Bo Nickal, a former Olympic wrestler turned UFC sensation, reveals how Soviet doping—exposed in Icarus—undermined fair competition, like his 2016 loss to a banned Iranian wrestler in Rome. He supports "enhanced games" for responsible PED use but credits his 5-0 record (including a viral 30-second KO) to relentless training under coaches Moose and Barry Robinson, avoiding lower-tier fights. Nickal’s structured MMA regimen—two brutal sessions weekly, active recovery with cold plunges/saunas, and Sunday mental rest—mirrors his bowhunting discipline, mastered in six months with Lancaster Archery. His upcoming UFC 300 bout (April) signals a shift toward elite opponents, as he balances fight prep with off-season refinement. The conversation ties athletic dominance to systematic rigor, questioning shortcuts while embracing discomfort as the path to mastery. [Automatically generated summary]
That was so insane, though, that they had a hole in the wall where they were handing through the dirty urine and getting back clean urine and then submitting that.
And if it wasn't for micro-analysis of the jars, then they realized, oh, the Soviets had figured out, well, it wasn't the Soviets, it was the Russians, had figured out some way To open up these unopenable jars because they had scratched them in little places.
And it's like, for them too, it's a different level.
The guys that won that were very successful maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, those guys are like big government positions and stuff.
In the U.S., You win the Olympics in wrestling, you win like a quarter million bucks, and it's a big deal for like a month, and then you kind of move on.
But over there, it's like you're kind of set for life.
So it's like, yeah, it's a completely different kind of motivation, I think.
What is it like competing when you know that there's like state-sponsored programs that are involved in these other countries doping up their athletes?
You grow up with an understanding of it, knowing this is kind of the way it works.
You're ready for it, you're prepared, you understand.
And I'm sure I've competed against a lot of guys that were doping and doing stuff, but the one experience that I had that was like...
Really kind of prominent in my mind.
So I wrestled this dude.
I wrestled a tournament in Rome.
This was a few years ago.
And I was trying to go up from...
I was in between weights.
So my weight was 86 kilos or 97 kilos.
And I was kind of having a little trouble with my lower back.
So I was like, I don't want to cut.
I just want to get bigger.
And so I came in and I was weighing like 210, which the weight class is 213, 97 kilos.
And I was like, I'll be fine.
I'll be good.
And I rolled up to this second round match and I was wrestling this Iranian dude.
And my coaches weren't there with me, so I had some different coaches, and they didn't really warn me who this dude was.
I had wrestled the number one Iranian guy a few months earlier, and I tech-faulted him.
I killed him.
So I was like, I'm a smasher steeler.
I don't give a crap.
This dude comes out.
He's like two inches taller than me, freaking jacked as hell, and does a forward roll and squat jump, and his feet are over my head.
And I'm like, what the hell is going on here?
And we're just this random tournament in Rome, and I'm wrestling some dude that I don't even know, and he killed me.
It's the only time I've ever wrestled a match where I really got whipped.
Single leg took me down, gut-wrenched me, and he came down from probably like 235. He was way bigger than me.
And then I got off the mat, and I was like, what the just happened?
And then the coach was like, oh yeah, this guy was...
World silver medalist, world bronze medalist like five years ago, but the last five years he got banned, he got popped, and so he hadn't competed in five years, he'd just been freaking training and juiced.
And then he actually, the next round, he beat my teammate Kyle Snyder, who was an Olympic gold medalist, the exact same way, like smoked us both.
And I was like, what the hell is going on here?
So then World Championship that year comes along, and now they're getting tested, and he went 0-1.
Yeah, yeah.
I was like, alright.
So I kind of felt bad about myself at first.
I was like, damn, I suck.
And then I was like, alright, well, it is what it is.
It's a thing they're trying to do where I guess what they're doing is they're allowing athletes and they're going to do it at the same time as the Olympics.
I never have been interested in trying anything like that.
It's not really the culture.
What I'm around in wrestling, in American wrestling, nobody does that.
Well, I won't say nobody, but...
99% of guys really aren't doing that especially as we get tested a lot like in collegiate athletics and stuff and It's just something that is kind of very looked down upon in what we do but it is interesting to think about like What would I be like if I was doing these things?
I can compete at such a high level already, and I think that my biggest asset in wrestling and in fighting is my mind.
Imagine my body.
And I think that with time, I'm very disciplined and do things a certain way.
I'm going to get to it as close as I can be.
But there is this other level that's kind of unnatural where it's interesting to think about, but while I'm competing and stuff, it's obviously not an option.
But at the end of the day, I probably have competed against a lot of guys that are juiced up, and we'll see what the UFC's drug testing program is like since USADA's over at the end of the year.
It is what it is, man.
I'm pretty confident in myself regardless.
If I've got to fight a dude that's juiced up and you're willing to take a backdoor to try to get an advantage and win, I think that you're probably cutting corners in a lot of other areas as well, which I'm not doing.
I just think that if they're willing to do that, if they're willing to go outside the rules and do that, to me that's kind of like they're trying to get an unfair advantage.
That's kind of a character thing.
They want to get that advantage.
To me that means they're Fearful that they wouldn't be able to do it without it.
Yeah, they might be doing everything right, but I know that in their mind, there's a little weakness there to me.
And I can take advantage of that and capitalize on that because at the end of the day, I'm going to do every single little thing right.
I'm going to make sure my sleep's on point, make sure my nutrition's on point.
And not only am I going to do this for a camp, but I'm doing this all the time.
And I've been doing this since I was a little kid.
So take what you want, do all that stuff, but you're not going to outwork 20-plus years in the short amount of time that you have to prepare for me.
So that's kind of my mindset around it.
It's just the reality of the situation.
I'm going to fight guys that are probably doing stuff that I'm not doing.
Well, I believe that the new UFC drug doping program is going to be real similar to USADA. They're just not going to do the dumb shit like wake people up the morning of the weigh-ins and things along those lines.
Unfortunately, they're still not going to let them take certain things that just like peptides, things that will enhance their body's ability to heal, which I really think they should.
I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm a college graduate.
I had a lot of opportunities.
There's a lot of things I could be doing.
I could be pretty much doing anything.
I could be...
You know, coaching, I could be in business, I could be doing whatever I want to do, but I'm choosing to do this, and there's a lot more consequences on the negative end of what I'm doing now, but I just freaking love it.
So, you know, I mean, you've fought, so you understand.
But, like, when I was wrestling and I would pin somebody in front of, you know, 10, 20,000 people and the crowd's going nuts, freaking out, this and that, it's like...
That's an amazing feeling.
And then, come to the UFC, that same big stage, even bigger stage, millions of people watching worldwide, knock a guy out cold, it's like, phew, you can't beat that.
It's amazing.
