Sept. 8, 2011 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:55:41
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! | ||
| We're up. | ||
| What's up, champ? | ||
| Pleasure to do this. | ||
| Pleasure to have you in here, man. | ||
| Yeah, thank you for having me, man. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| That was a phenomenal performance in Brazil against Glover Teixeira in his hometown. | ||
| Last minute, like, I mean, how much time did you have to prep for that? | ||
| I had about six weeks. | ||
| Oh, you did have six weeks. | ||
| Yeah, six weeks. | ||
| But you knew that it was supposed to be three rounds, and then they changed it to the title for five rounds, right? | ||
| No, it was a title right there. | ||
| Oh, that was right after Ankulaev and Jan Bohovic, so right from there. | ||
| They legitimately called me while they were still in the gauge. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| If you wanted a full camp for a five-round fight, though, what would you prefer? | ||
| Like, how much time do you really need? | ||
| I prefer about eight weeks. | ||
| Eight to ten weeks. | ||
| So slightly abbreviated, but your performance was phenomenal, man. | ||
| I mean, it was amazing. | ||
| To see you pick apart Glover like that and to do so well on the ground, too. | ||
| I mean, that was a big victory. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, a lot of people thought that I couldn't do it. | ||
| That was just the general assumption was that I couldn't grapple on the ground and things like that. | ||
| That's definitely... | ||
| But you're getting that general assumption from who though? | ||
| People online? | ||
| Just pics. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Just people like an analyst. | ||
| Then the fighters or whatever that I talk to, they be like... | ||
| They always say, it's always something that they say. | ||
| Even guys in the division, you know, they were like, oh, he's just a boxer. | ||
| You know, I don't know if he can really wrestle or if he can really ask, like, kicks or anything like that. | ||
| They're questioning the kicks, too. | ||
| That's some of the biggest moments in the fight, that left high kick of yours. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, people are going to question you until they can't anymore. | ||
| That's how it goes. | ||
| You know, there's always, ah, I don't know about this guy, and then all of a sudden he's the best ever. | ||
| You never know. | ||
| Right, and that's why I'm just hungry for, you know what I mean, for names, man. | ||
| I'm hungry for the next challenge. | ||
| What did it feel like when they strapped that thing around your waist? | ||
| Man, it's a hard thing to describe. | ||
| It was just like, almost like unreal, almost like living in a dream, one of the dreams that I've had. | ||
| It was just like, I don't know, it was just crazy. | ||
| Just the weight of everything that I did and been through and everything was just, it was a lot. | ||
| Yeah, it's a lot for everybody. | ||
| I mean, that's a moment that very few human beings will ever achieve. | ||
| There's it right now. | ||
| Yeah, that's when he told me he was about to retire. | ||
| I mean, it's amazing how long that dude has hung in there. | ||
| He was the boogeyman for six years. | ||
| You know, for six years Glover lived in Brazil and he couldn't get a visa. | ||
| And this was like in the early days, like when Chuck Liddell was the UFC light heavyweight champion. | ||
| That's how far back Glover goes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I heard something about like he went pro in 2001. Yeah. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Yeah, that's wild. | ||
| 22 years later. | ||
| Still fighting for a world champion. | ||
| That fight with Yuri Prohosko where he lost the title, that was a crazy close fight. | ||
| Until he got caught in that choke. | ||
| He was ahead. | ||
| I think he was. | ||
| Yeah, he was ahead in that fight. | ||
| I believe he was. | ||
| That video that you made to Yuri was hilarious. | ||
| We played it on the podcast. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| K let it slide, man. | ||
| That's what she said! | ||
|
unidentified
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That's what she said. | |
| That was the first thing that came in my head whenever he said it. | ||
| I'm coming. | ||
| I'm coming. | ||
| Now, I can't... | ||
| He's ruined the phrase for me now. | ||
| Now I can't say it at all, no matter what. | ||
| Somebody call me and be like, oh, I'm coming. | ||
| He's an odd duck. | ||
| That dude's an odd duck. | ||
| He's strange. | ||
| He's very, very different. | ||
| Do you see when he was fighting Glover and Glover was beating him up? | ||
| He was like, good job, good job. | ||
|
unidentified
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I thought it was like, well, you can't do that, man. | |
| It looks like you're tapping. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| He's like, good job, good job. | ||
| But he's saying good job. | ||
| Was it Mark Goddard who was the referee? | ||
| I think it was Mark Goddard. | ||
| Whoever it was was warning them. | ||
| It's like, hey, don't fucking slap them and say, good job. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| Just what a weird thing to do. | ||
| Guys on top of you, raining blows down. | ||
| You're like, good job. | ||
| Good job. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| The only thing I can think would be possibly it could be just like a tactic to try to make it seem like, oh, no matter what, you're wasting your time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Type thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Try to get in their head. | ||
| Because I think even with the whole samurai thing, he obviously wants this image to be believed of and things like that. | ||
| But I just seen him when I was at the PI a couple of days ago. | ||
| And he's a nice dude. | ||
| He walked up. | ||
| He's like, "Nice to meet you," things like that. | ||
| And then I came back the next day. | ||
| I was going into PT, and he was working. | ||
| He was like, "I'm working on it." You know what I mean? | ||
| I'm working. | ||
| I'm like, "Take your time. | ||
| Do your thing." He's already had the shoulder surgery, right? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I would assume if he's already trying to run. | ||
| Yeah, I'm sure he has, because apparently his shoulder was the worst shoulder they had ever seen. | ||
| The UFC doctors had never seen a shoulder that fucked up before. | ||
| Do you know what happened to him? | ||
| No. | ||
| His shoulder went out of socket in training camp, and they tried to put it back in. | ||
| And these dudes are yanking on it, these just gym dudes, yanking on it, and they fucked it up way worse. | ||
| Yeah, that's never a good idea. | ||
| Go to a fucking doctor, man. | ||
| You're a world champion. | ||
| World champion. | ||
| And he had to give up his title like that. | ||
| Well, it's interesting that he did decide to give up his title. | ||
| He could have held onto it, and they could have had an interim title, and you could be fighting him for the undisputed title, but instead he's like, nope, I'm going to give up my title. | ||
| That's why I thought he's an odd dude. | ||
| Yeah, that's strange. | ||
| Because that's not only like a... | ||
| That's not only a bad move legacy-wise, that's a bad business move. | ||
| Because now your next fight, you fight as a challenger. | ||
| You don't get the same pay-per-view buys. | ||
| You don't get the same amount of money or none of that. | ||
| Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| I could imagine the thought process behind it. | ||
| You want to be noble, but you got to take care of your money, bro. | ||
| You got to take care of your money. | ||
| I mean, how many world title fights do you get? | ||
| If you're lucky, if everything goes perfect, and he should know now, especially being injured, like, hey, this could happen, and you could get a catastrophic injury, and you could be out for a year or so. | ||
| You never know. | ||
| I think it was a play of him trying to be noble. | ||
| Just trying to be noble, trying to, like, you know, he does the right thing, where he respects the warrior. | ||
| I like how you're thinking about it, like 3D chess. | ||
| Like, what is this motherfucker doing for real? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I'm trying to tell you, man. | ||
| I think a lot of what he does is meant to put a certain image in your head. | ||
| You know, so. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| I mean, it makes sense. | ||
| It would be smart to do it. | ||
| I mean, he's got a weird image. | ||
| He's out there throwing kicks at trees. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, he's like, wraps a tree up in a foam pad and starts punching it and kicking it. | ||
| Yelling in the woods. | ||
| Yeah, like, okay, man. | ||
| You know, gyms are better. | ||
| Gyms are definitely better than a tree. | ||
| I want to know what it is about being in the woods that just makes them want to yell. | ||
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unidentified
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What is it? | |
| Are you upset with the trees? | ||
|
unidentified
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Do you just feel alone? | |
| Do you want to be heard? | ||
| I mean, these are all questions. | ||
| Do you want to be heard? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Does it make you more noble or sophisticated to be in the woods? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Remember when Rocky was training for Drago and Rocky IV? Went to the woods, running in the snow, carrying logs and shit. | ||
| I think, matter of fact, in the... | ||
| It makes me feel weird just even saying it in the I'm Coming video. | ||
|
unidentified
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Damn it. | |
| Damn it. | ||
| I don't know another way to say it. | ||
| That's what you said! | ||
|
unidentified
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This is crazy. | |
| Where you at, though? | ||
|
unidentified
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This is the video. | |
| By the way, that's what she said. | ||
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unidentified
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That's what she said! | |
| And the one that he did, though, it's like an axe in a tree stump in the background. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah? | |
| Did you notice that? | ||
| No, I didn't notice that. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| He's probably out there chopping wood. | ||
| Chopping wood. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Oh, look at him. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm coming. | |
| I'm coming! | ||
| It is fucking weird, man. | ||
| It's like, I guess I wear an axe. | ||
| I might have been high when I seen it. | ||
| It could have just been that post right there. | ||
| Yeah, I don't see an axe. | ||
| He's a strange cat, man. | ||
| That's a strange cat. | ||
| That was just like... | ||
| Yeah, I don't know, man. | ||
| I'm coming. | ||
| Did you think he's next? | ||
| Have they had any conversations with you about who's going to be your first title defense as the champion of the fucking world? | ||
|
unidentified
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Woo! | |
| Sounds good, Joe. | ||
| Sounds good, right? | ||
| Sounds real fucking good. | ||
| And you earned the fuck out of that, too. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| It was... | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| Glover was tough, man. | ||
| Oh, he's so tough. | ||
| Like... | ||
| Like, y'all said that, right? | ||
| I think we need to put a little bit more emphasis on it. | ||
| Because, like... | ||
| It's not just that he's tough. | ||
| He's tough. | ||
| He's tough. | ||
| And while he's being tough, he's still fighting intelligently. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, like, for not one second, then I hit him with something, and it was like, oh, shit. | ||
| I was like, oh, I don't want to get hit with whatever's next. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| Cover up. | ||
| Like, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, that one, like, oh, I need to find, like, protection type. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| He never did that. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And that was just, like, crazy. | ||
| Because it was one sequence, like, I think it was, like, in the third where I hit him with right hand, right hand, elbow, left hand. | ||
| It's like, at no point was he like, oh, shit, I need to cover up or anything. | ||
| Because, like, I mean, I finished you at that point. | ||
| But it's like... | ||
| That was in the ground and pound sequence. | ||
| Yeah, when you're on top of him. | ||
| That was so close. | ||
| A lot of referees would have stopped it. | ||
| A lot of referees would have stopped it there. | ||
| I mean, you were dropping bombs on him, but yeah, he kept moving. | ||
| Kept moving. | ||
| He kept trying to... | ||
| He kicked me in the face. | ||
| From the bottom? | ||
| Yeah, he grabbed my arm and pulled me like he was going to try to pull me into his guard. | ||
| And then when I went in, as soon as I was like, so obviously to not go in, you got to sit up. | ||
| I sat up. | ||
| He kicked me in the face. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a crafty fella. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I think his time with Alex Pajeda really improved him too towards the very end of his career when he started training with Alex. | ||
| Because there's something about having that dude in camp with him and he's on the run for the middleweight title that it all came together. | ||
| Some of his last fights were some of his best. | ||
| The Jan Bohovic fight, the Yuri Prochaska fight. | ||
| Those are fucking great fights, man. | ||
| Yeah, he's harder to hit clean than I thought. | ||
| Because he turns his face a little, rolls with stuff? | ||
| Yeah, a little bit of that, but it's like, it's his hands, right? | ||
| So, he definitely learns from the people that he fights, because he was definitely doing a little John Jones to me. | ||
| You know, the little, like, gonna kind of poke his hands out. | ||
| And he watched it a couple times, like, I wanted to follow up with some shots with some combos, but the way he was, like, blocking, he's, like, going... | ||
| Like this or like putting his elbow up like this. | ||
| Kind of like poking his fingers, like jibbing his fingers towards my face. | ||
| Yeah, that's a weird gray area, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, because John poked a lot of people in the eyes. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I'm sure he didn't mean to do it, but that style of doing it like that, of having the hands out, especially when you're as long as John, It's a, you know, it's a very, it's a very gray area. | ||
| You're not supposed to do that. | ||
| Yeah, no, you're not supposed to do it, but it's done. | ||
| It's done. | ||
| It's done. | ||
| It's done quite a bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Especially like whenever you see somebody get hit with something like solid and they start to like kind of get crowded and they want to get some space or they want to try to really keep you from coming forward. | ||
| That's the first thing that it does. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What could be done about that, though, the eye pokes? | ||
| The only thing that I think is a change of the gloves. | ||
| They have to figure out something to make a better glove that doesn't encourage your hands to be open. | ||
| You know, I mean, we talked about this before, but Trevor Whitman, you know, Gaethje's trainer, he's got a way better glove. | ||
| He makes his own material, Onyx. | ||
| He makes his own gloves and shin pads, and they're fucking top-notch. | ||
| But he made a better glove, and I don't know why the UFC is not using it. | ||
| I don't know what's going on. | ||
| I don't know if they have to get it approved by the commissions. | ||
| I don't know what the deal is, but it's a far superior glove. | ||
| Does it affect the grappling? | ||
| Yeah, no, no, it doesn't. | ||
| But it keeps your hand curved. | ||
| Like, the natural state of it is to have your hand in a curved position versus open. | ||
| With the UFC gloves, you put those on, your hand wants to be open, and you have to kind of close it. | ||
| And tighten it down. | ||
| With his gloves, it starts out in a folded position. | ||
| Like, it's much easier. | ||
| So even if you were, like, extending your hand, you would extend it like you would if you had a tie glove, a boxing glove on. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I just think there's got to be something. | ||
| There's so many fucking eye pokes. | ||
| You guys both poked each other in that fight accidentally. | ||
| The only difference is when I poked him in the eye, it helped him. | ||
| All right? | ||
| Because that knee, that knee I caught him with right in the sternum right before that. | ||
| If I actually am able to put the frame on him like I want to, he's eating a head kick. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Me, whenever he poked me in the eye though, I was on his ass. | ||
| I was on his ass. | ||
| I think I just landed like an uppercut. | ||
| Yeah, I just landed like an uppercut. | ||
| I was right after Lil Weave, the Lil Weave sequence. | ||
| Smooth. | ||
| How many times have you watched it? | ||
| How many times have you watched it? | ||
| I watched it a few times. | ||
| I watched it a few times. | ||
| It was just one little sequence in the beginning. | ||
| Towards the end of the first round, I remember it happening in the fight, but I wanted to see how it looked on camera. | ||
| It was alright. | ||
| Pretty smooth. | ||
| Oh listen, it was a very good performance. | ||
| It was very... | ||
| you were very crafty. | ||
| That was the the thing about the fight that I really enjoyed is like watching your setups and all your feints and luring them in and the way you're moving in and out like it was very... | ||
| because I had seen all that in other fights but with all the stakes on the line in Brazil fighting for the title and I think you were at your best. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I rise to the occasion. | ||
| I really lock in. | ||
| I understand the situation. | ||
| I understand the moment. | ||
| So that's why I work so hard to get to it. | ||
| And then I trust the work that I put in. | ||
| So at that point, it's just I do what you do every day. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Your pacing. | ||
| You just were so smart about when to hit the gas. | ||
| When to just give them looks and catch your breath. | ||
| It was just phenomenal, man. | ||
| Nothing surprised me. | ||
| Nothing surprised me in that fight. | ||
| That's the thing about being around for a long time. | ||
| There's so much film on you. | ||
| People watch your habits. | ||
| After you've been fighting for so long, people can see when you stop evolving. | ||
| They can see, alright, this is what he does. | ||
| You know, and then that's where it comes in. | ||
| Like, alright, this is what we know he's going to do. | ||
| This is what we're going to do in place of this. | ||
| You know, then we get Anthony Smith in, and he's like, yo, there's some things that he does that surprise me in our fight. | ||
| I realize he did this, and these are some things I would have done differently. | ||
|
unidentified
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Like, what kind of things did he do that surprised Anthony? | |
| His grip, I think he said his grip, how strong he was, how hard it was to break his grip. | ||
| Wrist control? | ||
| Yeah, so instead of trying to fight his grip, fight like the underhooks and fight like the positioning. | ||
| So a couple times he got his hands clashed, Behind my up, under my butt. | ||
| If you notice, I didn't fight his grip. | ||
| I wasn't fighting his grip. | ||
| I started fighting at his elbows. | ||
| I started fighting at his shoulders. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Just other things away from where his strengths were. | ||
| And then that trip, that trip that he got me down with in the fifth. | ||
| Smith had told me about that. | ||
| So whenever he did it, so whenever he actually did it, he showed me about it. | ||
| I was like, oh, it was slick. | ||
| So when I was actually feeling it, it was like, oh, yeah, it was slick. | ||
| But it was like, all right. | ||
| I know what to do. | ||
| Bang, I lay in here. | ||
| That's why I don't panic. | ||
| None of that. | ||
| Just chill and go through what I've been doing. | ||
| Everything we worked on was that. | ||
| Now, your takedown defense was amazing, too. | ||
| Because there was some times, especially in the first round, he got in pretty deep on you. | ||
| You just shucked it all off. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's why you're kind of... | ||
| He wasn't able to really fight and try to turn it into a scramble because I wasn't going to allow him. | ||
| I wasn't going to allow him to turn it into a scramble for a takedown. | ||
| So whenever he did shoot in, I just met him with hard frames. | ||
| Whenever I was hitting, those hip pumps were hard. | ||
| So immediately hip bump, put a frame for him to fight through. | ||
| If you're going to get this takedown, it's going to cost you a lot to get it. | ||
| So that was pretty much the game plan. | ||
| Make him do that and make him work. | ||
| Well, while we're at range, touch him up. | ||
| Then you did that. | ||
| When you woke up in the morning the next day, was it like, what the fuck? | ||
| Did that really happen? | ||
| You think I went to sleep, Joe? | ||
| You think I went to sleep, Joe? | ||
| No time for sleep. | ||
| I dozed off for maybe like, we were up until maybe like 11, 11.30. | ||
| I was like, we should probably take a nap or something, get some sleep. | ||
| I think like, I went into my room, I laid down, I just like kind of laid there. | ||
| You know, I didn't really sleep. | ||
| Did you lay there next to the belt? | ||
| That's how they got that picture, that picture of me laying with a belt. | ||
| Eventually, I dozed off for maybe like an hour, hour and a half. | ||
| It was like a couple hours after everybody went to go lay down and everything. | ||
| I dozed off for maybe like an hour, hour and a half after sitting up for a while. | ||
| And I woke up, and they were all up on the roof, so we just kind of went up on the roof. | ||
| Little bar up there and stuff. | ||
| Just hung out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| New world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're in a new world. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| It's crazy, you know, but it's... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was asleep. | ||
| I eventually passed out and then... | ||
| What was your experience like in Brazil? | ||
| Did you like it there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, actually. | ||
| Beautiful, right? | ||
| Yeah, it was beautiful. | ||
| Nice fucking people. | ||
| Nice people. | ||
| Great weather. | ||
| Beautiful sights. | ||
| Great food. | ||
| Beautiful sights. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| All kinds of sights, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Makes you look at sites a little different. | ||
| Yeah, like, wow, there's some genetics down here. | ||
| No! | ||
| What? | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Yeah, beautiful. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Great people, man. | ||
| It's a wild place to be, too, because when you think about Brazil and the UFC and jiu-jitsu, it's all from there. | ||
| I mean, without Brazil, the UFC would not be what it is. | ||
| I mean, who knows if it would have ever even happened or if it happened way, way later. | ||
| And if it wasn't for Horry and Gracie, it wasn't for the Gracie family, it wasn't for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, we wouldn't be here. | ||
| Yeah, no man. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Crazy that one family can have such an impact on the martial arts world. | ||
| Hey, it had an impact on me. | ||
| Coiler Gracie, the guy in my corner, that's Hoyce Gracie's nephew. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| So, you know, that's who our head instructor under our jiu-jitsu program, that's who we've been training under for, I think we joined under him maybe like about 10 years ago. | ||
| When did you, what was the first UFC that you saw? | ||
| How old were you? | ||
| The first UFC I saw was the Anderson Silva vs. | ||
| Forrest Griffin. | ||
| I think I was like 19. Oh, wow. | ||
|
unidentified
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That was 18. That was a good one to see because Anderson was a wizard back then. | |
| He was a wizard. | ||
| That's what got me hooked. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| That's really what started the path towards all of this. | ||
| Because like... | ||
| So, I've been in a lot of fights growing up, right? | ||
| So, like, I'm like, growing up, I've been in different, I fought big, small, short, fast, like, all these dudes, right? | ||
| And sitting there, watching that, and seeing what he did to him, it was like, okay. | ||
| Can I do that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And right now, while I can't do that, I definitely don't want to run into somebody that can do that. | ||
| I think I should probably become one of those guys that can do that. | ||
| You know, when people talk about goats, and I do think Jon Jones is a great argument for the greatest of all time, just based on his record. | ||
