Justin Wren joins Joe Rogan to dissect MMA’s future, from Francis Ngannou’s knockout of Overeem (covered by CNN) and his upcoming Bellator vs. Miocic—a clash of heavyweight power and All-American wrestler discipline—to Ortega’s 12-0 stand-up dominance at 145 lbs and Khabib’s grappling struggles against Barboza’s switch kicks. They also explore Rafael dos Anjos’ 170-lb transition, Emile Meek vs. Kamaru Usman’s delayed power-striking showdown, and Jimmy Rivera’s fight for the lightweight title against John Lineker. Wren’s work with Fight for the Forgotten exposes modern slavery in Libya and Congo, where broken promises trap laborers in debt, revealing how systemic exploitation mirrors MMA’s cutthroat survival—both demand relentless adaptation to win. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah, walking around, seeing all the history, seeing everyone get amped, and then being able to be that close to the comedians, too, is pretty awesome.
I mean, being able to meet them, say hi, and just, you're in arm's distance from them, so really unique.
If anyone hasn't gone, I suggest going, because it was awesome.
So, I don't live in California and I'm not a homeowner yet, but does homeowner insurance cover all that or do you have to have extra, like, fire insurance?
Yeah, because my family was in Hurricane Katrina and because they had hurricane insurance but they didn't have, like, wind insurance and so the insurance companies would say...
Well, then you have to pull out all the lead, you know, which like when people shoot smaller birds like pheasants and things along those lines, you do shoot the entire body.
But with the turkey, you're basically sitting still and you call them in.
You're like, bark, bark, bark.
You get this little sound thing in your hand, or you have one in your mouth, and you make little turkey calls, and the turkeys come in and just blast them in the head.
Or you shoot them in the body with a bow.
I know my friend John Dudley and a lot of those guys, they hunt with bows, and they shoot turkeys with a bow.
But it's tricky, because a turkey's a goddamn dinosaur.
And if you don't hit it in the right spot, they'll just fly away with an arrow sticking out of them.
Literally.
Something that kills a deer.
Go right through a turkey and the turkey's like, bitch, I'm out of here.
Like, you have to catch them in their vitals.
Their vitals are, you literally are shooting an arrow at a softball from, you know, 40 yards.
Like, obviously, he's got to beat Stipe Miocic, but if you want to, like, look at a picture, like, in history, when you come back and go, this is the moment where Ngannou arrived, and people realize, like, holy shit.
And the way he did it, it's like the whole world's noticing.
I saw it on CNN, I saw it on all these different websites, and everyone's just raving like he could be the next big thing.
And I think that's going to put him on the map.
Now that everybody knows, and they have this highlight reel of his knockouts now, and so the advertiser fight between him and Stipe, I think it's going to be gigantic.
Yeah, I guess if you just look at his comment, do MMA math or so, but the common opponent with them and Overeem and how they both performed against him.
Well, Overeem did catch Stipe and had him stunned and knocked him on his ass, and then Stipe came back and won.
But, you know, he's going to be obviously super aware of how dangerous it is to connect with Ngannou.
He's going to obviously try to stay on the outside.
And when he closes the distance, close the distance, get that clinch, get him up against the cage, and figure out some way to either get that guy down or wear his legs out or do something.
We don't know what happens when Ngannou goes into the third, fourth, and fifth rounds.
I think it's probably the biggest heavyweight fight ever when you think about what Ngannou is.
I mean, there's obviously been some giant fights like Brock Lesnar when he fought Cain Velasquez, Brock Lesnar when he fought over him.
Those are huge fights.
But I think that Ngannou is something special.
And if Stipe could figure out how to turn him down, how to shut him down and beat him, I mean, it will really cement his position as the baddest man on the planet.
So as a kid, his father and him, I don't know if you know what, they're the first ever American father-son Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts, and man, but they have this background of just everything.
It goes like Hicks and Gracie, Salo Hibero, Shanji, and then he's in that group.
That style of jiu-jitsu is just smush style.
Those guys have just tremendous pressure, basics.
And when I say basics, I mean like the hard, polished jiu-jitsu.
Tried and true techniques and it's like there's not like a lot of fancy crazy new-school stuff, but it's just laser sharp and just Smashing power and pressure such a big fan of that guy.
He's always talking about the pressure passing and just melting into Into him being a wet hot blanket on top of him just taking their air away making them give up and man honestly I've trained with guys like Carwin and Mir and Couture and Overeem.
And I've trained with some of the biggest heavyweights around.
And he is the only person.
And he fights at 185. He's the biggest 185er I've ever seen.
I can't imagine.
I don't know how he makes that cut, but he does it in such an incredible way.
