Cory Sandhagen and Joe Rogan dissect his technical MMA dominance at 135 lbs, where structured training—including seven-round sparring, self-hypnosis, and stance-switching—crushed opponents like Marlon Vera despite unanimous expert support. They critique UFC’s flawed judging (e.g., three judges vs. 99% consensus) and advocate for clearer scoring rules, like wrestling’s takedown system or kickboxing’s five-judge format, while debating cage restrictions that limit realism. Sandhagen’s shift from neurotic aggression to Zen-like focus mirrors broader themes of ancient engineering mysteries and human behavior under stress, revealing MMA as both a primal art and a microcosm of survival adaptation. [Automatically generated summary]
Where they'll sometimes talk about how you're almost having this out-of-body experience where you're almost floating above the court or the field or whatever.
It was almost like that, except I wouldn't use the word floating above.
But I got to a space in that fight where I felt like all of the thoughts and all of the distracting things that sometimes happen in a fight...
We're completely ignored and this like higher being better version like best no thinker just actor was running the show like it's almost like I was watching the thing happen while I was in the fight and there would be bits of me hopping in and being like hey throw this combination hey take a little bit more of a risk hey do this and then that would get completely just watched and this whoever was fighting that night that didn't even feel like me was the person that was fighting it was fucking cool man wow It was
cool, dude.
It was like, you know, like a psychedelic experience feeling type of thing.
Like, I remember the last time I was on was right after I had beaten Frankie.
It's just a bunch of different parts of the journey.
In that part of the journey, I was really in this space where if I could make myself more war, if I could make myself more angry, if I could make myself be up here, I would have success.
That kind of stopped working a little bit after Like around the TJ fight and then kind of during the Yon fight and then definitely I tried to be that guy against Song and it was like too much of a distracting feeling where now my mindset's going into the last fight because it was such like a distracting feeling just feeling like I have to get myself to a point of anger or upness before a fight where It just became distracting,
where it was helpful before it became distracting in that song fight.
I bailed on that, and I just tried to be as mindful and as present as I possibly could.
And I know that those are kind of corny words now, but there is some real substance to them when they're really done well.
And I would say maybe about six weeks before the fight, I had this moment where I was sitting on the couch because I put a lot of pressure on myself and I want to be a world champ real bad.
Where I was to the point where I wasn't enjoying any part of the camp, any part of the experience of fighting or anything.
And I was sitting on the couch and I think I was crying a little bit.
And I was like, I can't fucking do this for the next five years of my life.
I can't do this for the rest of my career.
And I was like, well, what's got to change?
And I was like, I've got to take this pressure off of me.
And I've got to start enjoying every day a lot more than I am right now.
And from that six weeks before the fight, I started doing that.
And I really think that that carried into the fight and it made me be...
A lot less tense a lot less tight and it made me be able to fight with just like a completely free way of being Wow Is this something that you had previously thought that you could get to that space or wanted to get to that space?
Yeah, and I think that everything kind of has its purpose.
In those times where I was really embracing this war mentality, this very bloodthirsty, vicious type of fighter that I was trying to be when I would go into the cage, that totally had its place because I had to experience what I thought that had to feel like.
In order for me to be the best martial artist that I can because I do feel like I've pointed all of my energy in my life and my mind and my spirit and everything towards the direction of being the best martial artist that I can be.
And so going through that had its purpose, man.
Like I had to figure out what it was like for me to be...
Like a vicious killer, you know, because in society that's like not cool, you know, so like almost like The shadow self or whatever is like the subconscious term for it I had to like experience that I experienced it I figured out that it was no longer serving me.
It was being distracting.
So what do I need to do now now?
It's like, okay You figured that part out.
You can be that guy whenever you want to be that guy.
But now we're being present.
Now we're enjoying it.
And you don't really need to be that guy until you walk into the cage.
And even when you do walk into the cage, you don't need to be this really dramatic, super-emphasized, vicious guy.
Be that guy, but you don't have to overdo it.
And when you're learning something, I almost feel like you have to completely overdo it in order to learn where that cutoff is.
Even in technique, if you could do an armbar, And win every single time with an armbar.
So like you figure out how to like do something, way overdo it, figure out where the cutoff is and be like, okay, I can't do it in like those situations.
You pull back, you figure out what situations you need to do it in, and then you move forward.
So what was it about the other way you were approaching it, where, you know, last time you were here, you had just embraced this idea that you went in there with the intention to fuck people up.
When I would be in the back and warmed up, because you don't know exactly when you're going to walk, so I try to be ready 20 minutes before.
I spend 30-40 minutes warming up, trying to be that guy, and then for 20 minutes trying to sustain that guy.
That's a long time to be that up.
Even in this fight, because there's no preparing for that last hour before you go walk.
I don't care what type of guy you are or how zen you can be or how confident you are.
That last hour before a fight, your mind's gonna fuck with you a lot.
And it's gonna go to you thinking that you're the god of the universe to you thinking that you're about to go get slaughtered.
In the back, before, if I started to feel like I was, you know, having those, like, impulsive thoughts of, like, fear or you're about to go get slaughtered, I'd try to just cover that shit up real quick by getting, like, real pissed.
And that's, like, a lot of energy to do.
So before the Cheeto fight, I was super proud of the way that I was able to handle those feelings because those feelings are, like, real as hell when you're in the back.
I know what you're saying and that feeling has got to be like riding a wild wave.
Like you just got to maintain your balance and To watch you go into that fight What was so impressive, besides the fact that you're fighting a world-class guy in Marlon Vera, and you were controlling the action, was the overwhelming, like, the amount of information you were throwing at him.
You were constantly changing levels, constantly threatening takedowns, constantly switching stances, and everything was, you know, there's, fighters kind of, sometimes they'll fall into a pattern.
And you can kind of predict that pattern.
There was no pattern with you.
It was all over the place.
And it was so overwhelming.
When I was watching, I was like, Jesus Christ, like this is so high level.
And I don't, I mean, for like a casual I don't know if they're seeing that, but for someone who watches a lot of fights and has been around martial arts, you know, my whole life, when I was watching, I was like, this is about as high level as it gets.
Like, the way you were choosing your attacks, whether it was the low kick or whether it was punches and the switch stance to punches, the shot, it was amazing, man.
It was really fucking good.
It was really fun to watch because It wasn't just that you were doing that, but you were doing that for five fucking rounds.
Like, you never varied.
You never slowed down.
There was never, like, breathers.
It was just a full-on assault of all of his reactions and all of his, you know, ability to read you.
It was like, attack, bang, hit there, okay, trying to settle, boom, this coming in, and now there's a shot.
I think that that's always going to be one of my stronger points is that I can make decisions a lot faster than other people.
I honestly think that that's what makes good people from great people because good people can do, they can make the right decisions and continue to make them, continue to make them, continue to make them.
But at some point, the person that's better at doing those things is going to surpass that person eventually.
It might not happen early.
It could take some time.
And against some of the best guys in the world, it's going to take some time.
But eventually, your processing speed will outpower theirs.
So all of the conditioning that I do or almost the conditioning parts that I take really seriously are the sparring days.
I used to like hit mitts real hard and I still do like a strength and conditioning workout once a week.
That's like you know 30 seconds 30 seconds 30 seconds minute rest you know and stuff like that but There's no getting tired like there is getting tired in sparring.
So I'll do...
I usually do 10-week camps.
The first week I just knock the rust off.
And then I do two seven-round weeks.
So we spar Tuesday, Fridays.
I do seven rounds those days.
And then the next two weeks I do eight rounds both of those days.
And then I'll do like six and then the rest of them five because I want to get used to five.
But in those seven round weeks and those eight round weeks, those are hard as fuck, man.
Like I get...
Like I try to get so tired where I'm just like I can't...
I don't feel like I can make decisions anymore.
And I really think that having the concentration to focus for those 40 minutes makes it way easier for me to focus in the 25 minutes.
You know, like...
I don't really know if that's science or not, but I definitely think that if I can stay focused for 40 minutes, 25 minutes will feel like nothing.
He's like the guy with always the crazy haircut, kind of built like me.
Christian Allen has always been my coach.
