July 24, 2011 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:46:35
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| So just tell me that again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What were you doing in Finland in the first place? | |
| I was there with an ex, training. | ||
| But aside from that, I was just there visiting. | ||
| I was just visiting Finland. | ||
| And so you decided to do a sauna in the motherland? | ||
| Because that's like the home of saunas, isn't it? | ||
| Yeah, it's the home of it. | ||
| So yeah, the people that were hosting us, they were like, hey, have you guys ever done sauna in Ice Lake? | ||
| Yeah, but never like in the ice lake after. | ||
| So they have like a shack that's the sauna that's next to the... | ||
| Yeah, it almost looks like a locker room, right? | ||
| And you just see a bunch of people, like all age groups. | ||
| There's a locker room where you get undressed and there's this huge box. | ||
| Like I said, it fits like easily 50 to 100 people. | ||
| And everyone's in there just packed. | ||
| There was actually a line to get in. | ||
| So when somebody steps out, you step in and kind of replace them. | ||
| Oh wow. | ||
| It's like bleacher seating. | ||
| So you're in there like packed tight in maybe three or four rows and it's hot as shit. | ||
| How hot? | ||
| I don't remember the exact temperature, but it was the hottest sauna that I've ever been in. | ||
| Like, my skin was on fire. | ||
|
unidentified
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Whoa. | |
| After maybe a minute, two minutes of being in there, I was like, this is almost unbelievable. | ||
| That's probably the moisture. | ||
| They probably threw a lot of water on there. | ||
| A lot of water. | ||
| That makes a fucking difference. | ||
| Right after, you just walk downstairs, or you walk outside, and there's a set of stairs where you walk literally right into the ice lake. | ||
| At night, we did it. | ||
| It was like 9 or 10 p.m. | ||
|
unidentified
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Whew. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And so they just cut a hole in the lake? | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| And you just walk. | ||
| There's like a metal walkway that you can't see, so it looks like you're just walking into the water at night, but there's like a little walkway, like a railway underwater, and you can hold onto the rail and do your lap. | ||
| And I think I did it like maybe four times, like four sessions, and it was one of the best things at the end of the night. | ||
| I slept like a baby. | ||
| Oh, you definitely do that. | ||
| When I do it at night, when I do the cold plunge and the sauna back to back at night, oh my god, you sleep so good. | ||
| It just drains you. | ||
| I love to do it before a podcast because it empties my brain. | ||
| Because the sauna, I put it at 189 degrees, and today I did 15 minutes on, and then I did three minutes in the ice bath, and then I had a run here. | ||
| So that's all I did today. | ||
| But most days I do 20, and then I do the ice bath, and then I'll do another 15. Got you. | ||
| But in the morning is good, man. | ||
| I feel like if I do that in the morning, I feel alive. | ||
| I don't have to do this crazy hard workout. | ||
| Just sauna and ice tub in the morning, I feel really revitalized, rejuvenated. | ||
| That's something that I think more athletes and more fighters in particular need to concentrate on is the recovery stuff. | ||
| There's a lot of guys who just train like animals and just hope their body is going to recover just naturally from hard work and eating well. | ||
| But I think things like hardcore stretching, yoga if you can get it in, hot yoga, and particularly sauna and ice bath, they're so beneficial. | ||
| Yeah, my conditioning coach, who's like a gigantic fan of you, What's his name? | ||
| His name is Lorenzo Pavlica. | ||
| Shout out to Lorenzo. | ||
| Shout out Lorenzo. | ||
| No, it's something that he has me do almost, I'd say like three to four times a week. | ||
| That's a part of our training. | ||
| It's sauna and ice and stretching and breathing. | ||
| What kind of breathing? | ||
| It's, I mean, I think what he calls it, tumo breathing? | ||
| Tumo. | ||
| Tumo. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| I might be saying it wrong. | ||
| How's it go? | ||
| It's a short inhale, long exhale, short inhale, long exhale, like a lot, pretty rapidly, and then... | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| How to do Wim Hof Tumo breathing. | ||
| Fire pranayama. | ||
| Activate your inner fire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So, one of the cool things, too, is, like, doing sauna, ice bath, or, you know, like, cold plunge, but also with this tumor breathing, I feel like something that really helped elevate and, like, activate everything in my body was I took a small little, like, chocolate microdose mushroom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ha ha! | |
| I ate a little piece of chocolate and then like kind of let that settle in. | ||
| We were like calming down and then got into this breathing exercise and when I tell you just there like I just felt so full like my brain was firing differently just so many sensations that I felt that were just like they felt like they were very healthy and like very powerful like I needed those things it was it was a really cool uh cool experience to mix it with uh With the mushrooms a little bit. | ||
| I think microdosing mushrooms is the future. | ||
| I think if people did that, first of all, it doesn't affect your cognitive function in a negative way, like your ability to think or talk or do work or anything like that, but it puts you in such a good place. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like this elevated place, but it's not medicated. | ||
| You don't feel bad when it's over. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I love microdosing muscles. | ||
| Yeah, you don't really trip out into this crazy headspace, right? | ||
| Yeah, you're functional. | ||
| Yeah, very functional. | ||
| If anything, clarity. | ||
| I feel a bit more clarity in a different realm. | ||
| Not so much clarity like if I have caffeine and I'm focused on my project. | ||
| It kind of takes me away from a certain aspect of my thinking and I'm a little bit more in line with my body. | ||
| Clarity with my body and my senses. | ||
| You feel your body better, right? | ||
| Yeah, stretching is amazing. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| You know, like stretching and breathing into stretches and, you know, if you were to microdose and do yoga or something like that, I'm sure it would be something that's... | ||
| I haven't done that. | ||
| I've done a lot of weed and do yoga and it's kind of the same thing. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| It gives you, you almost like feel the fibers stretching out. | ||
| That's how I feel. | ||
| I think that's one thing for me. | ||
| I'm not like a heavy weed smoker, but I love to smoke before I train or before I do any type of running or stretching. | ||
| Because I feel the fibers. | ||
| It might sound weird, but I feel like I feel more of my muscle fibers and I'm able to pay attention to those little things. | ||
| I don't think it's weird at all. | ||
| I think the whole thing is like, it's dose-dependent. | ||
| Like, if you get too high, you're like, oh, I can't even function. | ||
| Like, I've overdosed before and then tried to go to do jujitsu. | ||
| I was trying to explain an omoplata to someone, like this variation on an omoplata, and I couldn't figure out how to set up the omoplata. | ||
| I was like, so high. | ||
| I was like, what am I doing? | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| I was just too gone. | ||
| That was too much. | ||
|
unidentified
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You wanted just to touch. | |
| Just to separate you from normal consciousness. | ||
| I totally agree. | ||
| I totally agree. | ||
| It's been cool to be able to Yeah, just kind of bring new instruments and techniques into training and make it more exciting and more about fighting and, you know, Focusing more on just like my overall health and yeah ability, you know, just like ability mentally physically Emotionally, right? | ||
| Yeah, but that's one things that mushrooms and low-dose psychedelics and low-dose Marijuana can do for you. | ||
| It's just like You concentrate on your overall being when you're training. | ||
| You feel things that you don't ordinarily feel. | ||
| And sometimes I dismiss it when I train sober for a long time. | ||
| I'm like, who gives a fuck? | ||
| Just go get the work done. | ||
| But then I'll get high and I'll go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot about this. | ||
| I forgot about this. | ||
| It makes you realize that there's levels of sensitivity. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Have you ever tried doing like cardio or airdyme bike? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, I like it. | ||
| Yeah, same thing. | ||
| Yeah, it's great for a lot of things. | ||
| You know, I think it's not the best for learning for whatever reason. | ||
| Like I don't like it before learning techniques. | ||
| I think it's way better for me when I'm rolling. | ||
| Got you. | ||
| You know, or like hitting the bag is the best. | ||
| Getting high and hitting the bag is amazing. | ||
| I just put on some good tunes. | ||
| That's all you need. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's all you need. | ||
| And just feel it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't need a partner. | ||
| You don't need anybody yelling at you. | ||
| Just put on some music and let it flow. | ||
| Usually, I use my round timer and I have a Wu-Tang playlist. | ||
| And I put Wu-Tang Clan on and just fucking... | ||
| Gravel pit, get into that music. | ||
| It actually brings me into that. | ||
| I feel like I totally connect with you because there's a whole another level of training to Wu-Tang. | ||
| If you specifically put Wu-Tang on to train, I kind of get your mentality and that internal feeling that you get. | ||
| That's not my last fight, but the fight before I walked out to protect your neck. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| And just that mentality, the beat and the drums, you just feel like this, I don't know, like a badass martial artist in a way, like a street martial artist. | ||
| When we drive to shows, like when we leave the hotel and then we go to the arena, whenever I'm doing comedy, we listen to Protect Your Neck. | ||
| That's the first thing we listen to when we get in the car. | ||
| Either gravel pit or protect your neck. | ||
| A gravel pit's crazy, right? | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Check out my gravel pit. | |
| I get it. | ||
| Man, that era of hip-hop, to me, is just like... | ||
| I mean, obviously I'm old, so that era was when I was young, and it was when I was really getting into hip-hop, but... | ||
| There's something about that era of hip-hop because hip-hop was only a couple of decades old then. | ||
| Sugarhill Gang was like, what, 1979, 78? | ||
| When was Rapper's Delight? | ||
| I mean, way before my time. | ||
| I was born in 90. I think it was like 78 or 79. It could have been. | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| 80. Okay, so yeah, so that's that's when rap was essentially modern rap was essentially born and then you know 10 years later 15 years later, you know, you got cool G rap and DJ polo you got all those 90s hip-hop guys Yep, you know correct that's officially released on September 16th, 1970 Did you get to see the Wu-Tang Saga at all on Hulu? | ||
| No I hadn't been excited about a show in a long time. | ||
| I saw the Wu-Tang Saga, and some people have certain, you know, whatever their opinions on it, but I think to be able to see the background of every single member of Wu-Tang, right? | ||
| So it follows each character individually and how they all came together. | ||
| And Ashton Sanders, Saunders, who plays the RZA, And just there is a scene in season two where he's sampling the music and it takes him into this like all black room where the, I can't even remember the group that he was sampling, but they pop up. | ||
| And they're each playing their instruments. | ||
| And then as he turns it down on the keyboard, or as he turns it down on the board, then the guy's still singing, but you can't hear him anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, this is here? | |
| This is one of the best scenes in film history. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| That makes me crazy Watched him Your love is for me Don't take it away No, no Something about love That drives me Turn the voice up. | ||
| Oh, wow! | ||
| Let me hear the drums. | ||
| Oh, the guitar, yeah, right there. | ||
| That's probably the way a person sampling and creating music like that would see things, right? | ||
| You think about pulling... | ||
| You separate it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| RZA's a fascinating guy. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Apparently he was on set for a lot of the scenes and stuff, just kind of overseeing everything or giving his input on this is how it is. | ||
| But yeah, being someone who loves to make music and produce beats and stuff, it When I saw that scene, I had to rewind it. | ||
| I had to replay it because I'm like, yeah, exactly. | ||
| When you're listening, when you're trying to create music and maybe if you're sampling, you might just hear the guitar and you don't want the drums or you don't want the sing. | ||
| So you turn that down and you're like, ah, that's the feeling that I want to sample. | ||
| So when I saw that, I mean, that was season two, but I was already sold on the show before, you know. | ||
| How many seasons are there? | ||
| I think only two, and the third is coming. | ||
| Yeah, the third one's coming out. | ||
| The interesting thing about hip-hop is that it was the first musical genre, at least a popular musical genre, that sampled stuff. | ||
| Like in that, they, and they, it, what, you know, it made the songs more interesting because you heard a little bit of an old song in there, and you're like, oh, I remember that beat, but then it's all these new lyrics over that beat that changes what that beat is, and it's like, There was this, you know, there was like a lot of debate in the early days of sampling. | ||
| Like, is this stealing? | ||
| Like, what is this? | ||
| It's like, no, because the other song still exists, and it's obvious that this is a piece of that other song. | ||
| But it, you know, like, but it enhances... | ||
| New music. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| It's a totally different thing. | ||
| Like, taking little pieces of stuff and combining it together is an art form in and of itself. | ||
| Personally, it's an appreciation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Right? | ||
| It's like someone created this masterpiece already, and I took my favorite part from it and maybe just looped it or sped it up and then kind of made a version of it. | ||
| Not to, like, compete with... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This other song, but it's like an appreciation. | ||
| Like, thank you. | ||
| You've just made this amazing, you know, piece of music that I can now listen to on repeat or listen to in a way that, you know, translates to me in a certain way and to millions more. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't see a problem with it. | ||
| I think it's cool. | ||
| Yeah, it's not like they're pretending they didn't do that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Stealing is like... | ||
| There's been bands that have gotten in trouble because they have a riff that sounds exactly like an old riff that's on a record and they don't give the other band credit. | ||
| It's not a sample. | ||
| They're just trying to copy it and then they wind up losing all the royalties. | ||
| Do you remember that song, Bittersweet Symphony? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that song, I believe they had to give all their money to the Rolling Stones. | ||
| Oh, no way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See if that's true. | ||
| I'm pretty sure that's true, because I remember that song being really interesting, but the beginning of it was too close to a Rolling Stones song, and they lost in court. | ||
| Like the orchestra sound, like that melody? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But the lyrics obviously were totally different, and a different vibe to the song. | ||
| I forget which song it was, Stones. | ||
| But they took him to court. | ||
| But the thing about music is, like, I can't read music, but can you read music? | ||
| No, not read. | ||
| Just listen, like, I can play by ear. | ||
| When you read it, like, if you write the music out, they can see, like, oh, this is the same fucking song. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, you could see, like... | ||
| And then if you listen... | ||
| If someone listens to it that really has an ear for it, they could tell you, well, this is clearly, you know, the same breaks, the same... | ||
| It's basically the same music. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just they added different lyrics to it, and they made, you know... | ||
| But they weren't trying to pretend they were sampling. | ||
| They were just copying it. | ||
| Yeah, I think there's definitely two different... | ||
| This is a very confusing story. | ||
| It's almost too long to get into. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| They... | ||
| As of 2019, the Rolling Stones gave money back to the Verve. | ||
| What? | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, let me see that article. | ||
| Oh, not bitter, just sweet. | ||
| The Rolling Stones give royalties to the Verve. | ||
| Shout out Rolling Stones. | ||
| They had originally had permission from the original orchestral recording of those strings, apparently, or something. | ||
| It's right here. | ||
| Received permission from Decca, who released the album. | ||
| Okay, so the Verve received permission from DECA, the record label that had released the orchestral album, to use a few notes of the string melody from the Andrew Oldham Orchestra Instrumentals in exchange for half of the Verve's royalties on Bittersweet Symphony. | ||
| What was the song that was the Rolling Stones song that was... | ||
| The Last Time? | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| Let me hear that. | ||
| We're on Spotify. | ||
| See what happens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, I get it. | |
| Yeah, I hear it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all that. | |
| That's definitely it. | ||
| Oh my god, it's the same song. | ||
| It's the same song. | ||
| Well, that's sort of the issue, I think, is if they had permission, they had an agreement already in place, and then something in that agreement changed. | ||
| I was going to give you a better example before you brought that up, is the I'll Be Missing You, when Puff Daddy took that from the police. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's right. | ||
| He's never, apparently, Puff Daddy's never gotten any money from that. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| It's all 100% gone to Sting. | ||
| Not even the police. | ||
| Sting, specifically. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Look at that. | ||
| $730,000 a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| What? | ||
| Click on that so I can see it. | ||
| It says click in the bank account of Mr. Who. | ||
| Of Sting, probably, yeah. | ||
| Mr. Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner. | ||
| That's Sting's real name. | ||
| Is that real? | ||
| That's his real name? | ||
| What a goofy name. | ||
| I wonder why he changed his name to Sting. | ||
| There's too many words in that. | ||
| Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on, bro. | |
| It's two full names mixed into one. | ||
| Gordon Matthew and Thomas Sumner. | ||
| You can't have four words in your name. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Sting is living in a mansion in Benz's, but he isn't giving ends to his friends, yet he undoubtedly feels dependent. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| It's just someone's like sort of adding their opinion. | ||
| Oh, I get it. | ||
| Oh, someone bitching about Sting, not giving money. | ||
| Sumners had quoted, having said the song as the major ripoff of all time. | ||
| He, Sting, sampled my guitar. | ||
| That's what he based his whole track on. | ||
| Stuart's not on it, said Sumners. | ||
| Sting's not on it. | ||
| I'll be walking around. | ||
| No, that's not Sting then. | ||
| That's not correct. | ||
| Yeah, hold on. | ||
| So it's a different person. | ||
| According to Celebrity Network, Sting and Stingalow fattens his pockets with a cool $2,000 a day. | ||
| In fact, every penny of royalties that are generated by both Every Breath You Take and I'll Be Missing You. | ||
| Okay, so he gets $730,000 a year in that. | ||
| From both songs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| But who the fuck is Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner? | ||
| Is that Sting? | ||
| I think this article is just written poorly. | ||
| It's a shitty article. | ||
| Come on, XXL. Yeah, Sting. | ||
| I read this even through a different article where he was being interviewed with one of his bandmates from the police, and that guy was bitching about how he's not getting any money from it. | ||
| It's one of those deals. | ||
| Sting's taking all of it, and the way he's complaining about not having a chateau in Italy or something, he's like, we don't have chateaus in Italy, we have them in France. | ||
| Yeah, it's the wrong word, bro. | ||
| He's using French words for an Italian country. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Yeah, well, you know, that's the business of business. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta get your cut, too, though, right? | ||
| You can't be mad at the other guy. | ||
| That music business is a weird business. | ||
| You know, like guys who are in a band together, the band can be massive, but two guys are like the head guys in the band, and they make all the money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then the other guys get pissed, you know? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, kind of going back to Wu-Tang, I feel like there was a little bit of that. | ||
| There were so many members in Wu-Tang at one point in time, right? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| But I think one of the things was the guys didn't really understand the music business. | ||