In my entire life, obsessed with discipline and training.
The performance mindset or competitive mindset, the guy's the best I've ever been around.
But he is the only person to ever make me completely claustrophobic underneath.
I've never been claustrophobic underneath anyone.
And he just takes my, not in a weird way, but he takes my breath away.
He makes you want to quit.
And he's always about putting yourself in the worst position possible and becoming uncomfortable, or being comfortable being uncomfortable.
And just making yourself to where, no matter where you get put, you're going to fight out of it.
You're always just one step away from a finish.
Like you finishing them.
Even if they're about to finish you, you're just a few small steps, just inches away from getting out of there, reversing it, taking their back, you know, putting them on their back and mounting and just finishing.
And man, he's incredible.
He's the only guy that I've ever seen be able to go through like...
Ten ten minute rounds or sorry ten eight minute rounds back-to-back when he was training for the 80 cc's Wow, I mean he's just an animal no ten tens It was ten tens and I was just blown away that he could do that and we were having to rotate fresh guys on him And by the end of it, he got tired it but that was the only time I've ever seen him tired But actually tired and so he's just an absolute animal.
It's a lifestyle for him It's honestly so incredibly Inspiring and I feel like just being around them and me doing a lot of the same things that that's what's gonna make me the Bellator heavyweight champ But like just us feeding off each other.
It's really cool dynamic But if I can be half as disciplined as he is I'll be the most disciplined heavyweight fighter there is So it's it's it's pretty amazing being around him in his mindset and how he travels the world seeking out the the top instructors and In every discipline.
I mean, he's going down to Brazil to Evolo Sautai.
Through Jiu Jitsu, being around people, always trying to put himself in those situations.
And then he would go down, I think he was a 16 year old kid, and he would go down to Brazil sometimes by himself and stay for like a month or two.
I think he might have done it for four months at one time.
Wow.
So he's a really, really special individual.
He's the guy that I've never seen take a break or take off.
I mean, he competed.
He fought three times in Bellator this year, 3-0.
In between that, he had a super fight with Buchecha.
He had another grappling tournament.
He had the ADCCs.
He was just going from every two months he was competing.
Every two months, but he was staying healthy the whole time too, which blew my mind because he takes his...
We have a place called the ARC that we train at, the Athlete Recovery Center, and it's got hot and cold plunges and infrared saunas and the cryotherapy and just all sorts of stuff.
Those Norma Tech boots and our PTs there and our strength conditioning coach is right there.
So it's all in one shop.
And so right after he's done training, he's recovering where he gets there early and he's stretching out.
And so the whole warming up truly and cooling down and taking care of your body and putting the right fuel in it, eating whole foods at all times, like just not putting garbage in your body.
Man, he's going to be the Bellator middleweight champion probably pretty soon.
I think they have that maybe lined up in the next two or three fights.
Yeah, the guy who just fought, Chris Honeycutt, was in the NCAA finals.
That was the first high-level wrestler that he's competed against.
He won every single round.
The first six fights, he finished everybody.
And so it's going to be exciting.
If there's someone watching this that hasn't watched Rafael Lovato Jr. compete, whether it's in grappling or MMA, go follow him because he's going to do it.
I think it was the tendon in there that connects the shoulder and the pec and completely tore it and had to have reconstructive surgery.
And man, the guy's so disciplined.
I mean, he went through, like anyone, all of us athletes would, being bummed out a bit.
But, you know, he had this machine that was, you know, moving his arm up and down and, you know, just sitting there.
But then the guy is a planner, a visualizer.
Like he takes advantage even the times he's not on the mat.
He's structuring his life around it to where he's writing down his goals and his dreams and this month's plan, the next three months plan, this week's plan, this day's plan.
I'm just writing every single thing out so that way he can make sure that he's doing everything he can.
Even when he's not training, he's training.
He's training his mind.
He's training everything for that so that he can perform at the best.
And I think that's why he competes at such a high level.
And I'm speaking about him like this, but it's all true.
It's all honest.
I'm not just trying to give the guy props.
He earned that from me, at least.
And I think you should from pretty much anyone he competes with.
Because, man, I mean, his match with Buchecha, even, was so competitive.
I think he's awesome I'm excited to say I always love when the really the highest level guys in any discipline enter into MMA You know and when you see a guy like him who's just a just jiu-jitsu phenom and now he's like, okay now I'm gonna try to take over MMA or a guy like Gokan Saki It enters into the UFC like, oh, okay, let's see what happens when you get a real high-level guy in any discipline who enters into MMA. It's always interesting because they're such specialists.