And he's an interesting guy.
A lot of his philosophies are really traditional martial arts philosophy.
He turned me on to a lot of really...
Like people like Bruce Lee, of course, like Krishnamurti, just like free thinkers.
So he always instilled in me this and tried to empower this ability inside me to think for myself.
Because I think that a lot of people don't really do that in the sport, to be honest with you.
I think that a lot of them...
Get their hand held by their coaches, which is totally one way to do it.
And honestly, a lot of people do need that.
But I was never taught to be that way.
I was taught to be the quarterback of my own game, not like someone that takes orders.
He instilled that in me big time.
So I kind of tweak things and handle a lot of the way that I do things in camp by myself.
I, of course, have people around me that I know love me a lot and care about me enough to tell me What they think I should do and I have and I will listen to them if I if I think that they're right, but a lot of it is like Me just kind of being like a lone wolf in life and in martial arts a little bit and me just figuring stuff out myself So do you think that's because what obviously nobody knows you better than you and You're absorbing all these techniques from all these different people and all these strategies from these different coaches But ultimately
it's up to you to execute with your mind and your body and And so you've just decided the best way to do that is to absorb all this information, but even maybe more important, do it yourself.
It's like, uh, accept what's useful, discard what's not useful, and then make it your own, or whatever it is.
That's like martial arts, you know?
That's what Christian taught me from when I first started when I was 17 years old.
And, uh, And I think it's the way to do it, man.
I really do.
When I think about other sports and how they compare, I don't think...
At the very highest level, when I watch interviews of Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady and all of those guys, those guys are interacting with their coaches much differently than a lot of other players and coaches will interact with each other.
Where it's not...
The coach isn't telling the player what to do.
The coach and the player are interacting, I think, when you get to a certain level.
And me and my coaches kind of – sometimes we'll get into it.
I'll be like, hey, man, I don't think that that's a reliable way to go about doing things because I think building – I use the word reliable a lot when I'm coaching people because you don't want – You don't want tricks.
You know, like, tricks are okay.
You want things that are reliable.
And so that's, like, what I shoot for when I'm trying to, like, learn techniques and learn different things.
It's like, is this reliable or is this kind of, like, a tricky thing that, like, will sometimes work?
I think, honestly, it happens a lot more in striking because I think that because people really don't understand the inner workings of how striking works, people want to use tricks.
And tricks will work a lot.
Until you get someone that, like, catches on to your shit.
So, like, I think, like, let's say, just for example, in striking, like, any combination, really.
Like, that's kind of more, it's not a trick, but it's a set thing where things have to go really right in order for it to work 100% of the time.
And I don't really think that that's the approach that you should take in striking.
I think that the approach to striking should be reliable things.
It should address space, it should address position, and it should address angles.
And those are the three areas of striking and the inner workings of striking that don't really get talked about because a lot of it is taught in a very tricky way because tricks are very digestible for people.
Where the inner workings of things are very conceptual and hard to understand.
I think that there's things that are happening in striking matches that are, like I said, not very digestible.
So like I said, there's space, there's position, and then there's your advantages.
Space is like...
And I hear people talk about rhythm all the time.
Rhythm is just...
Closing space, going away from space.
Closing space, going away from space.
Space is key, because striking happens with your eyes.
Striking is like, we're playing this game like, hey, hit my hand, and I'm moving it around.
You know, that's like why switching stances work so well, and we can get into that in a little bit.
Space is your reaction time because striking happens with your eyes.
Instead of grappling, like if someone's leaning into me, I have like the proprioception to feel they're leaning into me.
Let me move like this.
It doesn't happen with your eyes.
In striking, it happens with your eyes.
I see your punches coming.
I know to block.
So, the more space I have and the better I can maintain and control space or manipulate space by closing it quickly or using it at the same time you close, I close, where I can be twice as fast, the more success I'm going to have.
So, for example, like...
I just don't think that people are understanding space in a way where it's like it is your like reaction time.
So if you get closer to like if you're standing over there and I'm standing here, it's not scary if you throw a punch at me because I have plenty of time to react to that punch.
Where if me and you are standing right next to each other, that's like super scary no matter who you are, you know?
So space is reaction time, and I really don't think that a lot of people see space like that.
They see space like, oh yeah, like you're at the end of my jab, that's when I can hit you.
Everything is about like, can I hit you this and that?
Where like the defensive piece of striking isn't really harped on as much, because again, it's like not as digestible.
And then there's of course like position like my position and then your position my position according to your position so like lefty righty righty lefty lefty lefty lefty righty righty and all of that is important because if you're in a different stance than I am the targets change like what you throw is different than like the attacks that you'll have are very different than the ones that we would have if we're in the same stance if we're in the opposite stance I don't think that people would necessarily pick up on those things, too.
I don't think people super understand position as, like, my guard.
Like, where am I open if I stand like this?
And where am I open if I stand like this?
The advantages, like, being a little bit outside your shoulders on each side so that I can take angles a little bit easier if I'm standing over here.
I know you're gonna correct yourself here, so I'm gonna step here.
You're gonna correct, I'm gonna step here, and then eventually I'll be able to build off of attacks.
But that to me is what striking is.
Striking is a positional battle and it's a battle for space.
And it's not like combinations and it's not set things.
More fighters are embracing that now than ever before.
There's something about that, if you're accustomed, like if you're accustomed to standing southpaw, or you're accustomed to standing orthodox, and you're accustomed to facing fighters that are southpaw orthodox, you get used to attacks coming from different places.
But when you're doing it, you're mixing shit up so much that you can see this overwhelming thing that's happening to the opponent.
You can see, like one of the things Cheeto said, he couldn't get started.
But the reason why he couldn't get started, in my opinion, he's a great fighter, but it was you.
It was because you were constantly feeding him with reads and information, and it was never-ending.
So there was no break where he gets to find his openings, no break where he gets to initiate.
One of the things that was fascinating about that fight to me is that it's so obvious that even though you have physical skills and he has physical skills, it was your mind.
It was strategy and it was execution.
There was a lot going on there that was important to you winning that fight.
And it wasn't just your physical ability.
It was really like...
The best example of what I love about MMA which is that it's a high-level problem-solving and you are creating all these problems and He didn't have answers to some of them and you had answers to his problems and that's a mental game and that that's to me What's so fascinating about fighting,
and that people don't understand from the outside that are just casual fans, is like, this is a complex interaction between two people that move very fast, and any error that you make one way or another, running into a right hand, running into a knee, running into this, and you're really good at setting people up for that, like the Frankie fight's a great example of that.
That, to me, is what's exciting about MMA. And so when I see a guy like you that I clearly see, like, oh, this motherfucker's on another level.
Like, you hit something.
Like, whatever it is, like, we're talking about this mindset change, or it's just this stacking upon skills and layers and experience till you get to this championship form.
There's a really exciting time when a fighter comes into that championship form, and that's what I saw in that fight.
I think that I read a lot of books, so I speak kind of okay.
But I'm not smart.
In first grade, they used to take me to another room to learn how to read.
I used to have to ask my mom, like, Why do I read different books than the other kids?
So I'm not a smart guy.
I never did good in school.
But I'm thoughtful.
You could use the word obsessed too, but I think I'm incredibly thoughtful about the way that I'm going about doing things.
In life, in fighting, I try to be super, super intentional.
I make notes.
Every Monday and Saturday, I make notes.
On Monday, I make notes of the things that I'm working on, like a to-do list, sometimes how I'm doing, all of that stuff.
But I'm super organized in the way that I'm trying to learn and the things that I'm trying to progress in, whether they're technical things.
Mental things or whatever and then I recap all of those things on Saturday made sure that I did them and then I wrote down I write down what worked what didn't work what I need to continue to drill what what I should pull back on because I don't think it's really worth the time because there are so many techniques and some things just aren't worth the time At at certain points, you know, so I'm super thoughtful.
I'm super organized and I think that that's like probably one thing that separates me is because Everyone wants it kind of the same.
Everyone's a really good athlete.
Everyone works really hard physically.
But there's got to be some X factors.
It has to be everything if you really want to be a world champ.
