it? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's like you go to the gym and have two different coaches, one that looks healthy and the one that is pretty big. | ||
| Which one are you going to pick? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| The one that knows how to get the way he is. | ||
| Yeah, when you see guys that start letting themselves go and getting big and fat, it's very disappointing. | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
| I give a hard time to a lot of people that I know, friends that let it go and say, man, it's not what you say, it's what you've been doing. | ||
| You say, oh, don't do this. | ||
| Then you're doing. | ||
| I mean, what kind of a... | ||
| It's more about an example. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People get tired. | ||
| They get lazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes, but man, you chose the wrong job to be lazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You're a martial artist. | ||
| You can't be lazy as a martial artist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know? | ||
| Do something. | ||
| Sit at a desk and don't do nothing then. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| But you're doing a martial arts and you get lazy? | ||
| No, you can't. | ||
| You become, in a way, an example for a lot of people. | ||
| And that's why you make people do what you do. | ||
| Yeah, it's not an option. | ||
| It's not an option to become lazy. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| And as soon as I see someone who is doing that, who becomes lazy and becomes fat, it's unfortunate. | ||
| It's unfortunate. | ||
| You're making a mistake. | ||
| I try to understand, and sometimes I don't. | ||
| I say, look, man, again, you chose the wrong line of work. | ||
| You're telling me that you don't like what you do, because if you like what you do, you're not going to be the way you are right now. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu is not working for you now, which should be working right now more than ever. | ||
| Well, that's one of the great things about you, my brother. | ||
| You've always been a great example. | ||
| And you've always been a person who leads by example. | ||
| By the way, the things you say, but more importantly, by the things you do. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And I know that. | ||
| I think we learned through the years that what you say and what you do will affect a lot of people out there. | ||
| And especially now in the social media, I get so many great inputs for people that I have no idea who they are. | ||
| Like, oh, thank you for this. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| Thank you for you to put a good quote out there. | ||
| I think those little things have an impact always in a lot of people. | ||
| And I can't forget that. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| I love what I do. | ||
| I never had a job. | ||
| Do you have a work? | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| I try Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| And the amazing things. | ||
| They give me money to do Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| They pay me to do this. | ||
| I can't be... | ||
| Thank you, Dan. | ||
| I never had it. | ||
| You have a great life. | ||
| You make friends every day. | ||
| You make friends every day. | ||
| And you kind of are able now to help people just with something that you say. | ||
| Sometimes I have higher belt students or even lower belt students that show up for training. | ||
| And I learned that with one story my uncle told me. | ||
| Uncle Carlos, he used to live there, and back in those days, he observed a lot of things. | ||
| It was a time in Brazil, we have a lot of cockfighters, and he has his regular rooster. | ||
| Then he said, man, I'm going to make money if it's his rooster. | ||
| I said, okay. | ||
| I'm going to see how long the rooster actually fights. | ||
| And when I noticed the time, how long he fights, every time he's fighting, I'm going to get the real, the cockfighter, and start moving him out. | ||
| And the rooster thinks he's winning. | ||
| And he's been doing that for a while. | ||
| Then he realized the rooster can only stay in a fight for two minutes. | ||
| After two minutes, he runs. | ||
| Then he goes to the arena and challenges anybody there with his rooster, who's not made for a fight, to fight anyone there for one minute. | ||
| And they bet the money. | ||
| And for one minute, the rooster got beat up, but fought for one minute, did not run. | ||
| Then one minute, he got his rooster. | ||
| Hey, give me the money. | ||
| Let it fight. | ||
| He said, no. | ||
| I said, one minute. | ||
| The point was, I have guys that come to my school and they're not having a good day. | ||
| And I can tell that by looking to their face. | ||
| And I start training with them. | ||
| And I let them give me a hard time. | ||
| And I go like, man, what's wrong with you today? | ||
| You kicked my butt today. | ||
| And I can see the change that made in that person. | ||
| And I use that to train a lot of my students. | ||
| I'll give one example. | ||
| Our friend Eddie, before he fights Hoyler, when he called me in, he wasn't in the best of his game, and I know he could be amazing. | ||
| On the beginning, I prohibit anybody to give him a hard time or anything as he started building up. | ||