Because most MMA fighters are pretty good at wrestling, pretty good at jiu-jitsu, pretty good at kickboxing, but not elite, like world-class, world-championship level at any different discipline.
So when you see a guy who is like Rafael Lovato, who is world-class at jiu-jitsu, like world-championship level, and then enters into MMA, it's like, ooh!
And something special about Raphael, you know, but anyways, he can coach it so incredibly well, too.
And that's not always the case with a lot of athletes.
I've been coached by a lot of incredible wrestlers.
Kenny Monday, Kendall Cross, they were incredible coaches.
Kale Sanderson, I've been coached on the mats by Dan Gable and some other guys.
So absolute legends.
And his coaching is also just so thorough and so exact.
And it's like you see the guy at the top right now.
Who's performing at the best and he's able to teach it at such a high level that that's why he's, you know, coached up some other grappling world champions and stuff like that.
Now his focus is on MMA. Just perfect timing.
Him and I got to train together for a full year now and taken in 2018. Both of us want to be, you know, hunting down those belts.
There was a few reasons, but yeah, that was one of the big ones.
I was going to regardless, because Water 4 is based out of there, and Fight for the Forgotten is underneath Water 4, and so we're partners with them, and they've taken over all the administrative stuff, and we're officially an initiative under Water 4. That's nice.
Yeah, man, it's incredible.
So stoked that they're making things just flourish.
We're going to serve over 200,000 people with clean water this year.
Well, I just found out right before we got on the podcast that there's a generous donor out of Oklahoma City, and he's going to match whatever comes in today on the website, whether that's at the Comedy Store or now, up to $10,000.
He's going to be on the podcast soon, and he's the guy who set up all this Bitcoin stuff for me in the first place.
The Bitcoins all came in as donations.
So just so anybody knows, like, because some people accused me of not donating that money to you, and I had explained to them, no, I took the Bitcoin and I just, whatever the money value of it was, then I gave that to you guys.
And if you guys haven't paid attention to any Justin's podcast before, I'll give you a brief rundown.
Justin was on The Ultimate Fighter, fought for the UFC for a while, and then found his true calling going to the Congo and building wells for the Pygmies.
And it's just...
An amazing story.
You could watch some of the podcasts.
You could watch some of the short clips on you.
And I know there's a documentary on you that's coming out soon as well.
It's going to add a whole lot of value to the film and just give it a louder voice or a wider reach because my first promise to the Pygmies, and this was even...
So, man, I'm just so thankful for the support of this community and personally you because, man, when I first came on, we hadn't drilled any wells.
In fact, I just had Andy Bowe.
I had held him, and he's a one-and-a-half-year-old boy that I held as he passed away, and...
And it wrecked me.
It changed me.
But I knew we were going to do something with water.
I just knew it.
But my first time on the podcast, there were zero wells drilled.
I was just going to go there and live for a year, and hopefully we were going to build an incredible team.
That team is now 20 strong, full-time, 12 part-time, been able to drill 70 water wells now.
There are two, maybe three, that can actually read, and they're the chiefs.
One of them is actually an incredible guy, Chief Alondo.
His grandson's Jippy, and he's going to be chief one day, and it's like my favorite little guy over there.
And Jippy's in school now, and there's a long story with that, but it's one of the first times ever the Mobuti Pygmies have ever been in school sustainably to where they can even pay their school fees.
And they can have food there because they can buy the food.
But traditionally, they don't have a written language.
They don't have a calendar, so they don't know their age.
And so they're really, really traditional hunter-gatherer society that's just incredible.
You love them.
With the bows, they're deadly.
I've seen a little boy, probably 8, 9, 10 years old, climb up a The canopy of the rainforest is well over 100 feet.
It's probably 150, 200 feet.
And seeing a guy shimmy up there, 8, 9, 10 years old, to the top.
With a bow.
With a bow hung around his neck.
And so he goes up there, and then he's sniping parrots or other kind of birds.
They eat parrots?
Anything they can find, man.
Yeah.
One thing that they do, I don't know why this popped in my mind, but if they're running and they're hunting after an antelope and a bee flies by, they're going to chase that bee to the hive because honey to them is like gold.
I mean, they love honey, having something sweet, so they'll risk their lives to climb up into the trees.
They set a fire at the bottom of the tree, let the smoke go up, and then they climb up there and they just reach in.
African bees, these are killer bees that they're reaching into the honey hive and just pulling it out and dropping it down in a basket or just plopping it down.
Sometimes two people go up there and one guy's purpose is just to have like a...
Twig and leaves that he's hitting the bees off of the guy reaching in.
So he's protecting them.
But then when those guys come back into the village and they have this just treasure pot of honey, the whole village celebrates their heroes.
