Joe Pyfer, at 212–214 lbs, shattered Francis Ngannou’s punch record (170 PSI) on a stationary machine, citing past 181 PSI tests and dismissing critics like Gerald Meerschaert while defending his power over technical skill. His UFC debut saw eight finishes in nine wins, but childhood trauma—including knife-wielding abuse from his Vicodin-addicted father—fueled his relentless drive, now balanced by wrestling discipline and a 208–210 lb weight-cut protocol. Despite fears of long-term damage, Pyfer’s upcoming February 10th fight against Jack Hermanson marks a pivotal moment, blending raw resilience with strategic evolution in a sport where pain and power often dictate survival. [Automatically generated summary]
So, this is the thing that people don't understand, though, is...
It's the same machine.
I think everybody thought it was like one of those punching bags that are down at the boardwalk.
And, you know, it's aggravating because I pride myself in my power.
I want to hurt you.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's my intention.
I mean, we all throw at power, right?
But I feel like I have a little different intention sometimes.
So, you know, I've always prided myself in hitting hard.
I've always felt like I hit harder than everybody.
Now sure, I'm sure Francis' punch feels different than mine, but I got speed, I got power, and I walk at like 220 when I'm out of camp.
So I'm not a small guy, you know what I mean?
I'm 6'2", 220 when I'm hitting that.
And even then, probably there, I was probably light because I was injured.
So I was probably about 212, 214 when I hit that.
And just to put it up, I'm going to post it whenever I get back home.
And I'm going to post a video and I'm going to post a picture also of me hitting higher than that at 181. I only have the picture, but Tuco, who's Brendan Allen's coach, was there.
There is a thing, though, where you could unlock horsepower in a human being, but you only have so much when it comes to power.
There are certain people, and I think we've all seen them, they just don't hit hard.
Whatever reason and they look big they can look strong and then there's certain guys that for whatever reason they fucking hit crazy hard and they're not that big and a lot of it is Efficiency and fluidity and the technique and the leverage and that's all learned right, but there's like a certain thing to like Bone structure and just natural power.
Dude, when you fought Razak Al Hasan, you are on...
There's a thing that happens with fighters where you see them, you see anxiety, you see first fight, you see nerves, you see jitters, you see skills, but it's hard to see the full range of them.
And then they start getting comfortable.
And when they start getting comfortable, like the Mirshard fight, you just stomped him.
But the Razak Alhassan fight, like, dude, you were on another level.
That's like, when people talk about a guy in the gym, like, dude, you gotta see this motherfucker in the gym.
And then, seeing that manifest itself inside the octagon, to me, that's one of my favorite things to see.
I love watching guys show their potential.
You know, and in that fight, Razak al-Hasan is a beast.
Bro, I mean, that dude, to me, without being disrespectful, I don't know how he's been in the UFC. The guy I first fought, you know, he's not in the UFC anymore, but he had eight knockouts.
I've been doing this for 23 years.
I started at four and a half years old.
I don't want people to think that I'm cocky or arrogant, but I am.
Abdul was just somebody you had to be careful with, but...
I didn't think he boxed better than me, and I think DC even says that as I'm walking into the cage, and his best shot was to knock me out, and if he couldn't knock me out, he wasn't winning that fight.
It's almost like, you know, I'm not going to say any names, but, you know, they're...
There's a guy that just recently lost who I like, and it's like, man, when you've had that off button shut off to the point where you're frozen, it's not like you got TKO'd.
I got dropped by a guy that used to be in the UFC for a brief moment.
It was Tim Williams.
He fought your boy Eric Anders, who I like.
He's cool.
But...
But yeah, no, I've never been, I've never had the lights, like, shut off or anything, so thankful for that, but I pride myself on my defense, too, you know what I mean?
And there's something about that dude, whether it's genetics or who knows what it is, but I've told this before, so I apologize if anybody's heard this.
The UFC had brought him to a doctor after one of his fights.
I think it was one of his fights in Australia.
And the doctor said to the UFC, where did you get this guy?
And they were like, he's one of our fighters.
He said, I've never seen anything like him.
He goes, yeah, he's pretty amazing, right?
He goes, no, you don't understand.
I've never seen a human being like him.
The tendons in his eyes are three times larger than normal.
They said that his orbital bone, when it fractured, by the time they got him to the doctor, a couple days later, it already started healing.
I mean, I think if you want to have that peak performance, you want to have that peak human being for whatever you're trying to, you know, put them in.
I'm sure with that kind of a program, like a communist program, where everything...
is on the line.
Like, if you are a athlete for a totalitarian dictatorship, like whether it's Cuba or Russia or China, whatever it is, they will do whatever they can to make their athletes the best.
Like, the idea of cheating...
We saw it in the Sochi Olympics with that documentary, Icarus.
Have you seen that documentary?
It's a great documentary by Brian Fogle about...
I've talked about this recently.
I apologize to people who listen, but...
Brian Fogel, what he was going to do is he did a bike race, and he did a bike race natural, and he's a very good athlete, endurance athlete.
So he did this bike race natural, and then he went to this guy who's the head of the Soviet anti-doping program, and he said, this is what I want to do.
I want to do it natural one year, and then the next year I want you to just juice me up to the tits, and we're going to do a documentary and see how I do juiced versus natural.
In the process of filming all this, it got released that the Sochi Olympics were rigged.
And so what Russia was doing was they put a hole in the wall where the urine samples were, and they were swapping urine samples.
So they're taking the dirty urine samples from their, because it was in Russia.
