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unidentified
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Hello, everybody. | |
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What's happening? | |
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Duke, motherfucking Rufus is here. | ||
Why play games? | ||
Jamie, cue the music. | ||
Let's get this shit started. | ||
unidentified
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The Joe Rogan Experience. | |
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. | ||
My friend, fellow martial artist, former world kickboxing champion, commentator for glory, more accolades on and on and on, trainer of some of the greatest mixed martial artists on the planet earth, Duke Rufus, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
Thanks, Joe. | ||
It's been a pleasure. | ||
We had a great workout today. | ||
We were exchanging some thoughts. | ||
Retro-Rogan, man. | ||
That's our new term, retro-Rogan. | ||
Well, what we're talking about is martial arts techniques that were a part of what you would consider traditional martial arts, like taekwondo or karate, that a lot of these techniques are starting to find their way into MMA. And kickboxing. | ||
And kickboxing. | ||
Raymond Daniels, knockout of the century at Glory 16. Yeah, he threw this... | ||
Raymond Daniels, who was a guy who had a background in karate... | ||
Is that his... | ||
Is he karate or taekwondo? | ||
Kenpo, but... | ||
Kenpo. | ||
Very similar. | ||
unidentified
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Kenpo. | |
Not unlike MMA, open martial arts tournaments, even though you have one style, everyone's got to learn how to do it, so everyone knows how to spin kick and so forth. | ||
That was an incredible kick. | ||
Yeah, he threw a sidekick with his right leg and then in the middle of the air spun and hit the guy with a spinning sidekick in the face with his left leg. | ||
It was just beautiful to watch. | ||
Go look it up on YouTube. | ||
It's incredible. | ||
Yeah, pull it up. | ||
Raymond Daniels. | ||
We might have played it on the podcast because it was so awesome after it happened. | ||
Raymond Daniels KO. It was a wild, wild kick. | ||
And it was a crazy fight before that. | ||
He was in this wild exchange, caught the guy with a punch, hurt him, dropped him, and then finished him off with this wild kick. | ||
Did it in style. | ||
Actually, I mean, you look at some of the... | ||
We were talking MMA kicks. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Oh, that's so crazy. | ||
Now, even some cool stuff. | ||
Some of my favorite spin kicks and kickboxing were Stefan Lecco versus Badr Hari 1 in Amsterdam. | ||
He knocked Badr Hari out with a back kick. | ||
That was June of 2005. Then November or December of 2005, Badr Hari came back and knocked him out with a wheel kick. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And then, I think a year later, Peter Graham knocked out Badr Hari with a rolling thunder kick. | ||
I mean, people don't think of those types of moves in kickboxing, but yeah, people are using them. | ||
High-level guys. | ||
It's one of the things we were talking about today. | ||
If you can do the traditional techniques in kickboxing, leg kicks, knees, all those things, if you're good at all those things, Then you can add those things to your repertoire. | ||
The rolling thunder kicks, the wheel kicks. | ||
So we're starting to see that a little bit more in kickboxing, but a lot more in MMA. And MMA has become a big weapon. | ||
Yeah, I think MMA is just so wide open. | ||
Because there's so many weapons on the battlefield, it's easier to catch people with them because, you don't know, it's a takedown. | ||
Four-ounce gloves changes everything. | ||
The size of the cage, they move around a little more. | ||
It makes it It's a controlled chaos in there, and I enjoy that. | ||
I can kind of get crazy with striking. | ||
Well, the thing is that you're in a really interesting position, too, because people think of the UFC as being an established sport, and it most certainly is. | ||
It's on Fox. | ||
It's on pay-per-view. | ||
You say UFC. Everybody knows what you're talking about. | ||
Pretty much mainstream. | ||
However, it's still in this growth stage. | ||
If you're playing football, there's pretty much everybody plays football like a football player. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You don't see people doing anything like, where the fuck did that come from? | ||
But in MMA, on any given night, you'll see some crazy submission that no one's ever done before. | ||
You'll see someone do some crazy flying kick that no one's ever attempted before. | ||
You see things that you'll see them for the first time ever, like in a match. | ||
And you go, that's the first time. | ||
Like, perfect example, Mitch Clark pulled off a Darce choke from the bottom against Al Iaquinta. | ||
And no one had ever done that before. | ||
unidentified
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No. | |
In the history of the UFC, nobody had ever pulled off a darse, like a guard pass darse, like Jeff Glover hits that move all the time. | ||
Guard pass darse in an MMA fight. | ||
Nobody's ever done it. | ||
No. | ||
From the bottom. | ||
That's what I enjoy about MMA. Like I said, the chaos. | ||
Something new's happening. | ||
I mean, I remember when Alan Belcher, Alan the Talon, as Hanato would call him. | ||
But my man Alan Belcher hit that Superman punch at the UFC 100. And that was kind of the beginning of even our little evolution of doing it. | ||
And then Anthony did it against Bart Palaszewski. | ||
He did a Superman punch in WC. And then, of course, his Showtime kick. | ||
And then against Roller, he actually used the cage to sweep Roller. | ||
I mean, you were at our old gym. | ||
You saw how small it was. | ||
Like, you know, birth of those techniques. | ||
And I told you how it started. | ||
It's a blend of Unbach and the movie, The Lords of Dogtown, the documentary on it, like how they changed skating. | ||
And I just, I don't know, I got in a cloudy little phase where I just, Unbach, run off the cage and all these other techniques. | ||
And here we are. | ||
I actually, I mean... | ||
I'm not BSing when I say Anthony has like another 10 moves he can do off the cage. | ||
It's awesome. | ||
Oh, I believe it. | ||
That was the thing about the Showtime kick was that it was pretty clear after he threw the kick and then after he talked about it, this is not a technique that he just came up with on the fly. | ||
This is something that they had drilled. | ||
Oh yeah, it was so funny. | ||
September before that fight, he did a shoot with the UFC magazine and he was doing the kick off the wall just on the pads and they're all like, stop! | ||
I'm like, what did we do wrong? | ||
We want to get our iPhones out to film this. | ||
They're loving all the cool things he was doing. | ||
And in that camp, he was doing it a lot off the wall with his training partners. | ||
I mean, I love Anthony. | ||
He's my really good friend. | ||
We're close. | ||
He's the godfather of my little daughter, and he's so open-minded. | ||
I'll show him something, and people look at him like, yeah, right. | ||
I remember my really good friend Giuseppe. | ||
I was up at his place. | ||
I was showing the Showtime kick at a seminar, the seminar before. | ||
Everyone's like, there's no way. | ||
And I got so many texts after the fight. | ||
Yeah, you were right. | ||
I love that. | ||
Again, like you were talking about, who would have thought Alan Belcher did what he did against Paul Harris? | ||
He put him in the twister, almost finished him with the twister. | ||
And then, again, we've seen the Korean Zombie catch Leonard Garcia with the twister. | ||
These are all moves that people, oh, this doesn't work. | ||
I think anything works if you train it enough. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Yeah, and the Paul Harris fight was really interesting with Alan Belcher because Paul Harris is known for being this terrifying leg lock master. | ||
Nobody wants to go to the ground with him because you go to the ground with him and he just rips guys' legs apart. | ||
I mean, you saw it in his World Series of Fighting premiere. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
He fought for 30 seconds, got a hold of the guy's leg, rips his ligaments apart. | ||
It's death. | ||
I call him the Mike Tyson of... | ||
Of grappling. | ||
Like, people fear grappling. | ||
And there's not a lot of guys that people are like, I fear, but he has that Mike Tyson-esque approach. | ||
Like, oh man, my leg's going to be toast. | ||
You know, and I remember in the fight, no, Alan! | ||
Oh, yeah, wait, keep doing that! | ||
You're doing great, Alan! | ||
Yeah, when he went to the ground with him and he was engaging him with leg locks, I was like, this is crazy. | ||
He's going to get submitted here. | ||
He's going to get his leg ripped apart. | ||
But Allen had perfect defense. | ||
He was one step ahead the entire way. | ||
You could really see that he had studied Paul Harris' game and just knew how to defend it and just was with him every step of the way and then beat him down. | ||
Oh, no, that was fun. | ||
Again, I love having people do things that people can't or don't think they can do. | ||
I did an interview with Ron Kroc on Inside MMA. Right the week of Anthony's fight with Henderson, they said, so how's the fight going to go down? | ||
He's going to beat him with striking. | ||
I said he's going to beat him any way he wants. | ||
They're like, yeah, right. | ||
I'm telling you, he can submit Ben Henderson. | ||
Who is the closest ever to submitting Ben Henderson? | ||
Before he did. | ||
Anthony. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Exactly. | ||
You almost caught him with a guillotine, right? | ||
He had his back. | ||
Yep. | ||
So the guillotine and he had the rear naked choke. | ||
So, you know, I love instilling that never put limits on yourself. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
You talk about it in your broadcasting. | ||
If you're world-class at one thing, you can decide to be world-class at another thing. | ||
You take that drive you had that got you to be a world-class martial artist in this discipline, go put it in the other one. | ||
Well, I think people forget, too, with Anthony Pettis, who's the current UFC lightweight champion, people forget how good his ground game is because he's so scary standing up. | ||
They think of him as the guy who knocked out Joe Lozon with a head kick, knocked out Donald Cerrone with a liver kick. | ||
They think of him as this devastating kicker, which he most certainly is. | ||
But they forget about his triangle of Shane Roller. | ||
They forget about his wicked ground game that he showed in the first Henderson fight where he took his back. | ||
He had his back for a full round. | ||
I believe him. | ||
I'm going to look him up quick. | ||
He might have more wins by submission than knockout, actually. | ||
That's crazy. | ||
People forget, for whatever reason, they don't think of his ground game as like... | ||
The same level as they think of his striking game. | ||
And it's because his striking game is so scary because everybody's afraid of getting knocked out. | ||
And his striking game is very unique in its effectiveness. | ||
Well, what I love about a lot of the guys that train, all the guys and gals that train, they're very open-minded. | ||
They want to get better all the time. | ||
Anthony's had a little downtime. | ||
He couldn't kick, so he's becoming a master boxer. | ||
They see it up there. | ||
15 submissions. | ||
65% by submission. | ||
Yep, there you go. | ||
That's crazy. | ||
I love the change. | ||
Again, everyone's worried about the knockout, but he wants to go to the mat. | ||
Yeah, he can do it all. | ||
That kid can do it all. | ||
It's got to be nice for you, too. | ||
Having trained that guy from the jump and to see him flourish and become the WEC champion and then the UFC champion in such a spectacular way, that's got to be beautiful. | ||
Yeah, I mean, I started crying slightly in Milwaukee, in the Octagon. | ||
Tears of joy. | ||
I mean, if anyone deserved it, he did. | ||
He's got a great attitude. | ||
He's a cool kid. | ||
I always say he's the coolest, famous guy I know. | ||
I mean, wherever else we go. | ||
Everyone knows him as the guy who jumped off the cage. | ||
He's showtime, but to me, he's just Anthony, this really cool kid. | ||
When he's at our academy, he's just mellow and he's in his element. | ||
He's a very humble guy, but that's what makes him great. | ||
We might go to Thailand and do some cross training with Sanchai. | ||
I want to talk to Nick Holtzkin from Glory. | ||
Anthony's hungry to train with everyone. | ||
One of his best friends from Milwaukee is on the money team. | ||
One of the top boxers. | ||
He's 8-0 for Floyd Mayweather, so while he's in Vegas doing the Ultimate Fighter, he's going to be training with the money team, too. | ||
I mean, this is the type of guy, he wants to be a master martial artist, so he's trying to train with the best glory guys, best Muay Thai. | ||
Boxers, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, you name it, he'll do it. | ||
Yeah, and that's what we were talking about before. | ||
This sport is really evolving and growing and developing. | ||
And, you know, in a lot of ways, he represents a new element. | ||
He represents, like, the Taekwondo stylist who got really good at everything else and now has that weapon above everybody else. | ||
Everybody can Muay Thai, everybody can do jiu-jitsu, everybody can wrestle. | ||
But not everybody can throw kicks like him on top of all those things. | ||
And he's one of the few guys that's known, like very Crow Cop-like in a way, you know, known for just devastating kicks. | ||
That's a big weapon to have. | ||
What I love about kicks, they're very unpredictable strikes, and when they hit you and they didn't land, they still hurt you. | ||
Yeah, they hit your arms. | ||
Yeah, and you're like, what was that? | ||