And, you know, because they literally did risk their lives.
For their wives, for their kids, so that they could have some honey.
And they save it.
They savor it.
And it's pretty incredible.
Another thing they do is if they're on a hunt and they find a turtle, they'll actually make it look almost like the kids here that have like ninja turtle backpacks.
They'll tie a vine around the feet of the turtle and then they put it on their back and then they go back to hunting.
And if they get an animal, if they get like an antelope.
Yeah, well, what I love is the heroes of this are our 32 well drillers.
We even have, now, I got to share on your podcast last time that Pacha Soap, which was inspired even by this podcast, him listening to this, working at night, the night shift, and having a dream to start up Pacha Soap, which is in Whole Foods, and they got another brand that's in Target.
It's super successful.
That's awesome.
Yeah, they're helping us buy land there in the Congo, and we're starting up a soap production facility.
So we have an essential oil press, and we're hiring the locals to be able to get all the essential oils like eucalyptus and avocado oil and palm oil and different raw materials.
Because the only thing they have available to them right now is car washing soap that's literally from China or from India.
Yeah, you're better off with no soap at all, just washing yourself with dirt.
By the way, you can do that if people don't know.
If you just take dirt, like if you're somewhere and there's no soap, just take dirt and just literally use water and mud and just wash yourself with the dirt and then rinse it all off.
You're just trying to scrub off the bullshit.
And dirt is probably better for you than antibiotic soaps.
But the Swahili they speak there, it's mixed with a little bit of French and also the local language.
So you've got to truly live there.
And over the last six years, I've been there for about maybe a year, And seven, eight, year, nine months, boots on the ground, a year at one time.
And then, man, but the saying about Swahili is that it was born in Tanzania, it got sick in Kenya, it died in Uganda, and they took it to the Congo to bury it.
Because they can't communicate with anyone in Uganda.
I mean, not truly communicate, get their point across.
What I meant by teaching them English is teaching them how to read.
I just think that if you could somehow or another teach them some language where they could read and write things down, you could just keep this thing going with them while they're there.
What I think is really cool is now, We've got this video up on YouTube.
It's Chief Leo May's transformation.
And so Chief Leo May, in his village, it was just an incredible transformation.
They had never owned land of their own, but Chief Leo May remembered his grandfather used to actually take him to hunt on that land that they now own.
And so now it's theirs and his grandson is going to be able to say, you know, this was my grandfather's land, just like he's able to say, you know, I used to hunt with my grandfather here.
But so from the land that they have, they have land, water and food there.
They have about 500 acres, I believe.
And so then they have their own water and now they've grown so many banana trees there.
They used to get paid one to two bananas a day for labor.
From sunup to sundown, a banana or two a day.
Now they have hundreds and hundreds of banana trees.
I mean, probably five, six hundred banana trees in that one village.
And from that, they're able to go sell it.
When they sell it, they can buy their own clothes for the first time.
They can now pay school fees so that they can actually go to the local school and learn to read and write.
It's a little bit of a hike for them.
But they can go learn and read and write.
And so it's the first time that, I mean, it could even create an opportunity for the Mabuti Pygmies to have representation at their version of Congress in the Congo for the first time ever.
There's over 200 tribes represented there.
The only one not represented is the Mabuti Pygmies.
And so to get them educated, the excuse used to be from the government was they're not really people.
They're part man, part animal.
That was the government saying that, I think, in the early 2000s.
Maybe the late 90s, but early 2000s, they're saying they're half man, half animal, that they'll never have representation.
But now it's started to shift to where we even have a governor, the governor of the largest state in Congo, sponsoring everything we do, you know, endorsing it, saying, hey, you have free range of the Eturi region, and we want you to drill here, and we want you to drill there.
And so he's actually come on our side and said, the work you guys are doing is really great because it's through the locals.
It's locally led.
And so to have that opportunity once some of the Mubuti Pygmies are educated, have a high school education, maybe we can get them to a local university there or right next door, maybe in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, then they can go back and they can actually start representing themselves.
Because now they say if they're educated, then we can, but none of them are educated.
So it would draw out the process longer.
But now they're, you know, the next generation will be.
Yeah, and so that time I got malaria while I was there.
Because it was so bad, I broke out in shingles, which, you know, being 30, just now turning 30, so then I was like 28 or 29. To have shingles, the doctor was like, you're too young for this.
That is the most fucked up thing about the human body, that it harbors these bacterias, and they sit there waiting, just waiting, biding my time to fuck up your life!