So they're taking the dirty urine samples from their athletes and swapping it out for clean urine samples.
But they got caught because they found these micro scratches on these jars that were supposedly impossible to open.
And that these impenetrable jars, they store the urine in to make it secure.
But then they did an analysis in the jar, and they said, like, somebody's been fucking with these jars.
And so then they analyzed the urine, and then the whole house of cards came tumbling down while this guy was doing this documentary.
And this guy, what was his name?
Gregory Rychenko?
Is that his name?
I think Rychenkov.
Rychenkov?
That gentleman, who was the head of the Soviet doping program, got in the witness protection program and then spilled the beans on the Soviet Union.
He's hiding in America now.
I mean, they arrested his family.
They took away his family's money.
They fucked his whole family up.
The story is crazy.
But he detailed everything that they do as far as their doping program.
He's actually funny, but it's an amazing documentary.
I can't recommend Icarus enough, but it just shows how far these countries are willing to go in order to gain national superiority by having their athletes gold medal more than anybody.
Because they'll never stop exploring trying to find the easier route, you know?
Exactly.
It's funny because a lot of people have said shit to me, and I'm like, listen, when I came back after I broke my arm, I was big before I broke my arm, but I was big in the wrong way.
Yeah, I mean, look, Joe, I started this at four and a half years old, you know, I don't know how much you know, but, you know, I started this at four and a half years old, and I haven't seen another path, and this was my A, and there was no B. So if A didn't work, that was it.
Five years old, I did my first competition in Naga.
And yeah, I mean, eight years old, I started developing like a little bit of a confidence.
I was so run down and abused that that was where my confidence started coming from.
I never had a dream of the belt, and I can say all these years, I've never had a dream of holding a belt, but I always had a dream of people chanting my name when I was walking out to a sold-out crowd.
So that was always my dream, and I've always wanted that.
And, yeah, I mean, I wasn't a kid that hung out with kids.
You know, I was homeschooled, and, yeah, there's a lot of detail to uncover in there.
But, yeah, I mean, I've known I wanted to do this all my life.
And when I tell you there was no plan B, bro, there was no plan B. When did you have your first MMA fight?
You know, so when I say I know, a lot of these guys will say, oh, I know these people.
I'm the OG in the gym as the young guy because I've been around for so long.
So that's why when these fucking clickbait turds come out and they say, oh, you know, he's fighting a guy with a lot of experience and Gerald Mearshaw, he's got the most submission.
I'm like, motherfucker, you're not doing anything that I have never seen.
Now, there's a difference between watching on the TV and saying, ah, he doesn't do anything special.
And you get in there and you feel somebody's presence.
You feel that energy.
You feel their intention, you know?
So, I knew that motherfucker wasn't going to bang with me.
I knew Abdul wasn't going to bang with me.
That's why as soon as I cracked him, as soon as I let him feel me, like, yeah, motherfucker, like, go ahead.
This is a moment right now that I get to recognize that I'm in front of somebody who has, you've heard so many stories, so many crazy things, and you know, my story is definitely not up there with the crazy things, right?
But my story, I'm unique, I'm one of one.
So my story is, you know, I started out, the abuse started when I was a year old.
My parents both blame each other, you know, child services in and out of our lives.
I'm one of five kids.
I got four sisters, two older, two younger.
And yeah, I started getting beat as a one-year-old from what I was told because I'd shit myself, right?
The story is I shit my diaper reached in my diaper wiped on the walls and then I got beat for it Neither parent owns up to it, but both parents have blamed each other Just because of the physical physical abuse on my father's side hundred percent has to be him My mom was not Physically aggressive by nature,
you know, I mean she she definitely what my ass, you know A good amount, but it was never with the mean intentions You know comparable to my father It was more verbal on her end, but uh, but yeah, so it started then and bro since the time I've had memory I remember getting my head stomped getting beat getting screamed at slap Humiliated just run down told you're never gonna be anything and you know,
my sisters received unfortunately received the the same treatment and Yeah, so I mean abuse has been something and toxic and I mean toxic like when I want to say like Breaking somebody down.
I didn't have an ounce of self-esteem.
I was my dad's puppet.
I didn't know no life being homeschooled You do school right that is he still around?
Still living yeah still living I'm not sure where I've parted ways with him and I don't want to talk to him next time I see him is probably you know yeah when it's done and I don't hate him.
I don't hate him, but I despise him as a human being as far as, you know, what he's given back to the world and the kind of person that he's accepted to be.
But yeah, I mean, yeah, he's still around.
I just don't know where and I don't really care where.
So I know my mom still lives at the house that I grew up in.
You know what's fucked up about it the most is that It was almost better for me to have never known him than to know him and see how it went and lose him.
You know what I mean?
Because I loved that man as a child.
That was my idol.
Nobody could beat him in the gym.
That's what I thought.
And I never thought he was a liar, you know, and then right around 15 years old, and I definitely think I was behind, you know what I mean, socially, just because of being homeschooled.
So my dad wound up getting a social security disability, and he was a stay-at-home dad, you know what I mean, collecting SSD and fucking doing nothing, but beating his kids and screaming and sitting, basically just being, you know, a child abuser to all of us, you know, and...
Never once has he ever taken accountability for the wrongs that he's done.
And if he's tried to finagle it, it's been to be like, hey, you were a bad kid.
It's like, yo, I want to know how I was a bad kid.
I didn't steal.
Sure, I lied as a kid out of fear because I was afraid to get my head stomped or get beat like a man.
You know, I didn't get a traditional ass whooping job.
Like, neither of my sisters either.