| But I feel like there's moments in guys' careers, and those moments kind of get diluted when you see later performances that aren't as good, maybe when they're older. | ||
| But when Anderson was in his prime, He was a magician. | ||
| There was something about him, man. | ||
| He had this unstoppable aura. | ||
| He was so at peace and so calm, and he would smile at guys, and you knew he was fucking them up. | ||
| He was fucking everybody up, and it was the way he was doing it. | ||
| He was doing it like it was magic. | ||
| When he knocked out Forrest, it was like Forrest didn't have a chance in the world of hitting him. | ||
| He was just waiting for the spot, moving backwards. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Man, that was, it was, I never seen anything like it, just a whoop whoop. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| Yeah, when he was on, when he was at his best, like the Vitor Belfort fight, during those times in his prime, man, he, like, when he first got into the UFC, when he lit up Chris Lieben, I was like, oh boy, everybody's fucked. | ||
| Everybody in this division's fucked. | ||
| And it was just one of those times where you saw a guy who was total next level who had just entered into the sport. | ||
| And it changed everybody's idea of what was possible with striking. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| He definitely did that for me. | ||
| I used to have this, whenever I first started, my amateur, early on amateur, my first fights, I think I made my amateur debut back, I think it was March 6, 2010 or something like that. | ||
| So, like, I used to watch. | ||
| I used to have a highlight video and just roll through, like, of all these fights and things. | ||
| And I don't know, something about just watching that video made me feel like, all right, like, just watching greatness made me believe that I could be great. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I used to watch it before every fight, and I was just going in and annihilating people. | ||
| Actually, my second amateur fight was against my godbrother, right? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he actually had brought, after I watched the Anderson Silva fight, he had a fight. | ||
| He did like an MMA fight. | ||
| He came back, he had the videos, you know, I seen him, like, you know, it was like, Alright, it can actually be done. | ||
| It's actually possible. | ||
| It's actually a scene for it around here. | ||
| Then that's when I found my own gym. | ||
| That's when I found my coaches. | ||
| My coaches that are here with me. | ||
| And I started training with them. | ||
| And I'd say maybe like four months later, four and a half months later. | ||
| About four months later, I ended up fighting him on like a week notice. | ||
| Did you guys have a conversation? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whenever they hit me up and asked me about it, I was like, alright, let me hit him up and I'm going to talk to him about it. | ||
| And he was like, yeah, you know, he was like, it's just a sport. | ||
| It's what we got into, you know, it's part of the game, you know. | ||
| Of course, now I feel differently about it just for the simple fact of, like, We wasn't making no money. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So it was like... | ||
| Now it would have been a no. | ||
| But I'm just not getting into it. | ||
| I'm trying to get the experience I can. | ||
| I'm trying to... | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| So we did. | ||
| And I ended up winning in like... | ||
| I think it was like 40-something seconds. | ||
| And then I... Ended choking this guy out after that in like 30 seconds. | ||
| So when I came out, I was just whooping people. | ||
| Then my fourth amateur fight was a title fight. | ||
| And it was a lot like the Glover Teixeira fight. | ||
| Bro, I whooped this dude's ass, bro. | ||
| Fur rounds. | ||
| His lip was almost inside out. | ||
| His eye was gashed above. | ||
| His eye was completely closed. | ||
|
unidentified
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But he would not stop coming after me, bro. | |
| He would not stop coming at me just trying to hit me. | ||
| And then I think I got tired. | ||
| But they, but like, I think like the first round, the first round, I had him down, pinned in a full mound, pounding him, like pounding him out. | ||
| And they stopped around like a minute early. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Was he a hometown guy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Yeah, so he was like, like. | ||
| Yeah, trying to save him. | ||
| And there was no commission. | ||
| You gotta think, there was no commission back in Michigan back in the day. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So it was just like, basically like guys just renting out venues, renting out a cage, and just putting on fights. | ||
| And so like, yeah, bro. | ||
| Then the next round, I think I caught him with a head kick, and he stopped it a minute early again. | ||
| Then I ended up eventually getting tired. | ||
| That's why amateur-wise, eventually it was just like, it's a no contest. | ||
| But I actually got caught in a guillotine. | ||
| At the end of that, like, after I got tired, like, I think it was, like, maybe, like, the fourth, fifth round or something like that, I got caught in a guillotine. | ||
| Because I just tried to shoot on him. | ||
| I just tried to shoot. | ||
| Like, I'm tired. | ||
| I'm gonna hold him down, catch my breath, and then, you know. | ||
| But I didn't finish the takedown. | ||
| It was not my best work, Joe. | ||
| Not my best work. | ||
| And I got caught in a good team. | ||
| You started your training with just MMA. Is that the first training you'd ever done? | ||
| Have you done any karate or anything when you were younger? | ||
| When I was a kid, I did taekwondo. | ||
| I did a little taekwondo whenever I was a kid. | ||
| But most of it was just like... | ||
| Stuff my dad showed me, you know what I mean? | ||
| Just about how to hold tight, how to roll with punches and things like that. | ||
| And then my uncles showed me things. | ||
| I was always into martial arts. | ||
| My brother that passed away before I went pro He was into martial arts like I was. | ||
| So he would hear some things, and he was really smart. | ||
| So he'd hear some things, he'd see some techniques he'd show with me, and we'd just kind of dialogue about things. | ||
| Then you had movies like The Matrix and stuff like that. | ||
| Obviously the stuff wasn't real, right? | ||
| But even in some of that... | ||
| They mimic certain real martial arts. | ||
| Wing Chun is a real thing. | ||
| Maybe not the most effective thing, but parts of it are effective. | ||
| And that's kind of our thing. | ||
| Parts of what martial arts are effective. | ||
| So he was already essentially playing with martial arts without even really knowing. | ||
| It was just an interest, though. | ||
| Tony Ferguson uses Wing Chun. | ||
| You see, he does a lot of Wing Chun dummies. | ||
| He practices with the dummy, but you see it in fights sometimes. | ||
| Like, he'll catch a wrist and use an elbow, or he'll catch a wrist and come with a punch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's something to it. | ||
| There's certain parts of every martial art that can be effective. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| As long as you combine them with the stuff that we know is effective. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's just some that are more effective, like boxing, wrestling, kickboxing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| You know? | ||
| But if you can have strong fundamentals in those and then be able to sprinkle in some of the things, like some people do, that's why you get the crazy spinning attacks from some dudes. | ||
| Like Yair Rodriguez is fighting this weekend. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Those are just different techniques. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| You know, those are just different, different arts. | ||
| And then he's just picking which one out of which bag that he wants to go. | ||
| Like spinning kicks and like tee kicks, those are more like karate. | ||
| You know, but they're more generalized now in MMA. Leg kicks, that's a Muay Thai thing. | ||
| You know, calf kicks, yeah, Muay Thai, jab, a jab is really more boxing-based, you know, but it's effective in more forms of fighting, so it's just like that. | ||
| Did you, so you started like hardcore training, you were 18 around there? | ||
| So that was like when you really just started learning everything. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Learning everything together. | ||
| Wrestling, jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, all of it together. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I started out with jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai basically. | ||
| And then how long into it were you like, I think I'm going to be a world champion? | ||
| See, that's the thing about me being arrogant. | ||
| When I got into it originally, I thought I could be a world champion. | ||
| But it's just like, you never really know. | ||
| Think about when you were a kid and you could believe you could do anything. | ||
| That's the type of belief that I have. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's just never changed. | ||
| I'm realistic about things like, alright, if I can't, or how much I want something and things like that. | ||
| But as far as believing what I can do, I bet I can do anything. | ||
| You know, so it's like whenever I stepped in, it was like, yeah, world champion. | ||
| Because whenever I came in, although I watched Anderson Silva and I was in awe of him, I wanted to know, can I whoop his ass? | ||
| So that's when my MMA journey started. | ||
| That's what that was. | ||
| That was me chasing Anderson Silva to see if I can. | ||
| I started fighting at 185. When I was 18, I was fighting 185. Because you're not real heavy for 205. What do you walk around at when you're training? | ||
| When I walk around training, maybe like between 230 and 230. Some of those guys get big. | ||
| I mean, I can't get up to around like 240, 245. That's around what I was whenever they called me for the Glover fight. | ||
| You don't think you could make 185 again? | ||
| I probably could. | ||
| For the right fight. | ||
| That would be a good fight. | ||
| Or champ, champ, champ. | ||
| Oh, heavyweight too. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Why not? | ||
| You can't make welterweight. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, no. | |
| Hamza, I don't know how the fuck he makes it. | ||
| No. | ||
| When you're around that dude in between fights, you're like, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| There's not a world where you weigh 170 pounds. | ||
| I don't think I've ever seen him in person. | ||
| He's a big fella. | ||
| He's big. | ||
| He's like Johnny Walker, though. | ||
| I don't know how Johnny Walker makes 205. He's huge. | ||
| He's huge. | ||
| Most dudes that are big, tall like that, they'd be like, where's he skinny at? | ||
| Right, he's big. | ||
| He's just a big dude. | ||
| Yeah, he looks like a heavyweight. | ||
| When you dropped him, dude, that was one of the craziest knockouts. | ||
| It was like, Timber! | ||
| At first, I wasn't like, I don't know, man. | ||
| It was just like, from my point of view, I slipped, I slipped, bang. | ||
| I felt the clean connection. | ||
| But he had swung, too, so I kind of dipped. | ||
| I kind of dip back and then when I look, all I see is his hands back. | ||
| Now to me, I know that's like a... | ||
| Boom! | ||
| When his hands go up, I'm like, okay, that's like a he's hurt type thing. | ||
| That's why I just load it up to just follow up. | ||
| I'm not thinking like, oh, he's out right then and there. | ||
| It's funny because I've heard people not believe in your power. | ||
| And I don't understand it. | ||
| I've had conversations with people that are like, oh, he doesn't hit that hard. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| The fuck are you talking about? | ||
| You're watching people fly across the ring and go unconscious. | ||
| How do you think he's not hitting hard? | ||
| It's weird when some people just decide that someone is not as good. | ||
| And like, I'm seeing something. | ||
| I'm watching you fight. | ||
| And I'm like, this dude's clever. | ||
| This dude's dangerous. | ||
| He catches chins. | ||
| You know how to catch chins. | ||
| You have a sense of where they're at, where they're gonna go, and then you find them. | ||
| I'm like, that's an unusual talent. | ||
| And some people are like, oh, he doesn't hit that hard. | ||
| He didn't hit Johnny that hard. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| Watch that. | ||
| What happened there? | ||
| That's about as clean as you can land a shot, especially to the tempo. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I understand fighting. | ||
| Whenever I was sitting... | ||
| Learning and being taught things, I not only wanted to know how to do it, I wanted to know the physics behind it. | ||
| And in doing that, I understand the fighting and angles and things like that on a different level. | ||
| It's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
How can I explain this? | |
| The three things that I know That I know that I can do, that I see constantly in fights that most people don't do. | ||
| I understand where I am in a fight, as far as positional-wise, what's happening in the fight, what my options are, and what they're trying to do. | ||
| It's just almost embedded into my senses, to where my body reacts and it does the things naturally. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's why I like that part in the fight where I just float and just move. | ||
| Did I see what he was throwing, honestly? | ||
| No. | ||
| But you kind of knew where it was going. | ||
| But I understood, based off of where it was going, what's next? | ||
| It's crazy, especially when I'm locked in. | ||
| It's one of the dopest feelings in the world that I wish I could plug a wire from myself into others so they could just... | ||
| Just see it maybe from my eyes or just how I'm feeling it or whatever. | ||
| But it's just like... | ||
| That's how I knew I was really good. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I think it was before the Santos fight. | ||
| We were in the back or we were doing pad work and I was just flowing. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And I was feeling good and I'm hitting the pads. | ||
| I'm like, alright. | ||
| And I'm now... | ||
| Sometimes whenever I hit pads, I'll kind of put myself out of weird angle just to try different things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know? | |
| Just to land here, to get here, to get to where I want to get here. | ||
| And like, it just hit me like... | ||
| There's nothing in a fight that I can't do. | ||
| And there's nothing that I can't do in a fight at the highest level. | ||
| And it was like, I've been working head down, working so long, just adding to my bag, adding to my bag. | ||
| And I never really actually looked up and looked at what I had. | ||
| And in that moment, that was one of the times that I actually did. | ||
| And I realized, like, I'm ready to be the best in the world. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| For real. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| I felt that. | ||
| You know what's inspiring about that? | ||
| There's some young kid that was just like you that's probably watching that fight and watching what you did and like practicing it and fucking around in his living room and fucking around with his friends and is like, I think I can do this too. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like your success will inspire someone the same way Anderson Silva inspired you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, man. | |
| Isn't that amazing? | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| And having that ability to see those great fighters, too, is so huge for young, up-and-coming guys. | ||
| Because having someone who's just coming up who can see you, or having those tapes, you could watch Fedor and watch Anderson and watch all the fighters that were in their primes. | ||
| You get this sense of what's possible. | ||
| And then you go and try to incorporate that into your own game, and it just makes everybody better. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I was hungry for evolution. | ||
| So, like, I had a period where, like, I just wanted to learn and just be able to do, like, just flow through flow. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I don't know if you've ever been in a fight or been, like, in training and you're just flowing. | ||
| Like, you're sparring. | ||
| You're just flowing. | ||
| You're just, like, feeling good. | ||
| You're not even thinking. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You know, I just wanted to add to that. | ||
| Like, being able to do it in more positions and more steps, more angles. | ||
| You know, I just wanted to do it. | ||
| So, I was legitimately renting the fights. | ||
| I've rented a lot of fights from, like, I think it was Family Video. | ||
| They had a bunch of UFC fights. | ||
| So, like, I'm renting those. | ||
| I'm pulling up YouTube, YouTube boxing videos, you know, some kickboxing, some wrestling. | ||
| So, like, any little things that I can try to learn that I can see, like, all right, that was nice, that was effective. | ||
| And then I can start to do it and then try to turn it, flip it into my own. | ||
| You know, and, bro, like... | ||
| That was one of the things that was hard coming up. | ||
| Like, whenever people are like, oh, you can't do this, you can't do this. | ||
| Like, bro, my bag is deep. | ||
| Like, my bag is deep. | ||
| And it's just, now it's, I just get to show it now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Now it's just about winning. | ||
| And still, the thing is about you, like, how old do you now? | ||
| 31. 31. Start training at 18. Like, you're still getting better. | ||
| Like, this is not like you just honing your skills and keeping them tight. | ||
| Like, no, you're constantly improving. | ||
| And that's not a lot of time at training. | ||
| You know, you really become, like, elite at what you're doing, you know, with whatever the 10,000-hour rule is. | ||
| You apply that. | ||
| Like, you're, like, still getting better. | ||
| Yeah, and I still had years where I had to take off, you know what I mean, where I had to do other things and stuff like that. | ||
| I'll be wrong, I always had periods, and there's still no time a little bit where I did make it to the gym a few times, but it hasn't been a whole solid 13 years. | ||
| And now that you're the champ, more resources are available to you, more time, and then also there's the confidence that comes from being a champ. | ||
| Most guys, when they become champ, then they hit another level. | ||
| They hit another level once they're champ. | ||
| Yeah, I did feel that a little something different, just in how the way it happened. | ||
| Everything went how we thought it was going to go. | ||
| I did think I was going to have to deal with some adversity, so he landed some shots. | ||
| You know, but I'm good at rolling shots. | ||
| I'm good at rolling off with shots. | ||
| You know, that's why sometimes you say I get hit and I don't give any space. | ||
| That's because you may have touched me, but you didn't hit me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So it's like not a lot of guys that have the skill and the understanding that I have are actually willing to just get in and fight, too. | ||
| You know, because... | ||
| At the end of the day, you push that envelope enough to where it's like, alright, the thing is now you have to fight this. | ||
| I'm good with that. | ||
| And I have fun with that too. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| I'm just built for this. | ||
| Well, that's what it takes. | ||
| If you want to be a world champion, you have to have that crazy belief in yourself like you had in the very beginning. | ||
| You've got to put in that time and you've got to have that hunger and desire. | ||
| You've got it all. | ||
| That's a beautiful thing, man. | ||
| Top of the world, Jamal Hill. | ||
| Man, it's just fun being in there, man. | ||
| I just have fun out being in there. | ||
| I feel like I'm just locked into something different. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Whenever, for anybody listening or whatever, for me, it's like whenever you're doing something you're really good at, maybe you ever seen like back in... | ||
| I was about to say back in high school, but we might have had different experiences in high school. | ||
| Like typing. | ||
| Have you ever seen somebody that can type straight up like this? | ||
| I can't type like that. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But there was a time where I did take typing class where I did kind of get it so like I can understand like It's like when you're really good at something. | ||
| When you're really good at something and you're just doing it and it just comes natural to you, maybe not a lot of other people can do it. | ||
| That's how I feel whenever I'm fighting. | ||
| I don't feel like anybody else can really do what I do. | ||
| Well, that's a big part of being a great champion. | ||
| You have to have that belief that you are the one. | ||
| You know, and it's not an easy road. | ||
| It's the craziest lifestyle choice, like, as a professional person, like, decide I'm going to be a professional fighter. | ||
| And a professional fighter in mixed martial arts? | ||
| It's one of the craziest choices you can make in life, but if you can pull it off, and if you can get to that world championship level, and they strap that, how much does that thing weigh? | ||
| It's got some weight. | ||
| It's got some weight to it. | ||
| They put that thing around your shoulders. | ||
| When you look back at fights that you had in the Octagon and you learned from, does any fight where you made a big leap, does any fight stand out for you? | ||
| What about the Paul Craig fight? | ||
| The Paul Craig fight, honestly, the thing that came from that is the realization that you're not better than the game. | ||
| You're not invincible. | ||
| Respect the craft and respect what you're doing. | ||
| That's what that was in that fight. | ||
| It was basically, I don't care what you do. | ||
| Regardless, I'm not worried about nothing. | ||
| All I gotta do is show up and I win. | ||
| That's really how I felt. | ||
| I felt like all I had to do was show up and I was going to win. | ||
| And I paid for that. | ||
| He didn't pull me down. | ||
| I went down with him willingly. | ||
| With him already having my arm locked and everything like that. | ||
| And then I'm like, alright, watch this. | ||
| Start working the legs. | ||
| But that was the one way he had to win. | ||
| And I gave it to him. | ||
| He's so dangerous off his back, too. | ||
| It's such a different level off his back. | ||
| I understand that, but that's the thing, though. | ||
| I didn't care. | ||
| I didn't respect that at all. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And that was what the lesson was for me to learn there. | ||
| Take from that respect the game. | ||
| Treat everybody like they're the absolute best in the world at what they do at everything. | ||
| He's a good guy to learn from, too, because his level on the ground is above and beyond most people's. | ||
| Above and beyond. | ||
| His level off his back, I mean, he tapped down Goliath with like one second to go. | ||
| I mean, he's something special off his back. | ||
| That guy is one of the best grapplers at 205 in the world. | ||
| He's so fucking good. | ||
| Like, I think Paul Craig could, I think if he dedicated himself, he could be a world champion at legit, like, straight grappling. | ||
| Oh yeah, a thousand percent. | ||
| He's that good. | ||
| He's that good. | ||
| When he locks triangles on people, you're like, oh shit! | ||
| It's a triangle. | ||
|
unidentified
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When he locked onto my arm, he was strong as shit. | |
| He grabs just like desperately. | ||
| It's almost like complete desperate. | ||
| Like you're about to grab like how you would grab a rope. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you about to fall off a cliff or some shit, that's how you grab my arm. | |
| Like you don't want to die, that's how you grab my arm. | ||
| And then whenever I, like literally, whenever I bass and I try to pull my arm, my arm didn't move at all. | ||
| Like there was no wiggle. | ||
| You know how you do it. | ||
| Shit, none of that. | ||
| There was no movement whatsoever. | ||
| Some guys, when they get to the ground, they don't want to go 100% because they don't want to burn themselves out. | ||
| But Paul Craig, he could close it off. | ||
| He's so confident in his ability to close it off. | ||
| He just cinches everything down. | ||
| Right away. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That kind of took me by surprise. | ||
| I thought he was going to be more of a technical, like, oh, this is the next step, this step, this step, this and that, try to set up. | ||
| He was strong, and then he was still doing those things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you leave that fight thinking, fuck, I gotta learn how to do that off my back? | ||
| No. | ||
| Not at all? | ||
| No. | ||
| Because I didn't feel like, oh, my ground game was shit or anything like that. | ||
| I just felt like I fucked up by going and doing things on his terms. | ||
| I let him dictate the fight. | ||
| Could I have beat Paul Craig on the ground even then? | ||