Yeah, and so then I had, oh man, dude, I had that, then I had shingles, and then I came back, and for a month or two months, the doctors were trying to figure out what was wrong with me because I was clear of malaria, but the CDC did two tests on me for malaria again, but they found out I had dengue fever.
Jesus Christ.
Every night I was going to sleep, I was waking up, and that was probably...
And it actually came back, it broke out since the big crazy one, it broke out, and I think it was like less than 100 people.
It might have been like 10 or less.
And so they really were able to contain it, which is impressive to be able to do in Congo, because it's not as organized as anywhere else.
But yeah, so, man, but on the MMA journey back, it was really, really tough.
I mean, the muscle memory just was not there.
I had lost the wrestling I grew up with, and the cardio obviously wasn't there after five years off.
But the sicknesses, other things, my body was healed, the muscles and joints and stuff.
Ligaments and all that I think I felt better than ever there.
It was just the muscle memory wasn't coming back and The cardio was really tough and I had to shed some weight Yeah, the muscles get healthy the muscles and the cartilage and the joints everything that they probably benefited from all that time off, right?
I think so a lot because so many guys get by the time you're 30 I mean how many MMA fighters are just have like really huge injuries by the time they're 30 31 years old It's pretty common Yeah, I started fighting at 19 years old, professionally, MMA. And I was always the young guy in the heavyweight division.
And so now, just turning 30, I feel like I've got a lot of miles left on me having those five years off.
And I honestly think a lot of people are like, oh, so you took off and that's probably impossible.
For me, it was a whole other kind of training.
I mean, kind of like I was talking about Raphael and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
I mean, I've slept in the mud, woke up in the mud at least, slept on the dirt, woke up in the mud because the rain came so hard and sleeping under twig and leaf huts on the dirt.
No mattress underneath you, no anything.
And so...
I mean, to have that, to battle through the sicknesses, to see what they suffer from and how they dig deep on a daily basis, they're in survival mode, and to see the battles they fight, and then to have You know, 32 of my heroes there that have drilled 70 wells that whenever a bridge collapses because a truck is illegally logging and they overloaded their weight and they just collapsed this 1930s bridge.
And then I think, oh, it's going to be impossible.
And then they get out of the truck.
They start walking through the water with all our well drilling equipment.
And we're going to find another way.
We're going to get...
Taxi motorcycles to ride in everything we needed this big truck to carry in.
And so it's going to take a lot longer.
It's going to be a lot harder, but we're going to get it done.
I mean, I'm not going to say this, or I don't want to compare it to this, but it's almost like it was a life experience and kind of like some of our Navy guys, Navy SEALs, where they do the special forces training.
I think this was my version of like kind of special training for me as a fighter.
It enlarged my heart or deepened the well of who I am.
And so I think I just have more of a motivation to go in there and win.
Yeah, so Brian is, in my opinion, probably the best guy in the division off of his back.
I don't think there's anybody that could fuck with him at 145. Especially now that Charles Oliveira has moved up to 55. I think he's the best at 45. His fucking submission game is so lightning fast and just...
Tight as can be.
But Cub Swanson's a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, too.
And Cub is a nasty striker, too, and super unorthodox, like real weird.
But Bryan is a fucking great striker, too, and Bryan is un-mother-fucking-defeated.
Because Cub is at the top of the heap in the 145 pound division.
He's lost to some of the big guys like Max Holloway.
He lost to Frankie Edgar.
But he's still...
Really respected and thought of as one of the top guys in the division and Ortega being this young prodigy at 12-0 has this opportunity now to fight one of the most crafty veterans in the division.
Sounds like a similar opportunity that Nagano just had, that Francis just had, you know, to be that young lion, to come up and Throw in a guy and really announce himself as one of the top contenders.
The thing about Ortega is, like, he'll make it seem like there's no intention whatsoever to go to the ground.
And then sometimes he boxes guys up, and then when they want to take him to the ground because they don't like the stand-up, that's when they're Foxville.
He's got an interesting strategy in that regard, because in the last fight, I was thinking, like, wow, this is kind of interesting.
We're in the third round, and he still has not tried to submit this guy.
Like, that's his game.
And then, boom, they go to the ground, and he instantly catches them with a guillotine.
But the reason they went to the ground, his opponent took him down because he didn't like the stand-up.
What I love seeing is, I think in high school, our senior year, I think he graduated, or sorry, I think he finished his senior year fourth in the state of Texas.
And then, so, lately, Emil Meek's Instagram and his Twitter has been calling Kamaru Usman a chicken and saying he's ducking him and all kinds of crazy shit.
So, I do not know if this is official.
I'm hoping this is official because someone needs to challenge Usman.
I think Usman is one of the most dangerous and scary guys in the division and he's not being talked about.