They got picked up by their necks, picked up by their hair, strangled, you know, and...
There's many stories, you know, and as you know, we have a documentary, right?
And I refrain from putting the details of specific stories because the documentary is not about, woe is me, poor me.
It's about, A, I never, through all of this, gave up on the dream to get to the UFC. Even when I broke my arm and I thought I was doing...
I did everything right.
I didn't go out and party.
I didn't go out and do drugs.
I've never smoked weed.
I've never done...
And I'm not saying weed's a drug, but I've never smoked weed.
I've never smoked a cigarette.
I've never popped a pill.
I've never done anything.
I didn't go out to strip clubs.
I didn't go out and bring girls home from the bar.
It's a horrible thing to hear You know as parents it's terrifying to think that a parent another parent could do that to their child But we all know it's true and we all know that it can do one of two things to someone It could just ruin your life or it can give you this unstoppable fuel and that's what it seems to have done with you I would never wish that on anybody but I often see people like you that are so fucking driven and so angry in there and And so effective because of that,
so dangerous because of that, I often wonder, is it even possible to make a guy like you without that?
So I think that from what I've heard, I think it depends on the commission and where you're fighting.
In PA, I know he has to have, I think, and I may be wrong, so somebody don't roast me for it, but I think you have to have, I think it's called a 2200. It has to be some type of visibility.
So I had a torn labrum and I got some stem cells to try and fix that.
And then, honestly, it really agitated it where...
And then the fight got announced and everything.
So this fight is sooner than I wanted it to be, in a way.
But you don't say no to something like this.
This is a good fight for me.
When I say good fight, I think that this is...
A fight that I'm very capable of winning at this point in time with the trajectory I'm on, with all the, you know, people call it hype, but I fucking earned it.
This isn't hype.
This is called I Paid My Dues and I was out for a year and eight fucking months and made a comeback.
Made my comeback fight with a broken left hand.
Still knocked that dude out, which was Derrick Brunson's wrestling coach.
I broke my left thumb in half, like right where the joint is.
And I still went in there.
And I remember my coach was like...
Yo, we got to bite down.
We just got to do this man like you do this you're going back to the UFC and it was the first time I ever worked with my my head coach John Marquez and How far out did you break your thumb?
The regular Raptors are turbo six, and this is, I think it has the same engine as the GT500. I think that's the idea behind it, because it's 700 stock from the factory.
I mean, these kids that are born into money, it's actually someone we both know where it's like sometimes...
And even people back home, it's like I know people that have kids where it's like they don't know how to fit in because status and money and shit like that.
So I stayed in Media PA. I lived in, I lived in, it's Pennsylvania, but it's like 25 minutes outside of Philadelphia.
So it's like the suburb city.
Honestly, it's like a bougie...
It's not bougie, but it's like a townie, nice town.
And, you know, everything was new to me.
I came from a school of 330 kids.
I got into high school.
I was in a school of like 1,600 kids.
It cost four grades.
But they were all like preppy fuckers.
Like...
Kids down in South Jersey where I grew up, they were all fighting each other, beating each other up, jumping each other after school.
Up here, everybody would talk shit and nobody would fight.
So it was like a weird thing for me to adjust.
I didn't have friends, I didn't have a phone until I started getting a job.
Yeah, man, it was weird.
It was really weird.
I lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and my dad, his girl at the time, which he's married to now, and her two daughters, we all lived in a two-bedroom apartment.
You know what I mean?
So it was a terrible living situation.
And then the beatings, man, I swear to God, he used to beat me up just to prove that he could...
Beat me, you know, and show his girl that he was tough, and he, you know, like, nobody could fuck with him type of deal, and it was just like, man, so it got real dark, man, and started, like, stomping me, breaking my, like, broke my teeth.
I had two crowns, you know, because of him, because of breaking my teeth, and I would curl up.
Like, he would punch me like a grown man, but I would curl up, but he would throw uppercuts.
Like, that's how intent this guy was on getting me.
And, um...
The last fight we had, it was over a fucking game called Uncharted 3. We were playing co-op, but because I would get more kills than him, this is the kind of shit he would rage at.
Mind you, throughout all these years, he's on SSD. The reason being, he had a car accident.
He was an oil truck driver.
I forget the story of who blew the light, but when he was going through the light, he got t-boned, or he t-boned somebody, blew out his back, had to get surgery.
Apparently it failed.
Whenever he wanted to jump up and whoop your ass, though, dude wasn't crippled no more.
So it's crazy, you know, and he would go box 15 rounds, but throughout 2004, all the way until I was 15 years old, and then some, this man was on narcotics all the time.
He was on Vicodin, Percocet, Oxy.
And he definitely was addicted.
There was never a time that I didn't see it.
The dude used to have like 60 fucking bottles of it.
And he would take medicine and then he would drink two yinglings.
And I think when I look back, I'm like, man, that shit will make a motherfucker angry.
And...
Yeah, I mean, it just got worse as I got older, but I remember the last fight that we had, it was, you know, I used to, I remember I used to look at him and be crying and say, you know, like, how come you don't love me?
Like, I got this empty hole in my chest, because I didn't understand emotion, so I'd, like, try to plead with him, like, yo, like, something's wrong with me, I got something, I got a hole, I got...
I got a hole in my heart or my chest.
I don't know how to explain it.
The things he would say in rebuttal would be like, fucking kill yourself.
Your feelings don't matter.
Shut the fuck up.
When I say jump, you say how high.
There was no remorse for anything he did, and I think that's why I despise him.