| Yes, I could have. | ||
| If we had done things, fought the fight on my terms. | ||
| I'm fighting him. | ||
| I make him sprawl desperately. | ||
| Now, bang, I make it hard on him. | ||
| Bang, land some shots on him. | ||
| And control from there. | ||
| Not letting him lock onto my arm and then go down to the ground with him. | ||
| Because when we hit the ground, it didn't... | ||
| For him to pull me to the ground, for you to pull somebody to the ground, you don't know how this person is going to land, right? | ||
| He doesn't know how he's going to land. | ||
| And there's a certain space that's created with that. | ||
| Because I willingly went down with him, that was not the case. | ||
| I fell down into position just like he did, and he was able to lock even tighter on my arm. | ||
| You know, just like little things like that, like little small things that I don't think anybody else really thinks about, you know, that are huge. | ||
| And I notice them, and I adjust them. | ||
| That's why it seems like it's like leaps and bounds, but really it's just a small adjustment. | ||
| Small realization, small adjustment. | ||
| Don't do this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bang. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| When that happened in that fight, like, we were worried about your arm. | ||
| Like, your arm got fucked up. | ||
| How bad was it? | ||
| It was dislocated. | ||
| It was a clean dislocation, no torn tendons, no broken bone, nothing. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| Yeah, it was basically best case scenario. | ||
| Best case scenario, for sure. | ||
| Best case scenario. | ||
| Did you ever watch when Frank Mir broke Tim Sylvia's arm? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Snapped it at the forearm, like, oh, shit. | ||
| Like, that's worst case scenario. | ||
| I thought it was broken. | ||
| Whenever I was in the case, so that's why I'm not like everybody in the world. | ||
| I thought it was broken. | ||
| Whenever I sat back, it was almost like a line you could see. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Where it looked just like a break across. | ||
| But I guess not. | ||
| That was just the arm. | ||
| That was my elbow and the bone just hanging out on the other side. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it was... | ||
| And then I was good. | ||
| I went and stood up and everything. | ||
| And I heard you got on my coach saying that y'all needed to get me up out of here. | ||
| What did I say? | ||
| My coach, he's like, y'all need to get him to F out. | ||
| Well, I thought it was broken. | ||
| You gotta get him to hospital. | ||
| I had to pay his respects for everything. | ||
| Now, me going and standing up for the decision, that was me paying my respect back to the game. | ||
| And then for, you know, just, I had to do it. | ||
| It was just something that I owe to the game to do. | ||
| And they did want to immediately, but nah, I'm like, nah, I'm going to go ahead. | ||
| I'm going to stand there. | ||
| You know, something I had to do. | ||
| I had to feel that. | ||
| I had to go through that. | ||
| You know, and that's kind of like what that was. | ||
| Even me sitting on the ground like, alright. | ||
| That was me realizing, me accepting and accountability. | ||
| That was me taking accountability. | ||
| There it is right there. | ||
| Yeah, it does. | ||
| That's a strong perspective that you have that you just accepted. | ||
| You took that loss like a champion. | ||
| You know, that's one of the hardest things to do, is to take a loss with grace. | ||
| Take a loss with dignity. | ||
| You know, and know that this is part of the learning process. | ||
| You win or you learn. | ||
| And sometimes you learn when you win, and sometimes you lose, and it's a big lesson. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And that's exactly how I approach it. | ||
| I agree a thousand percent. | ||
| And from that, I just took that and just learned from it. | ||
| It's funny how you see MMA math just doesn't work. | ||
| It just doesn't work. | ||
| Because you see Johnny Walker fights Paul Craig and takes him out early. | ||
| Jimmy Crute beat Paul Craig and then we went and had our fight. | ||
| That was the main thing. | ||
| I was happy about getting in the crew fight because he had beat Paul Craig. | ||
| So it was like getting into the ground and things like that. | ||
| I really wanted to go in and dominate in that fight, but I wanted to do it under my terms. | ||
| I wasn't just going to go in and let him just grapple me. | ||
| We were going to hit the ground. | ||
| We were going to hit the ground under my terms. | ||
| What happened happened. | ||
| The Johnny Walker thing. | ||
| But the thing was, And, you know, Paul's solid, bro. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Anytime me and Paul in the same place, he got drinking a dinner on me. | ||
| I always, you know? | ||
| But the Vulcan fighting, Vulcan losing their fight exposed a lot. | ||
| You know, it exposed a lot. | ||
| And it exposed that my man's gotta, he gotta learn how to, his wrestling, getting you to the ground, and then trusting his stand-up. | ||
| Honestly, I think Paul Craig has pretty good stand-up. | ||
| If he's confident and he actually trusts, it's just something whenever he gets in there, he just don't trust or believe in it. | ||
| You're going to take some hits. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But he's got to trust in the technique while still understanding that. | ||
| I think he comes from being a specialist, too, sometimes, because he's a specialist on the ground. | ||
| And so stand-up just doesn't really feel like his thing, whereas you, you're an overall guy. | ||
| You're striking as your strong suit, but you do everything. | ||
| I mean, your stand-up, also, every fight starts standing up, which is just a big advantage for the striker. | ||
| Especially if you've got good takedown defense. | ||
| You know, like for a grappler, there's this thing where you've got to get this fight to the ground. | ||
| And you're standing with the guy and he just keeps chopping away at your legs and hitting you and chopping away and your power bar keeps going down. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're like, ugh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's the thing. | ||
| Just because of the sheer size of Johnny Walker, I figured that would be a hard matchup for Paul because I know Paul wants to get it to the ground. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I know Johnny has explosive, nasty power. | ||
| I mean, look what he did to my arm just from me catching a kick. | ||
| He did that. | ||
| That wasn't him throwing a kick and me blocking it. | ||
| That wasn't him throwing a kick and I just caught it. | ||
| Just barely tapped it. | ||
| My arms swell up. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Dude's got some power. | ||
| He's got crazy power. | ||
| Dude's got some crazy power. | ||
| When he knocked out Khalil Roundtree, I was like, Jesus. | ||
| Yeah, the short elbow. | ||
|
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That was the one fight that I was worried about. | |
| If you actually look, whenever I first hit him and I hit him with those shots and he tried to push me against the cage all the way across, you see immediately where my hands went. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right to the bicep. | ||
| My hands went immediately to the bicep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, we're not doing this. | |
| No, it's dangerous. | ||
| He's knocked a few people out with that, I believe. | ||
| That's one of the things he's nice with. | ||
| He's so dangerous. | ||
| That was crazy, too. | ||
| Look how he does it so tight. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| I mean, amazing. | ||
| He's using leverage. | ||
| He's using the leverage of his height. | ||
| So he's coming down and he's just heavier and he's taller. | ||
| He just drops his weight. | ||
| When he did that celebration, though, and dropped down and did the worm, blew his shoulder out, I was like, what happened? | ||
| I remember I was interviewing him. | ||
| I'm like, is your shoulder okay? | ||
| He's like, no. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| Adrenaline was still pumping through him, so he didn't know how bad it was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy that he did that on a celebration. | |
| Destroyed his shoulder. | ||
| Giant-ass scar on his shoulder now. | ||
| I mean, I don't know how much that affects him still, whether or not he's okay. | ||
| You know, because fighters, they'll have, like, a thing where there's forever that arm's compromised, and they're still fighting, and they're still winning, but they don't have full power in that arm anymore. | ||
| Yeah, it took a while for my arm to be all right. | ||
| Like fully, fully all right. | ||
| Crazy how that did it. | ||
| That falling down and doing the worm did it. | ||
| Like right there. | ||
| Oh, because I slapped. | ||
| Right there he slapped. | ||
| He blew his fucking left shoulder out. | ||
| And now he's got it. | ||
| Yeah, right there. | ||
| Pop. | ||
| And now he's got a giant fucking scar on his left shoulder. | ||
| Just being goofy. | ||
|
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Yeah, people have hurt themselves doing some stupid shit. | |
| Didn't Terrence... | ||
| Terrence heard himself celebrating his debut when he knocked out Favola. | ||
| Did he hurt himself? | ||
| Bro, he jumped on the cage and hurt his knee. | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| He blew his knee out. | ||
| We might have to do a list of... | ||
| You might as well do a list of that. | ||
| Injuries during celebrations. | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| He's like, ah, I hurt my knee. | ||
| That is so crazy that he did that. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I forgot about that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Terrence McKinney's a dangerous dude too. | ||
| That's a guy who goes all out quick. | ||
| He comes at you. | ||
| That guy comes at you. | ||
| He's got to work a little more finesse because that flying knee that he gets caught with, it's just like a product of his instinct being just to wrestle. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So whenever they charge, they make a fast one and they charge towards him and it kind of gets his head away or he doesn't see. | ||
| First thing he thinks is like, are you He feels the momentum coming in. | ||
| Like Ben Askren and Masvidal. | ||
| Yeah, like that. | ||
| That instinct's hard to shake. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is. | ||
| The instinct of a specialist. | ||
| Footwork. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Footwork. | ||
| When you look at, like, the landscape and the light heavyweight division, like, what fights are intriguing for you right now? | ||
| Like... | ||
| Intriguing in what way? | ||
| Intriguing like, this is the guy I want to get in there with. | ||
| In that way, pretty much everybody at the top present different challenges. | ||
| Everybody's their own different challenge. | ||
| I think Blahovic would be a good striking and mix-up challenge. | ||
| Maka man's a good It's a good he's a good mix of times, but I think he's gonna come more of a heavier wrestling type Type thing years of striking challenge, so I be talking of a flowing striking challenge in fact cuz he just flows Yeah, I'm good. | ||
| I'm good with flowing. | ||
| I like to be creative and do things and flow. | ||
| He's so herky-jerky It's a very unusual way he moves. | ||
| Everything's like his hands are down. | ||
| He's switching stances. | ||
| I understand that though. | ||
| I understand that movement. | ||
| I understand that type of fighting. | ||
| Just trying to be loose to be fast. | ||
| Be fast. | ||
| It's like water. | ||
| Be water. | ||
| The whole thing like be water is just trying to flow and crash. | ||
| Just be loose, loose, loose, and then bang, crash and hit. | ||
| That's essentially the same thing that I'm doing. | ||
| I'm a little more technical. | ||
| I try to stay a little more tight and I try to keep more options open for myself. | ||
| I mean, if that makes sense. | ||
| So has the UFC given you some sort of a timeline on when your first defense would be? | ||
| No, I think it's kind of hard for them to do that at the time, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's because Yuri's hurt. | ||
| Magomed and Jan fought to a draw, so I don't really see them giving the title shot to one over the other. | ||
| Rackage is still hurt, I believe. | ||
| You got Smith, who hurt his leg and technically lost. | ||
| But he was supposed to be a backup, though, with you and Glover, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then he missed weight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As a backup, man, I don't want to make weight. | ||
| Making weight for me, he's a big fella. | ||
| He's a big dude. | ||
| Yeah, he's a big boy. | ||
| For him to make 205 is probably quite a struggle. | ||
| He probably should have gave him more time, too. | ||
| As soon as you're like, this is the fight, and then you got him, you should back up fighter then. | ||
| I don't think he knew until a couple weeks later. | ||
| So he didn't have as much time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, do you think it'll probably be Yuri if Yuri recovers in time? | ||
| Yeah, if Yuri recovers in time. | ||
| Maybe July? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I want International Fight Week. | ||
| Yeah, that's the big one. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You mean Yuri? | ||
| Conor and Chandler. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I think Conor and Chandler has to happen later than that, though. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, because... | ||
| Connor has to enter the USADA training, the testing pool. | ||
| So I think that's six months. | ||
| I think you have to be in that testing pool for six months before you can fight. | ||
| So we're in February, so I don't think July would work. | ||
| You know, I think it's going to take a little bit more time than that, if I'm guessing. | ||
| I think they have to fight in like September or something. | ||
| So here we are in February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September. | ||
| September is seven months. | ||
| I think he has to be in the testing pool for six months. | ||
| If it's six or more. | ||
| If it's more than six, that's crazy because they're hosting the Ultimate Fighter together. | ||
| It makes sense that they would try to set something up, a big fight for September or October or maybe even November. | ||
| Madison Square Garden. | ||
| Yeah, that's a big one. | ||
| It might be that one, which makes sense. | ||
| Well, that's why it makes sense to get Sweet Dreams in there for International Fight Week so I can be ready for Madison Square Garden. | ||
| The question is whether or not Yuri can recover from catastrophic shoulder injuries. | ||
| That's a catastrophic injury. | ||
| He had major shoulder surgery. | ||
| I don't know exactly the extent of the injury, but I know the UFC doctor said it was the worst shoulder injury he had ever seen. | ||
| Which is a lot. | ||
| I mean, that dude's seen a lot of shit. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So if he says that, that's a big fucking deal. | ||
| So, you know, shoulders are very tricky. | ||
| It's such a weird joint. | ||
| It moves in so many different ways that an injury can, you know, you got to really rehabilitate that correctly and it takes a long time. | ||
| Yeah, I was coming off a partial tear in my labrum after the Santos fight. | ||
| The second round, he actually dumped me. | ||
| When he got that takedown, he kicked me on the body, he got that takedown, he actually dumped me on my shoulder. | ||
| So he actually did a little bit of damage. | ||
| So I got to understand how much it actually takes for a shoulder to fully heal. | ||
| Did you have to get shoulder surgery? | ||
| I didn't have to get surgery or anything done on it, but it took a while for it to heal. | ||
| Just rehabilitation? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Did you do stem cells? | ||
| No, I just did physical therapy. | ||
| If you ever get in that situation again, get a hold of me. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll connect you to some stem cell places. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| A lot of guys are going. | ||
| Camaro just went down to Columbia. | ||
| A lot of guys are going to do that bioaccelerator place down in Columbia and getting stem cells. | ||
| It'll really help your recovery, especially for injuries. | ||
| It cuts the time down drastically. | ||
| I think somebody just came up to me and asked me and said they got a place somewhere down south. | ||
| We have a place we work with in Austin. | ||
| We have a place we work with in Austin that helps a lot of guys come into Austin and get stem cells here. | ||
| And that's a great option, too, if you want to stay in the States, too. | ||
| But they can do stuff in other countries that they can't do in the United States. | ||
| In Colombia, there's a great place, the CPI in Tijuana. | ||
| It's a great place in Panama that Dr. Neil Reardon runs, and the laws there are different. | ||
| The laws of the United States, for whatever reason, you can make all sorts of reasons for why they can't do it. | ||
| None of them are good, but they have a lockdown on what you're allowed to do here in the United States, even though it's highly effective, and even though you're dealing with injured people that really should have every option available to them, especially when some of these options have proven to be effective. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| I'm just now learning, like, all the things that are proper things and things like that to take care of my body. | ||
| That's another one of the unfortunate things about coming in late and learning things late. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, that's definitely one of the things I'm probably going to end up with. | ||
| It's just part of the job. | ||
| You're gonna get banged up. | ||
| You're gonna have things happen to you. | ||
| Yeah, you're in the destroying bodies business. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| On the main thing though, Yuri ideally would be the fight that I would want. | ||
| Just because I think that's the better sell and that's the fight that I think a lot more people want to see. | ||
| I don't think people are really big on watching Modern Man fight right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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He's good. | |
| He's a good fighter. | ||
| He's a great fighter. | ||
| The problem with a fight like that, a fight like that puts a bad taste in people's mouth and it's not his fault. | ||
| It's just the way they match up and then the decision, the fact that it was a draw. | ||
| Which I watched it again. | ||
| I still don't think it was a draw. | ||
| You know, it was very close. | ||
| Did you have one here? | ||
| I had Anka Laev winning because I thought Anka Laev won the first round, although it's very close. | ||
| I thought he did too. | ||
| Yeah, but then you got to give credit to Bohovic for those kicks because he had fucked that leg up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bad. | |
| Both of them. | ||
| And he just goes shin to shin with dudes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He just goes, boom, let's try it out. | ||
| Let's go shin to shin. | ||
| Let's see how you feel. | ||
| And next thing you know, your legs don't work like they used to before. | ||
| That dude's dense. | ||
| I mean, you see the power that guy carries? | ||
| He must be dense as fuck. | ||
| I bet his bones are just like fucking wood. | ||
| You know, he's just dense. | ||
| And when he goes crack shin to shin with guys, like, that's crazy confidence. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just kicking another dude in the shins. | ||
| You know, there's a dude named Malapet. | ||
| I think it's a technique to how he does it. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| He knows the spot on his shin. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's just very impressive that he does that. | ||
| And, you know, he's just so good at Muay Thai and so good in that fight at doing that. | ||
| But then the wrestling. | ||
| He got taken down by the wrestling. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| But that's a great adjustment by Magomed. | ||
| I mean, he's a real world-class fighter. | ||
| Yeah, he is. | ||
| I think he's legit. | ||
| Oh, those guys from Dagestan. | ||
| That is a hard spot in the world, man. | ||
| There's some fucking killers coming out of that spot. | ||
| I mean, they hungry. | ||
| They got a lot to fight for. | ||
| They got a lot to fight for, and a lot of those guys, I think they have this advantage in that they're very religious. | ||
| So with their Islamic religion, they don't drink, they don't party, no girls, no nothing, just food and training and fights. | ||
| And that focus, I know, Jamal's like, what? | ||
| Where would I be? | ||
| Where would I be? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If only, if only. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know, man. | ||
| I think you gotta enjoy yourself a little bit. | ||
| I think so, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, a lot of the greats enjoyed themselves. | ||
| I mean, hey, I did all that shit. | ||
| Look at me now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at me now. | |
| Bang! | ||
| Headshot! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Look at me now. | ||
| Shout out to Leon. | ||
| Yeah, shout out to Leon. | ||
| That's a great fight, huh? | ||
| The rematch? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ooh, that's intriguing. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Leon, bro. | ||
| Leon is dangerous for the same reason. | ||
| I feel like that make me great. | ||
| He knows what to do and when to do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Now, Yeah. | ||
| He's like... | ||
| Some of the things he does, the way he times it, and it's like on point, it's like an instinct. | ||
| He's good, bro. | ||
| Oh, he's good. | ||
| He's really good, bro. | ||
| He's so good. | ||
| He's one of the most impressive guys I've ever seen hitting pads. | ||
| You see Leon hit pads? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Pull up a video of Leon working the pads. | ||
| His technique is so sharp. | ||
| So sharp and the fluidity of his combinations, you're like, that's a world-class striker. | ||
| And that setup that he did with Kamaru, he shows him the hand and then lands that left high kick. | ||
| The kick was textbook, bro. | ||
| Textbook. | ||
| Textbook, perfect. | ||
| I mean, you watch him with his movement and his pad work. | ||
| Let's just understand where to be. | ||
| That little palm right there, let's just understand, check and understand where to be. | ||
| He's one of the most smooth guys that's ever fought in the UFC in terms of like combinations and striking and just everything he does is perfect. | ||
| His technique in his stand-up is just perfect. | ||
| And then the fact that he took Kamaru down, took him down the first round, got a full mount. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| He was on his back for what? | ||
| Like about two minutes? | ||
| Yeah, dominated that round on the ground. | ||
| Like who the fuck saw that coming? | ||
| That was nuts. | ||
| Yeah, it's nuts. | ||
| And, you know, it's going to be interesting to see. | ||
| And now also he's felt Camaro, he's felt that wrestling, felt that power, and, you know, had a situation where he was down in that fight and realized that he had won the first round, so his adjustments would have to be made. | ||
| And then Camaro knowing that he had the fight won if he just avoided that kick. | ||
| He had the fight won. | ||
| He was ahead on the cards. | ||
| And that's the thing though, right? | ||
| That's going to give Leon a weapon to actually have to threaten. | ||
| Because he's going to have to respect that kick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's already a change in the fight. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And he's going to have to respect everything else too. | ||
| Because Leon, it's not just a kick. | ||
| He's got hands. | ||
| He's got knees. | ||
| He's got elbows. | ||
| He's got everything. | ||
| And he's got the fluidity of his combinations. | ||
| It's just the best in the division. | ||
| Yeah, he's sharp, man. | ||
| Very, and then, but you got Kamaru, who's a fucking nightmare, man. | ||
| Kamaru, especially coming up, that's one of the things that I remember, and I talked about it frequently, I was like, no one is calling that guy's name. | ||
| No one. | ||
| Everybody's talking about, I want to fight this guy, I want to fight, no one said, and then Kamaru Usman, if you're looking for a fight, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| There was none of that. | ||
| There was none of that. | ||
| He knew, so, this is how, like, you gotta understand this about Kamaru, this is, this is, This is a testament to how good he is, right? | ||
| Leon won the first round, and for the next better of three rounds, you knew exactly what he was about to do to you, and you couldn't stop it. | ||
| Couldn't stop it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| It took a perfect setup at the end to bring it home because we all knew he was just going to push him up into the cage and just punch on him. | ||
| And the crazy thing about Kamaru has destroyed knees. | ||
| His knees are fucked up, man. | ||
| Yeah, I see him. | ||
| I see how he moves a little bit. | ||