There's so many tough guys in that division that he's sort of Kind of been overlooked in my opinion and to me when I watch him fight I'm like Jesus Christ this guy's a handful for everybody I think Usman is just He's got all the tools.
He's in his prime.
He's fucking super dangerous everywhere super dangerous standing up smashes people in the ground Really fucking strong for the division.
Top game, out of control.
You know, we don't know what happens when he gets put on his back.
We don't know what happens if he gets tagged, if he fights a world-class striker that could stand up.
But what Emile Meek brings to the table is nasty power and a real warrior spirit.
But also, Colby would be wise because Colby's made so much noise after beating Damian Maia.
He's trying to get a fight with Tyron Woodley.
He's trying to promote himself.
And the worst way to promote yourself is to fight Kamaru Usman.
But Emile Meek is like, get me in there, bitch.
Let's do it.
So I sincerely hope that this fight actually takes place because I think it's a fucking wicked, wicked fight.
And I want to see if Emile has any answers.
For the problems that Kamaru Usman brings to the octagon because no one has so far and I mean he's got one loss in his record I do not know if that was in the UFC or outside the UFC But in the last few fights we've seen him since he's won the ultimate fighter.
He's just been unstoppable But again not getting the credit that he deserves Yeah, it's all all of his fights inside the octagon seemed to be all victories He's one of the most naturally athletic guys that I've ever known.
Well, the big fight for me on this card is not just the title fight between Cyborg and Holly Holm, but yeah, that one.
Khabib Nurmagomedov versus Edson Barboza.
Come on, son.
Number two and number three.
In the lightweight division, which is the most stacked division, I think.
It's like lightweight and welterweight are the two most stacked divisions.
But it's hard to pick which one is most stacked, but Jesus Christ, I like this fight.
I like this fight a lot.
Apparently, Nurmagomedov has a new, according to Daniel Cormier, he told me Nurmagomedov has a new conditioning guy, or a new dietitian guy, a new nutrition guy.
Less dessert.
No tiramisu.
He's backing off the tiramisu.
He's got him on a very strict diet plan, and he's far lighter than he's ever been.
I'm fucking pumped for that fight because Barbosa is one of the best strikers in the division for sure and Khabib can't do anything wrong on the feet because Edson can light him up for sure.
I mean this is the best striker for sure the best striker that Khabib has fought.
He fought Michael Johnson who's a good striker Michael Johnson caught him and tagged him and had him rocked.
It was the first time we saw any adversity whatsoever Any real a real struggle for Khabib, but he went on to dominate that fight He took him to the ground just beat the shit out of him and he's 24 and oh, which is unprecedented You know 24 and oh and just been steamroll in everybody So he's only like 30 right 29 30 something like that.
I I do not know his age, but I feel like he's not even in his prime yet.
What does it say here?
29. Yeah, I mean, he's like right at the door of his athletic prime.
If he can stay healthy, I know he's had a bunch of injuries, but if he can get healthy and stay healthy, man, it's going to be scary seeing what he does.
And so now he's fighting John Lineker, who's a scary fucking guy at 135. Yeah, I like this a lot for Jimmy because you can just hear every interview he does, he's just hungry.
Yeah, Francisco Rivera, like so many guys, he's fought, he cracks them, and you just see the look in their eyes, like, oh Christ.
He beat Marlon Vera, which is a very good fight.
The T.J. Dillashaw loss, I think, was the most telling because T.J. Dillashaw figured out a way how to solve that puzzle when John Dodson couldn't, which was really interesting.
John Dodson lost to Lineker when Dodson was thought to be one of the best guys in the division at 135, and he lost to him with a split decision.
He fucked up Michael McDonald in the fight before that.
He's just something special, man.
He really is.
He's a tank of a guy.
But I really honestly believe that Jimmy Rivera is world class.
And I think this is a good opportunity for him.
To fight against a big scary tank of a guy in John Lineker and show his talent and his ability.
I think it's a real test.
I'm really interested to see how this works out.
Because Rivera's not like an elusive T.J. Dillshaw type guy.
He's an attacker.
So what is he going to do with Lineker?
Is he going to chop the legs?
Is he going to attack from below like he did with Uriah?
He fucked Uriah's leg up real early in that fight to the point where it really limited Uriah's mobility.
There was two fights that night that were humbling.
That was one of them.
That fight was humbling.
Like, the fucking guts and glory.
Watching those guys go at it.
But Yancy Medeiros and Cowboy Oliveira might have been even crazier.
I think that was the craziest fight of the night.
And I believe that one performance of the night.
Thank the baby Jesus.
Because if it didn't, there was some criminal shenanigans afoot.