I love that look on the fighter's face when he kicks them. | ||
It's like, the look in their face is like, what? | ||
Wait a minute, I'm not supposed to feel like that. | ||
Yeah, dude, you were demonstrating shit on me today, just lightly touching me and demonstrating shit. | ||
There's kicks to my forearm, just popping the shin into my forearm. | ||
It's like, ugh! | ||
Your arm starts going numb and you're barely hitting me. | ||
Barely hitting my leg. | ||
Just thumping it. | ||
Just a little bit of that. | ||
And it's like, man. | ||
You can't even imagine. | ||
For the average person, they really have no idea what it would feel like if a guy like Pettis or a guy like you leg kicked him. | ||
They have no fucking idea how hard that would be. | ||
Well, even let's think about Anderson shattering his leg and Tyrone Spung. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Like, when I was at the Glory fight where Tyrone Spung, I knew right away. | ||
I'm like, the fight's over. | ||
You could hear... | ||
It was like being at a baseball game and you heard the crack of a bat, you know? | ||
Oh, you heard the shins? | ||
Yeah, I heard it right away. | ||
It was a very ugly sound. | ||
And, you know, that's a one... | ||
I'll explain combat sports. | ||
I always get people one's better than the other. | ||
They're all freaking crazy. | ||
I think it's crazy to have to do eight jiu-jitsu matches in a day to win the world. | ||
Some jiu-jitsu. | ||
I think it's crazy to have to do 10-minute rounds in Abu Dhabi and how many... | ||
Studs. | ||
I mean, it's crazy to win an NCAA championship, how many matches over how many days. | ||
It's crazy to box 12 rounds and get punched in the dome for 12 rounds. | ||
It's crazy to get elbowed and clinched in Thailand. | ||
It's crazy to win a glory tournament. | ||
It's crazy to do MMA. They're all tough in their own right. | ||
I respect each one of them, but when it comes to striking, I think the most brutal thing you'll ever do, striking-wise, is an eight-man tournament. | ||
Which happened in Glory this weekend. | ||
Because you've got to beat three dudes in one night. | ||
So you've got to, like, imagine you kicked me really hard. | ||
My arm's jacked. | ||
Well, I won, but my right arm doesn't work. | ||
Wait a minute, you kicked my left leg. | ||
My hand's broken. | ||
I mean, I've never been able to win, beat three guys in a night. | ||
I've tried, and it's tough. | ||
I'm better at single fights, but these guys who go out there and can beat three guys in one night and find the nuts to do it, I don't know how they do it still. | ||
I only fought kickboxing three times, and it was all in one night. | ||
I fought in a tournament like that. | ||
Oh, wow. | ||
I won the first fight, won the second fight, and then I lost in the finals. | ||
You're so beat up by the time you get to the finals. | ||
Your body is just done. | ||
It's like fighting with the flu. | ||
It's like fighting. | ||
There's nothing left. | ||
You're a shadow of yourself. | ||
And plus, you have time to cool off. | ||
Yeah. | ||
It's getting that adrenaline kicked in again. | ||
It's like... | ||
I remember 2001, I fought in Vegas. | ||
I knocked out Tumas Kucershiewski right away. | ||
I felt great. | ||
Like, woo! | ||
Celebrate. | ||
Oh, shit. | ||
Hey, asshole, you've got to fight again. | ||
So I've got to go get up, fight Mike McDonald, and your body cools down. | ||
You've got to be able to control. | ||
I mean, I love fighting. | ||
And I knocked the guy out, so you get so high. | ||
There's no better feeling than finishing someone in a fight. | ||
So you're like, oh, wait. | ||
Tone down, dude. | ||
You've got two more fights to win. | ||
It's a special thing. | ||
I think that is the wildest feat. | ||
Another crazy sport to me is Kyokushin karate. | ||
I was at an All Japan Karate Championship and I've never seen... | ||
Those guys are the most insane people. | ||
They just sit there and... | ||
You kick me, I kick you. | ||
You punch me with bare knuckle until one of us falls down and we'll fight 16 guys in a day. | ||
Don't I think that's a really inefficient way to fight, though? | ||
I don't understand it. | ||
They're not punching to the face. | ||
They're punching to the body. | ||
They're standing right in front of each other. | ||
I just think... | ||
Not all of them. | ||
There's the great ones like Andy Hoog, Michael Thompson, who were more effective. | ||
They move around. | ||
That's actually GSP's core discipline. | ||
There are guys who really get into the budo. | ||
I'm not into it. | ||
I think it's more dangerous than Muay Thai. | ||
I love Muay Thai, but the style I've always related to is the evasive fighters who hit and don't get hit. | ||
That's my rule. | ||
I'd like to hit you a lot, and please never hit me. | ||
Well, I think we're seeing that more reinforced and appreciated more in MMA. There was a period of time that was disturbing to me where guys were just banging. | ||
I remember I read some guy's Twitter account, who's a really nice guy, and I read something. | ||
He wrote something about... | ||
Like, fuck technical striking, you know, I think what you do is you get out to, if you're a man, you stand in the center of the cage and you bang. | ||
You meet each other in the center of the cage and bang, and let the chips fall where they may. | ||
And I'm like, that is the craziest, that's so, I can't even tell you how dumb that is. | ||
That's like saying fuck steering when you're on a race car track. | ||
Fuck steering. | ||
You just fucking hit that gas. | ||
Whoever gets to the finish line gets to the finish line. | ||
That's so ridiculous. | ||
You have to be technical. | ||
Otherwise, you're not doing it your best. | ||
What you're doing is you're handicapping yourself for machismo? | ||
For bravado? | ||
Why would you stand in front of a guy and trade blows with him? | ||
That's ridiculous. | ||
There is a chronic problem, I'd say, right now in MMA. There's a lot of fighters who have had some cerebral issues. | ||
I think Martin Kampman's taking some time off. | ||
I can't say a few other fighters I know of that I've heard and I'm not sure if it's public. | ||
They've taken time off from taking too many blows. | ||
I thought martial arts is about self-defense. | ||
If we really get to the root of martial arts, it's learn not to get your ass kicked. | ||
I think the defense is everything. | ||
The greatest fighters in every discipline have all had defense. | ||
I think whether it's grappling, whether great wrestlers don't get taken down, great jiu-jitsu guys don't get submitted, great kickboxers don't get knocked out, Mayweather doesn't get hit. | ||
Like you're saying, It's easy to get... | ||
I went through a stage in my career where, yeah man, I'm going to go out there and put on a show and I'm just going to bleed for the crowd. | ||
Well, you know what? | ||
When you're done bleeding, you put the show on, it doesn't help your career. | ||
I'm not saying fight boring, but I'm just purposely going out there and... | ||
Making it exciting. | ||
Yeah, making it over-exciting. | ||
I mean, you can be exciting and not get hit. | ||
I mean, that's what I try and teach my guys. | ||
You know, if you're getting hit, you're losing. | ||
Well, it is an art form, and it sounds crazy to call martial... | ||
I mean, the term martial arts... | ||
It seems to a lot of people to be an inaccurate term or a term that doesn't seem to make sense because it's fighting. | ||
But the artistic aspect of it is the performance. | ||
If you see Anderson Silva fight when he fought Stefan Bonner, that was a beautiful artistic performance. | ||
It was art because he's creating on the spot. | ||
He's got this series of moves that his body knows how to do. | ||
His techniques he knows how to utilize. | ||
But it's all about... | ||
Putting them together against an unwilling opponent in the middle of a competition in the middle of a cage where you're on broadcasting in front of fucking millions of people worldwide and to pull it all off in this incredibly perfect way. | ||
It's a work of art. | ||
Definitely. | ||
It's beautiful. | ||
You go and watch it over and over again. | ||
You can see it on TV. You'll see the highlights. | ||
And it's just like watching a dance. | ||
Not even a dance. | ||
Dance is not that impressive. | ||
No. | ||
Film, music, comedy. | ||
It is art because it's an expression of your soul. | ||
I do really stress the art part. | ||
I want my athletes to express who they are. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's what they're doing. | ||
The canvas of the octagon or the ring is their literal canvas, too. | ||
I mean, you get a chance to put to film in front of the world what you are, who you are. | ||
Because the way you fight represents your personality. | ||
Yeah, and if you see those moments where a guy's hitting someone and can't be hit back, like the famous video of Anderson fighting Forrest Griffin, where he's bobbing and weaving in front of him. | ||
Forrest is hitting the air and then Anderson cracks him. | ||
They're both fighting at two different speeds, two different frequencies. | ||
Anderson's just in this complete different level. | ||
That's art. | ||
It's beautiful to watch. | ||
That's reminiscent. | ||
I watch a lot of old boxing. | ||
I love Sugar Ray Robinson films. | ||
Obviously reminiscent of the great Ali. | ||
I mean, he could do things that other people couldn't do. | ||
That's what makes fighters special. | ||
You know, any fighter can sit there and get beat up. | ||
But I think that's why we talk about people like Silva, Ali, you know, and now, like I said, there's guys coming up in glory that are special. | ||
I mean, even... | ||
My favorite fighter, some of you guys might not know, look up a guy named Samat Payakarun. | ||
He's from Sit Yutong camp. | ||
He's one of my Muay Thai idols, but he's a WBC boxing champion. | ||
He dodged 13 punches, and he... | ||
Knocked a guy out with one punch. | ||
It's S-A-M-A-R-T. And look up 13 punches. | ||
I trained in Thailand. | ||
This is why Rob Common was friends with him. | ||
But if we bring this video up, it is badass boxing. | ||
He used to be a Muay Thai champ. | ||
He's probably one of the best ever in Muay Thai. | ||
Why? | ||
He didn't get hit. | ||
But again, that style. | ||
He was able to dodge, move, evade, hit people, not get hit. | ||
And that's what makes striking fun. | ||
Yeah, here he is right here. | ||
Yeah, watch this, gang. | ||
Look at this. | ||
This is my idol. | ||
If anyone wants to know who I love, I went to train in Thailand at his gym because of him. | ||
That's amazing. | ||
That is beautiful. | ||
Bang! | ||
And the fight's over. | ||
Yeah, that style. | ||
That's incredible. | ||
That's actually one of Anthony's idols too, and a couple of my guys really... | ||
I have a vault. | ||
I mean, back in the day, I didn't have TV. I didn't have an antenna, so all I did was watch VHS tapes. | ||
I lived at my gym, so I watched, fight, Thai fights, Dutch fights, Japanese. | ||
Like, you know how a good musician... | ||
Or any other artist lives with their craft. | ||
That's how I mastered my craft. | ||
I watched fight after fight after fight after fight. | ||
That fight is a perfect example. | ||
That was art. | ||
Yeah, I mean, I can find so many different fights like that. | ||
That's what I do. | ||
I send a lot of videos to all my guys. | ||
I expose them to... | ||
One of my favorite compliments is when Alan Belcher fought... | ||
Patrick Cote, everyone goes, yeah, man, he looks like Yod-Senklai Fairtex. | ||
Well, as a matter of fact, he studied Yod-Senklai to a T. I'll take a fighter and have my athletes study that for that particular game plan. | ||
And I'll see, you're going to do this, use this technique. | ||
You know, a technique that Anthony and Serge have been doing is the handstand kick. | ||
Sanchais or Kingstar from Thailand. | ||
They're trying to land that. | ||
They're having a race. | ||
The handstand kick? | ||
Yeah, the cartwheel. | ||
The handstand. | ||
Yeah, it's a cool move from Moybaran, the old school. | ||
But Sanchais, S-A-E-N-C-H-A-I. He's a badass. | ||
He's from the Jockey Gym. | ||
Here's a good question. | ||
If you're doing a cartwheel kick, say if you've got one hand down and you're throwing a kick... | ||
Are you downed? | ||
Is that a downed opponent? | ||
They let you get away with it in Muay Thai, but I believe technically it is. | ||
So you're not supposed to be able to kick a guy in the face when you're down. | ||
No, you're right. | ||
Ah, here we go. | ||
Yeah, look familiar, guys. | ||
But what I'm saying is, say if he's throwing that kick, the guy who he's kicking can't kick him in the face when his hand is touching the ground. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Right? | ||
Technically, I believe so. | ||
But that's what you would want to do. | ||
You'd want to step in and kick him in the face when his hand's touching the ground. | ||
But he's on one limb. | ||
I think there, if you do that, that should... | ||
I hate in MMA when guys play the game, you know? | ||
Touched. | ||
I'm down. | ||
I'm not down. | ||
unidentified
|
I'm down. | |
Let's explain that for folks who don't know. | ||
You're not allowed to knee a downed opponent. | ||
What a downed opponent means is you can knee a guy in the face when he's standing up, but once a guy's on the ground, if he has a knee on the ground and one hand, as long as it's anything other than your feet on the ground. | ||
You can have one knee on the ground. | ||
And you're okay, right? | ||
You can knee a guy in the face with one knee on the ground, but as soon as his hand touches, it's three points, right? | ||
Yes. | ||
That's what it is. | ||
So you'll see guys standing up, and they'll reach down and just touch the ground just to keep from getting kneed in the face. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Can you knee a guy in the face if he's got one knee and one leg? | ||
No. | ||
No. | ||
The knee has to be up. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
Yeah. | ||
The feet have to be up. | ||
