Feb. 24, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:12:50
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| Hey, everybody. | ||
| This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by Squarespace. | ||
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| We're also brought to you by Onnit.com. | ||
| That's O-N-N-I-T, a human optimization website. | ||
| We're going to have to get some Onnit to Krohn Gracie because he's here and he wants to get Onnit. | ||
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| We want to provide you at Onnit with all the keys to And all the tools for you to function at your best, whether it's nutritional supplements or whether it's strength and conditioning equipment like kettlebells, battle ropes, weight vests, steel maces, ab wheels, all that shit. | ||
| We have the excellent kettlebell cardio extreme workout videos by Keith Weber. | ||
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| We sell defense soap, which is very important if you're into jujitsu or wrestling or anything where your skin comes in contact with funk. | ||
| Defense soap allows your body to maintain its healthy flora, but washes off all the bad bacteria. | ||
| And it's made by my friend Guy Sacco, who's a cool dude and a big supporter of wrestling. | ||
| And Guy actually just sent me an email today. | ||
| So I want to wish his son well because his son is competing in the NCAA wrestling championships at 145 pounds. | ||
| So Gus, good luck. | ||
| Gus Sacco. | ||
| Alright, use the code word ROGAN and save 10% on any and all supplements at Onnit.com. | ||
| We are here with Krohn Gracie and we're going to get popping. | ||
|
unidentified
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The Joe Rogan Experience. | |
| Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. | ||
| So a few years back, my friend Gordon Hester, who's a guy that I met on the internet, said, hey, do you want to have dinner with Hicks and Gracie? | ||
| So I said, fuck yeah, man. | ||
| If you are a jiu-jitsu practitioner, it's very rare in a sport. | ||
| I guess there's a few sports, like if you think bike racing, you think Lance Armstrong, unfortunately now. | ||
| But that's the name. | ||
| But... | ||
| The universal name that gets thrown about in Jiu Jitsu, there's the last name, which is Gracie. | ||
| And then once you get to know Jiu Jitsu, and you understand Jiu Jitsu, and you start training, everybody always wants to know who's the best, who's the best, who's the best. | ||
| Universally regarded as the all-time best is your father. | ||
| Your father, Hicks and Gracie. | ||
| There's not much debate amongst Jiu Jitsu people. | ||
| There's debate as to who's the best right now, but... | ||
| I talked to Henzo about this one time, and Henzo just shook his head. | ||
| He goes, he's a motherfucker. | ||
| He goes, he's a motherfucker. | ||
| He's laughing. | ||
| He's like, he's the best. | ||
| He's the best. | ||
| And when a guy like Henzo says something, I just listen. | ||
| Me too. | ||
|
unidentified
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Me too. | |
| So, that's when I met you. | ||
| You were with your dad, and we went and had some dinner, and then we went back to your house, and we watched some fights, which was amazing to have your dad break down what guys are doing wrong and what's wrong with... | ||
| Their positioning, what's wrong with their approach and what his approach is. | ||
| And for me, as a student of martial arts and as a fan of martial arts, it was a huge honor. | ||
| And you were, I think, were you like 16 or 17 back then? | ||
| Yeah, something like that. | ||
| Yeah, you were into rap music and all kinds of different shit. | ||
| So from that, I've run into you a few times over the years when Hoist fought Matt Hughes and a couple other times. | ||
| You've become yourself. | ||
| Like one of the most prominent jujitsu fighters in the world today. | ||
| And that's so cool to see. | ||
| It's so cool to see a young kid with aspirations and then put in the work. | ||
| And it's also cool to see the son of a great man become a great man himself, which is very difficult. | ||
| And it doesn't really happen that often. | ||
| You know, a lot of times the son of a great man lives in the shadow of his father and sort of falls short. | ||
| But you, in your young life, you're 25 now? | ||
| 25. In your young life, you've already carved out a great name in jiu-jitsu with your own accomplishments. | ||
| You're widely considered to be amongst the very best in the world at jiu-jitsu. | ||
| And how does that feel? | ||
| It feels great, you know. | ||
| Now finally... | ||
| After so long of, you know, because I knew when I was a little kid that I was going to have to be a fighter or be a martial artist. | ||
| Have to? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, have to, really. | ||
| As much as my dad wants to make it feel like he didn't put pressure on me, and, you know, he did. | ||
| People say he teaches invisible jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Well, I'll talk about invisible pressure. | ||
| At an early age, when I'm a little kid, I can always see how much my dad trains and how big he is a part of what he does in the world and how much people respect him. | ||
| How much recognition you get. | ||
| So from a very early age, you want to replicate that and you want to do what your father does if it feels cool to you. | ||
| And it's always been really cool to me. | ||
| Of course, when I was younger, up until 12 years old, I used to skate a lot and Jiu-Jitsu was kind of whatever. | ||
| But I knew that in the future that that was what I was going to have to do no matter what. | ||
| So it came to a point where I kind of put skateboarding aside I had gotten hurt skateboarding a bunch of times, and I was like, you know what, I don't care about skateboarding as much as I do jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I'm not going to be as good as a skateboarder as I can be with jiu-jitsu, which this kind of all clicked for me. | ||
| One day with my brother, you know, we were talking and everything, and this was like one of the last conversations we had, and he was always like, you know, Krohn, you... | ||
| Whatever you do in life, you do it 100%. | ||
| You do it the best you can do it. | ||
| If you're going to be a dentist, you'll be the best dentist. | ||
| If you're going to be a skateboarder, you'll be the best skateboarder. | ||
| But the only difference is, right here, you have an opportunity to do jiu-jitsu, and you have the best road, you have the best dad as a coach, you have all the tools you need to really be the best you can be. | ||
| And it would be stupid for you not to really take advantage of this. | ||
| And that kind of happened when I was 12. After my brother passed, I kind of really, really put effort into that and I kind of really made it my mission to make him proud and to make my dad proud and I kind of knew what I had in my hands. | ||
| But at that age, you never know how good you're going to get and you never know what's going to happen. | ||
| So I just kind of dedicated myself, dedicated myself. | ||
| And then, you know, when we met each other, I was still fully dedicated, but I still hadn't achieved, you know, anything really. | ||
| And I think like with the... | ||
| For me, like in life, when you... | ||
| When you try, when you try, when you try, when you try, you only get what you think you're going to get way later. | ||
| I put so much dedication into it by 16 years old, but I hadn't seen any of the fruits and I hadn't seen any necessarily big reward from it. | ||
| So it was basically just the passion of being able to train jiu-jitsu and being able to do what I knew was my mission. | ||
| And I kind of lost my track a little bit of what I was going to say. | ||
| But so... | ||
| So, basically, from that age, you know, it was always like I knew that I had to do that, you know. | ||
| As much as things would always, like, there's always, like, little things that go in your head that you might want to, like, change or whatever. | ||
| But in my mind, it was never an option not to do jiu-jitsu and never an option not to be the best I could be and to be the best in the world. | ||
| That was always, like, where I was going to be. | ||
| I never had a plan B. I never had a... | ||
| Oh, well, I'm just going to try this, and then if this doesn't work out, I'll try. | ||
| I never had that. | ||
| For me, it was always this was where I put my energy in, so I kind of just put my energy into it, and, you know, from a very early age, from 12, 13, 14, everybody knew me as Krohn Hickson's son. | ||
| Oh, you're Hickson's son. | ||
| Oh, you're Hickson's son. | ||
| So I already kind of... | ||
| I hated that. | ||
| I hated being called Hickson's son. | ||
| I hated being called Hawkson's little brother. | ||
| I hated being called somebody that I wasn't, and being recognized for something that I didn't do. | ||
| Somebody other than who you are. | ||
| Yeah, so I kind of always knew that if I wanted to climb out of this name and climb out of this shadow, I would have to work twice as hard, and it was going to be a real obstacle for me to get past this. | ||
| In my mind, that was my ending goal, no matter what. | ||
| I wanted to be my own man. | ||
| I wanted to be able to represent myself and my family and everything. | ||
| I wanted to be able to be remembered as somebody who kept the legacy going. | ||
| For folks who don't have any experience in martial arts, I'll try to explain this to people. | ||
| When you really stop and think about the history of martial arts, the most important moment, in my opinion, of modern martial arts was Hoist Gracie entering into the UFC in 1993. When Hoist Gracie entered into the UFC, we saw for the first time in a real application, we saw what we had always wanted to see in the movies. | ||
| A smaller man with technique defeating larger men. | ||
| A smaller man utilizing Leverage and utilizing his skills to defeat everybody in front of him. | ||
| And from that we got introduced to the name Gracie. | ||
| We got introduced to your father. | ||
| We got introduced to Elio, your grandfather, who was the most important figure in all of martial arts. | ||
| For folks who don't know, Martial arts, for the longest time, for thousands of years, there was all this debate about what was the best style, whether it was karate or whether it was kung fu. | ||
| There was all these different people that swore that their master could defeat a thousand men in unarmed combat. | ||
| No one knew what the real deal was until the UFC came along, and that was when the world got introduced to the name Gracie. | ||
| What is it like growing up? | ||
| In that environment, when did you realize that your family was different than everybody else? | ||
| I mean, you come from the most important family in the history of martial arts. | ||
| Martial arts is what every man wants to be able to do. | ||
| Every man wants to be able to defend himself. | ||
| Every man wants to be able to kick ass. | ||
| The most important family, in my opinion, is the Gracie family. | ||
| There's no comparison. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| You don't really think about it like that when you're in the Grace family. | ||
| You're kind of just born into this thing where it's all about martial arts and it's all about dedication and discipline. | ||
| You come from a tradition, so you don't really think about it from the outside point of view. | ||
| For me, it's just been a very normal thing to train jujitsu in the living room, to talk about how to defend yourself, to talk about leverage and health and all this. | ||
| This is just very normal for me. | ||
| It was never new. | ||
| Seeing somebody get in a fight, it's more interesting than it is like, oh, a shock. | ||
| So it's never been nothing big, but the older I get, the more I kind of realize of what I'm a part of and how important it is. | ||
| And that only motivates me more to really step up and be able to keep this going because my grandfather was a crazy dude. | ||
| He would challenge anybody, and his goal was to represent jiu-jitsu and to prove that jiu-jitsu was the best. | ||
| And that guy weighed 135 pounds, and he was not a physically fit dude, and it goes to show how powerful his spirit was and what he did. | ||
| He changed the world. | ||
| He made it so that a weak person could defeat a bigger opponent. | ||
| And with my dad, with him leading everything and taking charge and trying to spread... | ||
| He was a very, very important person in all of our lives. | ||
| He made it possible for a weak person to be able to defeat a big opponent, to have the self-confidence to believe in something other than physical form, to believe in the leverage. | ||
| And he, you know, his theory and what he put onto his children is what gave not only the leverage and the technique, but also put physical abilities on top of it. | ||
| So my dad got all the theory of the leverage and being a weak person and how to survive if you're weaker. | ||
| But my dad wasn't. | ||
| He wasn't weak. | ||
| He was strong. | ||
| So he used the technique and the leverage and the strength on top of it, which created a monster, you know. | ||
| He created... | ||
| You know, somebody who is physically strong, but trains like as if he was a very lightweight, not a physically strong person. | ||
| So he's able to really maximize his potential. | ||
| And me coming up into this, you know, again, like it's always just been a fun thing and something to be a part of. | ||
| And it only kind of really clicked that... | ||
| The older you get, the more you realize how part of it is. | ||
| And sometimes I kind of look outside from myself and I kind of think, man, this is crazy. | ||
| This is like a movie. | ||
| My grandfather was this legend and my dad is this legend. | ||
| And I'm the only son. | ||
| It's like a movie. | ||
| And not only am I... I'm not the only son, but I'm also being able to prove that it's still in the genes and it's still a powerful thing that we're dealing with. | ||
| So I'm overwhelmed sometimes and I kind of look back and I'm very grateful for the situation and obviously God put me in the situation and put us in the situation for a reason. | ||
| Most recently, you won the Abu Dhabi Submission Championships, which in the world of grappling is the most prestigious no-gi submission title in the world. | ||
| And for folks no-gi, there's two different types of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| There's jiu-jitsu with the kimono. | ||
| It looks like a judo uniform. | ||
| That's the gi. | ||
| And then there's jiu-jitsu with no-gi, which is much like wrestling or The type of techniques that you would see in the UFC, because they're not grabbing clothes. | ||
| Very different, very different as far as the pace of things. | ||
| But Abu Dhabi is the most prestigious championship in the world. | ||
| So you accomplished, you hit the top of the mountain. | ||
| You became much like the others in the Gracie family before you. | ||
| You became a champion. | ||
| What was that feeling like? | ||
| It's a great feeling. | ||
| There's no complaints about that. | ||
| In my perfect world, in my dream, if you would have asked me if I would have won the Abu Dhabi, I would have said, of course. | ||
| I would have won it probably much more times by this age. | ||
| If you would have asked me when I was 15 years old. | ||
| But, you know, in life it's not so easy, you know. | ||
| And for me in my life, everything was easy, you know. | ||
| Purple belt was easy, brown belt was easy. | ||
| So I never had this obstacle of challenges and I never really had to dig deep and figure out what... | ||
| What am I about, really? | ||
| So, I won everything. | ||
| I was undefeated as a purple and brown belt. | ||
| And then my first match as a black belt, I lost. | ||
| I got my ass whooped. | ||
| And it was a mix of a bunch of things that I came to my conclusion of why that happened. | ||
| In the end, I think that I was just not mentally ready for that and I let all these outside things affect me. | ||
| Anyways, I lost the fight and really dug deep to see what I was going to do with my life. | ||
| After you realize what happens and how you can prevent it and how you're going to get better, Then you start to really work hard for what you want to get. | ||
| After that moment, I started to really become a man and really understand sacrifice and how to work hard. | ||
| If you want something in life, you can't depend on anybody for it. | ||
| You can't ask anybody for it. | ||
| You have to go and really work hard to get it. | ||
| I think I started to really become a man as a black belt. | ||
| That's when I really put my energy into it. | ||
| I've lost tournaments. | ||
| I've won lots of tournaments. | ||
| Sometimes I lose because of points and I've never really been about points but ultimately I feel like now after so long of being on this Journey of this hard path, I finally kind of started to find myself in the past couple years and I'm finally getting the results that I've wanted a long time ago and I've realized a lot more about life and about myself than if I would have just won everything. | ||
| So that's a great situation to be in and I work really hard for this first place medal so it's gonna be hard for somebody to take it from me. | ||
| That is an interesting thing, isn't it? | ||
| That you need defeat in order to really inspire you to the greatness that's inside of you. | ||