The dude hurt me.
He hurt me for a lot of years that I had to repair.
And even then, I still carry over some bad Bad attitude problems.
And, you know, the dude fucking...
It got to the point where it was like, either I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to kill him.
And finally he beat me half to death the one day.
I mean, beat me half to death.
And I packed a bag of clothes and he came out.
He pulled a fucking knife on me, said he was going to kill me with it.
I shoved him, ran out the fucking door, never went back.
And yeah, so I left, slept in the park for a couple nights, and then I wound up standing up for a kid, a black kid that was getting called Rachel Slurs, and that was my first friend I had made, and yeah, I mean, he wound up having...
He definitely was on the spectrum.
He wasn't the smartest kid.
Unfortunately, he had some things that people would pick on him for, like being overweight, and he would say some weird stuff and whatnot, but yeah, he was the first friend that I developed, and his brother was in Juvie for arson, trying to light somebody's house on fire, and he was adopted by a white man.
But the house that they lived in, bro, it was the most disgusting living environment you could fucking think of.
Cat piss infested, hoarder of comics that were all destroyed from cat piss.
Like every part of the house would have been sticky like your shoes would stick to the fucking floor and there were shit everywhere the smell was like a pneumonia Maggots in the sink because he refused for about four years to fix the garbage disposal That's how long I sat there broken live wire on the overhead of the oven so I lived in there and I wind up with I used to run papers to the courthouse and make like 75 bucks a week and So every time I would make a little bit of money,
and his dad would give me some money sometimes to try and help straighten up the house.
And I would buy bleach and fucking bleach shit and try to clean.
Bro, it was disgusting.
You could wash your clothes six fucking times and it would still smell like cat piss and pneumonia.
And it was very embarrassing, very humbling.
Way to live.
And I lived off instant food, like microwave food, for the next two years.
All my wrestling high school years.
The next two years that I was there, everything was either donated food from my wrestling coach, Will Harmon, who fucking...
Man, that was my saving grace when I went to that school.
And when I say stupid, like, the whole time that my dad's a stay-at-home dad, and I want to give credit to my mother, too.
You know, my mother, I never really felt like, loved me that much.
And, you know, it is what it is, but...
My mom worked her ass off, and that's why I get my work ethic.
That woman held two jobs.
She did what she could to provide.
She wasn't, you know, she wasn't a bum.
She tried.
And she did the best she could with a dude like that.
You know what I mean?
She never had another man, still hasn't had another man to this day.
She was married to him for 20 years.
They had five blood kids.
And, uh...
Yeah, I mean, I owe my mom respect for that because she's a hard-working woman.
And it didn't matter if she used to work at ShopRite, Home Depot, those were her two jobs, and then CNA, and, you know, she did what she could, you know?
So I respect her for that.
And, yeah, I mean, fuck, man.
That dude was not teaching us homeschool is my point for years.
You were afraid to ask him to fucking give you a spelling bee.
Because he was sitting at the fucking computer playing games.
So if you did it, what the fuck do you want?
What the fuck are you bothering me?
It was always a huge explosion.
So you're a kid, and you know from getting beat by this person, it's like, I don't want to make him mad.
He might fucking slap me.
He might hit me.
He might do something.
So all of us were scared.
We didn't fucking learn anything.
I tested again in public school.
Motherfucker, they held me back.
I was dumb as shit.
Like, it is what it is.
So, yeah, I mean, so my point is making light of something, you know, dark, you know, but then coming back to the dark side, man, if I didn't have MMA, I don't think I would be successful.
I don't think I would have been strong enough.
I don't think I would have had confidence, and I think life would have broke me, man.
I think I would have taken, you know, the easy way out.
You know, I know you've gone through hell, but I really do think that it's prepared you in a way that nothing else does.
You know, just for the ability to overcome adversity, the ability to deal with things, and again, the superpower of that horrible childhood.
It sounds like a terrible thing, I would never wish it on anyone, but when I know that someone has been through that, and then you see them succeeding, that's a special kind of person.
So I moved out of this place that was basically a shithole.
I started working at Verizon.
It was my first job.
And I said, hey, either I'm going in the military because I don't know what the fuck I'm going to be with my life, or I'm going to fight.
If I get this job, I'm going to fight.
I interviewed somehow.
I must have been a good talker.
Fucking got an interview job.
No job experience.
Fucking idiot.
Somehow I landed it.
Got a job.
Started working.
Why not moving out?
Moved into a condo across the street from my high school wrestling coach.
Who, if you've seen the documentary...
Is super impactful on my life.
So I move across.
Then I move from there after a year.
I move to another place.
Was only there for a short period of time.
The whole relationships wind up falling apart.
I was trying to fight while knowing somebody that I thought was a best friend had fucked around with my girl while he was engaged to his girl.
And that was my fucking living situation.
And I was so, you know, eager to have a best friend that the motherfucker was never a best friend, right?
And it was like...
Man, the heartbreak that I got every fucking turn, and this was two weeks before I had one of the biggest fights that really put me on a trajectory like, man, I'm gonna kill everybody I'm fighting.
So that happened two weeks before.
Then that was when I broke it off with my dad.
He came over and he got in my face one time.
And it was the only time I ever...
I never put my hands on him.
I never fought back.
I never even put my hands on him to this day.
But it was one of those times where you know how when you...
I don't know if you've ever had this moment where somebody gets in your face and you're a kid and you have the chain quiver and you're like fucking nervous and it's like...
It's almost like you're trapped in fear.
Man, he said some shit about putting a bullet in my head.