You have to be on his feet only. | ||
Like, if you get down to one knee, no hands, but one knee, you can't knee a guy in the face. | ||
Yeah, there's some weird rules, man. | ||
Well, the 12-6 elbow, like you said, is stupid. | ||
Because we could see some killer techniques. | ||
That's where we'd see even more Muay Thai elbows. | ||
Because then I would have my guys climb the old school Muay Thai and drop the double elbows. | ||
Climb the cage? | ||
Oh yeah, definitely. | ||
For sure. | ||
I mean, I'm all about it. | ||
I love those techniques. | ||
Well, that technique is really one of the most ridiculous rules ever. | ||
And the reason why it's in, for folks who don't know, the 12 to 6, meaning an elbow that comes from the 12 o'clock down to 6 o'clock, The reason why it's outlawed is because when they tried to get mixed martial arts passed, they brought it to the athletic commissions and they said, well, you can't have that one technique because I saw it on ESPN. There was a guy breaking bricks with it. | ||
There's no way you can allow people to do that because they could kill somebody. | ||
And so they went, alright, as if this is anything more powerful than this, which is probably more powerful. | ||
I think when you're on the ground, the downward elbow is the most vicious strike. | ||
It's beautiful. | ||
I think that, like, That's another thing. | ||
When Allen beat Paula Harris in the fight before that, he beat McDonald on the mat. | ||
We've really been working our ground and pound on our team because it's another place to beat someone up. | ||
It's also so ridiculous. | ||
You're not allowed to do a 12-6 elbow to the thigh. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's so crazy. | ||
If a guy's in your guard, you can't do a 12-6 elbow to his thigh. | ||
If it were me, I'd love to have soccer kicks. | ||
Well, do you think that soccer kicks, though, they had them in Pride, and I liked it, I liked it, but what I don't think, I think in Pride, you're in a ring, and your head could slip under the ropes, you can get away from stuff. | ||
In the UFC, the cage would, like, you'd be mashed up if someone soccer kicked your head. | ||
You're right, you're right, yeah. | ||
I forgot about the head. | ||
The problem is you can't move. | ||
It was an open space. | ||
Say if every fight took place in a basketball-sized arena, like a basketball court, where there's plenty of room to move around, but there's no cage. | ||
That would be really interesting. | ||
It would be really interesting if people fought like that because then takedowns would be completely different. | ||
Getting back up would be much harder because getting back up against the cage now has gotten to a real art form. | ||
Guys have figured out how to press their back up against the cage and use it to stand back up and post up. | ||
Once they get that underhook and they get one hand down, they're popping up like crazy. | ||
No, it's crazy. | ||
The guys are getting way better at wrestling, way better at jujitsu, faster. | ||
Again, I think it's technology. | ||
There's so much knowledge out there. | ||
There's so much. | ||
I mean, when I was trying to learn Muay Thai, besides going to Thailand, watching videos, it was such a slow process. | ||
I remember my friends when they first, like it was a big deal to have a blue belt around in jiu-jitsu. | ||
And now, you know, there's black belts everywhere. | ||
And the knowledge is everywhere. | ||
Guys like Eddie Bravo, he has this site where he's sending out info and you can check out techniques. | ||
And there's so much going on with that. | ||
And just YouTube and everything else. | ||
It's on TV, too. | ||
How do kids learn how to play basketball in America? | ||
On the playground. | ||
How do they learn how to play on the playground? | ||
They watch TV. People are doing this stuff everywhere, whether they're in an organized school or just friends in their garage training. | ||
It's happening. | ||
Well, there's so much information now. | ||
Whereas when I was a kid, you would buy a book on a martial art or, you know, it was very rare that you would get a really good VHS tape on martial arts back then. | ||
Because when I was a kid, I was training in the 80s. | ||
I don't think there were any instructional martial arts tapes that I was aware of. | ||
You had to go to a school. | ||
You had to go to a school and learn from somebody, and then occasionally you would get fight videos. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And then you would watch, you know, try to emulate, like, Benny the Jet, you know, like, try to be like Benny the Jet or Kiedez, or, you know, or one of those guys that was fighting back then that was, like, really, really good. | ||
My first instructional tapes I had, because I still watch everything. | ||
I'm a student of the game, was a guy by the name of Putpednoy. | ||
His name's the Goldenlegger. | ||
Five-time Rajatam Nern champion who lived in France. | ||
That was my first Muay Thai instructional. | ||
And I luckily got a chance to go train at his gym in Paris. | ||
And then the other one was, I don't know if you remember, the Chakariki gym. | ||
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
Tom Haring. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And, you know, young Peter Arts is in there. | ||
Bronco Siketic and Gilbert Valentini. | ||
So those are like my first kind of core, you know, because 20 years ago this year I went to Thailand. | ||
You want to hear irony though? | ||
A friend of mine, his name is Ramba. | ||
He fights MMA. He's one of the top 115ers in the world. | ||
But he's Thai. | ||
Look up Ramba on R-A-M-B-A. Ramba Muay Thai. | ||
He's a crazy dancer. | ||
The first fight I ever went to, when I got to Thailand, I took my bags right to the hotel and I walked into Lumpini. | ||
I walked in and he's one of the main fights that night. | ||
Irony is he fights MMA now. | ||
It's just, I don't know, it's one of those weird destinies. | ||
The first fight card I see in Thailand is Rambach. | ||
And now he's fighting in MMA. Yeah, yeah. | ||
Where is he fighting? | ||
He lives in Japan. | ||
I think he fought Ulysses Gomez at Tachi. | ||
Ulysses? | ||
Yeah, he fought... | ||
Sorry, I was going to call him his UG name. | ||
UG, useless, what's up? | ||
Underground. | ||
I'm on there. | ||
I'm on there, too. | ||
I know, I know. | ||
I see you on there. | ||
Yeah, man, I know. | ||
It's been a little shady on there lately. | ||
There's a lot of douchebags on there. | ||
Yeah, guys, let's not turn into that other thing. | ||
Well, you know what it is, man? | ||
If it's on the internet and anybody can sign up, anybody can sign up. | ||
And if anybody can sign up, you're just going to get a lot of shitheads. | ||
If people are anonymous, it's almost impossible to keep any forum completely clear of shitheads unless you just start banning people. | ||
And then you worry about censorship and why are people banning people? | ||
Well, I'm lucky. | ||
Everyone's really nice to me. | ||
It's cool. | ||
It's been a good time. | ||
Want to bring up that video? | ||
unidentified
|
Which one exactly was it? | |
There's a couple of them. | ||
Maybe a highlight of them. | ||
It's Rambaugh Highlight. | ||
Dude, he has his own little crazy style. | ||
He does the worm. | ||
He does the running man after his fights. | ||
He's a really fun, entertaining guy. | ||
Rambaugh, his name literally means crazy dancer. | ||
Now what do you think about, there's a thing going on right now where people are talking about, this is him? | ||
Yep. | ||
When people are talking about this past UFC, which I thought was great, I loved the Mighty Mouse fight, I loved watching that guy perform, but that a lot of folks don't care to watch 125-pound fighters, and they're saying, you know, there's a rumor on the underground, again, who knows if it's substantiated, | ||
but that the pay-per-view buys were some of the lowest ever for the UFC. That it was somewhere around 100,000 pay-per-view buys, which is really, really low for the UFC. Do you think that's what it is, that Americans just do not want to see these little tiny guys? | ||
I just think the timing was bad this time around. | ||
It was a few weeks coming off another big fight. | ||
I think they should just drop a couple of the pay-per-views per year. | ||
I'm no expert, but... | ||
I like it when there's kind of a build-up, make the pay-per-view the big bomber, and then we got all of our good free fights. | ||
It's kind of like back in the day, remember Tuesday night fights on USA? You got some Friday night fights, you got some HBO, and now we're going to have a big pay-per-view fight. | ||
Build it up. | ||
Just don't have pay-per-view fights, just have pay-per-view fights. | ||
Yeah, it definitely seems like there's a lot of fights going on. | ||
On one hand, it's great. | ||
As a fight fan, like on the 28th, we were talking about this. | ||
There's two fight cards playing at the same time, or the same day. | ||
One from New Zealand, and then hours later, one from Texas. | ||
Jeremy Stevens is going to fight Cub Swanson. | ||
Great fucking fight. | ||
Sick fight. | ||
What a crazy fight that is. | ||
Cub Stevens is so fucking creative. | ||
You're talking about a creative guy in there. | ||
Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of Cobb. | ||
I really like what he's doing with his striking. | ||
Not only is he doing base kickboxing, he's got some spins, and he's honing his boxing as well. | ||
He's really... | ||
And I think that's like a big thing that a lot of people don't do. | ||
Because I think it's one of the hardest things to do. | ||
I was talking to Rico Verhoeven who was fighting Saturday. | ||
He went and trained with this guy Tyson Fury. | ||
And he said the first couple times he went, I mean, he just got lit up like a Christmas tree. | ||
Because boxers, that's all they do. | ||
That's like if you go watch someone roll with Marcelo Garcia and you're an MMA fighter, you're going to get crushed. | ||
Because that's all Marcelo does. | ||
But I think... | ||
That's always a cool thing. | ||
I love watching people humble themselves to get better, and that's how you get better. | ||
Cubs working with a world-class champion level boxer, and it's showing. | ||
Well, that's a real problem with a lot of fighters, especially if they come from a kickboxing background. | ||
They don't want to get tapped, so they don't want to do jiu-jitsu, and they never learn. | ||
There's certain guys that never got good on the ground. | ||
They've been doing MMA for 10, 15 years, and they're still a goddamn blue belt. | ||
I mean, they just never got good on the ground. | ||
They never became lethal on the ground. | ||
And conversely, there's certain guys who are grapplers that just suck at stand-up. | ||
They always suck at stand-up. | ||
Their whole game is predicated on getting a hold of you and turning it into a grappling match. | ||
But if it's stuck standing up, they're helpless. | ||
Yeah, I've always looked at any fighting, even if you're kickboxing, you got to know how to do every skill. | ||
I know some guys who don't want to train clinch at all. | ||
Well, I don't clinch. | ||
Well, learn it so you don't get beat by it. | ||
I know a lot of guys who, you know, knees are stupid. | ||
Well, you got to learn. | ||
What are you going to do when someone actually- Who the hell says knees are stupid? | ||
No comment. | ||
Anybody who sees Knees Are Stupid needs to watch Travis Brown vs. | ||
Alistair Overeem. | ||
I know Travis Brown survived that, but Jesus fucking Christ did Alistair take it to him. | ||
Those knees to the body. | ||
Bogdan Stoic, if you want to watch some cool knees, he's fighting Saturday in the Glory Tournament. | ||
He did this knee where he flew out of the ring. | ||
There's a highlight. | ||
If you bring up Bogdan, B-O-G-D-A-N, Stoic, S-T-O-I-C-I-C, I believe. | ||
But he's sick, dude. | ||
He comes out with flying. | ||
He flew out of the ring. | ||
Yeah, he went over the corner post. | ||
He missed the knee. | ||
And he got back up and whooped the guy's ass. | ||
Wow. | ||
Yeah, but he's going to be fun. | ||
He's fighting Wayne Baird, who kind of has a wild style. | ||
Oh, Wayne Baird's wild. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Tough guy. | ||
I think the, yeah, here it is. | ||
Check this. | ||
Look at this. | ||
Nice knee. | ||
Look at that. | ||
He's fighting Saturday. | ||
You know, just look at this. | ||
Pow. | ||
That's the new age of what's going on with Glory. | ||
You know, a little bit different. | ||
Here we go. | ||
unidentified
|
Wow! | |
That's so crazy. | ||
The dude went completely over the top. | ||
That is madness. | ||
Oh, I know. | ||
I know. | ||
And he was just laughing about it today when I was hanging out with him. | ||
I think he's okay. | ||
He could have broke a leg there. | ||
Well, there's a wild fight in Thailand we'll bring up in a second. | ||
There, he knocked him out. | ||
Look up D-E-N space Mung Surin M-U-A-N-G S-U-R-I-N verse Rainbow. | ||
Boy, these ties have some crazy-ass fucking names. | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
In the golden era of Muay Thai, you used to be able to grab the leg and run them across the ring. | ||
You can't do it anymore because too many injuries happen. | ||
And I'll show you the fight, why they can't. | ||
The cool thing in the cage, you can still do it. | ||
But if this clip comes up... | ||
unidentified
|
Can you spell that one more time? | |
Den, D-E-N, space, mungsurin, M-U-A-N-G-S-U-R-I-N, verse, rainbow, the word rainbow. | ||
And you could run across the ring. | ||
It's called the plow. | ||
Now you can only take a step and a half. | ||
This fight, you'll see why the guy actually broke his back. | ||
Oh, no. | ||
Yeah, this is insane. | ||
Yeah, here we go. | ||
So, Den is in the blue. | ||
Rainbow Simpantale. | ||
Do you know Greg Nelson from the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy? | ||
He actually used to train with Simpantale's camp. | ||
So yeah, Greg's an old friend of mine. | ||
Really good martial artist. | ||