| RZA was like the brains behind it. | ||
| He was the one who... | ||
| You know, had all of the kind of like business decisions and like, hey, I need you guys to sign this. | ||
| I need you guys to sign these contracts so we can get this money to make this music. | ||
| And, you know, they kind of trusted him and did it. | ||
| And I guess it just it didn't end up really being like a good deal for everybody. | ||
| They go over it a little bit in the show, but I think there's another documentary that kind of goes a little bit more in depth, you know, with all that stuff. | ||
| But yeah, man, this is dirty. | ||
| This is dirty. | ||
| It's a dirty game business. | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
| With so many people and so many different, you know... | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| We all gotta get paid. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just the fact that they brought those dudes together, though, is so interesting. | ||
| That the Wu-Tang Clan existed at all. | ||
| And it's so iconic. | ||
| You know, like, Wu-Tang is probably the most iconic hip-hop band of all time. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, off the top of my head, I really can't think of someone else to compare. | ||
| It's a different thing. | ||
| Like, Wu-Tang is like a mindset. | ||
| Like, when Dave Chappelle says Wu-Tang is a punchline sometimes, they'll say something and just go, Wu-Tang! | ||
| You can't use any other band for that. | ||
| You really can't. | ||
| You really can't. | ||
| And their logo, their symbol, they're known everywhere. | ||
| You can go to Jakarta, Indonesia, and they know who Wu-Tang is, or they've seen the symbol or something. | ||
| And the people in it vary. | ||
| So wildly, you got Old Dirty Bastard, who was just fucking crazy. | ||
| And then you got the JZA, who's an elite chess player. | ||
| And I think he's done TED Talks and shit. | ||
| No, the guy's a genius. | ||
| Yeah, like a legit genius. | ||
| He's a genius. | ||
| Yeah, I think he actually studied and has a degree in something like... | ||
| Like physics or something. | ||
| Yeah, like physics. | ||
| I think he has a physics degree or something like that. | ||
| The guy's a genius. | ||
| What was his TED Talk? | ||
| See if you can find out what the Jizz's TED Talk is. | ||
| Because I guarantee he did a TED Talk. | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| The genius of science. | ||
| The science genius at TEDxTeen. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, what the fuck, man? | |
| It's incredible. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, when you listen to some of his bars, you're like, wow, how do you even put those things together? | ||
| That's the other thing about 90s hip-hop and that era and Wu-Tang Clan in particular. | ||
| The lyrics were so good. | ||
| You would hear lyrics and you would just go, oh! | ||
| Like, how did you put those together to make that scenario happen? | ||
| Lyrics to me are everything. | ||
| I mean, the beat is everything, too. | ||
| I mean, it's all together, obviously, but it's like, man, there's something about sharp lyrics. | ||
| It's exciting. | ||
| Yeah, there's still a good number of hip-hop artists nowadays that still kind of produce the same type of stuff. | ||
| One of my favorite artists right now, he goes by Navy Blue, and he's kind of like an underground guy, but he's just got lyrics and poetry. | ||
| And you can get lost in just listening to him speak because you have to kind of put together the things that he's saying. | ||
| So you listen to the song a couple times and you're like, oh wow, okay, that makes sense. | ||
| Have you ever seen, there's a video from like the 1930s, and it's like, it says, I saw it on YouTube, it was a question mark, like is this the first ever rap? | ||
| And it's these dudes rhyming to music on some television show. | ||
| And like, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would you folks like to learn everything in five easy lessons? | |
| Yes! | ||
| Well, send for our free booklet. | ||
| This isn't what I saw. | ||
| Because what I saw was a video. | ||
| Well, that's it. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Click on that one. | ||
| Watch this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is 1940s. This | |
| is 1940s. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| I want you to build me an arc. | ||
| I won't do the billet three cubits long. | ||
| I won't do the billet big and strong. | ||
| I want it 50 high and 50 wide, so it will stand the wind and tide. | ||
| This is kind of hip-hop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, it's hip-hop with like a back melody going on. | |
| Right, with a back melody and dudes with nice suits on, on television in 1940. And a cappella. | ||
| And they're singing about the Bible. | ||
| You know? | ||
| But it's a completely different kind of music than what you think about from that era. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, 1940s, that's not what was happening. | |
| What happened there? | ||
| Were they adding the beat? | ||
| Yeah, you want to hear it? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow, man. man. | |
| You gotta think about people back then. | ||
| I mean, television was only like 10 years old, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like when did they, was it even? | ||
| Yeah, maybe. | ||
| About. | ||
| I think in the 30s, I think. | ||
| I'm pretty sure. | ||
| I mean, they came up with that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know what I mean? | ||
| They weren't getting inspiration from anything. | ||
| They weren't like, yeah, let's try to make something like this guy. | ||
| They were like, let's just make authentic music. | ||
| And that's what happened. | ||
| They just created something. | ||
| That's something I would sample. | ||
| I'd put this into my MPC and I'd try to make a cool beat out of it, just like the people did in this video. | ||
| People should definitely sample it. | ||
| I hope they do. | ||
| Make different versions of it. | ||
| I want to hear it. | ||
| And you think about it, you go 50 years later, then you have 90s hip-hop, which is that whole era. | ||
| 90s hip-hop was N.W.A. popped in the 90s. | ||
| Ice-T. I mean, there was so many artists became prominent in the 90s. | ||
| It became like a whole different thing. | ||
| And then gangster rap became like a whole different thing. | ||
| If you look from the beginning of these guys in 1940 to today, you're still only looking at 80 years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's such a small... | ||
| If you look at every other genre of music, it's had a longer span of time. | ||
| Time moves fast. | ||
| Technology advances. | ||
| I mean, yeah, man. | ||
| It's a beautiful thing to see. | ||
| I've been, yeah, very inspired by a lot of just evolution of music, of, like, finance, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah? | |
| Oh, yeah, man. | ||
| What do you, in terms of finance... | ||
| So I've been really, really focused and like intrigued in this whole Bitcoin thing lately. | ||
| I've been doing a lot of research and just like trying to get my own understanding. | ||
| I went to the Bitcoin conference in Miami this year and just got to see and hear Some really, really cool things. | ||
| And the people who are pioneering this and really believing in Bitcoin specifically, not just the whole world of cryptocurrency, but Bitcoin itself, I haven't been excited about something like this in a really long time. | ||
| And I'm not a finance guy. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I'm not a guy who grew up knowing about financial systems and networks and stock markets or anything. | ||
| And now I'm finally at a point where I'm Starting to be able to see a future for myself and also a way to... | ||
| People like me don't really have generational wealth, right? | ||
| And I don't see how I can really create that through fighting alone. | ||
| So lately I've just been trying to understand more of... | ||
| The advancement of technology and kind of where we're headed, right? | ||
| Like, for instance, you know, when I was a kid in the 1990s and early 2000s when the internet came versus now. | ||
| Like, in that jump in my lifetime, it's night and day difference. | ||
| Like, I'm living in the sci-fi compared to what was in the 90s, you know? | ||
| So now just, you know, listening to people really, like, Really smart people. | ||
| Even like Yeonmi Park, who you had here. | ||
| And hearing her and how she spoke about how like Bitcoin is actually helping save some children. | ||
| This is what she said. | ||
| In North Korea, when women are taken as sex lives and shipped over to Northern China, where these guys are buying them because China has this one-child rule in certain areas, right? | ||
| So, if the woman, if the sex slave has a child, then that child is half North Korean and half Chinese and the Chinese won't accept them and they can't go back to North Korea because the women kind of like escaped, right? | ||
| Because of that, there's actually what she said are pretty much millions of stateless children who can't get birth certificates, who can't get schooling, who can't get anything, and they're either sent to prison camps as children or killed because what are they going to do with them? | ||
| China doesn't accept them and they can't go back to North Korea, so what happens, right? | ||
| So there's like underground church groups that are actually taking these kids in and because they can't use Chinese money and they, you know, because it's happening in China, because they can't use Chinese money, the only currency that they can use right now is Bitcoin. | ||
| And so people are able to fund them so that they can at least school these kids and feed them and things like that. | ||
| So from a currency and money standpoint, there's a small fraction where I'm like, okay, I see how this works. | ||
| But then trying to uncover and dive more into the whole... | ||
| This system of how this can be implemented into just like daily society, I'm seeing more and more possibility, and it's making me more and more secure on, hey man, I can actually finally have something that I own that's mine. | ||
| Like, whatever I earn is going to be mine, and you can't touch it. | ||
| No one can touch it. | ||
| And there's a guy, Adam Curry, who- He's a good buddy of mine. | ||
| Yeah, you know, like Podcast Index. | ||
| Now they've created this thing where if you want to have your own platform and not worry about being taken down or censored or whatever, and you can also get paid in Satoshis, which are fractions of a Bitcoin, From the supporters. | ||
| So you can stream your stats. | ||
| You don't have to buy Bitcoin. | ||
| You can create a platform where, hey, I'm speaking. | ||
| If I wanted to start one and I'm like, you know what? | ||
| I don't have the money to actually buy Bitcoin, but I do have a lot of stuff that I want to talk about. | ||
| Subscribe to my podcast. | ||
| And then my fans and my followers are streaming to me Satoshis just like they would on Instagram, like likes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| So likes and replays and all that stuff is also a currency that people don't really look at it that way. | ||
| But a lot of these companies that want to do business with me, it's like, oh, how many followers do you have? | ||
| What's your Twitter engagement? | ||
| What's your Instagram engagement? | ||
| Oh, this video only got 70,000 plays. | ||
| That's a form of currency because that's looked at as my value or my worth on whether or not you're going to work with me or not. | ||
| Well, that's why shadow banning is so sneaky. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Shadow banning is so insidious because you're limiting a person's ability to grow. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And they do that all the time with people. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I think of Bitcoin the same way I think about the early internet. | ||
| I think they didn't see it coming, and now it's a viable form of currency. | ||
| You can actually buy things with it, and I think the government is freaking out. | ||
| I think what they're going to try to do... | ||
| Is they tried to do some shit with the internet during the Obama administration where they were going to try to censor the internet and it fell apart because people were furious in the uproar and they thought the political repercussions of it were not worth it. | ||
| Like the juice wasn't worth the squeeze so they backed off of it. | ||
| But I feel that there's going to come a time where some government, whether it's the United States or another government might try it first, they're going to try to implement, I know they already do it in China, but they're going to try to implement a digital currency, a centralized digital currency that they can control. | ||
| What's scary about that is they could say, Khalil, we've looked at your behavior online, and you have some marks against you, and so you're not going to be able to buy this. | ||
| Or you can only buy staples. | ||
| You can buy food and shelter, but we're not going to allow you to travel. | ||
| Because that could be a real thing where they could literally limit what you spend your money on. | ||
| 1,000%, Joe. | ||
| And that's the things that... | ||
| The more that I hear and the more that I see just the world evolving and... | ||
| Governments getting more strict or people getting censored. | ||
| And the more that I see parts of freedoms getting stripped away, the more that I'm like, okay, what can I do to kind of get a little bit more control over what's mine for the sake of my own future? | ||
| And so, yeah, just like the currency exchange in North Korea where like, Hey, it doesn't matter if you're a millionaire or a billionaire or if you have zero money in your account, starting, you know, next week, turn in your money and get exchange for, you know, for what? | ||
| For our currency. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which, you know, me also says, like, you know, when that happened, if you were a millionaire, then you had to trade in your money for the amount of two bags of kilos or two kilos of rice is what the money that the government gave you. | ||
| That's the amount that you could buy. | ||
| no matter how much you had to start with. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When that currency exchange happened, you know. | ||
| So I speak of that, too, because like North Korea is like it's a it's a it's just an idea of like how far a government can go. | ||
| Not saying that America is that way or anybody's that way. | ||
| I'm not pointing fingers, but like it just shows you how far, you know, a government. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can still have a military dictatorship that has full domination over its people and they're starving to death. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| I've been just trying to find different ways to Like secure myself outside of fighting, you know? | ||
| And so like, yeah, I went to the Bitcoin conference and I met a lot of amazing people. | ||
| A lot of people who kind of saw and hear my vision and where I want to go. | ||
| TradeStation. | ||
| I don't know if you saw the crypto bull that they built. | ||
| No. | ||
| The new version. | ||
| So there's a company called TradeStation that wants to make Miami the new finance hub. | ||
| And their whole thing is they built the brand new Wall Street bull. | ||
| You got to pull this up. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| And it's robotic, futuristic, transformed. | ||
| Look at that thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Oh, that's dope. | ||
| That's like things like showing like, hey, dude, like we're like, you know, so... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| I love that. | ||
| What is that made out of? | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| That's fucking killer. | ||
| But I think the same guys that did like Transformers and stuff, like they made it. | ||
| How big is that thing? | ||
| It's pretty big. | ||
| You see the guys like... | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| It's about the same size as the Wall Street Bull. | ||
| That's pretty sick. | ||
| So like, I'd never been interested in anything like that before, you know? | ||
| And like... | ||
| I think this was one of the biggest things that really just kind of helped me just pivot in my thinking and really wanting to secure a future for myself moving forward. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Well, you're an interesting guy, man. | ||
| You're a great fighter, but if someone didn't know you were a fighter and they just talked to you, they'd be like, oh, he's probably an artist or something. | ||
| I get that a lot. | ||
| You don't seem aggressive. | ||
| But you fight like you got rabies. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| Your last fight in particular, I felt it was really fascinating because against Roberson, you were fighting with a low stance. | ||
| That was a totally different thing. | ||
| Like when you fought Eric Anders, you're standing up straight and you were very Thai-style, light on the front leg, and in this fight you're like hunkered down low and almost like a wrestler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But still firing off strikes from that stance. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What were you doing? | ||
| What was the game plan there? | ||
| I don't know if there's ever really a game plan, Joe. | ||
| Really? | ||
| There has been in the past, and I think just game plans for me sometimes require a bit too much thinking, when in reality, yeah, there's some thinking in fighting, but... | ||
| I think it's good to have an idea of where I can finish the fight and where I want the fight to go and kind of stick to that. | ||
| But if I get too attached to a game plan, then I might miss opportunities to do certain things in the moment. | ||
| So is there a game plan involved in training? | ||
| Well, Carl is very well-rounded. | ||
| I knew that he was going to be a great striker. | ||
| Well, he fought in glory, right? | ||
| He fought in glory. | ||
| But I also knew that he was training at glory kickboxing with James Krause. | ||
| And for me, I think that was my biggest... | ||
| That was my biggest concern, is that he had Kraus in his corner, if I'm being honest. | ||
| Kraus is a wizard. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| And so, like, I wasn't necessarily... | ||
| I respected that I had to fight Carl and that he was a great fighter. | ||
| But I was really, if I'm being honest, I was nervous more about him having Kraus. | ||
| And I was like, Kraus is going to do his homework. | ||
| And he's going to, you know, he's going to find out any and all ways, you know, any type of possibilities on how to beat me. | ||
| I think the lower stance was just more instinctual. | ||
| Really? | ||
| So that wasn't something you prepared for? | ||
| No, I didn't prepare for it at all. | ||
| It was really a mood. | ||
| I've been training a lot differently lately, man. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, I have a different approach right now to fighting. | ||
| I think it feels more like my duty as if I'm in the military. | ||
| Really? | ||
| As if when I'm not fighting, I'm enjoying my family and I'm figuring out new ways to create a future for myself and invest money and get into more of a security mindset because I want to. | ||
| How old are you now? | ||
| I'm 32. So in your 30s as a professional athlete, you start thinking, okay, this is my last decade. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I don't see any fighters that are like... | ||
| I don't have any really role models to look up to as far as like, how do I model myself after this? | ||
| I think I want to be... | ||
| Wealthy, man. | ||
| You know, like, if I'm out here fighting and putting my life on the line and, like, for what we do, I mean, we all know it's no shot at the UFC. I'm very grateful for what I get paid, but, man, it's not enough. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so I have to figure out, like, ways to... | ||
| It's not enough for the rest of your life and you can't do it forever. | ||
| No, man. | ||
| And so, like, I have to figure out ways to, you know... | ||
| Have security for myself, but also to preserve my own life and my own body because I'm going in there with another guy who's a trained beast, you know, and like my face could get broken and, you know, so many different things can end my career at, you know, I don't know what the other guy's thinking, so I've got to do what I've got to do. | ||
| So that's why I feel like lately I'm fighting for more my life than I am for a sport. | ||
| You know, like, when I go in there, when I fight, you're facing me, like, the man, the person who, like, you kind of have to kill me to beat me in a way. | ||
| When did that shift for you? | ||
| I think... | ||
| Before the Bukakis fight, the oblique kick before that one. | ||
| I lost and my UFC contract was pretty much on the line. | ||
| I had lost in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| Wasn't that a sidekick to the knee? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why do you call it oblique kick? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's what people call it, oblique kick. | ||
| Isn't oblique kick the one where your big toe is up and you shoot it to the body or to the legs? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| You know who's the shit at that? | ||
| Lorenz Larkin. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I trained with him for this last camp. | ||
| He's sick. | ||
| He throws that thing to the body like a front kick. | ||
| He's made me like a lot of times. | ||
| When he fought Neil Magny, see if you can find that fight. | ||
| Find Lorenz Larkin versus Neil Magny. | ||
| He's a wicked striker. | ||
| Very interesting striker. | ||
| There's a guy, Lorenz Larkin's a guy who didn't get the credit he deserved. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| But he's still doing his thing. | ||
| He is still doing his thing. | ||
| But I felt like he went over to Bellator and I wish he kind of didn't. | ||
| Because I think he was in the hunt at 170 in the UFC. I mean, I think he was one of the elite of the elite and he was still improving and growing. | ||
| The problem with you going over to Bellator is I'm sure you're getting good money. | ||
