Oct. 4, 2011 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:09:26
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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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. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Jared Karanir, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Hey, what a fucking crazy couple of weeks of fights there's been, man. | ||
| There's so much to talk about. | ||
| Absolutely, yeah. | ||
| You know, this last main event. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I'm still, like, in shock. | ||
| The Justin Gaethje head kick knockout? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Of Dustin Poirier. | ||
| I'm like, oh, my God. | ||
| I mean, we all knew that that fight was going to be tremendous. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Something big was going to happen in that fight. | ||
| So when it did and how it happened... | ||
| It was beautiful. | ||
| Beautiful execution of that technique by Justin Gaethje to get that head kick off. | ||
| It was beautiful. | ||
| It landed beautifully, and he followed up nicely. | ||
| Well, it wasn't a follow-up. | ||
| He was on his way. | ||
| I think the ref stopped it. | ||
| I think he did land one hammer fist. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But yeah, it was perfect. | ||
| It was a direct mirror image of Leon Edwards' kick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| On the opposite side, in the same place. | ||
| In the same arena, yeah. | ||
| Crazy! | ||
| Yeah, that's crazy. | ||
| Crazy! | ||
| Something's going on. | ||
| I'll tell you one thing, and you can tell me if you feel it as a fighter, but there's something about the energy in an arena when you go to a place that really appreciates that you're there. | ||
| We're in Vegas a lot. | ||
| You guys fight in Vegas all the time. | ||
| They get a little used to the fact that the UFC's there. | ||
| But when you bring it somewhere like Salt Lake City, they get fucking hyped up. | ||
| Those people were there for the first fight of the night the place was packed and there's this wild feeling in the air like everybody's excited. | ||
| Does it, as a fighter, does that affect you? | ||
| Well, absolutely. | ||
| You know, when you hear the crowd reacting to the fight... | ||
| Pull the mic right in front of you. | ||
| Yeah, when you hear the crowd reacting to the fight in itself, you know, you get energy from it, you know? | ||
| I get invigorated by it, or I get checked by it, you know what I mean? | ||
| If the guy's doing something good and the crowd's loving it, I'm going to put a stop to that. | ||
| So, I like to take control of it, in a sense. | ||
| But yes, it is... | ||
| It's a... | ||
| It's a factor. | ||
| Yeah, it is a huge factor. | ||
| For some. | ||
| You know, for some it is. | ||
| And some people can just stay focused and stay on the rails and handle their business, you know? | ||
| But I like it, you know? | ||
| But I like fighting in the... | ||
| Do you like the apex as well? | ||
| I like the apex as well, because I find that fighting in the apex is a bit more personal, you know what I mean? | ||
| I can hear my opponent breathing. | ||
| I can hear his exertions. | ||
| I can hear his corner. | ||
| I can hear my corner a little bit better. | ||
| There's still a crowd there, and you can hear them, so you still get the feel of a crowd. | ||
| You know, although it's not that big. | ||
| It's not as big, but you can hear everything. | ||
| You can hear the commentators too, you know? | ||
| I feel like when I'm at the Apex, I feel like lucky. | ||
| Like, oh, I'm lucky to be one of the people to be here. | ||
| Like when Francis fought Stipe at the Apex, during the height of COVID, I was like, we are so lucky. | ||
| We get to be here live for this. | ||
| There's only like 30 people in this place. | ||
| That's that thing, man. | ||
| It makes it feel personal. | ||
| I guess it's personal for those in attendance as well. | ||
| Yeah, well, yeah. | ||
| Those in attendance and even people watching at home, I think you get a sense of that from that. | ||
| It's like you're watching a fight in a gym. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It's like a high-tech gym. | ||
| I mean, that's kind of what they did. | ||
| It's kind of what the UFC did. | ||
| They just made their own gym and they made their own arena. | ||
| A little intimate arena. | ||
| And it's great for Tuesday night fights, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's nice. | ||
| You can just go there and handle business and then go back to whatever else he was doing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the PI, like, putting something like that, such a high-tech, like, state-of-the-art gym where guys can do their camps there. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The PI has been... | ||
| It's a goldmine for a lot of guys, especially those guys in Vegas. | ||
| I've used it a few times, but I don't really get up there too often. | ||
| But I can imagine if I did live there, I'd be in the P.I. all the time. | ||
| Maybe once, twice a day. | ||
| They really help guys scientifically cut weight correctly, too, and give them an assessment of whether or not they can do it and be healthy when they're doing it. | ||
| That weight-cutting game is a crazy game, and you got a wild career, man, because you started off at heavyweight, you go down at 205, and now down to 85. Has anybody else done that and been as successful as you? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I don't think anybody's gone down. | ||
| Conor McGregor's gone up. | ||
| He hasn't been as successful, but he's just successful in anything he does. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I'm saying, has anybody ever started out as a heavyweight and gotten down to become an elite middleweight? | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't think anybody's done that before, yeah. | ||
| It's what well you know well Vito has gone up. | ||
| He's fought up at heavyweight. | ||
| Oh, yeah, he did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's fought up at light heavyweight. | ||
| Middleweight would have been his correct weight class. | ||
| I think if he started today like what he wound up in I think that's the correct weight class with weight cutting. | ||
| Well, I would say the same thing about me, too. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not no natural heavyweight. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And I knew that While I was fighting heavyweight, I was just an undisciplined heavyweight, if you will, you know? | ||
| Well, you probably walk around in heavyweight all the time. | ||
| Well, absolutely, yeah. | ||
| I think a lot of us middleweights walk around in light heavyweight or above the light heavyweight limit. | ||
| Like, what is the heaviest you get when you're walking around? | ||
| Be honest. | ||
| As a middleweight now? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The heaviest I've gotten was 125. No, 225. 225. Yeah. | ||
| So I'm about 220 right now, but I haven't been back to training as consistently as I would like to be. | ||
| It's so crazy that you say that so casually. | ||
| Because you look great, you look super fit, and the idea of you being able to lose that much weight is so bonkers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, water weighs a lot. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I burn a lot of water. | ||
| Well, there's also, I guess they break it down when you do it with someone that's a real expert in dehydration. | ||
| They break it down how much muscle mass you have. | ||
| And the more muscle mass you have, you can actually, muscles mostly water. | ||
| You can suck more. | ||
| That's why guys like Yoel Romero were able to make 185 when he's up. | ||
| Big guy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| He's fucking big. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just a thick thing, you know. | ||
| From top to bottom. | ||
| The idea that that guy's 185 for even more than 13 seconds. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Well, not anymore, right? | ||
| Not anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
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He's what? | |
| 205? | ||
| Yeah, now he's doing 205. But, you know, he's a top contender at 185 for a long time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Without weight cutting. | ||
| But those were hard weight cuts for him, though, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because he was so big, I would say. | ||
| But, you know, I was never there for any of them, so what do I know? | ||
| When you do yours, how far out do you just start to change your diet? | ||
| How much time do they, like if the UFC calls you up and says, we want you to fight for a world title in two weeks? | ||
| In two weeks? | ||
| You can't get down there. | ||
| In two weeks? | ||
| I haven't done it before, but I'm sure I could. | ||
| Hell yeah, I could. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But you wouldn't want to. | ||
| Ideally, what would you want to? | ||
| How much time do you need to get all the way down to healthy? | ||
| Comfortably four weeks at the least. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But six weeks is the general consensus for fight camps. | ||
| Eight weeks for those who want to put a little extra on it. | ||
| Right, but how much of the camp is centered around being careful with your weight? | ||
| How much do you think about it? | ||
| I would say the whole camp. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| When I'm not in camp and I don't have a fight coming up, I don't really pay attention to my portion sizes. | ||
| And that's the big thing is the portion sizes. | ||
| And the quality of the meat that I'm putting in my body as well. | ||
| So I change from eating less red meat for sure. | ||
| I eat more salmon, more fish. | ||
| And portion sizes, again, for me is important. | ||
| The work output, as long as I'm going to the gym making my appointments that I've made for myself and I'm going to the gym twice a day, I burn it off and I sweat off a lot too, you know? | ||
| So I can, as long as I got at least four weeks, I can make it happen. | ||
| You know, where I'm at now. | ||
| But when I'm training, you know what I mean? | ||
| I'm around 210, 215. | ||
| And all I have to do is change my diet. | ||
| I'll drop about 10. | ||
| 10, 12 pounds in about 2 or 3 weeks. | ||
| And then cut the weight during fight week. | ||
| That's not that much then. | ||
| So then you really just cut in about 10 fight week? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's a healthy way to do it. | ||
| No, I'm not showing up fight week at 220. No, I absolutely do not. | ||
| There's some guys that have done some wild cuts. | ||
| Some really wild ones. | ||
| Where you're just like, did you just not prepare for this at all? | ||
| Did you just try to wing it? | ||
| Did you put it off? | ||
| How did you allow yourself to come in so big and try to cut so much? | ||
| Just miscalculations. | ||
| Or maybe just to get called with an opportunity that they couldn't refuse no matter what state they're in. | ||
| They couldn't have made it. | ||
| They don't want to be the ones that say no sometimes. | ||
| Do you ever envision a time where the sport would have no weight cutting? | ||
| Where they would just match people up by weight? | ||
| When there's no weight cutting? | ||
| No weight cutting. | ||
| What if there was more weight classes, but no weight cutting? | ||
| I think that'd be fine. | ||
| I would love that, actually. | ||
| To make it more of a natural competition, you know what I mean? | ||
| As opposed to people trying to get the edge on their opponent. | ||
| But it seems like a crazy edge to agree to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I firmly believe that if weight cutting didn't exist... | ||
| And then people started doing it now, they would try to ban it. | ||
| They would try to say, don't do that. | ||
| That's dangerous. | ||
| 24 hours before you're going to have a fucking cage fight, you're going to dehydrate yourself to death's door. | ||
| To death's door. | ||
| I've seen some dudes that were on death's door. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yeah. | |
| Travis Luder, when he fought Anderson Silva, was the worst I ever saw a man when he was cutting weight. | ||
| Travis couldn't walk. | ||
| He was shuffling to the scale. | ||
| And he missed weight. | ||
| He missed weight in a world title fight and he had a real shot against Anderson because his jiu-jitsu was phenomenal. | ||
| His jiu-jitsu was phenomenal. | ||
| He took Anderson down and got caught in a triangle and got beat up. | ||
| But he was the closest I saw. | ||
| I looked at that guy and I'm like, oh my god. | ||
| If I found that guy in the desert, I'd get him right to the hospital. | ||
| I'd be like, holy shit bro, you okay? | ||
| Have some water. | ||
| We're going to get you some water, man. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| That's what he looked like. | ||
| Wow, just out of it, huh? | ||
| Just sucked in. | ||
| You're almost killing yourself. | ||
| You're taking all the water out of your body, and then you're putting it back in. | ||
| 24 hours before the most extreme physical combat sport that's currently available. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is MMA. Out of your vital organs. | ||
| In America. | ||
| You know, there's some left-way shit. | ||
| They might disagree that there's more extreme. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's why I wouldn't do no extreme weight cut myself. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's why I said middleweight is where I'm stopping. | ||
| I could probably do welterweight with a strict diet over a period of time. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| You would be a giant welterweight. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| But that would be uncomfortable for me. | ||
| That would be uncomfortable. | ||
| I wouldn't be able to live the way I want to. | ||
| I wouldn't be able to eat the way I would like. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I remember I ran into Rumble. | ||
| Rest in peace. | ||
| I ran into Anthony Rumble Johnson in a hotel lobby. | ||
| And I go, how big are you? | ||
| And this is when he's fighting at welterweight. | ||
| He goes, I'm 230 right now. | ||
| No way no no no no no no no no no no no no no he was in town for the fights just to watch and But you couldn't believe how big he was, and then he would make it down to 170. Wow. | ||
| Even if that was fine, that would explain some of his missed weight cuts, showing up to fight week at 230. Yeah. | ||
| I don't think the UFC now would allow something like that to happen, a fight like that to go on. | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| Well, there's so much more, you know, there's some more eyes on the fighters' behavior and what they're allowed to do and not allowed to do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which I think there's a lot of it, like I was having a conversation with Jeff Nowitzki about it, like that they are trying to introduce things like peptides. | ||
| And allow fighters to use things that help them heal from injuries, give them exemptions for things like that, because it's only beneficial to the fighter and their ability to heal from injuries. | ||
| A lot of people, at least anecdotally, there are some studies on BPC-157 I don't know what the full date is, but I know that the doctors that I work with and the people that I know believe in it a lot. | ||
| And it used to be legal for UFC fighters. | ||
| Then they banned it. | ||
| They did? | ||
| Recently, yeah. | ||
| Oh, I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a bummer. | ||
| See, this is why I don't use supplements myself. | ||
| I only use the stuff they give us from, like, throwing supplements. | ||
| I think UFC has a partnership with them. | ||
| Right, and they're all third-party tested. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| No bullshit in them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, there are some other things like element teas, hydration packages I'll use every now and then. | ||
| Those are great. | ||
| Rarely do I take supplements. | ||
| On top of that, I kind of even just take them consistently to get the benefit from them. | ||
| So, there's really no point in it for me. | ||
| So, do you have someone who cooks for you? | ||
| Do you have like a meal service to use? | ||
| My wife. | ||
| Your wife. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| That's perfect. | ||
| Because I see some guys, they take it so seriously. | ||
| They have stacked up Tupperware containers that they get from a company and it measures out all the carbs and the protein and it writes it down, 50 grams of carbs. | ||
| We got guys like that in the gym too, you know? | ||
| I think that's more of a convenience thing. | ||
| You don't have to stand over the stove for 30 minutes to an hour and a half cooking and preparing food and stuff like that. | ||
| Whenever I think about people that do stuff like this, I think about Fedor. | ||
| Because Fedor used to fight. | ||
| He had a big belly. | ||
|
unidentified
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He didn't give a fuck about portion control. | |
| He was very unassuming the way he looked physically. | ||
| But his demeanor... | ||
| He was such a beast. | ||
| I was listening to... | ||
| I can't remember who was talking about it on a podcast. | ||
| I'll try to remember. | ||
| It might have been Cejudo. | ||
| I forget who was talking about it, but they were talking about... | ||
| Oh, no, it was Rampage. | ||
| It was Rampage Jackson. | ||
| And he was talking about how Fedor was his favorite fighter, and he was recalling this moment Where Kevin Randleman suplexed him and threw him on his neck. | ||
| And Fedor's expression never changed. | ||
| I saw that clip too. | ||
| Isn't that wild? | ||
| It's so true. | ||
| He just, no matter what, in the heat of battle, just stone-faced. | ||
| Never, no emotion, no nothing. | ||
| Stone-faced. | ||
| That just says he saw some hard shit as a child, probably. | ||
| Yeah, right? | ||
| Something. | ||
| I mean, it definitely wasn't easy. | ||
| Whatever he went through was not easy. | ||
| But that dude, that is a hard man. | ||
| How did that fight end? | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| He comored him. | ||
| Like, right after that. | ||
| But look at the compression there. | ||
| I mean, look at how he's landing there. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Fedor comores him? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, right afterwards. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You want to see it? | ||
| It's pretty dope. | ||
| It's pretty dope. | ||
| See if he can find the finish. | ||
| Yeah, when he was going down, he tied up an arm. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| See, have you found it? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's only showing the slam. | |
| Oh. | ||
| Just go, uh, Fedor taps. | ||
| Randleman? | ||
| Yeah, Randleman. | ||
| I'm sure I've seen it at one point or another. | ||
| It was incredible. | ||
| Okay, here it is. | ||
| So Randleman slams him. | ||