When did you decide, or when did you even entertain the idea of transitioning to MMA? So, I always loved fighting, and I was always a fan of the UFC. I probably started watching when I was, I don't know, 11, 12. It was something with my family, we'd go to Buffalo Wild Wings on Saturday, we'd watch the fights, or we'd get the pay-per-view at home.
It was always something that I was like, I could do that.
Me and my friends would fight and stuff, or we'd fight other kids just for fun.
So it was always something that was kind of in the back of my mind.
You know, really through high school, through early college, I'm wrestling.
I'm focused on wrestling.
And then I did a camp in Missouri, and I was teaching wrestling all day.
And then this dad came up to me and was like, hey man, we're doing a jiu-jitsu class after this.
Would you want to come and try it out?
And I was like...
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Like, I'm down.
Let's go.
And so I go in, and they just kind of...
I rolled around with all the guys, and I was like, dude, this is fun.
I had done like, so this is actually kind of funny, when I was like 12 or something, no I was probably younger, I was probably like 10 or 11, there was a jiu-jitsu tournament at a high school that, my high school, so my dad was a high school wrestling coach, and this jiu-jitsu, it was like Naga or something, they wanted to put on a tournament at the high school, and so my dad set it up, like put all the mats in and stuff, and I was like, why don't you enter?
I'd watched UFC, so I knew, alright, the guy's going to try to guillotine me, or he's going to try to get my back, and I'm just like, don't let him do that.
And again, I played around.
Just watching stuff on TV, you can learn a few things.
And then after that, I just kind of took the guys down and held them down and stuff.
And actually in the finals, it was a tough match because I went against a kid who I had competitive.
He wrestled as well.
And I had competitive wrestling matches with him.
Not that competitive.
I would kind of whip him in wrestling.
But he also trained jiu-jitsu.
And right away he pulled guard.
And I was like, what the...
But he knew good wrestling, so I couldn't really do anything to him.
And I didn't know the rules at all, so he was winning on advantage, but then I somehow got past his guard at the very end, and then they gave me a point and I won.
But...
Really, that was it up until my second, third year in college, and I did that class.
Well, your last performance, man, like, the thing about, you know, watching you fight inside the octagon, like, everybody knows how good of a wrestler you are.
So they're looking for that.
But in the last fight, I was like, oh, shit!
Like, distance management, your ability to slide out of range and then explode back into range and timing with punches...
When you have that wrestling base, it is such a giant advantage.
I always tell any young athlete that that is the 100% best foundation for Because you get to choose whether a fight is standing or on the ground, and then there's the threat of that.
And the threat of that has so many consequences in terms of how your opponent's going to react and what they're going to do.
You were talking about that feint.
It's so gigantic, man.
Because a guy always has it in the back of their head that you might take him down, but you don't ever have that.
Yeah, I would say in the actual flight, the biggest advantage is the psychology of...
Them feeling threatened, feeling pressured, feeling nervous, like, shit, if I get taken down, I'm probably not getting back up.
Like, I can't get taken down.
Now that's what they're focused on, rather than winning the fight.
And, you know, of course, you know, the actual skills that come with that, of being able to implement that, the game plan, and do it is big, but if you ever notice and you watch guys fight or compete, especially in training, if you see one guy's a little more tense, a little more nervous, a little, like, more reacting, That's such a big part of how much energy you spend in the overall time of the fight.
I noticed when I got a lot better at wrestling and when I started pinning a lot more guys was when I just relaxed.
It was like this huge thing for me because I pinned a lot of guys growing up and got a lot of pins, but Then in college, guys get a little better.
They learn how to hold you off a little better.
And so I would use all my energy, all my strength, try to throw them on their back.
And a lot of times I would.
And so I'd get up, you know, a bunch of points.
But then towards the end, I'd get a little tired.
I wouldn't finish as strong.
Instead of just what I figured out later in my career was, all right, I'm just going to relax.
I'm just going to move you around.
Just get into position, pull you, push you, fake.
And I'm very relaxed.
Okay, you shoot.
No worries.
I'm going to down block, run around you.
And then...
When I have my opportunity, maybe you're fading a little bit, now I overwhelm you.
Versus trying to do that when we're both fresh.
So that's where I feel like in a fight, it's 15 minutes, really long time.
I don't got to overwhelm you in the first minute.
I can just be relaxed, move, catch your jab, check your kicks.
Set you up, and then wham!
And then overwhelm you when the time comes.
And I'm very relaxed because, like you said, you're going to shoot on me?
Dude, you shoot on me, the fight's over.
I'm going to win.
As soon as I catch somebody shooting on me, it's like, you're done.
So that's what I want them to.
But more than likely, that's never going to happen.
So they're going to be very tense, nervous, worrying about that stuff.
So that's kind of how I feel about the wrestling advantage.
Exactly like you said, it's so big to have that comfort and confidence.
Yeah, and that knowledge of when to hit the gas and when to be relaxed, that plays such a critical factor when you move from three to five rounds as well.
So when a guy is a champion and a guy has been fighting most, like a John Jones type guy, has been fighting five rounders for a decade plus, for a guy like him, he has almost like an internal sense.
Of when to hit the gas and what to do and how much energy he has.
So that's something I'm definitely preparing for in my mind.
And I think that fighting can become such an emotional thing.
People get baited into fighting a certain way that it's so important to be disciplined.
Obviously, you actually have to have the training and the base and the cardio to be able to do that, then to also implement it in front of millions of people and all the pressures on you.
And now there's this other guy who's a monster coming at you, trying to knock you out.
You know, you got to be a certain type of person, I think, and have a certain mindset to be able to be disciplined and calm and stoic in that fire, right?
Because you could have all the cardio in the world, but if you go 100% for two and a half minutes, you can't do that for 25, right?
You're going to lose it no matter what, even if you have the training.
So keeping cool in that situation, I think, is almost equally as important.
And I'm glad that I was able to learn exactly that in wrestling, where, you know, the stakes are lower.
And, you know, you don't really...
Being tired in a fight is pretty much the worst thing that you could be, right?
Like, you know, you got a guy who's a little more fresh than you, who's popping you a jab, who's kicking your legs, you know, pushing you up against the fence.
Yeah, I would say that my assessment is you've got to be good at everything, but cardio is a real X factor in MMA, almost more so than any other sport, just because you can just put that on somebody, and if they can't sustain it, As long as you don't get knocked out in the first few minutes, they're just going to fade and you're going to gain that energy and eventually you're going to kind of overpower them.
It's the way that it works and it happens time and time again.
Again, my coaches, the guys I work with, they're incredible.
So knowledgeable, experienced, and not only, like I said, I have these guys holding pads for me and coaching me, but the guy Moose, I get to spar with him.
How many MMA fighters have a guy that's a collegiate national champion with 80...
Amateur boxing fights as their main sparring partner.
Most guys in MMA are striking other MMA fighters.
So I know if I'm hanging in there with him and I can move and defend and hit him with some shots, what are these guys going to do to me?