He said he was gonna come back and put a bullet in my head.
I was like, yo, motherfucker, before you get to that car, I was like, I'm gonna bury you.
Like, that's it.
Like, I'll take out every fucking part of my angry being to destroy you.
You will not make it to your car.
Like, that's it.
You're done.
Like, you die.
And I think it was the first time that motherfucker knew.
He always knew I was better.
At 16 years old, I could submit him.
He was a brown belt in jiu-jitsu, but I could beat him.
And I think that started to intimidate him.
And I think that's why the beatings got worse and worse and worse.
I think he was scared that I was going to rise up against him.
But yeah I mean that was the last time and yeah I mean shit man so I've just had like betrayal, betrayal, betrayal, betrayal but I haven't lost faith in people you know I met a couple really good ones that changed my life and you never let them go.
The horrible thing about having horrible people in your life is it can ruin your faith in people but the one thing that it does do it makes you really appreciate good people.
And then when you're homeschooled, bro, I didn't have fucking friends.
I didn't know.
So we were all the weird kids.
And then when your response, when you try to express emotion, one of the things, because this shit haunts me to this day, because I wish I could have heard him.
My sister said she wanted to kill herself because she felt like her dad didn't love her.
And we go and we pick her up, right?
This is the kind of guy he is.
We go to pick her up.
The whole family goes to pick her up.
My mom, my four sisters, me.
We go pick her up, pick her up from school.
My dad seems really concerned.
Like, yeah, yeah.
I don't know why she would say that, you know.
But you could tell.
It's like, you could tell he was burning inside.
So we lived like 10 minutes from school.
We get home.
We all get out of the car.
And we're all, like, quiet.
We're all quiet.
We're like, man, something's about to go down.
Like, as soon as she opens the door, like, grabs her by her hair, grabs her by her pants, fucking throws her, chucks her in the fucking room, starts strangling her in, like, threw her on the fucking couch, and then starts strangling her in between the cushions.
And then we all have to fight them to get them off.
That's your response to your daughter who's suicidal.
So when I say, and we were all mean to each other, that made it even worse.
We were all mean.
We were all caring in that moment because we knew, like, this isn't right.
Seeing him hit my mom, cops being in our house 12 times a year and shit like that.
Like, I grew up dysfunctional.
This shit fucked me up.
And it fucked me up when I was toxic.
I was, you know, negative.
And I'm still, like, toxic and negative, right?
But, like...
You learn who people are.
When you see that kind of shit, I can have conversations.
Like, a conversation I want to have.
Like, you can talk about anything.
You're open-minded.
But you're also, you got your beliefs, right?
Like, you're a real person.
I don't like everybody because you know when somebody's got this fake face.
And my dad was one of those people.
He had that fucking fake face, man.
But the second he could get you in that door to hurt you, he would take it.
And it's like...
When you grow up with that, it just makes you angry.
And that's why it's like, you're going to take half my purse?
This motherfucker's my toughest test?
You're going to take it from me?
Come on.
Try it.
And if you beat me, you're one of the best in the world, in my mind.
And I've never...
I can honestly say this.
Through all that shit, I have such a strong confidence in myself where it's like, man, ain't no man beating me until it's been done.
It's not happening.
I have a loss on my career as an amateur because I was 174 pounds fighting at 185, training twice a week with a full-time job with that girl that just fucked me up.
My first pro loss, struggling with suicide, depression, things like that.
Still hadn't settled that beef with myself.
First time I ever went in a fight was absolutely dominating the fight.
Mental health is something I fight every day, and the reason I keep bringing it up is because I'm going to fight, and I'm going to win, and then I'm going to take some time.
And then I'm going to go on vacation, and I'm going to settle some things I got within myself.
So I just have a lot of people that I talk to close.
I've tried therapy like three, four times, and I've never really gotten a benefit from it.
I don't know if it's just because I haven't met the right one.
Or they haven't been able to get through to me.
Like, I'm not an open person where I... Like, I'm an open person.
Like, I can talk about these things, right?
And I may get upset about some of them and I still evoke strong emotion from it.
But...
Just because you're listening doesn't mean that I trust you with what I'm telling you.
You know what I mean?
For you to give feedback and then me to receive it in a way where I think, okay, let me apply this.
So I just...
Sometimes I feel like therapy is just another fucked up human being telling another person, hey, you shouldn't feel like this.
But...
Or you should try this and try that.
But that's why I love cars so much.
That's why I love cars.
I love nature.
And I also want to take time because I haven't taken a vacation since I've been in UFC a couple years before that.
I haven't taken a vacation since before I broke my arm.
I think part of, you know, one of my biggest things isn't holding the UFC title, but one of my biggest things is buying a beach house and that supercar I've always wanted, that Dodge Viper, and, you know, having a loved one and going and traveling the world before I'm dead.
I think that's what my idea of peace and happiness is, and I'm desperately searching for it.
But the key is to not let it consume you all the time.
And that is where someone can probably help you.
You're never going to forget it.
There's a monster that's going to be inside of you whenever you need him.
That's not going to go away.
It's just not going to go away.
To not live with it all the time would be very beneficial for you.
Because then you would get all of the positive attributes that come from having a horrible childhood, which is this unstoppable drive, this fury that you can unleash inside the octagon that's very different than other people's.
But you can get to the point where it doesn't consume your everyday life.
And it's not something you have to think about all the time.
And you can think about positive things.
You can think about growth and expansion and progress.
And I think you're very capable of doing that.
It's just so many people, they rightly so, dwell on the horrible experiences of their childhood forever.