| Then towards the end, I said, man, kick his butt. | ||
| He was so good and confident after a few months. | ||
| Nobody could even get close to do nothing to him. | ||
| I said, man, you're ready. | ||
| You're ready for a fight. | ||
| But in the beginning, this was my way to work out his psychological, to build him up. | ||
| He wasn't in the best shape. | ||
| He wasn't training. | ||
| He said, no, you can't train with your students. | ||
| Everybody does what you do. | ||
| You're going to fight somebody who doesn't do what you do. | ||
| You got to train with people that do what the other guy do. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| In three months, we made him a monster. | ||
| And he did what he did in his fight. | ||
| We're using the same idea of my uncle telling me a story to make you start believing. | ||
| And towards the end, I thought, man, get him. | ||
| Nobody could get even close. | ||
| Isn't it funny how much of it is psychological? | ||
| Because when you are tired, but you start doing well, all of a sudden you have energy. | ||
| That's all in your mind. | ||
| And one of the things, I'm trying to remember who said that. | ||
| We grew up in the fighting world, I was seeing samurai bushido in the war, and we have a lot of good quotes. | ||
| And one of them was, whenever you think you're tired, your opponent is dead. | ||
| I always remember that. | ||
| Until today. | ||
| I remember as a yellow belt. | ||
| One of my cousins told me that, man, when you're tired, your opponent is dead. | ||
| That keeps you going. | ||
| Your opponent is dead? | ||
| He's dead. | ||
| He's way more tired than you are. | ||
| That's the time you have to push. | ||
| Instead of trying to conserve, no, now push. | ||
| But what if you're tired and he's not? | ||
| This is the mindset. | ||
| Then Jiu-Jitsu gives you the tools, but makes you never give up. | ||
| You can be tired. | ||
| We're all going to be tired in a fight. | ||
| That's for sure. | ||
| But you're not going to give up. | ||
| How important do you think it is to do additional conditioning other than just taking classes? | ||
| If you want to go and participate in an event, in a tournament, training the jiu-jitsu training today, you're going to do well. | ||
| If you want to win the tournament, then you have to do more. | ||
| You have to work out, you have to do your physical, because that always involves with your mindset. | ||
| A lot of people, they get nervous because they feel they're not ready. | ||
| Do you ever think that you'll have a jiu-jitsu school that also has weights and cardio equipment and things like that, and maybe even classes to help supplement jiu-jitsu training? | ||
| I think it'll be a dream school, for sure, because a lot of people do not realize how beneficial that would be for them in general. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Not only for Jiu-Jitsu, because I keep telling people, and I always put them in their minds for them to get better and believe in themselves. | ||
| But when they do, those things are challenging themselves. | ||
| If you challenge yourself every day, you're going to bring the best of you every day. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| If you do the same thing every day, you already know what's going to happen. | ||
| Whenever you challenge yourself, you're going to bring something better and better. | ||
| You're going to grow more inside. | ||
| You're going to start believing so much more the capability that you have. | ||
| That would be a dream school. | ||
| I don't know any school that has like a real comprehensive gym, strength and conditioning gym attached to a jiu-jitsu school. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu school, I don't know any. | ||
| Martial art, MMA places do. | ||
| MMA places, yeah, like all those big gyms. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But a lot of things, like sometimes someone may ask me and my thought about was this. | ||
| When you go to MMA gym, and I think today they're specific for MMA. I mean, they train enough grappling for MMA. They train enough punching for MMA, which is amazing. | ||
| But it's like you're going to a hospital. | ||
| You go there, you have a general doctor. | ||
| But if you need a specialist, you've got to go to the school that is specific for that purpose, striking or jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Even though now the biggest gyms out there have the best instructors of anything all together. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like American Top Team, right? | ||
| They have, yeah. | ||
| Ricardo Laborio. | ||
| I mean, they have the best grappling coach you could have, the wrestling, but not all the schools are like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That's a rare one. | ||
| It's very challenging because of sometimes the ego among the instructors. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Who the fighter is going to listen to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You get a lot of jiu-jitsu fighters that start training with a striking coach and the striking coach has them convinced that they're a striker. | ||
| And I think the biggest challenge for the MMA guys is when is the right time for me to transition from standing to the ground or the ground to standing. | ||
| And the ones that find the right momentum to do that, they're the ones that are winning. | ||