So that's kind of where I started.
And then I love, I just love it.
Like I watch so much film.
I'm watching boxing.
I'm watching Muay Thai.
I'm watching kickboxing.
I'm always studying, always watching breakdowns.
And that's another thing that I learned from wrestling where I think I had a big leg up on people because I was studying it like a science almost at a young age.
Watching Kale Sanderson, you know, when I was eight years old, watching Satieff Brothers, watching, you know, multiple-time world champions.
Every tournament, and my dad was a coach, so I'd be at every high school wrestling tournament watching, and I absorbed a lot of information from that.
And so I just took those principles, and now I apply them to MMA. So, you know, it's not unusual for me to...
Study four or five hours of film in a week where, yeah, maybe I can't train an extra four or five hours, but now I have this extra four or five hours on top of the competition that, you know, these guys, I don't think they're really willing to do that, to put that time in.
Sometimes I'll watch just kind of as I won't say entertainment because it's not purely entertainment, but I'll just watch and enjoy and appreciate the art.
And I'll just look at it like, wow, that was amazing.
Oh, look at this technique he did.
And kind of, you know, be more on the creative side of, you know, trying to think about things in that way.
And then other times I can be very analytical and break things down and look at positioning and kind of start from the ground up where I see how they move into a position that puts them at an advantage.
Now their opponent has to react or counter a certain way or stay in a spot.
Now that gives them time to see, think, decide what they're going to do.
And really I learned a lot of my film study habits in the analytical sense from the guys was telling me about Barry Robinson.
He is, to me, the best film study breakdown guy there is.
So I'll do stuff on my own.
I'll also do stuff with him where I'll say, hey, I want to look at Southpaw Orthodox matchups, or I want to look at how somebody effectively counters a big right hand, or a good example of a guy that checks kicks, or a good example of a guy that manages the clock.
So we'll look at all these specific things and then he will help me break them down analytically and then I just kind of take some of the stuff that I learned from him and I do it on my own as well.
It's such an interesting thing to see a guy coming from that analytical approach to wrestling where you become incredibly successful and then just apply that to other combat sports because I think there's a lot of young athletes, unfortunately, that I don't think they maximize their time.
I think they show up and train and they train hard, but I don't necessarily think they're doing it systematically and technically and breaking things down.
They're just trying to be good instead of really focusing on very specific aspects.
And when you did that your whole life with wrestling, applying that to striking just seems kind of natural.
And I think the most important word that you said in that statement was systematically.
You have to put a system together, right?
Everybody can go learn a combination.
Everybody can go learn how to throw a kick to the body or how to do a technique.
But if you don't have a system and you don't have a way to apply it in actual competition, then there's really no point to what you're learning.
And I think the MMA, the culture of MMA, It's such a new sport, one, but it's such a tough guy mentality sport of, you know, let's bang, bro, like, let's get in there, let's do this, and it's, you know, that's not really, to me, I see fighting moving in a different direction.
I see it moving in a way, and I hope to push it more towards an analytical, professional way to go about your sport, the way that NFL quarterback plays.
Reads a defense.
You hear an NBA basketball player talk about offenses, schemes, setting it up.
That's not the way an MMA fighter talks about fighting.
And I hope to move MMA into a more professional realm where now we can look at things, we can systematize, we can break stuff down, we can analyze, and then it's gonna make everyone better.
It's gonna improve the overall sport.
And I think that when you talk that way too, It appeals to a much broader audience, and it'll get more eyes on the sport, which is also very positive.
What 40-year-old mom wants to hear guys talking about just crushing each other's faces and heads and this and that?
But maybe that 40-year-old mom will listen to an interview where Tom Brady talks about being a quarterback.
You can appreciate it a little more.
That's kind of the way that I look at it.
A lot of it comes from my background in wrestling and just the way that I've approached that sport and the way that my coaches in wrestling have handled themselves and just what I've been taught.
I think the MMA, people still want to see violence, but I would hope that we can make it Into a platform where there's some people that want to see the sport.
And I would hope that it continues to...
I think it's already trending that way, but continues to move that way.
So tell me what you think of this, because I kind of look at the sport and see the trends and the way things are going.
So it started off in MMA. It was like, which martial art beat which?
And we kind of saw the wrestlers had some success, but then Hoist Gracie in jiu-jitsu was like, if you don't know jiu-jitsu, you're going to get destroyed.
You're going to get killed.
And then it became, okay...
Now, if I know a little jujitsu and I can defend and then strike, that's the advantage.
And wrestlers really took over in that stage.
I feel like from there, it went to a point where...
The most well-rounded guys were winning.
You look at George St. Pierre.
He's not a wrestler, but super well-rounded.
Great jiu-jitsu, great wrestling, great striking, good conditioning.
The well-rounded guys had the biggest advantage.
I think now it's moving to a point where It's almost coming back, and I'll use myself as an example, but you have to be a specialist in one thing where it's like, dude, that one thing is better than anyone in the world.
And then everything else has to be elite.
It's like Israel Adesanya.
He's the best kickboxer, one of the best kickboxers in the world, but he also has...
Great takedown defense, and you even see him throw up subs in some of his fights, things like that.
Or, you know, you see guys where it's like, dude, you have this one thing, Khabib.
This one thing, his grappling is so, like, outrageous.
But then everything else is, like, freaking world class.
It's like, that's where I think it's getting, you know, now these guys that have one thing that can kind of overwhelm and overpower somebody in a certain area, but everything else is, like...
I definitely think there's a gigantic advantage to being elite in one specific area, whether it's wrestling, for you, or if you look at Alex Pajera, the kickboxing.
His kickboxing is so fucking dangerous that every fight starts on the feet.
And when you have a guy that's a two-division glory world champion, That just knocks people into other dimensions.
And then now this guy is learning takedown defense and all those things.
Obviously, he has vulnerabilities.
And it's interesting to see, particularly in the Euro Prochaska fight, and then in the fight with Jan Bohovic as well, he's learning how to defend himself on the ground.
But it seems like it's limited, right?
Like, it doesn't seem like he's very good at takedown defense.
He's getting better at it.
Doesn't seem like he's very good at getting back up to his feet, but he's getting better at it.
But at least now he's good at defending.
So if guys take him down, he defends, he survives, he doesn't get completely exhausted.
And the thing, too, is if you look at the matchups, when he fought Jan, Jan had to take him down.
He's not going to strike with him the whole time.
And he actually gassed himself out in that first round.
He had a body triangle for almost five minutes.
And I've never seen him look that tired in a fight.
And so now these people that maybe don't have that wrestling base, those years and years of reps, they have to fight him a certain way.
But he's proficient enough to kind of You know, hold him off.
Now he's got the advantage, right?
It's like, what are you going to do?
That's how I want to develop my style, ideally, is to where when somebody comes out to fight me, to game plan, they're like, alright, well, we obviously don't want to wrestle with him.