| Oh, how did he flip him over already? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, I skipped ahead. | |
| Position, transition, yeah. | ||
| I want to see the transition. | ||
| So he takes him down. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Oh, this is the start of the fight here, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, this is the start of the fight. | ||
| This is before he body-slammed him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he took him down first. | ||
| I'd like to do a pride round. | ||
| That'd be nice. | ||
| Do you like the idea of that? | ||
| The 10-minute round? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I think so, too. | ||
| Imagine, like, the option to... | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| That was knees to the head on the ground, too. | ||
| Pride was a different beast. | ||
| Oh, that was a beautiful rollover. | ||
| That was beautiful. | ||
| That was beautiful. | ||
|
unidentified
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And then he got the Kimura off of this, I guess. | |
| Is that Rampage? | ||
| Dude, those are hard shots from the top here. | ||
| These are fucking hard shots. | ||
| Damn. - Yeah. | ||
| Like that dude does not care about portions. | ||
| He just eats whatever the fuck he wants and smashes people. | ||
| I wish I got to see that guy live. | ||
| I have a regret. | ||
| You never seen Fader fight live? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| No, and all the guys from Pride, he was the one I would like to have seen live. | ||
| I got a chance to see Crow Cop fight live a bunch of times. | ||
| But seeing that guy in his prime in Japan must have been wild. | ||
| That must have been wild. | ||
| So you've been in this game for a number of generations. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you were to map MMA as a sport, how many generations would you say we're in right now? | ||
| I guess it's the 30th year of the UFC and an elite fighter. | ||
| What's the average amount of years they can compete? | ||
| Is it probably 10? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Average. | ||
| 8 to 12. Some guys can extend it. | ||
| Randy Couture extended it. | ||
| I actually started late. | ||
| But some guys extend that time period where you can fight as an elite fighter. | ||
| There's only a certain amount of time. | ||
| So that's kind of a generation, right? | ||
| So it's like 10 years. | ||
| So I'd say we're at least three generations in. | ||
| But it's more like four or five. | ||
| Because the generations, they change in terms of like... | ||
| The skill set. | ||
| The skill sets improve. | ||
| I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about how people today, everything they do today, they get a chance to see all the people who've done it before, and it helps you get better. | ||
| If you want to watch MMA fights, in 1993, when the UFC 1 was around, you couldn't see anything. | ||
| What are you going to find? | ||
| I watched my first MMA fight on a VHS tape. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Some people watching out don't know what VHS is probably. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And those people that fought in those things had nothing to look at first. | ||
| They just went out there and did it. | ||
| And they just were hoping karate worked. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You know, they were hoping that judo was enough. | ||
| They were hoping that freestyle wrestling was enough. | ||
| Talk about going in blind, huh? | ||
| I mean, those are the wildest of wild people. | ||
| I mean, respect to the pioneers, like the Hoist Gracies and the Ken Shamrocks and the Dan Severins and Don the Predator Fry. | ||
| It's like those guys, those are the pioneers, man. | ||
| Mark Coleman, there was nobody before them. | ||
| No. | ||
| Nobody before them. | ||
| So they didn't know what to expect. | ||
| They just knew that they had it. | ||
| They knew that they could get paid money to fight. | ||
| And so they were like, okay, for as long as this lasts, let's do this. | ||
| And for a while, it looked like it was going to get kicked off cable. | ||
| And then it did. | ||
| It got banned from cable, and you could only get it on DirecTV. | ||
| That's when I used to get it. | ||
| I got DirecTV specifically because it was the only way. | ||
| No, it was before Spike. | ||
| Before Spike? | ||
| Spike TV was when, that's when it really took off. | ||
| But that was like 2005, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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But there was a long period of... | |
| Struggle with the UFC. Yeah. | ||
| Both when SEG had it, there was so much suppression. | ||
| It was so hard for them to get into venues and get sanctioned to have them in certain states. | ||
| It's a grind. | ||
| When you first started watching MMA, how old were you? | ||
| How old was I? When I first started watching? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So when you saw your first... | ||
| I was in Alaska when I first started watching. | ||
| When I see my first fight, I was in Dallas. | ||
| I was transitioning from college into the military. | ||
| So I was about 21, 20, 21. I was 21, yeah. | ||
| So it was just a fight. | ||
| My mother, she was adopting children. | ||
| And she had this Ecuadorian, a Shaolin monk from Ecuadoria, right? | ||
| An Ecuadorian who was... | ||
| Who lived in the Shaolin Temple and trained and lived that life, you know what I mean? | ||
| And he would go outside and meditate and practice his art, practice kung fu and stuff like that. | ||
| And he found it on TV. I didn't even know it existed or anything like that. | ||
| And he was watching it one day when I came in. | ||
| And I sat down and watched it. | ||
| I think I was watching, I can't remember the fight. | ||
| I believe it was Shogun and somebody. | ||
| But anyway, I saw the fight and it didn't really peak my interest at the time, but I was interested in it because I respected the competitive aspect of it. | ||
| I definitely loved martial arts and I was just seeing these people fight and stuff, but I didn't see myself training at the time. | ||
| At that time, again, I was transitioning from college to the army. | ||
| So when I get into the Army, they have a Modern Army combattance program, which is like basic white belt jiu-jitsu, you know, minus a lot of the stuff that we do in actual jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But once I got my first hands-on experience with the martial arts, I was like, ooh, this is something I need to do with my vessel, with my body. | ||
| This is something I'm meant to do. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And even as a kid, you know, watching all the kung fu movies, the Ninja Turtles is big. | ||
| I love the Ninja Turtles. | ||
| But all the martial arts stuff, you know, it interests me and stuff. | ||
| On top of that, my daddy, whenever I would go and visit him, he has a gym in his garage, a boxing bag, and me and my brothers would throw the gloves on and play around, not really taking it seriously as a martial artist, you know? | ||
| But once I did it in the army, I knew this is something that I need to do with my vessel, something I have to throw myself, I have to ingrain into myself. | ||
| So... | ||
| That was in basic training. | ||
| And then luckily in AIT, we had my AIT phase, which is our training phase for our job in the military. | ||
| My AIT phase, one of my drill sergeants was like a level three combatives, had like a level three proficiency at combatives. | ||
| I think it goes like one to four or five or something like that. | ||
| And there was a battalion combatives tournament. | ||
| That I could participate in, you know what I mean? | ||
| So we were training for like a month, month and a half, maybe two months of training basic white belt jujitsu for the Modern Army Combatives thing. | ||
| I loved it, man. | ||
| I was having fun. | ||
| I was learning. | ||
| I was exercising. | ||
| I was applying my mental capacities to something that I wanted to apply to, not something that I was ordered to apply to or something I was trained to apply to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It was something that I wanted for myself. | ||
| And, uh... | ||
| It was one of the best times I had in the military, you know? | ||
| One of the best aspects about the military that I liked. | ||
| And, uh... | ||
| I got all the way to second place in the tournament. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I think I had, like, four matches. | ||
| So I got all the way to second place. | ||
| And, uh... | ||
| The guy who took first place was, like, some football athlete. | ||
| Just some buck-strong motherfucker. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Who, um... | ||
| Who was just faster than me, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| My technique wasn't able to get it done, so I took second place by points in that one, so it was all good. | ||
| So that's the birthplace of your martial arts journey. | ||
| Of my martial arts journey, yeah. | ||
| And so in the Army Combatives Program, how much striking did they have? | ||
| Well, when you get up to a level three or four, I think that's when they started incorporating striking. | ||
| And that's what I wanted to do throughout my military career. | ||
| So were they essentially teaching, like, MMA? Like, how they're incorporating grappling and striking? | ||
| There wasn't MMA. I think they did, when you get to the very tip-top of... | ||
| Whatever you're training, then they have like an MMA. They combine an MMA, but usually it's separate. | ||
| Okay, so it's grappling or striking. | ||
| Or striking, yeah. | ||
| And then is it striking like Muay Thai style? | ||
| It seems a little bit like amateur Muay Thai. | ||
| You know, they have the headgear and the shin guards and there's no elbows and stuff like that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So they modify it so I guess soldiers don't end up getting hurt and taken out of duty and stuff like that. | ||
| Yeah, but why would you remove elbows? | ||
| They're too goddamn effective to remove. | ||
| You want people to be proficient in elbows. | ||
| You want someone in a hand-on-hand fight who breaks his hands to be able to throw elbows. | ||
| And a person with really good elbows can do that, but a person who doesn't have good elbows is doomed. | ||
| It's funny you say that because I broke my hand in the fight and I had to finish it with an elbow. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| With elbows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I can't imagine why any effective system would want to remove elbows. | ||
| You could give guys elbow pads. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You should have them at least practicing elbows. | ||
| I mean, obviously, take care of your training partners. | ||
| Don't try to smash their face in. | ||
| Well, I think, again, you've got to think of it like the amateurs. | ||
| They don't want guys getting cut. | ||
| Right, in the fights. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's the military. | ||
| They want their soldiers to be soldiers, not world-class fighters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Yeah, but if you're going to teach them how to fight, teach them all the way. | ||
| Don't teach them Taekwondo. | ||
| That's what you want for your military, right? | ||
| Yeah, that's what I want. | ||
| Don't teach them Taekwondo. | ||
| Teach them Muay Thai. | ||
| Teach them MMA. It's not that there's anything wrong with Taekwondo, but if you're going to train someone to fight, why would you remove elbows? | ||
| Put that back in there. | ||
| You need to be able to stop someone that's coming towards you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just talk. | |
| Some dudes, when you watch like elbow masters, you know, dudes like John Wayne Parr, dudes who know how to slice people up, you know, Sanchai, guys you just know how to step in and smash people with elbows. | ||
| There's a beauty to elbows. | ||
| I'm actually increasing my repertoire with the elbows and stuff. | ||
| I'm working with a few of the guys. | ||
| Ben throws some nasty elbows and In sparring. | ||
| He doesn't wear elbow pads, but he has such good control and awareness of his distance that, you know, sometimes... | ||
| And I'm not too spastic, so I'm not, like, running into elbows either. | ||
| So there's a little bit of control on both sides, so, you know, he can just barely, like, boom. | ||
| I'm like, oh, my God. | ||
| I can only imagine the amount of damage he could have done if we were going at it. | ||
| But I've been working with him. | ||
| He brings it out of me a lot. | ||
| Working with Ryan Diaz, who comes in and helps me out, shows me a lot of the stuff. | ||
| He knows a lot of Thais and stuff, so he's a Muay Thai specialist himself. | ||
| Did you ever see the fight between Nate Marquardt and Tyron Woodley in Strikeforce? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I did. | |
| That was the last fight in Strikeforce, right? | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| I did see that one. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| I don't know if that was the last fight in Strikeforce. | ||
| I think that was the last event. | ||
| The very last event? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I think that was the last fight because that was the main event. | ||
| That fight was insane. | ||
| That stoppage was insane. | ||
| I mean, this is like video game stoppage. | ||
| Over the top elbows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then you hit him with his uppercut. | ||
| Uppercut. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| I mean, that was a video game stoppage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, they missed out on this Nate Marquardt era when he was at his prime. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that fight is like a great example of it. | ||
| What year was that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boom. | |
| God, I'm not sure. | ||
| Because I remember watching that. | ||
| I was a big fan of MMA at that point in time. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| I mean, insane combination. | ||
| Boy, I want to say, what year is that, Jamie? | ||
| That would have been like early 2010s, like maybe 11? | ||
| Yeah, I was thinking. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| I'm kind of bummed out that Bellator and the PFL are going to become one thing now. | ||
| I like having a bunch of different organizations, apparently. | ||
| That's what I keep hearing. | ||
| 2012. Rockhold versus Kennedy. | ||
| That was a great fight, too. | ||
| Damn, a lot of great fights in Strikeforce. | ||
| Strikeforce was one of the few organizations where you could absolutely say that it stood neck and neck with some of the best UFC fights at the time. | ||
| Yeah, you know like when Nate Diaz or when Nick Diaz was running shit over there when he had that fight with Cyborg like when Nick Diaz had that That crazy fight with Paul Daly Insane fight with Paul Daly and then with Frank Shamrock and Robbie Lawler Yeah, Robbie Lawler fighting Melvin Manhoff over there. | ||
| Remember that one? | ||
| I remember that. | ||
| See, you could say that when Luke Rockhold was the champ over there and then became the champ in the UFC, you could say that the level of fighter in Strikeforce at the very peak... | ||
| Was at the level? | ||
| It was at the same level of the UFC. Josh Thompson was over there. | ||
| It was at the very same level. | ||
| It was just elite. | ||
| I mean, we just got through watching our Woodley fight. | ||
| Last event they had. | ||
| Gegard Mousasi, I mean elite. | ||
| Gegard Mousasi is a bad motherfucker. | ||
| Jacare Sousa, Tim Kennedy, Ryan Couture, who's a bad motherfucker too, who's Randy's son. | ||
| Josh Barnett, Daniel Cormier, jeez! | ||
| But Willie went on to become, what, the Westway champion after that? | ||
| After that knockout? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, no, Wilter, yeah, after that knockout. | ||
| He entered into the UFC after that knockout, yeah, for sure. | ||
| It was quite a bit. | ||
| That Jay Heron knockout, oh my god. | ||
| Yeah, that was a nasty one. | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting if you go back and watch the first UFC and if someone did like an analysis, like some egghead did an analysis of like what percentage better are elite athletes today. | ||
| I would be very curious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think we ought to be curious. | ||
| I think that will put into numbers, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Quantifying, you know, what we're actually doing with ourselves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think we can probably put some direction on how to direct that trajectory, maybe even accelerate it. | ||
| I wonder if you can. | ||
| I mean, it's so accelerated right now. | ||
| I mean, nobody's really focusing on it, you know? | ||
| How many of us are focused on combining all this stuff and progressing it to the level? | ||
| And then it's only going to get so far because you can only test it out against the current level of competition out there. | ||
| So there are factors, limiting factors, but if we all focused on a certain thing as opposed to If it was like a collective consciousness focusing on it, like a think tank or some shit like that, I think we could speed it up, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I think so. | ||
| Like, how so? | ||
| What do you think they could use to speed it up? | ||
| Well, there would definitely have to be... | ||
| It would definitely be over a length of time. | ||
| There would be a lot of training involved, right? | ||
| Because, um... | ||
| But... | ||
| I would say with people focusing on it, like you got different experts at different fields, testing shit, trials and trial and error and stuff like that, you know, how science works, right? | ||
| You get a bunch of ideas together, you test them out, you see, you document the results. | ||
| Yeah, I see what you're saying. | ||
| But I also think that's a big part, and this is what a lot of people disagree with, about martial arts, that it's an art. | ||
| I think it is an art. | ||
| I think people disagree because they don't like arts where people get hurt. | ||
| But I think it's an art. | ||
| And I think everyone, it's something about whatever it is that draws them to that art. | ||
| Whether it's wrestling or it's Muay Thai, whatever it is that draws them to that. | ||
| And to me, like... | ||
| You're never going to be able to fix that with numbers. | ||
| You're never going to be able to quantify. | ||
| What drives someone to become elite, world-class striker and then learn how to wrestle? | ||
| It's a different animal. | ||
| It's a different thing. | ||
| And you've got to let people figure out what their thing is. | ||
| Some people, it's a jiu-jitsu thing. | ||
| They just want to take people down and strangle them. | ||
| And some people, it's like, no, they want to keep you on the feet and beat the fuck out of you. | ||
| And you've got to let them... | ||
| Figure that out. | ||
| And it's like some of the best fighters are not necessarily the most balanced where they're great at everything, but they're so good at one thing that they can impose that, whether it's grappling or whether it's striking. | ||