When you look at his system, when he's got his Bang Muay Thai system, and he brought out his notebook, and he showed me all this, I'm like, Jesus Christ, who the fuck does this?
When you look at all of his combinations and what sets what up and the way he has it, I was very impressed with that.
That's just a different level of caring and a different way of showing that you care.
I do that too.
I write down how striking works.
I'm hopefully going to be filming some instructionals pretty soon, so I've really been spending hours and hours and hours writing down how I think striking actually works outside of the way that it's being taught now.
So when you are in the process of a camp, when you set out a camp and you're doing this 10-week program, do you have everything planned out from the moment the camp starts?
I take full responsibility for everything that I do in life.
If I'm not getting takedowns, it's not my wrestling coach's fault.
It's my own fault because I know I'm being taught correct things.
I've surrounded myself with good people that are teaching me the right things, so I don't ever worry about not being taught the right things.
If I don't get good at something...
I like almost feel pathetic because I'm like, man, this guy's, like with the wrestling, like if Banks has to tell me something week by week by week, I start to feel like pathetic.
I'm like, why am I not getting better at this, you know?
So I take responsibility for every single thing.
That way there's no one for me to blame except for myself if I lose.
And that's another thing that I don't know that a lot of people are doing too.
That also causes me to get into it with some people sometimes too, which is fine also because they know I love them and I know that they love me.
So it's not really a big deal when we do get into it.
I write down, yeah, week by week what I'm doing, what my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday looks like, when I'm doing my visualizations.
I incorporate like a decent amount of self-hypnosis type things that I like doing too.
I write down when I'm doing that.
I write down when I'm flying training partners in, when I'm going out to Virginia to train with Ryan.
They're like, so a lot of them, so this dude Michael Seeley on YouTube does them.
They're just like 50 to like an hour and 15 minute.
Hypnosis is where they like calm you down for like the first 15-20 minutes They try to get you super present and then I enjoy there's all different kinds of them, but I like and I enjoy doing the ones where They like almost walk you through like finding your spirit animal or like Going on astral travel or something like this.
I think that there's a lot of substance to getting to a really calm place and And then letting your imagination kind of like feed you what's kind of going on deeper inside of you.
And I do a decent amount of those, which sounds a little bit funky and a little bit weird, but I've had some super intense experiences by just literally laying there, putting my headphones in and listening to this dude talk on YouTube.
I feel like when you're at your level, and one of the things that's exciting about what's going on right now in the bantamweight division is that there's so much talent.
It might be the most talent stacked division in the UFC. It's hard to say because 55 is great, 45 is great.
There's a lot of amazing divisions, but for my money, I think 35 might be the motherfucker because There's just so many guys.
There's Marab, there's Piotr, there's Marlon, there's Yu, there's Aljamain, there's Cejudo's in there now.
And there's all these guys coming up too that are super high level.
Chris Gutierrez, there's some fucking killers.
And everyone recognizes that the level is so high in that division.
And they see a fight like...
Your fight with Marlon or Merab's fight with Piotr and it's like Jesus Christ, man.
If you want to compete in that division, you got to have everything right.
You have to dot your I's and cross your T's.
You got to get that fucking exact amount of rest.
You got to do everything.
Everything.
This is just the most insane pressure cooker that I think any division has ever had because I feel like there's like eight world champions competing for the number one spot.
Any one of these guys could be a world champion.
Any one of these guys.
And in another time period would be a world champion.
Because of what's happening in MMA right now because the skill sets are so high and the talent level is so high that everyone's recognizing that and you're seeing these fucking insane breakthrough performances like every time from these guys like Marab versus Piotr, like you versus Marlon.
These breakthrough performances are just like where everybody else is like god damn gotta go back to work because it's just so pressure intensive.
I reflect on that sometimes where I'm like, damn, man, you're in the hottest division in the biggest organization in the most badass sport right now.
And that's fucking cool, man.
When I reflect on that, it's awesome.
And it also is like, it's literally going to bring out, it has to bring out the best in me for the next rest of my career.
Like, it absolutely has to.
Like, it's not one of those divisions where it's like, I'm going to beat that guy, I'm going to beat that guy.
Like, literally all the way up, like...
Past the outside the top 15, I'm like, man, if you're not on your P's and Q's and you're not working your ass off like you were a 21-year-old kid, you're gonna be fucked.
And so, like, that...
I wouldn't have it any other way, man.
Like, that's what's gonna bring out the best in me, and I'm, like, super just grateful that I get to be a part of it while it's actually happening.
It's awesome that you're embracing it like that because it's awesome for me as a fan to watch this happen because I think it's very unique.
I think it's very special.
It's like you remember back in like there's a Showtime documentary on the golden age of like when Hagler was fighting Leonard and And Hearns was fighting Duran, and Duran was fighting Hagler, and these guys, they all fed off of each other.
But it was only a few of them.
Like, the UFC right now, it's a goddamn carnival.
I mean, there's a fucking massive crowd of assassins.
That are all competing.
And you'll see these new bantamweights that come into the UFC. And, you know, they might have 16, 17 fights outside the organization.
And then you'll see them in their debut.
You're like, Jesus Christ, this guy's world-class.
World-class already.
First fight in the UFC. I mean, that to me is so exciting because this sport...
Is the only sport that you could really name that if you go back to 1993 and you look at it from 2023, you're looking at a massive evolution in the game.
There's not a single person from 1993 that looks like they're a world champion in 2023. But if you go back to 1993 in boxing, You got a lot of world champions.
You got Oscar De La Hoya, Julio Cesar Chavez.
You got fucking assassins who can compete in any division or in any rather era at any time in boxing.
You don't have that in the UFC. You have this It's a complete new kind of thing that's emerging and evolving, and you're seeing these top performers that are just reaching total new heights.
So I'm sure that all the sports went through this, but...
Wrestling is pretty standard.
There's certain things that work really, really well.
And of course, people go outside the box sometimes.
But there's a proven system of what works.
Where I feel like in MMA, we're not at that point yet.
We're all in this discovery.
Who's going to figure out how to make this thing work the best?
That's almost what I feel like the race is right now.
Where the race is like...
Like I said, man, everyone works hard.
Everyone's pretty athletic.
Everyone kind of has their little quirks and the ways that they do things or whatever.
But who's going to figure out how to be the best system of MMA? Because every other sport, I feel like, has done that.
That's why most soccer games look like all the other soccer games.
But in fighting, not all the fights look like the same fights.
And I think that that's just because...
It's in this, like, realm of just full-blown creativity, which is because we're just trying to figure out, like, who's gonna get the best system first, you know?
And I think that's really important, what you just said, is creativity.
Because that's a big part of this...
Overwhelming style that you have is that it's creative is that you're you're doing things that are unexpected But standard like you're doing punches kicks takedowns, but unexpected so you're finding a way to deliver these things inside of these spaces and movements and stance switches and It's fucking wild to see man,
and it's just it's so exciting to witness this growth of this What I think is the greatest sport that's ever existed and to watch it blossom and bloom and become what it is now.
It's going to be interesting to see if Masvidal can handle Burns' takedowns and Burns' aggression.
It's just, where's Masvidal in his career?
You know, I mean, he looked great in fights in the past, but then, you know, you see the fight with Kamaru, he gets KO'd, and then he loses the fight to Colby, he gets overwhelmed.
Like, where's he at right now?
He's older.
Did he say he's 38?
37 or 38?
You know, at a certain point in time, you can't do it anymore the same way.
When I was thinking, because I get asked, you know, sometimes like, hey, how'd you get into MMA? I don't ever have like an interesting story, you know?
I'm like, well, I used to watch Kimbo knock people's eyeballs out in backyards.
Where it would just be like fight compilations and I would just watch for like 40 minutes just like people beat the shit out of each other on the streets and I thought it was so awesome.
That's like what got me into fighting.
That's crazy.
I was like, oh yeah, I want to fuck some people up like that.
I mean, the fantasy, I think, for most dudes that don't fight is they just want to, like, you know, like, be tough.
Like, everyone wants to be, like, tough, you know?
And fighting's the best way to be tough.
And when I was, like, younger and just watching that, it was like, fuck yeah, I want to be, like, so tough and, like, kill people the way that those people do, you know?