Dang, he also has knocked a lot of guys out.
We don't want to get hit.
Oh, wow, he catches every jab.
He checks every kick.
Are we going to jab with him?
Are we going to kick with him?
Okay, no.
Okay, maybe we'll try to get him tired.
I don't get tired.
That's the idea, where I want to get to, right?
Does that make sense?
I think a lot of fighters probably are thinking on a similar wavelength.
It'll take away from your time striking and all those other things.
Right.
That is interesting.
It's like, even like an admission from a guy like yourself that is one of the best wrestlers in the world, you would need four weeks at least of real training and just wrestling.
I don't have to put myself underneath people like you do in wrestling.
You have to get so low to get to a shot.
People are upright.
When I go train wrestling now, I want to keep myself sharp and keep improving.
But I'm really trying to help the college guys and help these guys out, give back, help them improve and stuff.
So I'm not trying to be the best wrestler in the world right now.
And I'm trying to be the best fighter.
So I tailor my training to that.
And I think that's an important thing.
Some of my coaches say, never forget your wrestling.
A lot of guys forget it.
But to me, I think I just love the sport.
I appreciate it.
I want to represent...
For the wrestling community on a bigger stage.
And so, you know, I'm still very involved in it.
But, yeah, at the same time, it's like I'm adjusting my training and kind of fine-tuning it to what I think is best for what I'm, you know, mainly focused on.
Do you have a main MMA coach who structures your training program?
Because I would imagine...
Well, I should ask you, like, strength and conditioning, skill set acquisition, maintaining wrestling base, like, how do you manage all those very specific things, and how do you know whether or not you're optimizing?
You know, a lot of it is nobody's really done it the way that I have.
You know, most people, they wrestle in college, maybe they try to make the Olympic team, and now they go to flight, and they move, and they start at an MMA gym, right?
What I've done is I've partnered up with Dan Lambert, American Top Team.
We built a gym right near Penn State campus.
And the idea is that'll be a pipeline for any other wrestlers, specifically Penn State wrestlers who want to come and fight after they're done wrestling, right?
So it's a good relationship there.
But basically what we've done is I've brought in coaches for jujitsu, for Muay Thai, really high-level guys in their specific disciplines.
And so I'm learning from them.
I'm learning boxing from my boxing coach.
And then for strength conditioning, I use the training lab with Sam Calvita.
So he has worked with Penn State wrestling for a long time.
He's known one of our coaches for 25 years.
So when I started getting serious about my strength conditioning, nutrition, recovery, he was a guy I started using maybe as a junior in college.
And so I have a good relationship with him.
But for the most part, it's on me to organize it.
And kind of see what works best.
And I did play around at the beginning, like, alright, how much wrestling am I gonna do?
How many times am I gonna lift weights?
How many times am I gonna do jiu-jitsu?
How many times am I gonna strike?
And I'm kind of continuously refining that process.
And the idea for me is, I'm the trailblazer.
I'm the guy that's the first one to do this.
Now all these guys that are coming behind me, my best friend Anthony Kassar, he just won his second pro fight.
He's a 205er heavyweight NCAA champ.
He started about a year later than me, so now he kind of gets the benefits of me tinkering for that year.
And then the guys behind him, they'll get the benefits of us tinkering and figuring stuff out.
And we're really trying to build You know, a program.
We're trying to build a team that we're going to do things a certain way.
And, you know, it's fortunate and unfortunate because I'm the first guy to do it, I'm going to get the credit and I'm going to be probably like, you know, everybody's excited about it and things like that, so I get benefits there.
But I do have to, like, take the time and effort to test everything out and figure out what works and what doesn't.
And, you know, there's so many variables, so...
But I like that.
It's fun for me to do that.
I would rather do that than just plug in somewhere and just kind of go about it in a very set way.
You know, I think that everybody, you know, if you're a real true professional, you brought up GSP. GSP is the guy I look at.
He was the first guy that came into MMA There was kind of a true professional about it who was very organized, even in the media, well-spoken.
And the way he trained, the way he committed not only his time training but his lifestyle, I felt like that aligned a lot.
That aligns a lot with how I want to do things in a professional manner.
And so if you are a true professional, you have to take Ownership of that and take responsibility.
If you're not getting what you need, you need to make an adjustment.
And now, luckily, I have the freedom to be able to do that.
And I'm fortunate that I had the foresight to kind of see that and know, all right, let's look at MMA. There's a lot of people doing a lot of good things out, but it's been a sport for 20 years.
And so there's a lot of people that also don't know what's going on, that don't know what they're doing.
I look at wrestling.
It's one of the oldest sports in the world.
There's so many tried and true methods of training and how it works and what's best for you.
And not only have I been part of that for 20 years, but I was a part of the most elite organization and really dynasty in wrestling history, you know, with being on the Penn State team.
Like my coaches, they started at Penn State in 2009. They have notes for training sessions and recovery days for pretty much every day of the year.
Since 2009. So they know what they did.
What's today?
December 7th, 6th?
They know what they did December 7th of 2009, 2010, 2011, all the way until now.
And they meet every day to discuss these things.
So that's kind of like what I come from and what I know about training and how to organize a program and put things together.
They know a lot more than me.
I'm just kind of learning these things through osmosis.
And now I'm trying to apply them to my career.
And again, we're going to continue to refine and get better at them.
By the time I'm done, Hopefully I can give this system that I've created and what I've put together to a new generation of guys that are going to do even bigger and better things than me.
Hopefully they'll win more than me, make more money than me, be more famous.
That's what I hope for those guys that are coming.
I love hearing stories like that about those notes.
I love when you realize, like, oh, no stone unturned.
Everything is covered.
And that's how you become elite.
There's no elite by kind of covering some of the bases.
It's covering every fucking base.
Everything.
From nutrition to recovery to making notes and learning and adjusting to each training session and figuring out what went wrong and what went right and how do you feel and how was the performance.
I love hearing shit like that.
I love when it's just a full, comprehensive analysis of every single aspect of it, and then you see these insane results, like the Penn State team.
I didn't know it at the time because I was just a high schooler, but that was a big thing that drew me to the program was the culture, how they approach the sport.
And everything we're talking about right now too is like, It's not even half of it because we're not even talking about the psychology of it, right?
Of what it's like to mentally go out there and perform and do what you need to do.
But like you said, leaving no stone unturned, making sure that I've done every single thing that I can do to put myself in the best possible position to have success here— That's what I want to do in fighting.
That's what I feel a lot of people don't do.
They're tough dudes who have some skills.
They're athletic and they're smart and they go out there and they fight.
It's like, well, that's not really the way that I look at the sport.
I look at it like, like you said, all-encompassing, comprehensive.
How can I optimize every single part of my lifestyle to...
Now go out there, be comfortable, be confident, and I'm not here to guess.