And there comes a time where that doesn't serve you anymore, and it rots at you.
Where even with success, you're still angry.
Even with success, you're still bitter.
Even with success, you still want to talk about it, you want to live it again, and you want to go over it in your head.
And that can rot you out from the inside.
Because at a certain point in time, your mind can't handle it anymore.
I can talk about it now and I can evoke the strong emotions, what I remember with it, but I forgive them.
I view my dad now as somebody, like I said, I don't respect as a man because I don't think he's the definition of what a man's supposed to be for someone that teaches their kids useful tools and whatnot, but I... I've forgiven him because I think it's beyond his help because he never got help.
Because he never settled with his.
Now that is a man that has aged terribly because of his past and his demons that he's never let go.
It's very common, so I think I find light, and you always hear me say, I don't know if you've recognized, but after every fight, I don't want to be a role model, but I want to be an inspiration for the kids that it's like, hey, stay in a sport.
Don't let that sport go.
And whatever that unspoken is that...
If it stops you from quitting, follow it.
And if it's in wrestling or if it's in soccer or if it's in basketball, keep doing it.
I used to get laughed at my whole life.
I would sit at the cafeteria.
I stopped sitting with kids.
I would play chess every day with my wrestling coach during lunch because kids would laugh at me every time I said, I'm going to be in the UFC. Everybody would snuff, you know, like giggle at it.
So I just removed myself, put myself in a better situation.
I didn't like this friendship.
I got out of it.
I moved to a place where I could pursue fighting.
I found people that...
We're chasing things themselves, right?
So I think it's just about putting yourself around the right people and constantly wanting to evolve.
That's a giant part of it, putting yourself around the right people.
Either it's through watching documentaries about the right people, if you don't have access to the right people, or if you're very fortunate, like yourself, to get to a gym with these great people and to live like...
I know I know Sean and shit, and I always talk about him.
I always talk about him.
Because when I joined that team, man, I was not in UFC. I don't think a lot of people had a lot of faith in me, but Coach John took me in and never charged me a penny.
And I couldn't have afforded it if he did.
I made the switch before I even got the second surgery.
He cornered me and I feel it.
I can look at them and know that they get emotional too.
I have a lot of respect for Sean because Sean when I fought Gerald was in the back and even before I was in the UFC he said hey you want to come train?
I said no because I knew it was like man like I don't like training with people that I'm gonna have to fight.
And I might in a couple years, you know, but I think I would take the proper time to not be disrespectful and fight a fucking guy as big as Johnny Walker or somebody like that.
But I don't like, like I keep them updated with my weight cut as I'm coming down, but I don't do like, I don't know how people fucking water load, man.
I don't like it.
I don't like the water loads.
I do my cut, like I know my body pretty well, and I get down, but it's just, I don't know.
Yeah, I sweet sweat, do a couple rounds, pad work, get the sweat flowing, do it a couple ground and pound, you know, wrestling drills, and then do a couple ground and pound rounds, and then I'll hop in the sauna.
I don't want to overeat, and I don't want to overdrink where I feel so bloated or I feel so heavy, but I probably walk in around 210, 208. So I blow up.
Yeah, that's a lot.
So when I fought Gerald, I... When I fought Gerald, I was heavy.
I think I was like 209 when I walked into the cage.
But by the time I faced off with him by 4 p.m., I was like 203, 204. So I was like, I put it on quick.
And I don't lose it.
Like, I'll wake up the next morning and it goes right back to where it needs to.
So I have a good system.
And I think it's only going to get better.
But, man, you know, I'm not going to put it out there, but I have never had a smooth camp.
I've never had a smooth camp, and this is going to be no different, but this is where I've been built.
I've been built in the fire, and, you know, Jack's a good dude.
I've been going as far as to say, somebody's fucking poisoning us, because there's no way that everybody I fucking know got sick at the same time, and everybody's sick for two, three weeks with it.
I just have my morning routine of everything I've taken and I got it from the UFC PI. They gave me a sheet and then I've been doing it for Long enough now that I know what I need.
I mean, that guy is elite in terms of people who just trained grappling.
And for him, a guy who was training MMA, fighting in the top echelon of the UFC, fighting against some of the best of the best, for him to go and beat Craig Jones in a straight-up grappling match, that's incredible.
He bailed out of a bet he was supposed to, you know, and this was years, whatever, before I was in the UFC. You know, I met Phil Rowe playing with Randy Brown on Call of Duty.
And it's just, you know, Calvin, I told Calvin a long time ago, dude, I go, if you're 170, I think you're a potential world champion.
But at 85, the difference between a guy like you and a guy like him, just the physical frame difference, like Adesanya or Pajeda or any of these really big 85ers, they're just so much bigger.
Hey, listen, like, I told people, too, in my post-fight, too, like, that was Sean's first time being overseas and whatnot, and look, he knows where he's best, right?
I'm not saying he's...
I don't think he's, like, the best striker in the world by any means, but I think he's the best grappler for MMA by a long shot.
It's not just me, bro.
This motherfucker can put any of us on our back and you're not getting up.
I think there was a certain coach that's no longer on our team that I never fucked with, that shouldn't have been in his corner, and doesn't know how to fucking...
Bro, the head coach, the guy that was supposed to...
I'm not going to say his name.
He was supposed to run, give him a structure, tell him what to do.
He just kind of didn't train him and didn't develop a game plan with him.
Coach John did everything.
Coach John's just the striking end of it.
Obviously, that's where he lost the fight, but the dude shot one time.