| It's a really interesting argument. | ||
| Like, what's the best approach? | ||
| Is it to be an elite specialist and then also an elite athlete that can pick up the other stuff quick? | ||
| Or is it better to be, like, fully well-rounded, like Mighty Mouse, who's like the most well-rounded guy ever. | ||
| Everything he can do world-class. | ||
| Ground game world-class, stand-up world-class, everything. | ||
| No holes. | ||
| That's like the guy. | ||
| If I had to look at technique for all-time technique, Mighty Mouse is the guy. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| He could do everything. | ||
| He was definitely the best all-around fighter. | ||
| He could do everything. | ||
| And he was a ghost. | ||
| He was in front of you, and then he was to the side of you, and then he was kicking you, and then he was shoving you, and then he was fucking dropping punches down on you, and then he had your back. | ||
| It's like, whoa! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He was a speed demon man with perfect technique and a library of information and that relationship that he had with Matt Hume. | ||
| Matt Hume is a very, very intelligent guy and very interesting guy when he talks about martial arts. | ||
| He knows a lot about martial arts. | ||
| And he was another one of those guys that was like early on he was fighting in MMA. He fought Pat Militech. | ||
| In an MMA fight that I watched, one of those weird organizations that was emerging that we forgot the name of, like World Combat something or another, you know? | ||
| But like that relationship between like a great coach and a fighter, like a DJ and a Matt Hume or, you know, a George St. Pierre and Farah Sahabi, like this kind of relationship that happens with certain athletes, that shit is so important. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| I mean, you've got to have a coach that's going to be able to communicate with you, and then you'll be able to communicate back with your coach. | ||
| So you go from Army combatants, and what is the next gym that you join? | ||
| When do you start taking MMA as a path? | ||
| Well, after I get out of the Army. | ||
| Well, I was trying to do it in the Army, but that wasn't a priority. | ||
| So after I get out of the Army... | ||
| I relocate to Alaska. | ||
| I use my skills that I acquired in the Army to get a job with the FAA, and I get hired on in Alaska. | ||
| So I relocate up there, me and my wife, and so we relocate up there. | ||
| And as soon as I get up there, I mean, there's a lot of time in between my exit from the Army. | ||
| I exited, what, 2008, December, and I'm in Alaska July 2009. So, in between that time, you know, I just, I found it, I had the bug, so I found the judo gym, you know what I mean? | ||
| I'm broke as a joke right now, you know what I mean? | ||
| I'm on unemployment because I just got out of the military, and my wife is pregnant, you know, we're, we found out two days before we had to clear post that we're pregnant, so, uh... | ||
| It was a pretty harrowing time for us, you know what I mean? | ||
| But I still wanted to train, so I found myself a judo gym. | ||
| And I trained judo for about a month and a half, two months, and tried to pick up as much as I could. | ||
| In between that time, I was applying for the job with the FAA. Eventually, going through all that hiring process of interviews and a bunch of other things, we relocate up to Alaska. | ||
| And as soon as we get settled up there, me and my wife and my newly born daughter... | ||
| I'm looking for a gym, you know what I mean? | ||
| And I find Gracie Baja, Alaska that's up there. | ||
| And I get into it, you know, I start doing jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I'm like 300 pounds, you know what I mean? | ||
| Training and stuff. | ||
| In between this time, in between my army time and Alaska, I put on a bunch of weight, put on a bunch of baby weight. | ||
| So I'm training jiu-jitsu, you know what I mean? | ||
| 300 pounds up there. | ||
| Throwing myself into this martial art. | ||
| You know, I didn't even know about MMA. I wasn't concerning myself about being a UFC fighter or anything at that time. | ||
| But one of these days, I look up and see these guys are striking. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So that goes on for about a month or two. | ||
| And I'm interested in it, and I wanted to get in shape first. | ||
| So I didn't just throw myself into everything the gym had. | ||
| I just wanted to focus on jiu-jitsu. | ||
| So I just did jiu-jitsu for a couple of months. | ||
| And then opportunity came up, and I just did a couple of the MMA classes. | ||
| And it was fun. | ||
| I was hooked. | ||
| One thing led to another. | ||
| I found out they had a MMA promotion in Alaska, the AFC. So I trained for about a year from like the end of 2009, early 2010 to about early spring. | ||
| It was about March 2011. So where were you getting your striking in? | ||
| You were getting your striking in? | ||
| At Gracie Baja, Alaska. | ||
| So the guys that were striking there, you just joined in with them? | ||
| Yeah, I just joined in with them. | ||
| Was anybody like a... | ||
| Well, it was an MMA team. | ||
| Oh, so it was an MMA team. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they had an actual MMA team, and there was an MMA promotion. | ||
| There was a few other gyms in the town as well. | ||
| So I just threw myself in. | ||
| I couldn't do it at first because of work and stuff like that, and just being home with my daughter. | ||
| But... | ||
| Eventually I trickled my way into it and got hooked. | ||
| It caused some friction at first, but me and my wife made the adjustments we needed to, which was either be close to work. | ||
| Me personally, I either have to be close to where I work at or close to the gym, because that's where I'll be spending most of my time at. | ||
| How crazy is it when you think of that moment then, when you first started doing this, when you had to convince your wife, and now you're one of the top middleweights on planet Earth? | ||
| It is crazy to think about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| What a journey that is. | ||
| And it's hard to think about it as it being crazy because, you know, I'm in the driver's seat, so it just seems like the road that I've been on, you know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So a lot of people are astounded by it, you know? | ||
| So to go from, I guess, a regular guy to, like you said, the top middleweight in the world... | ||
| But I don't really see a scene in the transition. | ||
| To me, it's just been, like, this is what I want to do. | ||
| This is what I need to do. | ||
| This is something personal for me. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So, like, people go to church, it's personal for them. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| This is personal for me. | ||
| This is personal development. | ||
| Not only just doing martial art and what you see on the outside, learning how to do a move and, you know, be stronger than the next man, but the internal aspects of it is what really drew me to it, of being a martial artist, you know? | ||
| So, um... | ||
| It makes sense when you watch you fight because you're constantly improving. | ||
| You always are on the path, which I think is very admirable and very difficult to maintain for a lot of fighters, to maintain their enthusiasm for the path. | ||
| They'll have some setbacks. | ||
| And then maybe they lose a little bit of enthusiasm from the setbacks, and it's hard for them to, like, re-gear up. | ||
| But you always stay on the path. | ||
| And, like, all of your fights, like, the Marvin Vittori fight was super impressive, man. | ||
| That was a super impressive performance. | ||
| And it's just, like, you're getting better. | ||
| It's like we knew that you were elite as a middleweight, but you, even through the fights that you've lost, you come back and you're better. | ||
| Every time you're better. | ||
| It's like you keep seeing that the path and the hard work is paying off with every fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, that's interesting because Coach said it in a very interesting way that once you get to that top level, the improvements are incremental at best. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So it's hard to see them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's one of the things he's impressed by with me as well. | ||
| He said, because I'm making... | ||
| Semi-drastic, I don't want to say drastic improvements, but I'm making some big improvements that are noticeable. | ||
| The movement in the Vittori fight was noticeable. | ||
| That was very impressive. | ||
| Your movement was like, there was much more activity going on. | ||
| It was really technical, setting him up really well. | ||
| And it's only going to get better, I promise you that. | ||
| I believe you. | ||
| For me, it's already gotten better, because I've moved on from that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But with a big fight like that and a big win, is there also like this feeling like almost like you've leveled up, like you've gone through, like you got affirmation. | ||
| You knew it, you thought you were going to beat him. | ||
| Vittori's one of the best in the division for sure. | ||
| He's a beast. | ||
| That's another dude. | ||
| How the fuck does that guy make 185 pounds? | ||
| He's a beast. | ||
| He's a house. | ||
| I always stand next to him like, how the fuck do you do that? | ||
| He's so big. | ||
| His head's gotta be like 40 pounds, right? | ||
| Pajedo, who just fought at 205 this weekend to beat Jan Blachowicz. | ||
| When you're standing next to him, you're like, what are you really weighing? | ||
| Bro, you're 230 pounds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're huge. | |
| He's gigantic. | ||
| He looks like he's 225 pounds when he's standing there. | ||
| And I think he is something like that, right? | ||
| They tested them the day of the fight to see how much weight he put back on. | ||
| It was like 22 pounds or something like that. | ||
| Something bananas like that, yeah. | ||
| What did he weigh, Jamie? | ||
| I think they'll show it. | ||
| They show the before and after. | ||
| That fucking dude's good. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| And now that he can defend on the ground, too. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| 228. Bananas. | ||
| Homeboy gained 23 pounds. | ||
| And had full endurance, man. | ||
| He looked fantastic in that fight. | ||
| That was a good fight. | ||
| When you think about it, though, is that really... | ||
| I mean, that's like, what, two gallons of water? | ||
| Plus some food. | ||
| A gallon of water is like eight pounds. | ||
| Is it? | ||
| Yeah, I guess. | ||
| How much does a gallon of water weigh? | ||
| I never even thought of that. | ||
| A gallon of water is like over eight pounds, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
8.34. | |
| 8.34. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So yeah, you're right. | ||
| A little bit over two. | ||
| Two gallons. | ||
| Maybe close to three gallons of water. | ||
| We're definitely drinking that much. | ||
| We're definitely getting that after cutting weight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So with him being that big, that's not really that big drastic of an increase when you think about The fact that he may not be as dehydrated as he was at middleweight, but I'm sure he's dropping his weight, especially to get back up to 220. I think when you dehydrate yourself, you can really put down some water. | ||
| Yeah, no, I agree, for sure. | ||
| And I think when you're a real big guy like he is, the benefits of that weight cut are, without a doubt, I was like 215 when I fought Vittori. | ||
| Were you really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the most that I've put on. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the most. | ||
| Did you do it on purpose, or is it just happening? | ||
| No, it just happened. | ||
| I didn't do anything intentionally. | ||
| I was just... | ||
| The only thing I did intentionally was prepare a big jug of tea with some electrolytes and stuff in it that I carried around with me. | ||
| That was the first time I've done that. | ||
| When you do something like that, do you sip it slowly when you first start taking it in? | ||
| Because you're dehydrated for like how long? | ||
| I don't sip. | ||
| No, because I cut the night of. | ||
| The most dehydrated I am, I cut the night of late that night so I can just try to go to sleep and then wake up and go to the early weigh-ins. | ||
| And that's how I do it. | ||
| And I wake up and if I need to cut extra, there's still time to cut because I wake up early. | ||
| I can't sleep the night of a weight cut. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, I've heard different people do it different ways, but I think people are realizing now it's better to just get up early. | ||
| To get up early and do it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it would be better. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You want to sleep. | ||
| You just wake up. | ||
| Yeah, you want to sleep hydrated. | ||
| You definitely want to sleep hydrated. | ||
| Otherwise you're missing a night of sleep, for real. | ||
| No, you're absolutely right. | ||
| Yeah, it's like you're gonna always dehydrate yourself, but you're gonna miss a night of sleep because you want to be dehydrated earlier. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| You need that fucking sleep. | ||
| It's just I really wish that there was a way around it because I just don't think it makes any sense. | ||
| And I know it's tradition and I know it's the fight before the fight like John Anik always likes to describe it as. | ||
| But I just think it's unnecessary and dangerous. | ||
| And I think it's dangerously unnecessary. | ||
| Like, there's no reason to have people almost kill themselves a day before a fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| I think it affects guys' chins, and Josh Barnett was saying that. | ||
| Josh Barnett and I were having a tax conversation about this, and he said it absolutely affects your chin. | ||
| When you get dehydrated, your brain doesn't hydrate as much. | ||
| You're not just dehydrating yourself. | ||
| You're dehydrating your brain, your liver, your kidneys, your heart. | ||
| Yeah, you can't take a shot as well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's one of those things, man. | ||
| I feel like it's a legacy thing in the sport that I wish wasn't there anymore. | ||
| But I do like to see a guy like you go from heavyweight all the way down the middleweight. | ||
| I do like that, because when you fight, I go, God damn, he's big. | ||
| It's worth it. | ||
| It's worth it, because you could really be a bully in there sometimes. | ||
| You're a big middleweight, and it has its advantages. | ||
| It has its advantages in durability, too, I think. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| I'm able to absorb a lot more, even though my goal is to not absorb anything in there. | ||
| But it's the nature of the beast. | ||
| You can't really block them all, I suppose. | ||
| Same for guys like Vittori. | ||
| It's like one of the things he's famous for. | ||
| Yeah, look at this man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He can take shots. | |
| Yeah, because I'll put some heavy leather on that guy. | ||
| He was just looking at me like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, yeah. | ||
| No, he's a warrior. | ||
| But that was a really intriguing fight for me. | ||
| Because I know he's elite, and I know you're elite, but, you know, you just beat Sean Strickland, and then you went right into that fight, and I was like, this will show. | ||
| You know, this will show where he's flying colors, man. | ||
| You just dominated him. | ||
| That was, I think, your most technical performance. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| I think the Anderson Silva fight was pretty technical as well. | ||
| That was very technical. | ||
| That was very technical. | ||
| But that was mostly leg kicks, predominantly leg kicks in that fight. | ||
| I think I was more disciplined in that fight, to be honest, because the goal was he's going to be hard to hit in the head. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Whereas, well, I think I'm comparing this one to the Strickland fight, not to the Vittori fight. | ||
| But I was able to make that adjustment. | ||
| Okay, his head's going to be hard to hit right off the bat, so I'm just going to touch you down here. | ||
| And I stayed to that, and it only took one round to cause that injury. | ||
| Yeah, Anderson is... | ||
| As far as I know, the only guy who's successfully come back after that shin break. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No one else is really... | ||
| No one else was able to do it. | ||
| Well, didn't McGregor... | ||
| Well, Tyron Spong... | ||
| Did McGregor fight... | ||
| No, he hasn't fought since the injury. | ||
| Oh, okay, he hasn't fought the injury. | ||
| But Tyrone Spong, he's done it. | ||
| He injured, yep. | ||
| He had a horrible one against Gokhan Saki. | ||
| Horrible. | ||
| Same thing as Chris Wybin, Uriah Hall, same check. | ||
| Horrible snap. | ||
| Isn't he about to come back, though? | ||
| Well, Tyrone Spong became a boxer. | ||
| He'll still do MMA. I know he had at least one MMA fight since then. | ||
| But, you know, he was an elite kickboxer. | ||
| He was elite, man. | ||
| He was so good. | ||
| And to see his shin snap like that, you're like, God damn. | ||
| I mean, you would always think about it before you went to throw a shot. | ||
| You would always think about the two years it took you to fucking regrow your bone back where you could throw kicks with it again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wouldn't say it slowed my kicks down. | ||
| Checks have done that enough. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Checks hurt enough or are deterring enough. | ||
| But... | ||
| Yeah, it definitely gives you something to think about, you know? | ||
| It's definitely a scary fact of it. | ||
| It's one of the most horrific injuries in the sport. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That shin injury. | ||
| And it's happened. | ||
| There's so many versions of it now on Instagram. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can find so many small shows where guys are doing it, accidentally breaking their legs. | ||
| I think Noguera getting his arm snapped was pretty horrific as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, that was horrible. | |
| That was horrible. | ||
| I saw another girl get her arm snapped in a jiu-jitsu tournament. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| Oh, goddammit, tap! | ||
| I remember when Khabib had Michael Johnson, and I remember thinking, just please tap. | ||
| Please tap. | ||
| Please tap. | ||
| Just please tap. | ||
| Don't make me see this, man. | ||
| Don't make me see this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tap. | |
| He got you. | ||
| Fight another day. | ||
| Please tap. | ||
| Please tap. | ||
| That fucking spiral arm fracture from that Kimura is so nasty. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ugh. | ||
| And I hear those are, from doctors, I hear those are really hard to repair and stuff. | ||