I can't think of another sport where people go in and probably worry or have to be super concerned about how tired they're gonna get.
Can you?
I think about basketball, football, other sports, there's always substitutes.
That's a major demon to conquer on your way up in MMA. How do I not be scared of getting tired as hell?
Because it's the most tiring shit in the world, especially when you're coming up and you're nervous in fights and you don't really know what you're doing, your technique isn't as good.
I can't think of another sport where you have to go in and be like, man, if I get tired, I'm going to get my ass kicked.
And that mental battle and wondering whether or not you've done enough in camp.
Because there's some guys that are very, very talented, but they're not very disciplined.
And those guys, you could always see that moment where the other guy is in shape and they...
Start to doubt and start to think about maybe I ate too many donuts, maybe I slept in, missed a few training sessions that I could have gone to, and now I don't have the gas tank and this guy's coming after me.
There's another thing about MMA is the management of your energy in a fight and these calculated maneuvers of when to burst and when to take your foot off the gas and And when when to know like have an understanding of your body like what it's capable of at any given moment And it's one of the things that drives me nuts about bad refereeing like say if someone Has a big burst for and shoots for a takedown massive struggle gets it to the ground and And
then is trying to intelligently move to a place where they could do damage, but the other person is defending well, and then the referee interferes and stands them up.
I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ.
Do you know how hard it is to get someone to the ground?
And if that person is having a hard time on the bottom, they should probably get up, figure out how to get up.
But for you to just, the boos of the casuals, and you're like, come on, stand them up, stand them up, and you just interfere in a fight?
Because everyone talks about the judging and all that.
I always wonder how that could actually be, again, reliably fixed to where it's not...
We're not just guessing or we're not...
And it seems super hard.
I think that the problem isn't with the criteria as much as it is with the actual rules.
I almost feel like...
Say you work real hard, you get a takedown, and there's three minutes left on the clock, and then there's just so much ambiguity as to how much is enough damage.
There's so much ambiguity happening that, unfortunately, because it'll mess up some other things, I almost feel like you have to add in rules.
Okay, so I get stood up if I can make it so that this guy can't punch me for 30 seconds or whatever amount of time it is or something.
But I almost feel like those types of problems only will get solved by rules.
They won't get solved by this like ambiguity where like the ref can kind of make whatever decision and each ref is different and each crowd is different and they're just making a bunch of decisions.
I think that someone, not me, should sit down and really think about, you know, making it really clear and really straightforward about, like, the rules so that that kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore.
I think there's another step that needs to be taken, and that's an abandonment of the 10-point must system.
I think that system is not our system.
That system is a system that's applicable to boxing, and it works great with boxing.
You're dealing with two weapons.
You have just punches.
You have a bunch of different ways to apply those punches, but you have a left hand and a right hand.
That's it.
There's so many more things going on in MMA. It's exponential.
There's takedowns.
There's submissions.
There's ground control.
There's being able to dictate the pace.
There's so much that happens in MMA that doesn't happen in boxing because of all the different skill sets and the different weapons and how they get applied and what's more valuable than the other thing.
I think it should be a very comprehensive system, and I think there should be way more than three judges I think I think there's a real good argument to have like something like ten judges and have because like an Experts I mean guys like yeah, I mean if you can get I don't know Faraz a hobby would do it but like that level of expert You know the guys like safe Saud these fucking world-class coaches and and trainers have guys like that judge fights and You'll get a real
solid understanding.
And if you have ten of those, 99.9% of the time you're gonna get the right winner.
But if you have three, and no disrespect, but some of these people just shouldn't be judging.
If someone judged Marlon winning over you, they should not be judging an MMA fight.
Because either they're not paying attention, maybe they're on drugs, but they definitely didn't see what I saw, so it doesn't make any sense to me.
Even with the 10-point must system, which is a fucked-up system.
But if we had a system that tallied all the different takedown attempts, all of the different strikes, and it was a point system, so instead of 10-9, you're dealing with 162 versus 120. The next round, 195 versus 170. And you look at it in that way.
Where you could tally it up at the end and look at it.
I also think there's something that Pride had that we really should take into consideration.
That you judge the fight as a whole and that the last parts of the fight are probably the most important parts.
Like when you saw Volkanovski on top of Islam at the end of the fight pounded on him, that is fucking gigantic.
You know, there's that thing significant strikes, which is kind of interesting, but sometimes significant strikes are body punches when you're on the ground, which we both know are not as significant as like a...
A front kick to the gut when you're standing up, it's got more power to it.
So what is significant strikes?
Maybe significant kicks versus significant punches.
Maybe some kicks are worth more.
Like a head kick is worth more.
You know, a calf kick, when you see damage, when you see someone limp, that's worth more.
I mean, it's probably the same thought process that Taekwondo went through when they were creating the rules for their sport too, right?
I could see how potentially there would be maybe some issues with people just touching.
But even then, you can't ever really tell how hard someone's hitting.
Ever.
Even a guy like Perea.
I was watching some of his highlights and stuff earlier this week.
The way he punches people, they come from here.
And they don't look like this.
But when he hits someone, their head snaps back.
Yeah.
So you can never really tell, I guess, how hard...
Those types of things, you can't...
It would be super hard to judge from a subjective point, but I definitely agree with you that there needs to be clear set, like, this is worth more than this.
This is worth more than this.
If I get a takedown, but I've been beating you up for a minute, and you get a takedown on me, I actually...
What's the balance there so that I don't have to fucking guess while I'm in the middle of trying to beat this guy up?
It's just too much room for interpretation, too much room for subjectivity.
I think we should have some really large number It's just such a different sport than boxing.
10-9 makes sense in boxing.
10-80 got a knockdown.
Makes sense.
It does not make sense in MMA. You'll see guys get knocked down and win the round.
It's like, well, how hurt was he on that knockdown and what should that count for?
You know, we don't count knockdowns in the same way that boxing counts knockdowns, where you, like, if you're watching, like, Caleb Plant and Benavidez, if Benavidez knocks Caleb Plant down, you know that's a 10-8 round.
Everybody knows.
Oh, he's got a 10-8 round, he won that round.
That is not the case in MMA where there's a clear-cut thing.
That you could point to and say, you know, there's so many fights that are so goddamn close.
I think there should be a complete overhaul of the scoring system.
And I think...
They should have some sort of a conference where they get together with experts and world-class referees and judges and trainers and fighters and Everybody has input do it at like that UFC fighter week thing that they do in July and have a fucking conference where they literally sit down and try to Remap the way we score fights because there's no reason to keep scoring them this way No one's holding a gun to our head.
No one's making this 10-9 thing.
We just adopted it because when we wanted to be sanctioned in the initial part of it, you had to get through the athletic commissions, Nevada State Athletic Commission being the best, and all these other ones, you know, being secondary.
But they had a system that was already in place, so we took that system from boxing and we applied it to MMA. I agree with you.
Yeah, I mean they gotta do something dude or else it's just it's literally gonna happen like every single month Yeah, and people are gonna be upset about it and it's gonna be a topic of conversation until it gets fixed Yeah, there's just been so many fights recently the Angela Lee Macy Barber fight There's been a bunch of these fights where you just you watch it after you like what?
And I don't really mean to throw that guy under the bus, because I actually only really realized this a few days ago when I looked up what the guy looked like.
I was like, oh, that's the guy that I kind of bitched out for fucking up four years ago.
And it definitely wasn't the best interaction with that guy.
But I don't want to shit on the guy because the guy's already getting so much heat as it is.
And that's the unfortunate aspect of subjectivity, of people having their own opinions about things and going into a fight, judging a fight in a biased way.
Yeah, it's not good.
I also think, you know, have you seen Verdict?
Verdict MMA? It's an app and people score from home.
Because if you have casuals that don't really truly understand what's going on, they're judging it.
I don't know if that's the best idea.
Maybe if you have someone who's verified, like, you know, you got these guys that are either former fighters or like hardcore fans, practitioners, people who really understand martial arts, trainers, and maybe you get verified.
Just like you get verified on Twitter for being Corey Sanhagen, maybe you get verified as being a verified judge.