It was the craziest fight ever.
One would get rocked, and then the other would get rocked, and you'd think the fight was over, and then the other one would come back and rock the other one.
And then finally Yancey won in the third round.
I mean, it was just a fucking...
Chaotic war!
It was such a good fight.
Just such a good fight.
Two bonuses.
Two fight of the night awards.
That's nice.
See, that's what I love about the UFC. When people really perform and lay it on the line like that.
But, did Aldo and Holloway win any sort of a fight of the night?
Gaethje and Cowboy Oliveira and Yancey Medeiros got fired tonight.
Well, Max Holloway's performance was nothing short of masterful.
Nothing short of masterful.
The way he handled Aldo, the way he yelled at me after the first round.
He gets done with the round, and he's going back to his, and he looks at me and goes, The man is tired!
The man is tired!
He's a motherfucker.
Dude, Max Holloway is a real fucking warrior.
I mean, to the core.
That guy relishes it.
He loves it.
When he was chicken-necking at Aldo and he's got his hands down and he's talking shit to him and stalking him, you could see it in Aldo's face like he was drowning.
You could see the waves were coming and he knew he wasn't going to be able to dog paddle for too long.
He's like, Jesus Christ.
How am I going to keep up with this guy?
The thing about Max Holloway that's so interesting is...
In a lot of ways, he has that sort of Nick Diaz approach, where he's not hitting you with all of his might.
He's not throwing these handmakers, unless he's got you hurt.
Until he's got you hurt.
Once he's got you hurt, then he's just fucking whipping bombs your way.
But until then, he's just constantly on you, just constantly peppering you, constantly on you.
Kick, knee, punch, move forward, move forward.
And you're just dealing with him and trying to breathe.
You don't get any breath.
And he just keeps that pressure on you.
And he knew Aldo was fading right out.
And I'll tell you, Aldo looked good in that first round.
I love what he said about fighting Aldo in Rio, too.
He goes, that's what kings do!
He goes, they go to the other person's village and they take their crown.
I was like, ooooh.
That's right.
That's what they do.
That's what he did.
He's the baddest motherfucker.
I think he's the best 145 or ever.
I mean, he might not agree with it yet because of the record.
Which I see his point, but the way he fights, the octagon IQ that he shows, his fight IQ, his ability to find a weakness and to see it, his predatory behavior inside the octagon, I think he's the best.
I really do.
I just think...
It's so impressive to me that he's not...
Aldo in his prime was spectacular and amazingly impressive.
His flying knee, first round knockout of Cub Swanson, the knockout of Chad Mendes.
The Uriah Faber fight where he brutalized Uriah's leg.
He's unquestionably one of the greats of all time.
But in my opinion, skill-wise, Max Holloway has now surpassed him.
And so I think he's suspended until April and then he can fight.
And so, but that fight, I think probably a lot of fans 10 years ago, but now too, are going to be really excited to see Mir versus Fedor, you know, two kind of legendary champions.
And then, I don't know why the Bader won and King Mo won all the way back in May.
Because I feel like when it comes to the welterweight division...
Bellator has two guys in Lima and in...
See, the Lima thing, the only thing that stands out in the Lima thing is Ben Askren.
It was Ben Askren, and it was a long time ago, no doubt about it, but Ben Askren just had his way with Lima and had his way with Korshkov, had his way with all these guys.
That, to me, and Ben's coming on the podcast next month.
We got him scheduled.
Awesome.
Before or after, I forget which one, the event out here, the Bellator event.
But I feel like that is, I mean, now that he's retired, that is my biggest regret that he didn't get in MMA, that he didn't get into the UFC. My biggest regret.
But then, it's almost like, I won't use his name, but I know a fighter that fought in the upper weight classes in the UFC, you know, nine or ten wins and only two losses and gets cut.
And so it's almost like, you know, you gotta be in it.
Yeah, no, I mean, even me being in the same weight class, I mean, that's my wife was asking, who would you be more terrified to fight before the fight?
How much do you weigh right now?
unidentified
262. We can get you down 205. Get you going, Keough.
Well, Felder's an enormous 55. Felder walks around somewhere in the 185-pound range, and then Giants down to 55. Yeah, he tapped, but the referee didn't see it.
Yeah, I mean, I started in 2005 or 2006 fighting, and I remember a lot of wrestlers talking about wrestler tricks as if someone, if you go for the double leg and you start getting a takedown, you know, tap.
Yeah, well whenever they were always talking about the Rousey could beat Guys in her division and different stuff like that You would almost think they have to have no other options to where Gabby's gonna have to fight a guy someday I know right maybe like a 185 or something like that, but yeah, look at the size of her Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, I know multiple people from Uganda, Rwanda and Congo that were they were lured into some of these countries like there.