So yeah, he trained with Simpantale. | ||
Then Monks Rin actually scrapped with Danny Bill and Ramon Decker back in the day. | ||
So he's A-class too. | ||
So wow, watching high-level ties. | ||
Yeah, this is A-class. | ||
That's Lumpeneath. | ||
I miss the old stadium. | ||
I was there in the 90s, man. | ||
So many good fights I got to see. | ||
I'm blessed. | ||
But... | ||
How long did you go to Thailand for? | ||
I've been there like, I'd go three months at a time. | ||
The best thing I ever did, honestly, is I was able to bring some of the Thai guys to come live with me. | ||
I used to have four guys from Thailand living with me. | ||
And it was awesome because I was able to plug in and extract all that information. | ||
It was fun. | ||
Might have to fast forward a little until you see the end. | ||
These guys are going off though. | ||
This is beautiful to watch. | ||
Yeah, really good technique. | ||
Actually, Den also did some boxing for the Thai amateur team too. | ||
Actually, the logo you see on the right is Song Chai. | ||
If you're on YouTube, go to Song Chai's channel. | ||
It's a killer. | ||
That was the biggest promoter in Thailand. | ||
He used to promote boxing, Muay Thai. | ||
He's the one who promoted Decker, our friend Rob Common. | ||
Just, uh, yeah, here we go. | ||
Here, watch this. | ||
Duck. | ||
unidentified
|
Pow! | |
Oh my god. | ||
But check it out. | ||
In Thailand, they bet so much. | ||
Den Munk Sarin celebrating. | ||
He won. | ||
He won because he fell out of the ring. | ||
See? | ||
Look at that. | ||
They're jumping for joy. | ||
They won the bet. | ||
So that's when they switch the rules a little bit in Thailand. | ||
That guy got fucked up. | ||
He broke his back? | ||
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
Check this out. | ||
See how he picks it up? | ||
Plow. | ||
Jump. | ||
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
He got fucked up, though. | ||
The guy who was doing the plow got fucked up, which is crazy that it became illegal because the guy who he plowed didn't even get hurt. | ||
There was a few other incidents where they'd hit the ropes and bolts would flip. | ||
That's the thing. | ||
I miss those days, those rules. | ||
Actually, the fights from what they call the golden era before 99, 2000, there was a better style of fighting. | ||
Something happened. | ||
The betting changed too many stadiums. | ||
Everyone got into doing Premier League betting on that instead of going to the stadium. | ||
It's Premier League. | ||
Soccer. | ||
They like soccer more. | ||
It really hurt the economy of Muay Thai. | ||
Really? | ||
The economy went down and they couldn't pay the athletes as much as well. | ||
Well, now when that guy fell out of the ring like that, what happened? | ||
He shattered his back when he hit the ground? | ||
He came back to fighting though. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah, he healed up and he returned. | ||
Oh, so he just broke a bone? | ||
Yeah, broke a bone. | ||
Yeah, probably a back, rib backbone. | ||
Fuck. | ||
Yeah, crazy, right? | ||
But it's crazy that that is the one that made it illegal because the guy who's executing the technique is the one who got hurt. | ||
Yeah, old school. | ||
But the nice thing in UFC, we get to see the cage. | ||
Well, the cage is much better because it stops guys from going out. | ||
That was an issue in Pride as well. | ||
Guys would fall through the ropes. | ||
Guys would get caught up in the ropes and techniques. | ||
They couldn't defend themselves. | ||
Ropes are problematic. | ||
You know what show I used to like? | ||
There was a ring, I think it was Storm Samurai, I think, or Fury Fighting from Brazil, the BTT versus the Shootbox guys. | ||
Is that when they had the net underneath the bottom rope to keep guys from going out? | ||
Yeah, those were insane. | ||
If you're just into, you want some bloodlust and the soccer kicks and stomps. | ||
Did you ever see Chuck Liddell versus Pele? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, that was back before Chuck fought in the UFC. He fought Pele in the real Valley Tudo days where there was no rules. | ||
No gloves, no rules, no nothing. | ||
They were beating the fucking shit out of each other. | ||
And Pele was trapped in the net. | ||
Like he was underneath the bottom rope, like stuck in the net. | ||
Chuck's beating on him. | ||
Madness. | ||
Speaking of old school, I was in Cincinnati at the UFC. I made Sean Shelby and Joe Silva laugh. | ||
Waleed Ishmael walked by. | ||
And I seriously had to go, you know what, guys? | ||
That guy scares me. | ||
Luckily, I know him because our team's part of the Carlson Gracie team. | ||
He's nice to me, but that's one of the most ferocious dudes I've ever seen. | ||
Choked Hoyce Gracie unconscious on the beach in Rio. | ||
They were telling me a story, some of the Carlson Gracie guys, how down he is for Carlson Gracie, the team. | ||
He was at a tournament in Brazil. | ||
He won. | ||
He got his elbow popped. | ||
And... | ||
The loot delivery guys stormed the tournament, and they all challenge him, and Waleed jumped up. | ||
Of course, he's going to lead the charge. | ||
Waleed goes, I'll take on every one of you MFers, but he couldn't straighten his arm, so his finger's pointing that way. | ||
His arm is just dangling there, and he's still ready to go. | ||
What a tough SOB is, you know? | ||
Yeah, he was tough as shit. | ||
Remember those recordings of him when he was mad at Hyen? | ||
He was telling the story about Hyen Gracie. | ||
Somebody had a great video that they had online. | ||
It was on the underground of him explaining the thing. | ||
You know, he had the thing. | ||
He's cock. | ||
He's coward. | ||
He's chicken. | ||
And he's doing it with his accent, describing high end. | ||
It's a character. | ||
No, I mean, luckily, we both got to know Carlson Sr. I was there at the end with Stephan. | ||
You trained with him. | ||
I mean, that branch of the Gracie family, man. | ||
Real deal. | ||
I mean, not that anyone else isn't. | ||
I'm just saying what they did to MMA. Yeah, incredible. | ||
I mean, Vitor Belfort, Mario Sperry, Marilo Bustamante, the Nogueras. | ||
Think about all the different people that came out of that Carlson Mason team. | ||
Andre Penares. | ||
Stefan Bonner. | ||
Stefan Bonner. | ||
Miguel. | ||
Yeah, Penares, who went on to be Novo Oñal. | ||
And Novo Oñal is the biggest, for all the lightweight guys in Brazil, that's the biggest, toughest team. | ||
And as well, our friend Fabio Prado, who's with... | ||
And our coach, Daniel Vanderlei, too, who lived with Carlson in Chicago. | ||
It's part of the Rufus Sport team. | ||
It's just cool. | ||
Actually, Carlson Jr. has been coming up and helping out. | ||
It's fun to see him. | ||
He's a great guy, and he's cool, man. | ||
He's a real MMA pioneer, too, if you go back and watch his fights. | ||
Extreme fighting. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
The John Peretti organization? | ||
It's been fun to... | ||
Again, I really like making all these new friends in everything I do, whether it's jiu-jitsu, kickboxing. | ||
Now I've got a lot of wrestling friends, even. | ||
I mean, being exposed to the Askren brothers. | ||
Even I have a friend, Eric Juergens, who's a really good Iowa wrestler that I met through Pat Miletic. | ||
That's the neat thing about combative sports. | ||
The... | ||
The camaraderie. | ||
It's a special fraternity that I won't exchange for anything. | ||
Well, I think it's also these folks, first of all, they need each other. | ||
Like, you can't get good at MMA without people to teach you. | ||
And you need people to train with. | ||
And they appreciate that. | ||
And they also appreciate that there's very few people that understand them like other martial artists do or other fighters. | ||
You know, when they're training, the lifestyle, the amount of effort that you have to put in Very few people understand or appreciate the dedication and commitment that's required to be a professional level MMA fighter. | ||
I mean, you can't have... | ||
There's no going out at night. | ||
There's no life. | ||
You don't have any life. | ||
You might have a girlfriend. | ||
What do you do? | ||
You might watch a movie, get a little sex, and then pass out before you're training. | ||
And that's it, man. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You're not doing shit. | ||
You might get to go on a vacation after your fight, but guess what? | ||
Your amount of time you're actually relaxing is so small, because if you did well in that fight, they're already talking about your next opponent. | ||
So you start thinking about the next fight, and so you're on the beach somewhere, and all you're thinking about is fucking head kicks and tackles. | ||
To me, fighting reminds me of apocalypse now. | ||
When you're in the bush, you think about being on R&R. But when you're on R&R, you want to get back in the bush because you don't want to get soft because Charlie's going to come get you. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
That's how I feel. | ||
Like, fuck, I'm having a great time. | ||
Fuck. | ||
Now another dude. | ||
That's how it was for Anthony. | ||
Won the world title. | ||
It's like he was right back in the gym because he knows some dude wants that strap. | ||
He wants to take what's his. | ||
Yeah, it's a really unique lifestyle. | ||
Very unique. | ||
I mean, it's not unlike any other movie, musician, comedian. | ||
You're only as good as your last show. | ||
Honestly, you're only as good as your last performance when the spotlight's on you. | ||
But you gotta love that. | ||
The special people like Anthony, Ben Askren, Alan Belcher, they're the type of dude... | ||
If it were the Final Four or the NCAA Championship, give me the ball. | ||
I want to shoot it. | ||
To be a great fighter, you've got to be that guy. | ||
The quarterback is like, I'm going to call the play coach. | ||
I got it. | ||
It takes that special person to be one of the best. | ||
I love being around those people because it's empowering to watch them be that person. | ||
It was actually funny in Anthony's fight with Cerrone. | ||
I want him to stay righty, and he kind of stayed lefty. | ||
I was like the catcher, and he was the pitcher who waved me off like, no. | ||
I like that, though. | ||
I want my guys to quarterback their own fights. | ||
If they have to count on everything I say, they're not ready to be champion. | ||
This whole Ben Askren thing is a very interesting subject because Ben Askren was a great wrestler, an elite amateur wrestler, got into MMA, and shows dominance in the grappling that we have rarely ever seen before. | ||
And for whatever reason, he gets labeled as being boring because of that. | ||
But you see what he's been able to do to guys like Lima, like these killers. | ||
You know, he takes these guys that normally, you know, they're involved in these crazy wild fights with people and he manhandles them. | ||
He gets a hold of these motherfuckers and he drags them to the ground. | ||
He beats the shit out of them. | ||
And for whatever reason, because he's not finishing guys or he's not finishing as many guys and it's just a constant... | ||
State of frustration for one guy to be on the bottom and the other guy just getting ragdolled by Askren over and over again. | ||
People label him in a bad way. | ||
Bellator didn't even negotiate to reinstate his contract. | ||
He was their fucking champion. | ||
Now, I had a real hard time with that. | ||
I didn't understand the logic behind that even slightly. | ||
They let him go as their champion. | ||
I thought that was completely stupid and crazy too. | ||
And then the UFC didn't even fucking pick him up because there was some weird shit there with them not wanting to pick up Bellator's guy. | ||
But we did it with Hector Lombard. | ||
It's frustrating. | ||
It's really hard. | ||
I'm really good friends with Ben. | ||
He's doing great at 1FC. They're taking care of him. | ||
I want Ben to have a chance to put his legacy out there. | ||
I want to see him fight the best guys. | ||
His fucking grappling is ridiculous. | ||
His moves are very unique. | ||
It is. | ||
I've seen him give high-level black belts. | ||
Definitely. | ||
I mean, he's good. | ||
He just submitted his last opponent. | ||
I mean, Ben is so good on the ground. | ||
He makes it look easy that people think he's not working hard. | ||
But I think he has a new focus. | ||
He's finished his last three opponents, and he likes getting out of there early now. | ||
He's like, oh, okay. | ||
Don't get paid for overtime. | ||
You know, a lot of people don't realize he's third all-time In the NCAA in pins. | ||
Wow. | ||
And he's one of two two-time Hodge Trophy winners, the Heisman Trophy of Wrestling. | ||
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Wow. | |
So I think him and it was Cale Sanderson. | ||
I'm very, very impressed with that guy's wrestling. | ||
And I was very upset that it didn't go down, that he didn't fight in the UFC. When they were saying they were releasing him from Bellator and he was talking to people in the UFC, I was very excited. | ||
And there was a lot of people like, oh, he's boring, he's boring. | ||
And I think Dana said... | ||
Ben Askren is what Ambien takes when it wants to go to Saliba. | ||
I don't find him boring. | ||
I don't. | ||
I mean, look, is it as exciting as watching Anderson Silva knock out Stefan Bonner with that knee to the body? | ||
No. | ||
No, it's not as exciting, but it is a huge element of MMA. It's one of the biggest elements of MMA is grappling. | ||
Was Damian Maia versus Anderson Silva exciting? | ||
No. | ||
No, exactly. | ||
Not at all. | ||
You know what? | ||
I watch boxing matches where two guys... | ||
up and it's a defensive stalemate and that's just sports sometimes you know sometimes oh man this is gonna be the greatest super bowl and it's boring look the last uh mayweather fight was one of the most exciting fights he's ever had versus maidana but it's because it became a brawl that's not a mayweather fight yeah mayweather fights are fights where he boxes guys faces off moves away like the canelo alvarez fight wasn't particularly exciting no I mean, he just sort of boxed him, outboxed him, moved around him. | ||