| I'm sure everything's great over there, but you got way less eyeballs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's just how it is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's- Watch how he throws this to the body. | ||
| Look at that shit, man. | ||
| That is wild. | ||
| Who fucking does that? | ||
| Watch that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Who does that? | ||
| It's like your whole foot to the midsection. | ||
| Dude, I wound up practicing that on the bag afterwards, and I was like, that is so interesting because it really does work. | ||
| Is that considered an oblique kick? | ||
| That's an oblique kick. | ||
| I don't know why they call it... | ||
| I mean, I guess you're hitting him in the obliques right there. | ||
| Yeah, I guess you're right. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that is the part of the body. | ||
| But when people call it the oblique kick all the time when you're doing it to the thigh... | ||
| To the thigh? | ||
| Yeah, which I don't know why they would call it the oblique kick. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't have another name. | ||
| Yeah, that's the name that I see, so that's kind of why I repeated it that way. | ||
| It's in Jeet Kune Do. | ||
| You know, like Bruce Lee used that shit. | ||
| Bruce Lee threw that kick a lot. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, and some of his Jeet Kune Do texts, I think it's... | ||
| The sidekick? | ||
| Yeah, it's not a sidekick, really, because it's utilized in a way... | ||
| See, like John Jones, they call it the oblique kick. | ||
| But it's not really... | ||
| I guess because the foot's pointed outside, you know, like versus... | ||
| See, John Jones? | ||
| Well, John is doing an oblique kick right there where it says in text the oblique kick on the screen. | ||
| That is the oblique kick. | ||
| Got you. | ||
| But when you throw it sideways, like when you have a sideways stance, like when you threw it, it was essentially like a front leg sidekick to the knee, right? | ||
| It's a different technique. | ||
| Like that dude, knee stomps, where it says knee stomps, MMA Uncensored, that's a sidekick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Got you. | |
| But where John's throwing it, you see the difference. | ||
| His big toe is up, that guy's big toe is down. | ||
| Got you. | ||
| It's a weird... | ||
| Look, why can't you do it? | ||
| I mean, this is the thing. | ||
| And to Dukakis' credit, when you stopped him with that, he was like, look, that's a legal kick. | ||
| That's legit as fuck. | ||
| Which, like, respect on his behalf. | ||
| And, like, I definitely, like, even now to this day, like, it's hard to watch. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Like, you know, even for me, it's hard. | ||
| I mean, Bacacus is an insane pain. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the knee twist. | ||
| See if you can find that. | ||
| We'll watch that again. | ||
| Oh, come on, dude. | ||
| I just said it's hard to watch, and you're like, let's pull it up. | ||
| Okay, let's not watch it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's not watch it. | |
| People at home, if you want to see something sick. | ||
| No, but I think that's kind of one of the things. | ||
| And that's also when I kind of put the target on my back as well, right? | ||
| But... | ||
| Do you think by doing that you put a target on your back? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, for sure. | ||
| Because I think that when people now go to fight me, it's kind of like, okay, we're going to fight. | ||
| However, it's not necessarily going to be this, like, what everybody considers this, like, good, clean fight. | ||
| I mean, everybody's been doing that. | ||
| Yoel Romero did it to Robert Whittaker. | ||
| It happened to me. | ||
| Whittaker did it to him. | ||
| Who did you? | ||
| Marcin Pracnio, the fight that I lost in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| He kept doing it to my knee, and in between rounds, I'm like, dude, my leg is fucked. | ||
| I cannot walk. | ||
| I don't know how I'm going to get to the second and third round, but I did, and it was because of that kick. | ||
| So that's kind of another thing where I was like, this is a useful tool. | ||
| Did I think I'm going to snap this guy's like, no, absolutely not. | ||
| But if it's in a fight, I'm going to do it. | ||
| I'm going to do it with my full strength because we're fighting. | ||
| No different than kicking the shit out of someone's calf, right? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You eliminate their ability to move. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you have long-term damage from that kick, from getting kicked like that in that fight in Abu Dhabi? | ||
| I'd say, like, not long term because nothing was, like, torn or anything, but it was, like, there was, like, a stiffness for a good, like, two months. | ||
| Yeah, because it was, like, right on the top of my knee, right, you know, like, right above the patella, and it was just, like, it just, for me to bend it all the way or stretch, I had to do a lot of, you know, stretching and things, icing, stuff to really fix it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I talked to a lot of guys about this, and their thought is, like, why is it okay to do an inside heel hook and you can't stomp the knee? | ||
| Like, of course, heel hooks are fucking devastating. | ||
| I mean, remember the Paul Harris days? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Where he would hang on to a guy's knees and not let go and rip their shit apart. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, I mean, that was, like, the mentality switch kind of happened knowing that I was on my last UFC, you know, fight on the contract, and I knew that I just, I'm not done. | ||
| I still want to continue to make the best run that I can, knowing internally that I gave my best efforts. | ||
| You were thinking about being done at one time, though, fairly recently, right? | ||
| Yeah, like, um, I think it was... | ||
| Was that the Cudelabra fight? | ||
| The... | ||
| After that fight. | ||
| Was it after that fight? | ||
| Yeah, I think it was after that fight. | ||
| It was before the Prakneo fight, the one that was in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| Why were you thinking about ending? | ||
| Uh, because after I had spoken to you from being in Thailand and having that performance with Eric Anders, all that, um, I had reached a place where I felt like I was just happy with my life. | ||
| And I was in Thailand and I saw just the quality of life there. | ||
| And I had, you know, I had this idea that I was going to live there forever. | ||
| And, um, I would have been happy just like serving coffee at a, you know, at a cool spot in You know, in Sukhumvit, Bangkok, you know, because like just the people there are so cool. | ||
| So nice, right? | ||
| I love Thai people and I feel like there's a part of inside of me that's Thai, you know, and I'm like, I belong here. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And so I just I came to a point where I'm like, I think I'm striving for too much like in America. | ||
| Like, just, I want to have all of these things. | ||
| I want to have a big house and I want to have a lot of money when in reality, like, I don't absolutely need it all because I'm, I'm, my heart is full right now, you know? | ||
| So I just, and I wanted to fight Muay Thai and the UFC were like, no, you can't do that. | ||
| I wanted to fight in the stadium, you know, at Raja Damnarn Stadium. | ||
| And my friend, who's like one of the biggest promoters in Thailand, was like, yeah, I can do it. | ||
| And we can make it for the WBC heavyweight belt. | ||
| And I was like, you mean the green one? | ||
| He's like, yeah, we can make it at the stadium. | ||
| And I was like, okay. | ||
| But I had to get the clearance from UFC and obviously that's a hard no. | ||
| And so I was so passionate about wanting to stay in Thailand and wanting to fight Muay Thai that I was willing to give up my last fight in the UFC and kind of become like a sensation in Thailand. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| And, like, even to this day, there's a part of me that still wants to do it. | ||
| But now, like I said, I'm worried. | ||
| I'm not worried, but I'm focused on, like, just creating something out of all of this, you know, for myself, for my family, you know, something like some type of generational wealth, man. | ||
| But what made you make that adjustment? | ||
| Instead of saying, I'm going to live in Thailand, live a simple life amongst these happy, smiling, friendly people, to, I'm back in the hunt. | ||
| So during the pandemic, I was in Thailand. | ||
| So I was locked down there for, yeah, for all of 2021, or 2020. My fiance and I were there and we decided we have to come back because at that time it was very hard to get any type of paperwork from the embassy and my debit card got lost. | ||
| The height of the pandemic. | ||
| Phone lines were tied up. | ||
| Embassy was not taking anybody to get visa renewals. | ||
| It was just such a pain in the ass process for me to still be there because of the pandemic. | ||
| And we decided I have to go back to America for a little bit. | ||
| And then once I came back here, I got booked to fight. | ||
| And it all kind of unraveled from there. | ||
| So why did you choose New York City? | ||
| Well, my girlfriend lived there. | ||
| My fiance now, she lived there before. | ||
| And we were just in Thailand together during the lockdown. | ||
| So we both went back to New York City. | ||
| And that was the first time that I'd spend like a good amount of time in New York City. | ||
| And I was like, Oh, I like it here. | ||
| A lot's chaotic. | ||
| You know, people are loud. | ||
| I'm more chill. | ||
| So every day is like an exciting experience for me. | ||
| And so, yeah, we just kind of did our thing to be able to have a place there together. | ||
| But I also have a spot in Vegas, like a training camp. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, one bedroom apartment right by the PI. So is that where you do your camps? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So if the UFC were to call me and say, hey, we want you to fight in August, then I would go back to Vegas pretty shortly and... | ||
| I have a place there. | ||
| One bedroom, super simple. | ||
| It's got all my belongings, all my training camp supplies, stuff like that. | ||
| Does your girl go with you, or do you do the monastic thing? | ||
| From time to time, she'll come out for a couple weeks, but if she has work, she'll come back to New York. | ||
| Last camp, I did it solo. | ||
| She was like, I think you should just focus, and so I'll let you go and be alone. | ||
| And we just did like FaceTime movie dates every night, which worked. | ||
| That's the thing about camps and fighting. | ||
| It's like there's two different schools of thought. | ||
| Some guys are more comfortable with their family and they sleep better. | ||
| They can just deal and then they could just turn it on when they train. | ||
| And then there's guys like Marvin Hagler. | ||
| Who used to go to Cape Cod in the wintertime. | ||
| He didn't see some of his kids getting born. | ||
| He was just over there, just training. | ||
| He wouldn't talk to anybody. | ||
| He put a hat on that said war. | ||
| He would just train like a fucking wild man. | ||
| I mean, that's me, man. | ||
| I'd love to have it that way. | ||
| That's why a lot of the... | ||
| That's where I plan to also spend a good portion of my money, too, moving forward, is being able to fund a trip to the mountains or Big Bear or something where, like, hey, or even build something like Cowboys Ranch, something very small that, hey, we're in camp, and for the next eight weeks, we're in camp. | ||
| And if you're my coach, you're here, and if you're my training partner, you're here, and the world doesn't exist. | ||
| The cowboy setup is beautiful. | ||
| That's such a smart thing. | ||
| Such a smart thing he did in putting that together. | ||
| Legend. | ||
| He's got a crazy sauna that he built himself. | ||
| Yeah, with firewood. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Old school. | ||
| There's no hot stones in there. | ||
| That's like straight firewood. | ||
| Barbershop. | ||
| My friends were just there posting stories. | ||
| I was like, wow, he's got a setup. | ||
| That dude needs his mind. | ||
| Now Joe Rogan's got the new setup, guys. | ||
| Just want to tell you. | ||
| Be on the lookout for those videos. | ||
| I think he's got the number one training facility. | ||
| It's a dope spot, right? | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
| I got to come back and train with you. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, definitely. | ||
| I'd love to see some of the shit you learned in Thailand. | ||
| Because you were telling me that they taught you to kick differently. | ||
| Kick differently. | ||
| What was the difference? | ||
| So, there's different... | ||
| Like, they added the... | ||
| How do I put this? | ||
| Balance is something that's very focused on in real Muay Thai. | ||
| Like, you get judged on your balance. | ||
| If you have shit balance when you throw a kick... | ||
| You should be able to throw a kick, check a kick... | ||
| And land back in your stance and fire another kick knee and elbow seamlessly. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| That's real Muay Thai. | ||
| Being in full control, being able to throw a full body kick, check mid-air. | ||
| It shaped my perspective on kicking. | ||
| Something that I feel like I'd have to show you versus explain it to you. | ||
| Also, I know how to clinch. | ||
| I know how to properly clinch now. | ||
| And if you talk to anybody who's trained with me over the past year, I love my clinch game. | ||
| I'm so confident in my clinch. | ||
| And it's not just grabbing behind the head and throwing knees. | ||
| I feel like I have some techniques that if you can get out of it, I'll give you a lot of props if you can get out of my clinch. | ||
| You mean what, just a straight plum? | ||
| Or are you talking about just any kind of clinch? | ||
| Like my tie clinch. | ||
| Yeah, so like if I were to tie up with you and not even go for a body, we're just playing a stand-up clinch game. | ||
| And I'm controlling your entire body from the shoulders up and arms up. | ||
| I'm very confident in that and I feel good about it and I owe it to being able to clinch for 45 minutes a day in Thailand for a couple of years. | ||
| It's a real underrated aspect of Muay Thai. | ||
| The clinch game and then the trip game. | ||
| Yeah, sweeps. | ||
| Trips and sweeps are some of my favorite things to do now. | ||
| It all comes from being able to be a student of the game and see... | ||
| One of the trainers, he didn't even really talk to me much, but one day I was training and he was like, if you don't have defense, you're not a fighter. | ||
| Yeah, you can have all the offense in the world, but your defense sucks, so work on your defense. | ||
| And that's checking kicks, blocking kicks, being able to identify offense and defense. | ||
| Deliver full strikes and then defend fully. | ||
| So they have a very simple way of putting things, but it's all for a reason. | ||
| So now I think... | ||
| Yeah, I can show it more than I can explain it from across the table, you know what I mean? | ||
| But I'd love to be able to show you a few things. | ||
| I would love to learn some stuff. | ||
| Defense is, in almost every elite martial artist, if you talk to them about the cornerstones, one of the big ones is defense. | ||
| And people don't think of that when they think a good offense is the best defense. | ||
| A good example of that, they were talking about that this weekend when Chito Guerra fought Rob Font. | ||
| Incredible, right? | ||
| Bro, Chito's on fire. | ||
| Rob's on fire too, dude. | ||
| I know, which is crazy. | ||
| I was rooting for Rob that whole entire fight. | ||
| The fact that Chito did that to Rob, that shows how good that motherfucker's getting. | ||
| He's obsessed. | ||
| He texted me afterwards. | ||
| I congratulated him. | ||
| He texted me afterwards. | ||
| He goes, I'm obsessed. | ||
| He goes, all I want to do is train constantly. | ||
| I just want to train and constantly grow. | ||
| And he's like, and Jason Perillo has to, like, kick me out of the gym. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, bro, get out of here. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| I mean, like, it's nice to kind of catch that bug for a bit, you know what I mean? | ||
| And, like, capitalize on, like, hey, when you have that emotion, when you have that feeling, take it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and run with it. | ||
| Because a lot of us don't really have that. | ||
| We got to, like... | ||
| We gotta grind for it. | ||
| But he's finally there. | ||
| So yeah, shout out to Cheeto. | ||
| Keep doing it. | ||
| I'm so impressed with him, man. | ||
| I'd love to see what comes out of that obsession. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He blocks a lot of shit with his hands, too. | ||
| He's really good at... | ||
| The punches are coming in, and some of them are landing, but a lot of them are getting blocked, and then he's firing back. | ||
| That standing knee that he landed to the chin, holy shit, man. | ||
| How about the... | ||
| The hook kick? | ||
| The sidekick to the orbital. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The one that actually made Rob Font's face. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think it was a hook kick. | ||
| Was it a hook kick? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| It might have been a sidekick, but it was like a high, you know, in that regard. | ||
| Yeah, no, amazing, man. | ||
| What a beast, though, man. | ||
| Shout out Rob Font. | ||
| Yeah, he's incredible. | ||
| Wow, man. | ||
| Rob's got one of the best jabs in the sport. | ||
| Yeah, his boxing was on point. | ||
| It's always on point. | ||
| I mean, he's in that same camp as Calvin Cater, who also has some sick boxing. | ||
| Got you. | ||
| But I'm just so impressed with Cheeto. | ||
| I mean, Cheeto is now one of the top guys in that, what a fucking shark tank of a division, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That division is filled with animals. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| And Cejudo's talking about coming back. | ||
| Cejudo. | ||
| Who do we got? | ||
| Cejudo, Peter Yan. | ||
| Sugar Sean O'Malley. | ||
| Sugar Sean O'Malley. | ||
| Peter Yan. | ||
| Al Jermaine Sterling. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, fucking Cody Sanhagen. | ||
| Yeah, there's going to be a lot of- Cody Sanhagen. | ||
| And then TJ Dillshaw. | ||
| And Sanhagen's a fucking killer too, man. | ||
| That fight with Yan. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's definitely an exciting time for that division. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's a very exciting time, especially because all of those guys want that top spot, too, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's just so talent-rich. | ||
| It's fun when these divisions get to this boiling point of talent-rich divisions where someone's got to Break through and rise. | ||
| And you're seeing everybody get better. | ||
| Like, clear difference between Aljamain, the second fight with Jan, than the first fight. | ||
| Than the first, yeah. | ||
| Clear difference, you know? | ||
| And, you know, he said something that was probably accurate. | ||
| He said the first fight he didn't eat. | ||
| He was all freaked out and just fired up and just couldn't wait to get in there. | ||
| And he didn't fuel his body. | ||
| And he started fatiguing in the fight, you know? | ||
| And then he got hit with that illegal knee. | ||
| But in this fight, he made the proper adjustments. | ||
| Damn, his back taking is off the charts. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| His back control and ability to take the back is crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And once you're there, if you've got somebody who has good back control, it's not fun. | ||
| It's not fun, man. | ||
| It's frustrating. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's tiring. | ||
| Did you see the Shakur Stevenson fight? | ||
| I didn't. | ||
| Holy shit, man. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Good? | ||
| Fuck, he's good. | ||
| He's on another level right now, man. | ||
| He's on another level. | ||
| I mean, he is so smooth. | ||
| And his movement, his ability to, like, punches were coming at him, and he just lets them get right there. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Just right to there, they touch him, and then BAP! Fire's back. | ||
| His accuracy, his technique, his efficiency. | ||
| Yeah, I gotta watch it. | ||
| It was beautiful. | ||
| We were watching it in between shows when I was in Colorado this weekend doing comedy. | ||
| We were watching it in between shows, and I was like, God damn, he's good. | ||
| He's so smooth. | ||
| He's so efficient and technical. | ||
| Everything was on point. | ||
| Yeah, I'm gonna watch it for sure. | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| Dude, what do you think... | ||
| There's him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Valdez is undefeated in this fight, too. | ||
| I mean, Shakur basically won, if not all rounds, most rounds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait, where was this? | |
| It's just the way he did it. | ||
| This was at MGM. Oh, okay. | ||
| This was in Vegas. | ||
| But this was like a big coming out party for Shakur because a lot of people were aware of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that. | |
| It was on ESPN. Yeah. | ||
| Oh, bro. | ||
| I'm telling you. | ||
| He was on fire. | ||
| And it was just the smoothness. | ||
| And a lot of people were saying it's like Floyd Mayweather-esque. | ||
| And you could say that. | ||
| You could say that. | ||
| It was just, it was so, but it was, you know, it's Stevenson-esque. | ||
| It's just Stevenson coming into his prime and letting everybody know because it's such a high-profile venue. | ||
| I mean, he's at the MGM and he's fighting on ESPN. Yeah. | ||
| Also, yeah, let the man have his own name. | ||
| This is the end of the fight. | ||
| He ran around with his biceps up. | ||
| Yeah, smooth. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| It was a very, very, very good fight. | ||
| Joe, let me ask you this. | ||
| I've never asked anybody this in my whole entire life. | ||
| Who would you like to see me fight? | ||
| What would be a matchup that you'd be like, wow, that's one that I really want to see? | ||