| It's kind of like his angles aren't really sharp on the turn. | ||
| Well, he can't move good. | ||
| He's in constant pain. | ||
| He fights in pain. | ||
| Like, his knees are so fucked up that he walks downstairs backwards. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That fucked up, and a world champion. | ||
| He was so fucked up that he told me that he had to walk on the grass, like he was next to the sidewalk. | ||
| The sidewalk hurt too much, so he'd walk on the grass. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then still go in and compete at that level, train how you train. | ||
| If you look at the difference between the musculature in his legs and the musculature in his upper body, it's a drastic difference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I think a lot of that is because of the destroyed knees. | ||
| Well, if you look at the way he grapples a lot of his wrestling, his wrestling is done with upper body. | ||
| He doesn't wrestle with it. | ||
| He doesn't grapple with his legs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's amazing that some, and he throws a lot of kicks. | ||
| It's amazing that a guy who's hurt like that can compete. | ||
| Those low kicks. | ||
| Low kicks, yeah. | ||
| He'll throw a high kick occasionally, you know? | ||
| Like, I think he threw some high kicks in the Colby Covington fight. | ||
| I mean, he's just, he's fucking dangerous. | ||
| Dangerous. | ||
| His mind is the thing that is most dangerous about him. | ||
| Because to have the ability to overcome that kind of pain, like he's in, his cartilage is fucked. | ||
| So he's like everywhere he walks, every step, constant pain. | ||
| Everything constant pain. | ||
| He just believes he's the guy. | ||
| He just believes he's the guy. | ||
| He believes he's just better. | ||
| And he just, I believe he marches forward with that belief. | ||
| And that's how he, um... | ||
| That's how he's been getting through that and everything. | ||
| Plus, adrenaline is... | ||
| You done an MMA fight before? | ||
| No, kickboxing. | ||
| So you know the adrenaline, especially in an MMA fight, dog, that adrenaline is nuts. | ||
| Even the Paul Craig, I didn't feel it like that, but the minute you get back there to the back and that adrenaline's gone... | ||
| Yeah, you see guys walking out of there. | ||
| They're walking out of the locker room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're like, oh, oh, oh. | |
| Limping all of a sudden. | ||
| He's walking, he's walking, he's walking fine. | ||
| He's all hyping and everything like that. | ||
| The crazy thing is the Cavs. | ||
| The calf kick has changed everything. | ||
| It's so wild that this one kick that was always available. | ||
| Always. | ||
| All of a sudden, over the last few years, has become like a primary weapon. | ||
| Nasty. | ||
| Like Adesanya in Pajera. | ||
| He said that he fucked up his leg in that first round. | ||
| Like Israel said, part of the problem was I couldn't move. | ||
| He got my leg. | ||
| Even though Israel looked like he was fine, it's just because he's a champion. | ||
| Because he knows how to hide it. | ||
| And he knows how to keep moving, buddy. | ||
| It's like that leg was just compromised from too many of those chopping low kicks. | ||
| He just chop, chop, chop. | ||
| OSP got me with the leg with them whenever we fought. | ||
| And then the fight, they didn't feel like, you know what I mean? | ||
| They didn't really feel like anything. | ||
| After the fight, oh my god. | ||
| You know, maybe like the last one, maybe one of the last ones, it was like a stinging, like more like a little stinging feeling. | ||
| But, yeah, but that's the thing. | ||
| Once you see something's working, people are going to start taking it. | ||
| That's what made me realize, like, There are other people that study the fights and study things like I do because people will start to implement those things. | ||
| They'll start to implement it more and more and more and more. | ||
| Eventually, people are going to start implementing the jab more and more and more. | ||
| I'm wondering how many people... | ||
| You saw the Khalil Roundtree fight where he sidekicked that dude and made him lose his knee up. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not a fan. | ||
| That one scares me. | ||
| I'm not a fan of that one. | ||
| I'm not a fan of that one either. | ||
| It's like, I get it. | ||
| It's there. | ||
| It should be used because it is a real technique. | ||
| Well, if that's the case, then why can't we just punch in the back of the head then? | ||
| I think you should be able to. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense to me that you can't hit in the back of the head. | ||
| Well, they treat that because it's a weak spot, right? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| It's almost like me hitting the nut, you know? | ||
| Yeah, but I mean, isn't your whole fucking head a vulnerable spot? | ||
| I guess there's maybe a vulnerable spot that's more vulnerable in the back of your head, but shouldn't that be protected? | ||
| You don't really have a way to defend the back of your head, though. | ||
| Yeah, but then if someone gets to that spot, you're fucked. | ||
| I mean, that should be what it is, because that's reality. | ||
| Do you remember the early days? | ||
| I don't know if you ever saw this, but Henzo Gracie had a fight early on in one of those organizations that didn't go anywhere, like World Combat something or another. | ||
| And he took this guy down who was a judo guy. | ||
| He took him down, got his back. | ||
| And in those days, you could elbow the back of the head. | ||
| And Henzo just got his back. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| And then put him out. | ||
| And then I think he strangled him after he elbowed him in the back of the head. | ||
| But it's like having that ability to hit that spot, that's real. | ||
| It's also, this is the sport of fighting. | ||
| That's a fucking real vulnerability. | ||
| The back of the head's a real... | ||
| The idea that a guy can cover up like this and you have to go around that in this one glaring spot in the back of the head exists. | ||
| And doctors will tell you, oh, you can't get hit there. | ||
| But there's a lot of times where it's okay to get hit there. | ||
| Like, here's one. | ||
| Head kicks. | ||
| A lot of head kicks. | ||
| They wrap around. | ||
| They catch you right at the back of the head. | ||
| We know this. | ||
| We know this with wheel kicks. | ||
| We know this with roundhouse kicks. | ||
| Hooks. | ||
|
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Hooks. | |
| Happens all the time. | ||
| And it's okay. | ||
| But some people, like, I don't know. | ||
| I think it's more so frowned upon on the ground. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| I mean, I guess that it's more dangerous. | ||
| But then that's also a good spot to hit then. | ||
| When Jon Jones finished Alexander Gustin in the second fight, the way of those shots to the back of the head Let's look at it. | ||
| Let's look at it. | ||
| There's a lot of times where guys are in the middle of the heat of battle. | ||
| They let that aside. | ||
| Some of them definitely, when someone's raining down blows and a guy's covering up and turning, some of them are going back there. | ||
| I just don't... | ||
| I get... | ||
| A doctor, I understand. | ||
| If they would come to me and say, no, this is a particularly vulnerable area, okay, well then stop fighting. | ||
| You shouldn't be fighting. | ||
| No one should fight then. | ||
| Because your whole head's a vulnerable area. | ||
| If you get wheel kicked in the temple, that's a vulnerable fucking area. | ||
| This little skinny-ass piece of bone that protects the side of your head and someone swings a giant heel and it comes slamming right into there. | ||
| I remember Jorge Surratt. | ||
| He did that to, I think it was Ben Lagley. | ||
| He fought him back in the days. | ||
| One of my spinal partners was like... | ||
| My first sparring partner, when I first came in, he did a wheel kick. | ||
| His leg like wrapped around and, bow, clacked him in the back of the head. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he kind of fell off. | ||
| That's a bad one. | ||
| That happens all the time. | ||
| I remember when Edson Barboza wheel kicked Terry Edom in the head. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Stiff. | ||
| And we were talking in the commentary saying that Terry's got to do something to take more chances, but he could risk getting knocked out. | ||
| Yeah, risk getting knocked out! | ||
| Yeah, right when it happened. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| I think that might have been the original. | ||
| And he's coming! | ||
| The stiff. | ||
| When guys go stiff like that, that's a hard way to come back from. | ||
| Those are rough knockouts. | ||
| Terry Adam never really came back from that fight. | ||
| Never was world class again after that fight. | ||
| I think it's like a fear. | ||
| It's got to be some type of fear. | ||
| And this is what Kamaru's going to have to deal with whenever he fights Leon. | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| I think he lost one fight, right? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| One fight early in his career. | ||
| Early in his career. | ||
|
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He got choked. | |
| He got choked. | ||
| It's cool. | ||
| In jiu-jitsu, you make mistakes. | ||
| You know you can get choked. | ||
| Getting knocked out, bro. | ||
| It's got to be different. | ||
| Yeah, it's very different. | ||
| It's very different. | ||
| I believe it is too, so. | ||
| There's a moment in Kamaru's fight in his career where Damian Maia got his back. | ||
| And it was standing. | ||
| Damian Maia had him clinched up against the cage and he was getting his back and the referee separated him. | ||
|
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And I was like, what the fuck did you just do? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It changed the course of the fight. | ||
| To this day, I'm fast. | ||
| Because this was Damian Maia basically in his prime as a welterweight. | ||
| Kamaru coming up. | ||
| And there was this moment. | ||
| Where Damien has Kamaru's back. | ||
| He's like hanging on him. | ||
| He's clinched up against me. | ||
| He's in a very good position. | ||
| And the referee separates him. | ||
| And I remember at home going, No! | ||
| What the fuck are you doing? | ||
| How are you separating this? | ||
| Man, that's always a weird thing when they choose to separate someone or separate, stand up. | ||
| Because he was telling me that I needed to work when I was on top of Glover and I'm hitting him with elbows. | ||
| He was like, you gotta work, Jamal. | ||
| Which is crazy. | ||
| Why do they say that? | ||
| That doesn't make any sense to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| You work when you need to work. | ||
| If you're on top and you're maintaining on top. | ||
| Well, I was being heavy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I was being heavy. | ||
| I'm just zapping. | ||
| I'm just zapping. | ||
| I'm basically kind of crushing this diaphragm at this point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like, oh, you got to work. | ||
| You got to work. | ||
| I'm like, I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| I am. | ||
| You are working. | ||
| I'm not allowed to cook the stew. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cook the stew. | |
| I'm not allowed to turn the pressure cooker off. | ||
| Go make the rice. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You should be able to pick when you go, when you're in a dominant position, when you're controlling a guy. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| I hate stand-ups. | ||
| I feel like if someone could take you down and hold you down, that is on you to get up. | ||
| Like, having a stand-up just because the crowd's bored, tell them to go watch baseball. | ||
| That's boring as fuck, and people watch it every week. | ||
| You just gotta protect the product, Joe. | ||
| You gotta protect the product. | ||
| I don't believe that. | ||
| I believe the guys like you will always rise to the top. | ||
| I'm going to get up. | ||
|
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That's what I'm saying. | |
| I'm going to get up. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| I feel like if you didn't have that option available, guys would be very focused on getting up. | ||
| Instead of thinking that they could just wrap their guard around you and wrap your head around you and just hope for a stand-up. | ||
| Because sometimes referees will do that. | ||
| They get a guy in a guard position and no one's doing anything. | ||
| The guy can't do anything. | ||
| They'll stand him up. | ||
| They'll stand him up. | ||
| Stand him up. | ||
| And the crowd cheers, and everybody thinks, that's a good job. | ||
| I go, no! | ||
| You've ruined the flow of the fight. | ||
| You can go at your pace. | ||
| Yeah, and if you're on top, and if guy's got you in his guard, and he's squeezing and holding onto you, how long can you do that? | ||
| Can you do that for the full five minutes? | ||
| You might not be able to. | ||
| You might relax a little, and then that person's gonna get out. | ||
| And that's what the sport's all about. | ||
| The sport's all about You being able to figure out how to get out of a bad position and get to a better position, and someone being able to control you and minimize the damage that they take and maximize the amount of damage they could put on you. | ||
| That's what it's all about. | ||
| So if you have a stand-up, then you have a subjective person. | ||
| Like, it's up to them to decide. | ||
| Stand them up. | ||
| I've seen people get stand-up and side control, which is crazy. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen that too. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Like, it takes too long to get to that spot, and you only have five minutes to working around. | ||
| I don't like stand-ups at all. | ||
| I don't think that they should... | ||
| I think that's one of the things we should get rid of. | ||
| And people are like, oh, it's gonna make it boring. | ||
| Wrestlers are just gonna take people down. | ||
| Figure out how to not get wrestled. | ||
| Figure out how to get up. | ||
| There's ways to get up. | ||
| It's not like once a guy gets you mount, no one in the world can get up. | ||
| That's bullshit. | ||
| Everybody can get up. | ||
| It just scrambles. | ||
| Things have to happen. | ||
| That's part of the puzzle that Mixed Martial Arts presents. | ||
| Yeah, I think that I was only on the ground on top of Glover for, what, maybe like a minute and a half? | ||
| In a minute and a half, how many elbows did I hit him with? | ||
| For me to actually get a warning to be stood up was crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That was just wild to me. | ||
| And then, like, the whole... | ||
| He, I think it was the fourth round, the fourth round when I was standing up and I was actually starting to lay it on him a little bit. | ||
| He told him, I think he told him maybe three or four times, like, you gotta show me something, Glover. | ||
| You gotta show me, at what point are you gonna stop it, bro? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It was close. | ||
|
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You know what I'm saying? | |
| Because, like, the Izzy fight. | ||
| Do you think the Izzy fight should have been stopped? | ||
| When he had him on the ground? | ||
| When he had him, no, whenever he was. | ||
| Oh, when Izzy at the end. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that one's a good stoppage because that scissor knee was coming. | ||
| You know, like, he was hurt. | ||
| I mean, Izzy got caught clean. | ||
| I think he got caught clean, but I think also his leg was compromised because he actually got his leg to check. | ||
| He got his leg, he got a kick check right before that, which was, so he's already stumbling. | ||
| It's that same left leg that got chopped up in the first round. | ||
| Yeah, but his leg, but he was moving, like, he was weaving. | ||
| Now, I'm not going to say it was a bad stoppage or whatever like that, but, like, if You believe that should have been stopped. | ||
| Right, the global fight should have been stopped. | ||
| That's the thing about being subjective, about a referee being able to decide. | ||
| And some of them are great. | ||
| Like Herb Dean very rarely makes a bad call. | ||
| He's the best. | ||
| He's very good at it. | ||
| And some guys are just real quick with the trigger. | ||
| They'll stop a fight when the guy's just kind of a little rocked, you know? | ||
| Herb, we work for that stoppage on Santos. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I had to work for that one. | ||
| I was tired. | ||
| Yeah, I was tired. | ||
| I think I hit on about 50-something punches before we got in there, before we got the old wave off. | ||
| But after that fourth round, though, like... | ||
| You seen when they poured the water? | ||
| When they poured the water on my head? | ||
| Bro, that was all his blood. | ||
| I wasn't bleeding from my head at all. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| My coach was saying he had chunks of his flesh and stuff in my hair and things like that. | ||
| It was like, bro, what do you got to do then? | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Oh, that's his blood. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| You see the little white chunks and stuff in my hair? | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| If you actually look at my mouth, I was like, where's that coming from? | ||
| Where's that coming from? | ||
| Am I bleeding? | ||
| All of his blood in your hair. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is interesting. | ||
| But that's why the importance of good referees is so significant. | ||
| Because if you get a bad referee, some guys, they'll have a personal beef with a certain referee. | ||
| A referee can stop the fight too early, and they're like, I don't want him calling my fights. | ||
| Yeah, I don't get that person. | ||
| I just say how I feel about the situation and I move on from it, you know? | ||
| Like, Mark did what he did. | ||
| Like, Herb, they do what they do, you know what I mean? | ||
| I'll say how I feel about this situation or whatever and then from there, all right, we on to the next. | ||
| It is weird though that that's a factor in world championship fights, the subjective factor of when to stop a fight. | ||
| When to stop a fight, when to tell a guy to work, when to stand a person up. | ||
| Bro, that cut was nasty, dude. | ||
| If you were going to stop it for any cut, I thought it was going to be that one. | ||
| His eye was completely torn apart. | ||
| Well, I believe that in a lot of other places they would have stopped that fight. | ||
| Like if you had in a smaller commission, like maybe Arizona or something like that. | ||
| Yeah, someone that was in Brazil. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| And also maybe something like New York. | ||
| They're, you know, New York does not have, I mean, New York has a nice history now with the UFC, but when we first went there, there was not a real history of MMA in professional New York because it was corrupt. | ||
| They kept MMA out of New York forever. | ||
| It was, look at that cut. | ||
| Dude, that's a nasty cut. | ||
| That's a nasty-ass cut. | ||
| But he could still see out of that eye, as opposed to... | ||
| At one point, he was wiping blood out of his eyes. | ||
| Right, but it wasn't closed off, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like the Davidson-Figueredo fight, when Brandon Moreno caught him with that left hook and the eye just swole up and closed. | ||
| Even in Brazil, they're like, we gotta stop this fight. | ||
| I think that's part of the reason, another part of the reason why they didn't want to stop the fight also. | ||
| Was because right before that, they just stopped the Davidson-Figueredo fight for an injury. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, so you stop another title fight, take another title from a Brazilian off an injury. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's an interesting thing. | ||
| I wonder if that factors in like if one referee makes a quick call in an early stoppage and then the next fight the referee thinks about that and goes, you know what? | ||
| I'm not going to let this one go a little longer. | ||
| I'm not going to hear those boos. | ||
| Because those boos are real. | ||
| When the crowd boos and you're in there by yourself with your sneakers on going, ooh, everybody's mad at me. | ||
| But to Clover's credit though, I had to technically pour it on him. | ||
| I had to pour it on him for range setups and things like that. | ||
| I was never able to just sit and just power shot. | ||
| And just start cleaning his clock. | ||
| Because I tried. | ||
| God damn it, I tried. | ||
| But he just... | ||
| So experienced. | ||
| So experienced and so resilient. | ||
| But that, again, that's about as close to a stoppage as you're ever going to get without it being stopped. | ||
| When you were on top of him and blasting him, I thought it was over. | ||
| That's what I thought. | ||
| I thought this was over. | ||
| I thought whenever he kept in the fourth, whenever I was landing on him, and then especially after he threw it, I slipped counter with the knee, started hitting him, landing a couple more uppercuts. | ||
| I was expecting him to jump in between us and wave it off. | ||
| You know, but then, like, whenever I seen he didn't, then it's like, alright, now he's fighting for under because he's trying to clench up with me and things like that. | ||
| It's like, alright, I'm not gonna burn my load. | ||
| Now just start just picking shots, start hitting him with clean shots again. | ||
| Well, Glover never loses his composure to win. | ||
| Never loses it. | ||
| Even after you head kicked him, when you had him stumbling and rocking, he's still right here, focused. | ||
| You never see like, oh shit, in his eyes. | ||
| Even when Gustafson took him out, he was still in there trying, but Gustafson just paced him up. | ||
| That was Gustafson, I think, finest performance when he stopped Glover. | ||
| I mean, he just, what a video game combination he hit him with. | ||
| That was like you're playing the Ultimate Fighter video game. | ||
| Yeah, whoop, bam! | ||
| Perfect, three perfect uppercuts. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| That was an amazing performance. | ||
| Then he slipped. | ||
| He got hit with those three uppercuts and still threw a counter left hook. | ||
| Still threw a counter left hook. | ||
| He had to slip and then, bang, counter him again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, that's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Uppercuts aren't meant for people to be taking, bro. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They're not. | ||
| That's a nasty punch. | ||
| Remember when Rumble caught Glover with that uppercut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Sent his tooth flying. | ||
| Rumble, rest in peace. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, man. | |
| Rest in peace, Rumble. | ||
| What a great guy. | ||
| Put him down on one punch. | ||
| Oh, what the power that Rumble had was crazy. | ||
| And the fact that that guy carried that power all the way up in the heavyweight when he was a welterweight. | ||
| 170. He was never 170. He was 170 for three minutes. | ||
| All right. | ||
| He made the weight, Joe. | ||
| Yeah, he made the weight. | ||
| He made the weight, Joe. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
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He did. | |
| He looked like a skeleton. | ||
| He really did. | ||
| He looked like one of the people from Coco. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whenever he did it. | ||
| But he made it. | ||
| One of these, man. | ||
| For real. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| One of these sugar skulls. | ||
| Yeah, man, when I saw him in between fights once, he was so big. | ||
| I said, Anthony, how big are you? | ||
| And he goes, I'm about 230. I go, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| How are you going to lose 60 pounds? | ||
| And that was the real struggle when he decided to go up to middleweight. | ||
| And he missed middleweight. | ||
| Remember, he fought Vitor, missed middleweight, and then came back as a light heavyweight contender and one of the fucking scariest guys in the division. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| A lot of people are silly. | ||
| Wild! | ||
| Just realized he can't do that to his body anymore and he course corrected. | ||
| But I wonder about those guys. | ||
| He developed an illness. | ||
| I don't know if it was related and unfortunately died. | ||
| But those guys that cut that much weight, how much of a toll is that taking on their body? | ||
| It's got to be taking a heavy, heavy toll. | ||
| Johnny Walker? | ||
| Johnny Walker's got to be 240 pounds before he starts that guy. | ||
| He's got to be. | ||
| He's so big. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I don't know, bro. | ||
| It's a heavy toll. | ||
| I think somebody said something like he rehydrated back up to like 237 or something like that. | ||
| I believe it. | ||
| It looks like it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| When you're standing next to him, like, how the fuck are you 205 pounds? | ||
| He's huge, dude. | ||
| I'm just looking like, all right, where's the skinny part? | ||
| Not the skinny. | ||
| So what does it say? | ||