| Yeah, hard to repair. | ||
| You know, who knows if your arm's ever going to be the same again. | ||
| That's a rough one to come back from. | ||
| My friend Tom broke his arm playing basketball, like, what was it, like two years ago, Jamie? | ||
| Two years ago. | ||
| It's still fucked. | ||
| He's still struggling with it. | ||
| What part did he break? | ||
| He broke the top. | ||
| It broke the top bone, like up here. | ||
| Oh, that's a humerus. | ||
| It was big. | ||
| Big fracture. | ||
| Nerve damage in his hand. | ||
| I can imagine that one being painful because not only is the break painful, but you got the weight of the arm pulling on that thing. | ||
| And that can make it hard for it to heal as well. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| Injuries. | ||
| What's the worst injury you've had in MMA? In MMA? I've torn... | ||
| Well, I didn't... | ||
| In my MMA career, I've torn my pec training. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I think the worst one I had in competition... | ||
| I mean, I've broken my hand in competition. | ||
| Did you tear your pec in drilling or sparring? | ||
| It was just... | ||
| We were initiating a warm-up. | ||
| So it was a warm-up roll. | ||
| Me and Ben was like a warm-up roll. | ||
| And I was passing his guard. | ||
| Ben Henderson? | ||
| Ben Henderson, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Shout out to the lab. | ||
| Oh yeah, all day long. | ||
| Lab all day. | ||
| You all know that. | ||
| Everybody knows what we do. | ||
| It's a great gym. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| That's the whole reason why I quit my six-figure job and moved to Phoenix, Arizona. | ||
| But yeah, he had a whizzer on my left arm, and I was passing to the right side, so I cleared his leg, and I went to pass his guard, and I was extended with my left arm, because he had the whizzer, and I went to get strong to collect him up into side control, and as soon as I contracted that peg... | ||
| It tore just like that. | ||
| Three little rips. | ||
| And it tore. | ||
| That was February. | ||
| I think that was during the... | ||
| That was fight week for Jon Jones versus... | ||
| Who did his last fight at Light Heavyweight? | ||
| Dominic Reyes. | ||
| Dominic Reyes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that happened in Houston at the hotel. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then I came back and fought... | ||
| Yeah, that was 2020 before COVID. And then I came back and fought Robert Whittaker in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| Was it still fucked up? | ||
| No, the peck was fine. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Shout out to Ares Physical Therapy. | ||
| Now you got me running all my shout outs now. | ||
| Shout out to Ares Physical Therapy. | ||
| I've been hitting them up since the Anderson Silva fight. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I've been working out with them, working out there. | ||
| As well as working out at the lab, those two combined, you guys see my cardio, those two combined has really propelled my career. | ||
| But I came back after the peck tear to fight Robert Whittaker, and not a minute into the fight, he throws his patented Reaper combo, one-two head kick, and breaks my left ulna. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| So... | ||
| I ended up fighting this guy for, what, another two rounds plus four minutes of the first round with a broken owner and I almost got him too. | ||
| You should see the other guy, right? | ||
| That's one of those crazy freak injuries that, like, it can always happen when you're blocking kicks. | ||
| But it was my fault. | ||
| I extended my arm to block, more reactionary as opposed to being grounded and prepared and bracing and ready to absorb the kick. | ||
| Like, oh shit, kick. | ||
| And the reason being because I was slipping his initiation. | ||
| Typical shit. | ||
| We all see it happen all day long with Robert Whittaker. | ||
| We all know that combination. | ||
| Were you surprised at the Dracus Duplessis fight? | ||
| Who wasn't, right? | ||
| I wouldn't say I was surprised as if he doesn't have the capability to do what he did, but it was still surprising to see it happen, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because we all think so highly of Robert and his ability to go in there and fight at the highest level, but... | ||
| It was shocking. | ||
| I'm sure, you know, Drakus, he fucking opened some eyes there with that one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But to be honest, when I look at that fight, when I was looking at that fight in the lead up to it, that fight went exactly how I thought it could have gone. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I either thought Robert was going to be the tactician that he is and pick him apart, you know what I mean? | ||
| Maybe hurt him with some shots and get a finish or take him to a decision. | ||
| Or Drakus, who was a buzzsaw, my words exactly, the dude's a buzzsaw, he keeps going. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He doesn't slow down. | ||
| He may look from the outside, look tired, but he probably doesn't feel tired to his opponent in there. | ||
| I'm pretty sure he's putting some pressure on. | ||
| And that's exactly what he did. | ||
| And Robert began to wilt in the first round from what I saw. | ||
| Well, he got his nose fixed now. | ||
| He could breathe out of his nose. | ||
| So for the longest time, the reason why he had his mouth open, he had no nose. | ||
| So his nostrils are completely closed off. | ||
| So he won't look exhausted, slack-jawed. | ||
| Always look slack-jawed. | ||
| But he also would fight awkward, too. | ||
| I think it affected his cardio quite a bit. | ||
| I would say that's his style. | ||
| It is, but he used to get a little too overeager and he would like blitz, just run forward, which you can't do with a Whitaker. | ||
| You can't do with Pajera. | ||
| You can't do with an elite guy. | ||
| But he tightened all that up, man. | ||
| And he specifically tightened all that up for the Whitaker fight. | ||
| That was a very technical fight. | ||
| Someone broke it down on Instagram, one of those breakdown sites. | ||
| I forget who it was, whether it was Lawrence Kenshin or one of the other ones. | ||
| But they were talking about his use of the right hand, like stopping Whitaker in the right hook, stopping Whitaker as he was coming forward. | ||
| And that Whitaker has this like leap in style and that, you know, they had figured out the distance for that. | ||
| And that's when he started putting it on him. | ||
| It was very technical, man. | ||
| What he did was, you know, it was a very interesting fight. | ||
| I'm going to have to find him. | ||
| Because Whitaker is so fucking good, man. | ||
| For him to beat him down like that, it's like, wow, you got to take that guy for real. | ||
| You got to take that guy serious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's what I saw. | ||
| What I saw Dracus do to Whitaker, I personally feel was the effect that I had on Vittori. | ||
| Because I was in his face, putting pressure on him. | ||
| I was hitting him too. | ||
| I think... | ||
| That could be a bit of a difference, but I think the pressure, the fact that Robert had to stay on, you know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That does something to guys. | ||
| Guys aren't used to being on the whole time, like in their feet. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Getting chased. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sprinting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's like sprinting. | ||
| He can fucking crack, too. | ||
| So, Drakes can sprint in there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a good time. | ||
| I'm going to keep that one. | ||
| Well, it's going to be interesting to see, you know, what happens with him and Adesanya. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, he's not a fight in September, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| I hear rumors that they're going to go with the Strickland fight. | ||
| Well, I think that is happening now. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| That is definitely happening now. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Because Strickland... | ||
| They're in negotiations still, though. | ||
| Because I think Strickland wants more money. | ||
| You know, I think... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I hope they work it out. | ||
| That'll be a good fight. | ||
| Well, I don't want to be Mr. Steal Your Girl here, you know what I mean? | ||
| I know. | ||
| I was thinking that when you came on here. | ||
| But, you know what I mean? | ||
| Are you preparing for something like that? | ||
| The possibility to something like that? | ||
| Well, when I get back after this, my diet is going to change. | ||
| I'm going to prepare for somebody. | ||
| How many weeks is Australia? | ||
| September 29? | ||
| That's like five, six weeks, right? | ||
| I think it's September night. | ||
| It'll be just enough time for Jared Cannoneer to get popping again. | ||
| So that's what I'm preparing for. | ||
| I'm preparing for the stars to align and me to go in there and win my title. | ||
| Who knows what's going to happen? | ||
| If Sean is being difficult, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Mick, you know who to call. | ||
| Dana, you know who to call. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Y'all know Lou. | ||
| Y'all know first round. | ||
| You know how we handle business. | ||
| Y'all know I'm not difficult. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I think you guys pay me good. | ||
| I'm not going to ask for too much extra to go to Sydney. | ||
| I've never been there. | ||
| I think my contract is something that we agreed upon prior to these events occurring. | ||
| I think we can make something happen. | ||
| That's what I'm going to be getting ready for. | ||
| I definitely want to see you fight for the title for sure. | ||
| Yeah, it's going to be a different thing. | ||
| You know, everybody, you know, we all saw the first one and nobody was too entertained by that. | ||
| Not especially me. | ||
| So I've made the adjustments not only to make it more entertaining, because I know that's what people want, to be entertained, but... | ||
| Do you have to balance that out in your head sometimes? | ||
| Like be entertaining? | ||
| I don't concern myself for being entertaining or anything like that. | ||
| It's not as... | ||
| Well, you are. | ||
| You are, fortunately. | ||
| Your style is very entertaining, so you don't have to worry about that. | ||
| Well, it's just coincidental, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I like the hippie. | ||
| If anything, I'm entertaining myself because this is fun for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| I'm going in there having fun. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And this is something I tell people all the time. | ||
| You know, I don't think of this as... | ||
| A job. | ||
| It is a career. | ||
| And I do get paid. | ||
| It is my livelihood. | ||
| But I don't approach this as my job or anything. | ||
| Like, I have to go to work now. | ||
| You know, this is something... | ||
| Me fighting is merely a part of my training. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's like the test you take. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Every couple of weeks you take a test in school or you challenge yourself somehow. | ||
| And for me, that's what this is. | ||
| This is the challenge. | ||
| Marvin Vittoria is the challenge. | ||
| Israel Adesanya is the challenge. | ||
| I'm here to conquer these challenges, you know what I mean? | ||
| That's a beautiful approach. | ||
| That's probably why you just keep getting better. | ||
| That's why you keep getting better. | ||
| It's a fantastic mindset for an elite fighter. | ||
| A mindset of constant growth. | ||
| I'm always trying to learn. | ||
| That's the thing I love about it because I get to go into study, you know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So something that I want to learn, something that I want to dissect and analyze and break down and Not only do it with my mind, but do it with my body as well. | ||
| That's something you can't really do a lot, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Operate a field of thought with your mind and your body. | ||
| Well, it's also very impressive and very inspirational to people that you're doing it at like, I think you're 39 now? | ||
| Yeah, 39. You're getting better at an elite... | ||
| Athlete's level. | ||
| You're getting better at one of the most difficult jobs. | ||
| Combat sport athletes, that's one of the hardest fucking jobs on earth. | ||
| In terms of physical demands. | ||
| And you're getting better at 39. It's amazing. | ||
| I've mitigated a lot of the wear and tear through my years. | ||
| I didn't grow up jumping big hills on bicycles and shit like that. | ||
| Or anything like that. | ||
| On top of that... | ||
| I find my body to be valuable, so I didn't grow up destroying my body or anything like that. | ||
| When I finally started training, I was like 25 years old in Alaska, so I got into it relatively late. | ||
| I didn't grow up doing martial arts or anything like that. | ||
| I wouldn't say that I regret it, but I would like it to be the other way around. | ||
| I would have loved to have done martial arts as a child. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it is what it is. | ||
| You know what I think, though? | ||
| I think one of the best—I mean, especially a guy like you that's maintained your peak athleticism into your late 30s. | ||
| You don't have the wear and tear that someone who started doing it when they were like 13, 14. But, you know, by the time you're 25, 26, you got— Ten plus years of getting kicked and punched and taken down, your knees twisted and your neck cranked. | ||
| Like, everybody gets banged up within ten years. | ||
| I mean, I had a friend who was 22 when he had his first nerve blockage where his fucking arm wasn't working correctly because his nerves were getting pinched in his neck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In his neck, yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, so his neck was starting to get fucked when he was a young, young man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So by the time, you know, you enter into martial arts later in life, but you're already a mature man. | ||
| And one of the things I think about like a big guy that cuts down is like your body thinks you're 300 pounds still. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So but you have all the tendons of a guy who was 300 pounds for a while. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But meanwhile, you know, you're competing at, you know, 210, 215. Yeah. | ||
| I like it into Goku training in Hyperbaric Chamber. | ||
| As Super Saiyan, I just want to be regular Super Saiyan all the time. | ||
| So here, let me just get heavy, train Super Saiyan, and then when I lose weight, it'll be like regular. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you seem to have got it down to a science. | ||
| It sucks when people don't make weight. | ||
| Like this past weekend, Michelle Pereira and Wonderboy, they canceled the fight. | ||
| That's a bummer to me, man. | ||
| That's such a bummer. | ||
| That dude's so big, though. | ||
| He is big. | ||
| He's gigantic. | ||
| That's a gigantic 170. He's fucking huge. | ||
| So I could see it because Darren Till missed weight with Wonderboy in the past and Wonderboy always felt like that was a factor. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That he came in heavy. | ||
| I was going to sub for one of his fights. | ||
| I think they were concerned either. | ||
| I think it was visa issues. | ||
| Visa and weight issues. | ||
| The Darren Till one? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Man, it's interesting watching these guys come and go and come in with so much promise and it doesn't quite go the way. | ||
| Darren Till had a bunch of knee injuries. | ||
| Well, you know, the UFC is a promotion machine. | ||
| So they sell the world a dream for each and every one of us. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So a lot of people out there in the world have this idea of me. | ||
| That, you know, could be completely wrong, you know what I mean? | ||
| So, we all have these expectations. | ||
| Everybody has these hopes and dreams and stuff like that. | ||
| And us, as far as, especially with the mics in front of our faces, are allowed to share ours. | ||
| So everybody definitely believes us when we say, believes me when I say I'm going to be a champion one day. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I seriously believe myself when I say that. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| But a very few of us are going to make it to that level, you know what I mean? | ||
| A very few percentage of us are going to make it. | ||
| So that's the reality of it, you know? | ||
| And that's the reality I had already come to terms with when I first started this. | ||
| So when I first started doing MMA, I already had a full-time job, a good, comfortable job, you know what I mean? | ||
| I was able to take care of my family, so I was good. | ||
| And I was able to go train, so I was happy. | ||
| I just told myself, I'm just going to go as far as I can go. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Pretty much make myself no promises, you know what I mean? | ||
| Because I understand that. | ||
| I understand my ability, and I had confidence in myself, which is why I did it in the first place, but I understand the reality of it. | ||
| And I was blessed to already have a full-time job to be able to Take care of myself because there's a lot of fighters. | ||
| A lot of fighters out there are broke trying to fight. | ||
| The majority of fighters are in broke situations trying to fight. | ||
| When I was training, it wasn't my goal to be a UFC fighter. | ||
| I just wanted to go as far as I can, learn as much as I can while I have this time here on Earth. | ||
| This is as far as I've gotten. | ||
| Well, you've gotten pretty fucking far. | ||
| You've got a great approach, man. | ||
| You get a great approach to life, a great approach to this path that you're on to be a better martial artist and a better person. | ||
| It's a fascinating approach. | ||
| It's very samurai-like. | ||
| It is. | ||
| For me, I like to take energies from all places and try to create this, I don't want to say character, but create this avatar. | ||
| And equip this avatar with all these different perks and stuff that I find admirable, that I find moral, and things that's going to make me a bigger, stronger, better, what am I? A human? | ||
| A man? | ||
| A black man? | ||
| If you want to use those labels and terms, you know what I mean? | ||
| But, uh, for me being who I am, and, uh, That's a great way to think about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And not necessarily try to distinguish myself from any and everybody else. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Look to any and everybody else to see the potential that I have because we're all human. | ||
| We all have the potential to do great and wonderful things or terrible and... | ||