| I want to see you fight who you want to fight. | ||
| I got you. | ||
| I'd like to see you fight anybody in the division. | ||
| I was so impressed with the fight with Carl. | ||
| But I've been impressed with a lot of your fights. | ||
| I feel like there's two you's. | ||
| There's you motivated and prepared, and then there's you who's not really sure if you should be doing this anymore. | ||
| And I've seen a couple of those fights, too. | ||
| But the motivated, prepared Khalil is a scary motherfucker. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You're a scary motherfucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| When you were coming after Carl with that low stance, I didn't call that fight. | ||
| I was at home watching. | ||
| I was like, holy shit, man. | ||
| He looks fucking lethal. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And I think I'm at a point right now that the motivated and prepared is here to stay until it's over. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm not one foot in, one foot out right now. | ||
| I know exactly what I'm here to do. | ||
| And like I said, when I go fight now, it's more like it's my duty. | ||
| It's active duty, man. | ||
| So in between, I get to like, you know, I'm enjoying my life. | ||
| I'm in New York City. | ||
| I'm learning. | ||
| I'm doing this. | ||
| And then when I get that phone call, it's like, it's just like I'm going overseas. | ||
| Like Vegas. | ||
| I'm going to the desert. | ||
| I'm in the desert. | ||
| I'm going to war. | ||
| Let's lock down. | ||
| What's the mission? | ||
| Okay, this is it. | ||
| I have somewhere that I look back and say, okay, I gotta get back to my girl. | ||
| I gotta get back to my home. | ||
| And I'm here to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where are you training in New York City? | |
| Recently, I've just been doing jiu-jitsu at Marcelo Garcia. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No striking at all? | ||
| I do fitness stuff at Chelsea Piers, just fitness gym. | ||
| But no striking? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| No. | ||
| That seems kind of crazy. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Well, because I would think you would want to constantly be tuning up your striking. | ||
| You don't do any of it? | ||
| You don't even hit the bag? | ||
| I hit the bag a little bit. | ||
| A little bit? | ||
| I hit the bag a little bit. | ||
| It's hard to believe for anybody who watches you fight because you're so heavy on strikes. | ||
| Your strikes are so devastating you would assume that you're constantly working on them. | ||
| Nah. | ||
| I mean, not like that. | ||
| I think what's going to help me stay motivated and stay passionate about being here in the UFC and kind of going into this new run is having an equal balance in my life. | ||
| And when I'm training, I'm training. | ||
| And I give myself enough time to, you know... | ||
| Live life. | ||
| To live life. | ||
| And I don't fuck around. | ||
| I don't drink. | ||
| I don't party. | ||
| I don't, you know... | ||
| Like, I literally am serious when I say that I'm focused on just, like, making something out of my life, you know? | ||
| Like, I acted in my first movie. | ||
| I don't know if you saw it. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Me, Anderson, Rampage, Tretch from Naughty by Nature. | ||
| Oh, no shit. | ||
| Yeah, we're all in a movie together, a crime drama called Lord of the Streets. | ||
| Is it good? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was going to ask you, is it terrible? | |
| It's not terrible. | ||
| The movie's not terrible. | ||
| It's definitely watchable, and it's enjoyable. | ||
| There are some parts in there that's like, holy shit. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's it called? | |
| I didn't hate it. | ||
| I haven't gotten any... | ||
| Lord of the Streets. | ||
| Lord of the Streets. | ||
| I haven't gotten anyone that's like, yo, dude, that movie fucking sucked. | ||
| No one said that. | ||
| Who's going to say that to you? | ||
| I haven't even heard it through the grapevine. | ||
| I'm sure people think it. | ||
| They might say it on the internet. | ||
| They're not going to say it in front of you. | ||
| Nah, it's definitely something that I watched, and there's some cheesy parts. | ||
| but overall like the storyline and the fact that all of us really did go in there and like give our best I think it shows you know what I mean I think it shows and if you're a fan of oh yeah here's the trailer can you rewind it really quick with the sound is that possible okay and this is out uh it's on tubi yeah you stream it through tubi he wants you to throw the fight Trey goes down more later than round two. | ||
|
unidentified
|
you go down for good baby girl Dad! | |
| I told you to throw the fight. | ||
| What do I got to do to walk out of you with my daughter? | ||
| No holds barred fight. | ||
| I got a fighter. | ||
| He an inmate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's my 55 fighter in a row. | |
| That's suicide. | ||
| Good to see you on the outside, convict. | ||
| Thank God for corruption. | ||
| You don't know how good you had it, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wife, daughter, championship belt. | |
| I'm washed up. | ||
| I'm gonna win these fights. | ||
| Spend my life on me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's Stacy coming home. | |
| I didn't even know Tredge trained. | ||
| See what he's done? | ||
| He's turned us into monsters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fight or die. | |
| You choose. | ||
| It was so fun to make, man. | ||
| How long has Tretch been training? | ||
| So he didn't train MMA. He was just training to stay in shape. | ||
| He obviously had a double. | ||
| Oh, so he had a double to do the fight scenes and shit? | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| But all the other guys, like Chet Kongo, me... | ||
| Oh, Chuck Kong goes in, too? | ||
| That, too, I was, like, breaking the stool over his back. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah, we shot it, you know, we shot it in 12 days. | ||
| Yeah, we did it, had fun. | ||
| And so, like, but now I'm already working on my second film, where it's, like, it's actually, like... | ||
| It's more serious and there's more funding behind it. | ||
| Is it a fighting movie as well? | ||
| Yes, partially. | ||
| I can't say too much, but it has a lot to do with... | ||
| How athletes and fighters and celebrities are always like we are often looked at in this light where people see us as like stars and like larger than life but don't really realize and remember that we're human beings and that we have the same you know Struggles and things as any other person. | ||
| We have families, we have worries, we have bills, just like everybody else. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And oftentimes when we hear about drugs in sports, we think PEDs, right? | ||
| We don't really think about drugs that... | ||
| Like... | ||
| Painkillers. | ||
| Painkillers. | ||
| You know, stuff like that. | ||
| So there's a big element of that. | ||
| Also sexual abuse in men. | ||
| And men who are athletes. | ||
| So it's very heavy. | ||
| It's very real. | ||
| I would say that I'm the lead role in it. | ||
| Yeah, I'm very excited about it. | ||
| So you're serious about acting? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I think it's something that I found a love for. | ||
| And I'm just like fighting. | ||
| I didn't have a plan to be a fighter. | ||
| I never had a plan to be an actor. | ||
| But when I went into fighting, I went in with it. | ||
| With an open heart and a willingness to go to the top. | ||
| And I feel like it's the same with acting. | ||
| I have the same dedication and whatever it takes. | ||
| But all in all, it all kind of goes back to being able to make something out of my life that's long-lasting. | ||
| And I don't necessarily see fighting being that. | ||
| Yeah, it's certainly not. | ||
| It's not something to pour your eggs in one basket. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| BJ Penn said it best. | ||
| He was on the podcast last week. | ||
| He said, fighting's an opportunity. | ||
| It's not a career. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then he said, but don't tell that to Andre Orlovsky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That motherfucker made a career. | |
| Yeah, he's made a career. | ||
| He won again. | ||
| Yeah, crazy. | ||
| Isn't he crazy? | ||
| Wait, did he win? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He won. | |
| I thought Jay Collier won. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Andre won. | ||
| Oh, man, okay. | ||
| I was doing laundry during that fight. | ||
| Yeah, it was a close fight. | ||
| It was a split decision. | ||
| Yeah, that guy's wild. | ||
| What is he? | ||
| How old is he? | ||
| He's a thousand years old. | ||
| Yeah, he's a million and five. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| He was the champ in like... | ||
| 2002 or some shit? | ||
| 43. That's amazing, he's only 43. 6'3", 246, 43. That's crazy that he's only 43. I mean, Andre, what year was Andre the UFC champion? | ||
| Click on that, because I want to say it was like 2002 or 2003. 2005? | ||
| Does it say 2005? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He went on to defend his interim title, 2005. So, okay. | ||
| Four, motorcycle injury, Frank Mir, Tim Silvio. | ||
| So, somewhere 2004, 2005. Yeah. | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, he made his debut at UFC 28. Wow, that's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I mean, that's almost 20 fucking years ago. | ||
| Still kicking, dude. | ||
| Still kicking. | ||
| And still fighting with heart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, he goes in there, like, he's still determined. | ||
| He's trying to get better. | ||
| He's still trying to get better. | ||
| He's still in it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| Respect. | ||
| But there's only a handful of guys that, you know, that can do it and that love it. | ||
| Like, those are the guys that are going to go down in history for, like, being fighters. | ||
| Being fighters. | ||
| Andre Arlovsky is a fighter. | ||
| He's that guy. | ||
| There's a handful of those. | ||
| Unfortunately, I'm just not that guy that wants to continue to go in there and go to war with people to hopefully win and hopefully make a living out of it. | ||
| You have a lot of potential to do a lot of different things. | ||
| One of the things that I think you could do and you could be really successful at that would leave you independent is being a podcaster. | ||
| I really think you could do that. | ||
| I thought that from the first time we did it together, and I was like, yeah, 100%. | ||
| Because you have an interesting take on things, and you're a very smart guy, and you've been around the world, you've seen a lot of things, you've had a lot of wildlife experiences, and you have your own individual, unique take on things. | ||
| You talk to some people, and you're like, oh, I've heard these kind of opinions before, but you have a very specifically Khalil viewpoint on things. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I guess I've never looked at it that way. | ||
| And it feels like I'm almost mind-blown because coming from the fucking podcast god, for you to see that means a lot. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| Being who I am, I can tell you how easy it is. | ||
| Yeah, that's cool, man. | ||
| It's not hard to do in terms—I mean, it's— Brain surgery is hard to do. | ||
| This just requires effort. | ||
| There's a difference, right? | ||
| You're already a good conversationalist. | ||
| You're very good at talking to people. | ||
| You listen. | ||
| You're attentive. | ||
| You're curious. | ||
| You're perfect for it. | ||
| And I've always wondered why more fighters don't have them while they're fighting. | ||
| Some fighters have podcasts afterwards, like Michael Bisping has a successful podcast. | ||
| Josh Thompson and Big John McCarthy do one together, and that's successful. | ||
| But while they're fighting, it seems like it doesn't take up a lot of time, and you really don't need much. | ||
| Fuck, you could do it on an iPhone. | ||
| It doesn't require much. | ||
| Damn, that's actually, I've never really, like, it's probably crossed my mind before, but to look at it after you've kind of described me in a certain way, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, that kind of makes sense. | ||
| Totally makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, maybe I'll do it, and that'll be one of the things that I use to earn Satoshis, man. | ||
| Yeah, well, next time you come here, I want to promote your new podcast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| Next time we come here, even better, let's promote a podcast that's up and running and has been going for a while and doing well. | ||
| And that accepts Bitcoin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, well, Adam Curry, if you want to talk to him, I could arrange that. | ||
| He's the shit. | ||
| I love that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's the man. | |
| He's the original. | ||
| That's the podfather. | ||
| The podcast was created by Adam Curry, and every time he comes on, I want to let everybody know that. | ||
| Really? | ||
| He's the guy. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's patient zero in the podcast epidemic. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, I'm going to have to talk to him then. | ||
| Yeah, he created it. | ||
| I mean, when Steve Jobs went on stage to demonstrate podcasts on Apple Music, I think it was at the time, it was on iTunes, the podcast he pulled up was No Agenda. | ||
| He pulled up Adam Curry's podcast. | ||
| It might have been A different podcast at the time? | ||
| Was it no agenda back then? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| Because it was like he gave this speech, a conference, and when Steve Jobs was talking about Apple Podcasts, like how to get podcasts, he pulled up Adam Curry's podcast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| That's the original man. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He 100% is the original. | ||
| Yeah, interesting guy. | ||
| Super cool. | ||
| Just listening to him speak and talking about the future of podcasting, pretty much. | ||
| I was like, wow, this guy's awesome. | ||
| I want to know more about him. | ||
| Yeah, he's several steps ahead of everybody else, including me. | ||
| And he's also several steps ahead of internet censorship and government surveillance. | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| Wow, look at the throwback 90s photo. | ||
| So was it called The Daily Source Code? | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So that was his original podcast. | ||
| Yeah, that's a 90s photo, but you've got to remember, he was like 80s pretty, because he was on MTV in the 80s. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't know that, but wow. | ||
| So they're on old school iMac, and they're pulling up his podcast, like... | ||
| Early, early in the day. | ||
| This was 2005. So he had a podcast four years before I had one. | ||
| At least four years. | ||
| Because he might have had one even before that. | ||
| Well, damn. | ||
| Well, that might be one of the things, Joe. | ||
| You could totally do it. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, I think it would be great. | ||
| And now that I think of it, I'm like, ah, cool. | ||
| That means that I could have guests. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| And I don't have to be the guest, because that's why I don't do many podcasts, is because I kind of don't like being the guest. | ||
| I have a lot of questions. | ||
| I'm the guy with the questions. | ||
| But if you have questions and you're a guest, you can always ask questions. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| We're just talking. | ||
| I mean, I don't think of this as an interview. | ||
| I just think of us as talking. | ||
| I have questions for you, but if you have questions too, I don't give a shit. | ||
| But you could sit down with a notepad and just any subject that you would like to discuss, like Bitcoin, because you went to that Bitcoin conference, and just write out some stuff about Bitcoin and maybe have someone on that's a Bitcoin expert, and you could ask them about how did this get started? | ||
| Are there other crypto coins that you're interested in? | ||
| There's so many different angles you could take. | ||
| And then you could take that with music. | ||
| You could take that with, I mean, you could have all kinds of different people on your podcast. | ||
| You have all kinds of different interests, right? | ||
| You have different interests in art, interests in culture, interests in, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there's so many different things you could talk about. | ||
| Well, I see it as an extension because so many people are so concerned about social media, right? | ||
| We're talking about likes and engagement and everything like that. | ||
| That's a big thing with people. | ||
| Well, what is a podcast other than the ultimate form of social media? | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| It's the ultimate form of social media. | ||
| It's like, I have social media, I have Facebook, I have Twitter, I have Instagram, but this is my real social media. | ||
| If you want to know who I am, you listen to me talk. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And people engage with that, and then they get to know you, the real you. | ||
| Not just the you that's fighting, the you that lands brutal leg kicks and KOs somebody, but the you that talks about fucking gardening or whatever. | ||
| Yeah, on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| Yeah, whatever you're into. | ||
| Food, whatever you're into. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And people love to hear people that are engaged in things. | ||
| People that are curious about things. | ||
| Whether it's your engagement about music or your engagement about New York City or Thailand or anything. | ||
| People like when people are passionate about stuff. | ||
| And that's clearly an element of your life. | ||
| You're a passionate person. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And very curious. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| I know you are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I mean, just your journey in going to Thailand and training over there and the big adjustments and leaps that you've made. | ||
| I mean, if you watch some of your early fights to post-Thailand training, you changed, you know? | ||
| Change your mindset. | ||
| That's interesting to people. | ||
| People like when people do things and talk about them and get excited because we all feed off of each other's energy and passion and we all gather inspiration from other people. | ||
| And that's one of the things that makes podcasts interesting. | ||
| It's like I get to listen to the way another person thinks and it can flavor the way I think and maybe enhance the way I think. | ||
| Maybe give me a different perspective that I maybe didn't have before. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| That's very, very inspirational. | ||
| And you've just thrown more inspiration at me. | ||
| Because you're always fucking around with audio anyway, right? | ||
| You're always fucking around with music. | ||
| Music. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just trying to do my own video editing and layering music over video. | ||
| Yeah, just a lot of... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just shit like that. | |
| You 100% can do that. | ||
| Just shit like that. | ||
| And you don't even have to have somebody visit you. | ||
| You can start off doing Zoom calls, which are not as good. | ||
| You know, it's like there's an element that's missing when two people aren't in the room together. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's not hard to set something up, man. | ||
| You know, it's not hard. | ||
| I think I'm going to do it. | ||
| I think it's definitely going to be on the list of things to start to build. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And again, you can do that forever. | ||
| And you could do that completely independent. | ||
| You don't need anybody's help. | ||
| You don't need anything. | ||
| You could do it all by yourself. | ||
| And you can have it where it becomes a successful career. | ||
| And it's one of those things, it's like a plant. | ||
| Just keep watering it and feeding it and it'll grow. | ||
| Yeah, and the episodes stay. | ||
| Yes, yeah, and you just keep adding to them, you know, and then each one you learn a little bit more, like you go over that one, like, well, I was a little clunky on that one, or that was good because I did this, I'm going to do that more often, and then just keep building on it. | ||
| I wish more fighters did that, because there's a lot of interesting guys that are fighters. | ||
| Sanhagen's another guy. | ||
| I think he could have a really good podcast, too. | ||
| He's an interesting guy. | ||
| He's just a name I threw out there. | ||
| There's a lot of names. | ||
| You could bring up guys who would be really good at podcasts. | ||
| Justin Benavides. | ||
| Sure! | ||
| Benavides could totally do a podcast. | ||
| Maybe he will. | ||
| Maybe next time I see him, I'll bring it up. | ||
| He's retired now. | ||
| The life of a fighter is a life of extreme, intense action in brief moments in time and arduous training and discipline and drive for months on end for one intense moment in time. | ||
| One intense either 15 or 25 minutes. | ||
| 25 or 25 minutes. | ||
| Or one minute. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| Right, yeah. | ||
| It's so crazy, yeah. | ||
| It's a crazy way to live. | ||
| I think that's one of the things that my last fight, the reason why I kind of just had all this emotion and just kind of burst it out. | ||
| I don't want to wait until I'm champion and tell my story is because it's like... | ||
| Man, when we go in there and we fight, we're both equally putting in the same amount of time and energy in camp. | ||
| In theory. | ||
| In theory, you know? | ||
| And it's just, it kind of sucks sometimes, at least from my perspective, it kind of sucks that... | ||
| The only way to really move forward is to win. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Or for anybody to really want to talk or offer this type of sponsorship or something, you gotta win. | ||