Definitely. | ||
I mean, I hope Ben in the next year or so gets a chance to show. | ||
I mean, I think the welterweight division is kind of a wild place. | ||
I mean, yeah, we got Johnny Hendricks as a champ, but I mean, Robbie Lawler lost a close fight to him. | ||
It's scary how close it is right now. | ||
Very close. | ||
Yeah. | ||
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Yeah. | |
And Robbie Lawley just looked sensational, knocking out Jake Ellenberger. | ||
I mean, he looked like a fucking murderer. | ||
Then Rory McDonald just looked outstanding, and it's Tyron Woodley. | ||
You got Hector Lombard, who's fucking ridiculous. | ||
I mean, who is faster or more athletic than Hector Lombard? | ||
And he hits those fucking judo throws on high-level guys. | ||
To see Jake Shields go flying through the air on a hip toss like that, it's like, Jesus Christ! | ||
I just know who I'm the happiest for, Robbie. | ||
I've known Robbie for a long time through Pat Miletic. | ||
And man, that guy's worked so hard to evolve, adapt, change, and grow. | ||
I don't care what people say. | ||
You can teach an old dog new tricks. | ||
It all comes down to attitude. | ||
I think one of my favorite quotes by Zig Ziglar, it's not your... | ||
Aptitude that determines your altitude. | ||
It's your attitude. | ||
And he has the right attitude. | ||
He made the changes. | ||
I mean, he got way better at grappling. | ||
And he's so disciplined. | ||
I mean, what a comeback story. | ||
The other comeback story at 172. How about Matt Brown? | ||
Incredible. | ||
Yeah, I mean, when people say they can't get better, won't... | ||
You know what? | ||
Or sometimes when my guys get upset, if they lose a fight... | ||
You know, then Matt Brown yourself. | ||
You know, pull yourself out of the, be the phoenix that came out of the fire. | ||
Just work hard and have the right attitude. | ||
Matt Brown was submitted by Seth Bozinski just two years ago. | ||
Yep. | ||
You know, people don't, they forget about some of the fights that he's had where he lost. | ||
Look. | ||
If you can still move correctly, if you don't have a debilitating injury, if you don't have cognitive problems, you haven't been hit in the head too many times, you can still learn, you can still grow. | ||
But some guys, they do not do that because they're very stubborn in their ways or they're stuck on a path. | ||
They're stuck on that path and they never develop. | ||
And it's unfortunate. | ||
It really is unfortunate because the beautiful thing about MMA is the fact that there's so many options. | ||
And when you see a guy get to a high, like a Mighty Mouse, like a Demetrius Johnson who gets this Incredibly high level of aptitude in all these different areas. | ||
It's a beautiful thing to watch, man. | ||
It's so amazing. | ||
I loved his fight, honestly. | ||
I thought he did a great job of using his Muay Thai-style clinch to negate wrestling. | ||
Used knees well. | ||
I mean, he reminded me of a mini Anderson Silva in that aspect, using the clinch. | ||
I enjoy... | ||
That type of fighting. | ||
I think Matt Hume is an incredible coach. | ||
One of the best. | ||
Yeah, I mean, a great guy and I really enjoyed his performance. | ||
I mean, you know, sometimes people are just into the heavyweights. | ||
I mean, I like watching smaller fighters fight personally myself. | ||
Because there's much more going on. | ||
Not saying I don't like heavyweights, but just in general, if it's small, they're not good. | ||
Well, then what are you guys going to think of 115-pound chicks fighting? | ||
Well, that's coming. | ||
We were just talking about that. | ||
The flyweight division is going to be the next division in the UFC, excuse me, the strawweight division for women for 115. Yeah, it's exciting. | ||
I'm going to be assisting Anthony Pettis on the Ultimate Fighter. | ||
I'm only going 10 days and then I'm going to come back a little later. | ||
I want Anthony to shine as a coach. | ||
People don't realize he's a really good teacher, coach, and he's really competitive. | ||
He'd knock his baby daughter off the chair to win if it were musical chairs. | ||
I mean, he is the type of guy he likes to... | ||
Our last summer, we had a pickup basketball game. | ||
Oh, my God. | ||
It just turned into some little fun thing on... | ||
He looked like Jordan going for the third ring. | ||
It was just like every rebound, this kid wouldn't stop. | ||
We had so much fun. | ||
When you do things like that, casual games, you find out what certain guys are made of. | ||
Yeah, you find out how crazy they really are. | ||
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Oh yeah, there was 10 alphas playing basketball. | |
Not a smart move. | ||
That should probably be banned from the fight contracts. | ||
No basketball. | ||
Yeah, right? | ||
I mean, what is banned? | ||
Can they ride motorcycles? | ||
Are they allowed to ride motorcycles? | ||
There's certain things in our band, right? | ||
I believe they can. | ||
I'm not sure. | ||
I don't handle the management side of our stuff. | ||
I know that Anthony is a proud owner of his Milwaukee Harley Davidson. | ||
He won for his title. | ||
Does he ride it? | ||
A little bit. | ||
Not too much, though. | ||
Yeah, I mean... | ||
That's why I don't drive sports cars or motorcycles, because I'm that idiot who wants to see how fast it can go. | ||
That's why I fight. | ||
That's where I get my adrenaline out. | ||
I would worry more about the other drivers with a motorcycle. | ||
My dad's youngest brother, my uncle, actually got hit by a glass truck on a motorcycle. | ||
And he fell and didn't have a helmet on, because... | ||
And he's had many issues because of it. | ||
But yeah, I mean, unfortunately, every year or two I lose a friend in Wisconsin. | ||
It's just such a culture there. | ||
Live to ride, ride to live, you know, but we have such potholes. | ||
And the other thing I've never understood is... | ||
Jump on your bike and go to a bar and start drinking. | ||
People bar hop. | ||
Well, it's crazy that bars have parking lots. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Not a lot of drink and drive. | ||
There's a bunch of people drinking and there's a bunch of cars. | ||
Hey, wait. | ||
There's less people in the bar than there are. | ||
Where's the designated... | ||
Wait a minute. | ||
There's not enough designated drivers. | ||
It's not possible. | ||
No. | ||
It's cool, though. | ||
I... I can't handle the motorcycle culture. | ||
I love it, but I'm the guy who will test my limits. | ||
Well, I started trying to get my motorcycle license. | ||
Me and a few friends that were working on Fear Factor, a lot of the guys in production, we all signed up for motorcycle safety classes. | ||
We started learning how to ride. | ||
We did all the thing. | ||
I got a helmet. | ||
And then during the time where I was learning, three different people I knew. | ||
Well, one person saw, she saw a guy get hit by a motorcycle, and two friends got fucked up. | ||
Frank Mir got his leg broken. | ||
He got t-boned by a car. | ||
A guy ran a red light, slammed into him, broke his leg, sent him flying like 60 feet through the air. | ||
And if it wasn't for the fact that he's a giant heavyweight, he probably would have been paralyzed for life. | ||
Amazing that he came back to fight and become good again. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Actually improved. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And then another friend of mine, Edson, fell down and tore his shoulder apart. | ||
He was going around a turn and the bike slipped out from under him and boom! | ||
He hit his shoulder on the ground and mangled his shoulder. | ||
Dude, crazy. | ||
My friend Kong Napath, who used to live with me from Thailand, he's now here in the States, really killer dude. | ||
He was a four-time Roger Domner, stadium champ. | ||
He went back home to Royette in Northeast Thailand on his motorcycle. | ||
He had it all souped up. | ||
He got in a motorcycle accident. | ||
His ankle got bent back the other way in the accident. | ||
That was after his first title. | ||
He went on to win three more championships and go outside Thailand and fight Thailand. | ||
With that ankle. | ||
He'd like rebrandomly holding pads at the gym and he'd just fall down. | ||
I'm like, Kong, what's the problem? | ||
Oh, jet mark, my ankle, like, hurts bad. | ||
I'm like... | ||
We just give out on them? | ||
Yeah, man. | ||
Like, how the... | ||
Have you fought? | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's incredible. | ||
I know. | ||
I mean, it's, uh, you know, motorcycles are, you know, if you've ever been to Thailand, you've probably seen a family of five on one. | ||
It's crazy. | ||
It's like they can fit a family of five on a little 125. Well, if everybody was riding motorcycles, like in Thailand, back and with less cars, probably safer. | ||
Yeah, I mean, the traffic's so bad, so they go in between. | ||
And, you know, Thailand's crazy, though. | ||
It's a fun place, but a crazy place. | ||
Yeah, how did Thailand get so many ladyboys? | ||
What happened there? | ||
I don't understand, but the Thai culture is so tolerant. | ||
Accepting? | ||
Yeah, like the Buddhist religion, it's the Maipenlai, which means don't worry, it doesn't matter, culture. | ||
But yeah, I don't, it scares me because I used to train at the state of Utah when I first went and, you know, I'd go to the beach on the weekend and, you know, all these chicks, weird looking chicks, hey, sexy man. | ||
I'm like to my friend, man, these chicks really dig us, man. | ||
Hey, you know, next week, this guy in a walker, hey, sexy man. | ||
I'm like... | ||
Wait a minute. | ||
I think they're hookers. | ||
But point being, man, you can spot them a mile away. | ||
You grabbed your Adams elbow when you said that? | ||
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Yeah. | |
The big Adams elbow. | ||
And you spot them a mile away. | ||
Some of them you can't spot a mile away. | ||
Some of them look very, very, very feminine. | ||
Yes and no. | ||
I mean, they don't look like the other Thai women. | ||
I mean... | ||
I see. | ||
You can tell a pure woman. | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
At least then. | ||
But it's fascinating that this one culture is just known for ladyboys. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And that it's a normal part of... | ||
Like I had a buddy who went over there and was drinking Brody Stevens. | ||
Brody Stevens told a great story about it. | ||
And we determined that he was 84% gay. | ||
86. We got it to 86. He started off that he was 10% gay. | ||
And by the end of the conversation we worked at that he was somewhere over 50, definitely over 50% gay. | ||
But he told the story about meeting ladyboys there and, you know, just having a good time and enjoying it. | ||
It didn't feel abnormal because he was there in a culture where it's normal and it's accepted. | ||
There's all these other people that, you know, even guys that were like, you know, straight guys were hanging out with these ladyboys because it was just how they did it over there. | ||
Not me. | ||
You know, not me. | ||
I just... | ||
You know what? | ||
I never really partied much in Thailand because I was always training. | ||
One trip I've had a little fun, but I mean, like... | ||
It's just weird, though. | ||
One night, my wife went to Thailand with me once. | ||
We were on a tuk-tuk late night in Bangkok, cruising back to our hotel after some fights, and we were right up to a dude, and we totally see this guy mashin', kissin'. | ||
With total just Adam's apple. | ||
Both my wife and I are like, oh! | ||
The crying game going on. | ||
Well, maybe that's what he likes. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Hey, whatever floats your boat, man. | ||
Whatever floats your boat. | ||
Thailand's a wild place in all sorts of other ways, too, right? | ||
I mean, it's like prostitution is rampant. | ||
There's Muay Thai fights in bars. | ||
It's a wild, wild place, right? | ||
The wildest thing I saw in Thailand was... | ||
They're like church festivals on the weekend. | ||
And they line up all the kids and they put them in a line and there's no scale. | ||
They're just you two, you two, you two. | ||
And then their families like all – because some go to camps and some just train with their families. | ||
And then they all bet on their kids, man. | ||
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Wow. | |
And you see kids getting elbowed and... | ||
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And then the music speeds up and the little kid... | |
The shorts are way too big, yanking them up. | ||
It's just... | ||
I consider myself kind of a tough dude, but... | ||
I don't like watching little kids scrap down with elbows and like, you know, I have a daughter and everyone's like, is she going to fight? | ||
And I'm like, maybe, I don't know. | ||
I mean, like fighting isn't for everybody, you know what I mean? | ||
No. | ||
One time at one of the other camps I was at, this kid had just come from way northeast Thailand and he just wasn't sleeping well at night. | ||
He was used to eating different and one of the trainers, you know, sometimes the trainers drink a lot because they get their shit kicked out of On pads. | ||
They're all former fighters. | ||
You know, they live at the gym with you. | ||
So they're just sore from being beat up? | ||
They crack their shit out of the kid to shut up. | ||
You know, like, they just... | ||
There's basically a little toughen up session at midnight. | ||
It's just little things you see. | ||
I love Thailand, but I don't think it's healthy to send a kid away at nine years old to become a boxer. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Some of the guys I brought over from Thailand, I had to teach them things about life that they didn't learn when they lived at the Muay Thai camp. | ||