| 248 pounds one week after his fight. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| But look at him at even 248. He's not fat at 248. He's a big dude, man. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because he's actually been saying he's going to go up to heavyweight. | ||
| And he's talking about fighting. | ||
| He's got the right body type, bro. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's got the right body type to bounce between the two. | ||
| You know who else is a big dude? | ||
| That Joltan Almeida dude. | ||
| Oh, he's big. | ||
| He's a big boy. | ||
| He's big. | ||
| He's a big boy. | ||
| He's heavyweight. | ||
| He'd be like another. | ||
| He'd be like another. | ||
| They actually offered me to fight him. | ||
| A 205? | ||
| Yeah, on the 21st of January. | ||
| Yeah, he weighs like what? | ||
| Like 220-ish as he fights as a heavyweight? | ||
| He's on the lighter side of heavyweight. | ||
| I don't know, dude. | ||
| I know if he makes it to 205, that's about the same size as Johnny Walker. | ||
| It's like the same body build and things like that. | ||
| So I think that actually would be exciting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Would be a good one. | ||
| Is there any fighters from the past? | ||
| You look at it and go, man, I wish I was in his time. | ||
| I wish I could fight him. | ||
| There's a lot of the greats I would have liked to test myself against. | ||
| For me, it just looks like it's just a test. | ||
| I would have liked to fight Anderson Silva at his prime, at his peak. | ||
| I would have liked to fight Jon Jones at his peak. | ||
| I would have liked to fight Chuck Liddell, Lyoto Machida, Brock Lesnar. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I would have fought Brock. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Bro, I don't, bro. | ||
| Like, go wrong, bro. | ||
| Brock is a big name. | ||
| He's done a lot and things like that. | ||
| But I just don't think Brock was that good. | ||
| I just think he was big. | ||
| He was definitely big. | ||
| I don't think he was skilled. | ||
| I think he was just big. | ||
| Well, you know, an example of that is when Brock fought Alistair. | ||
| Before USADA came around, when Alistair was on all the Mexicans. | ||
| On the good stuff. | ||
| He was on the good stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| See, find that fight. | ||
| Brock Lesnar versus Alistair Overeem. | ||
|
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|
Look at the size of the ream. | |
| That was a fully juiced ream. | ||
| The fully juiced ream was the scariest heavyweight that ever existed. | ||
| Look at that motherfucker. | ||
| His eyebrows got muscles. | ||
| If it was any man that got fucked by USADA, it's Alistair Overeem. | ||
| I think Alistair Overeem, when he was like allowed to supplement with whatever the fuck you could do, he was so... | ||
| Because he was a world-class kickboxer, K-1 Grand Prix champion. | ||
| The type of stand-up skills that he had, man. | ||
| Brock nervous as shit right here. | ||
| Of course he's nervous. | ||
| Because he's got to try to take this dude down, and the dude's as big as him. | ||
| And Alistair was also a European champion in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| He won the European trials. | ||
| You know, Alistair Overeem, he fucking guillotined Vitor Belfort. | ||
| Alistair Overeem can submit people, too. | ||
| Very good ground game. | ||
| You gotta be able to go from a no-win to be a boxer and no-win to be a wrestler. | ||
| He don't know that. | ||
| Yeah, this was such a good fight, too. | ||
| It was such a good fight because Alistair, at this time, was in his prime, entered into the UFC, and had great takedown defense. | ||
| Look, stops that single. | ||
| And his stand-up was unparalleled. | ||
| I mean, by the time he fought Francis, he was already battle-worn and off the sauce and fighting natural. | ||
| It's just not the same guy. | ||
| I would have loved to have seen Francis in his prime versus this ouster. | ||
| Because they're literally the same size. | ||
| Francis is just a natural freak. | ||
| Francis is like some of the best genetics I've ever seen in the heavyweight division. | ||
| He's the perfect heavyweight. | ||
| Especially since there's a weight class. | ||
| Look how he's putting it on, man. | ||
| I mean, it's so skillful. | ||
| The way he frames off there. | ||
| He sets up that left kick to the body. | ||
| Oh, that liver kick. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| And Alistair's liver kick, that's a totally different level. | ||
| If you've never been hit by a world-class kickboxer like that, oof. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's one of my absolute favorite fighters to watch in his prime. | ||
| Alistair in his prime was the fucking man. | ||
| He really was. | ||
| And people forgot, man. | ||
| The ones that shake your organs. | ||
| And you take a couple steps and all of a sudden you just... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember when he fought Brett Rogers in Strikeforce, and the moment he hit him with a leg kick, you see Brett Rogers' eyes like, oh boy, this is a different thing. | ||
| This is a totally different thing. | ||
| Like, you're in there with an elite, world-class kickboxer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you would have fought him at heavyweight. | |
| Brock Lesnar. | ||
| Yeah, I don't fuck him anyway. | ||
| Yeah, you like that fight. | ||
| 265, something like that. | ||
| He ain't gonna do nothing. | ||
| He'll just try to dry hump me. | ||
| That's all he's gonna do. | ||
| Just try to get a little frisky on me. | ||
| When you think about your career, do you have a timeline when you want to get out of the game? | ||
| I juggle with it right now. | ||
| I'm just having fun with it. | ||
| Whenever I feel like people still want to see me and I still have things that I want to do and accomplish, I'm going to keep doing it. | ||
| Whenever I feel like I can't be at that level that I'm accustomed to being at, I'll find something else for me to do. | ||
| So right now you're just concentrating on excellence, just being the best you can be. | ||
| Do you have a thing that you want to do when you're done fighting? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you want to do? | ||
| I want to get into... | ||
| In the entertainment. | ||
| I like to entertain. | ||
| I like to make people laugh. | ||
| You're a funny dude, man. | ||
| You're very funny. | ||
| Your social media is excellent. | ||
| Sweet Dreams Hill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is Sweet Dreams Hill MMA? Sweet underscore dreams underscore J Hill. | |
| Okay. | ||
| That's your Instagram. | ||
| You're funny, man. | ||
| You got a good following on Instagram and you fuck around a lot. | ||
| It's like, that's a factor. | ||
| Like, being likable, being someone that is entertaining, that people enjoy, and that they can root for. | ||
| Like, people watch, like, where you at, doe? | ||
| Where you at, doe? | ||
| Yeah, that. | ||
| That's what she said! | ||
| That kind of shit is valuable. | ||
| If you looked at an overall fighter's marketability, there's your ability inside the cage that's already there, but then there's the personality. | ||
| And that's the intangible. | ||
| That's what makes people really want to see you. | ||
| And you got that. | ||
| I just like entertaining. | ||
| I like entertaining. | ||
| I like making people happy. | ||
| I like making people laugh. | ||
| Also, another thing I want to do whenever I get down is movies. | ||
| I want to get into movies. | ||
| I like writing movies. | ||
| I like writing my own stories. | ||
| I like being creative and things like that. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| You write movies? | ||
| I've written some movies and some TV series ideas. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| When did you start doing that? | ||
| Honestly, it kind of started when I was a little kid. | ||
| I don't know if anybody else ever played with their toys, but what I would do with my toys, like my action figures, it'd be like a whole situation, right? | ||
| Like, alright, this is the boss level on this floor right here. | ||
| They on this floor doing this. | ||
| He got you, girl. | ||
| Then we'd do fight scenes, but the fight scenes always had to lead up to something. | ||
| So I was kind of like making stories and making things up in my head. | ||
| Already, like, we're just doing it with toys. | ||
| Like, dang. | ||
| I wonder if I could ever create these into, like, movies. | ||
| Like, I thought of this as a little kid, so, like, that's just something I've always wanted to do. | ||
| What movies are you into? | ||
| Like, what's the kind of shit that you really like? | ||
| A bunch of different things, like action, you know, drama, thrill, you know, scary movies. | ||
| I kind of watch it all. | ||
| I dabble in it all. | ||
| So that's the thought of concentrating on, like, later in your career? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you could do that. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| You know what else you could do? | ||
| You could do a podcast. | ||
| And you could do that now. | ||
| Yeah, I'm going to get that going. | ||
| You could totally do that now. | ||
| And it's a great marketing tool because you could talk about fights after the fights happen. | ||
| You could make a breakdown of what you think could happen. | ||
| And just talk shit. | ||
| Just get together with your friends and fuck around. | ||
| It's so easy to do. | ||
| And you got a perfect personality for it. | ||
| And it's a great marketing tool, too. | ||
| Like, all that stuff is great for your overall profile, you know? | ||
| Yeah, I've been meaning to do it and buckle down. | ||
| But then I come in and I see studios, like, yo, set up. | ||
| And I'll be like, I don't have it set up. | ||
| Maybe I should get it first. | ||
| Well, I started out in my living room on a laptop. | ||
| I mean, it was just me and my friends. | ||
| It was the most low-tech setup ever. | ||
| Web camera, you know, like, fucking Ethernet cable into the laptop. | ||
| It was so low-tech. | ||
| Like, you just need to start. | ||
| And then eventually, you're like, you know what? | ||
| We need better chairs. | ||
| Eventually, you'd be like, you know what? | ||
| We need, like, a real table that has, like, microphones that come out of the table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, we need some lighting in this room. | ||
| This room's got bullshit lighting. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| We need better cameras. | ||
| You know, we need that and then it'll all Yeah, but the most important thing is just to start doing it like everybody thinks that they look at all these Podcasts that are like real successful and they go oh I have to have a setup like that like no No, just gotta just you set a fucking iPhone up in front of you on a table And just talk to it. | ||
| Just talk into it. | ||
| You could just do it on Instagram. | ||
| It's not hard to do. | ||
| You could just start. | ||
| And then once you get started, people go, hey, when are you doing those again? | ||
| And people get excited about it and they want to see it. | ||
| And then you just build. | ||
| Just build. | ||
| Just keep doing it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I'm going to get those started. | ||
| That's one of the plans whenever I got back home after I got done. | ||
| Let me know. | ||
| Let me know. | ||
| And I'll put it up on Instagram. | ||
| But you definitely could do that. | ||
| You definitely could do that. | ||
| And that's also another good source of revenue. | ||
| You could get more money coming in that way. | ||
| And, you know, if a fighter—like, look at Chael Sonnen. | ||
| Chael Sonnen has done a fantastic job of doing that. | ||
| He breaks down fights, has his videos, they're all super popular, and, you know, makes that transition into commentary as well. | ||
| It's a smart thing to do for a fighter, it really is. | ||
| Because everybody wants to hear perspective on this sport, because it's such, you know, you got the people that train, And the people that fight, and then you got other people that just like watching. | ||
| And the other people that just like watching, they kind of don't know a lot of the shit that's going on. | ||
| And if they get an insight from a world champion like yourself who explains what this is like and explains what's wrong with this, explains why this should have been different, explains what he could have done, that's so valuable to people. | ||
| And so to get someone who's doing it, like, really no one right now in the championship level is doing a podcast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Are there? | ||
| No, Aljo's doing it. | ||
| Aljo's doing it. | ||
| He does it. | ||
| He's the only one. | ||
| Izzy's doing it. | ||
| Izzy's doing his own podcast? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He does breakdowns. | ||
| He does reaction videos. | ||
| He just did it from my last fight. | ||
| Volk does. | ||
| Volk's been doing breakdowns. | ||
| He does a cooking show. | ||
| Volkanovski? | ||
| Yes, he makes some good shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He makes some good shit. | |
| He makes some good shit, yeah. | ||
| What do you think about that fight with him and Makhachev? | ||
| I think that's a good fight. | ||
| I think it's a good fight. | ||
| It's a crazy fight, right? | ||
| It's a crazy fight, yeah. | ||
| To go right from, like, 145-pound champion to the first title defense at 155 for Makhachev. | ||
| That's a crazy fight, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's this weekend. | ||
| Bro, it's crazy. | ||
| Honestly, just mainly I think a lot of it is because of how Islam beat Charles. | ||
| Like, nobody saw that coming. | ||
| I thought it was going to be a tough fight. | ||
| I thought it was going to be a tough fight, too. | ||
| He hurt him on the feet. | ||
| On the feet. | ||
| On the feet. | ||
| Beat him with it. | ||
| Beat him standing and then followed him to where everybody thought he would be safe at. | ||
| I've seen a clip of that choke that he did. | ||
| I know how that choke was so tight now. | ||
| Because most people finish a head and arm triangle, they go into the elbow. | ||
| The bicep, yeah. | ||
| He went up higher. | ||
| He went up higher. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Tighter squeeze into it. | ||
| Well, I think his squeeze is just phenomenal. | ||
| Because if you see the way he tapped Drew Dober too, the same sort of situation. | ||
| He gets guys on the ground and I think it's just a next level power and squeeze. | ||
| Some dudes just have next level squeeze. | ||
| And next level grappling power. | ||
| And he's developed that his whole life. | ||
| He's also enormous for 155. He's about as big as you can get and safely make 155 pounds. | ||
| I've never seen him in person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's big. | |
| He's about 190. He looks to me like a welterweight. | ||
| Where does Volk walk around at? | ||
| Can't be nearly that high. | ||
| Volk is 5'6". | ||
|
unidentified
|
170? | |
| I think he was a big dude before. | ||
| He was. | ||
| He was a big rugby player. | ||
| He got big fucking legs. | ||
| He's tough as shit, man. | ||
| He's fast as fuck. | ||
| Fast as fuck. | ||
| He's fast as fuck. | ||
| And I realized that in the Holloway fight. | ||
| The last one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I was there, and I was actually watching it live. | ||
| And, you know, Max is fast in his own right. | ||
| It's just like, bro, every time Max twitched, like, smallest of twitch, smallest of twitch, bang, he exploded. | ||
| And he beat him to the punch every time. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| It was crazy, dude. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| It was a big leap up. | ||
| Like, when you go to their first fight and then you go to their last fight, you see a different Volkanovski. | ||
| Completely different fighter. | ||
| He's on a whole nother level now. | ||
| That guy's drive, his fucking drive is top of the food chain. | ||
| That's why I think he wins. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I think he wins. | ||
| You think he wins over Makachev? | ||
| I think he wins. | ||
| Wow, that's interesting that you say that. | ||
| Because he's probably a heavy betting underdog, if I had to guess. | ||
| If I had to guess, he's at least a two to one underdog. | ||
| What's the betting odds for this weekend? | ||
| I think if he comes out loose, creative, standing out to start, I think he catches him with something big. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| He can either cut him open or he can put some damage on him early. | ||
| That changes the fight. | ||
| I think that's the main thing he's got to do is put some type of damage on him. | ||
| Get that respect out the gate. | ||
| I think he can do it. | ||
| What do we got for the odds? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They don't have it listed on the UFC set. | |
| I'm going to have to check a betting site. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The thing about... | ||
| Makachev, he might be looking at him like it's an easy win. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because he's been saying a lot of shit. | ||
| It might just be talk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, short man, what is short man going to do to me? | |
| You know, like he's been talking shit about him, about how he's little, and the 145-pounders are a big difference between that and 155, which is true. | ||
| But the other thing that's true is a lot of times when guys are cutting weight to get to 145 pounds, they're diminishing their abilities. | ||
| You might see a better Volkanovski at 155. Even though he's the best of the best at 145, he might be doing that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Big favorite. | |
| Are you joking, bro? | ||
| What? | ||
| That's a big favorite. | ||
| Damn, we're not allowed to bet on fights. | ||
| So he's plus... | ||
| I know, that sucks. | ||
| That's plus 290 for Makachev, and Volkanovski is 375. Minus 375. What is Volkanovski for the finish? | ||
| Oh, that's got to be like a fucking, that's got to be crazy odds. | ||
| Last year I could find that somewhere too. | ||
| That's got to be crazy odds. | ||
| What is going on in the Yair Rodriguez? | ||
| Let me see what the odds are on that. | ||
| I think if he hits him, I think he catches him, especially like that right hand is fast and sharp. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fast. | |
| I think that left hook is sharp and nasty too. | ||
| So I think if he hits him with one of those and then he starts working the legs, that's a long night for Islam. | ||
| It is. | ||
| However, I know MMA and math doesn't really work, but if you look at Brian Ortega's fight with Volkanovski, Brian Ortega almost finished him twice. | ||
| He got so close to that mounted guillotine. | ||
| That's a jiu-jitsu based guy. | ||
| Yes, but same techniques. | ||
| I think it's a little different. | ||
| But top game pressure and crushing with that guillotine is what Ortega almost got him with. | ||
| I don't know if Volkanovski survives if Makachev gets him in that same exact spot. | ||
| What? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| The website, a different website. | ||
| I would not name it. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It has the odds way different. | |
| Hmm. | ||
| Opposite, almost. | ||
| Bet on both. | ||
| How is that? | ||
| Go bet on both. | ||
| The one I checked before would have been printed maybe a couple days ago, and this is updated live. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So maybe the betting got so far the other way that they've switched it. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| I might have to check a third site now to see what this is. | ||
| Because this has Makachev's favorite to win inside the distance. | ||
| Right. | ||
| This is also favorite to win inside five rounds. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Wins by submission would be the highest bet here. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I'll check something else. | |
| Look at the draw. | ||
| Plus 6,600. | ||
| It's almost always worth throwing money on the draw in case it happens. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, weird. | |
| Damn. | ||
| If only, if only. | ||
| 282. It's more valuable than we all knew. | ||
| I fucking hate that they took away gambling. | ||
| I feel like you should be able to bet on yourself. | ||
| I would love it if, like, you're fighting someone and we said Jamal Hill just bet a million dollars on himself. | ||
| Like, oh! | ||
| That adds to the fight. | ||
| It makes it more exciting. | ||
| Justin James. | ||
| Yeah, you should be able to bet on yourself. | ||
| But the thing that fucked everybody up was this whole thing with that one fighter that looks like he took a dive. | ||
| Krause. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, Krause is cornering this guy. | ||
| Now no one from Krause's team can even compete in the UFC. You have to leave his camp if you want to fight in the UFC, which is crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy because if you can't gamble, what difference does it make where you're training? | ||
| If you can't gamble, you just made a rule that said they can't gamble. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So why are you telling them they can't train with this camp anymore? | ||
| That doesn't make any sense. | ||
| And they're saying he's suspended as a corner. | ||
| Okay, but what about training from that gym? | ||
| You can't train from that gym? | ||
| That doesn't make any sense. | ||
| You can't train a guy in a way that it's an unfair advantage. | ||
| So what's the point? | ||
| Why can't these guys from that gym? | ||
| If you're going to say Krause can't corner him, fine. | ||
| Just influence, I guess. | ||
| What kind of influence if there's no gambling? | ||
| If the gambling's not legal anymore? | ||
| You made gambling illegal. | ||
| So why are you penalizing these young fighters? | ||
| They don't have anything to do with that. | ||
| And they're coming out of this camp. | ||
| And you're also, what if the guy's innocent? | ||
| Okay, what if it turns out, because there's an investigation, what if it turns out he's innocent? | ||
| You've destroyed his livelihood. | ||
| You've destroyed his gym. | ||
| You've destroyed his reputation. | ||
| And we don't even know what the reality of the situation is. | ||
| The allegations are not good. | ||
| The allegations appears like they knew a guy was injured. | ||
| They told people who was injured he was going to lose the fight. | ||
| And everybody bet on the opponent. | ||
| If that's the case, that's some dirty shit. | ||
| That's some dirty shit. | ||
| But... | ||
| You know, if you want to bet on yourself or bet on your fighter, I feel like that should be good. | ||
| That's exciting. | ||
| That makes it fun. | ||
| You find out his brother bet $50,000 on him. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| Makes it fun. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like fun. | ||
| Gambling's fun. | ||
| If they've outlawed all gambling on the UFC, I would be so upset. | ||
| You're just gonna make bookmakers happy. | ||
| They're just gonna do it illegally. | ||
| And that makes people, and not only that, bro, gambling brings people in. | ||
| The first thing I pulled up must have been an error, because everything else has the opposite. | ||
| It has a Makachev as a heavy favorite. | ||
| Yeah, well, what did the other one say? | ||
| Was Volkanovski not a heavy favorite? | ||
| Yeah, this is the first thing I pulled up, is this. | ||
| And this must be an error. | ||
| They must have just switched that on an accident. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So it's Volkanovski is the favorite. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the regular one that you just pulled up, the other site... | ||
|
unidentified
|
This has the site. | |
| This has betting across all websites. | ||
| That's Makachev is a four-to-one favorite. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Which makes more sense. | ||
| And you got Yair Rodriguez. | ||
| He's a favorite over Josh Emmett. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Five to one here. | |
| Five to one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Interesting. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| You know, another fucking great fight on that card is Jack Della Maddalena and Randy Brown. | ||
| That's a great fight. | ||
| That's a great fight. | ||
| That Della Maddalena's a bad motherfucker. | ||
| And Randy Brown is long and talented. | ||
| I really like that fight. | ||
| His nose gets me every time. | ||
| Oh, it's fucked? | ||
| You don't want that nose? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That nose is smashed and never fixed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's a hard-nosed dude, man. | ||
| And he's going to be fighting in Australia. | ||
| Which, for a guy who lives there, man, that's such an advantage of not having to get on that 16-hour flight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That 16-hour flight will fuck up multiple days. | ||
| Because even though you're training, you're trying to get... | ||
| You're still... | ||
| How hard was the flight to Brazil? | ||
| It wasn't hard at all. | ||
| No? | ||
| Going down there, we actually flew out at night, so... | ||
| I fell asleep before the plane even left the ground. | ||
| And by the time I had woken up, we had already been up in the air for like five hours. | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| So it was just like, wake up, we got about four and a half hours. | ||
| I watched like two movies and we were there. | ||