| And sometimes, like, that's out of our hands, right? | ||
| Like, sometimes something just might happen and it's like, damn. | ||
| No matter how prepared I was, tonight just wasn't my night. | ||
| And now I gotta go back and Right. | ||
| Five, six steps. | ||
| And I got to put in the same amount of work, if not more, to then create the result. | ||
| But by then, things have already moved forward. | ||
| So we kind of get left behind in a sense. | ||
| There's so many fighters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it sucks because when we're champions, it's kind of when all of the opportunities and things like that present themselves. | ||
| And people want to... | ||
| Tell me about your backstory. | ||
| Tell me about the things you've overcome to get you to be where you are today, a champion. | ||
| But it's like, nah man, there's a lot of fighters in here right now. | ||
| We're busting our asses and we've been through crazy shit. | ||
| And we're not champion yet, but we can help millions of people. | ||
| Just based off of our own stories. | ||
| You get me? | ||
| There's different ways. | ||
| There's a lot of people that can be impacted by these fighters that are going out and putting everything on the line to become the champion. | ||
| There's a lot of work that can be done now and a lot of people that can be helped now through listening to maybe what we have to say or what we've been through or some type of inspiration to help the people who are struggling. | ||
| We're all struggling, but... | ||
| Yeah, to just be of some type of like light to a lot of people. | ||
| Well, you got real emotional in your post-fight speech where you were talking about how at one point in time you were suicidal and you feel like you have a message that you could reach out to someone that might be in that same sort of position. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I mean like I've sensed that I've gotten so many messages and I didn't know that it would bring this amount of Energy and attention. | ||
| I didn't know what type of energy and attention it would bring. | ||
| I just know that I wanted to be able to use my victory to maybe inspire someone to stick around another day and not give up and maybe find some type of... | ||
| Something to hold onto to just keep you from making a decision to like take your life, right? | ||
| Because I know that that's what it was for me is having someone like my family or a coach that's like, hey man, come back to the gym tomorrow. | ||
| Like you're doing good, you know? | ||
| Just a little bit of encouragement. | ||
| Yeah, just a little bit can go a long way. | ||
| Could actually save someone's life. | ||
| But since saying that, I think for the first month my inboxes were flooded to where it became almost like uncomfortable because everyone was reaching out to me as if I was going to help them. | ||
| You get me? | ||
| So I'm going, I'm getting these like, I'm getting messages like, dude, I'm going to take my life tomorrow. | ||
| I'm like, how do I read this and just let it pass, man? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, like, how do I read this and just ignore it? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So like, there was, there was one guy specifically that it was like, he's like, yeah, man, like, thanks for the message and all that stuff. | ||
| But like, you know, this, my birthday is on this date. | ||
| And like, this is when I plan to make it happen. | ||
| But, like, I respect what you're doing and I respect everything. | ||
| He's like, but, like, on the day that I was born is the day that I plan to do it. | ||
| And it was only in, like, three days, Joe. | ||
| And I was like, dude, and I fucking, I picked up the phone and I just started sending voice messages out of nowhere, just, like, just talking, you know? | ||
| And I'm like, I don't know this guy, but, like, I can't just let this pass. | ||
| And then, yeah, so there's just messages and a lot of people that are reaching out. | ||
| Did he respond? | ||
| Yeah, and it didn't sound too good. | ||
| He's like... | ||
| I think actually the last message I sent a voice message but I never got one back and I've just been on my own life journey to where I never reached back out but I'm now reminded and I'll probably reach back out today but like it's not just that one there's a lot and it's like and if I don't get back to a certain message it's almost like yeah you don't really care you know and I have to ignore these things too but so the attention that I've gotten now has been more like People have been reaching out | ||
| to me specifically to help them. | ||
| And me being who I am, I'm just trying to find different ways that I can. | ||
| And I've got some things in play for sure. | ||
| Where were you at in your life when you were thinking about taking your own life? | ||
| It was shortly before I started fighting. | ||
| It could have been like a year before I started fighting. | ||
| I was going on tour with my friends who were musicians at that time. | ||
| I was living in a two-bedroom apartment, but it was almost like a one-bedroom apartment because there was four or five of us in there and we had to use one of them as storage. | ||
| Four or five people, two-bedroom. | ||
| We had to use one room as storage for all of our stuff. | ||
| Plus, we had downsized from a home because in my... | ||
| Life we moved a lot just from my mom kind of struggling to make ends meet for all of her kids. | ||
| I'm a single mother trying to raise four kids. | ||
| So we had a larger place but then we had to downsize so one of the rooms like I said was a storage. | ||
| I think rent was about 750 bucks and between the four of us we could barely even make that. | ||
| Every month. | ||
| And just really had no hope and no kind of like vision. | ||
| I was already overweight. | ||
| I'd been overweight my whole life. | ||
| I had friends who played music, so I joined them on tour. | ||
| But even then, I'm like this big black dude, overweight, touring with heavy metal bands across the world, like across the country. | ||
| So I already fell out of place in a way. | ||
| I connected to the music and I connected to my friends, but when we start going places and when we start going to Alabama and the heart, when we start going to places around the country, I'm like, okay, I really feel out of place here. | ||
| And not only that, I almost felt worthless because these guys were playing on stage and I'm sitting here just selling the merchandise and I'm almost envious of them because they're following their passion and their dream and they're excited every night to go on stage and I'm just kind of an extra. | ||
| Well, they treated me well. | ||
| My friends always treated me well. | ||
| But just kind of comparing where am I in my life? | ||
| What do I have versus the things that they're receiving? | ||
| So I was about like 19, 18, 19. And it just, coming home from tour, after just like being stimulated or being on tour, Just getting home, kind of back to the same old shit, back to my, you know, my apartment, back to seeing my mom struggle, back to seeing, you know, my brother struggle. | ||
| Just everybody, and there's just like this struggling, hopeless type of place. | ||
| And I was very unhealthy, and if, I mean, if anybody, like, you should know, if you're unhealthy, and your gut's unhealthy, and your brain's unhealthy, and you're smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and only drinking soda, and eating fast food, if you're in that... | ||
| If that stuff's in your gut and in your brain, what do you think your mind is? | ||
| I just remember sitting on the stairs and just smoking, chain smoking, and drinking at the same time, and just being in this place of like, fuck it, dude. | ||
| If I had to wake up, if I had fucking died a night in my sleep, like, I really don't care. | ||
| Like, I'd much rather that happen because tomorrow I'm just gonna wake up to the same thing, right? | ||
| So, um, I think that might have been the night where, I can't really remember because a lot is a blur, but that might have been the night where, um, I was pretty high on just weed and just a lot of alcohol and a lot of cigarettes. | ||
| And I remember going to bed, or trying to go to bed, just kind of laying there, just all fucked up. | ||
| And I felt like my heart was going to stop. | ||
| I felt it doing really weird things. | ||
| I felt my heart doing weird things. | ||
| And I was only 19. And it scared me. | ||
| And that's the moment where I realized, oh shit, I don't really want to die. | ||
| I was kind of driving myself to that. | ||
| I was purposely, I'm going to smoke two packs. | ||
| I'm going to drink the whole bottle. | ||
| You know, like, things like that. | ||
| Like, just really trying to fuck myself up, you know? | ||
| Like, so not doing anything, like, I wasn't swallowing a whole thing of pills or, you know, slitting my wrists or anything like that. | ||
| Like, physically doing anything to take my life quick, but I was trying to fuck myself up. | ||
| You get me? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I was really trying to just, like, damage myself, and I got to a point where I tried so hard that my body kind of responded and it scared me. | ||
| And then that's where I started to kind of look at, okay, maybe I don't want to die. | ||
| Maybe I just need to get healthy. | ||
| So just that one... | ||
| Night of excess. | ||
| Pushed you to the edge. | ||
| Yeah, it didn't stop immediately, but I was more conscious. | ||
| I'm like, I'm going to smoke a little bit today. | ||
| I wasn't purposely trying to damage myself anymore, but I was already addicted to cigarettes and everything else, the food. | ||
| I was already addicted to it, but I wasn't with the intention of trying to damage myself anymore. | ||
| How did you transition from that into training and then fighting? | ||
| So I remember going on one more tour after that, shortly after that, and that's when I told everybody, hey, I think I'm going to, this is it for me. | ||
| I want to do something different. | ||
| I think I want to train MMA and fight MMA. And you had no experience? | ||
| Zero. | ||
| You were 19 at the time? | ||
| 19. And no experience. | ||
| No wrestling in high school? | ||
| Zero. | ||
| I tried out for the volleyball team in high school. | ||
| I made it, but my grades were shit. | ||
| And it was more of a joke. | ||
| Like, So when you tell these guys, I'm going to fight MMA, what was their reaction? | ||
| They laughed at me. | ||
| They started pulling up pictures of Bob Sapp and shit. | ||
| And they were like, oh, this is Khalil. | ||
| He's going to look like... | ||
| They were passing around the phone in the van and like, yeah, when you fight, you're going to be like this guy and pulling up pictures of Bob Sapp, literally. | ||
| Because that was the biggest comparison, because I wasn't ripped, I wasn't shredded, I was fat. | ||
| So they looked for a big guy who was an MMA fighter, and at the time it was Bob Sapp. | ||
| So they thought it was kind of a joke, and I remember hearing a couple of comments of like, okay, we'll see you next tour. | ||
| Or like, if it doesn't work out, you always have a spot here, you always have a job here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So where did you go first? | ||
| Vanderlei's. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Vanderlei's Silva's gym. | ||
| Was that in Vegas? | ||
| Yeah, at the time. | ||
| So when we started researching MMA, my brother and I, we started researching together, and we would look up certain videos, and we got into Pride, because Pride, at the time, that was like the best fights. | ||
| And I remember seeing Vanderlei's Silva, and he's doing the fucking... | ||
| Yeah, the hands. | ||
| And it's saying, Vanderlei's Silva, the axe murderer. | ||
| Muay Thai specialist and I was like what the fuck is Muay Thai and this guy's the axe murderer and I just saw his I saw his violence and that I connected to it in a way and then we started researching him and realized that he had a gym in Vegas and I'd used all the that last tour I used all the money to I collected all my tips and my savings and that was enough to get my brother and I a membership and then that's where it all unfolded. | ||
| I heard Vandele's gym in Vegas was crazy. | ||
| It was psycho. | ||
| I heard that dudes would just fight full blast. | ||
| Pojada. | ||
| Every day, pojada. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that was his mentality, right? | ||
| It was like, you go and you go and you go and you don't quit. | ||
| And if you get knocked out, you'll be okay. | ||
| Just get up there, take a break. | ||
| Go back out there again. | ||
| We sparred twice a week, full on. | ||
| Every sparring session was a fight with everybody. | ||
| And it was kind of like top dog mentality almost. | ||
| But we all loved each other. | ||
| We all cared about each other. | ||
| We were a unit, you know, like that gym. | ||
| We all beat the living shit out of each other, but we were a family. | ||
| Nobody could take that from us. | ||
| Until things just kind of towards the end kind of started to fall apart. | ||
| What fell apart? | ||
| I think there were just some bad eggs, man. | ||
| Bad seeds. | ||
| Just kind of broke... | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| I wasn't too connected, but it might have been on the business side or even on the team side and just kind of started to break things apart, spoil the batch, and we all kind of split and went separate ways. | ||
| What was the technical training like there? | ||
| The Muay Thai was phenomenal. | ||
| Michael Kosta, yeah. | ||
| He trained to shoot the box under Cordero in the same era as Vanderlei and Anderson and all of them. | ||
| He was just the younger prospect guy. | ||
| I would say it was at the same level as a King's MMA Muay Thai. | ||
| It's the same philosophy, same concept. | ||
| They have their Muay Thai belt system, very technical, a lot of combinations. | ||
| What was it like, though, starting as a raw beginner and going into that? | ||
| Like, how quickly did they have you sparring? | ||
| Probably within a couple of months. | ||
| You know, one of my first training sparring sessions was with Daniel Cormier before he even started training MMA. What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dude, he came in. | ||
| I was still overweight. | ||
| I was still big. | ||
| And Daniel Cormier came in. | ||
| Before he even fought MMA, he was just thinking about it. | ||
| He came to Vanderlei's gym. | ||
| Him and I sparred. | ||
| He wrestled the shit out of me. | ||
| I went home so pissed off that day. | ||
| I was like, fuck this, I'm over it. | ||
| He was throwing me around. | ||
| Next day I come in, my coach gives me a piece of paper and it says, Daniel Cormier, he says, hey, after you leave today's session, he's like, quit being a little bitch and go research this. | ||
| Like, go look at this on YouTube. | ||
| And I typed in his name and I saw that he was this collegiate fucking gold medal wrestler. | ||
| And then I came back the next day to the gym feeling a lot better because, yeah, Daniel Cormier had like thrown me around. | ||
| And he, like I said, he hadn't even competed in his first MMA match yet. | ||
| He was just kind of testing the waters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I got to find that laptop that has it, like has that video on it, man. | ||
| This was like, this was before I was even an amateur. | ||
| So how long did it take for you to shed the weight and to get in shape and to get to the point where you felt like you could fight? | ||
| 11 months, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| 100 pounds, 11 months. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| 100 pounds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so... | ||
| That must have been wild to feel. | ||
| It's almost 10 pounds a month. | ||
| Yeah, it was just through... | ||
| I think it was through the training that we were doing, right? | ||
| Like the shoe-to-box style Muay Thai training and the hard, hard, hard sparring and taking our body to its physical limit as much as possible. | ||
| And even to this day, I'm thankful for that because that's what's kind of made me who I am today too, right? | ||
| Like when I train... | ||
| Now in my conditioning, if I'm on the airdy and bike, I'm pushing. | ||
| I'm not just coasting. | ||
| I'm like, how many seconds can I burn 50 cals? | ||
| I'm really trying to push the limits because that's where the real success is. | ||
| That's where your body really starts to make a difference. | ||
| You go to the gym and And bullshit for 30 minutes a day for two years, you're never going to really get anywhere. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But if you go and you push 100%, every time you go to, like, your mental and physical limits, like, you'll see some results really, really, really fast. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And that's... | ||
| It wasn't a secret diet and anything. | ||
| Like, it was hard work. | ||
| And it was, like... | ||
| It was vision. | ||
| And it was... | ||
| Like, the wanting to really just make a change in my life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that that's what the people, like, people who want to lose weight or who want to change need to hear. | ||
| Like, don't go and look for this secret diet and this secret, you know, way of doing things. | ||
| Just work hard, man. | ||
| You know, David Goggins, like he's, like, people feel how you, but that guy's a fucking beast. | ||
| He's an animal. | ||
| And we do have something inside of us that tries to stop us from everything. | ||
| But you gotta, you gotta fucking say fuck it and get up some days and really go hard and really go hard and push yourself and you'll see results. | ||
| And Goggins has a very similar story. | ||
| He was kind of lost and overweight and the first time he went on a run he couldn't even run a mile. | ||
| He was a mess. | ||
| He turned himself into a fucking machine. | ||
| I'd say like after reading his book and listening to a lot of what he went through I saw so many similarities. | ||
| And I think the main thing was, like, Goggins went to the military, and I found MMA. You know, like, the military's a lot different. | ||
| It's like, it's a bit more serious, a bit higher level of just... | ||
| Not only training, but just the people that you're surrounded by and the duty that you're attached to. | ||
| But just from a lot of the traumas that we had, the very similar life traumas as a kid, teenagers, things like that. | ||
| So do you remember specifically when you realized as you started training that this was for you? | ||
| Do you remember like when you realized it was changing your life and that you were like so in the beginning were you still smoking and still drinking and still doing all that shit when you first started training? | ||
| I quit smoking after the first day. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, my first day of Muay Thai, I quit. | ||
| Because you got tired quick? | ||
| I felt it. | ||
| I knew, I was like, this is enjoyable, but I can't fucking breathe. | ||
| I was like, this is cool. | ||
| I'm hitting, I'm kicking the pad. | ||
| This guy's holding it for me. | ||
| He's screaming at me to go harder. | ||
| He's actually trying to get me to hit harder. | ||
| That's cool, but I just can't fucking breathe, man. | ||
| I'm like, if I could only breathe, then I could enjoy this. | ||
| If I could breathe, then I could enjoy this. | ||
| This could actually be something cool. | ||
| How long did it take for you to quit before you feel like you didn't want another one? | ||
| Oh, I mean, that took forever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah? | |
| Yeah, I mean, that took forever. | ||
| I think it became more day-to-day after, I'd say, the first month. | ||
| You know, after the first month, then the urges and the cravings were a bit different. | ||
| Did you go cold turkey? | ||
| At that moment, yeah, I did. | ||
| But there's another time, too. | ||
| I'd say within that first year, I quit cold turkey. | ||
| But there was other times that, like... | ||
| Already, too, as an amateur where I'd pick up a cigarette, I'd smoke it, or I'd smoke for a week and be like, I'm fucking stupid. | ||
| What am I doing? | ||
| In Thailand, they smoke a lot, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| A lot of Thai champions smoke. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's more the trainers from what I've seen. | ||
| But the guys who are active champions and who have a lot of money riding on them, if they were caught smoking, they'd probably get hit with a stick or something. | ||
| Oh, no kidding. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| They might sneak it, you know, just because when you're in Thailand, when you're a part of a Thai camp, like, you know, like you're under like ownership, right? | ||
| And so they might feel like it's a bit of like rebellion, like we're going to sneak out and smoke cigarettes, you know, because it's the only thing to really do. | ||
| What else are you going to do? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you quit the cigarettes, essentially, almost right away. | ||
| And then, the first thing that you did, really, in your life that was physically engaging that way, right? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| I'd never done anything that called for me to... | ||
| Like run, or breathe hard, or punch, or lift weights, or any physical activity. | ||
| I've never really been dedicated to anything like that in my life on a daily basis. | ||
| When did you notice that you felt differently? | ||
| I'd say about three months in is when I saw my face slimming and my neck. | ||
| But did you feel differently even originally after training? | ||
| You know that feeling after training where you feel calm and peaceful? | ||
| Oh, that was after the first day, first week. | ||
| It's shocking, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| After, let's say, just to be safe, let's say the first week, which would be three days, right? | ||
| Within a week, I went and trained three days because of that we only had enough gas to get to the gym for three days. | ||
| So, every single time but the third day was like confirmation that I just felt so much peace and like I'd slept so good in between or like you know that night because I'm like wow I just went and let out of all this like bad energy and got so much good energy back and I'm tired muscles are sore but I want to go back but I can't move and I was like man this is like this is fucking awesome. | ||