| Bad things, you know what I mean? | ||
| This is one thing I tell my children. | ||
| We have the ability as humans, this is what makes us unique from any other species on this planet, that we have the ability to be an animal. | ||
| Or we can be something better than that. | ||
| We have the ability to be a demon or a devil. | ||
| Or we can be a celestial or a god or a goddess, you know what I mean? | ||
| Not that we would physically embody our definitions of these things. | ||
| These are just conceptualizations, but... | ||
| I think for me, that allows me to take the trajectory of my life and point it to where I want. | ||
| I want to ascend, you know what I mean? | ||
| To use the word that has been so conceptualized, to Godhood. | ||
| And I realize that I'm not the Almighty, but I am living an aspect. | ||
| I am Generating a perspective. | ||
| I am so many different ways to put it. | ||
| Living an experience. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That God can look back and say, yep, I've done this. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Maybe this has already been done. | ||
| Maybe it hasn't. | ||
| But for me, I just want to go up. | ||
| Be better. | ||
| I want to be able to levitate and shit like that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Do things that nobody else does, which is probably one of the reasons why I joined the Army and do martial arts in the first place, because everybody where I'm from, where I grew up, definitely wasn't joining the Army, and nobody was doing martial arts that I knew of. | ||
| So, I guess I was just born a nonconformist, if you will, and I just like taking the route that I find best suits me. | ||
| You feel me? | ||
| Yeah, I do feel you. | ||
| No, that's a fascinating path. | ||
| I like what you just said. | ||
| I like what you just said a lot. | ||
| I think if people could adopt that mindset and adopt that way of thinking, I think that would be very, very beneficial to a lot of people. | ||
| It's very admirable. | ||
| Sometimes when you hear someone's philosophy, the way they think about things and the way they approach their life, you go, oh, that's admirable. | ||
| And that's what I just felt when you were saying that. | ||
| I was like, that's very admirable. | ||
| I like when someone has a very clear, disciplined sort of view of what their life is and what they're trying to accomplish. | ||
| And you have, especially with this mindset that you have about constant growth, about looking at it like that, like you're always on the path. | ||
| And to approach that as a martial artist and then, you know, be a martial artist while you're still an elite fighter in the UFC. You're still a martial artist and I think that's why you're so good. | ||
| I think that's why you keep getting better too. | ||
| I'm a martial artist first. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| And I think that, you know, there was a lot of people that felt like that was kind of lost, along with all the trash-talking part of the sport, the pro-wrestling style sport, which, you know, I think the first person to do it really good was Chael Sonnen. | ||
| But to me, it was funny, man. | ||
| I loved it. | ||
| So it's like I'm conflicted. | ||
| I like it, too. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Who didn't love it? | ||
| Who didn't love the Conor McGregor era, right? | ||
| How could you not love it? | ||
| Man, he came on the mic saying some... | ||
| Some wild shit. | ||
| Some wild shit, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How about when Jerry Stevens was talking shit to him and he goes, who the fuck is that guy? | |
| Yeah, right? | ||
| He's had so many iconic one-liners that... | ||
| So yeah, man, I can understand it. | ||
| I can understand the entertainment aspect of it. | ||
| And I can understand the business aspect of the UFC catering to that because apparently that's more profitable, you know? | ||
| But... | ||
| I necessarily don't cater to that, you know what I mean? | ||
| I keep it clean. | ||
| Not that I keep it clean. | ||
| I keep it real, for lack of a better word. | ||
| You just are you. | ||
| You are you, no matter what. | ||
| This is how you feel about the matchup. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I'm excited. | ||
| My only goal is to be as honest. | ||
| With myself. | ||
| And in doing so, I'll be honest with any and everybody else. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, and that, for me, that keeps me in check. | ||
| Because I don't want to have to tell you some crazy fucked up shit I didn't do, you know what I mean? | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| So, I don't want to have to be like, mama, mama, you know, you know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| It was at one point where I was getting ready to leave a previous job of mine. | ||
| I'm not going to say which one specifically. | ||
| But I was doing things that I shouldn't have been doing. | ||
| And let's just say I got put in a position to where... | ||
| I can't even say it. | ||
| Don't say it. | ||
| If you think you should say it, tell me afterwards. | ||
| Don't get sued, Jared. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't get sued. | |
| I won't get sued because no damages, nobody was hurt, nothing happened or anything like that. | ||
| If you don't think you should say it, don't say it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But anyway, it was wild. | ||
| And there was a moment where I was going to call my wife and be like, baby, I just want you to know I love you, but something happening may make our future a little rainy in the future. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Something bad may just, you know. | ||
| Well, I'm glad you didn't do whatever you were thinking about doing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was going to call her, and then I just didn't call her, too. | ||
| And I just... | ||
| I'll tell you about it afterwards. | ||
| Okay, tell me afterwards. | ||
| Tell me afterwards. | ||
| So when you were competing, you first start competing in Alaska, how did you wound up in Arizona? | ||
| Like, what was the path to get down there? | ||
| Like, how many years in were you? | ||
| Well, I was training from... | ||
| I began competing in 2011 and I moved to Phoenix in 2017. On our team, Joe Murphy and Lauren Murphy. | ||
| Lauren Murphy's in the UFC. Joe Murphy, we're all familiar with. | ||
| Some of us should be familiar with that pair. | ||
| They were some of my first training partners. | ||
| Joe's a really good friend of mine. | ||
| I love that guy. | ||
| He's my guy. | ||
| I love him. | ||
| And I love Lauren, too. | ||
| Some of my first training partners. | ||
| But they had moved. | ||
| Lauren, they had moved to Florida. | ||
| Joe was in the Air Force, went from Florida to Texas, and eventually landed in Phoenix early 2010s. | ||
| And... | ||
| When they came back to visit in Alaska, they told me, hey, we're in the lab, you know what I mean? | ||
| They have a really good program there. | ||
| I think you can go there and, you know, really be good, you know what I mean? | ||
| As opposed to staying up here in Alaska, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| If you want to take your MMA career to the next level, the MMA lab can get you there. | ||
| At that time, I was just now getting signed with the UFC. I was 7-0 as a heavyweight in Alaska. | ||
| I fought my last fight January 2014. I had my first fight in the UFC January 2015. So a year later, I had my first fight. | ||
| So in the summertime, fall time, I was getting managers, getting in with the UFC. And I contacted them. | ||
| They said, come on down. | ||
| You can stay with us for a little bit. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Do your camp here. | ||
| And, you know, go from there. | ||
| And I went down, did the camp, and got my toes wet, as they say. | ||
| And I really like the temperature of the water. | ||
| You feel me? | ||
| So it was a two-month camp. | ||
| I did my debut. | ||
| You remember that card. | ||
| It was Jones-Cormier 1. And they first fought in Vegas. | ||
| So I fought Shawn Jordan on that card. | ||
| And those who don't know Shawn Jordan, I was lucky in my heavyweight career in the UFC. I didn't get to fight any of these 6'4", 6'5", giants, behemoths. | ||
| Shawn Jordan was like 5'10", 5'11". | ||
| He was a crazy athlete. | ||
| But he was a crazy athlete. | ||
| He would do backflips after all of his wins and knockouts and stuff. | ||
| Did he stop Derrick Lewis with a hook kick? | ||
| After he stopped me in the first round, he stopped Derrick Lewis with a hook kick. | ||
| Yeah, that dude was a freak athlete. | ||
| That was his next fight because I was watching. | ||
| I was like, let's see how this guy goes. | ||
| Because I'll be watching. | ||
| Let's see how guys do after we meet in the octagon. | ||
| Win or lose. | ||
| He was a freak athlete. | ||
| He was. | ||
| He holds a, I think it's a bench press or a squat or deadlift record. | ||
| Something crazy like that. | ||
| At LSU. And he played for LSU. I think it was a fullback for them when they, when the Tigers won, when they won a championship way back when. | ||
| When you see a dude who's built like the Hulk and he does a backflip, you're like, what the fuck, man? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's built like a tank. | ||
| He's built like a tank. | ||
| Like the Hulk. | ||
| For real. | ||
| When you see that guy do a backflip, you're like, that's a fucking athlete. | ||
| That's a lot of weight to throw around. | ||
| So yeah, he knocked me out in the first round. | ||
| TKO. He didn't knock me out. | ||
| It was a TKO. Did you already know at that time you were going to go down at least to light heavyweight? | ||
| Not at that time. | ||
| You thought you were going to fight as a heavyweight? | ||
| I thought I was going to win this fight and make millions of dollars and quit my job. | ||
| I could just fight and train now. | ||
| That wasn't the reality of it. | ||
| I lost the fight and went back to Alaska. | ||
| That was early 2015, so I spent another two years up there doing my career. | ||
| I fought again in heavyweight. | ||
| I'm sorry, let me get on this mic. | ||
| I fought again in heavyweight and won that one. | ||
| That's the fight I won in Croatia. | ||
| That was my last fight in heavyweight. | ||
| And interestingly enough, on that fight, that fight in Croatia, there was like four or five other heavyweights on that card. | ||
| And all those heavyweights are the guys who look at it and say, oh, that dude, that's the man. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It was Francis Ngannou. | ||
| Everybody knows him. | ||
| And Curtis Blades was on that card. | ||
| It was Derrick Lewis and Gabriel Gonzaga. | ||
| Ben Rothwell, he fought. | ||
| Who did Ben Rothwell fight? | ||
| Did he fight Junior Dos Santos? | ||
| I think he fought Junior Dos Santos. | ||
| But those are just three behemoths, four, six behemoths of men. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Jan Blachowicz was on that card? | ||
| I didn't even know that. | ||
| Oh, Timothy Johnson, Martin Tabora. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So all these big dudes was on this card, and I'm, you know, standing next to him, walking next to him, and I, you know, I went by knockout in the first round, so I'm a big dog too, you know what I mean? | ||
| But... | ||
| You started thinking... | ||
| I started thinking, not that I was afraid of any of these fools, but for the sake of my career, if I wanted to be able to compete and give myself... | ||
| As best a chance as possible to make this career work. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When I see guys like Jon Jones and... | ||
| Francis Ngannou. | ||
| Francis Ngannou. | ||
| It was Cain Velasquez at the time, you know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Who I was getting prepared for. | ||
| That's a guy, when I did my training, coming up, I was looking at him. | ||
| I gotta get ready for that guy. | ||
| That guy had cardio. | ||
| That's another aspect of my training right there. | ||
| Cardio Cain, that's what they call him. | ||
| So that's why my conditioning is... | ||
| Where it is now, because that's one thing I focused on early on in my career. | ||
| So huge. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's so huge. | ||
| Having a giant gas tank. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| That's the last place you want to be. | ||
| I always talk about primetime BJ Penn. | ||
| When BJ Penn was at his best, he was training with Marv Marinovich. | ||
| And Marv Marinovich, I don't want to paraphrase, I don't want to fuck this up, but I'm pretty sure their philosophy was it's more important for strength and conditioning for an elite fighter than even fight training. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| It's water and there's filtered water in that too. | ||
| So their philosophy was they would get BJ to have the most insane gas tank. | ||
| He already knows how to fight. | ||
| They're like, just do your drills or whatever you want to do, but the most important part of your day is plyometrics. | ||
| We're going to give you the most insane ability. | ||
| So you do eight weeks of this, by the time that fight comes, you'll be a totally different kind of human. | ||
| With a crazy gas tank. | ||
| Crazy ability to change distances, to change positions, move back and forth. | ||
| All the plyometric shit they did and box jumping shit. | ||
| That was like all the work they did. | ||
| Everything was like high intensity Tabatas and all these different endurance work and all these different things they would do for explosivity and strength and conditioning that's just purely for like your ability to just generate fast twitch muscle fibers and throw them into action for fighting. | ||
| And he was a beast during that time man. | ||
| I dare say he was training with one of my training partners, Rob Emerson. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because Rob Emerson has brought a whole bunch of good stuff he did working with BJ and his team. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's brought it over. | ||
| He always has us doing explosive stuff, you know what I mean? | ||
| It's always plyometric oriented type stuff with him. | ||
| It's fascinating stuff, man. | ||
| It's fascinating stuff because there's so many different philosophies. | ||
| And then George St. Pierre, when he was at his best, he didn't do any strength and conditioning. | ||
| No. | ||
| He said he just wanted to work on efficiency and fight training. | ||
| So he was just constantly training fight specific stuff. | ||
| He didn't do any of the gymnastics stuff either? | ||
| When he got to a certain point in his career, he was incorporating gymnastics at one point in time. | ||
| But I think towards the end, maybe he did a little bit of that still, but I think towards the end when we had this conversation on the podcast, he was saying that he doesn't do any of the shit that he did when he first started out. | ||
| He was doing like box jumps and all this crazy shit and cleans and presses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Traditional shit. | |
| Traditional shit that you see I've seen the countdown show. | ||
| It gets excited. | ||
| It gets you hyped up. | ||
| But he stopped doing that. | ||
| And he was just concentrating on efficiency. | ||
| So it was just all technique. | ||
| Well, that makes perfect sense, especially when you become a person like GSP. You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, but I'm saying there's two totally different schools of thought there, right? | ||
| There's the BJ Penn School of Thought under Marvin Marinovich, where it's all strength and conditioning. | ||
| You already know how to fight. | ||
| Just get yourself to this insane gas tank. | ||
| And then there's the George St. Pierre, where it's all fight-specific stuff. | ||
| You're fight-drilling wrestling, fight-drilling takedowns, fight-drilling jujitsu, fight-drilling stand-up. | ||
| Everything's fight. | ||
| Fight, fight, fight. | ||
| Technique. | ||
| Well, I guess that approach can be attributed to the person, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| GSP is more of the martial artist. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| More of the traditional martial artist. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| Yeah, BJ's a real martial artist, too. | ||
| But he's a jiu-jitsu guy, though, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Jiu-jitsu martial artists are different from traditional karate martial artists. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So, I would say... | ||
| That could be attributed to their training style. | ||
| I would say BJ Penn, you know, he's from Hawaii. | ||
| I think you got some dogs out there, you know what I mean? | ||
| So I would say he's got more of a dog in him than BJ would carry around, than GSP would carry around. | ||
| I'm not saying GSP got a dog in him. | ||
| Ain't got it in them. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| Like, BJ will fight you in the street. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You know what I'm saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| I think that could be attributed to the character of the person doing the work and the coaches and the corner men around you and stuff like that, so... | ||
| I mean, it's also, the gas tank wouldn't do any good if BJ didn't have spectacular technique already. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| No, you're absolutely right about that. | ||
| He had spectacular technique. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was only one of the first jiu-jitsu guys who was striking. | ||
| It was like fucking world class. | ||
| If he got you to the ground, he kind of won the Mundial's three years into jiu-jitsu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh. | |
| That's nuts! | ||
| The what now? | ||
| The Mundials, the World Championships. | ||
| BJ won the World Championships three years in his jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Three years consecutively. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He got his black belt in three years, entered the Mundials, and won. | ||
| Three years in. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Obsessed, training every day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, and doing jiu-jitsu. | |
| Three years in. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So he's a white belt, and then three years later, he's a black belt, and he wins Mundials. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's how talented BJ Penn was. | ||
| BJ Penn was a phenom. | ||
| He was a phenom. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| I just got my brown belt after being a purple belt for like seven years. | ||
| I was a brown belt for eight years. | ||
| Eight years? | ||
| Eight years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wasn't consistent enough. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| God, I wish they could just fix injuries. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| So you'd never have to worry about them again. | ||
| Like 100% just fucking... | ||
| I would do jiu-jitsu till I died. | ||
| I'd be like Elio Gracie on those mats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| That dude was rolling when he was in his 90s. | ||