| You need to feel adversity to rise to the occasion. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| You fought, was it Sergio Morais? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who's a very, very good black belt, and he's fighting in the UFC now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One of the best jiu-jitsu guys in the UFC. Really fantastic technique. | ||
| That's a guy that you're connected to forever now because of that, right? | ||
| Yeah, I thank him in my mind. | ||
| I thank him a lot. | ||
| I got promoted like two weeks before the World Championships and my dad's always like, life is about surprises and about challenges and he's like, you want this black belt? | ||
| And I had submitted 50 fights straight and I was like, yeah, I want this challenge. | ||
| Little did I know it was going to fucking shake my world. | ||
| But I'm grateful for it and it's great. | ||
| I have no complaints and I wouldn't have changed anything. | ||
| What is it like growing up? | ||
| You're going into this world of martial arts with a guy like that as your father. | ||
| What kind of advice did he give you? | ||
| The best advice. | ||
| I think that's what made me who I am and be able to really become my own man at this age. | ||
| The advice that my dad gave me was such a, you know, it's easy in life to be drifted by things and to be drifted by what people say and what you personally think and say and feel. | ||
| So, you know, always being able to have my dad give me good advice and To be able to be my father and to teach me how to be a man, not just jujitsu, not just being good at technique, but being able to be a good person, being humble and doing the best that you can. | ||
| I think that's what allows me to become great at jujitsu and what allows me to become great at whatever I do. | ||
| And, you know, for me, I never really had that much training sessions with my father. | ||
| People think he was there coaching me every day, training on the sidelines with the water bottle and all this shit that's never existed. | ||
| But one thing I am very grateful for is... | ||
| When I started to train really hard at like 12 years old, my dad wasn't training at the academy. | ||
| My brother had passed and he was just on his own search, you know? | ||
| So he disappeared from the academy, but every night I'd come home and he would be there and he wouldn't ask me how was school. | ||
| He would ask me... | ||
| I was training and I would tell him, oh man, I got smashed or this happened or I got stuck in this position. | ||
| So at the dinner table or in front of the TV, he would give me an answer to my problem and he would give me advice, you know, whether it be about jujitsu technique or whether it be about what happened. | ||
| Here or how to how to react to what this person did. | ||
| And so my my learning my jujitsu really growth happened over food over, you know, watching TV, you know, that's where I really learned What I learned and then went back and trained at the academy and practiced what I was taught. | ||
| Most of my jujitsu I learned through verbal, light conversations at the dinner table and being able to do from that really. | ||
| Your dad had that approach which was different than Hoyce's approach and different than many other people's approach. | ||
| This approach of mastering the physical as well as mastering technique. | ||
| You know, your dad is an accomplished yogi. | ||
| He's very physically strong. | ||
| That was one thing that really separated him from a lot of the other people in the Gracie family. | ||
| Yeah, I definitely think so. | ||
| I think what separates my dad from not only everybody in the family, but from most fighters is not only his mental strength, but his spiritual strength. | ||
| And he's a very spiritual person. | ||
| I think that's huge, especially now in my life, realizing how important that is a part of me. | ||
| I think being spiritually connected to yourself and connected to whatever is above us is something that really sometimes things you can't explain happen when you're that connected. | ||
| My dad has always been a very spiritual person. | ||
| He's done all the things that he does for his purpose. | ||
| If you talk to him about money, money is just secondary to what his beliefs are. | ||
| As opposed to some people who... | ||
| They will go against what they believe in or they will go against their spirituality for a paycheck. | ||
| So my dad never did that. | ||
| He never took sponsors for beer or whatever because he doesn't believe that that's necessarily the image that he wants to go with. | ||
| I think he's a very spiritual person. | ||
| I still, even to the day, am surprised with how much honor and It's just weird to describe how good he's done for Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Growing up in that atmosphere, that's an incredible role model to have. | ||
| To have that as your dad. | ||
| This guy that's got such a high moral standard. | ||
| How did he get into yoga? | ||
| Because that's another thing that really separated him from a lot of other martial artists and really opened up a lot of people's eyes to the beneficial aspects of yoga. | ||
| So he got into yoga with this guy Orlando Cunning who was a Brazilian yoga guy who basically his whole theory was breathing with your movements. | ||
| So being able to... | ||
| Because yoga is usually you breathe and you stop and you kind of breathe and you just do your movements and you kind of just... | ||
| Static. | ||
| But he kind of incorporated breathing with movement and being able to, like, he would be like, oh, I'm an animal, I'm a tiger. | ||
| So he would walk like a tiger and he would breathe like a tiger and he would look and he would visualize himself like a tiger. | ||
| So he started to be able to not only do that as an animal, but he started to transfer it over to jiu-jitsu and being able to Because this theory, the guy's theory, Orlando Cunning's theory was animals are perfect. | ||
| You know, they move and they breathe and they don't get tired and everything is in sync. | ||
| So his whole theory was the better you can do that, the more you can replicate that, the more you're going to be able to be efficient with whatever you do. | ||
| And the yoga for my dad, I guess, was a huge, huge part. | ||
| Since a little kid, he kind of always told me about breathing and yoga and I never cared and I just kind of brushed it off. | ||
| Until when you get older and you start really having difficulties, when you really start searching and really start having problems, Then I started to breathe more, and now I think that the breathing is a huge part of myself, and it's a huge part of my growth, and it's a huge part of me being able to be in tune with what I'm doing. | ||
| So I wouldn't take away that for anything, and I think that's probably one of the biggest additions to myself that I could have added. | ||
| Yeah, the yoga breathing is a thing. | ||
| Pranayama, is that what they call it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, pranayama is a huge part of what a lot of people are missing when it comes to the idea of yoga. | ||
| They don't understand that deep breathing and breathing exercises are... | ||
| They're very difficult to do. | ||
| It's very difficult and it becomes like a factor of motivation. | ||
| You can do this shit too, right? | ||
| The shit your dad does with the abdomen? | ||
| Of course, yeah, I do that. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| That crazy video. | ||
| Folks who haven't seen this, there's a documentary called Choke. | ||
| It's an amazing documentary. | ||
| And it was back when Hickson was competing in Japan Valley Tudo. | ||
| Was it like 1995 or something like that? | ||
| Yeah, 94, 95. And there's a video that Really, like, open up a lot of people's eyes of him doing yoga and moving his stomach around with these weird stomach exercises. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| So, your diaphragm... | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I can kind of explain, but basically... | |
| Your lungs are like bottles. | ||
| They start skinny at the top and then they fill up to be big at the bottom. | ||
| So when you normally breathe, you're only filling up a small portion of your lungs. | ||
| And when you get scared or when you have anxiety, everything, it shortens your breath. | ||
| Panic breathing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's what normally happens. | ||
| That's what's very normal for humans. | ||
| And being able to breathe through your diaphragm is filling your lungs to the max. | ||
| And being able to control that is... | ||
| So your diaphragm is a muscle and you need to train it. | ||
| Like a push-up or like anything you do, you need to train your muscle. | ||
| So the more you train your muscle, the more control you have over it. | ||
| And that is just being able to have the highest control of your diaphragm muscle. | ||
| And when you have that kind of control, you can filter your body out easier. | ||
| As opposed to, like right now, if you don't train it, you can't even, like, use your diaphragm. | ||
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So... | |
| So just that simple movement is a difficult thing to do. | ||
| You have to train to do that. | ||
| And then being able to do the . - So what you're doing is you're breathing in deep and then you're pulling your diaphragm in. | ||
| That actual exercise that you do is you exhale, you have no oxygen in your lungs, and then you just kind of massage your diaphragm, and you kind of just have that kind of control, so you're just practicing, like, how to move it. | ||
| Because when you're training and you're tired, and if you have to think about to breathe, it's already too much, so you should just have it... | ||
| It's like one of those things that start fire. | ||
| When you push out, when you open it up, it fills up naturally. | ||
| So if you learn how to breathe through your diaphragm, you naturally are going to filter way more oxygen and everything's going to be better. | ||
| That's the reason why I can train as long as I can train and why I can stay clear. | ||
| Normally, a lot of people, they get gassed out or they... | ||
| Or they feel like they're going to pass out or they get anxiety. | ||
| So being able to breathe correctly is a huge part of my growth, I think. | ||
| Did you learn that from your dad? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The diaphragm breathing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What does he call it? | ||
| Is there a name for it? | ||
| No, because we're not necessarily like yoga crazy, you know. | ||
| I'm super into a specific type. | ||
| I think I just use yoga for my benefit and I'm not like a ride or die of a certain type of yoga. | ||
| I just kind of use yoga for what I do, for jujitsu and how to become a better person. | ||
| So I don't know exactly what the name is or anything. | ||
| It's just being able to breathe and being able to use my diaphragm and being able to stay calm. | ||
| Learn how to manage my energy. | ||
| So that has helped me not only with jiu-jitsu, but anything new I do, or if I'm going to come here on an interview, if I start to get nervous, you know, I breathe and it goes away. | ||
| So the breathing has helped me become, has given me really an opportunity to do everything that I can do. | ||
| Yeah, I do a lot of deep breathing exercises in a sensory deprivation tank. | ||
| And one of the things that I do is the long breathing. | ||
| Like, I'll have an inhale that lasts a minute. | ||
| And then the exhale lasts a minute. | ||
| And it's a discipline. | ||
| Like, you have to force yourself to maintain that pace. | ||
| Because you get to a panic, and you just want to... | ||
| Fuck this. | ||
| But you can stay alive and keep doing it. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| And you can still stay alive and keep doing it. | ||
| But it becomes this weird thing where your body starts freaking out. | ||
| It's like, breathe, motherfucker. | ||
| Stop breathing out. | ||
| Breathe. | ||
| Breathe. | ||
| Breathe in. | ||
| But breathe out for a minute and then breathe in for a minute. | ||
| Breathe out for a minute. | ||
| Yeah, there is different types of exercise I know. | ||
| Like sometimes if I'm... | ||
| If I'm trying to stay calm, I'm going to breathe slower. | ||
| If I'm trying to get energy, I'm going to breathe faster. | ||
| If I'm trying to maintain a high pace, I'm going to... | ||
| You know, it's like a car. | ||
| When you drive a car, if you're driving slow, it's like... | ||
| But if you drive fast, the car's like... | ||
| So you need... | ||
| Like when I train, if I'm in a very intense session, I'll breathe loud like... | ||
| To make sure I'm getting enough oxygen to keep up with what I'm doing physically. | ||
| So I definitely... | ||
| I'm very grateful for being able to have that a part of my life, and it's cool, man. | ||
| It's really good. | ||
| I only experienced that breathing for the first time in jiu-jitsu after a lifelong of martial arts. | ||
| I'd never heard anybody breathe like that until I started training, and then at John Jacques Academy, and hearing people, you know, hearing, like, black belts roll, like, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. | ||
| I hear guys roll like, what the fuck are they doing? | ||
| I was a white bear, looking around, everybody doing it. | ||
| It was such a strange thing. | ||
| And Jean-Jacques explained to me that when you breathe out, you will definitely breathe in. | ||
| Force yourself to breathe out and then get rid of all the bad air in your body and breathe in fresh oxygen. | ||
| And then forcing it out is something that people don't concentrate enough on. | ||
| Yeah, when you normally want to breathe, you breathe in, and then that only fills up that top part, you know? | ||
| So if you, I mean, there's a lot about it, but I think it's definitely a huge part of my success today, and it's also a huge part of my dad's success. | ||
| Yeah, I would recommend to anybody who is interested in this to go and just look up various yoga breathing videos on YouTube and just follow along with them and you get a great benefit from that. | ||
| And it's something that people don't really think too much about, about concentrating and controlling your breathing. | ||
| And there's also a great meditative quality to that too. | ||
| One of the first breathing exercises I ever did when I was really young, somebody told me that you can meditate by just concentrating only on your breath. | ||
| Just not even a breathing exercise, but just breathe in good and out bad, and think of nothing but those things. | ||
| Think as you're breathing in, you're taking in oxygen, and as you're breathing out, you're just pumping out in with the good, out with the bad. | ||
| Just think of those things, and think only of your breath. | ||
| And by forcing yourself to concentrate on that, it sort of filters out everything in your life, and it all becomes like background. | ||
| Everything else sort of calms down, and you get this feeling after you're done doing that. | ||
| If you do that for an hour, it just... | ||
| Everything else, sort of like, the importance of things that you thought were so big and so crazy in your life and, oh, this is fucked up, what am I going to do about that? | ||
| It seems less important after that. | ||
| Yeah, I think the breathing keeps me in touch with my spirituality and being able to breathe. | ||
| Like, I've gotten into some super gnarly trances where I'm, you know, really connected to whatever is above us and that's through the breathing. | ||
| So that, like... | ||
| Being able to breathe after your training or during your training or however you like to do it has given me huge, huge benefits. | ||
| I connect myself to when I'm training. | ||
| Being able to breathe puts me in a very animal-like state where it's me against you. | ||
| I'm not thinking about what you're doing. | ||
| I'm not thinking about I am thinking about what you're doing, but I'm not thinking about things. | ||
| It's more of like a feeling, and that feeling, the closer you are to that feeling, it keeps you almost above your mind, above you can actually think. | ||
| It's more like an animal instinct. | ||
| Since I started to really incorporate the breathing and connecting it to my jiu-jitsu, it's given me way more... | ||
| Well there's a whole group of people that use breathing, it's called holotropic breathing, and they use it to achieve psychedelic states. | ||
| I've achieved psychedelic states for sure. | ||
| What's the most intense state you've ever achieved while breathing? | ||
| Oh, I mean, a couple times after training when I'm really exhausted, like I'm very, very, very, very exhausted to a point where you wanted to stop training like 30, 40 minutes before. | ||
| And then after, I'll do a breathing and breathing, and I'll just keep going into the breathing, and as I start to breathe and start to get more in tune, nothing exists, and it's just me, and I can almost see the particles in the air, and I can... | ||
| It's just like a sensation that I've only felt a couple of times, but I definitely have gotten in touch with... | ||
| It's very intense to get to that point where you just feel... | ||
| It's almost like you can see the air. | ||
| It's almost like you can see all these little things, and it's pretty intense. | ||
| So I've gotten to that point a couple of times, three or four points, where I feel like... | ||
| Where I can actually feel the energy. | ||
| It was a great thing, man. | ||
| After you feel high and you smile and you're like, man, this is crazy. | ||
| It's crazy how much we're capable of as humans and how much we do is so big. | ||
| You think about the actual world and how the actual world is. | ||