| And so then once you got in, do you train immediately to acclimate your body? | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| I just chill. | ||
| How many days in advance of the fight did you get there? | ||
| I got there Monday. | ||
| We left Sunday and we arrived Monday morning. | ||
| Wow, that's not much time at all. | ||
| Have you ever had a fight at a heavy altitude? | ||
| Not heavy, but higher. | ||
| I know Vegas is higher altitude than Michigan is. | ||
| Oh, is it though? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like 1500. Yeah, but that doesn't really factor in. | |
| It would really factor, does it? | ||
| It might. | ||
| Did you notice it at all? | ||
| I felt a little different. | ||
| The thing I'm thinking about is when Cain Velasquez... | ||
| The Mexico City one is a rough one, because Fabricio Verdum, he got there real early, like months early, and he trained in the mountains above Mexico City. | ||
| Fabricio did it the right way. | ||
| He spent a lot of time. | ||
| That's a guy that doesn't get the credit that he deserves. | ||
| I believe Fabricio Verdum should go down as one of the all-time great MMA fighters. | ||
| One of all-time great heavyweight champions. | ||
| If you look at all the heavyweight champions and what they accomplished, Fabricio Verdum tapped out all the legends. | ||
| All the legends. | ||
| Tapped out Cain Velasquez. | ||
| Tapped out Fedor. | ||
| Tapped out Minotauro. | ||
| I mean, dude. | ||
| Fabricio Verdum in his prime was a motherfucker. | ||
| And again, that top-level jiu-jitsu. | ||
| World championship caliber jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I don't think his prime lasted long enough. | ||
| Didn't last long enough. | ||
| But if you just look at his accomplishments, just by virtue of accomplishments, you have to put him in there as some of the all-time greats. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| And when he tapped Fedor, when he caught Fedor in that triangle, it was like, oh, oh, oh, oh! | ||
| Honestly, now that I think about it, whose prime in heavyweight actually did last that long? | ||
| Stipe. | ||
| Stipe's probably, if you look at the all-time heavyweight greats, outside of the UFC. Outside of the UFC. Outside of the UFC, you have to say Fedor. | ||
| You have to say Fedor. | ||
| He's the greatest. | ||
| He's the greatest. | ||
| Fedor might be the greatest heavyweight of all time. | ||
| There's always going to be that thing because he didn't fight in the UFC. And then there's Cain Velasquez in his prime, who was the motherfucker back. | ||
| He was the motherfucker. | ||
| But I always wonder, Like, Cain Velasquez, in his prime, Junior Dos Santos, still caught him with one punch and knocked him out. | ||
| What would Francis have done to him? | ||
| Would he have done to him the same thing he did when they fought later? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because when they fought later, Francis clipped him once and put him out in the first round. | ||
| Maybe Francis would have done that his entire career. | ||
| Like, maybe. | ||
| I remember that damn fight. | ||
| That was on Fox. | ||
| They put one fucking fight on that entire card, and he came out and got clipped in like a minute and a half. | ||
| And it was like, alright, see, goodnight, folks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was like, damn. | ||
| He caught one big punch, and apparently Kane had a really fucked up knee. | ||
| Going into that fight. | ||
| He couldn't train right and they made him fight. | ||
| He had a fight. | ||
| It's like, hey, this is a big deal. | ||
| It's on Fox. | ||
| Gotta defend your title. | ||
| And then he goes out there with a blown out knee. | ||
| But then dominated him in a rematch. | ||
| The two rematches. | ||
| Both of them. | ||
| They were hard to watch. | ||
| They weren't even close. | ||
| They were hard to watch. | ||
| They weren't even close. | ||
| Kane had cardio like you couldn't fucking believe. | ||
| That was the scary thing about Kane. | ||
| He never stopped coming at you. | ||
| It was like a Julio Cesar Chavez approach. | ||
| Whereas Julio Cesar Chavez, he was one of the greatest boxers of all time, but he wasn't really a one-punch guy. | ||
| He would beat the fuck out of you, just keep coming, never tired, combinations, always moving, always moving. | ||
| I mean, I loved watching Julio Cesar Chavez in his prime. | ||
| But that's what Kane was like as a heavyweight. | ||
| No, just never tired. | ||
| Just constant volume. | ||
| Like volume you never see in the heavyweight division. | ||
| But still, what would Francis have done to that? | ||
| Like Francis has that nuclear option. | ||
| Which Francis? | ||
| It depends on Francis at what level. | ||
| Stipe 2. That Francis. | ||
| Francis when he knocks out Stipe. | ||
| That Francis might be the greatest heavyweight of all time. | ||
| Yeah, that's kind of... | ||
| Even against Cyril Ghan, right? | ||
| He turned into, like, he adjusted, and we're like, all right, you know, I'm about to just keep in here and chop my legs and took him down. | ||
| And this is Francis with a really fucked up leg. | ||
| He had a torn ACL and a torn MCL going into that fight. | ||
| His leg was fucked up, and he won with that fucked up leg. | ||
| Just grappling. | ||
| Without being able to do what he does best, which is strike. | ||
| Kind of crazy. | ||
| Couldn't move well on that one leg. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Without the credentials, honestly, probably without... | ||
| How do you say this? | ||
| Without the credentials, obviously somebody's more decorated and things like that, but if we're talking like just pure gifts, you probably have to go with Francis. | ||
| I can't think of a heavyweight champion across history that he couldn't beat. | ||
| I think the Francis that fought Stipe the second time, DC said it best. | ||
| DC's like, patient Francis is a scary Francis. | ||
| Because he was patient in that fight. | ||
| Calculated. | ||
| He started, the beginning of the end was a jab. | ||
| In his hands, man. | ||
| You get clipped with one of those bombs. | ||
| That Alistair Overeem knockout to this day was one of the scariest knockouts I've ever saw. | ||
| That shovel hook, you hit him with that left hook. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| That was Alistair's fault, though, because, like, bro, you felt the first one that he missed you with, and you still stood in there trying to swing with him. | ||
| Get out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get out. | |
| He should have read just like the dude from Get Out. | ||
| Get him out of there. | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| I mean, bro, he's looking at the seats behind him. | ||
| Yeah, we call that getting your Koofy knocked off. | ||
| Koofy Jones, Koofy Juice. | ||
| You see that? | ||
| You see that? | ||
| You see that sweat hanging flying? | ||
| You see the beads of sweat flying off his chin? | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| That's Koofy Juice right there. | ||
| That was a crazy, crazy knockout. | ||
| But again, that's the thing about Francis. | ||
| To have that kind of power, it's such a game changer. | ||
| It's like what Teddy Atlas says about Deontay Wilder, that he said he's got that eraser. | ||
| His head and his neck were asleep, but the rest of his body was still awake. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When it first connects, you could see where his head go to sleep. | ||
| Look at the difference in Alistair's body between Alistair and when he fought Brock Lesnar. | ||
| It's a different human being. | ||
| That's natural Alistair. | ||
| And natural Alistair, oh my goodness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boom! | |
| That left hook. | ||
| Bam! | ||
| And then that hammer. | ||
| Put his head down trying to blindly swing. | ||
| You gotta see where you're punching. | ||
|
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|
Hoo-wee! | |
| He just stepped inside of it, too. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Alistair threw it. | ||
| He just kind of stepped inside of it. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, Alistair was just, I mean, he was wide open in that. | ||
| It's just not the same guy. | ||
| Not the same guy when, you know, he's not supplementing. | ||
| First left miss, bro, you gotta get out. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| Spin, move. | ||
| He changed his style. | ||
| Remember he changed his style? | ||
| Like when he did go natural, he changed his style and started moving a lot more. | ||
| And he was training with Jackson Winklejohn, right? | ||
| Wasn't he? | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Alistair? | ||
| Alistair. | ||
| I think he was. | ||
| Pretty sure he was. | ||
| He was moving a lot more. | ||
| He was trying to outpoint guys. | ||
| Yeah, like when he fought Junior Dos Santos. | ||
| That was a good fight. | ||
| He just used a lot more movement. | ||
| He was just more cautious. | ||
| Different fighter. | ||
| Styles made fights, right? | ||
| So that might work against one fighter, but not against the other. | ||
| Honestly, that should have been the approach that he took. | ||
| In and out, moving like that. | ||
| That's the approach he should have took to Francis. | ||
| Chop his legs. | ||
| Chop at his legs first. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| Try to reach you. | ||
| Try to make him reach you. | ||
| Don't let him catch you coming. | ||
| Because there, you got caught coming to him. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Nah, bro. | ||
| And then, I've never been a fan of him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah, it's weird. | ||
| It seemed like he was just like a little tentative in that fight, like just feared of that power, just aware, hyper aware of that power. | ||
| But in being scared of it, he put himself right in the line to get hit with it bad, like clipped bad. | ||
| That Francis, like the Francis that beat Stipe in the second fight, I would have loved to have seen him against anybody that ever lived. | ||
| Including Fedor in his prime. | ||
| All those guys in their prime. | ||
| Francis was just so ferocious. | ||
| And anytime he touched you, you were doomed. | ||
| He would have blocked. | ||
| You put him in the early days and he blocks a lot. | ||
| A lot of dudes don't win a title. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of dudes don't want a title. | ||
| They don't even get close. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, he's next level. | ||
| That's why I was very upset when he didn't re-sign with the UFC. I'm very happy for him if he gets that giant payday. | ||
| They're talking about him and Deontay Wilder now. | ||
| I read that today. | ||
| Talk about him and Deontay Wilder in a boxing match. | ||
| That would be violent. | ||
| It would be violent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, Deontay can be hit. | ||
| But Deontay hits people. | ||
| Deontay hits hard, bro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you talk about trying to find your equal, you found him. | |
| That last knockout he had looked like a jab. | ||
| Moving away. | ||
| Bink! | ||
| And the dude's stiff. | ||
| Stiff as a bore. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| He's got that gift of God. | ||
| It's like when he knocked out Luis Ortiz, like whoo. | ||
| Stiff touch. | ||
| Just right to the forehead. | ||
| Blop! | ||
|
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|
Blop! | |
| And you see Ortiz on the ground going, what the fuck? | ||
| He hits guys and it's like they've never been hit like that before. | ||
| You can see the look in their eyes. | ||
| Only Tyson Fury rises from the dead. | ||
| Like the Undertaker. | ||
| Just sits up. | ||
| And then won the rest of the round. | ||
| Won the rest of the fight. | ||
| Yeah, crazy. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| And then, you know, the rematch and then the third fight, the third fight, he got hurt real bad, you know, and Deontay clipped him perfect with the right hand. | ||
| You see the fat ripple through his whole body when he got hit, it's like boom! | ||
| In slow-mo, you see it ripple all the way down to his love handles from the impact. | ||
| That's the kind of power Deontay has. | ||
| Yeah, Deontay is nasty, bro. | ||
| Greatest one-punch knockout artist in the history of the heavyweight division, I think. | ||
| I don't think there's anybody that has greater one-punch knockout power because you're talking about a guy whose entire career was knockout wins. | ||
| Knockouts. | ||
| Only Stiverne made it to the decision and then he fucked him up in the rematch. | ||
| Rematch, bro, yeah. | ||
| Bad. | ||
| The way he blocked like this was just not what I would recommend for somebody punching like Deontay. | ||
| You're just holding still and lining up a frame for him to just bop. | ||
| Yeah, you're still getting jostled by those shots. | ||
| Even if your hands are up like this, if he's hitting full blast on that hand, it's still rattling your skull. | ||
| That was one of the things that you did with Glover. | ||
| When Glover blocked that head kick, it didn't matter. | ||
| It didn't matter because it's still blasting through. | ||
| But that was the setup. | ||
| That was how I wanted it. | ||
| That's why I moved the way that I did. | ||
| You know, as I was moving him, moving, moving him, and then... | ||
| I'd pop a jab or I'd just look low. | ||
| I was getting that little look low and bang, just put the leg up, you know, look low. | ||
| Is that something you've been incorporating more into your game, the head kicks? | ||
| The head kick, the leg, the left leg kick, head kick, body kick was the first weapon I had walking in. | ||
| That was the one thing I knew I could beat them. | ||
| If you go back and you watch my... | ||
| My first amateur fight is on YouTube. | ||
| I knocked him out with a head kick. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, knocked him out with a head kick. | ||
| Four months into training? | ||
| That was six weeks. | ||
| Six weeks into training? | ||
| Yeah, about six to eight weeks. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, I knocked him out, bro. | ||
| I hit him. | ||
| He kind of stumbled. | ||
| I hit him again, and then, bang, right off of that, boop, left. | ||
| That kick came up. | ||
| So that's always been one of your big weapons. | ||
| That's always been one of my, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's a giant weapon to have. | ||
| Guys who don't throw head kicks, it's like, man, you're missing out on just an enormous part of the game. | ||
|
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|
Most of the dudes who don't throw up, they can't quite get their leg up there. | |
| Which is crazy. | ||
| Like, hey, man, maybe you should work on that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, if you're in a business where people are kicking you in the head and you can't kick them in the head, that seems kind of crazy. | ||
| I mean, when a world championship fight is won that way, like Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman, or like Jon Jones versus DC... There's something about a head kick, man. | ||
| I mean, that is the great equalizer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you got to deal with it the right way. | ||
| You can't just put it like that way. | ||
| Now, as far as timing, yeah, he got his arm with it, but there was no way for you to block a flush, clean head kick with one arm. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| Even two arms are still getting rattled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Especially your kick. | ||
| That was like, you were setting it up beautiful. | ||
| It's a technique. | ||
| Turn it over right when it needs to be turned. | ||
| And you landed it multiple times, too. | ||
| It's like he didn't make an adjustment. | ||
| You kept landing that shot. | ||
| He made an adjustment. | ||
| He did. | ||
| He made an adjustment. | ||
| The thing was, he adjusts, I adjust it. | ||
| And then I eventually worked my way back to it. | ||
| And he wasn't ready for it. | ||
| You know, you can be like, alright, yeah, he caught me with a head kick, I'm not gonna let him hit me with a head kick. | ||
| Alright, now he's punching you. | ||
| Now he's throwing straights down the middle and he's hitting you in the face. | ||
| Now he's throwing straights and he's hitting you to the body. | ||
| Now he's chopping your legs. | ||
| Now he's kicking you in the body. | ||
| Now he's fainting. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He's fainting and he's catching you with combinations. | ||
| Now all of a sudden, now you land a shot. | ||
| Alright, now I gotta try to press forward. | ||
| Alright, step, step, side, head kick. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| Now you get hit with the same head kick again. | ||
| It's like, damn! | ||
| I thought I had adjusted. | ||
| Am I gonna be able to... | ||
| The doubt starts to seep in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I understand that. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I've gone through a lot of things in training, a lot of things over. | ||
| I've had total amateur, I think, I had like 13 fights. | ||
| So I have dealt with a lot of different things. | ||
| So I got the idea of how to process things and how people think whenever they go through it. | ||
| Like getting hit hard. | ||
| Which is still why I don't understand how Glober didn't pause at all. | ||
| Because I've been hit hard. | ||
| I've been hit hard. | ||
| It's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who hit you the hardest in the UFC? The UFC? Darko Stosig. | |
| Yeah? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What hit you with? | ||
| His fist. | ||
| No, he hit me with a... | ||
| Hit me with like an overhand. | ||
| Like an overhand, like... | ||
| Like a looping hook. | ||
| Like a bow. | ||
| Like one of those. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He hit me the most, probably. | |
| Santos? | ||
| Santos hits hard. | ||
| He hits hard, but the only punch that really, like, it didn't hurt, but it did damage. | ||
| Like, the one that swole my eye out. | ||
| You know, but... | ||
| He hits hard. | ||
| I'm pretty sure he hits hard if he lands flush on you. | ||
| The only thing is he don't put himself in position to stick you. | ||
| So whenever he's hitting, if you notice, like whenever I was going through him, he was landing those, you can roll them all. | ||
| You can roll his shots off. | ||
| And I think that's why Glover survived against him, because he was fucking Glover up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, he was a dangerous dude. | ||
| To this day, he gave Jon Jones some serious fucking trouble. | ||
| And Jon destroyed his legs. | ||
| He needed double knee surgery after the fight. | ||
| Both of his knees were destroyed. | ||
| I seen him in a wheelchair. | ||
| Yeah, crazy. | ||
| John just destroyed his knees. | ||
| A sidekick to the knees. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| John is so good at that. | ||
| One of his knees, they messed up. | ||
| He tried to kick John and John slid back and made a miss and he hyperextended his leg. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, he fucked up both knees in one fight and really was never the same again. | ||
| I think he wins. | ||
| I think he wins in PFL. You think so? | ||
| I think he wins. | ||
| Is that where he's going now? | ||
| That's where he went. | ||
| He did go there. | ||
| He went to the PFL. PFL's interesting. | ||
| It's interesting to have more options. | ||
| I wonder how much longer they can keep putting out that cash. | ||
| I don't know how much money they're making. | ||
| I haven't seen them in a packed arena. | ||
| I don't think they have a Pactarina. | ||
| I don't think they can sell a Pactarina. | ||
| Maybe they can sell if they get some bigger name fighters. | ||
| But, you know, Bellator pulls off big places now and they get big numbers on television. | ||
| They got a million for Fedor, Ryan Bader too. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| You know, a million people watching you. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| And so it's good. | ||
| It's good for everybody. | ||
| The more there's real competition... | ||
| How do you watch Bellator fights? | ||
| You can watch it on CBS. You can watch it on Showtime. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I have it on my DirecTV. | ||
| DirecTV looks for it whenever it comes up and it records it for me. | ||
| But yeah, I'm not as big a Bellator fan as maybe I should be, but I'm aware of... | ||
| There's guys over there that are real talented. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like Johnny Elbin, that middleweight dude. | ||
| Yeah, that's my... | ||
| Come on, dog. | ||
| Shout out Johnny. | ||
| He's legit. | ||
| He's fucking legit. | ||
| I met Johnny. | ||
| We went down to Florida for my boy Sabah's birthday. | ||
| I met Johnny down there. | ||
| He's a cool dude. | ||
| Yeah, he's a cool dude and he's focused. | ||
| He's focused and driven. | ||
| He's one of those guys that I got my eye on. | ||
| I'm like, that guy, he could be a champion in any organization. | ||
| He's got that kind of quality to him. | ||
| And a real good wrestler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Real good wrestler. | ||
| And fucking striking is nasty too, man. | ||
| When he beat Gegard Mousasi, I think that opened up a lot of people's eyes because Gegard is a fucking assassin. | ||
| Gegard is a smooth criminal. | ||
| That dude is good. | ||
| And when he beat Gegard, I was like, wow. | ||
| And he beat Gegard on the feet, too. | ||
| That was a big fight for Johnny. | ||
| And I look at him like that, because Gegard, after Gegard had beat Chris Weidman and Gegard left and went over to Bellator, I was like, wow, I guess we're not going to see him in the UFC anymore. | ||
| That sucks, because I think Gegard... | ||
| I would have loved to see Gegard versus Anderson, or rather, Gegard versus Israel. | ||
| I would have loved to see him versus Robert Whittaker. | ||
| I would have loved to see him. | ||
| You know, he's... | ||
| It's a lot of fun matchups. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he was right at that level where I'm thinking he might be the best in the world. | ||
| He was, like, right there. | ||
| And then he went over and won the Bellator title and eventually lost to Elbin. | ||
| You know, there's it's good to have these other organizations though. | ||
| I really do I think that's it's great for the fighters. | ||
| It's great for the fighters to have Financial options. | ||
| Yeah, I mean I don't like I said, I don't know where Francis is going what I'm genuinely hopeful I really hope Francis goes get some big money boxing match get successful then we figure out who wins versus John Jones and Cyril gone and then they offer him what he's worth and And then have him come back. | ||
| And maybe they do another world title fight with Francis coming back. | ||
| I think the market and the landscape can change a little bit with Jake Paul signing with the PFL. Very interesting. | ||
| Because it brings eyes, it brings attention, which brings money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He might be the only guy that can really waken up people to the PFL. Because he's so popular in mainstream. | ||
| What if Francis comes, too? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But who's he going to fight? | ||
| Who do they have over there to fight? | ||
| I'm like, Francis versus Jon Jones is the biggest fight you can make. | ||
| Especially if Jon Jones can beat Cyril Gaon. | ||
| If Jon Jones beats Cirogon, that is the biggest heavyweight fight that's ever existed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who's on the way out the door in the UFC? Yeah, that's the thing. | |
| Who is on the way out the door? | ||
| Who's on their way out? | ||
| This guy's on the way up, like Sergei Pavlovich. | ||
| That dude's a bad motherfucker. | ||
| I was shocked by what he did to Ty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| I was shocked, bro. | ||
| Crazy, right? | ||
| I was like, man, what? | ||
| I know. | ||
| Patient. | ||
| Calculating. | ||
| And so accurate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Accurate. | |
| So good. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| Yeah, he's legit as fuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's good. | |
| And kind of flying under the radar with mainstream people. | ||
| I can't bet against him anymore because I bet against him the last couple fights. | ||
| Not bet. | ||
| He's not betting. | ||
| Gambling's illegal for fights. | ||
| It's illegal. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We believe in following rules here. | ||
| We follow all the rules. | ||
| Well, you could bet back then. | ||
| Right? | ||
| The gambling thing is a recently illegal thing. | ||
| Fuck that. | ||
| Anytime I done picked against him, I was wrong. | ||
| I was wrong. | ||
| It's hard to tell until he starts beating really good people. | ||
| He doesn't look like he moves. | ||
| He's actually pretty quick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| For heavyweight. | ||
| Yeah, I think this is a fight. | ||
| I think I had Alistair in this fight. | ||
| Oh yeah, this is the Alistair fight. | ||
| Ends up piecing him up. | ||
| It was a good fight. | ||
| And this was a fight where no one knew who Pavlovich was. | ||
| And Alistair took him down. | ||
| Wrestling Alistair. | ||
| Alistair hammer-fisted him. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| Alistair had him in fucking serious trouble here. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| So Alistair stopped him. | ||
| And then that was a lot of people's understanding of who he is. | ||