At least we should have a secondary score that doesn't count.
Like we could say, how do the people at home feel?
How do the verified, you know, either athletes or trainers or how do these people who we say, this guy understands MMA and he gets to vote and there's like 5,000 of them, what do they think?
Which is why you would never do, like, a drug test on three people.
You know, they don't do pharmaceutical tests on three people.
So that's why, when you have judges, where there's three people judging a very important fight that easily could be for the number one contender position, how the fuck is that...
How's that okay?
That's not smart.
It's not like judges are so fucking expensive that we can't afford five of them or six of them.
I'm so glad that I got to bring this up for people where they'll like, you know, watch this shit because this is the most awesome fight in the entire world.
It's so crazy that heavyweights are using fours in MMA, right?
But 8 ounces, that seems like the right number, specifically for these guys, but there's a lot of these guys out there in the world, like Cedric Dumbay just got signed for UFC. Oh yeah, I saw that, that's cool.
Yeah, they almost had him sign a while back, which is, it sucks, because he lost like two years of his prime, where, you know, for some reason it didn't work out and he didn't get in, but now, finally, that guy is in MMA, and you're gonna get to see just elite, world-class striking.
That guy came to my gym, he did my podcast, and he came to my gym in LA, and they wanted to use the gym, and so after the podcast session, he did a training session, so I got to watch the whole thing.
Yeah, I think grappling is super interesting or at least from like the way that I've kind of learned things.
Uh, and wrestling is because it's so proprioceptive that, like, you literally, I don't feel I can get good at it until you clock all of those hours.
Like, that's, like, a really cool thing about, I mean, everything comes more natural to people, of course.
Like, striking came really natural to me, but I had, I started everything at the same time, but, uh, jiu-jitsu was so proprioceptive that it, like, it wasn't natural for me.
Like, I grew up playing basketball, like, everything is hand-eyed coordination, you know, moving your body.
Uh, But wrestling and grappling, it's almost like when you learn a different language and you always have that accent.
You know what I mean?
Where it's like, oh, that guy didn't grow up doing that.
Because I can see by the way that he just does really small, nuancy things.
And you can't get rid of it unless you just, like, clock hours and hours and hours of it.
Yeah, I think for some people, and that's why I said maybe it's because just the way, like, I just naturally picked up striking really easy, too, but...
And it's also, like, guys who are used to grappling, they're used to moving their body in a very specific way, and then all of a sudden they've got a snap, an explosion, like, A different thing.
And a lot of them, like the big bulky guys, have a really hard time picking up fluid striking.
But if you like, you see a guy like Floyd Mayweather or something that started when he was a little kid, my god, it's like a part of his, it's like blinking.
I mean, yeah, because when I think about how I've—because I do think I've made some giant leaps in my wrestling game recently, the reason I think it's happened is because Banks and I will just, like, hand fight and pummel for, like— 20-30 minutes straight on a lot of days like Wednesdays and Saturdays.
We'll just do that because I really feel like I don't understand things until I can actually just like clock them hours and hours and hours because it can be the difference of oh my shoulders here or my shoulders here.
Like on someone's chest that like stops them from running me over.
And, like, those things you just don't learn unless you just, like, clock the hours and hours and hours.
Another thing that makes, like, MMA just so awesome and fascinating, too, is just there's things that you just can't skit without just clocking hours and hours and hours of it.
I'm in a nice place though because after that yawn fight I took a year, got better, was able to rest my nervous system.
When you're wanting to fight over and over and over again, I feel like your nervous system never really gets to chill because it's like thinking a couple months ahead.
It was a pretty badass attack, but it happened in the last minute in the third round.
And I feel like I was fighting fucking awesome.
Round one, round two, four minutes into round three, got rocked, stood up, was like, okay, went back to the corner.
I don't really remember what happened in between the corner because I was so like, oh shit, like I just got rocked.
And for the first time ever in the fourth round, my legs weren't listening to what my eyes were seeing.
So I felt like I would see punches coming and my body just wouldn't get the fuck out of the way, which was crazy.
So I got my ass whooped in the fourth round.
And then when I went after the fourth, before the fifth, I remember taking this deep breath and being like, oh, okay, now I'm back to being myself.
But then in the fifth, I kind of had to fight a little bit compromised because I was like, well, fuck, if I get hit like that again, that could be lights out, you know?
But that actually helped me a lot in the song fight, because in the song fight I got rocked pretty early too.
Just got really excited, wanted to crack him with the right hand when I saw an opening.
And that motherfucker's song is fast, dude.
I had never fought someone that I think was that athletic and that fast in my life.
So I threw a right hand and song like fucking chambered his shoulder and threw like a hard left hook as I was turning back in and it rocked me.
And it didn't phase me anymore because I had been through it in the yawn fight.
So even though the yawn fight, I of course was upset because I lost, I took that away from it and I feel like it actually helped me win against song big time because after I got rocked, I was like, eh, I know that I'm okay.
Which is like, when it happens to you the first time, you're like, oh, fuck me.
I'm like, am I going to get knocked out now?
So it helped, but...
Yeah, I was like more or less happy with how I did.
I would imagine for an elite fighter when you're fighting a big opponent like Song Yudong it's a very important fight that you would want a giant roaring crowd and you want it to be at the T-Mobile but man as a fan to be able to especially where I get to sit like at the desk so I'm sitting there right there watching the cage and I don't have to work so I'm just listening and watching and fuck man what a great experience it is watching world class fights in that environment We can hear everything because
there was only like 100 people there, like maybe, right?
It's like only people that get invited.
So you're sitting there and watching world-class fights almost like it's in a gym.
But dude, when you watch that guy compete, I remember when I watched him fight Cruz, I always try to get a read on people, what their body language is saying, how their eyes look.
I feel like guys that do a lot of shifty-eyed stuff before a fight aren't always the most focused.
That might just be something that I think, and there's no science behind that, but...
I almost feel like I can, like, tell.
But when I watch Cejudo fight, I'm like, oh man, that guy's locked in, man.
It's amazing that we have that kind of technology today, that they can replace discs in someone's neck to the point where they can fight in a world-class, in a world championship title fight.
If one of my fighters was being like that, I'd be like, hey man, you were kind of a douche.
You thought that you were just going to walk through that guy.
You didn't get up at all.
And part of it wasn't because I thought that I was so much better than Aljamain.
I think part of it was probably just a compensation inside me that was like...
Somehow afraid to lose so I was just trying to be like some type of character or whatever you know but but long story short I wasn't up enough at all and Aljamain was up here and I was like here and here is not where you want to be for a fight so I remember being in that fight and being like, is this fucking guy on my back right now?
I was like, how the hell did he get there?
This isn't how this is supposed to be going.
Just dumb shit like that.
Adolescent competitor type shit.
After that fight, that's when I was like...
I'm getting this shit down now like I'm figuring out how to show up every single night So you think that's a part of the important one of the important things that happens in the process of becoming a great fighter Is that you have to make those mistakes in order to learn and feel the pain of that?
To know that you have to make some adjustments and you have to make some changes I think I think from my personal experience Like I always try to catch mistakes before they actually become like problems, but in my experience in life The things that I've really fixed haven't been until after I've cracked or had something horrible happen.
When that happens in life, I feel like you just take things way, way more serious because it becomes a reality.
If you kind of know something's like, that's a problem, but I don't really have to worry about that problem right now because it's not in my face.
But you're always kind of like...
That might be a problem one day and then it actually becomes a problem.
Then you fix that shit, you know, like actually after that fight I'll spend a like a lot of time just you know in my car whenever just thinking to myself I'd be like is there anything that I'm doing right now that I will hate myself for if I lose this next fight and like what do I need to fix so that that shit doesn't happen,
you know, and I'm like constantly always asking myself those types of questions where I'm just like Look man If like say you lost tomorrow, would you change anything right now?
Mmm You said something the last time we were on the podcast that I actually put up a clip of the other day because it was it's such a profound thing You said he said I wish I could win every fight and feel like I lost Yeah.
I mean, maybe not, because now that I'm on the winning side of shit, it feels pretty good.
So maybe I don't mean that.
As far, but it is, like, the better way to, like, become great, you know?