| It's like this planet. | ||
| We should be in touch with something above. | ||
| We should be able to be in touch with how this got to this or how there's water. | ||
| So all these things that we today are like, oh no, that's this, that's this, or this is that. | ||
| It's so much more. | ||
| You can't explain shit. | ||
| I go a lot more about my feelings these days than anything else. | ||
| Over my rational decision, I kind of try to feel how things are. | ||
| I feel how people are. | ||
| I feel how... | ||
| How I feel, how I feel about this training session, whatever it is, I kind of try to go more about feeling because that's never failed me before. | ||
| So these breathing techniques and these states that you achieve, they give you a sort of a fresh perspective. | ||
| They give you a perspective of recognizing the greatness and the beauty and the magnitude of life that sometimes escapes us in our normal everyday path where You know, you just sort of take for granted that that's a door, this is the house, go outside, that's the sky, it becomes normal, but these breathing techniques and the psychedelic states that you achieve from them allow you to, it's almost like a reset button. | ||
| It's pretty cool, man. | ||
| I really recommend breathing. | ||
| And for anybody who is doing anything in their life, whether it be something, you know, whether you're trying to get through a tough situation, whether you're arguing with your girlfriend, or whether you're stuck in traffic, or whether you're trying to stay calm while somebody's trying to choke you, the breathing has given me, and it took a long time. | ||
| It's not like, oh, boom, I started breathing, I got it. | ||
| It actually took a long time before you really value it. | ||
| Because when my dad started telling me this, I kind of didn't care. | ||
| And I was just like, whatever. | ||
| He's got all kinds of... | ||
| She's always telling me shit. | ||
| But after, you know... | ||
| The older I got the more I kind of started to have stress and have to deal with this pressure and then I kind of started to do it every once in a while and then now it's at a point where the past few years I've really stepped it up a lot and it's really a big part of my training and everything I do. | ||
| So even when I skateboard now I'm like trying to breathe and I'm trying to like keep everything in tune so I can do the best I can do. | ||
| The last time When we had dinner together, your dad was still talking about competing. | ||
| He had stopped, but he was still thinking about fighting. | ||
| There was always a thread on the underground. | ||
| One of the big themes on the underground is Hickson by armbar. | ||
| They would joke around about anything. | ||
| Who would win Godzilla vs. | ||
| King Kong? | ||
| Hickson by armbar. | ||
| It was just an inside joke. | ||
| Something couldn't be answered, someone would just write Hickson via armbar. | ||
| Did he have any regrets that he didn't fight any of the big name guys, that he didn't continue? | ||
| We were talking about him fighting Fedor. | ||
| He was saying that if he did fight someone, he would want to fight Fedor, who was the champ of pride at the time. | ||
| Yeah, I think that, I don't know if there's any regrets or anything. | ||
| I think it was just a time in my dad's life where, well, right after my brother passed, you know, he got offered to fight Sakuraba, and it was a big, big payday, and it was a big, big fight. | ||
| And, of course, my dad, being the man he is, he wasn't going to just leave the family to go train for a fight and to take his selfish needs into consideration. | ||
| So he kind of just turned away the fight and kind of gave his energy to the family and tried to do what he could to help everybody. | ||
| After that time passes there's still like some some people wanting to have him fight and he was maybe fighting fatal or maybe this but I think after that moment he kind of just the time passed you know his fighting that time had passed for his even though it was a still possibility for him to fight I think that he necessarily He was ready to fight and as a man he was ready to die, but I don't think that necessarily it was... | ||
| I'm glad that he didn't fight after that. | ||
| I'm glad that he, you know, it happened the way it did and he retired the way he did and he still has, you know, the greatest image, so I think that it's... | ||
| I think it's a great thing that it went the way it did, you know, like... | ||
| My dad is a great fighter, and he's a great mind, and that separates him from everybody else, but I think that everything went fine, even though whatever happened, I think that he didn't need to fight. | ||
| He didn't need to prove anything to anybody else, and even if he did fight, win or lose, that wouldn't have been him at his best, you know? | ||
| So I think my dad did enough from when he was 15 to when he was 40. He proved enough people wrong. | ||
| He did what he had to do. | ||
| He was ready. | ||
| You know, you don't know what it's like. | ||
| Nobody knows what it's like to be having to be ready to fight to die at any moment. | ||
| Motherfuckers come in your academy and they challenge you. | ||
| You got this guy telling you that he doesn't believe in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| So nobody knows what that feels like to have to be ready. | ||
| Everybody now, oh, you want to fight? | ||
| Okay, give me three months or six months. | ||
| I'm going to train for my fight. | ||
| But to have to be ready at any time, any moment, no matter what, that's where my dad lived from 15 years old to 40 years old. | ||
| So he needed to retire. | ||
| He needed to be able to not be ready. | ||
| He needed to be able to release. | ||
| And I think that was the best thing for him and it was the best thing for his life. | ||
| And now I think it's all good and... | ||
| It's just a very tough situation, man. | ||
| A lot of people don't know how serious my dad took. | ||
| Of course people know how serious, but you only see the glory, you know? | ||
| You don't see how he really is as a man and how you really make it your life, you know? | ||
| And fighting is a big thing. | ||
| It's probably the hardest thing to do. | ||
| And, you know, that guy was ready at any time, anywhere, ready to prove, ready to prove the family was... | ||
| I was better, ready to prove that he was better. | ||
| That's what gives me inspiration to wake up in the mornings and do what I do. | ||
| I only really do it because of him and my brother. | ||
| I only really compete because of him and my brother. | ||
| My motivation is to keep him happy and to keep this family remembered instead of just, The Gracies were good when nobody knew Jiu Jitsu, but now everybody doesn't. | ||
| They're not the shit. | ||
| They're no matter. | ||
| So I think it's important for my life. | ||
| I've already kind of am willing to sacrifice my life and willing to sacrifice whatever I feel and how I like things to be for the bigger objective, which is to keep my father and my grandfather, you know, alive and well in their legacy. | ||
| Were you there for any of those challenge matches like when Anjo came to the dojo? | ||
| I was a little kid. | ||
| At that time I was like maybe four or five years old and I remember the days happening and it's happening. | ||
| I wasn't there at the specific invite because not even my dad was at the academy. | ||
| My dad was at home eating breakfast and the guys came and called him and was like, dude, guys in Japan are invading the academy. | ||
| So my dad got up and like, Got ready to go to the academy, and that was like another thing. | ||
| He just waked up, thought it was going to be another day for him to go on a bike ride, and then motherfuckers outside the academy ready to challenge you with all this press, and if you lose, it's just like a real fight. | ||
| For folks who don't know, that's one historical match that apparently... | ||
| Gordon Hester said he's seen the video. | ||
| Yoji Anjo, who's a pro wrestler and MMA fighter in Japan, just showed up at the academy and Hickson took him into a back room and beat the fucking shit out of him. | ||
| And your dad... | ||
| You know, he came out and, you know, Yoji Anjo's face, there's photos of his face online where you can see what your dad did to him. | ||
| But, you know, I've heard all sorts of stories about the way he choked him and all sorts of, you know, I don't know. | ||
| True story, true story. | ||
| I've seen the video many times and I used to bring my friends over when I was a kid and show them the fights and everything. | ||
| There's Anjo's face up on that screen. | ||
| So the story behind that is he came into the academy, and it's a long story, but I'll kind of sum it up. | ||
| Basically, he came in to challenge my dad, and my dad was like, okay, fine. | ||
| So he shows up at the academy, and they kicked all the press out because he didn't want them to film in case whatever happened. | ||
| So he kicked all the press out, and then just the guy, Anjo, and his manager were in the academy. | ||
| My dad's black belt was having a class, so there was a bunch of students there. | ||
| And yeah, man, just like everybody says, my dad beat the shit out of this guy. | ||
| Like this guy came in and my dad instantly took him down, mounted him, beat him up. | ||
| And in the beginning of the fight, the guy turned his back to try to get put to sleep because he realized he was going to lose. | ||
| So he gave him his back to get put to sleep. | ||
| And my dad was like, no, you're going to take more punishment. | ||
| You're not going to get put to sleep so easily, you know? | ||
| So he kept beating him bad. | ||
| And it was like, it was hard to see, you know, even as a kid. | ||
| And he broke his nose. | ||
| You can hear his nose break. | ||
| It's a pretty big beating. | ||
| And then after he fought, put him to sleep, he called the press and the press came in and took pictures and everything. | ||
| Anjo went back to Japan saying that he got jumped by the academy, that we all jumped him. | ||
| And then my dad had filmed it. | ||
| Brought the video to Japan and was like, look, this is the fight. | ||
| Showed it all the press. | ||
| And they were like, oh, yeah. | ||
| They all thought it was very bad that he had lied and said that he got jumped in front of TV. So anyways, yeah, that fight is true. | ||
| Why doesn't he put that online? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| It's martial arts history. | ||
| Yeah, I'll talk to him about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please! | |
| Put it on iTunes. | ||
| You'll probably make $100,000. | ||
| You'll probably make $100,000. | ||
| Easy. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Fuck yeah! | ||
| I'll promote it. | ||
| Let me know, man. | ||
| Let me know when it's up. | ||
| I'll put it on Twitter. | ||
| I'll put it on the podcast. | ||
| I'll let people know. | ||
| I'd pay a buck to watch that. | ||
| I'll pay $20 to watch that shit. | ||
| To me, that's one of the great challenge matches in martial arts history. | ||
| I mean, there's your dad versus Hugo Duarte on the beach in Rio. | ||
| There's a few of those that you can see. | ||
| There's a few of those, which is fucking crazy. | ||
| I mean, they were duking it out on the beach, in the sand. | ||
| It was pretty wild. | ||
| You can see that, but... | ||
| That wasn't the prolonged beating. | ||
| He let him up after he kicked his ass. | ||
| I think my dad, because there were so many videos of everybody fighting the Gracie in action videos that came out, all these videos were out, I think my dad just wanted to keep something for himself and wanted to have some kind of power because everybody had taken all the footage and everything was used in whichever way. | ||
| My dad probably never got paid a cent for the Gracie in action videos. | ||
| Or anything. | ||
| So I think he just wanted to keep something that he had power in. | ||
| And it was good, you know. | ||
| At this moment, he has, you know, value to that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And more value over here, probably. | |
| More than $1.99. | ||
| 50 bucks. | ||
| There was also, from the outside, there was always the talk was always, especially because, you know, I've been working for the UFC since 97, so the people that I was working with, like Campbell McLaren and all those guys, they had been there from UFC 1. And they were, you know, they had said that the reason why your uncle didn't put your brother in, or didn't put your father in, instead put hoist in, that the reason why he did that was because he couldn't control Hickson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That Hickson was just, you know, he was the best of the family. | ||
| Everybody knew he was the best of the family, but that Horian knew that if he put Hickson in, that Hickson wasn't going to, you know, Hickson was going to do whatever he wanted to. | ||
| He wasn't going to listen to him, and he wouldn't be able to control him the way he possibly controlled everybody else. | ||
| Is there any, is there truth to that, or what is... | ||
| So, there's a lot of different things that happen in that kind of time and era, you know. | ||
| One reason why Hoist fought in the UFC and not my dad, because my dad was the best. | ||
| My dad would tap out Hoist with one hand in his belt before his fight. | ||
| So there was no doubt of that. | ||
| One excuse, I think, was that Hoist looked more frail. | ||
| He looked like more of a normal guy. | ||
| So they wanted that to be able to prove that Jiu-Jitsu was better. | ||
| But ultimately, I don't know if that's true or not. | ||
| And I don't know the exact reason, but basically before that situation, Horian and my dad, they kind of started to separate. | ||
| They kind of started to go their own ways. | ||
| And I think in that situation, again, I don't know 100%, but that's what I kind of think happened. | ||
| I'm sure Horian felt more control over Hoist than he did over my father. | ||
| My dad was kind of already starting to find his own way and do his own thing. | ||
| I don't know too much about it because we never really talked about that far back. | ||
| I think I have talked to my dad about it, but I forget because that's not really that important these days for me. | ||
| Well, you know, Horian gets a lot of grief, but, I mean, he was such a great promoter of jiu-jitsu, and if it wasn't for him doing that, it wasn't for him putting on those Gracie in Action videos and promoting them and promoting jiu-jitsu and promoting Gracie jiu-jitsu, it would have... | ||
| Yeah, Horian has a huge part of what jiu-jitsu and what MMA is today at. | ||
| He definitely made his value huge, you know, because not only did he... | ||
| He created the UFC, but he, you know, came to America. | ||
| He spread it. | ||
| He was the one doing all the challenges and doing everything. | ||
| So he was the reason, really. | ||
| And my dad was just the soldier, was the guy, the one representing and ready to do what he had to do. | ||
| And, you know, it's like Carlos and Elio. | ||
| Eli was the representative and Carlos was the guy who kind of took care of the academy and had the theory behind the diets and the theory behind the names and had this stuff. | ||
| So I think neither one of them, I think they're both responsible for the movement. | ||
| And yeah, I think it was a great thing. | ||
| Horian, like even his academy, you look at his academy, it's like a museum, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like a five-star hotel with 20 shower heads. | ||
| Look at my academy. | ||
| It's nothing like that. | ||
| My academy has some pictures and stuff, but it's not focused on that. | ||
| My focusing is on the mats. | ||
| We train what I teach. | ||
| I'm not focused on promoting and being able to sell jiu-jitsu and being able to expand wide. | ||
| For me, you're going to come to me and train with me if you know and you want to. | ||
| And Horian, he did a great job in expanding and showing the world in your face, like, here, look, this is what happens when this happens, and this is... | ||
| So he was a great tool for the family and a great, you know, he made it happen, you know, he created it a lot. | ||
| Yeah, all of us fans of jiu-jitsu, oh, Horian Gracie, a huge debt of gratitude. | ||
| Without a doubt. | ||
| And also because he produced his sons that are also great promoters of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| The Gracie breakdowns are one of my favorite things about after submissions. | ||
| After there's a submission in the UFC, Henner and Huron will get together and... | ||
| Discuss with great technical explanation all the various aspects of where someone went wrong, where things went right, what was the proper adjustment, what they did to get out of a bad situation. | ||
| Really very, very educational. | ||
| If you watch that show, UFC Ultimate Insider, it's on UFC Ultimate Insider. | ||
| It's so great because, first of all, Hanner is so good at explaining these things. | ||
| He's so articulate and so charismatic when it comes to these breakdowns of positions. | ||
| There's so much enthusiasm. | ||
| You know, you watch these guys talk about these things and it makes you want to train. | ||
| I mean, it really does. | ||
| It's really good stuff. | ||
| And it just shows how much is going on with jiu-jitsu. | ||
| For folks who don't know, There's so much going on. | ||
| For people who don't know, they're looking and they think, oh, this guy's trying to choke that guy and he's trying to stop it. | ||
| But it's all about the positions and the intricate details of leverage and movement. | ||