| And then he goes from that and then starts going on a fucking tear. | ||
| Wrestling Alistair. | ||
| When Alistair started wrestling people, that was a bad Well, Alistair was a dangerous motherfucker, man. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But whenever he started wrestling, though, like, grappling, like, actually taking dudes down, putting them on their backs, and laying off that, that was... | ||
| Look, the guy has one of the most incredible careers in combat sports. | ||
| He fought in pride. | ||
| He fought in dream. | ||
| He was the dream heavyweight champion. | ||
| He won the K-1 Grand Prix. | ||
| He won the Strikeforce title. | ||
| Comes over to the UFC and, you know, becomes one of the best heavyweights in the world in the UFC, too. | ||
| And now he's back at glory kickboxing. | ||
| He just beat Badr Hari in a kickboxing fight. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| I mean, Alistair's been doing the damn thing for 20-plus years at a world-class level. | ||
| It's pretty impressive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's like heavyweight Glover. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In a lot of ways, yeah. | ||
| But he's just not as old. | ||
| He just got his start very young. | ||
| Remember when Alistair would first start fighting? | ||
| He was so skinny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was so skinny. | ||
| This is Twig. | ||
| But he was ripped, though. | ||
| He's always been ripped as shit, though. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But he was fighting at 205. Chuck Liddell knocked him out at 205. And he was beating Chuck up. | ||
| And Chuck caught him against the ropes. | ||
| But again, at heavyweight, for me, Ngannou versus the winner of Jones and Cyril Gann. | ||
| That's the biggest fight you can make. | ||
| And that's what I really hope. | ||
| I hope Francis goes and gets some big money boxing match. | ||
| And God forbid, if he wins, we'll probably never see him again. | ||
| Nah, probably not. | ||
| If he wins, he'd just probably be raking in the cash. | ||
| Next thing you see, Francis is covered in diamonds and jewelry. | ||
| Halfway naked on the back of Sports Illustrated. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Look, he could do it. | ||
| The guy's main skill is his striking. | ||
| So if he wants to box, I mean, you're dealing with a guy who's 265 pounds natural. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| And he has to cut a little bit of weight to make the 265 pound weight limit in the UFC. There's no weight limit in boxing, so he doesn't have to cut anything. | ||
| Francis had to cut to make weight? | ||
| Sometimes Francis was over 265. I wouldn't say cut. | ||
| I would say watch his food. | ||
| But I talked to Eric Nixick at one point in time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was over 290. Damn. | |
| That's a big fella. | ||
| That's a lot of horsepower behind those punches. | ||
| Woo! | ||
| Boom, boom! | ||
| Bang! | ||
| Man, bro. | ||
| Him back some Tyson Fury, bro, is a bad idea. | ||
| I think personally it's a bad idea. | ||
| It's a good idea if you want a lot of zeros in your bank account. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| But like... | ||
| But to be humiliated. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The Hunter Brand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because... | |
| He said he could have weighed 307 here. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Was that after his knee surgery? | ||
|
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|
August. | |
| It might have been after his knee surgery, yeah. | ||
| So it's probably, you know... | ||
| I mean, I'd rather fight that, for instance, than in shape, ready, and no point, for instance. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| But no, Tyson's a big dude. | ||
| He's big. | ||
| He's giving up the size. | ||
| 6'9". | ||
| And not only that, he knows how to box. | ||
| He knows the science behind the punks. | ||
| He knows the science behind the counters. | ||
| He knows the science behind the setups. | ||
| That's... | ||
| That's not something you're coming into his world. | ||
| That's not something to play with, bro. | ||
| And he's going to keep you on the end of that stick for as long as he can, and he's going to box you up, and he's going to clinch you whenever he can. | ||
| As I was about to say, as soon as you try to wind up big or you try to land big, he's just going to tie you up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And there is no, oh, we'll fight to get Luton. | ||
| There is none of that. | ||
| It's just a restart. | ||
| And then with Francis, the other thing is, like, if he fights someone who's a lesser-named opponent and loses that fight, that's terrible. | ||
| So it's almost like he's got to jump right into the deep end of the pool. | ||
| But I think right now Tyson Fury is concentrating on the Usyk fight. | ||
| And that seems like it's going to happen. | ||
| So if Tyson Fury fights Usyk, you know, that kind of like leaves Francis in limbo. | ||
| And that's why I think they're talking about Deontay Wilder. | ||
| See if that is real. | ||
| Wilder said it in an interview. | ||
|
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He said he wants to do a one-on-one. | |
| And I don't think Ngan has responded to that yet. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So he's just putting it out there. | ||
| I know there was some talk. | ||
| I think there was some talk of Dillian White too. | ||
| There's some talk of some other top flight heavyweights. | ||
| But that's the problem. | ||
| Those guys are fucking good, man. | ||
| If Francis get exposed in one of those fights and can't box with those guys, then all that big money goes away. | ||
| Because the big money is Francis is the destroyer. | ||
| He shows his highlight reel, the Alistair knockout. | ||
|
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He didn't want to do the boxing thing. | |
| Look, I get it from their perspective. | ||
| I don't know if that was the major sticking point. | ||
| I'm not privy to the negotiations, but in my mind, that's the best heavyweight in the world. | ||
| When the guy beats Cyril Ghosn handily with one knee, and then you see Cyril Ghosn fighting in his next fight for the title, I want to see the Cyril Ghosn fight. | ||
| Look, Cyril Ghosn versus Tai Duyvasa was amazing. | ||
| Cyril Ghosn is a heavyweight. | ||
| He moves different than any other heavyweight. | ||
| Anybody. | ||
| Light on his feet. | ||
| He throws that weird front kick off that front leg. | ||
| It's like a stepping... | ||
| Man, yeah. | ||
| It's nasty, too. | ||
| That's from his lead leg. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So it's like... | ||
| He's standing sideways. | ||
| He's stabbing you with it, too. | ||
| And he twists with it when he throws it. | ||
| Like, he's standing totally sideways. | ||
| He's standing this way, and he's bouncing around, and he, like, twists and stabs you with that front leg. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You and your kidney! | ||
| Yeah, he stabs dudes and his movement and his agility at heavyweight is different than everybody else's. | ||
| He moves like a middleweight or a lightweight, I mean, like a light heavyweight. | ||
| He's much lighter on his feet than someone who's, you know, in the heavyweight division, mostly. | ||
| It's different. | ||
| He's a problem. | ||
| He's a problem. | ||
| He's a big dude. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a big dude. | ||
| So the fact that John won't be able to just bully him. | ||
| He won't be able to big boy him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'm interested to see that. | ||
| And John has no problem chopping at John's legs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think for a good portion, maybe even in the early part, we might see a leg kicking match. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| I don't know if Jon wants a kick to kick with that guy, though. | ||
| Nah, but that might be all he can get to for, you know what I mean? | ||
| Well, Francis took him down repeatedly. | ||
| That's where I go, hmm. | ||
| Because if Jon Jones can wrestle you, like, Jon wrestles on another level. | ||
| See, and there's a difference, and this is the difference where people made between Santos and the Glover with me, right? | ||
| Is Jon Jones as strong as Francis Ngannou? | ||
| No. | ||
| You gotta factor that in, bro. | ||
| You gotta factor that in, because Glover wasn't as strong as Thiago Santos. | ||
| Now, technically, skill for skill, I'd give the grappling to Glover, right? | ||
| But Santos was strong as shit, so it took a different type of resistance and defense. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| To fight him off from his takedowns. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I had to actually strain and be strong with him. | ||
| Which took some energy. | ||
| Took some things out of me that I wasn't expecting. | ||
| Because I was expecting us to come out and bang. | ||
| Glover was making technical moves, so it's all right, this step to the next step to the next step type deal. | ||
| That's not going to strain you two too much. | ||
| It can, especially if you get behind. | ||
| But that's different, though. | ||
| Those are two different styles of grappling. | ||
| So that really don't work. | ||
| Like, oh, he was able to do this, so he's going to be able to... | ||
| I don't... | ||
| Jones isn't as strong as Francis. | ||
| No. | ||
| So a lot of those positions that he was getting, where he was getting Cyril gone down, he was just... | ||
| He just bullied him. | ||
| Just tossed him. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I don't think John Jones can do that. | ||
| Also, you gotta think that Cyril gone going into that fight with Francis probably didn't expect grappling. | ||
| Cyril Ghan probably thought this was going to be a stand-up fight. | ||
| I believe it. | ||
|
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I did. | |
| I expected Francis to grapple a little more. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| I did. | ||
| Just because Cyril Ghan moves too much. | ||
| He moves too much. | ||
| How is she going to get a hold of him and try to slow the fight down to your pace? | ||
| You got to grab him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| That's one way of looking at it. | ||
| But Francis said that during the sparring exchanges that they had when they were training together in the gym, he hurt Cyril. | ||
| Training isn't the same thing because, you know, you're not trying to be a dick to your partner. | ||
| You're not trying to hurt your partner. | ||
| You're just trying to get looks and things like that. | ||
| So, like, training is not the same thing. | ||
| Well, luckily now, you know, it's interesting where we're at now because fighters are so much more scientific in the way they train. | ||
|
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But if you go back to the early days of MMA... Ah, yeah, that's how they did it. | |
| Dudes just fought. | ||
| They just fought in the gym. | ||
| They knocked each other out all the time. | ||
| That's why Sean Strickland... | ||
| Yeah, well, Sean Strickland, that guy fucking spars hard. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| He keeps asking me if I want to get some work in. | ||
| I think we wanted to get some in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's an interesting cat. | ||
| He's peculiar. | ||
| Yeah, he's definitely peculiar. | ||
| His style's so different, too. | ||
| I like the way he fights. | ||
| I like watching fights. | ||
| He's funny as hell. | ||
| Yeah, he's funny. | ||
| I hate his boots. | ||
| His boots? | ||
| His fucking boots are terrible. | ||
| What kind of boots is he wearing? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They look terrible. | ||
| I've never seen his boots. | ||
| Throw your boots away, Sean. | ||
| What's wrong with his boots? | ||
| What are they like? | ||
| Oh, bro, they just look like... | ||
| Those things? | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| They gotta go, bro. | ||
| Why is he wearing those boots in his fighter picture? | ||
| That's so weird. | ||
| And it's Vegas, bro. | ||
| It's Vegas, bro. | ||
| It's hot as shit. | ||
| Why do you have boots? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For no reason should you live in Vegas and own a pair of boots. | ||
| Yeah, are you working on a construction site? | ||
| Why you have boots on like that? | ||
| Are you hiking? | ||
| He's misappropriating construction workers. | ||
| Yeah, his big victory over Imamov. | ||
| That was a big fight. | ||
| Big fight. | ||
| And gutted it out. | ||
| Short term, didn't have a lot of time to prepare for that fight. | ||
| That was the one after New Year's, right? | ||
| Was that before? | ||
| It was before. | ||
| It was the last fight of the year, yeah. | ||
| I mean, no. | ||
| He even headlined the last one of last year and the first one of this year. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that was the beginning. | ||
| That was January. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| That was the beginning. | ||
| But he had just fought like two weeks before that. | ||
| And you let me fight a little heavier. | ||
| I would agree most people could probably do that. | ||
| That's true too, right? | ||
| Most professional fighters, most top level fighters, two weeks after you fought, you're not that bad off of shape. | ||
| Even if you've been eating like shit, you're still sitting pretty good. | ||
| Who was even involved supposed to fight? | ||
| Kelvin Gaslam? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And that's a way different fight, too, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because Calvin's shorter. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He leans a little forward. | ||
| He's a little bit more boxy. | ||
| He comes to you. | ||
| He comes to you a little more, whereas Sean fights really long and, like, kind of awkward and gives you different, like, angles. | ||
| Calvin's one of those dudes. | ||
| I had a conversation with Calvin once. | ||
| I was like, Calvin, you could be a world champion at 170. You just got to get your shit together. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You just got to lose that weight because, like, he's such a tank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And at 170, he would be lean and ripped and has all these advantages. | ||
| Same size. | ||
| That's the only thing about 185. Those dudes are too tall. | ||
| They're just too big. | ||
| They're too big for him to... | ||
| When you see Pajera, he's so big. | ||
| And Kelvin's my size. | ||
| It doesn't make sense that he's fighting at 185 pounds. | ||
| When you see who, I don't see nobody, Joe. | ||
| Oh, you don't see him? | ||
| I don't see him, Joe. | ||
| When you guys are staring at each other after the fight, that was a weird moment, right? | ||
| We weren't even staring at each other, literally. | ||
| I walked up. | ||
| Govan went over to shake my team's hand. | ||
| I walked up to shake his hand. | ||
| The whole thing of him getting mad about, the whole, what are you going to say about knocking? | ||
| What about knocking me out? | ||
| Dude, I said that shit months ago. | ||
| And yeah, I said it. | ||
| I said this shit. | ||
| I believe this shit. | ||
| You come up to 205. You sign a contract to fight me. | ||
| I plan on knocking you the fuck out. | ||
| Period. | ||
| You know? | ||
| He's like, well, maybe Hill should be the backup for me and me and Izzy fighting and all that. | ||
| Like, bro, if you want to fight me, like, for real, for real, Come up. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Vacate your belt. | ||
| Do whatever you want to do. | ||
| And make it happen, bro. | ||
| Make it happen. | ||
| I'm not ducking nobody, bro. | ||
| I'm here for all the smoke. | ||
| I want to fight everybody. | ||
| I want those fights. | ||
| You know, I don't think he gets past Izzy this time. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I think Izzy wins this one. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Bro, he was winning. | ||
| He was winning in pretty good fashion. | ||
| He was winning, and he had him hurt real bad at the end of that first round. | ||
| Real bad. | ||
| If that fight, if you got 30 seconds more in that fight, he might not make it out of that first round. | ||
| Ten. | ||
| If he throws that hook that he was going to throw, and that land, the fight's over. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting rematch. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| That's April, right? | ||
| That's Miami. | ||
| That's gonna be wild. | ||
| If I got any, like, my only thing I would do differently, then I'm definitely 100% not telling them how to fight or anything like that. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Don't focus so much on the kicks. | ||
| Just box his ass. | ||
| Alex can't box. | ||
| He can't box. | ||
| Box his ass. | ||
| And you knock him out easy. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| The problem is Alex is kicking. | ||
| He's always jumping with those fucking legs. | ||
| People thought I could only box for all this time. | ||
| So I'm going to be honest. | ||
| If you stay on the right angle and you press that boxing range enough, kicking don't help you. | ||
| That's going on one leg. | ||
| If I'm in range to put these hands on you and you go up on one leg, you just did me a favor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm saying a little too much, but I can say this, and I'm still going to whoop his ass if it ever happens. | ||
| So, if they fight again, and Alex—even if Alex loses, if he loses, maybe that's a good reason for him to go up to light heavyweight. | ||
| But also, if it's a close fight, he's going to want a rubber match. | ||
| He's going to want a rubber match. | ||
| I mean, he beat Izzy for the title in the fifth round, stopped him in the fifth round. | ||
| But do you do that, though, if he didn't defend the belt? | ||
| Like, what's up with all this, like— That'd be like if I fought my next fight and then it was a close fight and I lost, do I get a rematch? | ||
| Just because the fight was close? | ||
| Whatever happened to earning the rematch, establishing the reign, I think most champs that get instant rematches was because it's like, alright, this dude's the best in the world, maybe he just had an off night. | ||
| Well, I think it's because we want to see it again. | ||
| Because it was so close, we want to see, like, me as a person who loves watching, like, really skillful guys go at it, I want to see who makes the adjustments and who doesn't. | ||
| Like Max Holloway and Volkanovski, it's a perfect example. | ||
| The first fight were real close, Volkanovski comes on and wins the second fight, also pretty close. | ||
| The third fight, no. | ||
| But he fought Zombie in between them. | ||
| Yes, true, true. | ||
|
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|
Good point. | |
| You know, so it's like, so somebody else got, they got a shot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, you got a little taste of a different flavor, if you will. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Well, shit. | ||
| Well, the fact that Izzy has completely wiped out the entire weight class might... | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
|
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|
Shit. | |
| It might happen. | ||
| It might happen. | ||
| Think of it like that. | ||
| It does make sense. | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| Well, Robert Whitaker... | ||
| Robert Whitaker in that last fight with Izzy, that was very close. | ||
|
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|
Very close. | |
| Very close. | ||
| And that's a great example of a guy who got destroyed in the first fight and made all the adjustments. | ||
| Made great adjustments. | ||
| Beat Cannoneer, who's fucking dangerous as shit. | ||
|
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Dangerous as shit. | |
| And then went on and gave Izzy a really fucking tough fight. | ||
| That was a really tough fight. | ||
| I liked that fight a lot. | ||
| I think Whitaker is a dangerous fight for Pajeda, too. | ||
| I think he is, too. | ||
| I think Whitaker is actually a more dangerous fight. | ||
| One, because Rob actually does box a little more. | ||
| And two, the angles. | ||
| The angles of the movement and the mixing, the way he mixes in the grab. | ||
| He almost fights like a karate style. | ||
| Light on his feet. | ||
| Yeah, it's almost like a bobbing in and out. | ||
| The minute it faints and the minute you buy something, he sell you. | ||
| He sell you. | ||
| He get you what you pay for. | ||
| He get you what you pay for. | ||
| And he blitzes you. | ||
| And I think he's in a different level now. | ||
| But he blitzes you at an angle. | ||
| He blitzes you off at an angle, so it's pretty... | ||
| This is not taking anything away from Izzy, but I feel like Robert was in a funk then. | ||
| I feel like he wasn't fighting to the best of his abilities, and he just fought right into Izzy's hands in that fight. | ||
| And also, that's Izzy putting it on. | ||
| I think Izzy's presence kind of stunts and shocks people. | ||
| Izzy may look on TV, he may look skinny, but in person, Izzy's a pretty big dude. | ||
|
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|
He's tall, and he hits hard, and he's accurate as fuck. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| He's solid. | ||
| People like skinny. | ||
| Skinny don't mean shit if it's just straight, dense muscle. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| He's got some size to him. | ||
| So he does have some, like, oh, okay. | ||
| Because Rob is like, what, 6'1"? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's just my size. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a big, tall dude. | ||
| You know, I thought it was interesting when he fought Jan Bohovic, he decided to not even gain any weight. | ||
| Just decided to fight. | ||
| He weighed like one night before. | ||
| I think that was a mistake. | ||
| I think that was a big, that was a mistake. | ||
| But honestly, Jan started catching his timing with some of the stand-up, too. | ||
| I think it was like a jab, a quick little pop-in jab. | ||
| He started laying in that to disrupt his timing and disrupt whenever Izzy was coming forward. | ||
| So he had some success with that. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Izzy... | ||
| Definitely should have gained some weight for that fight, because then at the end, whenever you started to get tired, and now the main thing that you had was speed, because I believe Izzy was landing the hook. | ||
| Lead, hook, lead, lead, left hook. | ||
| Was it lead, left hook, or switch, right hook? | ||
| One of those sides, he was landing that on Blachowicz, and he was landing it pretty solid. | ||
| Then, I just went to the rest one. | ||
| And when Brohovich took him down, you see the size. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was so much bigger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But you see the size difference with Pajera, too. | ||
| Pajera's way bigger. | ||
| He's skinny, though. | ||
| He's thinner. | ||
| He's pretty muscular. | ||
| He's muscular, but he's taller, but he's like... | ||
| He's thinner. | ||
| For 185, yeah, he's like that. | ||
| But you put him at 205, he's not like that. | ||
| I think he's damn near the same height as Johnny Walker. | ||
| Is he built like Johnny Walker? | ||
| No. | ||
| Even when he's out of camp and he's like, oh, he walks around 220, he still looks relatively thin. | ||
| In comparison to Johnny Walker. | ||
| Johnny Walker's a real outlier in that light heavyweight division. | ||
| Shit, he's still thin as opposed to anybody else in the 205 division. | ||
| Pejeres. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting if he does that, if he gains more weight. | ||
| What does he decide to do? | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| He was talking about fighting Hamzat. | ||
| Remember he said, I'll fight you at light heavyweight. | ||
| Because Hamzat was like, let's fight in Brazil. | ||
| But he's like, I can't make the weight on short notice like that. | ||
| Which is interesting. | ||
| How much time does he need to make that weight? | ||
| He's cutting a lot of weight. | ||
| How much time has it been on average in between his fights? | ||
| He's had some time. | ||
| But, I mean, you know, I don't know, like, how big he got after the Izzy fight. | ||
| He might have just, like, ate like a pig and just realized, like, hey, it's going to take me a few weeks just to get this weight off. | ||
| I'm not sure, you know? | ||
| But it's a fascinating rematch. | ||
| And, you know, Izzy's just so intelligent and he's so clever. | ||
| And that he doesn't, I mean, he's not taking this fight unless he thinks he can beat him again. | ||
| And he's going to try to figure out some way. | ||
| I think he does. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Honestly, I think Izzy kind of like a little bit more of a Vulk approach. | ||
| Just, alright, I'm going to be faster. | ||
| Let you open up first and then make you pay for whatever you do. | ||
| And then just kind of shut down anything that he wants to do. | ||
| Like from the beginning and play it from that type of way. | ||
| Wow, mix it in. | ||
| Maybe like the threat of a takedown. | ||
| The threat of a tie-up and things like that. | ||
| That's different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he definitely won the grappling exchanges. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And he had him in bad trouble when he had his back and he was beating him up. | ||
| And, you know, that was unexpected. | ||