| That's my plan, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, everybody talks about, you're 30 years old, 39 years old. | ||
| First of all, I said I'm level 39. I'm a level 39 Jack Cannon. | ||
| I'm a level 39 killer gorilla. | ||
| I'm a level 39 badass. | ||
| So, first and foremost, I'm a level 39. 39 years of experience in life. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And when I see myself as 60, 65, I see myself big, chiseled, jacked, Gray beard, gray afro with a battle axe in one hand. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Ready to fuck up anybody who's finna step foot. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Who's finna cross that threshold. | ||
| That's how I envision myself. | ||
| I don't see 39 the same way as most people see 39. You know what I mean? | ||
| I do know what you mean. | ||
| I want to be... | ||
| 120-something years old, you know what I mean? | ||
| Finally getting on the dance floor, because I don't dance now. | ||
| But it'll be something new when I'm old. | ||
| It's interesting, elite athletes that are able to compete at a higher age, they almost all have one thing in common. | ||
| Extreme discipline. | ||
| Like Bernard Hopkins. | ||
| One of the most disciplined guys ever in boxing. | ||
| Never got out of shape. | ||
| Never ate bad. | ||
| Always ate clean. | ||
| Always ate organic. | ||
| Never drank. | ||
| Never smoked. | ||
| Never fucked around. | ||
| Never fucked around. | ||
| And competed deep, deep into his 40s at a world-class level. | ||
| I think he beat his last world champion when he was, I think he was 50. 50. Crazy. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| He competed at 51 and then he lost, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Joe Smith Jr. knocked him out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Knocked him out of the ring. | ||
| It was horrible. | ||
| Out of the ring, yeah. | ||
| Horrible because he fell on his head. | ||
| He fell right on his head. | ||
| Yeah, that was horrible. | ||
| That's so bad for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's worse even than the knockout because a lot of the... | ||
| I mean, he was getting clipped but the ropes were loose and he just went right through the ropes. | ||
| It was a shitty job by whoever put together that fucking ring for a... | ||
| A world championship fight with a guy like Bernard Hopkins and to go through the ropes like that, and to not have any protection for the athletes below the ropes, just concrete. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| At the very least, they should have wrestling mats all around the base in case of the worst case scenario. | ||
| Someone falls out of the ring. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Man, it's funny you mention that. | ||
| I would like them to have wrestling mats inside the ring. | ||
| You think that would be better than the canvas? | ||
| Yeah, I don't like the canvas. | ||
| The canvas gets slippery, especially when they put the logos on it. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| Last fight I didn't slip. | ||
| I had a pretty good foot in my last fight, but I had made some adjustments. | ||
| But when I fought Strickland and when I fought out of Sonya, it was a few times when I was slipping and I was getting ready to go. | ||
| And it's the logos, because they get wet. | ||
| It was the logo I slipped on, but even the canvas in itself. | ||
| Right, you have to wet it and then step on your feet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why do you think they continue to use canvas? | ||
| Because canvas also fucks your skin up. | ||
| I would say because of the logos. | ||
| I would say so they can have logos on it. | ||
| But can't you do logos on MMA mats? | ||
| I don't think they will come off a whole lot easier due to friction. | ||
| Imagine if they had... | ||
| You want to have no seams though, right? | ||
| You can't have a seam. | ||
| I mean, there are seams on the canvas. | ||
| Yeah, there's so seams. | ||
| There's like a seam every, what, two, two and a half, three feet, there's a seam. | ||
| But you can't have like tatami mats where they're like stuck together. | ||
| You can't have the possibility of a toe getting in a crack. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's why I was thinking like a wrestling mat. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Maybe not as thick as those thick ones. | ||
| Right, but not the surface of a wrestling mat because they're wearing shoes. | ||
| You want the surface of like tatami mats where you have that texture to it so you can dig in. | ||
| Because I remember we switched to a smooth mat at one time in my gym, my old studio, and I couldn't use it. | ||
| Because as soon as I got sweaty, every time I went to throw a kick, I'm slipping all over the place. | ||
| I'm like, this sucks. | ||
| And that's another reason why they use the canvas. | ||
| Because it's absorbent. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It does absorb. | ||
| But if your feet are dry, it's real slippery. | ||
| And if they do get the logos, the logos, I don't know how they apply them. | ||
| But if they're just like... | ||
| What's that shit when you do with the iron? | ||
| What's that called, Jamie? | ||
| Do you know what I'm talking about? | ||
| Like a heat transfer. | ||
| What is it called, though? | ||
| They used to iron on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, heat transfer. | |
| So if you get a cheap t-shirt from someone and it's real thick, this is a nice t-shirt. | ||
| There's not so much material that it's thick. | ||
| If you have that on a canvas where it's real thick, water's not going to go through there. | ||
| It's going to puddle up on that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| This is going to be right on top of it. | ||
| If you lose a fight or get an injury, just specifically because of that, that's a shame. | ||
| That's a shame. | ||
| It feels like, to me, there's a better way. | ||
| I mean, how many people are buying something because they see someone get the fuck beaten up on top of it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've seen those, right? | ||
| They got those cards that have pieces of the match in them to commemorate the event. | ||
| That makes sense, actually, if you're a big fan. | ||
| And also, it does make sense that people find out about products. | ||
| I just wish there was a way to do it where it didn't fuck with the performance. | ||
| Speaking of shirts... | ||
| You got Jared Cannoneer merch? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| I was gonna give it to you for one of my fights, but I don't think... | ||
| That's a perfect example. | ||
| Like, do you see how shiny that is? | ||
| There's no way water's getting through that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| If that was on a canvas, that would suck. | ||
| It would definitely... | ||
| But how do they do it on a canvas? | ||
| I would imagine they've thought about this. | ||
| So I'm sure this one was, like, they put, like, a press on it with this one. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If the canvas, they just do dye. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Can't they just do it with dye? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Let me give my shout-out in real quick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Sorry. | ||
| Shout-out to Nelson for hooking me up. | ||
| He hooked me up with the artwork for this shirt, right? | ||
| And I put it on the shirt, so I really like this one. | ||
| And what's the website where people can buy these? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| You don't know? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's a link in my bio. | ||
| Do you have a personal website? | ||
| It's a link in my bio and it links it to a square. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Killer Gorilla. | ||
| Merchandise. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| It's in your Instagram. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Bam. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| This one is not on sale yet, right? | ||
| When's it going to be on sale? | ||
| Huh? | ||
| When's it going to be on sale? | ||
| Probably soon after this podcast releases. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Good. | ||
| Let it go. | ||
| But yes, I have my homeboy. | ||
| You're wearing it. | ||
| You can just show me what's on your shirt. | ||
| Oh, there it is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I'm giving you this one. | ||
| Oh, thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And this one's actually a little bit different. | ||
| It's not as thick. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| The thing on top isn't as thick as that one. | ||
| Yeah, it's printed differently. | ||
| Well, the other one's like a graphic image. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But this one is exactly what I'm talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| This kind of stuff. | ||
| If sweat hits this and you have to move your feet around on it, you've got to slide all over. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you ever compete in the crazy days where people were allowed to wear wrestling shoes? | ||
| Was that all phased out by the time you were in? | ||
| No. | ||
| My first fight was in 2011. Ah, there you go. | ||
| So I was way out of that. | ||
| I remember when dudes wore wrestling shoes all the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, there were some venues, I'm sure, right? | ||
| Some local promotion that... | ||
| I wonder. | ||
| ...that ain't gonna, like, strictly adhere to... | ||
| UFC's standard of martial arts, right? | ||
| That seems so dangerous, though. | ||
| Wrestling shoes, like a head kick with wrestling shoes. | ||
| Like, if the foot goes in the eye, it's kind of a weapon. | ||
| Or submissions. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Submissions, especially heel hooks and shit. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| For the person who's wearing them. | ||
| Or wrestling. | ||
| That's a huge... | ||
| Huge factor. | ||
| Yeah, a huge factor. | ||
| Huge factor. | ||
| That grip and traction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah, that's gigantic. | ||
| Both in defense and offense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Imagine somebody wearing wrestling shoes against DC, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or Khabib. | ||
| They're getting taken down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right off the top. | ||
| It's also the thing about generating power in punches. | ||
| Like, you get more traction. | ||
| They grip, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you're really digging in with your feet. | ||
| Now, I've injured my toes naturally from kicks or whatever. | ||
| And I've had to wear wrestling shoes for training. | ||
| Now, one thing wearing wrestling shoes for me has done is helped... | ||
| Sort of increase, make better, enhance my footwork, right? | ||
| It makes me be more cognizant of how I'm placing my feet as opposed to dragging my feet across the mat or the surface of whatever surface I'm moving on. | ||
| Oh, because there's traction in the bottom of it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you can't slide as easily? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So it's... | ||
| So I have to use precise footwork, precise foot placement. | ||
| And I actually use that as a teaching technique. | ||
| I teach a class at the lab Saturdays at 10 p.m. | ||
| at the MMA lab. | ||
| And that's one of the things in an analogy that I use was imagine anybody who's seen the Kung Fu Panda movie or any old Kung Fu movie where they have those training setups where there's a bunch of logs standing on in and they just have like that small two, three inch surface, round surface to stand on, to move around on and do all these Kung round surface to stand on, to move around on and do all these Kung Fu training and Kung Fu Panda is the one that comes to mind big time for me. | ||
| But that would facilitate precise foot placement, precise footwork. | ||
| You have to place your foot in a precise position and of course maneuver your body in accordance. | ||
| But it all starts with the feet. | ||
| So that's one thing that's a huge thing that I ingrained in myself is footwork. | ||
| Where are you taking the footwork from specifically? | ||
| Where are you learning from? | ||
| Self-talk. | ||
| Self-talk? | ||
| Educated. | ||
| Just what you like. | ||
| Things that work for you when you're sparring and fighting. | ||
| Things that I find that I can find that are accessible for me. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Things that I know work. | ||
| I watch. | ||
| For me, I'm like Rogue. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Rogue from the X-Men. | ||
| I see something. | ||
| And you imitate it. | ||
| And I can imitate it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Or like Kakashi. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm an anime guy too. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| I'll see something and I can do that shit. | ||
| Do you know how much it bums out some dudes that killers are anime nerds? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, you know, those guys are missing out, right? | ||
| They're missing out if you enjoy it. | ||
| I wouldn't say I'm an anime nerd because there's a lot of anime that I don't watch and I can't watch. | ||
| Speaking of footwork, did you watch the Terrence Crawford-Earl Spence Jr. fight? | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| And I just saw so many different levels. | ||
| In both fighters, but mostly in Terence Crawford. | ||
| I saw him change his tempo, change his approach to the fight. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Make those adjustments. | ||
| And the ability to land hard shots in so tight. | ||
| In tight. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Really tight positions. | ||
| And so accurate. | ||
| Just inches away from him, and he's landing these right hooks. | ||
| Oh my god, what a performance. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What a performance. | ||
| It was beautiful. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| We see it there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was one of the knockdowns. | |
| Yeah, boxing is one of the sports that I continue to watch after getting into MMA. And a lot of people, for whatever reason, are sort of trying to come up with reasons why Earl Spence didn't perform as well as they thought he was going to. | ||
| But I think you just have to say Terence Crawford is that good. | ||
| I think he's just that good. | ||
| And I think we found it. | ||
| It doesn't mean that Errol Spence isn't amazing. | ||
| He is. | ||
| But I think Terence Crawford, I think you're looking at an all-time great. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| He's, in my opinion, the best switch hitter in boxing since Marvin Hagler. | ||
| And he might be better. | ||
| He's so good, man. | ||
| He's so good. | ||
| He's so good. | ||
| I think Boots Ennis is his mandatory. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, which is an amazing fight. | ||
| That's an amazing fight. | ||
| See, pull up some Boots Ennis because this dude's movement is next level. | ||
| And he's another one that is a brilliant switch hitter. | ||
| Yes, Jerron Boots Ennis. | ||
| They have to fight him soon if he plans on keeping the title. | ||
| Go to a video of Boots Ennis because that dude, yeah, highlights. | ||
| That dude is phenomenal. | ||
| He's fantastic. | ||
| When you watch him fight, man, he's so precise and so slick. | ||
| He's really, really good. | ||
| And he's also undefeated. | ||
| I mean, come on, son. | ||
| This dude... | ||
| And this is, you know, early on in his career. | ||
| I mean, from the moment people first started seeing this guy fight, they're like, this guy is super talented. | ||
| Something special. | ||
| You know, and so that's a big test, man. | ||
| This guy's good. | ||
| like world championship good dude I mean is he ready for Terrence Crawford or I don't know. | ||
| We're gonna find out. | ||
| And it's gonna be interesting. | ||
| Go like a little further up ahead in his highlights. | ||
| I mean, look at that movement, man. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Oh, play that again. | ||
| Play that again. | ||
| Come on, son. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| I mean, that head movement is a thing of beauty. | ||
| And to do that while you're wearing shorts like that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know Duke feeling himself. | ||
| He wears shorts like that, fighting like that, too. | ||
| Look at that right hand. | ||
| He just landed. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| Oh, my goodness. | ||
| So talented. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So that's interesting. | ||
| That's very interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I like watching guys like this, you know? | ||
| Because I pick up so much just from watching fights like these. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'll watch a fight, and I'll go back and watch a round, like three, four times. | ||
| I'll watch a certain part of the round, like, damn, you see that technique? | ||
| And then I'll go back and watch the whole round. | ||
| And then I'll maybe watch the round... | ||
| In front of that to see if there was something like a tail that the fighter may have seen. | ||
| Do you watch all kinds of things? | ||
| Do you watch kickboxing? | ||
| Do you watch other MMA organizations? | ||
| Anything combat related. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It can even be, you know, I wouldn't say the gimmicky stuff, but... | ||
| The less conventional MMA stuff. | ||
| You feel me? | ||
| Like what kind of stuff? | ||
| Like Capoeira. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I study Capoeira. | ||
| And I have a few what I call my $50,000 moves that are Capoeira based. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| Fight night bonus. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| If I break them out in a fight, if I land, you know what I mean? | ||
| These moves are pretty much finishing moves. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| If I land this in a fight, I'm pretty much going to guarantee a bonus. | ||
| So, Capoeira's a risky martial art, though. | ||
| But it can work. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| I've seen it work. | ||
| How about that Sanchai cartwheel kick? | ||
| That shit works. | ||
| He pulls that off all the time on people. | ||
| He kicks people in the face with that. | ||
| It's unorthodox stuff sometimes you don't see coming. | ||
| It can work. | ||
| And that's a lot of force behind those kicks. | ||
| And I would also imagine that learning capoeira would be just like when George Chapier got really into gymnastics. | ||
| It would help your athleticism. | ||
| Yeah, I've made that same correlation. | ||
| So yeah, it really does. | ||
| Yeah, it makes sense. | ||
| Just like yoga does. | ||
| Just like anything that's requiring you to flip your body around like that and throw kicks into the air. | ||