| That was really my take on it when I first started is that it was an amazing thing and I just got addicted to that feeling of feeling exhausted but being proud. | ||
| I had something that I was proud of. | ||
| I was exhausted because I was actually applying myself to something that was good for me and I was surrounded by good people. | ||
| So a couple months in, you start physically feeling better, you start to feel your face slimming, and then you knew you were on this good path, but did you think that you were going to fight? | ||
| It wasn't until I went to an actual MMA event, amateur MMA event, when I felt like, okay, I can do this now. | ||
| Like, I've been training a bit, I've been sparring. | ||
| And we went to an event to support a teammate, and I saw the heavyweights going at it, and I told my coach, like, hey, man, I'm ready. | ||
| I want to do this. | ||
| And he's like, nah, you got to lose 100 pounds. | ||
| Because I was still heavy. | ||
| 205 was the next weight class down, right? | ||
| And you were like what? | ||
| Still like in the 300s. | ||
| Yeah, or like high 200s, you know, 285, something like that. | ||
| So, yeah, I think... | ||
| And you felt because of your frame you should be 205. Yeah, he knew it. | ||
| I was only three months in, right? | ||
| I'd only been training for three months. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I want to do it. | ||
| He's like, you've been trained three months. | ||
| For one, you're out of shape. | ||
| Two, you don't really know shit. | ||
| So I think little did he know that I was going to lose that weight in such a short amount of time. | ||
| But he probably thought at least a year. | ||
| I think him saying lose 100 pounds was more like... | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| It's like saying a white belt, you know, like going into third week in jujitsu and they're like, I want to compete! | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, you're like, okay. | ||
| Give it a little time. | ||
| Give it a little time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Did you change the way you ate? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I went from eating fast food and, like, sugar and stuff in boxes and all that to kind of just what I saw people in the gym eating. | ||
| Chicken rice, broccoli, steamed fish, you know, things like that. | ||
| Stuff I never even would, like, think twice about. | ||
| And I kind of just... | ||
| I saw what the people at the gym were eating and the fighters were bringing their meals to the gym and eating lunch right after training. | ||
| I just kind of was just a product of like influence, right? | ||
| I'm looking at these guys. | ||
| I'm like, hey, he's eating chicken and rice and that guy's got a bunch of broccoli. | ||
| So that's what I would go shop for. | ||
| And then I'd... | ||
| So that I could kind of feel like I fit in and I'd, you know, cook at home. | ||
| My brother and I'd cook eggs and chicken and broccoli and bring it to the gym so we can eat with the guys and kind of eat the same stuff because we'd never been in an MMA gym before. | ||
| We never knew the culture, you know? | ||
| My brother played... | ||
| Like high school football and basketball where afterward they'd go to 7-Eleven and get like hot Cheetos and put cheese in it and like drink soda. | ||
| You know, like that's where we come from. | ||
| That's what we did. | ||
| So yeah, like I think being in the environment of an MMA gym just kind of started teaching us how to eat. | ||
| So we started just eating more whole foods, right? | ||
| Real stuff. | ||
| Did you feel the change in your body from that? | ||
| Yeah, that's where the bloating in my stomach started to go down and energy levels started to increase. | ||
| I, that's where I picked up my addiction to coffee. | ||
| I would actually brew, I'd brew black coffee, and I'd put the whole thing in the fridge the next day, and then the next day in the morning I'd pick it up and just chug it straight out of the coffee container thing, and I'd be like, ah, like hyped, and then I'd go running, and then come back, and then, yeah, and then that became kind of like my new addiction. | ||
| I couldn't smoke cigarettes, so I'm like, ah, I gotta find some coffee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and I'm like, jump rope, put on music, that whole thing. | ||
| So yeah, it did a huge turnaround for me, man. | ||
| And so how long did you stay at Vanderlei's gym? | ||
| I'd say like two years, two or three years. | ||
| Yeah, all the way up until I transferred over to Black House MMA. And so when you were at Vanderlei's gym and you're training, you said about a year in you had your first fight? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And was that a local smoker in Vegas? | ||
| It was Tough Enough. | ||
| Oh yeah, sure. | ||
| Yeah, so like Tough Enough put on great shows there. | ||
| Amateur shows that were selling out the Sam Boyd Stadium, you know, like where we got to fight in front of thousands of people as amateurs. | ||
| No shin guards, you know, no California like camo rules. | ||
| It was like The only thing we couldn't do was like knee to the head and throw elbows, but everything else was full on. | ||
| The only thing is the rounds were two minutes instead of five. | ||
| How many amateur fights did you have? | ||
| I had seven. | ||
| I think I went six and one, and I had two... | ||
| I had the 205 title and the middleweight title because I went down to 185. How was that? | ||
| Oh, look at that, dude! | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| That's post-nose job Vanderlei, too. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| That's Vanderlei after he got his face fixed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Were you there when he had that done? | ||
| I think it was right after. | ||
| Look how young you look, dude. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| You're fresh-faced. | ||
| Look at you with your title. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| When he got his face fixed, it was so bizarre. | ||
| He showed up at the UFC one day, and we're all like, who is that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And we're like, oh my god, that's Vandal. | ||
| It looked like a totally different human. | ||
| He got a new nose, and his nose was bigger. | ||
| It's like they made him a bigger nose. | ||
| Yeah, because before it was like smash it, right? | ||
| Yeah, it was completely flat. | ||
| He had this kind of primal... | ||
| Yeah, it looked cool. | ||
| I thought it looked cool. | ||
| He couldn't breathe out of his nose. | ||
| His nose was completely useless. | ||
| It was flattened. | ||
| I'm getting there. | ||
| Is it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It sucks. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| Yeah, it sucks. | ||
| I had mine done. | ||
| It's nice. | ||
| Was it like a septoplasty or something like that? | ||
| Deviated septum surgery. | ||
| I forget what they call it. | ||
| This one looked... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I had the exact same thing. | ||
| Exact same thing. | ||
| Exact same nostrils. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I had my right nostril. | ||
| Well, maybe it was the other one. | ||
| I think my left one was one quarter of it was open and the right one was completely useless. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's how I am right now. | ||
| I can't wait to get it fixed. | ||
| So nice. | ||
| But Vandelay, they took a piece of his cartilage from his rib and they made him a new nose. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, they cut a chunk of cartilage out, like a little thing, and shoved it in there and stitched it in place and completely changed his nose. | ||
| Ugh. | ||
| And then they did some work on his scar tissue and pulled his face back, but the end result was like, he's a different guy. | ||
| We were all kind of freaked out about it. | ||
| Like, he looks so weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He looks like a different human. | ||
| Yeah, his face was more like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it looked like more like pulled back almost. | ||
| Well, they did plastic surgery. | ||
| I mean, it was for fighting, but it was, you know, they removed some of the scar tissue around his eyes and tightened it up because he would, you know, you would breathe on him and he would cut. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those guys like the Nate Diaz's, those kind of guys who's been around a long time. | ||
| They have all that scar tissue around their eyes and they get that heavy lid look. | ||
| You know, that's a very specific to fighting look. | ||
| Yeah, gotta stay away from all that shit, man. | ||
| Yeah, well, you've managed to avoid it. | ||
| You look beautiful. | ||
| You got no problems at all with that in that department. | ||
| Man, I just got a modeling contract, you know? | ||
| Did you? | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh, look at you. | |
| Out of nowhere. | ||
| I was like, wow, cool. | ||
| So you got a lot of things going on outside of fighting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So back then, so you win some amateur fights, and what organization was your first pro fight in? | ||
| Oh, I want to ask you about 85. So you'd made it all the way down to 85. I made it down to 85, yeah. | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| Uh, hell. | ||
| What do you walk around at right now? | ||
| Ooh, right now, 230. 230. Yeah. | ||
| How many guys at 85 are that big? | ||
| Like, Yoel Romero's that big. | ||
| He's probably that big. | ||
| Probably Paul Acosta, right? | ||
| Yeah, he's big. | ||
| Yeah, but at the time, too, I was only, like, 21, 22. Mm-hmm. | ||
| Like, I would never be able to do that now. | ||
| Never. | ||
| And I was only cutting from, I would, at the time I was walking around at maybe, like, 218. Mm-hmm. | ||
| My body wouldn't go above 218. Mm-hmm. | ||
| So I'd cut to 85 from 200 on the dot. | ||
| I knew that if I was 200 that I can make 85. It was painful, man. | ||
| It was hell. | ||
| I hated it. | ||
| Did you do it with like a Mike Dolce type guy or a Lockhart type guy? | ||
| No, I did it in the worst way possible. | ||
| I thought I knew what I was doing. | ||
| I was listening to idiots. | ||
| Like not even nutrition. | ||
| I was listening to other fighters. | ||
| Oh no. | ||
| Other amateur, like, idiot fighters. | ||
| I was eating, literally, Joe, I was eating, like, spinach and nuts. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, so you just starved yourself? | ||
| Starved myself. | ||
| Oof. | ||
| And I'd eat, like, half a can of tuna and, like, you know, just, like, really dumb shit, no seasoning, not really nourishing my body at all. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I think my first professional fight was at 85. My first fight in RFA. I didn't start fighting 205 until the Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And so your first professional fight, you were eating that way, like nuts and spinach and just barely feeding yourself? | ||
| Yeah, barely feeding myself. | ||
| I didn't fight at 205 until Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And how much relief was it to fight at 205? | ||
| Well, it was cool, because on The Ultimate Fighter, I was like, well, I usually fight at 85, so I'm going to eat steaks every day and lobster. | ||
| We were just eating, and then I got knocked out of the competition a bit early, so then I was just grubbing. | ||
| And I was like, wow, this is a really nice life. | ||
| And then when it came time to fight, I only had to cut a little bit of weight, like five pounds or something like that. | ||
| That's not bad at all. | ||
| Until you fight a guy who's cutting a shitload of weight and he's a good wrestler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those are the guys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But now, I think just with age and everything, to get to 205 now, it's not hard, but it ain't easy. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Any weight cut is not easy. | ||
| But you've got to do it right. | ||
| Yeah, and I can get there consistently every time. | ||
| And do you adjust your diet at the beginning of the camp, or do you wait until the very end when you know you're going to cut the weight? | ||
| How do you do it? | ||
| I keep a pretty consistent diet just in life and in training camp. | ||
| There was a time while I was in Thailand and a little bit after that I tried to do a vegan thing and that was just causing for me some gut inflammation because I was eating the Beyond Meat and all that stuff and I was just like, ugh. | ||
| So it wasn't good for me. | ||
| How did your energy levels feel? | ||
| Energy levels felt great. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, energy levels felt great. | ||
| But it was just, no matter what, I just wasn't, I felt inflammation in my gut. | ||
| But I didn't know what it was coming from until, like, my coach started telling me, like, a lot of the, like, beans and plants and stuff that I was eating contain lectins, which are, like, almost like toxins that plants and beans and stuff can release as, like, a defense mechanism. | ||
| So if I'm eating them, it's not too good. | ||
| But I went from that to pretty much, like, a carnivore-type keto, you know, diet where – Like my last training camp, my daily meal would be, I'd probably eat within a day like four burger patties. | ||
| Yeah, four burger patties, eggs, steak, elk, like just primarily like meat and fats. | ||
| You fought like a predator. | ||
| Yeah, and then at night I would have a bowl of oatmeal just for like, you know, for my brain. | ||
| Did you eat any fruit? | ||
| Yeah, I ate a lot of blueberries. | ||
| I'd snack on blueberries, but I'm not really like a fruit guy anyway. | ||
| I like fruit before I work out. | ||
| But that's basically how I eat now. | ||
| I eat mostly meat and I eat fruit. | ||
| I like fruit before I train. | ||
| When I was trying to do strict carnivore, what I would notice is when I would work out really hard, I just didn't have that extra gear. | ||
| I would fade off. | ||
| And then when I added fruit to my diet, I changed that. | ||
| I think, you know, I subscribe to Paul Saladino's way of doing it. | ||
| He's the carnivore MD guy. | ||
| And he essentially says, like, if you look at the most cherished foods by hunters and gatherers, number one is meat, number two is fruit and honey and raw dairy. | ||
| And he believes that to thrive, to have your body operate optimally, that those are the foods that your body's most comfortable with. | ||
| I think it varies, you know, because Jake Shields doesn't have any problem when he eats vegetarian. | ||
| He just has eggs for protein and occasionally some other things, but most of what he eats is vegetable-based, and he seems fine, I think. | ||
| But everybody's body is different. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| You know, it's just... | ||
| That's why it's hard to say what's the right diet for a certain person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very hard. | |
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But what helped me was that I never was like, oh, I only eat keto. | ||
| I only eat carnivore. | ||
| I just know that I want to eat a lot, and I'm going to eat a lot of protein. | ||
| If I like cheese, I'm going to throw some raw cheese on my burger. | ||
| Do you work with the PI? Do they help you at all? | ||
| If I ask them for any help, they will. | ||
| But I just, I don't know, man. | ||
| I try to do my best to just kind of do things. | ||
| Because they'll meal plan for you and everything, right? | ||
| Yeah, they'll do all of that. | ||
| That's an amazing resource. | ||
| The UFC's putting together the Performance Institute, I think it's a huge resource for fighters. | ||
| I mean, when I went there, I was really impressed. | ||
| I was like, this is a lot that they did to put this place together. | ||
| Yeah, it's beautiful. | ||
| They do anything and everything to help us. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think I just try to... | ||
| I'm just very stubborn. | ||
| I think I have this thing that just makes me cooler if I do things my own way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, I'm just an idiot like that in some areas of life. | ||
| But I definitely love the PI for everything that they've done for me every time I go in there. | ||
| They treat me great. | ||
| And, like, if I need food, if I need any advice, at the drop of a hat, they're, you know, they provide support. | ||
| And they have USADA-approved supplements there, too, right? | ||
| So you know everything's third-party tested. | ||
| You don't have to worry about contamination. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that is such a fucked up issue. | ||
| Supplement contamination. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| I know a lot of people think that people are using that as an excuse to do steroids. | ||
| Like, oh, my supplements were tainted. | ||
| No, a lot of fucking supplements have bullshit in them. | ||
| I know that for a fact because at Onnit, when we started putting together AlphaBrain, what we would do is we would have a third party that would mix all of our nutrients for us. | ||
| We would test it independently and we'd find stuff in there that's not supposed to be in there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It wasn't steroids, but there would be certain vitamins that were supposed to be in there. | ||
| Like, where did this come from? | ||
| It comes because they mix it at the same vats that they would mix some other stuff in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ah. | |
| Yeah, and that's what they do. | ||
| A lot of the stuff, like if people were buying creatine from China, well, you're getting the same lab that's putting that together might also be making steroids. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| So you can get tainted creatine or tainted supplements. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense to me, and I think I definitely make sure that any steps that I take, they have that stamp of approval on it. | ||
| I take some from the PI, but I take another one. | ||
| What do you take? | ||
| You really want to know? | ||
| No, I use a company called X Endurance, Extreme Endurance. | ||
| They sponsor and work with a lot of CrossFit athletes, but I love every single product that they make. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| What kind of stuff? | ||
| So, um, damn, I'm like giving you my secrets. | ||
| I hope no one's listening to this. | ||
| Do you have real secrets? | ||
| I mean, like, I feel like it's a secret. | ||
| What's the secret? | ||
| Do you take beta alanine? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I don't like the tingly. | ||
| The tingling is a sign it's working now. | ||
| I don't like the tingling. | ||
| That shit's good for you. | ||
| Now, they have a product called Fuel 5. It's just like any other carbohydrate drink that you would drink. | ||
| Pre-workout? | ||
| Pre or during or intro workout. | ||
| They have hydration supplements. | ||
| They have lactic acid buffers. | ||
| They have focused stuff like nootropic and nootropics. | ||
| But I like, when I look at their ingredients, I just like what I see. | ||
| And I like how things taste, and I like how it makes me feel. | ||
| I feel clean. | ||
| Although I'm taking supplements, I feel clean, you know? | ||
| If that makes any sense. | ||
| It does make sense, yeah. | ||
| Like when I'm sweating, when I'm working out, I just feel this energy. | ||
| Your body's fortified. | ||
| Yeah, I feel great. | ||
| I feel clear here. | ||
| I feel like I don't have any toxins in my body. | ||
| So I take their stack and it works for me every time. | ||
| What's the name of the company again? | ||
| X Endurance. | ||
| X Endurance. | ||
| Yeah, Extreme Endurance, but I think it's just like X Endurance. | ||
| So when you first started fighting professionally, were you supplementing? | ||
| Were you doing any strength and conditioning training? | ||
| I was just kind of doing a mix of everything, man. | ||
| Like, I didn't really know what I was doing. | ||
| I was always that, like, guy that, like, hey, I'm just here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, and some coach would be like, I'm going to take you to the next level. | ||
| You know, that fucking saying that every coach has. | ||
| Like, I'm going to take you to the next level. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| Alright, what are we doing? | ||
| And he's like, you're going to take this supplement. | ||
| You're going to work. | ||
| So I've kind of done everything. | ||
| I was training MMA. I've trained jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I've trained just strictly boxing. | ||
| I've done it all, I feel like. | ||
| And now I'm just at a point where I'm back at Syndicate MMA with John Wood. | ||
| I love John. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| He's a great gym too. | ||
| Great gym. | ||
| There's been a good amount of people coming through there. | ||
| The traffic's been nice. | ||
| Great training partners. | ||
| The environment of the gym is like, let's work together. | ||
| Let's not kill each other. | ||
| And it's been cool, man. | ||
| And that was the old system that I had going on before I'd start traveling. | ||
| So I'm back home. | ||
| I'm back in Vegas for training camp. | ||
| Got my old coach, old coaches. | ||
| And let's see what happens from here. | ||
| Do you have a fight set up next? | ||
| Nah, but they called me and asked me if I wanted to fight in July. | ||
| But I want to fight more around August. | ||
| I feel like I'm up to a lot right now. | ||
| And I know that I'm not putting off fighting, but I want to make sure that I got some stuff done. | ||
| So after the fight, I have something to come back to. | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| So yeah, I'm still in it. | ||
| I'm not running away from it. | ||
| I think August would be a good time for me to fight. | ||
| I like your approach. | ||
| I like what you're doing. | ||
| Because you're thinking about the future, you're thinking about life, but then you're also recognizing that when it comes down to training camp, you're all in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 100%, man. | ||
| Well, I mean, the results speak wonders because it speaks volumes. | ||
| If you look at the Roberson fight, man, you look like a fucking machine. | ||
| Sick, thank you. | ||
| You're on it, right? | ||
| Whatever you're doing, it's a good thing. | ||