It's not normal to go live in a... | ||
What a Muay Thai camp is a modern day ludus. | ||
It's a gladiator school. | ||
You know, I mean, I love Muay Thai in a lot of it. | ||
And please don't make it seem like I'm trying to put it down. | ||
It's just you have to understand what it is. | ||
It's a third world country. | ||
It's not martial arts. | ||
It's a boxing gym. | ||
It's professional horse racing. | ||
They're there to make money for the camp. | ||
50% of their earnings go to the camp. | ||
And then the rest of their money they try and send back home to their family. | ||
Well, that's something that folks don't realize, too, when you hear, like, Boakrot. | ||
Boakow, poor Pramuk. | ||
Yeah. | ||
His name is one thing. | ||
The gym name is the name that he takes on. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's not even his real name at all. | ||
He has a boxing name, Boakow. | ||
Boakow means cow's white, and boa is lotus, so it's the white lotus. | ||
And then poor Pramuk, he's a student of Pramuk. | ||
Pramuk is the boss of the camp. | ||
So he has a real name, and then that's essentially his nickname. | ||
Yeah, Sombat. | ||
I forgot his last name. | ||
It starts with a B, but his real name is Sombat. | ||
That's his passport name. | ||
Yeah, all the boxers get a different name. | ||
You know, they have your boxing name, and yeah. | ||
So it's the White Lotus? | ||
Yeah, that's what his name means. | ||
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That's cool. | |
His nickname actually is Dom, which means black because he's so dark. | ||
Oh. | ||
You know what's messed up in Thailand, dude? | ||
Like, I think they got good skin tone. | ||
We're trying to get tan going running with them. | ||
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Right. | |
You can tell all the boxers running. | ||
They got hats on. | ||
They got long-sleeved t-shirts and long shorts on because they don't want to get tan because it's frowned upon to be dark-skinned in Thailand. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
It's like if you're dark-skinned, you're from the country, you work in the fields. | ||
You know, that's what's going on with the Philippines. | ||
Yeah, that sucks, man. | ||
They're using glutathione, and glutathione, somehow or another, it's an antioxidant, but somehow or another, I think they inject it or something, I don't know what they're doing, but they're doing it to lighten their skin color, and it's become a very common treatment. | ||
And here you and I want to be tan. | ||
I want my vitamin D. It's messed up, man. | ||
Well, it's not only that. | ||
Steve Maxwell, who has been on the podcast several times, told me that vitamin D levels actually, when you have vitamin D from sun, that it actually has an anabolic effect on the body. | ||
It helps your body recover. | ||
It helps develop and build muscle. | ||
There's a lot of positive aspects to having vitamin D. I mean, the hardest thing about where I live is the tough winters, you know, from being from the Boston area. | ||
And the last couple weeks, I've had some pep in my step, man. | ||
You know, the sun's out. | ||
I'm feeling better. | ||
I'm working out better. | ||
You know, it's... | ||
I believe you. | ||
I mean, a trick that I do, because I struggle a little bit with seasonal depression, our whole gym, you've been there, is painted super yellow. | ||
It's in a basement. | ||
I do it to trick myself psychologically and my students. | ||
So you can't tell how dreary it is outside. | ||
And then another trick they say to do in the winter is don't wear your sunglasses out. | ||
The best vitamin D comes through your pupil. | ||
So right away while you're outside in the winter and it's sunny out, let that vitamin D come through your pupil. | ||
That's the only way, because it's not strong enough to touch your skin in the winter, when you live in winter areas. | ||
But yeah, I'm a firm believer in vitamin D, sun. | ||
I'm really into the elements of life. | ||
Water is so important. | ||
Sun, the wind, and the stars. | ||
It's very revitalizing, all those things. | ||
Staring at the stars, like a good starry night, it gives you a feeling, like your body, like what? | ||
That's why I love... | ||
My wife's from central Wisconsin, and I love going out into the woods and just chilling and, you know, go out and there's lakes. | ||
It's just so beautiful. | ||
That's, you know, looking up the stars, fresh air. | ||
I mean, it's... | ||
It's so important to connect with nature. | ||
Actually, like in Vegas, everyone's like, oh, you got to party, go crazy? | ||
I'm like, no, man, we're going to go hiking. | ||
My wife and I are going to go hiking every morning at 6 a.m. | ||
We're going to stay in Milwaukee time. | ||
I like going out into the mountains, Red Rock, go up to Charleston, do that. | ||
I mean, you know how it is, older you get. | ||
Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. | ||
It's pretty old. | ||
Well, a lot of fighters have a real problem with that when they live in Vegas, too. | ||
And the ones who tend to do best are the ones who avoid the strip and do things like go to Lake Mead, maybe do a little jet skiing, maybe go hiking, maybe go fishing. | ||
Do something where you're getting out of the Vegas Vegas and getting into the Nevada. | ||
Yeah, for sure. | ||
I've been going to Vegas since I was 18 for fights. | ||
Wow. | ||
The first fight I went to was at the Sands. | ||
That's how old I am. | ||
Wow. | ||
Even... | ||
It's weird. | ||
When I trained in Vegas, I used to train at Master Totties, and he had all these really killer trainers from Thailand, and they would all laugh at me. | ||
They're like, Duke, I'd be home on the weekend. | ||
They're like, you're not going out? | ||
I'm like, no, I want to win. | ||
I go run on Sunday. | ||
They're like, you're not going out? | ||
Like, I don't know. | ||
Has everyone else who's come here before done that? | ||
They're like, yeah. | ||
So that's why they gave me so much attention. | ||
I was so disciplined that... | ||
Like, for me, I know I'm not the most gifted and talented guy. | ||
So I'm the person. | ||
Now I'm having the time of my life. | ||
I have a ball. | ||
You know, that's why I try and tell all my fighters, all you fighters, man. | ||
Dude, like Joe and I, we're in our 40s and we're having the time of our life. | ||
It don't, like... | ||
A number doesn't change how you live. | ||
Also, there's life after competition. | ||
I have more fun now doing everything than I did when I was a fighter. | ||
I was pretty boring when I was a fighter. | ||
Like I said, I'd just hang out. | ||
I became a movie buff, comedy buff, because I watched that. | ||
That was my hobby. | ||
Dude, you can always party. | ||
You can always chase girls. | ||
You can always eat bad food. | ||
You can always do drugs. | ||
Whatever you want to do, After fighting, you can do that, but you only have so many years. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
You have a lifespan to be great, and that's what I preach to my guys. | ||
Cement your legacy and then have some fun. | ||
And it's also important to take it into perspective. | ||
There's guys that are super talented. | ||
They're super naturally talented, and it doesn't take much. | ||
There's guys who are champions, who are notorious for not working out very hard. | ||
But you know what comes along? | ||
Like, say, guys who don't train in between fights. | ||
They just sort of hang out somewhere. | ||
You know what comes along? | ||
Somebody who's exactly like you, but disciplined. | ||
Exactly. | ||
And those guys are out there. | ||
Those perfect storm athletes are out there that are really physically talented, really mentally talented, very strong, very creative, and... | ||
Super disciplined. | ||
And hungrier, man. | ||
To me, the person who wants it is who wins the fight. | ||
The person who wants it, it just doesn't start on fight night. | ||
It starts all year round. | ||
The guy who trains... | ||
all year round wants it more than the guy who doesn't. | ||
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Yeah. | |
Yeah. | ||
You know, and there's so many examples now that you could look to as far as, one of the most important things about martial artists is learning from past martial artists, learning from their techniques, emulating techniques, as you were talking about before with Belcher and a lot of different fighters. | ||
And this is like the greatest time ever to have that opportunity. | ||
Like, do you know what Sugar Ray Robinson would have given to have been able to see a Sugar Ray Robinson on video before him to be able to study films. | ||
What did you see? | ||
You saw some grainy Jack Johnson footage? | ||
Yeah, exactly. | ||
That's kind of like, I would say that's the, you know, like in basketball, you know, people who change a game, I would say first it was Bob Cousy. | ||
Then Pistol Pete, Dr. J, Jordan, and then maybe LeBron now, but like those game-changing athletes in boxing, who would it have to be? | ||
Jack Johnson, first athletic moving guy, Sugar Ray Robinson, who I still watch and study. | ||
That is the blueprint of the greatest of all time. | ||
Muhammad Ali, of course. | ||
Duran. | ||
Oh, man. | ||
Duran's like one of my favorites. | ||
Me too. | ||
You too? | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Because, like, my family, I remember we used to have pay-per-view fights. | ||
My dad has five brothers. | ||
I got five brothers. | ||
He'd be crazy. | ||
Like, everyone would be on one side of, you know, Duran over here, Leonard, you know. | ||
I got to meet Ray Leonard through my brother and know him. | ||
He's a great guy, but I didn't like Leonard. | ||
I was a blue collar type guy. | ||
I was a Hagler and Duran guy because I was a hard worker. | ||
So I related to Duran and Hagler. | ||
Isn't that funny? | ||
It's not like Leonard wasn't a hard worker, but everybody had this opinion of him as this glamorous, pretty boy. | ||
You know, showing up with, you know, like a beautiful girl, a mink coat. | ||
That's the idea that you thought of when you thought of it, Leonard. | ||
The golden boy from the Olympics. | ||
Meanwhile, pretty fucking hard work. | ||
Oh, no. | ||
Ray, man, I got to hang out with Ray a couple times, and he's cool. | ||
Really cool. | ||
And he loves martial arts. | ||
You know who his idol is? | ||
Who? | ||
Uh, Bruce Lee, he came out, um, when I think the, it was either when he fought Donnie Lalonde or when he fought Hearns the second time, it was cold fighting Caesars. | ||
He came out in a Kung Fu suit, not the yellow and black, but the traditional black, you know, style. | ||
Oh yeah, dude. | ||
He used to train a little with Jun Ri too. | ||
Really? | ||
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Yeah. | |
Interesting. | ||
Yeah, I mean, speaking of, you got Bruce, man. | ||
People just don't realize how awesome he was. | ||
Bruce Lee? | ||
Yeah, just like, remember, what was the first armbar in a movie? | ||
It was Enter the Dragon, right? | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
And then he had... | ||
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the head-arm triangle in Game of Death, too. | ||
I think he did. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, I mean, just, you know... | ||
It's just crazy. | ||
I'm huge. | ||
I love the guys who kind of shake it up. | ||
Actually, even one of my mentors in Thailand, Kruya Tong, he had a different style of Muay Thai that wasn't necessarily the same. | ||
Or the other gym I like a lot, jockey gym. | ||
They're not the norm, and I like finding the innovators. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Yeah. | ||
And it's fun. | ||
Because that's the, you know, it's like, what would we do without Steve Jobs? | ||
Right. | ||
You know, I mean, what he, I want, my goal, like, with what I'm trying to do, I want to be an Apple-type product that changes people's lives with martial arts, you know? | ||
I want to, I just, every day I try and think of, like, we were training a round kick today, and I probably show you something a little different every time. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I'm trying to, like, Innovate. | ||
Even the simplest move. | ||
Time is what makes techniques happen. | ||
The faster you can splice the time that that technique locks on or lands is how you win a fight. | ||
Also, the various aspects of the technique that allow you to avoid counters as opposed to doing it one way or you don't avoid the counter. | ||
You know, those little subtle aspects of striking that are lost on some folks. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I think that's why it's good to watch, say, like those UFC shows on Fox where they break down the fights after the fight. | ||
Dominick Cruz is really good at that. | ||
Really good at breaking down where fighters made mistakes. | ||
Like a good example is the Cunley-Rich Franklin fight when Cunley knocked Franklin out with a punch. | ||
We caught Franklin straight up, coming straight at him, not moving the head off the center line. | ||
How many fighters do you see that are really talented, great fighters, but they don't get with a good camp? | ||
They don't leave their comfort zone, their surroundings. | ||
They might start out with some gym that has limited trainers, but they're talented themselves. | ||
They get to a certain level, but then they can sort of stagnate, and they get fucked because of it, really. | ||
Yeah, I mean, it's like any other sport. | ||
You know, you've got to go to the right college in basketball, baseball to get selected to go to the NBA, NFL, major leagues, you know. | ||
It's unfortunate. | ||
I know everyone has their Cinderella story. | ||
I mean, one of my students is fighting Saturday. | ||
He's from Marshalltown, Iowa. | ||
He moved to Milwaukee and his career has blossomed because of it. | ||
He's fighting for the World Series of Fighting title. | ||
The featherweight, Rick the Gladiator, Glenn, great kid. | ||
Been on an incredible winning streak. | ||