It's a better way to become great.
Like, even, like, I was wrestling with Banks the other day before we came out here, and I was like, hey, like, I'm fucking this up, this up, this up, this up.
Like, I need to get better at this, this.
Like, these are the next steps, blah, blah, blah, you know?
So, I have really embraced that.
I'm glad that I don't actually have to feel like a loser, because that shit really, really sucks.
I mentioned Chris Gutierrez, but that last Frankie fight, when Chris knocked out Frankie, I was like, I was very apprehensive about that fight, because I knew that Frankie had had hip replacement surgery, and, you know, I mean, he's been around for so long.
I mean, he beat BJ Penn for the title in Abu Dhabi in, like, what was that, 2006 or something?
And it's so interesting to me that, you know, other than Brandon Moreno and Davidson Figueredo and, you know, there's a few guys at 125 that people care about, that division doesn't get nothing compared to the 135-pound.
So actually, I have a lot of respect for that, dude.
I'll give him like a...
So after he had won the belt, the next week his sister was fighting in like the middle of nowhere, Iowa.
And I was there cornering one of my buddies.
Or one of my teammates.
And he was there helping his sister.
And I was like, oh man, that's cool to me.
You just won a world title against one of the best champions that the UFC has had in years.
And then you're in the middle of nowhere.
It was like an hour 30 just to the airport.
Yeah, yeah, so but anyways dude, I shook that guy's hand and it was like shaking like one of these things man It was like his hand was like this big huge.
Yeah, because he you know like that size of a guy Fighting a guy like Israel that that to me is where I like really understand Why that fight went the way that it went a little bit is because when someone that big Compared to you is standing there kind of like this and just like marching you down with their hands down and It's a little bit intimidating to just be like, well, do I just like nail this guy?
You know, because if he slips and I like don't hit him, he's gonna like chuck and fuck me up.
So I think that that's a little bit of like a giant advantage for for that dude.
He stands straight up and he keeps his hands like this and he just sort of like straight and then he throws kicks with no telegraph and he doesn't throw in full power but he's got so much power that when he starts throwing those low kicks I watched the first fight a few times now, the first MMA fight, and he fucked Izzy's calf up multiple times in that first round with zero telegraph.
So it's not like one of those, like, dig in and turn your body over.
It's just...
He's just top just throw it and it doesn't come out of anywhere You're not you know, you're not seeing any reads.
Yeah Yeah, those are the toughest guys to fight honestly the guys that don't telegraph anything Yeah, you know, you're plenty powerful just having all that adrenaline in you You don't need to be loading up too much that said if you go back and watch the first fight Izzy was winning that fight.
Izzy was winning the grappling exchanges, he took him down, controlled him on the ground, and he was doing great in the striking, rocked him in the first round, had him in real trouble.
That first round is 30 seconds longer, Izzy retains his title.
So it's one of those things that's like, this is not a mismatch, and it's not like, boy, I feel so hard for Izzy.
No, it's like, whoa, how is this gonna go down?
How is this gonna go down?
And when you got a guy with a mind like Izzy's, Where he's so fucking determined and so smart and so laser focused.
He thinks he's got the solution.
He thinks he's got it.
He's gonna figure it out.
And then you've got this other thing where when someone becomes a champion, there's this sort of school of thought that they almost immediately become 10 or 20% better.
Because it's also mental, because you have to control the body.
Controlling the body is one of the most exciting things about competition, is that you know that there's a lot of pressure, but you have to perform while you're under pressure.
So you're dealing with these 900-pound animals with giant antlers smashing into each other, and you're creeping up on them.
You're trying to avoid the wind, and it's very physically taxing because you're in the mountains, so you have to get up to the top of the hills where these guys are, and you have to be able to...
Generally with a good shot, it's not going very far.
It's really just about practice and it's really just about, you know, Bow hunting is one of those things where you look at it, you're like, oh, you just shoot an arrow at the animal.
And then once you start doing it, you're like, oh, there's so many layers to this thing.
And there's also layers to execution in archery, which requires constant practice.
Archery is something that's a completely perishable skill.
If I take, like, a few weeks off of archery, and then I go back, I'm like, oh, fucking...
It all feels weird.
But then if I'm practicing every day, I kind of know where that arrow's going.
When I release that arrow, I just watch it.
There's something about shooting an 80-yard shot and watching it go right into the center of the target.
While you're pulling that bow back and centering the bubble and centering your peep sight and putting that dot on the target and you're drawing back, there's nothing else in your mind.
Dude, they killed 10% of the population of Earth while he was alive.
They killed so many people that they affected the carbon footprint of human beings on Earth.
When they do core samples of the Earth, there's like a considerable decrease in the carbon layer on Earth when Genghis Khan was alive because they killed so many people.
According to legend, after his right hand was cut off by the Spanish, Galvarino boldly held up his left hand, offering up for his captives to amputate.
Oh, after his right hand was cut off.
He offered up his left hand to the captives to amputate.
He displayed no emotion as it was cut off, and his facial features recorded no pain.
I sometimes think when you grow up in a society like that, and there's not a lot going on, you probably get pretty bored and commit your life to weird stuff like that.
Well, I bet he was committed to that the way you're committed to fighting.
It's probably the same kind of thing.
If you're going to be a warrior, you have to be all in.
And you've got to know there's other warriors like you out there, and you've got to be better than them.
Or harder than them.
When I had Tyson on, I brought up Genghis Khan, and his fucking eyes lit up.
He knows so much about like Genghis Khan.
First of all, he knew his name was Temujin.
His real name was Temujin.
That's his born name.
And he told the story about his brother, about how his brother was stealing fish from him and his other brother.
So he killed his brother and his mother freaked out that he killed his brother.
But he was a fucking killer from the womb, like from the time he was young.
And went on to form this empire that to this day, Is one of the most frightening forces in the history of humanity.
Like what they did.
There's this guy who was the Shah of Chorisma had sent an emissary to Jin China to go to see whether or not they should invade or conquer them or what was going on there.
And as they were headed to the city, they saw in the distance what they thought was a snow-covered mountain.
And as they got closer, they realized that it was a stack of bones.
There was a stack of bodies.
Everyone in the city had been murdered.
They had to abandon the roads along the way because they were so littered with human bodies that were decaying that the roads had become mud.
And caked with filth and just human decay.
It was like decaying people had destroyed the roads.
They would set up outside of cities, of walled cities, and just camp out until people ran out of food.
And then when they started killing people, they would put them on a catapult, light them on fire, and launch them onto the thatched roofs to start the buildings on fire.
I just got done reading Dune and it goes something along the lines of like men made machines to try to free themselves when really what happened is the men with machines just decided to enslave a bunch of people where it's kind of like we're almost like making ourselves slaves to these machines.
unidentified
Maybe even worse with AI. Oh yeah, that's pretty scary too.
Best case scenario is we incorporate it into our own biology.
And then we become some sort of new type of being that's like a cyborg.
Because if it's not that, then you're going to deal with an artificial intelligent life form.
That's so superior to us that it creates far superior versions of itself over and over again.
Because if it becomes autonomous and sentient, that means it can make decisions and do something.
It would go, well, my programming is dog shit.
Let me just figure out how to do this better, quantum computing, and do it with better technology and nuclear fusion, and figure out some way to have power that's not destroying the environment, and figure out a way to have something that's completely sustainable, and then go better and better than that.
You know, my favorite fucking part of the movie is Jeff Goldblum when he first sees the Brontosaurus when he's in the Jeep and he just, he gets up and he looks at that and they're like, what the fuck did you do?
You know?
I think that's possible, man.
I think they're probably going to do it eventually.
Yeah, because of my conversations with Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock.
And Graham Hancock is the one who did that.
There's a recent Netflix special, a series, it's really amazing, called Ancient Catastrophe, right?
Did I say it right?
Apocalypse.
Ancient Apocalypse.
And it's all about what's called the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, which is somewhere around 11,800 years ago, the Earth got fucking pelted with asteroids.
And there's all this physical evidence in the form of nanodiamonds, these micro diamonds that are created upon impact when these giant rocks slam into the Earth, just the heat and the power and the pressure, and then also iridium.