| I just can't believe that you're not strike training. | ||
| It's like I have a hard time imagining Because you're so striking-oriented. | ||
| It seems like there's a lot of good gyms in New York City. | ||
| Are there? | ||
| Yeah, I'm sure. | ||
| Striking gyms? | ||
| Has to be. | ||
| Please send me recommendations. | ||
| I mean, isn't the Watt still in New York City? | ||
| Is he still open? | ||
| Closed down in the pandemic. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| Where's he at now? | ||
| At home? | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| I talked to Nurse a little bit. | ||
| We were going to say something, but I don't want to be like... | ||
| Phil Nurse is a great coach. | ||
| Yeah, great guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck. | |
| Really, he went under? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So many gyms went under, man. | ||
| So many gyms in L.A. went under. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's horrific. | ||
| And the guys who didn't go under, they had to sneak people in the back door. | ||
| They were worried about health departments showing up. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| We had the health department show up at our podcast studio in L.A. That's ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like, shouldn't you guys be out there dealing with sick people? | ||
| We test everybody here, man. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| Seriously. | ||
| It was just such an intrusion in privacy and all of a sudden the government was like stepping into... | ||
| The most healthy thing you could fucking do. | ||
| Go to the gym. | ||
| And they're closing down gyms. | ||
| During a time where, you know, you're worried about health. | ||
| Doesn't make sense. | ||
| It was bonkers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Nothing made sense, but... | ||
| This has got to be a good Muay Thai gym. | ||
| I feel like I want to find you one. | ||
| I would love that. | ||
| We'll find you one. | ||
| I would love that. | ||
| Yeah, I just can't imagine that it's smart. | ||
| I mean, you obviously have an amazing striking base, but I just can't imagine that just doing jujitsu and then just getting it back polished up. | ||
| Sure, you're at such a high level that when you polish it up, it's going to be ready to go. | ||
| But would it be at the same level that it would if you were consistently training? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| You don't even have to spar. | ||
| Just pads with someone who's good. | ||
| Someone who's gonna run you through drills. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that'd be helpful. | ||
| I'd really like that. | ||
| I'd love that. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We put it out there in the universe. | ||
| We'll find you, Jim. | ||
| Come find us. | ||
| I guarantee you there's a place out there. | ||
| So your first professional fight was with what organization? | ||
| RFA. That's now LFA. I was at Black House. | ||
| I went out there to train. | ||
| I was working for Scotty, OTM. Okay, great. | ||
| I love Scotty too. | ||
| Yeah, shout out Scotty. | ||
| So I was working for Scotty in Vegas at OTM. And then he's like, hey dude, the numbers in the store look great. | ||
| Do you mind coming out to California to do the same thing? | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, but I don't know where I'm going to live or I'm going to train. | ||
| He's like, I'm like, man, you can crash on my couch or whatever. | ||
| Scotty's very welcoming guy. | ||
| So Scotty hooked me up at OTM and he hooked me up at Black House. | ||
| And then once I got to Black House, they saw some potential and Ed's like, yeah, man, we'll find you a fight. | ||
| We'll get you a fight. | ||
| So Ed got me a fight in the RFA. Is he still managing people? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I think so, but... | ||
| And Jorge manages people as well, right? | ||
| Linares? | ||
| Joinha. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| And then they have, I mean, they have like a full program over there, right? | ||
| Like their whole thing in terms of... | ||
| Strength and conditioning, Muay Thai, wrestling. | ||
| Kenny Johnson, he's been with them forever. | ||
| Yeah, man, they have a great, great system. | ||
| Tough guys. | ||
| In the days that I was training at Black House, I'm sure they still have it. | ||
| What made you migrate from there? | ||
| From Black House? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So at the time, I was only making like $1,000 to $2,000 per fight in the RFA, and I wasn't fighting a lot. | ||
| And I was like, man, I don't know if I want to do this shit. | ||
| I'm training hard. | ||
| I'm living in California now. | ||
| I'm paying $1,000 per month for somebody's room in their house. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, I was living at Jessica Penney's. | ||
| She had a guest bedroom downstairs. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, can I live here? | ||
| She's like, yeah. | ||
| I think it was like $900 for us to make rent. | ||
| So I was like, okay, I'm over this. | ||
| And so I went back to Vegas and I started working construction. | ||
| And then in construction, I was bringing in $1,000 a week. | ||
| And I was like, what the hell? | ||
| I'm not going to fight anymore. | ||
| I'm going to do construction, man. | ||
| And then that's when I came in contact with John Wood at an MMA fight. | ||
| He's like, what's up, man? | ||
| He's still training? | ||
| I'm like, hell no, I'm not training. | ||
| I'm doing construction, man. | ||
| I was so proud to be doing construction because of how much money I was making. | ||
| And he was like, I don't know, man. | ||
| You should come and hit some pads with me. | ||
| He's like, I know we never worked together, but I think you should come train at Syndicate. | ||
| And I was like, nah. | ||
| He's like, please, just one session. | ||
| Just come train with me one time. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| So John Wood is responsible for the resurrection. | ||
| Yeah, the first one. | ||
| There's been a couple. | ||
| Have there really? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there was that one, and then the second one was the one from Thailand, right? | ||
| Where I thought that I was just done, and I wasn't going to fight anymore. | ||
| So how'd you get to Thailand? | ||
| This is what I'm Johnny Walker knocked me out in Argentina using the Muay Thai clinch. | ||
| And he elbowed me and first time I'd ever been knocked out. | ||
| Then reviewing the tape, I realized that that's what it was. | ||
| He clinched me and elbowed the shit out of me. | ||
| So a week or two after that, I was on a flight to Thailand to go learn how to clinch. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You didn't think that you could find that kind of training in Vegas? | ||
| I mean, there is... | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| I don't think that you can find that type of training anywhere in America, if I'm being honest. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Well, now, probably. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Some spots. | ||
| Some spots. | ||
| You'd really have to search. | ||
| But yeah, at that time, people in America teach the clinch one way. | ||
| You grab the back of the head and you pull them down and you knee them. | ||
| And I was like, nah, there's got to be more of that. | ||
| So I went there to learn it and I found out that yeah, this is a whole other sport. | ||
| And where did you go? | ||
| Which gym? | ||
| It's called Petyan Di. | ||
| It would be pronounced in English like Petyan Di. | ||
| But in Thai, Petyan Di. | ||
| And they are the... | ||
| They have the most active champions in Thailand right now. | ||
| And this is in Bangkok? | ||
| In Bangkok, Thailand. | ||
| The family that runs Petyan Di, the father of the family, was one of the first promoters of Raja Damnern Stadium, which is like... | ||
| Like, Lumpini Stadium, right? | ||
| One of the biggest ones. | ||
| And now his son, Boat, is now, like, the main promoter. | ||
| So their family has a long lineage of Thailand. | ||
| You know, Sagat? | ||
| Sagat, Petyan D, from Street Fighter II. He was one of Sienau, who is the boss. | ||
| His name is Sienau. | ||
| One of his fighters, like Sagat, fought under Petyan D back in the day. | ||
| So it just comes from that like lineage of just like champions and like legends. | ||
| So this is like 2017? | ||
| 2017. I think the end of 2017. Or the end of 2018. Yeah, the end of 2018. Because then I was there. | ||
| Wait. | ||
| Didn't you fight Eric Anders in 18? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Yeah, and that was after you'd gone to Thailand. | ||
| Yeah, that was after. | ||
| Because it was a giant difference. | ||
| Yeah, I'd already been there for a few months. | ||
| Because I remember me and Daniel Cormier were going crazy during your fight. | ||
| We were like, holy shit! | ||
| Yeah, I came out full tie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's all I was really doing. | ||
| But it wasn't just that you came out full tie. | ||
| It was the fucking kicks, man. | ||
| Holy shit! | ||
| Eric Anders is one of the toughest motherfuckers that's ever walked the face of the earth. | ||
| On the planet. | ||
| That guy just ate those kicks like they were popcorn. | ||
| Shout out, Anders. | ||
| It was crazy how tough that guy is. | ||
| Didn't flinch. | ||
| Didn't shy away from him. | ||
| Didn't even make a face. | ||
| Bro. | ||
| He's so tough. | ||
| Because I know that shit hurt like hell. | ||
| He just dealt with it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He just dealt with it. | ||
| He's a beast, man. | ||
| He's got the best nickname ever. | ||
| Yeah, boy. | ||
| I love seeing Bruce Buffer say it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, when Bruce Buffer has to say it, Eric, your boy! | |
| But that fight marked a real turning point for you. | ||
| You changed the way you were fighting. | ||
| You became one of the spookiest strikers. | ||
| Was that before after you knocked out Gokhan Saki? | ||
| After. | ||
| Was Gokhan after Thailand? | ||
| Before. | ||
| It was before Thailand, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So it was Gokhan, Johnny Walker. | ||
| Was Johnny Walker after Gokhan? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you go to Thailand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So when you went to Thailand, was your initial idea to go there to just train for a little while? | ||
| Yeah, one month. | ||
| I'd only planned to go there for one month. | ||
| Like, the ticket that I bought was for one month. | ||
| And I only paid for, like, one month of membership at Pet Yundee. | ||
| And... | ||
| After being there, man, I'm like, nah, I need to stay here forever. | ||
| I really wanted to stay there forever. | ||
| Just from everything. | ||
| The people, the food, the culture. | ||
| I love the food. | ||
| The Muay Thai. | ||
| I love Thai food. | ||
| Just the way of life. | ||
| Just walking and catching taxis. | ||
| Almost like New York City, but just on a whole different... | ||
| Everyone's happy instead of everybody pissed off. | ||
| Isn't that wild? | ||
| How is everybody so happy over there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't know, man, but everybody is. | ||
| There's smiles everywhere and good energy and welcoming. | ||
| They call it the land of smiles. | ||
| The land of smiles. | ||
| And the language to me was so beautiful that I just had to start learning it. | ||
| Can you speak Thai now? | ||
| Ninoy. | ||
| It means a little bit, yeah. | ||
| Enough to where I could live there and take my taxis and order my food and introduce myself. | ||
| Can you read it? | ||
| Do you know what it's saying? | ||
| That's the hardest part, is the reading. | ||
| But, yeah, I was able to, like, live there on my own for, like, almost three years. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And so, like, I picked up enough to where, like, I could live day to day and take my taxis and, like I said, order my You were telling me once that the way they throw kicks is different in that they're more relaxed as they're throwing the kicks. | ||
| In what way? | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
| So, if you ever see the Thai stance and you see them fighting, it looks like they're marching. | ||
| They're just like... | ||
| It's more like a quick fire. | ||
| So instead of being hunkered down and ready to defend and your whole body's engaged, it's more of like... | ||
| Imagine if I tell you as soon as your foot hits the ground, you have to lift it up and throw full force from there. | ||
| So if that front leg is bouncing, as soon as it touches, you have to whip it right up. | ||
| So your hand leg has to be relaxed in order to do that. | ||
| If it's too firm, it's going to be readable. | ||
| Your opponent will be able to read it and it won't have the same effect. | ||
| So yeah, mostly everything comes from a relaxed position. | ||
| I cannot wait till the day that I can just train with you and kind of show you what I mean versus try to explain it to you. | ||
| Yeah, I would love that. | ||
| I can explain it while you're trying it, and that way you'd be like, ah, now I get it. | ||
| I understand what you mean. | ||
| They also throw kicks with a straighter leg than some other styles do. | ||
| With a straighter leg? | ||
| In which way? | ||
| Even as they're whipping it across, it's almost like a baseball bat as opposed to it's chambered and it extends at the end. | ||
| Yeah, because a lot of the power and everything is from the hip. | ||
| Your hip has to turn over. | ||
| A lot of people that throw kicks, especially a roundhouse kick, you'll see the shoulders are still... | ||
| Like, angled this way. | ||
| Right, I know what you're saying. | ||
| Instead of when you throw the kick, your body should be fully this way. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So in order to... | ||
| It's because of the force of the body and the leg kind of like it'll bend and then straighten out. | ||
| Yeah, and it's full shin. | ||
| Like, you know, imagine like you're trying to kick someone with like the full shin. | ||
| You want the whole shin to hit the arms and attack, not like your foot or your ankle because that hurts. | ||
| But if you kick someone with, you know, just the shin, It's different and it looks different. | ||
| And so when you first went over there and you started, was it an immediate revelation that this is what you needed? | ||
| Um... | ||
| Yeah, yeah, because the first day that I ever trained, I couldn't sleep. | ||
| I remember I got there pretty late at night, so I couldn't sleep and I went to go train the next day and everyone was like really intrigued by my size because they'd never really seen anybody my size. | ||
| And then some of the trainers put me into clinch with these guys who are no more than 145 pounds. | ||
| And they threw me around like a rag doll. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Guys pretty much half my size could throw me, could trip me, could sweep me, could lock me to where I couldn't pick them up or break the lock. | ||
| And I was like, this is exactly why I came here. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| To learn this. | ||
| Are they known for clinch? | ||
| Because there's camps that are known for various specific things. | ||
| They have great clinchers. | ||
| They have great clinchers. | ||
| They're not necessarily known for their clinch. | ||
| I think they're known for having the fighters with the most heart. | ||
| And like... | ||
| And having very skillful fighters. | ||
| But there's a guy named Pet Dam, who he fights in one championship, but he's known for his left kick. | ||
| And Pet Morikot, it's from Pet Yindi, but he's also known for his knees. | ||
| And Lan Cao, he's known for his clinch. | ||
| He's got an unbreakable lock that he taught me that is ridiculous. | ||
| So all of them kind of have their own thing. | ||
| Prow Prow is known for, like, this guy, you gotta kill him. | ||
| He's almost unbeatable. | ||
| Like, he's just this crazy guy where, you know, it's the fifth round, he's covered in blood, but he's just like, he doesn't go down, you know? | ||
| So all of the fighters, Savas Michael, he's a pet indie fighter, and he's from Cyprus. | ||
| One of my best friends. | ||
| And he's just very technical. | ||
| So they all have their own styles, but Pequendi is just known for kind of buying and grooming the best of the best. | ||
| They're very prideful. | ||
| They want to have world champion fighters. | ||
| How happy were they when you went on and fought Anders and just showed that tie style? | ||
| Dude, they were so happy. | ||
| When I went back to my room in the gym, it's hard to impress the big boss, right? | ||
| He likes to keep a straight face, straight demeanor, but he was very happy, very proud. | ||
| Well, you impressed the fuck out of us. | ||
| That was, in my opinion, like the biggest leap that I saw anybody ever make in terms of like, you were always a very good fighter. | ||
| You know, when you knocked out Gokan Saki, I was super impressed with that. | ||
| You're always a very good fighter. | ||
| But then you see that, you're like, holy shit, this guy's a fucking contender. | ||
| It was like this switch had been hit. | ||
| And I mean, I had to talk to you. | ||
| I was like, what are you doing? | ||
| Because whenever I see someone doing something that's radical improvement, I want to get that down. | ||
| I want to talk to you. | ||
| I want everybody to know, like, what are you doing? | ||
| Because you did something. | ||
| I was doing Muay Thai, like the real way, you know, and using the real system. | ||
| And my dream... | ||
| Is to also be able to earn enough funds to where I can fly my Thai trainer here and do what I was doing there here. | ||
| So that I don't have to worry about finding a gym in New York City. | ||
| Because no one's going to teach me what I learned there here unless I bring over someone. | ||
| And what that's going to take for me is funds. | ||
| When you were training in Thailand, did you get any wrestling in? | ||
| Yeah, Tiger. | ||
| So I would go to Tiger Muay Thai, which was like a 45-minute flight from Bangkok to Phuket. | ||
| And that's where I met the Hickman brothers. | ||
| And that's where I'd get my wrestling in with them. | ||
| So you had to fly to get your wrestling in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And how often would you do that? | ||
| I'd say, like, mostly when UFC would call me. | ||
| So just like how I do now, UFC calls me, hey, you got to fight, or do you want to fight in two months? | ||
| And I'd say, yeah. | ||
| And I would fly to Phuket, and I would just stay by Tiger Muay Thai. | ||
| I'd find, like, a hotel or something there. | ||
| And I would just train with the Hickman Brothers, where I could still get Muay Thai and wrestling there, at Tiger Muay Thai at the time. | ||
| But now they have Bang Tao MMA, which looks so sick. | ||
| Their new gym. | ||
| Yeah, Volkanovski is just up there teaching and training and stuff. | ||
| The Hickman brothers, they used to train and coach Tiger Muay Thai, but now they've opened up their own gym at the north side of Phuket. | ||
| What's it called again? | ||
| Bang Tao. | ||
| Bang Tao? | ||
| Bang Tao MMA. Yeah, so they've got real Thai trainers. | ||
| Them two are like great wrestling coaches and wrestlers themselves. | ||
| And now they've got a bunch of people now coming in and checking out the gym and facility. | ||
| Their grand opening was, from what I saw, a success and I can't wait to go back there. | ||
| That's dope. | ||
| Well, it's such an interesting place for guys to go and train and so many people fall in love with the country and wind up staying there. | ||
| You know, Mike Swick went over there and just stayed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's very simple life for a fighter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, you don't have to really worry about anything other than waking up and going to train. | ||
| And whenever you're not training, then you can go and relax by the beach or like, you know, just hop on a motorcycle and go. | ||
| Well, what's attractive to me is the nice people. | ||
| That's one of the reasons why I moved to Austin. | ||
| I like when people are nice. | ||
| It makes your day better. | ||
| When I was in Thailand, everyone's so nice. | ||
| It's fascinating to me that a place that's known for its incredibly brutal and effective fighting style is filled with the nicest people. | ||
| Do you know what it's like before they fight? | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Like, the fighters. | ||
| Do you know what that looks like? | ||
| So, in a Muay Thai stadium, the locker room is about the size of this, and all of the fighters that are even fighting against each other are all in the same room, and they're all getting massages with Thai oil and stuff. | ||
| But then, right before you walk out, you sit on a bench, and you're just, like, sitting next to the guy that you're about to fight. | ||
| And most of the time, the guys are just talking, like, shooting the shit about life, about, like, something that has nothing to do with fighting. | ||
| They're just like, oh, yeah, did you see that? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I saw it. | ||
| And then, like, they go and they fight. | ||
| And there's no... | ||
| Even the fighting itself, the spirit of Muay Thai is... | ||
| It's beautiful, man. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| As violent as it is, it's so non-violent. | ||
| When they go in there and fight, there's so much respect before, a little bit of during, and after, that it blew my mind. | ||
| It blew my mind. | ||
| That's why all I wanted to do was just learn and study it and be around it. | ||
| I've never seen a martial art like that, ever. | ||
| Yeah, it's very unusual. | ||
| It's certainly very unusual. | ||
| And it's also very unusual that it's so damn effective. | ||
| And if you think about the history of martial arts and you think about the history of kicking martial arts, there's so many different countries that developed their own specific kicking styles. | ||
| But they were the ones who figured out how to kick the legs correctly. | ||
| They were the ones who figured out how to fight in the clinch correctly. | ||
| They're the ones who figured out elbows better than anybody. | ||
| They figured out knees better than anybody. | ||
| It's really kind of amazing. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| And I think that it's really cool that they have this pride of it and it's like a national staple or religion. | ||