| Interesting to see Izzy become a grappler, too. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's another thing. | ||
| Like, everybody thinks, like, oh, Pieta is, uh, Pieta will be, like, bro, he can't grapple with me. | ||
| He can't. | ||
| Anybody thinks that I can't wrestle... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Remember when y'all thought I couldn't grapple or couldn't get up from bottom? | |
| Like, it's like, bro. | ||
| I'm excited, bro. | ||
| I'm really excited. | ||
| There's so many good fights for you, man. | ||
| Yeah, I'm excited. | ||
| Was this camp preparing for the title? | ||
| I know that you had brought in a nutritionist to work with you. | ||
| Is that the first time you had done that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| It was great, bro. | ||
| It was a game changer. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| He's a nutritionist and a personal chef. | ||
| What's his name? | ||
| Ian Larios. | ||
| I'll be forgetting how to pronounce his last name. | ||
| Jamie will find it. | ||
| Larios. | ||
| I think it's Larios. | ||
| Ian Larios. | ||
| He comes in. | ||
| He stayed at my house. | ||
| He cooks all my food. | ||
| He makes everything for me. | ||
| I don't have to. | ||
| All I got to do is just eat what he tells me. | ||
| He puts it in front of me. | ||
| Like, yo, eat this. | ||
| And it's good food. | ||
| It's legitimate. | ||
| I got pictures and stuff of it. | ||
| Larios. | ||
| Ian Larios. | ||
| Chef to the world's top fighters. | ||
| And so, like, what was different in the way he was having you eat versus the way you were eating previously? | ||
| I wasn't eating enough, you know? | ||
| In order to eat at a calorie deficit for me, to me, you just ate less. | ||
| You ate the right things, and then I just ate. | ||
| I knew how to portion my things, you know? | ||
| So, like, certain things that I ate, I knew what to eat, and I knew how to get my weight to where I wanted to. | ||
| And that's what I was doing. | ||
| And granted, throughout the camp, I felt weak as shit, you know, just because I wasn't giving myself enough carbs, enough energy. | ||
| Sometimes for certain weeks, I'd just do a keto diet and I wouldn't even eat carbs. | ||
| You know, he came in and was like, no, you need carbs. | ||
| This is what you're going to do. | ||
| And I never felt weak once during the camp. | ||
| I felt tired. | ||
| I felt beat up a little bit, you know, a little wear and tear from doing two-a-days for a whole week. | ||
| But I never felt drained. | ||
| I never felt weak. | ||
| And that was a game changer. | ||
| And what was the difference in terms of the types of foods that he was having you eat? | ||
| You said he added carbs, but what were you eating? | ||
| I was eating everything. | ||
| I was eating steak. | ||
| I think he made chicken wings once. | ||
| He made like some... | ||
| He just made like... | ||
| He made a bunch of different things. | ||
| He made a Peruvian dish, homemade tater tots, just different things. | ||
| But the way he makes them and the sauces he puts on them, it's almost like you're eating at a restaurant. | ||
| It's almost like you're eating at a five-star restaurant every meal. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He puts a little drizzle on the plate and everything. | ||
| Oh yeah, bro. | ||
| And that's how he played it. | ||
| That's how he was plating it to me like every time. | ||
| So it's exciting. | ||
| So you're looking forward to it? | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| If I could've got him to come and stay with me now, he'd still be with me. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I'd rather eat the food. | ||
| Like, it's like that. | ||
| It's just like, but it's all good. | ||
| It's like some of the best food I've ever eaten. | ||
| You know, and I was full. | ||
| You know, I ate chicken. | ||
| I ate, it was just dick. | ||
| So he's taking into consideration the amount of calories that you're burning, the amount of calories you're going to get from each individual meal. | ||
| Sodium. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| And he makes everything from scratch. | ||
| So he gets everything fresh. | ||
| Everything is organic. | ||
| He makes all the sauces himself. | ||
| He makes all the... | ||
| Everything. | ||
| So you think you'll be using him for future camps too? | ||
| I'll never do a camp without him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I'll never do another camp without him. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What a big change. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm going to bring him out even earlier in the next camp. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| How many weeks was he with you for this one? | ||
| He was with me just under four weeks. | ||
| So, when you think about different things that you have added over the years, what about strength and conditioning? | ||
| Like, how much do you do that, and how much of it, like, fight-specific training? | ||
| Honestly, this last camp, I didn't do any strength and conditioning, really. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Outside of maybe doing the skier and then doing the bike just to warm up for my first few rounds and get a sweat going. | ||
| I do a lot of fight-specific things. | ||
| I do a lot of rolling, a lot of drilling, a lot of sparring. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No strength and conditioning? | ||
| I didn't know any strength and conditioning. | ||
| You had great fucking cardio. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Well, I still work. | ||
| I mean, my strength and conditioning was me going hard rounds, fresh body. | ||
| So, like, one of the things we'll do is this, right? | ||
| So, my job was to defend takedowns and be able to defend a relentless takedown attack. | ||
| So, what we'll do, we'll do minute round, minute intervals. | ||
| So, my, uh... | ||
| My grappling coach and training partner, Justin Andrews, he'll come in. | ||
| He'll start in. | ||
| We'll start in on a single leg. | ||
| I have to defend a single leg. | ||
| Defend the takedown. | ||
| Defend the takedown. | ||
| He's going to go as hard as he can for a minute. | ||
| Once that minute is up, we've got a fresh body coming in. | ||
| Once that man's up, fresh body coming in. | ||
| Fresh body. | ||
| So I'll have about five or six dudes lined up, and we just fresh body every minute. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So that's how we do it. | ||
| We go like that, and we'll do that for maybe like an hour. | ||
| And then I go over to striking, and I go and I'll strike for like an hour. | ||
| In the same session? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, then I'll leave, go home, recover, or go to PT or whatever, get my recovery in, eat, probably catch a nap for a second, I go back and I do it again. | ||
| Same thing? | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| Work my grappling, not the exact same thing, but working grappling, working different parts of grappling, drilling, things like that, fresh body, And then rolling, sparring, fresh body, even sparring. | ||
| So even when I'm sparring, well, we'll go. | ||
| We'll go. | ||
| Depending on how many guys I got, you know, you go a minute, you go like a minute and a half, then fresh body. | ||
| Minute, minute and a half, fresh body. | ||
| Minute, minute and a half, fresh body. | ||
| So it's always somebody else fresh, so they can always be on point. | ||
| Then I just, you know. | ||
| I gotta adjust. | ||
| It's interesting the different approaches when it comes to like how much time should you be spending on doing strength and conditioning work versus fight specific work and some people like yourself that just get all their conditioning done through fight specific work because that's what George St. Pierre turned to later in his career. | ||
| Like George, early on in his career, he was doing a lot of strength and conditioning training, and then somewhere along the line he realized that efficiency was most important, and that you get that from training. | ||
| And you get that fight-specific cardio from doing the grappling rounds, doing the sparring rounds, doing the rounds in the bag. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, even like, and then everything, like, I always put myself at a disadvantage. | ||
| So, like, we'll get through that. | ||
| We'll get through that session. | ||
| Now the next session is, I gotta start from the bottom. | ||
| And sometimes it'll be sitting back up against the wall. | ||
| And they got your legs. | ||
| You gotta go from there. | ||
| I already got your legs completely pinned, so now I have to get up from there. | ||
| And then the next minute, another fresh guy is coming to get on my legs to restart me in the same way. | ||
| That's how we do it. | ||
| We work all positions, work all facets of where we want to be proficient at. | ||
| Do it to you. | ||
| So you gotta be able to do it when y'all both full strength, the full guy come in. | ||
| And when you get tired and he's still got more and more in you, he's fresh, you know, you still gotta be able to do it. | ||
| Now what about in between camps? | ||
| Do you do any, like, weightlifting, kettlebells, any yoga, anything in between camps to just, like, sort of strengthen areas and, you know, prevent injuries or anything along those lines? | ||
| I haven't been. | ||
| That's something that we are going to I had a strength and conditioning coach actually for the Jimmy Crew and the Johnny Walker fight. | ||
| It just kind of got away from me because the last year I've really been dealing with a lot of injuries. | ||
| My body's been beat up more the last year than it's ever been. | ||
| What kind of injuries? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Man, shit. | |
| All type of things, bro. | ||
| Elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles. | ||
| I really like this. | ||
| Tiago Santos' fight, too. | ||
| I didn't really do any strength and condition. | ||
| I did pretty much no strength and condition. | ||
| And then minimal, even really hard smart. | ||
| Hard anything for the Santos fight just because I was so beat up. | ||
| My body was so beat up that I just had to make sure I could get to the fight and feel good and just feel healthy in the fight. | ||
| So that was the main focus for that one. | ||
| And it showed a little bit. | ||
| You know, I did get it. | ||
| I got a little tired in the fight, you know, and things like that. | ||
| But, you know, I still had enough, had what I needed to finish the fight late in the fourth round. | ||
| So that just let me... | ||
| That was also a thing that just let me know, like, all right, bro, you got it. | ||
| So just make sure you put in the work, put in, and then you really got it. | ||
| Yeah, even under less than ideal circumstances. | ||
| You know, with injuries and dealing with stuff, you could still win against a top guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That was the whole laying back, I belong... | ||
| So that was a big moment for you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't complain and I don't make excuses or nothing like that. | ||
| Most of the stuff I deal with, I just don't say anything. | ||
| I just deal with it because I really, truly got the mentality of feeling, who cares? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| You need that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a giant advantage. | ||
| Because guys who fret over every little thing that's going wrong and it starts spiraling, they go in a downward spiral in their head, like, oh, I'm injured. | ||
| I wish I was not injured. | ||
| If you can just deal and just get to the fight, that's a giant advantage. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was the main thing I do. | |
| It's just... | ||
| What are you doing for recovery? | ||
| Do you get massages? | ||
| Do you do cold plunge? | ||
| Do you do saunas? | ||
| Yeah, I get massages. | ||
| This last time with Glover, I felt good. | ||
| Everything went good. | ||
| I have a teammate. | ||
| She's gone to school. | ||
| She's a licensed massage therapist. | ||
| Health massage, sports massage and things like that. | ||
| So she came in in the mornings and she was massaging me before her training. | ||
| And then after that I'd leave her and I'd go to physical therapy. | ||
| I'd be there for a few hours and then ice baths. | ||
| What do you go to physical therapy for? | ||
| What do you go to physical therapy for? | ||
| Injuries. | ||
| Just a little weird stuff. | ||
| All the shit you're dealing with. | ||
| So you're just dealing with it while you're in the middle of camp. | ||
| Which is less than ideal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're doing cold plunges and saunas? | ||
| I do the cold plunge whenever I go out to Vegas. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| We have a, what is it, the cryo? | ||
| Yeah, cryotherapy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are great. | |
| I go to the cryo there. | ||
| I do ice bath here and there. | ||
| Like, honestly, for the most part, bro, it's a fucking winter in Michigan. | ||
| All you got to do is just go outside, man. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Get in your pool. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Put a bucket of water outside and just go sit in that. | ||
| You ain't got to put a bucket of water out there. | ||
| Just go step out there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just go step out there. | ||
| Right, in your underwear. | ||
| Man, you could be fully dressed. | ||
| Go ahead, just step out there. | ||
| You're going to knock some inflammation out. | ||
| That's true, right? | ||
| For real. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| You could stand still in 30 minutes outside with 30 degrees out in your underwear. | ||
| Just stand still. | ||
| You'd knock it all out. | ||
| Man, listen. | ||
| This dude's in Michigan. | ||
| I mean, I live in Grand Rapids, bro. | ||
| So you could be literally a blizzard. | ||
| You walk and just see a dude walking out in a t-shirt and some shorts. | ||
| They're so used to it. | ||
| Yeah, over here. | ||
| That's too used to it, fam. | ||
| That's too used. | ||
| Over here, dude, they had a rain. | ||
| It was like 33 degrees and it shut the whole fucking city down. | ||
| It was like, what do we do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's 33 degrees freezing rain! | |
| Freezing rain is very, very dangerous out. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| I was like, dude, I grew up in Boston. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This ain't shit. | |
| This is normal. | ||
| You go to work. | ||
| You ever came outside and not be able to find your car? | ||
| It's covered in snow. | ||
| You don't know which one's your car. | ||
| You have to go to the side panel. | ||
| Nope, this one's blue. | ||
| This one's white. | ||
| Nope, where's my red car? | ||
| Alright, this one's red. | ||
| You gotta go to the back. | ||
| A Toyota! | ||
|
unidentified
|
A Toyota! | |
| And then you gotta scrape the windshield. | ||
| There's a lot. | ||
| It's terrible, man. | ||
| Shoveling yourself. | ||
| But it makes resilient people. | ||
| People that grow up in cold climates, they are much more resilient people. | ||
| People that live in California, they don't know shit about weather. | ||
| You gotta endure, man. | ||
| It's about endurance, man. | ||
| You gotta be able to endure. | ||
| Then we moved close enough to the school to wear it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was a walk, but wasn't no bus coming to get you. | |
| Oh. | ||
| How many blocks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You ever woke up late? | |
| You ever woke up late for school and it's snowing outside? | ||
| Bro. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta hurry up, rush, and before you even get out, you walk outside. | ||
| They gotta try to turn against the wind. | ||
| Trying to turn, trying to hide from the wind. | ||
| People in warm weather, they don't know about that wind. | ||
| Those Hawaii people, they have no idea about that wind. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They don't? | |
| Rain. | ||
| Rain. | ||
| Yes, rain, motherfucker. | ||
| You can just walk your ass out and get wet a little bit. | ||
| Fuck, Ray, what about three feet of snow in front of your door where you can't open your door to get outside? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I had to, um... | |
| I think I posted it on my TikTok video. | ||
| It snowed. | ||
| It snowed, bro. | ||
| I opened my garage. | ||
| Dude, it's like three feet of snow there. | ||
| So now I just got to get out there. | ||
| It's like, hell no. | ||
| Hell no. | ||
| It's a serious workout snow shovel. | ||
| It was. | ||
| It was. | ||
| Shit was heavy. | ||
| Especially when it gets wet. | ||
| That wet snow. | ||
| Ugh. | ||
| It gets sticky. | ||
| That's why you got to get out and get it while it's coming down. | ||
| So it don't stick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because once it sticks... | ||
| Now you out there for your cold plunge. | ||
| Just fucking lay down that snow. | ||
| That'll reduce the shit out of some inflammation. | ||
| That'll reduce the shit out of some inflammation. | ||
| The only thing is, though, even when you go inside, it still don't stop. | ||
| And it hurts a little bit. | ||
| Yeah, it does. | ||
| Do you take supplements? | ||
| Are you taking vitamins and minerals? | ||
| Here's you. | ||
| That's mysterious. | ||
| That's work, too, though. | ||
| That's a good workout. | ||
| I was on my way to training. | ||
| I was on my way to the gym to go do a two-hour grappling and striking workout. | ||
| Hard work. | ||
| I really firmly believe it makes better people. | ||
| I think people that grow up in cold climates, they just can deal with more shit. | ||
| They're just used to it. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I ain't gonna say that. | ||
| What are you gonna say? | ||
| One day you're gonna get out of there? | ||
| When you got a lot of money, man, when you start stacking up some big victories and you go, why the fuck am I freezing my dick off? | ||
| Why am I cold? | ||
| Why am I cold? | ||
| Like, I've been gone. | ||
| I think I left. | ||
| I've been gone for like I've been home for like a week now. | ||
| I've been home for like a week. | ||
| It's too cold, bro. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's too cold. | |
| I've been in Vegas. | ||
| I've been in AZ. I'm here. | ||
| So nice. | ||
| Hanging around a little bit here for a little while longer. | ||
| Birds are chirping. | ||
| Sunny weather. | ||
| I heard a bird. | ||
| I heard a bird. | ||
| It was outside my home. | ||
| It was like, beep, beep. | ||
| I was like, what is that? | ||
| I was like, is that an alarm clock? | ||
| I got to check in my phone. | ||
| I was like, oh, oh, it's a bird. | ||
| Real bird. | ||
| That's nice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Go outside. | ||
| Go outside already for the... | ||
| And it's warm. | ||
| I wore a t-shirt when I got here, Joe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wore a t-shirt out the airport when I got here. | ||
| Yeah, it was like 70 degrees out. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| Do you think that you have an advantage, though, in suffering and being in cold weather like that? | ||
| I think it makes me a little... | ||
| I'm more used to dealing with adversity, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Especially in a physical context, because, you know, you got to think. | ||
| I played football, so, you know, you play football a lot in that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| In the cold. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, that's different. | ||
| Yeah, when you watch a football game, it's just like a blizzard out. | ||
| Like, well, that is a wild sport. | ||
| It makes me mad now, though. | ||
| Like, you just can't... | ||
| I wouldn't. | ||
| I just... | ||
| I get really judgmental, Joe. | ||
| I get real judged. | ||
| Then when they don't have any sleeves on, you think you're better than the rest of us? | ||
| You think you're better? | ||
| Oh, you got thicker skin. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I wonder how they do that. | ||
| Like, dude, it's like literally coming out blizzard. | ||
| They stand out there... | ||
| Looked like they smoked 12 packs of cigarettes. | ||
| No sleeves. | ||
| No sleeves. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No sleeves. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, come on, bro. | ||
| This is Wisconsin people. | ||
| What do you have to prove? | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| What do you have to prove? | ||
| No shirts. | ||
| Hand warmers. | ||
| Hand warmers. | ||
| Gloves. | ||
| Why don't they have shirts on? | ||
| Like, what is the purpose of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know how fucking badass they are. | |
| Just to let everybody know how jacked they are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're ready to go. | |
| Ready to go. | ||
| I'm not going to lie, your muscles do look worse. | ||
| You ever notice that whenever you get out of a cryo chamber? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're jacked. | |
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| If you actually feel, your muscles feel harder. | ||
| Yeah, but your whole body's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
You look like Killmonger and shit with all the bumps on your body. | |
| Are you taking... | ||
| Do you take supplements? | ||
| Do you take vitamins on top of all that? | ||
| Yeah, I take some vitamins. | ||
| Do you have someone who monitors that for you and sets your schedule and what to take and when to take it? | ||
| I kind of do it myself, but while Ian was there, he kind of stays on that. | ||
| What kind of stuff are you taking? | ||
| Like multivitamins? | ||
| Multivitamins, fish oil, krill oil, turmeric. | ||
| got some aminos yeah pretty much have you ever thought about doing a camp at the performance Institute I have. | ||
| I have. | ||
| Because they have so many resources that are available. | ||
| It's a beautiful thing to have that thing for the UFC where the UFC PI has this amazing setup with all these experts and great nutrition and all these equipment and great great facilities to train at. | ||
| I went in and got the test, where they test out your body, how far your neck turns, how far you can bend this way, can you touch your toes, can your toes touch you, just all those things. | ||
| So I've gotten those, and then at the end of that, they give you an assessment like, hey, your body has this here, you can lift here, do this exercise. | ||
| I know how helpful and how deep they get down into everything. | ||
| Yeah, it's about as scientific as you can get. | ||
| The fact that it's available to all fighters, that they can just train there anytime they want, that's giant. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I think that's huge. | ||
| So you've thought about it? | ||
| I've thought about it. | ||
| It's just being out there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got six kids, but it's like being all the way out there. | |
| No, you can't do that. | ||
| Yeah, that's a bummer, man. | ||
| I know some guys, they go away and they do these mountain camps. | ||
| They go to Big Bear or something like that, and they train for months away from their family. | ||
| I'm like, I know that you don't want a distraction, but how much does that take away from you as a person? | ||
| Like, how do you feel when you're up there? | ||
| Like, how much do you miss your family? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think while you're busy, like, you're not really distracted, all right? | ||
| But then whenever you stop doing stuff, and then, like, hey, it'll be something small, like somebody else sees their kid, or you see a kid, or you see something like, oh, my kid might like that, or something like that, and he's like, damn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And you just start missing him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The life of a fighter. | ||
| It's not an easy road, my friend, but you're on one of the best paths that you can get. | ||
| World motherfucking champion. | ||
| Small Hill. | ||
| No matter what happens, they can't take that from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Man, not the town. | |
| Not the city. | ||
| Not the county. | ||
| Not the state. | ||
| Not the country. | ||
| Not the continent. | ||
| But the world. | ||
| The whole planet. | ||
| And if you're the UFC champion, you're the real champion. | ||
| There's a lot of champions out there. | ||
| Best in the world. | ||
| That's the best in the world. | ||
| Jamal Hill, you fucking man. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Well, listen, man. | ||
| Thank you very much for being here. | ||
| I'm a fan, and I'm really looking forward to seeing your title defenses and seeing you continue to chase excellence. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I appreciate you having me, man. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Been trying to get in here with you for a minute, Joe. | ||
| We're here. | ||
| I thought the first time we was going to be in the same room, I thought it would have been on Fear Factor. | ||
| Because back when you were a kid, you broke in the hood, you watching Fear Factor, you like... | ||
| That bug really ain't that bad. | ||
| I can use $50,000. | ||
| I can use $50,000. | ||
| Well, this is even sweeter to do it this way. | ||
| Oh yeah, definitely. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Appreciate you, brother. |
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