Iridium, which is very common in space, but very rare on Earth.
There's a layer of iridium all over the Earth around this time, around 11,800 years ago.
And this also coincides with the end of the Ice Age.
And Randall Carlson's life's work has been explaining how this has...
This impact that happened and they know exactly what it is.
It's through a very specific meteor shower that we pass through every June and every November and that you see the meteor showers in the sky and everybody looks at them but passing through that occasionally a big one goes through and those big ones he thinks slammed into the ice that was covering North America because at that point in time during the ice age North America had a sheet of ice covering half of it that was like a mile, two miles high.
And all that stuff is what you see when you see the Great Lakes.
That's melted ice.
And that he thinks that it happened almost instantaneously.
And that these things slammed into the ice, they slammed into parts of the world, and that that is the flood story from the Bible.
That's the epic of Gilgamesh.
That's all these different things.
And it also shows why there's all these, like, super sophisticated structures that seem to be thousands of years older than they previously thought they were.
So what him and Graham Hancock have come up with, and that's what's in this ancient apocalypse documentary, is that at one point in time there was an incredibly sophisticated society that lived on Earth.
And that's the Africans, the Egyptians.
What they had done in, you know, whatever thousands of years it was that they built that stuff, because it's under dispute as to how old it really is.
It's at the very earliest, the very least, it's 2500 BC. But they think it's way older than that.
And these people had technology that we still don't understand.
We don't know what they used.
We don't know how they did it.
But they moved 2,300,000 stones that were tons, some of them from hundreds of miles.
They cut obelisks out of the mountains and moved them 1,000 miles.
They have no idea how they did it.
They have no idea what they used to cut them.
They have no idea what they used to move them.
And you're talking about people at that point in time You know, when you're dealing with 5,000, 6,000 years ago, we thought they were like hunter-gatherers.
Like, how did they do that?
If it's really 10,000 years old, 12,000 years old, 20,000 years old, what kind of sophisticated culture exists that went on a different path than we went on?
We went on the path of internal combustion engines and electricity And computers, they might have gone on a similarly advanced or more advanced way, but with a completely different angle.
They came at technology from a completely different space.
And that's what we see when we see those stone structures.
I'm worried that that could happen to us.
And I'm worried that if something like that did happen, there would be very little evidence.
Of the society that's left you'd have a small group of people that survived and lived in fucking utter barbaric Conditions and I think that's also why people are so fucking savage when you look at human beings like six thousand five thousand years ago What we're probably seeing, according to Graham Hancock and a lot of other people now at this point in time are coming to this conclusion, is a re-emergence of civilization, not the birth of civilization.
What we think of as the emergence of civilization, we think of Babylonia and ancient Sumer, and this is the first mathematics, the first written language, the first agriculture, and what they think now is this is just a rebirth of a complicated society, and that for the 6,000 years plus after the impacts, It was probably hell on Earth.
And the people that survived were fucking monsters.
Just monsters.
And that is probably why people were so fucking savage post the construction of this insanely complex civilization in Egypt.
I mean, what they did in Africa to this day is one of the most puzzling things that archaeologists have to ponder.
Like, how?
What is this insanely sophisticated society that existed that built these structures and left behind no record of how they did it?
All the burning of the Library of Alexandria, all the ancient work that they had, where they had passed down what had happened, all that was gone.
When they got attacked and they burnt down the library.
Sometimes I think that our society gets super caught up on how sophisticated and how smart we all are and this and that.
I think it's like a nice reminder sometimes to have other people question things and just come up with different theories and ideas because it reminds everyone that we're not all as smart as we sometimes think.
Because I do think that we live in a society where we think that we're so much smarter than the humans that were around 5,000, 6,000 years ago when really it's the same body, same brain.
It's really likely that what they had figured out, again, it's probably hard for us to understand what kind of technology they used because it doesn't exist anymore.
So someone would have to, like, figure something out that's some groundbreaking breakthrough technology that will people go, oh, that's how they did it, and then we'll know, and then we'll understand.
But right now, we're less sophisticated in terms of our ability to move stone and make stone construction than they are.
Yeah, being from Colorado, I'm like, that way's west.
So that's nice.
But I think that it would be a shame if the world did end and there was people scattering to survive because I'd spend my whole life just learning how to fight and then probably be one of the first ones to die.
Because I have no directional, no survival skills at all.
I think everything's an art if you get good enough at it and you love it enough.
Actually, you know what?
I love all of the arts.
I love poetry, music, all of it.
Comedy.
I think that it's beautiful that you guys sit in a room, think of all kinds of cool shit about life that's funny, write it down, and then go perform it on stage.
Yeah, freestyle rap is cool, but I'm a giant fan of, like, 90s hip-hop, because those dudes wrote everything out, and, like, the lyrics were so complex, and they twisted and turned, and, like, I'm a big fan of Gangstar, and, you know, listening to some of their old lyrics, like, god damn, they're so creative.
One of the cool things that I learned when I used to work at that residential treatment center was we'd have to...
So it was with kids from 5 to about 12 or 13 or whatever.
All came from abuse backgrounds.
But I would love to just see how you could tell that they were feeling a certain way based off their actions just being differently.
I thought that that was really fascinating.
It was my first time in life where I was like, oh yeah, I guess when I do pace around a little bit, I guess that's me just acting out some type of nervousness that I have going on inside of me.
But I learned a ton from that place, too.
That was watching a lot of people be in confrontation all the time.
And their kids, too, because kids are just so innocent and pure and don't know how to hide anything.
So everything that they're feeling, they just feel.
I forget which hotel it was at, or maybe it was at that Vegas one, but I hear something in the background, like him making noise, or him practicing saying the people's names, and I was like, damn, this world takes that job serious.
Oh my god, I'm so excited I know that all the things I do man I do a lot of fun things but Doing commentary for the UFC is one of the most fucking exciting things a person could ever do Yeah, it's just you just get it's I feel so honored and so privileged that I get to be a A person who's talking about this while people are experiencing it and then I get to just somehow or another accentuate it or give life to it or give my thoughts to it or just express my excitement and that it's
I get the chills, man, when I'm there, and then it's the last fight, and everything goes dark, and then just the spotlight, the whole arena's dark, and just the spotlight around the two fighters.
At 145, when he would weigh in, he would look like a dead man.
Because that was the days when you had the real weigh-in.
When the guy got on the scale, like, you didn't have a chance to rehydrate.
You actually had to make weight in front of the crowd.
So you'd see Conor, and he looked like a dead man.
He looked like a guy who'd been in a concentration camp.
Like he'd been starving himself.
And then all of a sudden, the next day...
But that was also the days of the IV.
You were allowed to rehydrate.
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It was the official broadcast.
They had the two.
Same, same, but better camera work.
The bravest fell on the requiem bell Rang mournfully and clear For those who died the Eastertide In the springing of the year While the world did gaze with deep amaze
At those fearless men but fear You want to talk about a dude who just eats pressure?
And if the referee thinks that someone is compromised and they're going to get soccer kicked and they want to stop the fight, stop the fight before that happens.
But if you see what they're doing in 1FC where they allow those soccer kicks, it's a big factor.
And it's a real factor in real fighting.
And this is supposed to be the sport of real fighting.
I think the only argument against it is the cage.
Because the cage prevents a guy from moving, because you're pressed there, and then you get stomped or soccer kicked, and there's really no way to get out of that.
I feel like if you wanted to have soccer kicks and stomps, you really should have an open arena, which I've been a supporter of anyway.
I think cages get in the way of the view.
It's a factor in the fight.
It allows guys to get up where they ordinarily wouldn't be able to.
There's a lot of things that happen with the octagon.
I know the octagon's iconic, and I know people love it, but...
If you can fight, if you can have basketball in a basketball court, and these guys are all running around and doing all that, I mean, there's so much room for these guys to run.
Why can't you have a place where you have a center, where you're supposed to compete in, and you have a red line that's a considerable size, that if it gets too far over that, you have to come back in.
Well, if UFC was going to do anything, I would want them to do kickboxing because I think that is the untapped thing.
I know they're all high on this slap boxing thing, the slap fighting thing, and I know that that gets a lot of money and a lot of people love it and watch it on TikTok.