| And these guys do a real good job breaking that down. | ||
| Yeah, they do do a great job breaking it down. | ||
| And personally, for me, I've never been one to teach online or through magazines or through stuff. | ||
| I believe that jiu-jitsu is a lot more about feel. | ||
| And I kind of don't do that. | ||
| I kind of disagree with myself teaching online or through videos and all that stuff. | ||
| I want to be able to feel and look somebody in the eyes if I'm going to teach them jiu-jitsu. | ||
| And so, yeah, that's my philosophy behind that. | ||
| But, you know, they're doing a great job of spreading it to all those people who can't get to them. | ||
| And they do what they do. | ||
| I'm not really too in control of what they do or how they do it. | ||
| But I know for myself, I kind of don't do that. | ||
| And I kind of stick to, you know, my academy and where I teach. | ||
| And I focus on that kind of stuff. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What I'm just talking about is their explanations of jiu-jitsu and MMA. Oh yeah, those guys are great explanators. | ||
| You know, those guys, they explain to the T. It's one of the more difficult aspects of doing commentary is explaining, not just recognizing positions and what's going to happen, but explaining to people positions and explaining where the defense is, where the offense is, and doing it all in real time while the mad scrambles are going on and trying to like... | ||
| You know what arms in jeopardy. | ||
| Is that the left arm or the left arm? | ||
| You've got to process all this stuff in your head. | ||
| Does he have his hand? | ||
| Is his hands locked? | ||
| I can't see. | ||
| And try to put it all together and then explain it to the layman, explain it to the person who doesn't train at home where it's just a mass of bodies. | ||
| That's why I just focus on competing and training. | ||
| That's what's better for me. | ||
| Competing, training, and teaching. | ||
| I like that philosophy of looking someone in the eye and training them because There is that aspect of if you put a video out there, you don't know who's learning your shit, you know? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| It's very personal, right? | ||
| Jiu-jitsu. | ||
| It's very personal. | ||
| I think so, too. | ||
| And while I'm still competing, the last thing I want is my enemies to be able to see what I do and see how I do things. | ||
| So, yeah, there's no way I would do that. | ||
| One of the interesting aspects about you and your jiu-jitsu career, too, is that there's a lot of variation in jiu-jitsu and jiu-jitsu styles. | ||
| There's a lot of new stuff that's come along, a lot of new techniques, a lot of new strategies. | ||
| But your attacks and your jiu-jitsu are very much like your father's. | ||
| It's very much traditional jiu-jitsu. | ||
| There was a time when Vinny Magalhães was on The Ultimate Fighter with Minotauro Noguera. | ||
| And he was talking about Minotaro Nogueira's jiu-jitsu and he said it's very basic, very basic jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Minotaro got really mad at him. | ||
| But he said he didn't mean it in a bad way. | ||
| What he meant by it's the basics but honed to a laser sharp edge. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with the basics. | ||
| They're the foundation of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| And when I watch you compete, you're using the real traditional techniques of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| There's nothing tricky that people haven't seen before. | ||
| It's just jiu-jitsu that's done to perfection. | ||
| Yeah, I think that... | ||
| The tricks, they work sometimes and they work if it's a good moment, you know, like these new things that happen and these new ways to defeat your opponent. | ||
| So I'm always looking for a situation that's going to work all the time. | ||
| So these tricks, the good positions, they demand a lot out of you and they only work if that situation happens. | ||
| So I'm not concerned with trapping myself into a position that's good for me because I count on not being in good positions. | ||
| I count on being in a bad position. | ||
| I count on being in all the positions. | ||
| So for me, I'm leaving my training sessions open to what may happen. | ||
| And I don't... | ||
| Like try to get to a certain position and then begin my training. | ||
| That's what I feel like happens most of the time in Jiu Jitsu these days is you want to get to this grip and this sleeve grip and then from here you're going to start training. | ||
| So to get to that position where you have your special grips and everything, it takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of strength. | ||
| And I kind of base my Jiu Jitsu on leverage and technique so that it'll work when I'm fresh, when I'm tired, if I'm fighting a guy who's bigger than me. | ||
| It doesn't depend on physical strength. | ||
| So that's where my dad kind of forced me because I didn't always think like this. | ||
| And he kind of giving me not only the technique and the leverage, but showing me that it's possible. | ||
| Proving to me firsthand that it's possible for you to beat your opponents with leverage. | ||
| To not use strength. | ||
| So my dad, you know, been promoting... | ||
| This like little mini warrior in my mind for a long time of how to be not only mentally but physically and training wise and spiritually and it's been... | ||
| It's all helped me and he's a great huge part of my success. | ||
| One of the things I took from the conversation with your dad, we were talking about the various aspects of Jiu Jitsu, but he was saying that first and foremost... | ||
| One of the most important weapons that he has is his defense. | ||
| That he's always safe. | ||
| He said, in any position, I'm always safe. | ||
| He doesn't, you know, he concentrates on that. | ||
| And then the other thing was that when he moved from one position, I'll never forget this conversation. | ||
| He goes, we all start at point zero. | ||
| And he goes, from zero in the neutral point, I move to one. | ||
| And when I get to one, I'm not going back to zero. | ||
| Isn't that what he sounds like? | ||
| Yeah, he's a very interesting person, you know. | ||
| But it's true. | ||
| If you watch his fights, he rarely loses positions. | ||
| There's no sloppy scrambles. | ||
| It's one of the things that I criticize people sometimes about in MMA. Guys leave too much space. | ||
| They go for things in a way that they're not in control of the position. | ||
| And he never did that. | ||
| When he would mount a guy, that motherfucker would stay mounted. | ||
| When he mounted a guy, it was just a matter of time before he got an armbar or whatever he got for you. | ||
| Yeah, it's pretty cool to see that, I guess, everything in life, everything goes back to the basics. | ||
| I didn't plan to have a certain type of style. | ||
| I didn't like, oh, I'm going to just try to train this style with just submissions only. | ||
| No, I didn't plan that. | ||
| I'm planning... | ||
| And it's not like, oh, I'm going to start a fight and I'm just going to go for an armlock or I'm going to go for a crazy submission from nowhere. | ||
| It's not like that either. | ||
| You're not going to get that. | ||
| But my training sessions are to, like my dad said, to get to the next better position, to get to the next better position, to get to the submission. | ||
| So I'm never stopping my mind. | ||
| I'm never stopping my training. | ||
| I don't stop in a place and be like, okay, I'm going to breathe here for a second. | ||
| No, I don't do that. | ||
| I kind of always am looking for the next place to get to the finish line. | ||
| That's created a very aggressive style because I'm always looking for the next place to be and it's not necessarily like, oh, I just go for submissions from anywhere. | ||
| No. | ||
| Sometimes it may be to pass the guard or maybe to get his leg off my hip or whatever it is that may happen. | ||
| So it's not like I'm just thinking about submissions or I'm not thinking about doing crazy, tricky stuff. | ||
| It's just that those stuff may not fall into what I'm mentally trying to do. | ||
| Your objective. | ||
| My objective. | ||
| And I think that's the biggest thing. | ||
| I don't think too much about it. | ||
| I just think about how am I going to get to a next better place? | ||
| How am I going to put him, you know, here? | ||
| So it just comes kind of naturally. | ||
| At this point, I can't even not train that way. | ||
| If I try to train... | ||
| In a different way, my jiu-jitsu sucks. | ||
| So I'm glad, I'm very grateful that it's become like this and I have this type of style and I've gotten as good as I got with the basics and with the tools that I had. | ||
| So I'm super stoked. | ||
| That became an issue in Abu Dhabi with a lot of wrestlers. | ||
| Wrestlers would take guys down and just hold them in positions and not go for submissions. | ||
| Just try to go for points. | ||
| And people would get furious. | ||
| They'd be like, well, this isn't jujitsu. | ||
| But some people felt like the only way to compete with these guys is to do what they're doing, is to fight smart. | ||
| The only way you can win is to fight on points. | ||
| Would you rather lose on points or... | ||
| Than win by holding a guy down? | ||
| Yeah, I have lost like that. | ||
| Doesn't bother you though. | ||
| It does. | ||
| I mean, you show me a good loser, I'll show you a loser, buddy. | ||
| But, you know, yeah. | ||
| I'd rather lose on points with keeping my mentality always with the objective to get into a better place than to stop my game and try to find out how I'm going to win this match while using the time on my side. | ||
| So I have fought matches where I lost when I could have won. | ||
| I was winning on points. | ||
| And then I went for something or I tried to advance the position and I lost it and then whatever, the guy swept me and then I lost because the time ran out. | ||
| So I have lost matches like that. | ||
| And it served as a good learning experience and everything. | ||
| And, you know, yeah, I'd rather lose on points than to sit there and stop the game and wait for the time to... | ||
| To run out. | ||
| Because I don't know if I... I would feel like shit, you know? | ||
| I feel like... | ||
| Deep inside me, I have a thing that I feel like really bad if I don't try to go for the next position. | ||
| I feel guilty almost. | ||
| So you're... | ||
| I feel like my grandfather's like... | ||
| From heaven, look down. | ||
| I'm angry at you. | ||
| So your jujitsu and your path is clearly a work in progress. | ||
| And even though you've achieved the great heights of being an Abu Dhabi world champion, while you're training and fighting, you're always competing with that very specific mindset. | ||
| So any setbacks are just going to be educational experiences. | ||
| You learn from those setbacks, and then next time you're even greater. | ||
| Which is why, I mean, you came in, was it second place in 2011? | ||
| Third place in 2011, then came back and fucking dominated in 2013. That was a big leap, man. | ||
| That was a good one. | ||
| Honestly, I think I was ready for it. | ||
| Maybe if I would have won in 2011, it wouldn't have been the same. | ||
| Or if I won in 2009, who knows what would happen. | ||
| But I feel like now I'm ready. | ||
| I don't make more excuses about anything. | ||
| And if I don't win, it's my fault. | ||
| If the guy was good enough to stall me out, He was good enough to stall me out. | ||
| So I have to come up with something to be able to be better than he is. | ||
| So I don't really take it and criticize him anymore if the guy just stalls on me. | ||
| I expect that the guys are not going to want to fight me and that they're going to want to stall and get some points and feel good. | ||
| I expect that. | ||
| And I train that situation and I'm ready for that. | ||
| So far, so good. | ||
| I've been on a good run lately. | ||
| Have you ever seen the video where Eddie Bravo and I were talking about your match? | ||
| For folks who don't know, in the finals, the dude was trying to stall Krohn out, and Hickson starts making chicken noises. | ||
| He's going... | ||
| And for a jujitsu guy, I mean, you want to talk about the ultimate mindfuck. | ||
| You're not just fighting against the son of the greatest ever, but the greatest ever is making chicken noises at you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that was fucked up because... | |
| Because it started... | ||
| When he did that, I was like, man, now I can't let this get to me too, you know? | ||
| Because my dad is over here like... | ||
| Of course, I have to kind of try to keep... | ||
| In the final match, I fought a guy who I had beaten many times before. | ||
| So... | ||
| I knew that I could win, but if I were to start letting myself believe that I was gonna win, oh I'm gonna win because I had already won, it was gonna completely mess up my mind. | ||
| So I went into the fight like it was the most difficult fight of my life and when my dad started to get frustrated, I knew he was gonna back away. | ||
| I knew he was gonna stall me out and it was not getting to me. | ||
| I was just like trying to do what I could do. | ||
| I'm not gonna go crazy because he's not wanting to fight me. | ||
| I was expecting that the refs were going to warn him and take away points, and I was going to let that happen. | ||
| And, yeah, when my dad was like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
When he did that, I was like... | |
| I was like, man, I can't... | ||
| Cron, don't let it get to you. | ||
| Don't let that shit get to you, man. | ||
| Don't think... | ||
| Don't let he... | ||
| You have to make it so that you and your dad are fighting together, not against each other. | ||
| I didn't want to let what he said affect my train and thought, put more pressure on me to have to do something. | ||
| So I kind of kept my cool, and thank God shortly after that, he got a point taken away for stalling, and then he went for the takedown, and I got him in a good guillotine. | ||
| So it all worked out as well, and that victory right there, right there, is like the happiest moment of my life. | ||
| The greatest feeling ever. | ||
| And I think my dad's still so happy. | ||
| I mean, I haven't seen my dad this happy. | ||
| Everybody who comes up and talks to me is like, your dad hasn't been this happy in so long. | ||
| And to see him so proud and so stoked, you know, to finally achieve that number one place is a... | ||
| It's a good thing. | ||
| It was such a beautiful, poetic moment, too. | ||
| When the guy shoots for the takedown, you immediately lock it up. | ||
| Like, this is why this guy was stalling in the first place. | ||
| Right into the jaws of death. | ||
| Bam! | ||
| You locked that thing on perfect, too. | ||
| That was beautiful. | ||
| I mean, he tapped out within a couple of seconds. | ||
| It was over. | ||
| Yeah, when he went for it. | ||
| I mean, I have... | ||
| I'm dangerous from a lot of different places, you know, but when he went for my legs, I was like, thanks, buddy. | ||
| I was like, dude, this is a great Christmas present. | ||
| Like, boom, everything fits so good. | ||
| And it was a good, good, I mean, it was a great showing. | ||
| And that success at that competition kind of just came from a lot of... | ||
| I trained my ass off. | ||
| I sacrificed everything in life. | ||
| That's what you've got to do when you want something. | ||
| Whatever field it is, you have to really see what you want. | ||
| I saw my potential and I used it. | ||
| Anybody who saw me train saw how hard I trained for that fight. | ||
| I was ready to win. | ||
| Yeah, you want to see something crazy, pull up Crone Gracie Ninja Training. | ||
| It's some bars in Santa Monica. | ||
| I saw this the other day. | ||
| Somebody put it on my message board on the thread of this particular podcast when the podcast was announced. | ||
| Do you do this often? | ||
| There's this wild video of you climbing up on these bars in Santa Monica You climb to the top, and then you're swinging. | ||
| Here's a video. | ||
| How often do you do this? | ||
| I mean, I live in Santa Monica, so I go there all the time, and I kind of always do just some workouts, and I like to be at the beach and in the ocean. | ||
| But this is just like a joke, you know? | ||
| It's just kind of a little trick, you know? | ||
| Yeah, well, this little trick, he's jumping nine feet from one bar to the next, swinging, and then catching with his arms like a monkey. | ||
| This is some wild shit, dude. | ||
| This is some chimpanzee shit. | ||
| That day, Nate was the one filming that, and he was super stoked on it. | ||
| How often do you do that? | ||
| I go down to the bars at least once or twice a week, just to kind of, you know, I do the ropes, and I climb the ropes for my forearms, and I do some pull-ups and stuff. | ||
| But, you know, that's never, like, the biggest part of my training. | ||
| It's never the most important thing. | ||
| It's always come secondary to training jiu-jitsu and my specific stuff I got going on. | ||
| When you train all day every day, you gotta find ways to keep yourself entertained and keep yourself enjoying what you're doing. | ||
| And I hate being in a gym. | ||
| I hate being in a gym. | ||
| A weightlifting gym, you mean? | ||
| Yeah, a weightlifting gym. | ||
| I hate being in there like working out. | ||
| So if I'm gonna go on a bike ride, I'll go outside. | ||
| If I'm gonna run, I'll go outside. | ||
| I like to feel the fresh air and kind of enjoy myself while I'm in this kind of hell that I live in. | ||