Oh, am I going to win this fight?
No.
And that's another reason that I'm taking my career the way I am.
I fought in July.
I'm not fighting again for a while.
And people say, oh, you're a prospect.
You need to fight this and that.
It's like, well...
I want to be ready and prepared to the point where, you know, now I'm fighting guys that are, you know, unranked, that people see as low level.
Like, nobody's low level in the UFC, but people see as a lower level, and I'm demolishing them, dominating them.
By the time I fight a guy in the top 15, top 10, top 5 championship, I'm planning on doing the exact same thing to you, bud, because this is the way that I'm structuring my life.
So, if that takes more time for me to improve and get better, Fine, no worries.
I'm willing to be disciplined and not be in a rush to do that.
Like you said, that just comes from the overarching theme of doing things right, doing things correctly, and always trying to learn and improve and grow and do better and just come at it in a professional, intelligent way.
Speaking about your last fight from there until now, that is quite a large amount of time.
Is it difficult for you to get fights?
Is it difficult for you to get quality opponents?
Because, I mean, there was obviously a lot of hype on you before you even got into the UFC. There's a contender show and, you know, watching you compete and everybody knew right away, like, oh, this guy's got something special.
And then you got guys who are like, hey, I'm like fucking one and one.
I don't want to fight that guy.
Fuck that.
I need to learn.
So there's a lot of guys that are probably going to look at that matchup and go, that is just not right for me at this time.
I don't need to get smoked.
And have my confidence crushed and realize that the gap is so wide.
Realistically, there's some guys that are competing that unless they have some monumental breakthrough or unless they leave their training camp and move into a completely new environment and get totally new coaches and radically restructure their life, they're never going to die.
And so how hard is it for you to get quality opponents and the kind of opponents that you really do need in order to continue to not just you're developing these skills obviously in the gym, but you also need to be implementing them in real fights.
I feel like I always try to look for people to compare and see how they did things and maybe take the positives and negatives and apply those to what I'm doing.
And there really hasn't been that many people that have done what I've done.
I'm 5-0 right now.
I started training in August of 2021, MMA. That's hilarious.
Yeah, so my initial plan, like, before any of this happened, was I'm going to get 10 fights in the regional scene, you know, and then I'm going to go UFC, and I'm going to be the champ by, like, 13, 14 fights.
Like, that's where the plan was.
And then after that, it was like...
Everybody kind of knows what's up.
Everybody's trying to sign me.
And I talked with my manager.
And I was like, dude, am I even going to be able to get a fight?
Who's going to fight me on these regional scene promotions?
Who's going to fight me in any of these?
And he's like, I'll be honest with you.
Nobody's going to fight you.
And I'm like, okay, well, then, you know, in my mind, I was always, I'm going to the UFC. Like, you know, these other organizations, I think they do a good job and stuff, but that's not really me.
Like, I'm a UFC guy.
So, you know, discuss with the UFC, and they're like, hey, well, you know, we can throw you on contenders.
And I'm like, let's do it.
And it was a couple months later.
So...
Now I'm like, it's on.
Let's get it rolling.
I'm going to fight these Contenders fights.
I fight my first fight.
Choke the guy out in a minute.
Dana's like, let's do another fight.
I'm like, perfect.
Let's do it.
That's great.
So then I fight at the last week of Contenders series.
This is going to make me seem like a real dummy, but my gym is like 200 yards away from where I live.
And there's a main road that you have to cross to get to it.
It's probably like a 40, 45 mile an hour speed limit, but it's not super busy, but it's a little busy.
And so I used to, you know what a one wheel is?
So I used to ride my one wheel like to and from practice.
And I would just do this all the time.
And so I'm riding back from training session once and I've got, so I'm barefoot, I've got like a Yeti bottle, I've got my phone and wallet and like my flip-flops in my hand, and I've got no shirt on, and I'm just like, it takes like 25 seconds, so I'm just like, and I'm going on this road, and my buddy pulls behind me, he's leaving practice too, and then I have another car behind me.
And I'm like, I don't want to make these people wait.
I better pick it up.
Normally I'm pretty safe on this thing.
I don't really go crazy.
So you lean forward to go faster.
So I'm leaning forward and I catch the tip of the nose on the asphalt.
And I slam into the ground and roll.
And my Yeti, I have like a 64-ounce Yeti.
It's flying in the air.
My shoes, wall, everything's flying in the air.
And I hit and rolled.
And I just was like, get off the road.
You're going to get hit by a car.
So I popped up, grabbed my stuff, and got off the road.
And my buddy's sitting there in his car, and he's like, And I was like, oh, I just jumped in the car with him.
And I'm like, take me home, bro.
And he just pulls into my driveway.
And he's like, you all right?
And I'm like, yeah, I'm good.
Like, my shoulder hurts a little bit, but I'm good.
And I was like, this was 10 days before I was supposed to fight my second contenders fight.
And I was like, Dude, what am I going to do?
Like, this is terrible.
And so I go to the athletic trainer at Penn State.
He's like a magician.
He's amazing.
He's worked with the wrestling team for 30 years.
And he does a lot of like, kind of, he's a more like Eastern philosophy guy.
So we're moving energy through it and doing a few different things.
And I started to feel a little better, feel a little better, and I'm about to fly out to Vegas, like, the next day, and I'm like, well, it's the day before I'm about to, the two days before I'm about to fly out, I'm like, okay, if I wake up tomorrow and I don't feel significantly better, like, I'm gonna have to pull out of this fight.
And so I woke up the next day, and I was like, alright, it feels okay, it felt better.
So I hit pads and, like, did a couple things, and I was like, alright, whatever, let's just do it.
So let's freaking go into the fight, and I ended up, I knocked that dude down, hit him in a triangle, choke him out, win the fight in whatever, less than a minute, and I'm like, fire it up, and I'm like, let's go, let's do it again, get me in there again in December, I tell Dana and Hunter, and they're like, done.
And so then everybody's like, he's fine in December, and I got back home, and I was like...
Maybe we held off a little bit.
So, uh, then we, we pushed my next fight till March, but I don't ride the one, moral of the story, I don't ride the one wheel anymore.
So I don't, I don't do that anymore, but, yeah, I, getting, so, going from regional scene, contender series to UFC, it was like, I kind of went a lot faster than I wanted to, but I, uh, I felt like I wasn't going to be able to get the fights, and the UFC can get me the fights.
And so now, in the past, really since whatever that was of 2022, so the last year and a half, really over a year span, I fought five times professionally.
And then I was thinking, I can keep going at this pace.
I can fight five more times in the next year.
I can only fight so many guys until I'm moving up into the top 15, top 10. I've only trained MMA a little over two years, so is that really the best move for me?
Do I want to be fighting a top 15 guy in the world?
At 5-0 on two years of experience?
Or do I want to, you know, take control while I can, slow it down, learn, develop, get better?