| It's honored by almost everybody. | ||
| Do you think that gambling has anything to do with the effectiveness of it? | ||
| That they've been gambling early on? | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| Because there's people that make a living off of the gambling, and they're passionate about the gambling. | ||
| Like anything in life, there can be some bad parts to it. | ||
| From someone who's coming from an outside perspective and seeing the type of life that it's providing for these people, I think that the gambling's a good thing. | ||
| And it also adds the excitement to the matches. | ||
| Is there any fixed fights over there? | ||
| Because that's a problem with gambling, right? | ||
| It's hard to say. | ||
| I know that some people do get pissed off as far as the gamblers being able to have the ability to sway the judges. | ||
| Do they? | ||
| Yeah, because their gambling system is very different. | ||
| It's not just like you bet who's going to win and who's going to lose. | ||
| It's like live betting almost. | ||
| And it's like a lot of hand signals and shit. | ||
| So they're betting with each other? | ||
| They're betting with each other in the crowd. | ||
| So, like, the whole crowd, there's one guy who's got the money. | ||
| He's usually the guy who's got the pouch. | ||
| And then he's got guys who are eyes on the crowd. | ||
| And then you see people, like, throwing, like, this means something, and, like, this means something. | ||
| And so he'll look. | ||
| Do you know what it means? | ||
| It's like, like... | ||
| This is like three to one, like three to one odds. | ||
| And if it's your left hand or your right hand, it's like red or blue corner. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| So it's like three to one. | ||
| So it's like this or like this means something. | ||
| And so they do like hand signals. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Whoever is like taking the bets is like you make eye contact and you know that this is the guy that you made the bet with. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| Yeah, and so you got one... | ||
| So if he says three to one, like three to one, what about the number? | ||
| And then they do another hand signal. | ||
| For the number. | ||
| For the number. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then, yeah, so the whole crowd is like... | ||
| There's guys who are there who are placing the bets, and everyone's placing bets with each other, and that's how they kind of collect their money. | ||
| But if there's a specific fighter... | ||
| Then they'll make a louder noise. | ||
| Like, people are like, oi! | ||
| Like, you always hear that. | ||
| Oh, because it's the guy that they're betting on. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's every time you score. | ||
| So sometimes they'll make the noise, like, or they won't make the noise. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So a guy can land a clean kick, but they'll be like, they won't say anything. | ||
| Because they're not betting on him. | ||
| Because they're not betting on that guy. | ||
| So then they're able to sway the judges, or like, a punch won't land, but they're like, oh, yeah. | ||
| Did you see during the Tyson Fury fight with Dillian White that the judges were wearing noise-canceling headphones? | ||
| I mean, what, 94,000 people or something like that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But isn't that wild? | ||
| I think that's a great idea. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The only thing that I don't like about that is I'd like them to hear the impact of certain shots. | ||
| Yeah, but does the impact of the shot really make it score higher? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No, but sometimes you hear the impact of a shot and you realize how effective it is. | ||
| If you're dealing with significant blows, you can kind of tell, but sometimes you can tell plus the impact sound adds to your understanding of what kind of force was involved in that strike. | ||
| Do you think that they were wearing the headphones for the noise reasons or for the focus? | ||
| I think they were alluding to the fact, if I remember correctly in the broadcast, they were alluding to the fact they were doing it because of focus. | ||
| And they were saying, I think that's good so that people aren't swayed by the way the crowd is cheering. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| So they could just look at the technical aspects of the engagements. | ||
| Yeah, that's interesting. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Sometimes I guess it is a little bit better to like watch a fight without the commentators or yeah You know and you just you're seeing it for what it is I would like fight Fight judges to have the same setup that I have when I'm doing commentary though When you know DC and John Anik and I are doing commentary we have all these monitors Yeah, so there's sometimes when shit's going down. | ||
| I can't see it right right in front of me I prefer to look right through the cage and But sometimes I have to look at the screen, and I don't think they have that option, unfortunately. | ||
| No, they're just staring right into the cage, no matter what angle you have, right? | ||
| It's not good enough. | ||
| It's not good enough, because then you miss certain things. | ||
| You miss certain impacts. | ||
| I'd like for them to be able to call for replays, too. | ||
| Yeah, that'd be great. | ||
| Yeah, if they had a specific person in the truck that was just for the judges, so they could say, hey, show me that again. | ||
| So you could see whether a punch impacted or whether it caught an elbow. | ||
| Yeah, I still don't understand how they're scoring these things. | ||
| I know they say that it's like, you know, strikes landed, cage control, stuff like that, but I don't really see that being the way that they're scoring these fights. | ||
| It's certainly subjective. | ||
| You know, people that are wrestling heavy prefer wrestling. | ||
| People that are striking heavy prefer striking. | ||
| I mean, I don't know how they call, like, near catches when it comes to submissions. | ||
| Like, how do you decide? | ||
| It's very subjective. | ||
| Yeah, very. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a tricky game. | ||
| You know, like, here's a good example, right? | ||
| Brian Ortega versus Volkanovski. | ||
| Remember that one round where Ortega almost got him in a mounted guillotine and then almost got him in a triangle? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But Volkanovski got out and beat the fuck out of him. | ||
| Like, how do you score that? | ||
| I mean, it's hard. | ||
| Hard to score that, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because if you look at it objectively, I mean, there was a moment in that fight where it was almost fucking over. | ||
| When Ortega had that mounted guillotine and Volkanovski's face turned purple. | ||
| Yeah, he had to fight for his life right there. | ||
| Fight for his life. | ||
| And then he caught him in a triangle afterwards that. | ||
| So it's like you've got to give credit to Volkanovski for having the heart to gut through it, for having the technique to get out of that position, and then for smashing him afterwards. | ||
| But is the smashing him afterwards more valuable than those two almost submissions? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's tricky. | ||
| I think Volkanovski, if I wanted to look at the judges' scorecards, I would assume, rightfully so, he won those rounds. | ||
| Because he did get out, he did land those shots, and it was super impressive. | ||
| And at the end of the fight, he's beating the fuck out of Ortega. | ||
| And, you know, looking at each round in its entirety, he was imposing his will more. | ||
| And at the end, he was dominating. | ||
| But, boy... | ||
| You know, look at like a boxing fight. | ||
| If a guy clips you and drops you, that's a 10-8 round, right? | ||
| How's it not a 10-8 round if you're almost going to sleep? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| It's tricky. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| It's tricky. | ||
| Because I do think Volkanovski should have won that round. | ||
| But I also think, like, it merits some debate. | ||
| Because fucking those two submissions are so... | ||
| I watched that fight again the other day. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because, you know, I was so impressed with Volkanovski's fight with Zombie that I wanted to go back and watch his fight again with Ortega. | ||
| With Ortega, yeah. | ||
| And I watched both of them. | ||
| I'm like, that motherfucker is on fire. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| He's on fire. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| He's so good right now. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| He's in that conversation of top fighters on the planet. | ||
| Yeah, Alex the Great, man. | ||
| He's a motherfucker, dude. | ||
| And he's so driven, dude. | ||
| Very. | ||
| And that's what he talked about at the end of the fight. | ||
| Like, it's his mind. | ||
| He's like, it's drive. | ||
| It's all about my drive to get better and succeed. | ||
| I think that is a really good word that would, like, describe him. | ||
| Right? | ||
| If you can just, like, describe him in one word, like, what's this guy's fighting style like? | ||
| He's like, yeah, he's driven. | ||
| Driven. | ||
| Driven. | ||
| But, you know, he's fucking... | ||
| He's technical, too, man. | ||
| His striking is super technical. | ||
| So many feints and setups and his ability to close the distance and move in and out. | ||
| It's very, very smooth. | ||
| He's a... | ||
| Is Eugene in his corner, too? | ||
| Eugene is in his corner. | ||
| Well, he's an Australian guy, right? | ||
| He is with City Kickboxing in Australia, but I think he has different coaches on a day-to-day, but does train with them as well. | ||
| I think during the pandemic, though, he basically just trained in Australia. | ||
| I don't even know if they're allowed to train. | ||
| Australia had some of the worst lockdown ever. | ||
| I mean, they went full authoritarian. | ||
| Yeah, they did. | ||
| They went crazy. | ||
| Yeah, people were going nuts. | ||
| I have some friends out there that were just completely over it and just... | ||
| They were shutting down the whole entire areas off one case. | ||
| It was madness. | ||
| I'm glad that everything seems to be lightening up a bit, though. | ||
| Yeah, but boy, that would make me move. | ||
| I have a good buddy, man, that lived his whole life in Australia. | ||
| He's like, fuck this country. | ||
| He moved. | ||
| It was driving people that way, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he was like, you can't tell me what to do. | ||
| Like, this is not what I signed up for. | ||
| It's like, you can't... | ||
| Particularly people that already had COVID, you know, when they were telling him they had his mandatory vaccination, he's like, that doesn't even make sense. | ||
| He's like, there's all these scientific studies that show that natural infection is superior. | ||
| Recovering from natural infection imparts superior antibodies. | ||
| He didn't have a fake version of COVID. I don't want to say fake, but non-symptomatic, asymptomatic. | ||
| He had fucking COVID. And he got over it, and they're like, you gotta get vaccinated. | ||
| He's like, fuck you, I do. | ||
| Like, who are you telling me to? | ||
| This doesn't even make any sense. | ||
| This is not scientific. | ||
| Like, you could test me for antibodies. | ||
| You know I had the disease. | ||
| Nobody wanted to hear anything at a certain time. | ||
| You know, it was just so much panic. | ||
| So many things were rushed. | ||
| So much money was spent on, you know what I mean, on these vaccines. | ||
| Just so much. | ||
| And so I think, like, you know, of course it made sense to, like, if you got the virus, then, you know, chances are, like, you don't need the vaccine. | ||
| Not just chances are. | ||
| Yeah, but, like, let's say just from, like, a... | ||
| From a conservative perspective, I don't even know a word, but let's say, chances are, if you got the virus, you don't need the vaccine. | ||
| Like I said, things were so panicked, and nobody was even willing to do research in certain areas to try to prove it. | ||
| It was also super authoritarian. | ||
| Money spent, we don't care, do this, our way, highway. | ||
| How do they deal with it in Thailand? | ||
| Dude, it was kind of cool, actually, at first. | ||
| So we heard about it in December of 2019. So America hadn't even really adopted the idea of COVID until March of 2020, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we heard about it in 2019 and had already started prepping in January, my girl and I. So we started ordering boxes of masks and alcohol and all this stuff just to prepare. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Like, no shit, no bullshit. | ||
| And our house, or her house in New York, was stocked of everything. | ||
| Just cleaning supplies. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| So then she came back out to Thailand with me, and that's when Thailand told us, like, hey guys, you have about two weeks. | ||
| We're going to do a lockdown. | ||
| There's this pandemic happening. | ||
| It's starting to spread everywhere. | ||
| So you have about two weeks to go to the grocery store and, like, get what you need to get, but your area, your, like, neighborhoods are going to be shut down. | ||
| Indefinitely. | ||
| Like, we don't know when, but we're just encouraging everybody to just lock down and stay put. | ||
| And at the time, people were already wearing masks in Thailand because of the pollution, right? | ||
| PM25 or PM9.5, something like that. | ||
| It was like, there's a little particle that you can breathe in that was causing defects in newborn children. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, Jesus. | |
| Because of all the pollution and the barbecue stuff. | ||
| Particulates. | ||
| Yeah, so masks were never, like, a problem. | ||
| Which was cool because we didn't have to hear about, like, just... | ||
| Everyone was like, okay, cool. | ||
| We'll put on a mask. | ||
| We'll go shopping. | ||
| We'll stay home. | ||
| We don't want to go to jail. | ||
| You know, because Thai police are like, you either do this or you get fined or you go to jail. | ||
| So for, like, the first month and a half, two months, we were isolated at home. | ||
| And we couldn't go outside. | ||
| There was a curfew of, like, 4 o'clock. | ||
| So in between, like, you know, in the morning time and up until 4 o'clock, we could at least drive to the grocery store. | ||
| But even then there was like a police barrier where they would like sign a piece like they sign you off like you got 30 minutes to go to the grocery into the grocery store and back. | ||
| So what that did is because everybody was locked down and stationary they were able to see where the sick people were coming from in what areas. | ||
| So, like, they're like, ah, this place in the past month, there hasn't been one case reported. | ||
| But down here, there's been six. | ||
| So let's open this place up and give them a boundary. | ||
| Like, you can't go past this. | ||
| We're going to open. | ||
| You don't have to stay at home all day, but you can at least go this far. | ||
| But then, like, everyone down here, because you have six cases, we're going to keep you locked down. | ||
| So they were finding where these cases were at and then letting other places open up slowly but surely until... | ||
| Eventually, it was like almost everybody was able to travel freely again through Phuket, at least. | ||
| How long ago was that? | ||
| This was in 2020. I'd say from March 2020 all the way until... | ||
| July is when everything started like... | ||
| You could be kind of freely moving around. | ||
| Yeah, freely moving as long as you had a mask. | ||
| And like the airport opened back up. | ||
| Yeah, so people started sneaking over the border from like Myanmar. | ||
| And they kind of lost track of like where it was coming from then. | ||
| You know, like, it starts spreading again. | ||
| They were like, how? | ||
| Like, we just pretty much, like, had a look and, like, we had a grip on everything. | ||
| Like, how? | ||
| And they discovered that it was from people crossing the border. | ||
| And so then they kind of, like, went into another lockdown. | ||
| But there was a huge, like, political uproar going on at the same time in Bangkok, like, the prime minister and stuff. | ||
| So... | ||
| It was a good time. | ||
| I enjoyed being there for the lockdown. | ||
| It didn't feel too bad. | ||
| Were you allowed to train? | ||
| No. | ||
| The gyms weren't open, but we would train just at home. | ||
| George, my coach at the time, I would hit pads with him. | ||
| He had access to like his father-in-law's like Muay Thai Stadium and we'd just go there and hit pads and Have a group of like maybe three four guys to come and train so No, the gyms weren't open, but we had our own like personal Team and so eventually shit got too crazy as you were saying before and you had to get out of there. | ||
| Yeah, because as a foreigner They told us like if you're a foreigner you can stay here or you can leave and Like, but we're shutting down the airport. | ||
| We don't know when we're going to open it back up. | ||
| We want to get this thing under control. | ||
| So that caused a lot of the people to go back to their home country instead of to stay. | ||
| So I was the guy who was like, I'm staying. | ||
| So I went to the embassy and I got my stamps. | ||
| for extension but because of just the embassy being tied up and the pandemic going crazy and other places it was just hard to to get through any phone lines you know so I needed to get an extension or I needed a certain piece of paper for my visa you know just for like that those type of documents and it was just almost impossible to get and so I started to get pretty nervous and | ||
| I didn't want to get fined or banned from Thailand, banned entry, you know, the next time I want to come. | ||
| So that's kind of what I was like, fuck, I just have to go home for a bit then. | ||
| Did you ever think about going back now that everything's basically opened up again? | ||
| Yeah, I want to go back now. | ||
| My girl and I have actually been having dreams like I've had like reoccurring dreams the past month of like being there and I have a Thai family you know and like she has a Thai family too and we just we really miss it and we miss the essence of you know of Thailand and the training so we have a plan to go back soon. | ||
| Fortunately, I've had enough to do, and I've been busy since the fight, and I'm grateful for that. | ||
| But I do have to go back to training soon, so I don't know if I'll be able to do it in this break. | ||
| But it is my goal to be able to go there this year, for sure. | ||
| And if you go there, are you going to stay and do a camp there? | ||
| Nah, probably not. | ||
| Just go there for recreation? | ||
| Yeah, I have a pretty good agreement now with my coaches and stuff that I'll stay here and we have something. | ||
| We've got a two-fight-win streak right now. | ||
| Let's keep doing what we're doing. | ||
| We've got some stuff. | ||
| Planned out, so let's stick with it and see. | ||
| Vegas is a very good place for balance, too, because you do get that good wrestling there, too. | ||
| Yeah, wrestling. | ||
| It's got a lot of cool outdoor stuff. | ||
| Yeah, a lot of cool outdoor stuff. | ||
| Great places to run. | ||
| We run the mountain every weekend. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's hot as hell in the summer, but it makes for better training. | ||
| That Goggins mentality. | ||
| It's actually good for you, believe it or not. | ||
| We're talking about with the sauna. | ||
| Emmanuel Stewart used to crank the heat up in the Kronk gym back in the day. | ||
| It was hot as fuck in there. | ||
| That was a big part of his training strategy. | ||
| It was the heat. | ||
| Yeah, he wanted people to be able to perform under that extreme heat, and it made regular fighting easier. | ||
| Yeah, that's what my coach says, man. | ||
| In life, if you look at yourself as a human, you're battling the elements. | ||
| He's like, it's you versus the elements at the end of the day. | ||
| The elements strengthen you. | ||
| They really do. | ||
| Cold and heat, they have a giant factor on strengthening your immune system, keeping your body healthy, reducing inflammation. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| It's just uncomfortable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's what's up. | ||
| Well, listen, brother, thank you very much for coming in here again. | ||
| And I really wanted to talk to you after your last fight because you were so emotional. | ||
| I'm like, I know he's got a lot to get out. | ||
| But I also want to talk to you because I know you can do a lot of other stuff. | ||
| You're a multifaceted guy. | ||
| And I really do hope you consider doing a podcast because I think it would be successful. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I think it's been good. | ||
| I didn't know specifically or have anything to specifically talk about, but I just wanted to come and catch up with you. | ||
| It's been a while. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| It's been fun. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Hopefully I'll be calling your fight in July or August, right? | ||
| That's when you were hoping for it? | ||
| Yeah, August would be nice. | ||
| We'll find out soon who it is, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Please tell everybody how to get a hold of you on Instagram, social media, whatever social media you use. | ||
| Social media, Instagram is at Khalil Roundtree. | ||
| My name, K-H-A-L-I-L. I don't want to spell it, but if you can look it up, all of my handles are Khalil Roundtree. | ||
| What else? | ||
| Podcast coming soon. | ||
| Yes, podcast. | ||
| Podcast coming soon. | ||
| Yeah, and I plan to also be, I want to inform more people and get more people excited about Bitcoin. | ||
| And I want to thank, you know, the people who have been helping me out. | ||
| And especially like Ledger, people who are going to help me save my Bitcoin and keep it off, you know, off the internet. | ||
| So yeah, thank you guys. | ||
| And follow me on any social media platforms and let's connect. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Bye, everybody. |
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