| This kind of hell perpetual training, you mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How much physical training do you do besides the jiu-jitsu? | ||
| I do a lot of jujitsu and I do a lot of everything. | ||
| I run, I bike, I swim, I do... | ||
| And when you do it, what are the objectives? | ||
| When you do your running, are you monitoring your heart rate? | ||
| Are you doing sprints? | ||
| Are you doing Tabata intervals? | ||
| How do you do that? | ||
| I do all the different types. | ||
| Sometimes I do just a long-distance run where I'll run an hour and 10 or an hour and 20 minutes straight. | ||
| And then the goal for that would be endurance. | ||
| And then I'll do some days where I'll just do sprints upstairs or some days I'll just do long bike rides. | ||
| You know, all those things that kind of just... | ||
| Some days it's more explosive and some days it's more long distance. | ||
| And I just use it as a tool, like as an addition to all the things I do. | ||
| And I felt like... | ||
| Since I really started to put my energy into other things, it's made my jiu-jitsu better because the more in life when you sacrifice in one direction, no matter what it is, it makes you better. | ||
| I don't know how. | ||
| I don't know what. | ||
| It's like something with the universe where even if you say, oh, I'm going to wake up at 6 in the morning to go do 20 push-ups and then go back to sleep, that is going to make you better at what you do because you are going to start to Create this energy to achieve your goals, | ||
| so once I started to really dedicate myself not only with Jiu Jitsu, but with breathing and physical strength and technical strength and mental strength and all these different ways that I can build myself as the best I can be, it really went to show, you know. | ||
| It really made a big improvement since that moment. | ||
| Do you find that the physical training helps prevent injuries? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I think it's important. | ||
| I think Physical training should be done at a right time because if you get a white belt and you start telling him, alright, you got to be physically strong and you tell him to start working out and running and then he's going to create, his training is going to be based on his physical strength. | ||
| So my advice is The physical strength is to add to your technical ability. | ||
| It's not to take away from your technical ability and make you rely on your strength and make you rely on your physical attributes. | ||
| So I always kind of don't push for guys in my academy to work out until they reach a brown or black belt level. | ||
| Then they can start adding to their technique because if you get too strong, I've seen it happen many times where guys will take steroids and then they'll get so strong and they'll lose their technique. | ||
| So I never wanted that to happen to me. | ||
| I knew that the strength was always going to be there if I worked on it. | ||
| So I think it's important for you to build your technique and then secondary, you know, your strength can keep your technique going because, of course, if you don't have any physical strength, your technique will fade, you know. | ||
| So you got to have enough strength to keep it going. | ||
| Do you have a trainer that helps you with your physical strength workouts or do you just... | ||
| Nope. | ||
| I got myself... | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's who I count on. | ||
| So it's just all that you've learned over all your years of martial arts. | ||
| Yeah, and like I said, you know, it took... | ||
| You know, when you're training for fights and when you're getting ready... | ||
| My dad left to Brazil when I was 18, so I didn't have a coach. | ||
| I didn't have nobody. | ||
| My dad was in another country. | ||
| I didn't have a coach. | ||
| I didn't have a strength trainer. | ||
| I didn't have nobody to give me any kind of advice. | ||
| So... | ||
| For a long time, I was kind of like, oh man, this sucks. | ||
| Like, fuck, everybody should be helping me. | ||
| My dad should be helping me. | ||
| I should have a trainer. | ||
| I should have fucking somebody, you know, writing my stuff down. | ||
| And I should have all this stuff. | ||
| And, you know, I should be sponsored by Nike. | ||
| And I should have, you know, like, all these things that, like, I compared myself to Kobe, Ryan. | ||
| But... | ||
| As you get better you realize that stuff's not going to happen and I kind of got to a point where I kind of stopped making excuses and I kind of started to blame myself for my unsuccess not blaming other reasons not blaming because I didn't have this or because I didn't have this or because my dad wasn't here so I'm grateful for my dad taught me as much as he can for as much as he did and Got to a certain point where I stopped blaming anybody for anything and I kind of just put everything into my hands. | ||
| What I do now and how my schedule is now is a result of a lot of years of being on my own and being Of course, I've had help here and there, but nobody fully embraced being my help. | ||
| So, of course, I pick from the help I can get from wherever I can get. | ||
| Oh, this guy taught me this one thing, I'll do it. | ||
| So, I kind of go around and using my experience to make the best training that fits for me, and I've kind of finally got to that point where... | ||
| I know how to train hard, to where I don't overtrain, to where I know I'm in shape, to where I know I'm mental. | ||
| All that stuff is kind of starting to really combine well based on what I feel and based on how I have lived my life and how I've competed and how I've put my body in stress. | ||
| I'm able to kind of get a good understanding of where I'm at. | ||
| When your dad went to Brazil, was he teaching in Brazil? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| What was he doing there? | ||
| My parents got split up and then my dad went to Brazil to go recharge his battery. | ||
| Just to hang out? | ||
| Yeah, to go. | ||
| His analogy is... | ||
| His explanation is, you know, you put a coconut tree in America... | ||
| It doesn't grow coconuts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You put a coconut tree in Brazil, coconuts grow. | |
| I cannot explain why. | ||
| So he wanted to just go make some coconuts. | ||
| Yeah, so I think he just wanted to feel good and kind of Be his on his little retreat and it worked well and now he just moved back actually like a couple months ago he's moved back here and now he's kind of after eight years of living in Brazil he's kind of got more motivation to be here in America be a part of my life and I mean he's always been a part of my life just It's not like my dad didn't help me, | ||
| but he helped me up until I was like 18, gave me everything he could, and then he let me be my own man. | ||
| He let me do everything on my own, make my own decisions. | ||
| If I wanted to do this, I could do it. | ||
| If I wanted to do that, if I wanted to wake up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I was my own man and had the own freedom to do everything. | ||
| He gave me the option to do whatever I wanted and thank God I was able to really embrace that and use it to my benefit and be able to do what I did with that kind of on my own. | ||
| Does your dad still train? | ||
| My dad teaches. | ||
| He doesn't train so much like where he actually like goes and tries to get better. | ||
| He's kind of physically can't do it because he's got like eight hernias and his back looks like a, you know, he's physically burnt out. | ||
| You know, you train at the highest level for your whole life with no... | ||
| When you say hernias, you mean herniated discs? | ||
| Yeah, eight hernias. | ||
| Herniated discs. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So he's got just his back's a mess. | ||
| Oh yeah, his doctor said he shouldn't be walking, but he walks. | ||
| So he can't train as much, but he does put a gi on and he'll show a move here and there and he'll do what he has to do. | ||
| And I think he's happy with that. | ||
| I think now he's gotten to a place where he is okay with being retired. | ||
| And he's okay with not being the front line. | ||
| He's okay with being at the stage where... | ||
| Where he is, you know, he knew that the time that he had to be physically was up until this age. | ||
| And, you know, I guess when you start to fall out of your physical shape, you want to fight it and you want to know, I can still do it. | ||
| And I think now he's very happy being the icon that he is and being, you know, he helps me with what he can help. | ||
| He trains with what he can do. | ||
| And he's still the man. | ||
| Like, when he comes to me with theories and training stuff, I mean, man, it's like nobody else has the mind that he has anymore. | ||
| Even if you put his brain on anybody's body, they will be a champion for sure because he has a very great sense of how to adapt to anything. | ||
| So sometimes I'll come up with a move or I'll be like, Dad, this has been giving me problems. | ||
| And even if him not training for 10 years, he'll still feel how to defend it or feel how to deal with that or he'll have a great understanding of how to To be. | ||
| So, I think he's just better now, at this time of his life, he's incorporating different things. | ||
| He's not focused on training hard. | ||
| That time for him has passed. | ||
| The time for him to fight has passed. | ||
| Now it's time for him to watch me fight. | ||
| Now it's time for him to watch himself, you know, teach or watch him be an icon, you know, start, you know. | ||
| What does he do for exercise these days? | ||
| Oh, he surfs and he does exercises. | ||
| He'll do his little workouts and stuff and he's still very active. | ||
| But he's just not going to go and train rounds after rounds. | ||
| But he's definitely a very healthy and physical person. | ||
| I mean, if I have eight hernia discs by his age and I'm able to do what he did, I'll take that, no problem. | ||
| I'll take the eight hernias to being the best in the world any day of the week. | ||
| Well, they can do a lot for those things now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, he's going to doctors and if you have any advice, he definitely... | ||
| Yeah, I certainly do. | ||
| The Regenikine that I had done was because of a bulging disc and made a huge impact on me. | ||
| And it's also the same thing that a lot of football players have done, like Peyton Manning had done on his neck and he had two operations on his neck and was ready to retire. | ||
| Went to Germany, had the blood spinning procedure done and now was playing better football than ever. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Massive anti-inflammatory properties of it. | ||
| And the good thing about it is it's using your own blood. | ||
| So it's not like you're introducing a steroid or any unnatural substance into your body that's going to cause an adverse side effect. | ||
| It's actually your own blood. | ||
| It's amazing to see with his body how it's been, how well he lives and how he's happy to... | ||
| He says, if I can surf and I can do the things, if I can train once a week and do the little moves here, I'm okay with that. | ||
| So I don't know how far he's trying to step into actually feeling like 20 years old again, but I'm sure he'd be interested to hear what you have to say. | ||
| Well, just pain relief and just the replenishing of his body's ability to move correctly would be a huge impact. | ||
| I know a lot of guys that are getting towards his age, though, that have done jiu-jitsu for a long time have similar issues. | ||
| Ricardo Laborio told me he has seven hernia discs. | ||
| You know, like you stand next to Ricardo, he's kind of like hunched over and leaned down. | ||
| And when we were describing it, you know, you could see like he has like a wince in his face. | ||
| He's just thinking about the pain, but still trains. | ||
| Still goes out there every now and then and rolls and just loves it and can't help it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu is so fun. | ||
| It's too bad your body's not indestructible. | ||
| It's too bad you can't tap out, but your body's, you know, rubber, indestructible. | ||
| They created it like that for a reason, I bet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, maybe. | |
| Or else my dad would still be mopping fools off. | ||
| I'd be like, this is my time now. | ||
| Come on, stop. | ||
| Give me a break. | ||
| When was the last time your dad like really seriously rolled? | ||
| How long ago was it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| All I know is the last time we seriously rolled, I got fucked up. | ||
| This was bad because I just got my black belt and I was like, alright dad, you know, at this time he was still kind of not, I mean he's had a hernia disc for a long time. | ||
| He probably had an eight hernia disc when he was fighting. | ||
| Really? | ||
| He's probably had it for a long time. | ||
| Just dealt with the pain? | ||
| Yeah, he's dealt with pain his whole life. | ||
| And I don't know exactly what the exact he has or doesn't have, but... | ||
| Yeah, when I was like 21 years old, 19, I just got my black belt, and I was like, alright dad, let's go. | ||
| Since you're out of shape, give me three minutes. | ||
| Three minutes. | ||
| And we'll go as hard as we can for three minutes, and let's see. | ||
| Because after three minutes, then, of course, I'm in better shape, and you are not training so much, so I don't want that to be an issue. | ||
| And when we trained, man, he got me in like a minute and a half, and I was so pissed. | ||
| Got me with a footlock. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, alright, he's still the man. | ||
| That was the last time we really rolled. | ||
| So, yeah, I mean, he's a very, I mean, he's just a real samurai. | ||
| I mean, there's no way to put it. | ||
| He's just all around. | ||
| It's not an act, you know. | ||
| He's definitely in his bones. | ||
| He's ready to die. | ||
| Even today, if something happened, he'd be ready to die for what he believes in. | ||
| And I think that's why I believe in what he says and I believe in what I do and why I do what I do with so much passion. | ||
| Yeah, he's the real deal. | ||
| And for folks who you want to get a sense of it, even if you're not a martial artist, the movie Choke, go watch the movie Choke. | ||
| Because that's, you know, Hickson when he was, I mean, essentially not quite his prime because he was in his late 30s at the time. | ||
| He was probably, you know, he was better when he was even younger than that. | ||
| But you get a chance to see the physical preparation when he's sitting up to his neck in an icy glacial river. | ||
| And meditating. | ||
| I mean, fucking freezing cold water, and he's just breathing and concentrating. | ||
| And you see, Hoyler gets in, he dips his foot in, he's like, fuck this! | ||
|
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I'm out of here, man! | |
| Everybody else is like touching the water and going, no! | ||
| This is crazy! | ||
| And your dad's in there, up to his head. | ||
| Like it's nothing, like he's in a jacuzzi. | ||
| So yeah, that inspires me, you know? | ||
| Well, I remember him getting out, you know, he's happy and praising and thank you, my Lord, just loving it. | ||
| You know, he embraces the challenge of it and embraces just the wildness of being in a glacier river in Japan and the whole deal, man. | ||
| Yeah, he really does it. | ||
| Now you are starting to, you're doing a lot of training with, I know Gilbert Melendez, a good friend of yours, who thankfully just got re-signed to a new deal where he's going to compete against Anthony Pettis, who's the lightweight champion. | ||
| They're going to fight after they coach the Ultimate Fighter together, which is a huge thing. | ||
| And you're training with a lot of the other Oilers. | ||
| Fuck this, let me get out of here. | ||
| I've had enough. | ||
| And for folks who don't know, Hoyler Gracie is one of the greatest submission artists of all time, too, and very, very successful in competition. | ||
| So, you know, when you see the difference between how Hickson deals with it and how Hoyler deals with it, look, that's when you really get a sense of what a special person he is. | ||
| And by the way, no one's telling him to do this. | ||
| This is all his idea. | ||
| And your mom's going, oh, fuck. | ||
| Yeah, and my dad never had a coach either, you know. | ||
| He never really had nobody there all the time. | ||
| So that gave me more motivation too. | ||
| And also it gave him the confidence that he could let me be on my own and I was still going to be alright if I was trying to be alright. | ||
| Now, what I was going to say is you've done quite a bit of training with Nick and Nate Diaz and Ronda Rousey. | ||
| Didn't you do some training with her as well? | ||
| I've never trained with Ronda, actually. | ||
| I've trained with Nick and Nate a lot and Gilbert and Jake quite a lot. | ||
| So those guys are a big part of my training and I've helped them all out with fights. | ||
| Ronda trains with those guys on a fairly regular basis, right? | ||
| She's trained with them a few times. | ||
| She has. | ||
| I think she definitely was up there more before. | ||
| I don't know how much she goes up there now. | ||
| Are you planning on fighting in MMA now? | ||
| Yeah, I am. | ||
| So I actually, after the ADCC, I kind of started to focus more on MMA. I kind of want my energy to be driven towards fighting professionally in MMA. Yeah, that's where my energy is going these days. | ||