And they would go there thinking that they were going to have a job opportunity and that they would be working at this place or that place or whatever.
And you start here and you work your way up.
And but automatically you're going to be making more than you've ever made in a year every week.
And so they go there thinking that they're going to be able to have a new job, send back a bunch of money to their family.
Then all of a sudden they get there.
They take all their documents away from them to where they can't travel.
They can't escape.
If they do, they don't speak the language.
And then they throw them into someone's house and they're literally their slave.
They'll keep them there forever, but then some of these people that are able to make contact with their families, they have to fundraise and come up with thousands and thousands of dollars.
I'm talking like an African family that might make $1 to $1.25 per day is now having to come up with $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $10,000 to try to buy them back out of it.
So this is what the documentary is really covering.
I cover a little bit of it in the book, but we've actually seen 1,500 people, and that's what, at the Comedy Store tonight, we'll play the short trailer for it.
And it's going to talk about the slavery that's in there.
There's 400 to 600,000 Mabuti Pygmies in the Congo and basically all of them are enslaved currently right now.
And so we've actually seen peaceful negotiations of 1,500 people transition out of a life of slavery and into a life of freedom.
And we're hoping that we can replicate that.
And so how we're able to do it is we're able to work with the local, state and national government on documents.
And then also we're able to buy back the land from the slave master.
So they benefit financially by having maybe more money than they've ever made from their slaves.
And then we get water for both sides.
So the slave masters, it's a different context for slavery.
There's a lot of places like Libya or different countries that they're really rich and they have a bunch of slaves.
But in this context, it's a family owns a family.
In most cases, some own many families.
But I've attended the funerals of the slave master's kids.
The slave master's kids are dying of dirty water because they have zero access to it.
And so whenever you can bring in, because they're making $1, $1.25 a day on the film, there's going to be a beautiful part on the documentary.
I don't want to ruin that part or the thunder, but it's, man, there's a slave master crying on camera with us.
Crying.
Because of how much of a benefit it's been the peace that's come from not having the slaves that he inherited from his father who inherited them from his grandfather because it became a burden where they're making $1.25 a day.
They're spending on average, the average person in Congress being $185 a year on treatment against waterborne disease.
So on medicine, all this stuff, they're spending half of their salary I think?
Of Congo.
They're the first people here.
They're the native Congolese.
Don't you think they deserve some land?
And so we kind of cast a vision, work together with them.
It's all inclusive to where they get to share their concerns and questions and they get to be part of it and say, we want this here.
And so then all of a sudden, once that happens, we do the land purchases.
It's all legal.
And then we bring in water for both sides.
To where they both have clean water, access to that, which changes everything.
Whenever the slave master's wife is on average going 3.75 miles to go collect water, she can't do other things.
Or you're a slave master and if you are fortunate enough that your wife doesn't have to go collect water all day, one of your kids can't go to school because they have to go collect water all day.
And so when those jerry cans are full, 20 liters.
20 liters is 44 pounds in full.
And a lot of times you do it with two because if you're not going to carry it on your head and if you're going to make the most of your time, that 3.75 mile walk, you're going to go with two jerry cans on that walk and then it'll balance you out almost like kettlebells.
And so you get two 44 pound, almost kettlebells, but jerry cans of water that's moving that's so hard to carry and you walk that back.
Our team normally does the waterwalk in every new village that we go to.
So probably 70 waterwalks now.
There might be one or two that we didn't do.
But the first 13 we did when I was there.
Man, it's to understand, to put yourself literally in their shoes and go on that long walk and to have the sore neck from carrying it on your head or to have just your shoulders dying because you're walking back with 88 pounds.
You're not doing, I mean, think about whenever we're doing those kettlebell walks.
No, because we were we were currently trying to drill the new well and we were getting pretty close to it And so but just slip and falling while you're doing it losing your balance I sprained my knee one time on one of the water walks Because you're carrying all this weight you step in a hole and then all sudden you sprain your ankle sprain your Knee different stuff like that listen Justin Wren you're doing the Lord's work.
You're doing amazing stuff, man And I'm so happy that we can help and I'm happy that we can help tonight If you were thinking about coming to the show you shit out of luck Sold out.
It was sold out a long fucking time ago.
So tonight will be Tom Segura, Tony Hinchcliffe, Whitney Cummings, Owen Smith, Tom Papa...
Is that everybody?
And me.
Is that it?
That's it.
That's the show.
Tonight, 9.30 at the Comedy Store and all the proceeds will be donated to Fight for the Forgotten.