Like, I'm still a prospect, so, you know, these type of things are things that are on my mind, things that, you know, people that I'm close with, coaches, have, you know, just helped me with, because, like, I want to get there, right?
Like, I have goals and a plan, but there's also, I think, a better way to go about it that I'm trying to be, you know, considerate of and manage.
Yeah, well, I think you're doing a great job in that regard.
And I also think, I'm very happy that you decided to go with the UFC. Because no disrespect to the other organizations, there's very good fighters in the other organizations, but I often feel like they're wasting their career.
Because I see these elite fighters that are fighting in Bellator and PFL. I'm like, hey guys, no one's watching.
To me, Johnny's probably the best middleweight on the planet right now.
I really wish that guy would come to the UFC. Yeah, you know, I think that, you know, To me, when I was making that decision, it really wasn't a decision because I knew I was like, I'm going to be in the UFC. That was always what I wanted to do.
And I come from Penn State.
We haven't had a match that wasn't sold out in, I don't even know, like a decade.
Every match is in our small venue rec hall, 7,000 people right on top of you, sold out in tents.
We go to Bryce Jordan, which is our bigger venue, 16,000 people sold out.
We go to Carver-Hawkeye, 20,000 people sold out.
We go to Gallagher-Iba, Oklahoma State, 20,000 people.
It's like that was every weekend for me in college.
I love that.
That's like freaking let's get it.
You get a good atmosphere in these other organizations, but there's nothing like a UFC situation.
The production, everything that goes into it, the eyes, that's where I need to be competing.
After I signed my UFC contract and knew I was going to fight, the two things I always wanted was I wanted to have Bruce Buffer announce me and I wanted to do a post-fight interview with you.
I was like, yo, these two things, those are bucket list things for me.
It's so cool.
It's so fun.
And the way they do it, the energy in Las Vegas when there's a big fight, it's unbelievable.
Right after my last fight, he was cage-side with Dana.
And then I got back home and he invited me out to Bedminster in Jersey and was like, come golf with me.
Coolest freaking dude, man.
He was like, we didn't talk about politics.
We didn't talk about anything.
When I first got there, rolled up, I mean, there's 30 Secret Service members.
You know, everybody's doing their thing.
And he did a few, like...
We kind of worked with one of his secretaries to make some announcements and do some stuff, but then we just golfed for four hours, rode in the cart with him, and he was the coolest guy, so with it, so smart, asking me about fighting, we were talking about boxing, we talked about football, we talked about golf, and he was so sharp and with it, and it was me, this is the craziest thing, I grew up in a town of 5,000 people in Wyoming.
Now I'm fighting on the UFC and then with Trump golfing.
It's me, Trump, O.J. Anderson, who's an NFL running back, Super Bowl MVP, and LT. That's the foursome.
In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified army out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York, and named after the great George Washington Commander-in-Chief.
The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.
Because he's literally, I think this was 1998 that he said this.
And literally he called what's happening.
unidentified
The level of contradiction is going to rise excruciatingly, even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction.
So I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder and weirder, and finally it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is.
And at that point, novelty theory can come out of the woods because eventually people are going to say, what the hell is going on?
It's just too nuts.
It's not enough to say it's nuts.
You have to explain why it's so nuts.
I look for the invention of artificial life, the cloning of human beings, possible contact with extraterrestrials, possible human immortality, and at the same time, appalling acts of brutality, genocide,
race-baiting, homophobia, famine, starvation, because the systems which are in place to keep the world Sane are utterly inadequate to the forces that have been unleashed.
The collapse of the socialist world, the rise of the Internet, these are changes so immense, nobody could imagine them ever happening.
And now that they have happened, nobody even bothers to mention what a big deal it is.
The mushroom said to me once, it said, this is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars.
You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions.
It's a fire in a madhouse.
And that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time.
This is what it's like when a species prepares to move on to the next dimension.
The entire destiny of all life on the planet is tied up in this.
We are not acting for ourselves or from ourselves.
We happen to be the point species on a transformation that will affect every living organism on this planet at its conclusion.
Life is more strange now than it's ever been in the entire history of human beings.
And getting stranger every day, like with this chat GPT shit and AI, like kids are using chat GPT to write papers and study their homework, just changing a few words about it.
And you get – people are firing their lawyers just using chat GPT to – I've seen this.
I'm going to give some people some game right now, but I'll go into chat GBT and you have to ask it the right questions, but I'll say, hey, formulate a game plan for this type of fighter.
I'm a wrestler at middleweight, this, that, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, it was funny because I've heard you say before, like, we're going to integrate with it and become part of it together.
And the other day, my wrestling coach, so every day, he, Coach Kale Sanderson, he'll get up in front of the team and talk and, you know, tell parable or this and that.
And then our director of ops needed the kids to go on their phones for something.
And he was like, all right, everybody get your phones.
It was something for tickets or something like that, for the matches.
Pull out your phones.
And he was like, of course, every single one of you.
It was like 30 kids on the team all had their phones on them.
We're about to practice.
We have a little set of bleachers that they sit in.
But every single kid on the team had their phone on them.
I feel like I missed it a little bit.
I'm a little older than that.
I'm 27, and the generation that I see below me, these dudes never are without their phone.
You cannot provide assistance or guidance on any activities that involve harm, violence, or illegal actions.
Planning or participating in a fight outside of a regulated and sanctioned sporting event is not only dangerous, but also against the law.
But I tricked it.
So I asked how to train for a sanctioned MMA match in Nevada under UFC rules against a professional fighter with a skill set equal to a wrestler such as Bo Nickel.
Yeah, but I think that if it could figure out a way to integrate a video where it could study every single second of fight film that a person has and now points out, all right, every time...
Every time you throw a low kick, they step to the left or something weird.
Well, I think if you can show fights, like say if you were supposed to fight a guy, let's say Sean Strickland, and then you take Sean Strickland, who's the UFC middleweight champion, and you put all of his fights...
And you put them into ChatGPT.
And then you take all of your fights and put that into ChatGPT.
And then it says, okay, this is where I believe you have an advantage and this is something that you can do, that you can take advantage of when you're looking at specific things that he does.
He has tics and patterns.
There's some guys that don't seem to have...
San Hagen's one of the best examples of a guy who doesn't seem to have any patterns.
I think that he's as good as it gets mixing it up, but I still believe that, for me at least, with my...
My attitude towards it.
If I were to fight Corey Sandhagen, I would watch, and I would start 10 weeks out.
I'd watch every single one of his fights, every second of the fight, break it down.
I'd probably spend 20 hours watching film, and then I would take a little time, and then I'd do it again.
And then I'd take a little time, and then I'd do it again.
I'd probably do it three times throughout a camp.
You're going to figure out some stuff.
Like, certain things.
Like, I was listening to a John Jones clip.