And his game has gone up exponentially. | ||
There's a nice fight of his on MMA Junkie today. | ||
He knocked a guy out in the world. | ||
Great kid. | ||
It's hard. | ||
You've got to leave home sometimes. | ||
Is that going to be on TV? Yes, I believe. | ||
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NBC. And who is he fighting? | |
Alexei, the good Russian kid. | ||
I forgot how to say his last name. | ||
There's a lot of goddamn good Russians. | ||
Yeah, man, the Ruskies, they know how to fight, man. | ||
They are not regular white people. | ||
No, no. | ||
No. | ||
Like Bagotinov? | ||
How many knees did he take from Mighty Mouse? | ||
Like a hundred? | ||
A hundred knees in the face? | ||
Crazy. | ||
That guy just ate him. | ||
He ate all those knees. | ||
Speaking of Russians, we were talking about him earlier. | ||
I'm so stoked about this tournament. | ||
Artem Levin. | ||
He's got a cool style of fighting. | ||
I'm not picking his style over anyone. | ||
What I like about him, he's a Muay Thai stylist, but he's also good at boxing. | ||
But no, it's funny. | ||
You're going to love it because you're a social media guru. | ||
During his fights, he's tweeting. | ||
During the fights? | ||
He's got someone rocking his Twitter feed. | ||
It's awesome. | ||
He's awesome, though. | ||
He's cool. | ||
He's going up against that Pereira from Brazil. | ||
This guy, he trains in the mountains. | ||
I think there's a cool video on YouTube, maybe. | ||
Alex Pereira. | ||
He's a native Indian from... | ||
How do you spell Pereira? | ||
P-E-R-R-I-E-R-A I believe. | ||
Maybe add Glory into that too. | ||
There's a cool video of him training up in the mountains. | ||
But he's a former boxer. | ||
And he did Taekwondo. | ||
So he's got a sweet turning sidekick. | ||
He was not the favorite fighter to win the middleweight tournament. | ||
But this dude's tough. | ||
He beat a lot of good dudes. | ||
I like Levin a lot. | ||
Here, check it out. | ||
This is him. | ||
He's getting ready for the eight-man tournament this weekend. | ||
Look at this. | ||
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He's really in Who did he fight? | |
Who has he fought so far in glory? | ||
Did he fight Tyron Spong? | ||
No, he's a weight class lighter. | ||
But he beat a really good guy from Mike's gym in the final. | ||
Oh, I know who he fought. | ||
He fought... | ||
Sayak. | ||
No, in his last fight, he knocked somebody out with a left hook. | ||
Oh, Jacoby. | ||
Yes. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Dustin Jacoby. | ||
Yeah. | ||
He brings it, man. | ||
That was a nasty left hook, too. | ||
And Jacoby's tough as shit, man. | ||
Yeah. | ||
No... | ||
How about Melvin Manhoof is going to be in this tournament? | ||
Oh, he is? | ||
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Yeah, yeah. | |
Dude, that's another guy that scares me. | ||
I'm like, hey, Mike Pastner, can you put his collar on, please? | ||
He wears a dog collar under the ring. | ||
Excuse me, Mike. | ||
Can you take him back to the gym? | ||
You know, he's walking around. | ||
I'm like, I think I'm going to go over here. | ||
That is one of the wildest guys that has ever fought in anything. | ||
Melvin Manhoof is a wild motherfucker. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
There's just... | ||
I've trained in Amsterdam, and there's just a unique craziness. | ||
Look at his build! | ||
You've got to get his walkout, though. | ||
His walkout where Mike is just firing him up. | ||
I don't know what Mike says to those guys. | ||
Goddamn, for him it works. | ||
Oh yeah, him and Badr Hari. | ||
Animal. | ||
And they got Saki too. | ||
Yeah, Gorgon Saki. | ||
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. | ||
I'm having a lot of fun with the Glory gig. | ||
I'm real thankful to have the opportunity to kind of expose people to just stand up. | ||
It's fun. | ||
I mean, you know, Crow Cop's fighting this weekend. | ||
Yeah, that's nuts. | ||
I didn't even know that. | ||
Yeah, he's on the prelims. | ||
We also got a really good kid from Thailand. | ||
He's only 19 years old with 106 fights. | ||
What? | ||
Yeah. | ||
19 with 106 fights. | ||
That's insane. | ||
I was hanging out with him. | ||
He's just gentle as a lamb. | ||
Nice little kid. | ||
He's just a little babyface killer. | ||
Jesus Christ. | ||
Now when you say Crow Cops in the prelims, is it the aired prelims? | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
It's on Spike TV free. | ||
So, yeah, it's our warm-up to the pay-per-view. | ||
Now, hey, I got to tell you, normally these guys are kind of reserved, but Rico Verhoeven and Daniel Gita were going at each other on Twitter. | ||
I think Gita's been calling Rico, they call him the prince of kickboxing. | ||
He's the princess. | ||
He's going to steal his tiara. | ||
And then, you know... | ||
Verhoeven's been going off about, he says he's the number one in the rankings. | ||
He's like, well, you're the number one shit talker. | ||
Both of them today, I've never seen European guys this animated. | ||
Well, they fought. | ||
Yes. | ||
And it was a very controversial fight, right? | ||
The first one... | ||
Rico won the tournament. | ||
There was that kind of controversial knockdown with Saki, which he pushed the ref. | ||
He didn't get cut from glory for that. | ||
Yeah, Saki pushed the ref when he went down, right? | ||
Yeah. | ||
We'll talk about that subject later. | ||
Then he beat Keita in a close decision. | ||
Keita thinks he won. | ||
Keita's come back and knocked out Two big wins off. | ||
He looked really good. | ||
And now, Verhoeven beat Arts. | ||
He just had his first pro boxing fight, though. | ||
Verhoeven. | ||
He's been racing with Tyson Fury and really working on it. | ||
He fought boxing really recently, right? | ||
Yeah, seven weeks ago. | ||
A lot of guys in glory are moonlighting. | ||
Nicky Holtzkin, he's been pro boxing. | ||
Mark DeBonte, who's fighting Bazooka Joe Valtellini. | ||
Valtellini's fun to watch, man. | ||
Very fun to watch. | ||
His fight with Raymond Daniels was an awesome, awesome fight. | ||
I'm a big fan of Raymond, but he did exactly what you're supposed to do. | ||
Can we get that fight up there, Raymond Daniels and Bazooka Joe? | ||
And DeBong, is that for the title? | ||
Yeah, it's for the title. | ||
Wow. | ||
Yeah, DeBong just beat Carpet, Carpetchen in Denver. | ||
Yeah, very technical. | ||
Great fight. | ||
I mean, Carpet's a really super smart fighter, both technical. | ||
And Carpet was really coming on those last rounds, too, which is interesting. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know what I like about DeBonte? | ||
He throws some jump kicks. | ||
He does the jump scissor kick. | ||
A lot of cool moves. | ||
Jump flying knee. | ||
But Bazooka Joe, if I had to describe who Bazooka Joe is, he's the Arturo Gotti of kickboxing. | ||
Canadian-Italian scrapper, but here he... | ||
You can see he stayed on the legs nicely, dissected, went after the high kick. | ||
That's all she wrote. | ||
Mamma mia. | ||
That was beautiful. | ||
That was beautiful. | ||
He's only got 11 pro fights, and he went toe-to-toe with Nicky Holtzkin. | ||
Yeah, and was hanging in there until the end, got KO'd in the final round. | ||
But that was also a fight where he fought that fight before that. | ||
Yeah, exactly. | ||
I mean, I think Bazooka Joe's going to be tough to beat in the single-fight format. | ||
Yeah, I gotta tell you, I don't particularly like the tournament format because I think it's unfair. | ||
If a guy has one fight early and he knocks the guy out in the first round, whereas his opponent might have to go a fourth round because the three rounds have gone to a draw, I think that's crazy to have those two guys fight afterwards. | ||
I know it's kind of exciting, but I don't think it's fair to the athletes. | ||
I've loved that Glory has done our five-round title fights. | ||
It's just been magnificent because we see the art of fighting. | ||
We really do. | ||
The tournaments, they're a cool spectacle for the fans who want to see the blood and glory. | ||
But the technique and the art of strategy, I think we see that in a title fight. | ||
Yeah, no doubt. | ||
No doubt. | ||
There's been some great, great fights, too. | ||
In the last, the lighter weight division fight, that last fight with the Kyokushin. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Davat Kiria. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Man, because Risti was coming off those two big wins over Giorgio Petrosian. | ||
Which is a huge upset. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Knocking out Petrosian, who's like one of the greatest ever. | ||
Yeah, definitely. | ||
He was, up to that point, considered the Mayweather of our sport. | ||
And, you know... | ||
Glory, that's a crazy thing, the parody. | ||
That's what I love about the kickboxing. | ||
The fights are so evenly matched. | ||
And this is Ristie's first fight back in this glory card this weekend. | ||
He's fighting in the tournament, right? | ||
Yeah, he's actually fighting Kai Hollenbeck on the Spike TV broadcast, too. | ||
So that's another tasty fight for fans. | ||
So it's not a tournament fight? | ||
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No. | |
It's just a fight on... | ||
On Spike TV, there's going to be a four-man featherweight tournament, and that's going to be really good. | ||
You've got Yod Kunpun Sitman Chai from Thailand, the 19-year-old with 106 fights. | ||
Gabriel Varga, who's a really lifelong martial artist. | ||
I like this kid's style a lot. | ||
He's good at kickboxing, incorporates spin kicks, he can punch. | ||
He has a fun style. | ||
He's a lot of fun to watch. | ||
And you've got Marcus... | ||
Vinicius, excuse me, from Brazil as well. | ||
So it's going to be a tasty tournament. | ||
So that's the tournament, and then Riesty is fighting Hollenbeck in a single fight, and then Krokop is fighting this guy. | ||
Jarrell Miller. | ||
He actually has a win over Pat Berry in the World Combat League, and he fought Krokop, I believe, in the K-1 last year. | ||
Now the whatever's left, the K1. But everyone thought Jarrell won. | ||
So I didn't... | ||
I watched the fight. | ||
I could have saw it that way, too. | ||
It was in Croatia. | ||
Amazing that Krokov's making this resurgence as a kickboxer. | ||
Yeah, it was a pretty cool atmosphere in Zagreb when he fought. | ||
I mean, I thought he beat Remy. | ||
I did, too. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Remy Bonjoski was another great fighter who's been around the block a long time. | ||
He's been... | ||
Actually, no, it's really cool. | ||
Remy's on the broadcast. | ||
Is he? | ||
Yeah, they're bringing in Stephen Quatros, Michael Scavallo, and Remy. | ||
We're going to have some extra, kind of like you were talking about the UFCs doing the extra analyst and breaking things down. | ||
So we're going to have fun, and it'll be Ron Kroc and I in the booth, Luke Thomas. | ||
We're going to have a lot of fun with this broadcast. | ||
I'm having a ball doing this because what I like doing, like what you do at the UFC, is let people behind the curtain. | ||
You know, it's different. | ||
People kind of understand punching, boxing. | ||
That's a jab across the hook. | ||
It's martial arts. | ||
There's a little bit more detail to it, not taken away from boxing. | ||
We need to have that time and room to explain everything because there's a little bit more going on with the kicks, the knees. | ||
And some of the sweeps, trips, and obviously in jiu-jitsu and wrestling, a lot of minute details that make a big difference. | ||
Yeah, and there's also, people can relate to what it feels like to get punched. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And I don't, there's, like we're saying about leg kicks, people don't understand. | ||
They just don't, people who judge fights, unfortunately, don't understand. | ||
We have a real problem with that. | ||
I remember the first, I was at that fight, UFC 104, Shogun versus... | ||
Machida. | ||
Leota Machida, yeah. | ||
And he kicked the shit out of his legs, and he didn't win the fight. | ||
And someone, one of the judges actually said, leg kicks don't finish fights. | ||
Like, the fuck are you talking about? | ||
Are you just ignorant to history? | ||
I've broken two guys' legs with leg kicks in fights. | ||
Thighs? | ||
The thigh bone? | ||
The femur? | ||
I fought Mitchell Hala in 1996 in Australia. | ||
He was kicking hard. | ||
He broke the tibia. | ||
He stopped on the stool because it was blocked wrong, so I broke that. | ||
And then Pat Smith, I kicked him on the back leg. | ||
And I crack the bone right by the knee joint there. | ||
So, yeah. | ||
I like the leg kick a little bit. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Leg kicks are awesome. | ||
I'm sorry. | ||
I mean, it's a great feeling to know that you can do that to someone. | ||
There's something. | ||
I don't know. | ||
I've always told my guys this isn't going to sound mad, but as I've gotten older, I've probably changed my opinion on it. | ||
I used to have a quote, knocking someone out with a head kick is better than sex. | ||
You know? | ||
I love There's nothing better that's my favorite thing to do. | ||
That's my favorite coup de grace to finish a fight and striking. | ||
The head kick. | ||
Yeah, the head kick. | ||
That's why I really push it with all my guys. | ||
It's weird, too, when you connect to someone's head, a lot of times you don't even feel it. | ||
It feels like it goes right through them. | ||
Yeah, especially the neck kick. | ||
I mean, that, to me, is my... | ||
My favorite technique. | ||
Eric Koch's gotten a bonus with it and WC. Anthony's got a bonus. | ||
WC knockout and UFC. Allen got it against Jorge Santiago. | ||
You see little Sergio's hunting for it constantly. | ||
We like to kick that. | ||
It's just cool, man. | ||
It's yielding a special power that most people don't have. | ||
Dude, he's trying to knock me out with a kick. | ||
I love it. | ||
You know, it's an intimidation factor. | ||
That's like Peter Arts. | ||