He shot one time and that was it.
I think Sean just...
He had a mental bug and I think Sean's more of like an introvert where he keeps things to himself and he's very like his private life is his private life and you know and I can respect that versus me I'm outspoken and I'll say what I'm feeling and I said it the week at bro I was fucking sad as shit when I fought Abdul.
I didn't turn it on until I started walking.
Actually, that's not true.
I didn't turn it on until I saw him fucking, like, doing all this, like, dancing shit.
Like, I was like, you think so, huh?
And then that's when it turned on, right?
But some people just can't turn it on, man.
And I think that was one of those times where he just wasn't, like, he was doing good.
Like, it was a back and forth in the first round, and then it just got off.
I started martial arts when I was 15. That's when I started seriously.
I took a little bit of it before.
I took karate when I was 14. I fucked around a little bit before that.
But when I was 15, I became obsessed.
And, you know, just wasn't really good at anything other than art.
I was a good artist.
But it was nothing that really made me feel like I was a special person until I started doing martial arts.
Then when I started winning, and I became obsessed, I was training every day, and I started getting really good, winning tournaments, and then I realized, oh, I'm not a loser.
I just never figured out what to do.
And now I've found a thing to do, and I know that if I just work hard, I can be exceptional, and I can get better at it.
But I was also When I was making the transition into kickboxing, first of all, there was no money.
We're talking 1988. There's no money in it.
And there's no money in kickboxing.
I wasn't a good boxer.
I didn't have a lot of boxing experience.
And some of the guys that I was training with were going into boxing, particularly this one kid, Dana Rosenblatt, who went on to be the New England middleweight champion.
He beat Vinnie Pacienza, he beat Howard Davis Jr. Vinnie Pacienza fought Roy Jones.
But when I was watching those guys, one of the things that I was seeing was brain damage.
I was seeing guys where I knew them from five years ago and then I know them now and I was noticing slurring, a slowness to the way they were thinking.
You know I was just seeing the people didn't just spar they fought in the gym and You know there's a lot of that from the early days of MMA as well You know particularly shoot the box those guys just beat the fuck out of each other like the old Miletic fighters those guys beat the fuck out of each other there was a lot of camps where The amount of damage,
like I've talked to Shaub about this too, about him training with Shane Carwin and those guys back in the day in Denver, they beat the fuck out of each other.
And the damage that you take in the gym, that shit counts.
It's real.
And in that way, I'm glad I didn't, because I started seeing...
I had a lot of headaches and that kind of shit early on.
And there was no future.
I didn't have a future in fighting.
It didn't exist.
So when the UFC came along...
Which was 1993. I'd already stopped fighting.
I was already doing stand-up comedy.
But I was like, oh, they figured it out.
This is it.
Somebody figured it out.
Because back then it was always like, how do you make a living as a martial artist if you want to compete?
There's no money.
You have to open up a school.
The only thing you could do is teach at a school and then compete in tournaments and there's no money in the tournaments.
But then when the UFC came along, also, we realized how much of what people were doing was nonsense.
How much of what people were doing was wasted time.
I don't like reading that stuff because that sits in the back of my mind, too.
I don't want to be a fucking vegetable, right?
But I'm not and I'm not knocking our pay, but we don't make what any other professional athlete makes Well, you do at the high end at the high end, right?
Yeah, you know, I'm three fights in I'm fortunate to be getting the main event and I I don't know, but I was told that there's only one other person that's done that in my division.
It's so different even for me sitting as a fan watching.
Like you don't realize what that person's going through when you walk out and it's like a cold sweat because it's a fucking big-ass building like AC. It's like that cold sweat, but you're kind of hot and then you fucking realize when you're in there, it's like everything's like so amplified and you're like fuck man like I'm about to get into a fist fight.
But then, that's where you make that decision.
Once that finally hits your brain, which we all have it, you either can hone in on what you're about to do, or you can hone in on the fact that you don't feel like being there.
And one of the things that I've come to terms with is, I think that changed my trajectory of my career and the way I fought.
Because if you watch my early fights, I would just go out there and try to blitz and get out of there.
And just fuck you up and knock you out and get out.
That's what I wanted to do.
I don't force trying to knock people out.
I don't force the finish.
I don't.
I just try to wear and then catch you.
I know I need one.
In my head, I'm convinced.
You could be Francis Ngannou.
I think I need one.
I wholeheartedly believe that.
And then you've got the other aspect of fighters that convince themselves, oh, I can knock somebody out.
And then it's very difficult to express that inside the octagon.
So when you hear a lot of great things about fighters and then you see a performance, You got to go, okay, they got to get over the anxiety, they got to get over the pressure, they got to get over the experience boundary, because you do need experience in front of different styles, no matter what.
No matter how well you train and how good your training partners are, you need live experience against really talented fighters to really develop to your full potential.
So I think that's kind of like a part of his defense.
A lot of people that do the Philly show, like me, sometimes I'll dip into a certain side, and it's like he just kind of stands straight and leans and either puts his arms out.
This is a situation I wanted to talk to you about this because there's a lot of different philosophies on this.
I understand why Usman took that last minute fight against Hansa.
And I understand why Volkanovski took that last minute fight against Makachev.
And as a fan, when I was at home and they announced those changes, I was like, oh shit!
But the reality is you need a camp.
You are not the same guy with 10 days notice as you are with 10 weeks notice.
You are just not the same guy.
And when you look at the Volkanovski that fought Makachev the first time, that was a guy who went through a full fucking camp and was A +, rip ready to go, full gas tank, let's fucking go.