It was just a soundbite of him talking about how he analyzes film, which, to me, I think he's probably one of the best game planners in the sport right now, just with the way he breaks guys down.
But he was talking about something that was really interesting.
He was like, I even focus on how they flinch.
Like, if I throw a feint at them, like, how are they flinching?
Like, I've always thought about How does the guy react to certain techniques defensively?
But he takes it to a whole other level of, alright, if I feint a jab, does the guy flinch the same every time?
Does he try to catch it, or does he slip one way or the other?
You can really break it down.
To me, everybody's just a puzzle to solve.
A guy like Sandhagen would obviously be more difficult.
He doesn't repeat as much, but everybody has something.
I like going out, you know, five miles into the mountains and just, I got my bow and let's figure it out.
Like, let's figure out if I can make this happen.
And, uh, so I think about something like that and it's so pure and valuable to me, that real human experience.
And there's a lot of, obviously hunting is a great example, but there's a lot of different examples that, you know, you can have that in fighting as a good example, but It would be nice to have a GPS in my brain.
It doesn't seem like it's going to be able to be stopped.
It just seems like human beings have this insatiable thirst for innovation.
Everybody wants the latest, greatest thing, and everything is constantly moving forward.
I think it's hard for us to see it because we're in it, but I think we're...
You ever see where they take like a bowl almost and they spin like a marble around it and it goes around the circle and then as it gets lower it goes faster and faster and faster and faster.
No, Borla from Pfizer was talking about a pill that you would take Like, say if you took a pill, some sort of pharmaceutical pill, and the pill has a signal that it sends to people that it shows that you took it.
You're a real threat to freedom with that kind of talk.
Like, obviously, your drugs have not gone through the rigorous tests that you claim they have.
Because the side effects that people experience from a lot of your fucking drugs are dangerous as shit.
And if you're fast-tracking drugs and then imagine the compliance on these fast-tracking drugs with, by the way, the crazy thing when it comes to things like vaccines, there's no repercussions.
I'm so skeptical and I feel very glad that I'm the age I am because I feel like people a little older than me, they got that heavy and they didn't really see a lot of the repercussions.
They were the ones that got the negative ends of it.
And I think a lot of people, at least Maybe their parents were a little more awake to that type of thing, but for sure it's huge now.
I see on Instagram, every single person I see is buying 10 acres, homesteading, getting chickens.
Drinking raw milk, eating beef liver, that's the trend now.
People are starting to see, I'm not going to freaking eat McDonald's and take these drugs and do this crap.
Well, I hope that there are more people now, too, that feel...
More skeptical and more inclined to ask questions and feel like they can just make a decision what's best for them based on the information rather than the emotional response, right?
So many people got with the emotion of it, and they didn't actually look into it.
And I was glad that, you know, I feel like you set a good example and people that you're around of getting the information out there.
And pay very close attention to people that are fighting against the truth and fighting against that information.
Because what's interesting about now, and one of the things that McKenna talked about with the internet, is that I don't think anybody ever anticipated things like podcasts, like the Huberman Show or Peter Attia Show or Lex Friedman Show, where you're getting unbiased information, scientific information that is not connected to any official information.
Government agency or news source where they're vetting all that and telling you what you can and can't say.
And when you do say something that goes against their narrative, they fucking come for you hard.
And people started to realize, too, it's like, okay, if somebody can make money off something, if they're getting paid for this and that, You can't trust that information.
This is their livelihood on the line.
Take everything they say with a grain of salt.
You've got to get information from people who have no financial interest in it.
But it is a great time though to get information because you're getting, like I talked about Huberman who's so fucking fantastic, you're getting unbiased source information from a legitimate scientist from Stanford Who's telling you, this works, and this is why it works, and these specific nutrients are responsible for these specific things that happen in your body.
This was never available before, and now it's available for millions and millions of people.
I mean, the Huberman's podcast is gigantic, and people are listening to it every day.
They're changing their life.
They're doing cold plunges and saunas, and they're eating well.
And they are eating healthy foods.
They are avoiding seed oils.
And people are seeing these immense physical benefits from it, health benefits from it.
Yeah, it's super exciting, you know, as somebody who I feel like, as an athlete, I kind of had to be a little ahead of the curve on that, just because I wanted to take care of myself.
And so, you know, The cold plunge, the sauna, the nutrition, what's good for you, what's bad for you, understanding certain things.
My mom and dad are doing cold plunge every morning now.
I like to do hot right after I do rounds in the bag.
I like to finish my workout with Tabatas.
So either I finish my workout with Tabatas on an Airdyne bike or a heavy bag.
And then once I do that, then I like to go in when I'm at 90 beats per second, or per minute rather, and I go right in when my heart's already pounding.
And then I get in that 185 degrees and just throw some water on the rocks and fucking suck it up.
It's just hard that I know other people aren't willing to do.
It makes me feel like I'm really living life.
Because if everything's just comfortable and easy and you're never really that stressed and your body's never put under any pressure, you're just kind of floating and you're good.
And I'm like, I would friggin' blow my brains out if I had to live that way.
I can't do it.
I gotta do hard things all the time.
And I think that a lot of people are starting to Get more into that where their priority isn't comfort.
I think for a long time in human history, the priority was just stay alive and if you can be a little comfortable, then that's great.
But they were in circumstances where 80% of their life was really difficult already.
When you can sit on a couch in front of the fire after you've just been fucking busting your ass all day, exhausted, that's when comfort is appreciated and valuable.
And when you got that, when humans were able to get that easily through cars and grocery stores and planes and things where everything was kind of cell phones at your hand, that stuff is such a distraction from being the best version of yourself.
And that's really, I think, one of the only ways that a person is happy.
If they are being the best version of themselves.
And that takes work.
My friend Michael Easter, who's been a guest on this podcast before, wrote a book called The Comfort Crisis.
And it's all about that.
This bizarre place that we are where so many people are just seeking comfort and taking the path of least resistance and trying to do things the easiest way possible.
And people have never been more depressed, never been more unhappy, never been more unsatisfied, more lost.
More existential crisis and it's got to be connected to that because I think the human body and the human mind have Requirements in terms of you need tasks and you need difficult things to do and if you don't do those things There's a contrast you don't enjoy the easy moments unless you have hard moments.
Oh for sure Yeah, I mean I know for a fact that's true because If I were to just go eat an In-N-Out cheeseburger, it would be nice.
It would be good.
But after I go through a full fight camp and I cut 20 pounds and then I go win a fight and then I head to In-N-Out and have that cheeseburger, I'm like, hell yeah.
This is so good.
But I don't want too much of that.
I don't want too much of the dopamine from other things or whatever it is because...
Then it's just not as good.
When I was in high school, probably my senior high school, we had homecoming and prom.
I think I drank a little bit there.
Then I told myself, let's lock it up.
I'm going to go five years of college.