| And what motivates you to want to do that? | ||
| Like I said before, this has been my... | ||
| I knew I was going to get to this point when I was a little kid. | ||
| I never saw Jiu-Jitsu as my final mission. | ||
| And I was just waiting for the right time and waiting for myself to be ready for whatever obstacles I can get to on this specific situation. | ||
| So now I feel mentally ready and now I feel... | ||
| The motivation and now if you would ask me when I was 20 years old if I was ready to fight I mean I wasn't you know mentally not physically not technically but just mentally ready to do something like that so the last thing I wanted was to be traumatized and now I feel like no matter what happens I'm ready to embrace whatever happens and I'm ready to fight so negotiating and seeing what the best situation for me to take advantage of this moment. | ||
| Now, how have you adjusted your training to prepare for mixed martial arts? | ||
| Some minor adjustments. | ||
| Nothing too crazy, but I think, of course, there's different obstacles and different things that you got to worry about when you're just dealing with jiu-jitsu and when you're just dealing with MMA. You know, of course, you can hit and stuff, but I think generally my fights, the way I fight is more of a fight, and I kind of, I'm not a sportist. | ||
| I'm not trying to be sporty with my jiu-jitsu, so I don't think the transfer over will be that big of a jump as it could be for some other guys. | ||
| People who are more points oriented. | ||
| Yeah, people who are kind of, they want to stay in their clums. | ||
| I'm very comfortable in the storm, so I think that'll help me when I fight. | ||
| That's one of the most important attitudes to have in life, is to embrace the storm. | ||
| Be comfortable in the storm. | ||
| Try to figure out how to make yourself uncomfortable all the time. | ||
| There's always time for relaxation after that's all over. | ||
|
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But don't avoid the storm. | |
| Then you're going to see who you are when you can deal with how you react in those situations. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Especially if you embrace it. | ||
| It becomes a part of who you are as a human being that you do that, that you take on those challenges. | ||
| What about striking? | ||
| What are you doing as far as striking? | ||
| I'm working on striking a little bit here and there. | ||
| I don't want to give up too much of my training. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| I think jiu-jitsu has striking. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu strikes when it's beneficial for you. | ||
| It doesn't teach you to sit there in the pocket and just bang out with anybody. | ||
| Striking is definitely a part of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I think it's going to be interesting to see what I can do. | ||
| I'm curious. | ||
| I want to see what happens. | ||
| Just like anybody else, I'm very curious to see how my jiu-jitsu is going to play in fighting and what's going to happen. | ||
| Is jiu-jitsu going to be enough or is he going to have to do this certain type of training? | ||
| I think my training with Nick, Nate, Jake and Gilbert is sufficient to really put me wherever I want to be. | ||
| Now, your uncle, Hoyce, has said recently that you don't need anything other than Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Is it all these different people that train wrestling and all these different aspects of striking that you really don't need it? | ||
| Just train Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| Or do you think that in modern mixed martial arts it is important that you cross train? | ||
| It is important that you prepare for a full mixed martial arts competition? | ||
| Or do you think that the highest level of Jiu Jitsu is still sufficient? | ||
| I think jujitsu is sufficient. | ||
| I think jujitsu is sufficient to be the best martial arts. | ||
| I just think that the rules make it so that it's not necessarily possible. | ||
| So the rounds, the gloves, the rules, you know, those things all change the sport and it changes the situation. | ||
| Stand-ups? | ||
| Yeah, like if you have no gloves, nobody's going to be throwing those punches that guys throw these days. | ||
| So you're going to break your hand. | ||
| First punch you throw, the guy ducks his head, you're going to break your hand. | ||
| So I think that all those things change it. | ||
| And when it changes, you have to be ready to adapt to what changes. | ||
| Personally, if you put two guys in a cage, jiu-jitsu is enough. | ||
| But when you put in the gloves, and you put the time, and you put the rounds, and you put the, you know, all these things, the steroids, so it changes the situation. | ||
| And, you know, Guys are more willing to just throw the hardest punches and knock you out because they know that the round is going to end, because they know that their hand is not necessarily going to break. | ||
| So if you ask me what's the best martial arts, I think Jiu Jitsu, of course. | ||
| If you ask me, is Jiu Jitsu enough? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It just depends on the rules. | ||
| If you tell me, okay, it's a two minute round and the guy is going to stand you up or do the, you know, of course, then you have to learn how to box. | ||
| You have to learn how to do this. | ||
| And personally, deflection of punches has always been a part of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Not necessarily being able to strike. | ||
| I don't know necessarily if I'm going to be knocking guys out. | ||
| But I'm going to be able to defend. | ||
| My goal in the jiu-jitsu goal, in the principle, is to be able to defend whatever the guys are going to do. | ||
| If the guy's going to punch you, you have to be able to defend the punch. | ||
| So I don't necessarily think that you have to be a great striker to win MMA and to be a champ, but you have to be able to defend yourself. | ||
| You have to be able to know where the punch is coming from. | ||
| You have to be able to know what's going on. | ||
| You have to know about all this stuff. | ||
| It's not like, oh, guy trains sport jiu-jitsu for 20 years and then he goes into a fight, he's going to get beat up. | ||
| Depends how you train and what your worry is and how well you adapt to whatever's going on in the fight. | ||
| Your dad always said that, that he doesn't train kickboxing to become a kickboxer. | ||
| He trains it to know what they're doing. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| So I feel comfortable. | ||
| So who are you talking to? | ||
| Are you talking to organizations? | ||
| Can you tell me? | ||
| Yeah, I'm talking to... | ||
| Right now I'm negotiating with Japan. | ||
| Nothing's for sure, but it's looking good and... | ||
| I'm trying to see if there's an opportunity for me in Japan. | ||
| What organizations are left in Japan right now? | ||
| I can't really say too much right now, but basically very shortly we'll know what's going on with that. | ||
| Well, for folks who don't know, your dad was a huge star in Japan. | ||
| They had a comic book based on him. | ||
| I mean, there was a lot of fanfare and publicity, and they embraced him, especially when he won the Japan Valley Tudos. | ||
| I mean, your dad was an enormous star over there, and I think that that makes sense that you would want to compete over there because they would be very interested to see. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of benefits for me starting off in Japan. | ||
| It's just a lot better for me at this moment in my career to start off in Japan and to really build myself the best I can. | ||
| And I personally like fighting in front of Japanese culture because they're a little bit more martial artists. | ||
| They come from a samurai background, so they really care about what you are. | ||
| They really care about what you stand for. | ||
| They really care about if you sweep somebody in the middle of a tournament, they're going to clap. | ||
| So personally for me, I appreciate that, and I like that about... | ||
| Japan and I think it's just a time in my life and of course if Japan were to ever like you know have a movement of being able to bring MMA back to Japan I think a possibility would be with bringing me to it because that's gonna it's gonna replicate what my dad did you know how he brought it to Japan so I think it's for me in this situation it's a great opportunity and I'm trying to go for that Yeah, | ||
| for people who don't know, your dad was the star of Pride 1. I mean, that's what got Pride kicked off. | ||
| That was the big launching pad after he had won the Japan Valley Tudo. | ||
| And then, of course, Pride came close to... | ||
| I mean, it was an enormous event in Japan. | ||
| Like, they had put on 90,000 seat shows several times. | ||
| Yeah, like 60,000 Tokyo Dome sold out. | ||
| Huge. | ||
| And somehow or another, it stopped. | ||
| It's one of the great mysteries of martial arts, and I don't totally understand Japanese culture. | ||
| I guess they get really into things sometimes, and then the things fade away. | ||
| But when we were there, and we did the UFC there a couple years ago, it was my first time in Japan, and I was amazed at the audiences. | ||
| They were awesome. | ||
| They're amazing. | ||
| When the fight's going on, they're so polite. | ||
| And then when something happens, like a transition or a sweep, everybody applauds. | ||
| It's like, wow! | ||
| It's really cool. | ||
| I really appreciate how much they love the technique and the martial arts aspect of it. | ||
| But as far as a crazy crowd, there's nothing like Brazil. | ||
| There's nothing like Brazil. | ||
| This last event, when Michida fought Musashi, I watched it at home, and when Bruce Buffer says it's time, the whole audience does it with him. | ||
| I mean, there's like 18,000 people. | ||
| It's time! | ||
| No one cheers like a Brazilian crowd. | ||
| No one cheers. | ||
| And they're there at the very first fight. | ||
| That place is packed. | ||
| Packed. | ||
| They're getting their money's worth. | ||
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Yeah. | |
| And they're fucking fired up, man. | ||
| We got there early and there was already just a giant line around the block to the arena. | ||
| And then when we got in it, man, the energy in the air was... | ||
| It was a huge, huge, huge thing. | ||
| That was the last one that I was at in Rio. | ||
| But... | ||
| There's no crowds like Brazilian crowds. | ||
| They come from the soccer background, so they're really into that. | ||
| The Japanese crowds are just different in their own way. | ||
| Completely different, yeah. | ||
| Very, very different from the Brazilian crowds, but different in their own unique way. | ||
| So, is there a timeline on when this is going to happen? | ||
| Basically, we're going to know very soon. | ||
| Very, very soon. | ||
| The next, you know, probably the next time I see you, I'll have an answer. | ||
| So, I'm just waiting. | ||
| I don't want to give up a date or a time. | ||
| I don't want to put too much energy into that because I hope it happens so much that I don't want to, like, spoil anything. | ||
| So, we'll see and it's going to happen very soon. | ||
| So, I'll let you know. | ||
| I'll let you know. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| You'll be able to... | ||
| Did you watch the UFC this weekend? | ||
| I did not, actually. | ||
| I missed it. | ||
| Damian Maia, who's a very excellent representative of jiu-jitsu, fought Rory McDonald and got beat up. | ||
| What happened in the fight? | ||
| Well, Damian took him down the first round, mounted him, but he couldn't submit him. | ||
| And Rory defended, got back up to his feet, and then started kicking the shit out of him. | ||
| Really? | ||
| And was Damian just trying to stand up with him? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
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Well, there you go. | |
| I like Damien. | ||
| Damien's a good guy. | ||
| I've always had respect for him. | ||
| We've always had a good relationship. | ||
| And he's always been a representative of Jiu Jitsu in a great way. | ||
| So I think the more he focuses on that and the more he tries to really use jiu-jitsu, the better he's going to be because he's a specialist in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| He's not a specialist in striking, so it's tough to try to be an excellent person in a different sport. | ||
| I think he should try to focus in on being the greatest jiu-jitsu fighter in an MMA, and I think that'll be beneficial for him. | ||
| Well, he was trying to do that. | ||
| He was trying to take Rory down, but he couldn't take him down. | ||
| He kept getting his takedowns stuffed, and then he was forced to stand with him, and Rory kept kicking him. | ||
| He was just kicking the shit out of him. | ||
| That's why I'm curious. | ||
| I'm curious to see for myself how it is, fighting with guys who don't want to go to the ground and see how I'm going to be able to deal with it. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| I have zero experience in MMA, so... | ||
| I'm curious. | ||
| I'm curious to see what happens and I'm curious to see how really difficult it could be and where my technique is going to play a role and how it's going to be because you never know. | ||
| That's why I'm really open for the challenge and my blessings for Damien. | ||
| Hopefully he can find a great tactic to beat his opponents and beat guys who are trying to do that. | ||
| Do you look at him as sort of, I mean, he's a very high-level jiu-jitsu guy. | ||
| Do you look at him as an example of what can be possible and not, the pitfalls, the possibilities? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think if somebody can defend his takedowns or something, then there's definitely a technical reason why that's happening. | ||
| And I think that, like, personally, I admire the guy. | ||
| The guy's an exceptional athlete. | ||
| He's a great fighter and everything. | ||
| But I don't look up to his jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I don't look up to anybody's Jiu Jitsu that is fighting these days. | ||
| I don't see anything that is exceptional. | ||
| I see guys that are good, tough, and guys who make it happen. | ||
| But I'm impressed with my dad's Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| That's where I feel like I'm going to try to replicate. | ||
| So as much as I'm a fan and I'm an admirer and all these guys, they got to where they got with the tools that they were given. | ||
| You know, we are all given a certain amount of tools and how will you use them. | ||
| So I can't take anything away from the guys who got far with the jiu-jitsu or with the striking or with whatever. | ||
| But yeah, it's definitely like you're gonna be able to see, you know. | ||
| Who do you think is the best representative of jiu-jitsu right now in mixed martial arts? | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of good guys, you know. | ||
| There's, you know, the classics, you know, like Damien's very good, you know, Jacare is very good. | ||
| Those guys are guys who I'm friends with, you know, guys who have been competing in jiu-jitsu tournaments. | ||
| Sergio Moraes, too. | ||
| His jiu-jitsu, I mean, he hasn't gotten to that level yet, you know, the level of opposition yet, but his jiu-jitsu has been very effective in MMA. His submissions are, you know... | ||
| I actually haven't seen him fight really in MMA, so I don't really know too much. | ||
| But his jiu-jitsu in jiu-jitsu tournaments is good. | ||
| You know, he's a tough guy. | ||
| He has a specific type of style. | ||
| But again, I'm not impressed with his jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I'm impressed with him as a whole. | ||
| He's like, wow, the guy can make it happen. | ||
| He can defend well. | ||
| He's an exceptional athlete. | ||
| The guy's very strong, very explosive. | ||
| But I don't see him as an exceptional jiu-jitsu fighter. | ||
| What's missing? | ||
| For him personally? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, again, like, I don't... | ||
| No, but when you say, I mean, you look at a guy who's like a high-level, world champion caliber fighter, but you say you're not impressed with his jiu-jitsu. | ||
| What is not impressive about it? | ||
|
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Um... | |
| I don't know, because I've never seen him fight in MMA, so I don't know what he's doing in MMA. But when I fight him, I fought him once, he beat my ass, and then I fought him the next time, and it was a very even match. | ||
| I thought I won that match, and I felt like I got gypped. | ||
| Did they give him an advantage? | ||
| They gave him an advantage in the last five seconds. | ||
| Advantage is so square. | ||
| For folks who don't know, there's weird scoring in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| If jiu-jitsu is 0-0, one guy can get what they call an advantage and it's very subjective. | ||
| I've seen fucking bench-clearing brawls because of advantage scoring. | ||
| What I feel about impressive jiu-jitsu is Why am I so impressed with my dad's jiu-jitsu? | ||
| It's because he outsmarts me. | ||
| He technically beats me. | ||
| If somebody is stronger than me and they pass my guard or they submit me, I am not impressed. | ||
| Because of that, I think that the guy used his tools to beat me or did whatever. | ||
| But that doesn't mean he's a better jujitsu who doesn't technically impress me. | ||
| So it's very difficult to impress me. | ||