| That's got to be good for everything. | ||
| Or just be able to hold your weight up on the ground and stuff like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So are you in kind of like a holding pattern right now just to see what happens with Australia, whether or not they signed Strickland? | ||
| Have they contacted you and said, hey, Jared? | ||
| Nobody said anything to me. | ||
| Maybe after this podcast. | ||
| I would hope so. | ||
| It's good timing. | ||
| I would hope so, right? | ||
| Like I told them, I'm here. | ||
| I'm waiting. | ||
| I'm ready. | ||
| Well, I personally hope that they... | ||
| This Strickland thing gets worked out because I think that's an interesting fight and I would like to see you fight whoever wins that fight. | ||
| And I think that you're right in line, man. | ||
| It's a it's a real fun time for the division. | ||
| There's so much talent in that division Yeah, with Trekkas Duplicy just beating Robert Whitaker like that and Whitaker was always the guy that was like right below Adesanya and like creeping up on him. | ||
| Yeah, like in the last fight he got closer Like it was a unanimous decision loss, but he had his moments in that fight It was a much much much better performance in his first fight where he got taken out quick Yeah, so you everybody was thinking that that's the guy now you watch Trekkas Duplicy beat him down You're like wow Yeah, it's gonna open some eyes. | ||
| Definitely bring a lot of attention. | ||
| A lot more attention back to the middleweight division after what he did that was a couple weeks ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| There's just so much talent now. | ||
| So much talent in the sport. | ||
| There's these guys that are just jumping in that are UFC debuts and you're watching a fight. | ||
| That guy looks like a world-class contender. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See, when I see stuff like that, right? | ||
| I'm like, yes, they look good, especially in the first round, right? | ||
| Don't we all look good in the first round? | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, yeah. | |
| And on top of that, I think having your fighting debut fights is completely different from fighting top five, top ten fighters, you know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| So, those, like even with, there's so many different examples. | ||
| Johnny Walker is a big example. | ||
| He came in Wild, blazing, guns are blazing. | ||
| He was successful until he got to that top level and realized, hey, let me settle down a little bit. | ||
| These men are older up here. | ||
| These are some grown men up here. | ||
| You can't just come wild. | ||
| No. | ||
| It might work. | ||
| It might work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it works on a lot of people. | ||
| Yeah, but you can't... | ||
| It doesn't always work. | ||
| But at the top level, you can't take those risks. | ||
| You don't want to be taking... | ||
| Those type of risks. | ||
| You want to take risks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But those type of risks are sort of... | ||
| You don't have to take that type of risk. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| The thing is, in that flashy style where he's taking those risks, occasionally he has the most insane knockouts. | ||
| Because the guy generates crazy power. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That Khalil Rountree knockout, that elbow from In Tight, another vote for elbows there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that was insane. | ||
| That was nasty. | ||
| His power is great. | ||
| Which was his last fight? | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Who did he just fight? | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| It's at the tip of my tongue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck. | |
| I hate when this happens. | ||
| Anyway, he won by knockout. | ||
| He's so big, too. | ||
| He looks like he should be a heavyweight. | ||
| He's another guy. | ||
| He's just tall. | ||
| 205. He's enormous. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons why I was like, here, man, let me go down the middleweight, too, because everybody I was fighting was like 6'4", 6'2", 6'3". | ||
| I'm like, damn, I thought... | ||
| Paul Craig. | ||
| That's who it was. | ||
| That's who it was. | ||
| Why can't I remember that? | ||
| Yeah, he was... | ||
| Paul Craig was grabbing a single. | ||
| He was beating him up, caoling him while he was holding onto his leg. | ||
| Yeah, when he started hammer fisting him, he was standing, yeah. | ||
| Crazy, he could generate that kind of power. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but... | ||
| Yeah, right? | ||
| I would imagine... | ||
| A world beater right out of the gate, but what happens when he fights the more elite guys? | ||
| But I think he probably does Capoeira, right? | ||
| I would assume he moves around. | ||
| Yeah, he could do that. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| He's probably done it for sure. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So, I mean, he's able to generate... | ||
| That was his whole body. | ||
| He was able to generate power for that position, so... | ||
| But when you get to a level like Jamal Hill, that's not... | ||
| Yeah, you can't... | ||
| You don't want to be doing that. | ||
| Doing wild shit with that guy. | ||
| You... | ||
| If you want to take risks, I mean, by all means, do your thing, you know what I mean? | ||
| But it's not a high percentage of success. | ||
| Yes, the margin of error goes down drastically. | ||
| So that's one thing I've realized, especially after fighting... | ||
| Fighting Robert, fighting Kelvin, and Israel. | ||
| The marginal error is much finer up here. | ||
| Not only do I have to be better, but I even have to get better at getting better. | ||
| I have to think about... | ||
| I gotta just look at these techniques through a microscope, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| There's so much that goes on when you extend for a punch or when you step to move or step to fan. | ||
| There's so much of an effect that it has. | ||
| Not only on my position, but the way my opponent is going to respond and may reposition himself. | ||
| Do you write down things that you've learned? | ||
| I don't really write down things. | ||
| You just keep them in your head? | ||
| I just keep them in my head, fill it with my being, my vessel. | ||
| Sometimes, rarely though, will I write some things down. | ||
| Like if I'm in camp and I need to keep this stuff on my mind. | ||
| If it's something that I'm like, I need to just keep this on my mind. | ||
| As long as I can keep it conscious, I'll do it. | ||
| So without having my coach to tell me, this is what we got to do. | ||
| This is what we got to do. | ||
| But it's hard. | ||
| There's just not enough time to train everything. | ||
| Not enough time to get good everywhere. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Not enough time to recover from all the workouts. | ||
| Not to mention that, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you do anything unique for your recovery? | ||
| I am... | ||
| I do have a plunge. | ||
| Cold plunge? | ||
| Yep, I use a cold plunge. | ||
| I ice bath. | ||
| I mean, I have some salt. | ||
| I stretch. | ||
| Stretching is huge, especially post-workout. | ||
| I think that is... | ||
| One of the bigger things, one of the more prominent things that I do to help with my recovery. | ||
| I get massages, you know. | ||
| Other than that, nothing else really. | ||
| When do you do the cold? | ||
| Especially during fight camps. | ||
| Do you do it after workouts? | ||
| I would do it after workouts. | ||
| But I also know the benefits of doing it like first thing when you wake up. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I just hadn't gotten that far in my journey with this cold plunge yet. | ||
| But I definitely love using it, using it prior to this fight, and it helped me out because when I got to the PI and used the plunge there, it was very nice having the hot tub right next to the plunge so I can go out of one and into the other. | ||
| And use that one extreme to the next for some mental training. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I felt great. | ||
| They got a bitch-ass cold plunge at the PI. You said a bitch-ass cold plunge? | ||
| It's a bitch-ass cold plunge. | ||
| What was it saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it was up to like 40. I thought it was up to like 45 or something like that. | |
| Is it 45? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It felt colder than mine. | ||
| I got a bitch. | ||
| 34. Well, I said my cold plunge to bitch then. | ||
| Yeah, don't do it. | ||
| Don't give in. | ||
| You want it cold. | ||
| I'm incrementing my way down. | ||
| I'm making my way down. | ||
| The thing is, once you start doing it at 34, you'll get used to it. | ||
| You will get used to it. | ||
| You'll get used to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| And that's how I felt. | ||
| I hear about people cold plunging at 52 degrees and they're like, shut the fuck up. | ||
| Don't even... | ||
| Yeah, I'm not cold plunging. | ||
| Don't ask me what mine is. | ||
| You're lukewarm water plunging. | ||
| So what do you do yours at? | ||
| 34. 34? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For how long? | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| Three minutes. | ||
| Just one session? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, sometimes two. | ||
| Sometimes what I'll do is I'll do it before the workout and then after the workout I'll do a sauna session and then after the sauna I'll go back in for a few minutes. | ||
| You go before your workout? | ||
| Yeah, I do it in the morning first thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And then I work out. | ||
| And I use the, because I'm in the cold for so long, for three minutes and I'm freezing when I get out, I do a lot of my working out outside. | ||
| I'll do like body weight stuff, like push-ups and Okay, some plyos. | ||
| Bodyweight squats and stuff like that, pulling the sled. | ||
| I'll do that outside. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| And then I get inside and do the rest of the shit. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But I think there's something to cooling your body down and then making your body reheat back up. | ||
| That's supposed to be real beneficial to testosterone levels. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And there was this, I think it's a Japanese study about that. | ||
| A lot of people have used that. | ||
| It just feels good, too. | ||
| It just wakes you up first thing in the morning. | ||
| Woo! | ||
| I get in that motherfucker and I don't want to be in there. | ||
| I'm like, God damn it! | ||
| But I think everybody should do something like that. | ||
| Just a little something like that. | ||
| Just a little something for yourself. | ||
| I think my... | ||
| Closest experience to that was in the Army, having to wake up and it's cold as shit outside, and you're freezing balls, sitting in formation, and then you start running, like, oh, finally. | ||
| At first, you're a little, you know, creakety-crackly a little bit, and then you loosen up, and you get that runner's high, or some shit like that, or you get a good drift sergeant called Canis to pump you up, motivate you, some shit like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I figured all about the cold then. | |
| Yeah, people just have to be active. | ||
| If you really think it sucks to be outside in cold weather, guess what? | ||
| Once you start hiking, you start sweating. | ||
| That's the thing if you go hunting. | ||
| One of the things about it is layering correctly. | ||
| You want to actually be a little cold while you're hiking. | ||
| Because if you're not, you're going to heat up. | ||
| You want to be a little cold. | ||
| You want to have a minimal amount of layers on. | ||
| Because if you have a lot of layers on, you have to stop, take them off, now you're wet. | ||
| Unless you're wearing merino wool or some Top-notch synthetics, it sucks bad if you're sweaty and it's cold out. | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| That's how a lot of people get really fucked up. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I remember when I moved to Alaska the first time, I had to do this learn-to-return training for my job, right? | ||
| Because we would fly out to remote places and work on their traffic control equipment. | ||
| So, just in case some shit happened, it'd be like a reenactment of a Grey, with that movie Grey, with the wolves, and was it Liam Neeson that had to fight off the wolves? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It'd be something like that. | ||
| They'll teach you how to survive, you know what I mean? | ||
| And I was not prepared for this class, bro. | ||
| It was wintertime, so it was snow all over the damn place in Anchorage, Alaska, and they took us to some BLM land, some BLM land. | ||
| And I had on steel-toed boots, right? | ||
| You used to be wearing steel-toed boots out in the cold, right? | ||
| So that's a big no-no right there. | ||
| It gets colder because the steel gets cold? | ||
| Yeah, the steel gets cold and you'll lose toes like that. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| I didn't wear layers. | ||
| I had on steel-toed boots, some jeans, a button-up Polo shirt. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| And a Carhartt jacket, man. | ||
| No way. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And I think I had a beanie. | ||
| I can't remember. | ||
| I think I had a beanie on my head. | ||
| Oh, my God, dude. | ||
| But that was it, right? | ||
| And we were supposed to go out there in the middle of the wilderness to simulate a fucking plane crash. | ||
| And luckily... | ||
| I lost a shoe. | ||
| Luckily, I lost a shoe. | ||
| They taught us how to make a makeshift shoe out of an airplane seat cushion. | ||
| And the airplane seat cushion was way more comfortable than the other steel-toed boot that I didn't lose. | ||
| And it was warmer, you know what I mean? | ||
| How'd you lose a boot? | ||
| Airplane crash simulated situation. | ||
| And it was able to stay on top of the snow a lot better than my boot was. | ||
| Needless to say, I was not prepared to live in Alaska. | ||
| And it was slow going at first because I didn't have money to buy all the gear you need to live in the cold weather environment. | ||
| So I'm up there and I'm going outside, clearing snow off of my vehicle in freaking flip-flops, gym shorts, and a t-shirt. | ||
| Well, a jacket, of course, because you can have jackets. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Yeah, I wasn't prepared to live up there at first. | ||
| Which part of Alaska were you in? | ||
| Anchorage. | ||
| Anchorage. | ||
| Did you see a lot of moose and bears and shit? | ||
| You did see moose. | ||
| I think I saw a bear like... | ||
| Three or four times while I was up there in town. | ||
| Grizzly bear? | ||
| No, no grizzly bears. | ||
| Black bears. | ||
| No, we don't see grizzly bear in town. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| Thank God for that. | ||
| Thank God. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| I have a friend who lives in BC, like way up in BC, and he had to shoot a bear from like three feet away. | ||
| What? | ||
| A brown? | ||
| Yeah, a brown bear that was trying to get into a cabin. | ||
| He was in the cabin? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he had to shoot through the window, or what? | ||
| No, I think the thing was coming through the door, and he had to open the door and shoot it in the head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| What'd he shoot it with? | ||
| A rifle, I believe. | ||
| I forget the story totally. | ||
| He told me a while ago. | ||
| He's had multiple encounters with bears up there. | ||
| There's, like, the high areas of, you know, like, when you get up into B.C. into real heavily wooded areas. | ||
| They have, like, real... | ||
| Grizzly problems. | ||
| There's a lot of grizzly bears up there. | ||
| And they recently made it illegal to hunt them. | ||
| You can hunt black bears still, but you can't hunt grizzly bears anymore. | ||
| Because the people that live in the city voted it out. | ||
| So the people that live in Vancouver are like, don't kill the grizzly bears. | ||
| And the people that are up there are like, hey, you've got to kill them or there's going to be too many of them. | ||
| Like, what are we doing? | ||
| You've got to manage their population. | ||
| They come into town and sometimes they fucking open up people's cabins. | ||
| That's scary stuff, man. | ||
| Scary stuff. | ||
| There was a video recently somebody put me onto of this grizzly bear that tears open this cabin and pulls out like a leg of a moose and is dragging it out, but it went through the wall of this cabin. | ||
| They're so strong, they just tore the wall apart. | ||
| Just tore a hole through the wall, and it smelled the meat through there, and it's like, I gotta get you this fucking wall. | ||
| So the bear was motivated then, to say the least. | ||
| It's a scary animal to live around. | ||
| I just came from Alaska, and we were up there. | ||
| We went camping, stayed in the camper for a little bit, and there was... | ||
| Where were we? | ||
| There wasn't... | ||
| No, this isn't a bear scare. | ||
| It was a tsunami scare, is what it was. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| But they cleared. | ||
| They gave us all clear. | ||
| What happens? | ||
| You get like a horn blows off or something? | ||
| Well, we were in a camper right there on the beach. | ||
| And then on your phones, you get an alert. | ||
| Just like an Amber Alert or something like that. | ||
| On your phones, you get an alert saying tsunami warning for this area. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Get to high ground. | ||
| Shit like that. | ||
| So we were... | ||
| So we packed up our stuff and we had to leave. | ||
| You can look on the internet and see where the effects, where places are actually affecting. | ||
| And it wasn't us. | ||
| We were just really close to it, but they hit the whole area. | ||
| Tsunami scared the fuck out of me. | ||
| When I lived in California, I was always worried that a big one was going to hit and a tsunami was going to wash over the whole city. | ||
| I was always worried about that. | ||
| But I started telling the story because we went up to Alaska a couple of weeks ago, but a few days before we went to Alaska, I heard about this black bear pulled this man out of his truck and killed him. | ||
| Out of his tent and killed him. | ||
| I think I was in Arizona. | ||
| So I'm in Arizona and I hear about this and we're about to go to Alaska. | ||
| In the camp, right? | ||
| It came right into the camp. | ||
| Yeah, the bear came right into the camp, pulled him into a brush and mauled him, killed him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And... | ||
| So I'm worried because the last time I went to Alaska, we was in a camper. | ||
| There was a bear come through town. | ||
| I could see the bear running in the distance and shit. | ||
| It was a little black bear. | ||
| But still, so I'm like, ah, you know how black people are. | ||
| We don't play around in the wilderness and shit, man. | ||