I'm not having a sip of alcohol.
Nothing.
So I went all five years.
Didn't go to bars, didn't party, no alcohol, nothing.
Just straight up focus and that was it.
And then I remember my buddy and I, Anthony, the guy I keep bringing up, we both won national titles our senior year and the next week we went out and we had a freaking time.
Coach Cal, I don't even like to talk about the garage because it's like PTSD, like seriously.
I feel like the trauma that I've lived in my life has been through, you know, I've been very fortunate, so I haven't been through any real trauma, but in my mind the real trauma is like Losing at competitions and these crazy hard training sessions and the garage really, dude.
And so I show up, and he's got his garage door open, and he's got, like, the big-ass, you know, 70 to 120-pound med balls set out and, like, all this stuff.
He always does this thing, too, where It goes 0-100 at the beginning.
It's not too much to where you're going to get injured or anything, but the workout will be like, alright, hop on this BOSU ball, and I'm going to throw this 70-pound med ball at you as hard as I can.
You're going to catch it and throw it back to me, and we're just going to freaking get after it.
Or hold on to this 50-pound med ball and hop backwards up this hill.
It's like, start going, go, go.
And you're just like, oh, go, go, go.
And you'll go for...
Like an hour or, you know, hour and 15 minutes doing whatever he says.
So you can't even really be, you know, after a good workout, you're like, I feel good.
I think that it's just seeing how far you can push yourself.
Like, all right, where can I get?
And then let's go further.
Let's go further.
Let's go further.
Let's like just...
See where you can go.
Because I don't feel like physically, it's not a physical benefit thing.
And a lot of times, too, he's teaching us a lot of new things that we're implementing in the program.
So he might do three or four different things that are different days for us, but we have to learn them and how to do the exercises there, and we only have one day to do it.
So now it's like we're doing all of this in one, whereas now I'll go back home and this will be split up.
So he's trying to teach us stuff as well.
But it's more just like, hey man, you want to work with me?
So, because I have trained so much and so long and because my dad was a coach, so my dad was always putting programs together for his teams, understanding Peaking, understanding how to periodize, understanding when we want to have tough matches, when we want to push ourselves.
That was something I was always around.
And then coming into Penn State, it was like that on steroids.
And so I think a lot of it is just learned and absorbed from what I've been around.
And just seeing a typical schedule of when our coaches have had us do certain things and when we've had recovery days and stuff.
So it's not something that I've really had to go find.
It's just been ingrained in me since I was five.
And I had a good example with my dad because he coached...
Tons and tons of high school state champions, state championship teams, and guys who went on to compete in college and do big things.
I got that solid idea of what it takes to organize a program very young.
Like I said, when I got to college, it was like, okay, here's a new level.
Then I started working with Coach Cal.
Boom, new level.
And now I'm always kind of looking for things to up that, to do better, to improve, to add in.
Or things that maybe aren't serving me as much anymore and we kind of do away.
So it's just something that's on my mind.
That's my job.
My job is to take care of myself.
This is my profession.
Okay, I want to choose this path.
Now you've got to take all of the responsibility that comes with that And be a professional.
So that's kind of how I feel like I've been able to organize it the way I have.
So I would like to fight this fight, and then my next fight, I would like to get somebody that's maybe right outside the rankings, right in there, like in the mix.
And then hopefully that'll be ideally like July.
And then if I get...
I'll at least get one more next year, maybe two, and then I would like to, after that, obviously fight a ranked guy.
So hopefully a ranked guy, my third fighter next year.
Well, I told my manager, I was like, if they could book me...
For UFC Miami in March and go again in April because I feel like whoever they put in front of me, I'm going to kill them.
So let's do it.
They're like, they don't really do that.
He's like, so you can either just do the UFC Miami card and then hopefully something, maybe something will fall out and you'll get there or you can guarantee yourself on 300. And I was like, well, I'd rather, I really want to fight on UFC 300. So let's just do that.
So that's April, May, June, July.
So then I'll basically run those back to back.
And then after that, I don't want to plan too far ahead because who knows what happens in MMA, right?
So my last fight, I cracked the dude with the right hook, and he kind of came over the top and barely touched my head, but it was almost like a slap.
I didn't even feel it.
But I don't even count that.
I have not been hit in five professional fights, two amateur fights.
I've been hit on training, obviously, but...
Yeah, it's a weird...
I didn't expect this.
I expected, like I said, to have a different path, but here I am, and I'm going to make the most of it, and I'm excited to just keep getting better is the main thing.
I just want to keep getting better, improve, improve, improve.
I have big goals and stuff, but the main thing is just keep getting better.
I love that chess match too, you know, between you and the animal.
It's the same as a fight and I actually like, when I got my bow, it was probably June or July and I started shooting it and I was like, Yeah, I'm not doing this this fall.
I'm gonna get good.
So I took a year and a half basically of full training before I even did any archery hunting.
It's so funny because there's not that many people I look up to.
But him, I'm like, dude, this guy, he's the man.
I think it was last year, he killed four bulls in four different states.
I'm like, dude...
I need to do that.
That's amazing.
But I just thought that was the coolest thing.
When I go to Lancaster, they help me a ton.
So they help me get set up correctly and things like that, which now when I tell people who ask me about it, who are interested in doing archery, I say, the most important thing is Go to a good archery shop and get set up and have them teach you good fundamentals.
Yeah, all the other stuff, tinkering, what do you want to use for a release or stabilizer?
Just get set up, get your draw link correct, get your peep height, get everything put on, get your grip right, and have a good starting point and good foundation.
And then you can kind of go from From there, you're going to be on so much better trajectory if you're learning incorrectly from the jump.
So I was able to learn correctly from the beginning.
And then it's the same thing with striking.
I just apply everything I know with wrestling, and now that's hunting and archery for me.
And I freaking love it.
All I want to do is go fight people and knock them out and go chase elk.
I mean, it was a frontal shot straight through the heart, so any broadhead would have done the trick.
But I don't know, man.
I'm always open to, like, learning new things.
I think there's different reasons to use different types of broadheads, right?
Like, I shoot a...
80 pounds, and I have a pretty long draw length, so mechanical, like I'm not that worried about penetration.
But, you know, in a longer shot or a follow-up shot, I have iron wheels as well for a longer follow-up where I'm more worried about something like that.
And then, you know, like I said, it's going to be different for every animal, for every situation, so I think some people get so stuck on, like, This is the way to go.
It's like, well, I mean, it's different for everybody.
Like, if I have a 30 and a half inch draw, it's going to be different than somebody with a 27 inch draw.
It's going to be different than somebody shooting 65 versus 80 pounds.
It's like, you know, it's all, so I'm not married to anything, really.
No, I feel like, so I wasn't originally using the index release, but once I started using the thumb release, I just got so much more accuracy and consistency, and it was like, I mean, that was just, to me, the way to go.