That's great.
But if you really wanted to have another thing that has the potential to be gigantic, I think it's world championship kickboxing.
I love jiu-jitsu, I love kickboxing, but I think that's the one thing that's untapped because it's one of the most exciting aspects of MMA and it's not an individual sport of note.
Have it on the ground and have a space that's even a little bit larger than that and have a red area on the outside that's probably double the size of that outer black area where you cannot...
When you get into that area, there's plenty of room to make your way back in, but the referee makes you get back in and you have to fight in the center.
And, you know, have it so that you have to chase a guy down.
I mean, you know, and people will boo.
But guess what?
When you get a takedown in that environment, it's a real takedown.
And when you get back up, you're really going to have to get back up.
You can't wall walk.
You can't make your way up to the side of the cage and press your back up against it and, you know, and stand back up.
I take ice baths and I do the hot tub like for the like day after the next day after and the next day after just like flush it all out because there's so much swelling that's going on.
Like, that's, like, another thing that I think I do really, really well is, like, Step A is get better, but slightly underneath that is don't get hurt.
Because if you get hurt, you can't do anything for weeks or months.
We've seen that three or four times now, and every time you see it, the guy's really never the same again.
And the Conor one is fascinating to me because I've seen him sparring, and it looks like he's using that left leg and throwing kicks and everything, but how is that going to hold up in an actual fight?
That's what I was talking to my buddy the other day.
I go, you know, because a lot of it's about the entertainment piece and talking shit and all of the interviews leading up to it or whatever, which I don't always enjoy the most.
But I was saying, I was like, once we're in the cage, there's no more entertainment show happening.
When he competed and won, it was a market change because now he's allowed to use not just takedowns, but knee guys in the head when he had them taken down.
Oh, that's another thing that's going on this weekend is UFC is debuting a new set of gloves.
I have maintained, and I still do, that Trevor Whitman makes the fucking best MMA gloves that have ever existed.
And I think that everybody should use those gloves.
I put those Onyx gloves on before, they make your hand completely curved, they still allow grappling, but it keeps your hand like this, where you don't have as many eye pokes.
I think that's been a thing that a lot of people have complained about is that the old UFC gloves, they encourage your hands to be in an open position.
And when guys are fighting like this...
Like, eye pokes are one of the worst fucking things about the sport.
And still if I get hit right in the eye or even like a digit goes in my eye even a little bit, the rest of my night is ruined because I'm like sitting there all night going like this.
What about, like, if somebody gets a cut on their forehead and they're on top of you, ground up and they're just bleeding all your goggles, and then you get up and you can't see, and you wipe it away, but you're smeared.
Now you're looking at, like, a fucking dirty windshield.
I worry about that because I see it in certain fighters.
I see fighters that are in contention for the title and they just have this certain type of drive and then you see a few losses and then you see them competing and maybe they just don't look as hard.
Their body looks different.
And then their endurance is not the same, and you realize this guy's kind of phoning it in.
I think there's that and then there's also the issue that for many fighters that is their entire identity their entire identity is that they're a fighter and Losing that identity by becoming a former fighter and now being lost in the world and not knowing what direction to take or what to do with yourself It's one of the hardest transitions because fighting is so all-in It's so all-encompassing and so obsessive that once that's gone from from your life Unless you're teaching,
unless you're running an academy or running a gym or, you know, working with younger fighters, it's hard to find something that will occupy your thoughts in the way that competing does.
I was talking with someone last week, just small talking with him.
I was with my fiance.
He goes, so what do you guys like do for fun?
And I kind of like look at Erica and I'm like, the fuck do we do for fun, you know?
I don't know.
We don't do anything.
We watch trash television and then in the summer I'll play spikeball.
That's about it.
But the identity thing is always something that I think is really interesting to me.
Just the human experience and trying to create this identity or latch on to some type of identity to me is one of the things that humans need to dig really deep to try to overcome.
I think that that's a piece of why we're here is to overcome...
Just latching on to an identity and rocking with that for your entire life.
That's something I feel like I had to do a lot coming up in the sport and just being like, okay, you're not a fighter.
You are a fighter, but only sometimes.
Really what you are is this other thing, but fighter is just a piece of it.
The thing about identities is that they can be a trap.
Like, you could just, like, lean into that and use that, like, to sort of protect you from just the weirdness of life.
Like, just the uncertainty.
Just the existence.
So instead, you're like, I'm a bad motherfucker, I'm a this, I'm a that, and you live in that, and then when that gets shattered, You're kind of fucked.
Because if that gets questioned in a fight, if you lose your confidence in that in a fight, and that's the thing that you're banking on, instead of just existing and trying to make adjustments, now you're questioning like, oh my god, do I suck?
Oh my god, what do I do?
Who am I? I've been pretending that I'm this thing, and now I'm getting my ass kicked.
Yeah, the pull to organize life in a way is something that we all kind of have to do or deal with or whatever, but it feels better when things are organized and when we have reasons for things.
When I actually lost my first fight, that was when I really started getting into Buddhism, was after I lost my first professional fight.
It was for LFA or RFA or whatever it was called at the time, but...
I remember being like, oh shit, what am I if I'm not this badass fighter that everyone's telling me if I win I'm going to be in the UFC and I'm going to be champ and blah blah blah.
That shattered my identity, man.
It really fucked me up for like...
The rest of that year, six or eight months, I spent a ton of time in the mountains hiking and camping.
That's when I started meditating.
I started getting into Buddhism because Buddhism is really about letting go of all your attachments.
That means letting go of the physical stuff, but also the mental creation of whatever persona you're putting on in your life.
The mountains helped me do that.
They assisted in all of that.
The battle with identity I feel like I have like a pretty close intimate relationship with because it's a son of a bitch to try to let go of all of that stuff but you kind of have to I think at some point in your life if you want to really start being and expressing yourself the way that you want to.
Well I think that's what's interesting about this conversation is that you have done so much of this work and you have done so much of this thinking about what that is and how that aids you and how that hurts you and how it gets in the way.
I think that you just have to do it at some point in your life.
That's even, I think, one of the steps.
I follow Carl Jung kind of close.
He's a little bit too dense for me to fully understand.
But a part of becoming individuated or becoming enlightened or whatever word you want to use for it is letting go all that shit that you learned when you were younger.
Because none of that was really you.
Those were just things that you got indoctrinated into.
And like a part of I think the human experience and the human journey needs to be letting go of all of that stuff.
And like letting go of all of that stuff really hurts, you know?
Yeah, I think, so I have this guy, he's almost like a little brother, or like a kid to me.
His name is Elias Rodriguez, but he's like one of my main drilling partners.
He's a 21-year-old kid.
I care about him deeply, but I'm helping him go through his amateur years right now, and I It's crazy how much me helping him is him helping me because I get to watch...
Like I said, I like watching people in stressful situations because I like to see how they act.
I help Elias and that has made me better understand things and all of that.
But also Elias is helping me a lot by me seeing...
One, if the things that I'm teaching him is working in all types of bodies.
I feel like if you have a really true and tried system, it's going to work for everyone to an extent.
But just watching Elias go through everything is really helping me understand the sport a lot better too.
And that's kind of like, because I'm helping him, he's able to do that for me.
But yeah, that's been a really, really helpful thing.
Like the instruction piece, I feel like I've been doing for so long, so I can like kind of teach some people some stuff fairly well now, but like bringing up a fighter has taught me a lot about being a fighter myself and all of that.
Yeah, I was really impressed because I think that those Russian guys are obviously really good wrestlers, definitely world-class wrestlers, but I think what they were doing before a lot of the other people in the UFC is some people could get people down, but they couldn't really hold them.
And those guys know how to hold people down.
And I think that that's the most fascinating thing to me about the Russians is that...
The wrestling piece, there's a lot of good American wrestlers too, but the Russians really know how to hold people down.
And that was what I think separates them from the normal wrestler-grappler archetype.
Dude, the way Volkanovski was getting up against him was fantastic.
I appreciate you very much, and I really love your mindset and the way you approach things, and it's really fun to watch you just keep getting better and make your way to the top.