You have to go through that suffering to know that you were built strong enough to withstand what you're about to go through, and I won't take no fucking short notice fight.
I remember I was so excited, we couldn't afford to fucking buy it, but I was like, when him and Brock Lesnar fought, and I was like, man, I just remember the hype video, and I was like, yo, these are two fucking giants.
But then again, Brock probably shouldn't have taken that fight either, because Brock was just a few months out of diverticulitis surgery, where he had to get a length of his colon or his intestine removed.
Well, there is kind of with the UFC, you know, I mean people respect, obviously Jotty Eblen is like one of the best middleweights on the planet Earth, without a doubt.
And unfortunately, he's fighting at Bellator and the casual has no idea who he is.
And GSP, when he went up to fight 185 when he fought Bisping, he had to put a bunch of weight on.
It was a struggle for him.
He was eating like six times a day.
He got sick.
He was throwing up all the time.
He's trying to eat so much food just to maintain the mass.
I think that...
Those fights are exciting, like super fights where guys go up a weight class or down a weight class.
But I think the real way to do this is to reshape the sport where you cut what I call sanctioned cheating out.
Everybody's doing it.
There's nothing wrong with doing it.
Don't get me wrong.
But the fact that you don't really weigh 185, but you fight at 185 pounds.
Like when I interview you and you're 185, I'm like, how?
When I interview Drekus.
I'm like, how?
How are you 185?
It doesn't make any sense.
You're not 185. You're fucking...
Pajeda.
Pajeda's fucking huge!
How are you 185?
You're not 185. This is nonsense.
You're really a 225-pound man.
That's what you look like.
That's what you are.
And that's really what the weight you should be fighting at.
And I think guys would fight better.
I think they would have less deterioration of their endurance over the course of a five-round fight if they weren't fucking radically dehydrated 24 hours ago.
But, you know, trying to convince guys to do that when there's guys like you that are cutting the weight that are massive for that weight class, it's crazy.
So I never had a strength and conditioning coach ever.
Ever.
And when I got into...
So I was sitting at a light one day coming back from Philadelphia practice at Marquez.
And at the light, this guy is like, yo!
He's like, you're Joe Pfeiffer, right?
And I was like, yeah!
And he's like, you should come by my gym one day.
I was like, nah, probably not.
What the fuck?
I don't even know you.
I winded up going, winded up hitting him up like, yo, do you do personal training?
He was like, yeah, of course.
His name's Adam Ferris.
He owns a gym called Pursuit.
It's right in Washington Township, right around where I live, right?
I worked with them.
We didn't do anything crazy, anything hard or anything.
I was skinny as fuck still because I just came off of being, you know, having two surgeries and all that stuff.
I was still on the road back.
And after I won my 50 grand bonus and I won my debut, I was still super skinny.
I think DC interviewed me.
You interviewed me once and it was Miami.
So from that time when I won my debut...
I was still skinny.
And I didn't have a chance to ever have a power program because I took a fight a month after I won the contract.
And then I didn't have a chance to have a weightlifting program because I'd had a comeback fight and then I broke my ankle.
So I never got a long enough period to build my body back.
And I also didn't have a strength coach.
For some reason, I never thought I needed one.
I made it to the UFC on the first before I continue.
I made it to the Contender Series, hitting pads three days a week with the man that I brought, Sam Morpiza, who had a full-time job, and we would do it at 5 a.m., three days a week.
I wrestled with one of my best friends, who literally was only a wrestler, had no MMA experience, and he was like 5'7".
And he was just like a sauced fucking wrestler, and that's it.
I literally, and I sparred with Corey Anderson once a week.
That's how I was making all these fights, and I was knocking everybody out and doing all this.
So now that I have structure, now that I actually have a system with Marquez, I have jiu-jitsu with Jonathan Webb, like, and I beat fucking Gerald Merchardt, the middleweight submission, highest fucking whatever.
Dude got waxed, like, didn't even come close to beating me.
My jiu-jitsu is underrated and my wrestling is underrated.
But I think it will come to light with a guy like Jack.
So you started the strength and conditioning program?
So I started the strength and conditioning program.
That's what we care about because I'm just not putting more than 275 on a bench with my elbow.
It's just not worth it.
It's not worth the risk.
It's not worth the nerve pain.
It just doesn't make sense for me.
I'd be deadlifting a fuck and I was squatting a fuck ton.
I always wanted thick legs.
I never had it.
And then now I started putting on size and I wanted my back I've always had a real big back like strong back like wide and So yeah, I mean we were doing we were doing a power program and then we would go right into like Explosiveness and jumps and ladder drills and just doing real simple movements, but a lot of functionality like a lot of core twisting a lot of med ball slams a lot of kettlebell stuff and Yeah, that's my coach right there, Adam Ferris.
And that's the only thing I'll say, and I'll leave my last.
If you look at Jack, and you look at me the way my mind is, Jack's not been able to climb to the top, but he's been against the best, and he's lost to the best.
Me, if you look at him where he is now, coming off an injury, 35 years old, do you look at him and say, hey, this guy could hold the belt?
No.
I think the general public would say no.
If you look at me, there's a lot of question marks still.
I still have to prove myself against a lot of good guys.
I haven't beat anybody that's that good.
So I'm really honest with myself, but I'm going to put myself on the map very soon.
Can't say it yet, but this was actually filmed by Chandler Henry, who is actually a kid that I went to high school with, so now I got him a job and he does this for a living, and this was made by him.
So we're hoping really soon, I just can't say yet, because that's Alex's job now.