| I come from my father. | ||
| My dad has been technically outsmarting me for a long time. | ||
| So it's hard for me to be impressed with jujitsu these days. | ||
| And that's what I'm trying to do. | ||
| I'm trying to do a jujitsu that is technical. | ||
| It's way harder for you to technically outsmart somebody than for you to just, no, I'm going to get it and just take it. | ||
| And the guy defends and then you just rip right through it. | ||
| So it's a different approach to what I believe Jiu Jitsu is about. | ||
| And that's why I feel like I'm not impressed as much as other people. | ||
| Wow, he got that arm bar, yeah. | ||
| But he got that arm bar because he's much stronger than the guy. | ||
| The guy has no defense. | ||
| So I feel like it's a mind game and however well you use your chess pieces, You know, that's what's going to make you the results. | ||
| But I don't take anything away from Sergio Moraes. | ||
| He's a, you know, great fighter and he's an exceptionally healthy, strong person. | ||
| And he's able to use the tools and he's able to use Jiu-Jitsu for his benefit. | ||
| That doesn't mean he's not good at Jiu-Jitsu or anything. | ||
| That just means that if you speak specifically for Jiu-Jitsu, is he, like... | ||
| Using his strength or he's using his technical abilities to beat your opponent? | ||
| And that's where I say that. | ||
| That's why I say that. | ||
| Mark Coleman once said to me... | ||
| Yeah, that was the match that I drawed with him. | ||
| It was like 4-4 and then I lost on an advantage at the last second. | ||
| You were rocking the old school samurai ponytail just like your dad. | ||
| Old school, old school. | ||
| Tried that out for a little bit. | ||
| Nobody told me it was really gay, so... | ||
| I kept it going for a little bit. | ||
| Well, your dad had that back in the day, man. | ||
| That's a tribute haircut. | ||
| You get a pass. | ||
| You get a gay pass. | ||
| Then I realized it was really... | ||
| So I kind of cut it. | ||
| Did it get in the way? | ||
| Yeah, I just got in the way and it just kind of wasn't really my style. | ||
| It was for a while. | ||
| I did what I had to do with it and then that was it. | ||
| I was going to say that Mark Coleman once told me, strength is technique. | ||
| Strength is a technique. | ||
| For some people. | ||
| And that's for some people. | ||
| Everybody has their belief. | ||
| Other people, other Jiu-Jitsu guys, they're like, you know, if your move doesn't work, then use more strength. | ||
| You know? | ||
| The moves don't work because you're not using enough strength. | ||
| So I don't come from that theory. | ||
| I don't come from that belief. | ||
| And I come from a leverage and technique background. | ||
| So... | ||
| That's why I feel the way I feel. | ||
| It's not because I feel against anybody, and I'm not trying to point fingers or try to say that I'm better than anybody. | ||
| Nothing like that. | ||
| I still have a lot to prove. | ||
| But if you honestly ask me if I'm impressed with the jiu-jitsu, I come from... | ||
| I'm Hickson's son, you know? | ||
| I come from the best. | ||
| If I'm easily impressed, you know, that's not a good sign. | ||
| Who impresses you in jiu-jitsu today? | ||
| Um... | ||
| What really impresses me is guys who are smaller being able to really defeat bigger opponents. | ||
| Like Marcelo Garcia? | ||
| Marcelo Garcia is a very... | ||
| He's definitely a great fighter. | ||
| I've fought him twice. | ||
| He's one guy who technically is great. | ||
| I have nothing to say about his technical abilities. | ||
| He's technically in the game. | ||
| He's not overpowering. | ||
| He's not using his physical attributes to beat his opponents. | ||
| I'm impressed with that. | ||
| That's a great thing that he has. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, the technical ability is where I feel like is the line for greatness. | ||
| And yeah, Marcelo Garcia, he's great. | ||
| I love fighting him. | ||
| You know, that's one guy who I would fight any day. | ||
| That's like... | ||
| Great to be meshing with that kind of talent. | ||
| So, yeah, he's a great example, and he fought guys who were really big, and right there I almost got him. | ||
| Marcelo? | ||
| Yeah, I had him in the guillotine for a good minute until my forearms cramped up. | ||
| If there was a professional avenue for jujitsu, if jujitsu was like golf or baseball or something like that, it was on television all the time, would you be motivated at all to enter into MMA? Yeah, I think so too because I think it's more of a real fight and I think it's more of a challenge and I like challenges and I like to I like to challenge and I like to see what's going to happen. | ||
| Personally, I think that jujitsu takes away a little bit from the full fighting spirit. | ||
| Because there's no punching. | ||
| Because there's no punching and because there's other tools. | ||
| So the less rules you have, the more you can actually present yourself and use the inner stuff that you have within the fighting spirit and find out ways to stay safe. | ||
| Personally, most of the jiu-jitsu these days are very boring matches and they're very point-oriented. | ||
| It's not as interesting to watch because guys are there for the win, for the point. | ||
| It's not motivating for me to compete in a fight like that. | ||
| I'm motivated to embark on this new journey of MMA. I'm motivated to see what happens, to see how the fight goes, what I need to do, what happens if this happens, and I think that's a great thing. | ||
| Now, when you see guys like Jacare, who were great jiu-jitsu artists and now entering into MMA, Jacare is winning a lot of his fights with kickboxing, and a lot of guys that he's fighting, he's not able to take down, so he's sort of forced to stand and strike with them. | ||
| Do you take away anything from that? | ||
| Do you learn anything from that? | ||
| Yeah, I'm trying to learn. | ||
| I think Jacare is great and I really like him a lot as a human being and as an athlete and I've been his fan since he was before, you know, in Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| He was always kind of a real cool guy to watch. | ||
| He's a warrior, you know? | ||
| That guy has a strong spirit and he's a very strong-hearted person. | ||
| So whatever he does, he's going to be good at. | ||
| And however he does it, he's going to make it happen. | ||
| And he just used the tools that he was given to get the best results that he can get. | ||
| I don't take anything away from him. | ||
| I didn't mean by taking anything away from him. | ||
| Do you personally get something from watching him? | ||
| Like, did you learn something from his approach? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, personally, I'm kind of trying to always analyze and more importantly, I'm trying to see where I fit in on this, you know? | ||
| I want to see how I'm going to deal with somebody who's not letting me take them down. | ||
| How am I going to get them down? | ||
| How am I going to find the way to win the fight? | ||
| I think it's all in the air and we're going to see what happens. | ||
| I can't wait to start to test myself in these waters and get these challenges and find out ways to win. | ||
| Other than Gil and Jake, how many wrestlers are you working with? | ||
| I mean, in my academy, there's always been great wrestlers and great judo guys and great everything. | ||
| They all come in and out of my academy, so I've wrestled with the best wrestlers, and I've wrestled with, you know, I've been in the mix with a lot of great athletes, and yeah, I mean... | ||
| They're a part of the training. | ||
| They come in and when I go up to train with Nate or Gilbert, there's a lot of wrestlers. | ||
| I think that's just one more tool, one more training session, one different type of training. | ||
| Sometimes you train just to not get taken down. | ||
| Sometimes you train to take somebody down. | ||
| Sometimes you just train jujitsu. | ||
| Sometimes you just train defense. | ||
| Sometimes you just train... | ||
| One position. | ||
| So you try to build yourself as a complete as much as you can. | ||
| And of course, my specialty will never be wrestling. | ||
| My specialty will never be boxing or kickboxing. | ||
| It's never going to be my specialty. | ||
| Just like Jacare, his specialty is not going to be stand-up. | ||
| He's great at stand-up. | ||
| He's knocking guys out. | ||
| He's doing great. | ||
| But that's not his specialty. | ||
| You ask him where he feels the best, it's going to be jujitsu. | ||
| So I feel like my best is always going to be jujitsu. | ||
| As much as I train the other stuff and as much as I feel comfortable in the other place, I want to bring the fight to where I feel great. | ||
| That's why Anderson Silva was champion for so long, was because he was able to keep the fight where he felt comfortable. | ||
| He was able to keep the fight on his feet, and in that elusiveness, he was able to win. | ||
| If he was like, I don't care if I get taken down and let the guys mount and do this stuff, and then didn't fight to get up, then he would have lost a long time before. | ||
| But because he was so well at being able to stay where he's comfortable at and keep the fight where he wants to keep it at, He was an exceptional legend, you know, for so long. | ||
| And, you know, that's something to admire. | ||
| And I see guys, a lot of guys are just general. | ||
| A lot of guys are just really good at everything. | ||
| Nobody's a specialist in anything. | ||
| Except for some here and there. | ||
| But generally, MMA is just... | ||
| You're good at everything. | ||
| You're not specialized in something. | ||
| So I think for me, coming from a martial arts background, not coming from an MMA background, not coming from a... | ||
| I didn't just start doing this because I saw it on TV. I come from, you know, a tradition. | ||
| And my tradition is jujitsu. | ||
| My tradition is technique and leverage. | ||
| And that's what I base my whole life on. | ||
| So if I'm going to fight, I'm going to use that to my benefit, you know. | ||
| There's one pattern that we do see in MMA all the time is that when a guy gets truly excellent at any one aspect of fighting, that will always be that advantage when he gets into the octagon. | ||
| It always is a significant advantage over people that have never competed in that individual form. | ||
| For example, if you take a guy... | ||
| Like Anderson Silva, he's a total specialist, a stand-up striking specialist. | ||
| I mean, his whole career is a stand-up striking specialist. | ||
| In order for you to get that good as he was at striking... | ||
| It's a whole lifetime. | ||
| It's a whole lifetime. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's... | ||
| I don't got two lives. | ||
| I only got one right now. | ||
| I better do what I got going on, you know. | ||
| Where's your academy? | ||
| Where do you teach? | ||
| I teach in Culver City, right next to Playa del Rey, Jefferson and Sentinella. | ||
| And it's called the Crone Gracie Academy? | ||
| Crone Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, yeah. | ||
| Now, do you find that teaching makes you better at Jiu Jitsu? | ||
| Yeah, I've been teaching since I was 15. So, every day I teach, even until today, I still get better and I realize something that could be better or realize how I can explain something better or realize how I can see a different side. | ||
| And teaching for me has definitely been a huge part of my growth in Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| And I see people who just train and don't teach and I see a big difference in the people who do teach and how much more knowledgeable they are and how much better they can be from that. | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, that teaching someone who doesn't know something forces you to think about almost every single aspect of it, including parts of it that you could sort of take for granted. | ||
| And it seems to translate not just with jiu-jitsu, but kind of anything that you teach people. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah, sometimes you do something naturally, and it just feels right, and then... | ||
| When somebody asks, oh, how'd you do that? | ||
| Then you have to sit and you have to program your mind to do and know what you're doing. | ||
| Instead of just reacting, you have to know. | ||
| I knew I did that. | ||
| I think teaching for me has been huge. | ||
| I really, really enjoy teaching much more now. | ||
| I really enjoy teaching. | ||
| I really enjoy making people better. | ||
| As a teacher, I am able to see what a person needs and see where he's weak and try to make it better. | ||
| Instead of coming with a class, like in my mind, oh, I'm going to just teach this class or I'm going to just teach this move. | ||
| I'm looking specifically to see what this person is lacking in and how it's going to benefit. | ||
| Some guys are too hyper, you have to calm down, breathe. | ||
| Some guys are too slow, wake up buddy, come on, let's get it going. | ||
| I think the good teacher is the one who kind of adapts to the needs of the student for the... | ||
| For the goal of being better. | ||
| I'm not necessarily trying to make you feel good. | ||
| I'm not necessarily trying to make you believe something. | ||
| I'm trying to make you better at Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| You have to get better. | ||
| You have to be a little bit better every time you leave me. | ||
| I really believe that the more I teach... | ||
| And especially for me, personally, because my dad left when I was 18, so I had all these students at the academy, you know? | ||
| These were all my training partners, so I had to teach these people to be better so that I could have good training. | ||
| Because if I just was there like, oh yeah, just do that, move, yeah, keep going, alright guys, keep going, open training, alright, boom, boom. | ||
| Then I would not have great training partners the way I do now. | ||
| I have great training partners now because I was like, okay, how is this guy going to beat me? | ||
| Don't let me get to this position. | ||
| And I'm like very passionate on letting these guys get better to tell them. | ||
| I tell them, man, dude, the way you're going to beat me is to do like this. | ||
| And I'm making these guys better to try to beat me so that one, they stay motivated and two, so they give me great training because I can train now. | ||
| My academy for a fight. | ||
| I don't need to go to train with these other because I have guys who know exactly what I do and I tell them exactly how to defend it and I'm working that and the better I make them the better they're gonna make me. | ||
| So you were teaching at your dad's academy when you were 18? | ||
| You were basically running the show. | ||
| 15. 15 I started teaching but I wasn't running the academy. | ||
| I wasn't teaching the adult classes. | ||
| At 16 I taught like once a week. | ||
| 17, I started teaching a couple more times a week. | ||
| By 18, I was fully teaching everything and running the whole academy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| So that's what you've been doing essentially for a living. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| So for the past seven years, that's been what you do? | ||
| Well, since I was 18, I've been... | ||
| Since I was 15, I've been... | ||
| All the money I make is from Jiu-Jitsu, so yeah. | ||
| Wow, that's incredible. | ||
| So now, when you teach, how many days a week are you teaching? | ||
| I teach once a day. | ||
| Once a day? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you have daytime classes that someone else teaches? | ||
| Yeah, I teach... | ||
| Once a day, and then some days I teach twice, and then some days I train the afternoon class, and so I kind of scatter it out to where I can get to every, you know, I'll teach two days in the afternoon, and then I'll teach every night, and then, so some days on Tuesdays I teach twice a day, but But yeah, I teach a lot, and I also teach enough to where I don't over-teach and get kind of... | ||
| because I've taught before where I teach every class, and that's draining, you know? | ||
| You give a lot of your energy, you teach, you know, you give, give, give, and then you have nothing for yourself. | ||
| So I've found my kind of remedy of how much I can teach to where I still am feeling good about myself and still have enough to do the things I need to do. | ||
| So I teach, you know, Monday to Thursday nights, and then I teach Tuesday and Friday mornings. | ||
| And then Saturday is open training and so I kind of give myself a time to not have those responsibilities. | ||
| Now, how do you structure a class? | ||
| Do you sit down and write out what your objectives are for each class? | ||
| Do you structure them on the fly, like as you get there? | ||
| Do you have specific things that you want to work on, certain drills that you think that people are lacking? | ||
| Every day is different and it depends a lot on my mood too. | ||
| Some days I want to do a specific training for me. | ||
| So I'll do something that I feel like I need to work on. | ||
| So then I'll teach that move. | ||
| Something I know I'm not the greatest at. | ||
| So I'll teach that move and then try to really research and see how I can make it better. | ||
| I work on that move. | ||
| Sometimes I see what the class needs and what I feel like those people who are in that class, how are they going to get the most out of that class? | ||
| So some days it's like that, some days it's not. | ||