| And I know my Uncle Hilio said, man, sooner or later they're going to get your number. | ||
| I mean, that's the MMA world. | ||
| Very hard for you to retire without... | ||
| And when is the right time to retire? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard to figure out for many, many fighters. | ||
| No, it's a lot of the things. | ||
| Maybe money issues, or maybe I don't want to give up being famous, or maybe it's a lot of things involved. | ||
| I should retire like now. | ||
| Well, we've been around for a long time, and we've seen a lot of fighters fight long past where they should have retired. | ||
| That's when they can get hurt really bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you see, that's when the injury can be resting, be with him for a very long time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Does it bother you when you see that? | ||
| Particularly like older fighters getting knocked out. | ||
| Man, for me, I think the people surrounding them should be saying, hey, enough is enough. | ||
| I hope all of them and I think the way it is today is everyone is able to make good for their lives with enough money that they can live well. | ||
| Not all of them, unfortunately. | ||
| That's why they have to keep fighting as much as they can. | ||
| But it's a very challenge. | ||
| I think we have to understand it's a short career. | ||
| You don't have 20 years fighting. | ||
| You have to understand my body can't take this much. | ||
| But after a certain point, man, then you can get hurt really bad. | ||
| Just so everybody knows, on the wall of the studio right there, there's John Jacque Machado's coral belt right there on that wall in the studio permanently. | ||
| That's really cool, man. | ||
| You gave me that. | ||
| It was an honor. | ||
| I only made 10 of those. | ||
| One of them is right there, my brother. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I've got to be for a special person. | ||
| Joe Hogan, man. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| Well, thank you for everything, man. | ||
| Thank you for teaching me jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Thank you for being such a great leader and a role model. | ||
| And just thanks for being here, brother. | ||
| I really appreciate you. | ||
| Super, Joe. | ||
| Thank you for having me here. | ||
| And now I can... | ||
| People don't keep asking me, hey, why don't you go to see Joe Hogan? | ||
| I see Joe Hogan all the time, and I think it was a great pleasure for me to be here. | ||
| It's amazing to see the transformation, and I think in the mixed martial arts world, in the martial arts world, how important was to have someone like you that knows what you're talking about? | ||
| Because I remember the first few days of UFC. Please, UFC, understand Joe Hogan was much bigger than UFC, and I think UFC reached out to a point like that to have someone like you pushing, and you have so many people that love you, that follow you, And UFC is your voice of UFC, you know? | ||
| And don't get me wrong, those guys out there, but when you're talking and you have all those main fights there, it's very different than when you see the other guys talking about. | ||
| Because I know the involvement that you have in the martial arts and the knowledge that you have. | ||
| And it's really good to be here, I mean, in all these past 20 years, see the amazing journey to follow you, see you're getting bigger and bigger, and to be able to see that from the beginning is amazing. | ||
| Well, thank you, and I promise I'll be training soon. | ||
| As soon as this knee feels better, I'll be back. | ||
| And in Tarzana, that's your main school. | ||
| The Malibu one, unfortunately, was affected by the fires. | ||
| But Jay is now teaching somewhere else in the valley, right? | ||
| Where is he teaching? | ||
| I think we have a lot of affiliation schools around here. | ||
| We have one in Chatsward. | ||
| We have one in Simivari. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's where Jay is, right? | |
| Jay Bezos? | ||
| He goes there on Fridays. | ||
| Yeah, it's the Kings. | ||
| Kings Combat Sports. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And your gym, the Machado Jiu-Jitsu Academy, is in Tarzana, and you can find it online. | ||
| Yeah, we've been there for 27 years, and now we're probably going to be moving around the area for something that we need more space. | ||
| Unfortunately and fortunate at the same time. | ||
| Fortunately. | ||
| Blowing up. | ||
| Wait until after this podcast. | ||
| We see, yeah. | ||
| That's going to be even more fucking crazy. | ||
| Anything that comes out of your hoagie gets a lot bigger, for sure. | ||
| Well, listen, you have the best fucking school I've ever been to in the world. | ||
| And it's a beautiful environment. | ||
| It's a brotherhood and a sisterhood. | ||
| And that's one of the best things about it is how much it is like family over there. | ||
| It's like everyone who trains with you has the utmost respect for you. | ||
| And the way you are and the way you treat people, it rubs off on everybody. | ||
| You really genuinely do make people a better person. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| And I'll see you back soon on the mat. | ||
| All right, my brother. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Joe. |
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