| We don't do bears and bobcats and stuff like that. | ||
| Did you have a gun or anything on you? | ||
| The last time we had a gun, but not this last time we went, we didn't have a gun. | ||
| But the time we saw the bear, we had a gun and some bear mace and stuff like that. | ||
| So this time we had the bear spray, but no gun. | ||
| I only saw a grizzly bear one time in the wild. | ||
| When you were hunting? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They look at you so different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A black bear looks at you like, who are you? | ||
| Are you going to hurt me? | ||
| What are you doing here? | ||
| What are you? | ||
| Maybe they've never seen a person before, but they're like, what is this? | ||
| A grizzly bear looks at you like this. | ||
| Can I eat you? | ||
| Can I eat you? | ||
| Like these cold, dark eyes, man. | ||
| The eyes just are... | ||
| Feeling this. | ||
| Like, you realize that the primal energy of this killing machine is locked on you. | ||
| A real live grizzly bear in the wild. | ||
| It wasn't a big one either. | ||
| The one that I saw was only like six feet tall. | ||
| Small. | ||
| But they know. | ||
| A young bear. | ||
| They know. | ||
| Right away, looking at me. | ||
| They'll know when they're being that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just a different sort of wiring, I guess. | ||
| Like polar bears. | ||
| I would hear stories because I worked up there. | ||
| We would go to remote areas to work on airfields and shit. | ||
| And further north you get, you can come into encounters. | ||
| And I've heard stories. | ||
| One of the guys who I work with was up in Barrow, which is way up north Alaska. | ||
| And he was working on his thing. | ||
| And... | ||
| Out in the distance, way out in the distance with the binoculars because they're always watching. | ||
| There's a polar bear out there. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And so they have to keep an eye on this thing. | ||
| And they just notice this bear is getting closer and closer. | ||
| So this bear is freaking honing in on them. | ||
| You know these bears? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, see he lift his nose and then put his nose down and start coming closer and closer. | ||
| And they noticed these bears hunting them, so they had to abort mission and leave because these bears would break down the door and get whatever they want. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| They hunt anything. | ||
| They hunt everything. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, we don't mess around with polar bears and stuff when you're on the job, at least. | ||
| I don't know what people do on the outside of the job, but I don't mess around with polar bears anymore. | ||
| Period. | ||
| A friend of mine is a veterinarian, and he was explaining how when they work with little baby polar bears, he goes, they're like the predator right out of the womb. | ||
| They're like the alien, you know, from the womb. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Like right out of the womb. | ||
| He's like, you're looking at these little cute killers. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Polar bears don't eat anything but meat. | ||
| There's no vegetables up there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no vegetation. | |
| There's no fucking blueberries. | ||
| We're lucky that these... | ||
| That's like the thing about salmon and the brown bears. | ||
| The brown bears and the coastal bears. | ||
| Plenty of food. | ||
| That's why you see all those videos of people sitting there taking pictures of these things catching salmon out of the river. | ||
| They say the Indian ones are more dangerous. | ||
| Yes, that's what they say. | ||
| Because they hunt most of the time. | ||
| Or they eat berries. | ||
| That's wild seeing these big bears run down a fucking moose. | ||
| They're so fast. | ||
| They're so powerful. | ||
| They're powerful. | ||
| Did you see that video that some guy captured recently of these two bears duking it out for a long time? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A long time, man. | ||
| Like a pride round. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The dude was like, this is going to get good or some shit like that. | ||
| Then they just like standing up and I was like, whoa. | ||
| They go hard, man. | ||
| Got them by the ear, had one by the leg at one point. | ||
| I was watching it like, ooh, what kind of wrestling move these bears from the dude? | ||
| They do have a little jujitsu. | ||
| They got something, man. | ||
| Yeah, they do use a little wrestling. | ||
| And they bite each other so fucking hard. | ||
| Snapping. | ||
| You see him? | ||
| He got that overhook. | ||
| He got that wizard right there. | ||
| Their coat is so impressive. | ||
| They pull giant chunks of hair out of each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Did you ever see the movie Grizzly Man? | ||
| No, not Grizzly Man. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| You have to see it. | ||
| That's the documentary, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's about this crazy dude. | ||
| Is that the dude who died? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think I might have seen that, who died at the end. | ||
| It's a Werner Herzog movie, and I swear to God, he's trying to make it a comedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think it's a comedy. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I would call it an unintentional comedy, but he's too brilliant for it to be unintentional. | ||
| I think he did it on purpose. | ||
| It's a comedy movie, man. | ||
| Grizzly man. | ||
| It's a tragedy for sure. | ||
| It's sad that this guy got eaten by a grizzly bear and his girlfriend, too. | ||
| But it's also, it is a bananas movie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because this guy just, he thought he was protecting these grizzlies. | ||
| He's like, I'm here to save them, to save all the grizzlies. | ||
| And he's like, you're not saving jack shit. | ||
| Like, what are you talking about? | ||
| You're merely accommodating them for the time being. | ||
| You're just around them because they don't know what you are. | ||
| If they knew who you are, they would just eat you. | ||
| And that's what one of them eventually did. | ||
| He's like, I think I can eat this guy. | ||
| And he just fucking ate him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he stuck around too long, too. | ||
| And most of the bears were already in hibernation when he was in there. | ||
| So the bears that weren't hibernating yet didn't have enough food. | ||
| So they were desperate. | ||
| So like maybe a desperate old male. | ||
| And so then he just said, I'll just eat this dude. | ||
| I've been seeing this annoying motherfucker saying he's saving me. | ||
| You're like, no, I'm saving you for later, motherfucker. | ||
| But there's a scene in it where they talk to this sheriff, and the sheriff's like, I thought he was retarded. | ||
| And then he just cuts, smash cuts after that. | ||
| I'm like, that is comedy. | ||
| Like he's doing this on purpose. | ||
| He knows what he's doing. | ||
| He knows what he's doing. | ||
| But it's a crazy movie of this guy who's just... | ||
| He seems like an in-the-closeted gay man. | ||
| Because there's part of the movie where he's like, I wish I was gay, because if I was gay, I'd just meet a guy, but I'm not gay. | ||
| It's like, okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What? | ||
| What are you doing, man? | ||
| Like, what's going on up there? | ||
| Well, I doubt you'll find many gay people they're loving out there. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Maybe that guy. | ||
| Pretty sure. | ||
| But I mean, I think it's a thing where people attach themselves, like that they're there to help and save this magnificent creature, which is a magnificent creature. | ||
| And then it gives their life so much more meaning because they're attached to something bigger than them, so important, so huge, because their whole identity is wrapped around protecting these bears. | ||
| But the people that are the wildlife biologists up in Alaska, they know what they're doing. | ||
| Those bears aren't in danger. | ||
| They're not in danger at all. | ||
| They have to monitor their populations very carefully. | ||
| They go out there with rifles. | ||
| They'll use them if they have to. | ||
| Yeah, they have to sometimes. | ||
| And especially if a bear starts eating people. | ||
| Like there was a hiker. | ||
| They're going to put their bear down. | ||
| Or a bicyclist in Montana. | ||
| She got pulled out of her tent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Apparently she had had an encounter with that same bear earlier and scared it off and the bear came back. | ||
| I think that's the case. | ||
| See if you can find that store. | ||
| But that's in Montana. | ||
| And that was like real close to town. | ||
| So it freaked everybody out that this lady got... | ||
| Just dragged out of her fucking... | ||
| And killed. | ||
| Yeah, she got killed. | ||
| She got killed. | ||
| I don't think it takes much for... | ||
| It's a rare exception when a grizzly bear doesn't kill you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you see some of those dudes, they stitch them back together again. | ||
| You're like, yikes. | ||
| Respect. | ||
| Respect, dude. | ||
| That sin of the shit right there. | ||
| That's that reverent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a true story, man. | ||
| It was? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's based on a true story. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Based on a true story. | ||
| That was a wild scene. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That bear attack. | ||
| Yeah, I forget who the Reverend is based on. | ||
| What were we just looking up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The lady getting the bear, the hiker. | |
| Oh yeah, the story about the hiker. | ||
| The bicyclist. | ||
| Did she run into it? | ||
| I think she did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There could be different articles. | |
| Either way, the bear pulled her out of her tent. | ||
| That's the scariest way to die. | ||
| That's why I don't do animals, man. | ||
| I respect them. | ||
| Oh, I've seen this one. | ||
| This bear showed up in a cabin and starts rubbing his body on it. | ||
| That's got to be like a miniature cabin, right? | ||
| No, he's just huge, man. | ||
| Some of those bears are 12 feet tall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jeez! | |
| That thing is huge. | ||
| Revenant, yeah. | ||
| What is the dude's name who it's based on? | ||
| Apparently the real story, the author of the book on it was on Steve Rinella's podcast, Meat Eater podcast, was a really good story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hugh Glass. | |
| Hugh Glass is the author. | ||
| It's an amazing episode where he talks about, you know, there's a difference between the Hollywood version and the real version, but it is based on a true story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| That was a good movie, man. | ||
| Bro, imagine living back then. | ||
| You get worried about bows and arrows flying at you, and you're trying to make your way through the woods, and what the fuck are we doing here? | ||
| Woo! | ||
| Hard people, man. | ||
| What was that? | ||
| That wasn't The Reverend. | ||
| That was, uh, was it The Predator? | ||
| The newest Predator. | ||
| The newest one, yeah, with the Comanches. | ||
| Prey. | ||
| And they had the French over there. | ||
| That was good. | ||
| That was a really good one. | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| It was a fun Predator movie. | ||
| Like, I was a little skeptical. | ||
| I was like, yeah, you got a girl. | ||
| On the streaming side, yeah. | ||
| You got a girl who's gonna kill it. | ||
| Come on, shut the fuck up. | ||
| But it was good. | ||
| It was still cinematic for the story. | ||
| You know, some... | ||
| Suspension of disbelief. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but still, they nailed it. | ||
| They did it good. | ||
| It was good. | ||
| I enjoyed the shit out of it. | ||
| It was a lot better than Aliens vs. | ||
| Predator. | ||
| Yeah, that wasn't so good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| What do you do to unwind? | ||
| Are you like a video game guy? | ||
| What do you do to relax? | ||
| Well, I play video games. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| I knew it. | ||
| With the anime, I was like, it's a shot in the dark. | ||
| But, you know, since having children, man, it's few and far in between. | ||
| But I still get my gaming time in right now. | ||
| Right now, I'm playing Final Fantasy XVI. I don't play much online. | ||
| My daughter is... | ||
| She's big into... | ||
| What is it, Roblox and shit like that? | ||
| Roblox, mine too. | ||
| So the battle is, nah, too much of that shit. | ||
| Get off of that shit, get off of those things. | ||
| You know how it is with kids, you know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, we played Wanted, Dead or Alive, you know that karate game? | ||
| Wanted Dead or Alive? | ||
| You don't know that karate game? | ||
| Oh man, it's the shit. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, it's a karate game. | ||
| I fuck everybody up in that game. | ||
| Nobody in my house wants to play me. | ||
| It's a newer game? | ||
| No, it's one of those ready, fight! | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| You know those games? | ||
| I remember that. | ||
| I had Karate Champ growing up. | ||
| That was on Nintendo. | ||
| It was just like that. | ||
| You had a red one and a dude in white. | ||
| Yeah, that's the game. | ||
| Wanted. | ||
| Dead or Alive. | ||
| Oh, just Dead or Alive. | ||
| Okay, I remember Dead or Alive. | ||
| I fucked it up. | ||
| But Dead or Alive, yeah. | ||
| Dead or Alive is the shit. | ||
| That game was fun. | ||
| Dead or Alive is the shit. | ||
| You'll knock somebody off of a platform, and they'll fall, and then you'll jump down and continue fighting. | ||
| I keep trying to coach my kids how to do it, but I keep fucking them up. | ||
| You can't help yourself, huh? | ||
| I can't help myself. | ||
| I get very competitive when it comes to that game. | ||
| They don't like playing it, they get mad! | ||
| When's the last time you played it? | ||
| A couple days ago. | ||
| Who's your character on that one? | ||
| I pick whoever the fuck. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, I don't give a shit. | ||
| Each one of them has some specific moves you can do, a combination you can do to knock a person back and just keep landing it. | ||
| See, my favorite fighting game was Bloody Roar. | ||
| I don't know if a lot of people don't know what Bloody Roar is. | ||
| Bloody Roar. | ||
| I think I've heard that name. | ||
| What does that look like? | ||
| Well, it was a 3D fighting game. | ||
| But you have fighters who could transform into beast-like apparitions. | ||
| Ooh, okay, similar kind of thing. | ||
| Oh, I remembered this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I was good with a lot of them. | ||
| Have you fucked around at all with VR? Have you done any of those VR games? | ||
| I've played Thrill of the Fight. | ||
| Is it Thrill of the Fight? | ||
| Is that a boxing one? | ||
| Yeah, it's a boxing one. | ||
| Those are great, aren't they? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You can kind of move around with that a little. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| That was fairly realistic as far as the sensors and responsiveness goes. | ||
| And I was using that to cut weight for my last fight. | ||
| And for the Adesanya fight, I was using it to, you know, because I start pouring sweat on those damn things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then the eyes will fog up. | ||
| I was surprised that, like, we did it on the concrete. | ||
| I was like, my feet hurt. | ||
| Because I'm, like, pushing off my feet and moving my body around. | ||
| Which one were you playing? | ||
| Which one were we playing, Jamie, on the HTC Vive? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It could have been this. | |
| I don't remember at that time. | ||
| I don't remember, but I do remember, I love the fact that when he pops you, the screen goes white. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Like, you get hit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, it feels like you get your, you know, like you see stars. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, that's cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like, it gives you like a real feeling of what it looks like when punches are coming at you. | ||
| You get a real good workout. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was really good. | ||
| I was... | ||
| If you can do... | ||
| That's what I always tell people. | ||
| If you can find something you enjoy doing, working out is so much easier. | ||
| People say, well, I'm going to get in shape. | ||
| I'm going to go to the gym. | ||
| God damn it, that's boring. | ||
| That's so boring. | ||
| Just learn jujitsu. | ||
| Learn kickboxing. | ||
| Do something. | ||
| And if a video game... | ||
| There was a while where they were talking about... | ||
| And I think some people still... | ||
| They are doing it. | ||
| But doing VR games on a unidirectional treadmill or a multidirectional treadmill. | ||
| So they have this treadmill that can go all different ways, and it's propelled by your movement. | ||
| So as you're moving, you're harnessed into this circle. | ||
| But this treadmill can go in 360 different ways. | ||
| I've seen those. | ||
| Yeah, it's fucking cool. | ||
| I want one of those. | ||
| That's fucking cool. | ||
| So you're running around and shooting things. | ||
| It's like you're getting exercise while you're also playing a fun game. | ||
| Like, if you could do something like Dance Dance Revolution, a lot of people lost weight doing that, because that's fun. | ||
| That thing's revolutionary right there, though. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| I didn't get into it, because I'm not a big dancer. | ||
| But, you know, I like my games. | ||
| But I gotta use the bathroom. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, you can just wrap this up. | ||
| Let's wrap this up. | ||
| We're about the end of the line, anyway. | ||
| Thank you very much, man. | ||
| I hear you. | ||
| Let's wrap it up, Pete. | ||
| Tell everybody your Instagram so they can follow you. | ||
| I'm on Instagram, KillerGorillaMMA. | ||
| So give me a like, follow. | ||
| You guys will see all this cool stuff that I'm doing. | ||
| I'm going to get more active. | ||
| I'm not super active, but I will be more active. | ||
| I'm definitely active during fight weeks. | ||
| But I'm... | ||
| Slowly spreading my wings. | ||
| Well, I'm just happy when you're active in the octagon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'm glad we got to do this. | ||
| I really enjoyed your perspective on things. | ||
| I think it was great. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| I enjoyed it very much. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Let's do it again. | ||
| All right. |
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