| Some days I come up with stuff on the moment, some days I'm kind of like thinking about something all day. | ||
| Every day is different. | ||
| Basically I never write anything down before. | ||
| I kind of just do everything on the spot. | ||
| Basically my goal when I'm teaching is to make my students better and to make them Gain, you know? | ||
| So how I'm going to do that, I don't know. | ||
| I'm just going to kind of see and feel where it is. | ||
| You know, sometimes I have a lot more beginners. | ||
| I'm not going to teach a fancy or something that took me 20 years to figure out. | ||
| I'm not going to teach it to somebody, beginners. | ||
| So if there's a class and it's mostly beginners, I'm going to teach them mostly beginner stuff. | ||
| If there's a class and these guys want to all train, then we will do all these training. | ||
| So it depends. | ||
| It's an interesting aspect about Jiu Jitsu that most people that have never trained, it's very difficult for them to grasp the depth of technique. | ||
| There's so many different techniques and there's so many different techniques that transition into other techniques. | ||
| For the lay person to kind of understand it, it's almost impossible. | ||
| When you see someone like yourself that has a deep knowledge of it and then teaches and trains and competes, you got to kind of pay attention to it for many, many, many hours before you even see how deep the water is. | ||
| The more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. | ||
| It can always be easier for you. | ||
| If you're training and you're having trouble, if it's difficult for you to beat your opponent, then you're doing something wrong. | ||
| It should be easy. | ||
| You should be able to outsmart your opponent and It should be easy. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu is easy, really. | ||
| So, if you're having a struggle with any kind of training session or anything, then that means you need to improve on something else to make your life easier. | ||
| So, I really don't think that there is ever, like, a cap where you're going to be like, oh, I know everything. | ||
| And it gets to such a small detail. | ||
| And then it gets to, like, the timing of not only being able to know and to do what you do, but do it at the right time. | ||
| So... | ||
| It's very complicated. | ||
| It's so complicated, I've cried so many times trying to figure it out. | ||
| Still to this day, I feel like, fuck, I'm only like maybe even halfway of where I want to be. | ||
| Dennis McKenna, who's this very brilliant guy, had an interesting expression when it came to learning things. | ||
| He said, the brighter the bonfire of enlightenment, the more surface area of ignorance is revealed. | ||
| So the more you know, the more you realize, God, there's so much shit to know. | ||
| Yeah, it's true. | ||
| And it sort of applies to everything. | ||
| But I think one of the unique things about jujitsu and one of the things that I've gotten, not just from myself, but from other people that I've inspired to begin jujitsu and start training jujitsu, is that they say that it makes everything else in their life better. | ||
| That they say that the jujitsu training, the difficulty of it, and the learning about themselves... | ||
| Has helped them in virtually everything they do. | ||
| Yeah, I definitely agree. | ||
| You couldn't give me a billion dollars today to take away the Jiu Jitsu, I know. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| How I feel as a man, how I talk, and how I am, He's 100% because of Jiu Jitsu and that's just something that I'm very grateful to have landed where I landed in the footsteps of following my father's footsteps and it's just a real... | ||
| Jiu Jitsu will for sure save your ass. | ||
| One way or another not necessarily a physical fight, but also being able to deal with yourself know about yourself and and It really improve yourself as a whole because it's very easy to get trapped into like a Daily life schedule and you kind of don't even tap to your potential You don't even tap into discovering yourself and realizing all these feelings I feel alive when I could compete and when I trained for a fight and when I know I got a fight and this is deadline and if you On this day, | ||
| you're going to show up, whether you're going to be ready or not, or whether you're sick or hurt. | ||
| This day, this is going to happen. | ||
| So, to know that that day is going to happen, and to be nervous, and to train for that, and to put so much energy, and wake up early, and drink this special juice, and do this, and eat healthy, and all this stuff. | ||
| That only makes you, you know, more sure of yourself and when the day happens, you know, like, then after. | ||
| So it makes me feel alive. | ||
| All these feelings that you get before you fight or when you're fighting or training for a fight, it makes me feel alive and I love that feeling. | ||
| Now, if you take away competition from my life, I will go crazy. | ||
| I will go crazy. | ||
| I just wouldn't know what to do. | ||
| Days would just seem like repetitive. | ||
| I have no passion. | ||
| I kind of lose my drive. | ||
| I kind of just start going down a dark hole so I think that jujitsu competitions really makes me feel alive and every time before I feel nervous and then after when I win or lose it, it's just you only gain and when you know that you're gonna have a fight you gain because you know that you got to be at your best so you always like how am I gonna get my better and you're never good enough and then it's just so it makes me feel real good. | ||
| One of the things that I feel is missing in today's society is that people can get by really easily. | ||
| All you have to do is show up for work, do your job, go home, eat food, go to sleep. | ||
| You don't have to struggle to acquire that food. | ||
| You don't have to... | ||
| You really go through life or death scenarios on a daily basis. | ||
| For most people, a life or death scenario is incredibly, incredibly rare. | ||
| But those scenarios are sort of replicated inside the gym on a daily basis. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu black belt is mounting you and he's choking the shit out of you. | ||
| Survival is a key thing. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| Like, you know, look, look, if I'm rolling and, you know, John Jacques on top of me and he's got an arm triangle and, you know, I might black out. | ||
| I'm 100% certain he's not going to kill me. | ||
| He'll tap me. | ||
| Even if he chokes me, I'll go to sleep. | ||
| I know that I'm going to survive. | ||
| But you don't feel that at the time. | ||
| When you are getting choked, that is life or death. | ||
| It really truly is. | ||
| You can't fake those feelings that you feel when you're training and you put yourself through all these situations. | ||
| I've been put to sleep many times in training. | ||
| That's a crazy feeling. | ||
| It's a crazy feeling to... | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't want to tap and I'm going to almost get out and I'm going to almost... | |
| And then you just wake up and your motherfuckers are laughing at you. | ||
| That's a feeling that you cannot replace. | ||
| There's no other way that you're going to be able to feel that unless you personally are living in that moment and no matter what, there's nothing more... | ||
| Intense than somebody trying to choke you. | ||
| You know, you're natural. | ||
| So you feel those feelings and how you deal with those feelings are going to really dedicate your life. | ||
| And that's how I kind of am able to read people is how they deal. | ||
| How do they deal when they're under stress? | ||
| How do they deal when they're winning? | ||
| How do they deal when everything's going good? | ||
| Are they the same person when they're losing and when they're winning? | ||
| How do they deal when somebody's out? | ||
| So... | ||
| I've kind of always been really curious to see how people are and how do they react. | ||
| How are you going to react when somebody's beating you? | ||
| How are you going to react when you're winning, when you're stronger? | ||
| Or how are you going to react when somebody's weaker and you're just trying to help? | ||
| So I think it's kind of a great experience. | ||
| Jiu-Jitsu reveals character. | ||
| Oh, I know more about my students than they know about themselves. | ||
| I'll tell them exactly where they... | ||
| I know everything about them because I've trained with them and I know what they feel, how they feel when they're feeling great, how they feel when they're feeling weak, when they... | ||
| When they're winning, I know how to feel if you're a coward, if you have heart, if you have patience, if you have dignity. | ||
| All these things are things that I can feel when I train with you. | ||
| Just give me 5-10 minutes to train with you and I'll know more about you than probably you yourself, unless you're a very experienced person with yourself. | ||
| And that's what I kind of judge my whole basis on, is how I feel. | ||
|
unidentified
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How... | |
| I judge somebody on how they train. | ||
| I don't judge somebody on how they talk to me. | ||
| You know, sometimes I'll get people who they're super nice and they're super, ah, yeah, and super respectful in person and they're just the perfect person, right? | ||
| And then when they train, there's this malice from them. | ||
| And I don't... | ||
| It's weird, you know? | ||
| You're like, whoa, that malice is for real. | ||
| Malice towards other... | ||
| Yeah, towards other people or just not how they were when they were normal. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So... | ||
| When they're able to act, they're able to put this show on for whoever, but when they're training, there's no way you can hide your personality. | ||
| And it goes the other way, too. | ||
| It goes to other people. | ||
| Sometimes people are very cold and rude, and that's not necessarily them. | ||
| They just don't feel necessarily... | ||
| When they train, they're respectful, and they're trying to get better. | ||
| So there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of feel people out, and I just kind of do my judgment on their training. | ||
| I don't really care what people... | ||
| Of course I care, but... | ||
| I don't judge too much on what you say and how you are. | ||
| Of course, I feel it. | ||
| But when I train with you, I'll make my final decision. | ||
| And on that note, that's a beautiful way to describe it. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| I love that statement. | ||
| When I train with you, I'll make my final decision. | ||
| That's so true, man. | ||
| That's so true. | ||
| You learn so much about someone when they train. | ||
| Now, as far as your goals, you've achieved world championship status in jujitsu. | ||
| What are your goals from now? | ||
| My goal now is to focus on MMA and to be the best I can be in MMA. So that's my new mission. | ||
| So you have aspirations to fight in the UFC? Yeah, I mean, right now I think that Japan is the better opportunity for me. | ||
| But, you know, whatever, if it's UFC or, you know, I'd love to fight. | ||
| You know, the UFC has the best fighters and the best organization. | ||
| So, of course, I would like to test myself against those guys. | ||
| So you want to try other organizations first, get your feet wet in MMA, and then eventually jump in? | ||
| I don't know exactly, but all I know is right now I have Japan to negotiate with, and I know that, of course, wherever the best fighters are, that's where I want to be. | ||
| What do you think about guys like Hadra Gracie, for example? | ||
| He's a perfect example of a guy who's a very high-level jiu-jitsu guy who just hasn't really been able to get that much going in MMA. I don't train with him, so I don't really know. | ||
| I know that he's a legend in jiu-jitsu and he's been able to really excel in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But I don't train with him. | ||
| I don't know necessarily how well he... | ||
| What he does or anything. | ||
| So I really hope that he's able to excel in MMA and I really hope that he's able to show what he's about and bring the game to his game. | ||
| And I saw a fight with him with Kennedy, I think it was, and I just felt like he wasn't able to find his place and he wasn't able to find... | ||
| Find himself really in the fight, and I don't know if that's lack of training, lack of advice, lack of knowing what to do. | ||
| I don't know what it is really, and I'm curious to see if that's going to happen with me too. | ||
| I think it's also Tim Kennedy too. | ||
| Tim Kennedy's a stud. | ||
| Tim Kennedy's really good, very good. | ||
| He's an animal. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| He's really a dangerous guy in a lot of ways. | ||
| And there's a lot of stuff. | ||
| Weight cuts and this. | ||
| That's a big part, too. | ||
| So, there's no real... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And I'm not the owner of the truth to be able to tell you what he's doing or why he's not. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He's different than me. | ||
| He's a different size than me. | ||
| He's a huge guy. | ||
| I would love to see him just whoop ass. | ||
| I would love to see him do really well. | ||
| But his jiu-jitsu style is a little different than mine. | ||
| He's bigger. | ||
| He... | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I have to 100% rely on my technique and my leverage and we'll see what happens. | ||
| I'm really curious. | ||
| That's why I'm in this is to see and to prove to the people what I'm about. | ||
| So I hope Harger wins and I hope he does well and I hope he's able to find himself and really be able to be where he's at, which is the number one place. | ||
| That's where he deserves to be. | ||
| Were you there for any of Hoyler's MMA fights? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| He had some disastrous results in MMA against some really high-level guys where it seems like maybe he took some fights that maybe wasn't quite prepared for. | ||
| Do you learn from anything like that when you see him fighting guys? | ||
| He fought Kid Yamamoto, right? | ||
| Genki Sudo and real high-level guys. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I just... | ||
| He's another example, a very technical jiu-jitsu guy, very high level. | ||
| I'm curious, you know, I'm curious to see what I'm going to be about in MMA, really. | ||
| For me to say, sit here and tell you and act like I know what I'm doing and like I know the rules and like I know the truth behind everything is bullshit because I don't. | ||
| And I'm in it just like you're curious to see how I'm going to do, I'm curious to see how I'm going to do too. | ||
| And I hope I do well, and I hope I'm able to do everything that I want to do. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| I don't know if that's going to happen, and that's why I go there and test myself. | ||
| Because if I knew I was going to win, I probably wouldn't even fight. | ||
| Well, that's a beautiful aspect of what you're trying to do. | ||
| The fact that you're embracing a challenge. | ||
| That you are gravitating towards the most difficult thing you could possibly do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I can't wait. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
|
unidentified
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Look at it. | |
| See what you're saying. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| The attitude's beautiful. | ||
| Your thought process behind it, the reason why you're doing it in the first place. | ||
| It's all the right stuff, man. | ||
| All the right stuff. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, listen, man. | ||
| Thank you very much for an awesome conversation. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| I look forward to seeing you compete in whatever you do, whether it's jiu-jitsu or MMA. I love your attitude. | ||
| I love all the things you've said. | ||
| I think you've opened up a lot of people's ideas and a lot of people's minds on How profound your thinking is, and I think it's very inspirational. | ||
| I appreciate it, man. | ||
| I enjoyed it very, very much. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| So, if you are anywhere near Culver City, that's where your academy is? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Give us the address, and do you have a website for the academy? | ||
| Yeah, krongracyjujitsu.com, and my Instagram is realkid. | ||
| Go there, folks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go. | |
| Learn. | ||
| Train. | ||
| Some serious legacy here. | ||
| And hopefully we'll see you in MMA. I would love to call one of your fights in the UFC. That would be an honor. | ||
| Me too, man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| A beautiful podcast is done, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Thank you to our sponsors. | ||
| Thanks to Squarespace. | ||
| Go to squarespace.com. | ||
| And use the code word Joe to save 10% off. | ||
| Go to Onnit.com. | ||
| Use the code word Rogan. | ||
| Save 10% off any and all supplements. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow with David Seaman. | ||
| And we will be back on Thursday with Brian Callen, Steve Ranella, and Doug Duren. | ||
| We're going to talk about a hunting trip in Wisconsin and share some hilarious stories. | ||
| And we've got a lot of good guests coming. | ||
| A lot of good shit. | ||
| So we'll see you guys soon. |
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