He's the same age as me. | ||
That's one bad motor scooter. | ||
And he's still winging head kicks in his fights, man. | ||
Yeah, he's still at it, man. | ||
100%. | ||
Yeah, Peter is something else. | ||
Did he retire in his last fight? | ||
No. | ||
He said he was retiring. | ||
Yeah, he just fought in Dubai. | ||
So he said he was retiring and he just fought again anyway. | ||
He's just never going to retire. | ||
He's a madman. | ||
I love Peter. | ||
He's a man. | ||
Funny dude, man. | ||
He just exemplifies what's special about our sport. | ||
I mean, a guy like Rico Verhoeven grew up and wanted to be him, and now here he is. | ||
I mean, Peter's just funny, joking, laughing. | ||
And has he been stopped something like 14 or 15 times? | ||
Yeah, I think so. | ||
I mean, he's... | ||
How is that possible? | ||
But he's got over a hundred some fights. | ||
How is it possible that you can get KO'd 14 times and you're still alright? | ||
You're still out there? | ||
I hope he is. | ||
I don't know if he is. | ||
Do you talk to him? | ||
Yeah, a little bit. | ||
What's it like? | ||
Well, he's got a thick Dutch accent these days. | ||
So it's hard to tell if he's slurring his words? | ||
That's a weird moment, isn't it, when you're talking to a fighter and you know for sure something's going on that didn't used to be going on? | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
You know, I've met a few kickboxers that are a little punch drunk, and I know boxers from back home. | ||
I mean, one of my training partners years ago, Gerald McClellan, almost died in a boxing match. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
That was one of your training partners? | ||
Yeah. | ||
The Nigel Benn fight. | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
That was scary, man. | ||
That's scary. | ||
That scared a lot of people, including Roy Jones. | ||
I feel we're empathetic. | ||
You're empathetic to people's problems. | ||
I remember, like, Dr. Ferdy Pacheco was calling the fight. | ||
Like, I can't believe this guy's quitting. | ||
You could see, like, he was blinking and there's something seriously wrong. | ||
I'd never call a fight again if I called a guy quitter and he slumped over in the corner and just... | ||
Ferdy Pacheco was, yeah, he was old school. | ||
You know, a lot of those old school guys, they had that sort of an attitude about... | ||
About fighters. | ||
Okay, yeah, go get punched yourself. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Yeah, I agree. | ||
You've gone in there getting punched, you've gotten submitted, wrestled. | ||
You know what it feels like, you know, me too. | ||
And now there's nothing worse than the guy who's never done it who's judging the guy who does it. | ||
I mean... | ||
It is horrible, and it's very unfortunate. | ||
It's unfortunate that a lot of those guys get into that position, whether they're reporters or what have you, and they start talking shit about fighters after their performance, questioning their heart and courage. | ||
Look, you can say that a guy didn't have a good performance. | ||
You can give an assessment of their performance. | ||
When you start making character assessments and character judgments, you're stepping way out of line. | ||
Hey, do you ever have bad days at work? | ||
Jamie? | ||
unidentified
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Nah, nah. | |
Sometimes you have a bad day, you're off. | ||
Well, guess what? | ||
Fighters fight two, three times out of the year. | ||
Unfortunately, their chance of having bad days are higher than a guy who works many days a week. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
It sucks. | ||
I mean, you just... | ||
I'm not making excuses, but the Anthony Pettis that fought Guido was like the worst Anthony Pettis ever. | ||
He was flat in the locker room. | ||
He just wasn't feeling good. | ||
And know what? | ||
It was the best thing for him. | ||
Losing is the best medicine if you use it as a medicine to make you better. | ||
But people have bad days, man. | ||
It's life. | ||
It sucks when you have a big moment in your life and you just can't show up. | ||
Anthony is a piece of crap, a pussy. | ||
You know, look, you know, I mean... | ||
He's overrated. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Told you he was overrated. | ||
You know that Duran, he's a wimp. | ||
No moss, you know, like... | ||
That fucked him up for a long time, though. | ||
That fucked up public perception of him. | ||
That fucked him up personally for a long time. | ||
Well, why is it... | ||
It's okay in our sport. | ||
We can tap, which is humane. | ||
It's smart in MMA. But if you know you're hurt, like... | ||
McClellan, but not Roberto Duran. | ||
Roberto Duran, that was pretty shameful. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Yeah, but... | ||
The no-Moss fight? | ||
I mean, he's like, that's it. | ||
I'm done. | ||
I'm done. | ||
He was fine, and he wasn't even trying to fight. | ||
Yeah, I mean, he knew he was getting smashed, though. | ||
But he wasn't getting smashed. | ||
He was just getting out-boxed. | ||
My friend Nathan Corbett. | ||
Love that guy. | ||
Great dude. | ||
He's here in L.A. training at Black House. | ||
unidentified
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Oh, is he really? | |
Yeah, he's here visiting, man. | ||
Is he going to fight MMA? I think he's going to start helping teach striking here in L.A., dude. | ||
So if you're in the L.A. area, look up my man, Nathan Corbett. | ||
Great, great Muay Thai fighter. | ||
But did you see him when he got smashed? | ||
He knew his ear was done. | ||
I mean, he didn't want to, you know, he's a smart... | ||
He got left hooked by Tyron Spong, and Spong hit him with this left hook, or Gokhan Sakai hit him with this left hook, and blood started pouring out of it, and he was just, like, touching his ears, like, this is over. | ||
I mean, that's the thing. | ||
Do you want guys to go out on their shield or do they want to be intelligent? | ||
That was intelligent. | ||
It's also a guy, Nathan Corbett, who's fought so many fucking times. | ||
And you saw the replay. | ||
When Gokhan hit him, it was just a perfect left hook. | ||
His ear was fucked up, rattled. | ||
Blood starts pouring out of it. | ||
When your eardrums popped, the fight is basically there. | ||
There's not much you can do. | ||
You know, all these guys, I respect win, lose, or draw. | ||
I mean, that's the hardest thing about going to the UFC glory. | ||
I have personal relationships with a lot of guys. | ||
There's not a lot of people I meet in professional martial arts that are bad guys. | ||
There's not a guy like, aha, you lost. | ||
No, I just don't. | ||
You meet every guy and you see, you know, like that ABC Wild World of Sports, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. | ||
It's just so you see that. | ||
It just... | ||
It's so hard to see the nicest guys get their, that's the weak side of what I do. | ||
You see, you know, cause that's what this is. | ||
You're fighting me to crush my dream to build yours. | ||
It's so like, it's old school Coliseum, you know, I mean, you know. | ||
It is crazy. | ||
It's so hard for guys to transition out of that to go to the next phase of their life. | ||
Man, I get fight offers all the time. | ||
I miss still. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
I love... | ||
I mean... | ||
When was the last time you fight? | ||
What year was it? | ||
2007, I think. | ||
unidentified
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2008. Where'd you fight in 2008? | |
Canada. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I love... | ||
I love it, but, you know, you gotta do the math. | ||
The fighting part of my past or my future. | ||
So you know what I do? | ||
I go, a couple weeks ago, Anthony was boxing in the gym. | ||
I saw him on Saturday. | ||
I'm like, ah, screw it. | ||
I'll just spar three rounds with him. | ||
So that's my thrill now. | ||
I go and spar. | ||
We had a pretty good heated session, you know? | ||
It was fun. | ||
Not like we go hard, because I'm way bigger than him, but we work. | ||
We have a good time. | ||
He had fun. | ||
I had fun. | ||
But, you know, it's a quick reminder. | ||
Like, man, that's one little bad motherfucker. | ||
I don't think I want to fight ever again. | ||
That was fun, but that was practice. | ||
I'm going to go back to doing what I was doing. | ||
Actually, I do some jiu-jitsu tournaments when I can. | ||
I won the Arnold's and I won the Grappler's Quest. | ||
That was when I was a white belt. | ||
I've got my blue belt now. | ||
I'm just looking for a pocket of time I can get serious. | ||
You know, our jiu-jitsu team's grown tremendously under my friend and brother, Daniel Vonderly. | ||
Like, we had, two weeks ago, we had 14 fights at Rufus Sport and MMA. 13-1, nine of them were on the mat. | ||
Like, that's not a Rufus Sport stat, right? | ||
Right. | ||
I've been really pushing all my guys to be dangerous everywhere. | ||
A lot of my guys are going to IBJJF tournaments, you know, big nagas, grapplers, quests, winning. | ||
Like, I'm really, if you choose to be an MMA fighter, then really be an MMA fighter. | ||
Let me ask you this. | ||
So if you're training Anthony Pettis, world champion, say if you're training him for his title defense against Gilbert Melendez, which is going to be a great fight. | ||
Can't wait for that fight. | ||
Two amazing fighters. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
When you would train him, would you schedule his entire training routine? | ||
Do you set a schedule like, in the morning you're going to do this, in the afternoon you're going to do that. | ||
I want you to do five rounds on Tuesday, and then another three rounds on Wednesday. | ||
I'll give you his schedule. | ||
We have a really good strength and conditioning team. | ||
The guy who trains J.J. Watt from the... | ||
Can we bring that up? | ||
J.J. Watt... | ||
Do box jump. | ||
There's either box jump. | ||
He's one of the best athletes in the NFL, and he's from the Milwaukee area. | ||
It's not by chance, though. | ||
He's been at our strength and conditioning center, NX level. | ||
Brad Arnett, who used to be the head strength and conditioning coach at Arizona and Minnesota. | ||
Incredible. | ||
A lot of NFL or NBA guys. | ||
Watch this. | ||
This is a dude, 290 pounds. | ||
unidentified
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59 1⁄2 inches. | |
Yep. | ||
That is insane. | ||
That's who trains our boys at that facility. | ||
That guy does? | ||
Not him. | ||
He's in the NFL. That is an insane vertical jump. | ||
Yep. | ||
And he's a big fan of the guys. | ||
He's out there all the time. | ||
He plays for... | ||
Who is it? | ||
The Texas Titans. | ||
But needless to say... | ||
What is the Texas Titans? | ||
unidentified
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The Texans. | |
Our Texans. | ||
What is that? | ||
NFL. Houston. | ||
It's an NFL team? | ||
Yeah. | ||
I'm so out of the loop. | ||
Yeah, I'm not a big team sport guy, so please excuse me. | ||
Yeah, me neither. | ||
Isn't that funny? | ||
Yeah. | ||
So many guys in MMA are the same way. | ||
Once you get used to fighting, everything else is like, yeah, I mean, alright. | ||
It's not even that. | ||
I don't have the time. | ||
I'm so busy watching my craft. | ||
And then, like, you know, like, I don't know about you, on Sunday, I don't want to watch a bunch of sweaty dudes who don't care about me. | ||
I'd rather hang out with a hot chick, you know, which, before we were married, it was my wife. | ||
You know, I'd just, I'd rather get a little R&R, if you know what I'm saying. | ||
No, but get back to this Anthony Pedersen. | ||
Oh, so the schedule. | ||
The schedule. | ||
The strength and conditioning is the big ruler of what we do. | ||
It's through, it's, The recovery, the active warm-up, active recovery, but every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, he goes there. | ||
On Mondays at 1.30, we have practice every day at 1.30. | ||
He works a striking-based MMA practice and then we have MMA sparring. | ||
Our hardest sparring is on a Monday. | ||
I believe we do that because it's their freshest, so the injuries aren't going to happen. | ||
I don't like to do sparring at the end of the week. | ||
They're mentally, emotionally, physically drained. | ||
That's when injuries are going to happen. | ||
But does he do the sparring before or after the strength and conditioning program? | ||
After the strength and conditioning. | ||
Wouldn't you think that that would be counterintuitive? | ||
The strength and conditioning you'd probably be better off doing after? | ||
It's just the guys like doing it first thing in the morning. | ||
They get it out of the way. | ||
And the other thing I'll say about our sparring, we've really backed off on the intensity. | ||
We have a lot of good technical guys. | ||
Right now we're doing about three rounds a little bit harder a week. | ||
That's it. | ||
I'm really in. | ||
Everyone's wearing helmet, everyone's wearing high-end gear, so no one's getting hurt. | ||
Because it's those wild scrambles in MMA where you get in weird positions, the wrestling, and awkward positions where you're getting hurt or collisions. | ||
And then after that practice, he'll rest up, and he'll come back and do one-on-one pad sessions with me, working drilling and fight-specific game plan. | ||
So he'll do on Monday three times. | ||
Tuesday, a little rest. | ||
Tuesday, he rolls real hard on those days. | ||
It's jiu-jitsu practice. | ||
And then again that night, he'll come back, pad work, drilling. | ||
Wednesday is wrestling day with Max or Ben Askren with the team. | ||
And strength and conditioning in the morning. | ||
At night, again, pads, technique. | ||
So do you set the schedule for him? | ||
Somewhat, with the whole team of everyone. | ||
Our primary is in the evenings. | ||
We do our light work, technique, and a lot of drilling. | ||
And so when he does his strength and conditioning program, is it based on five-round fights? | ||
Yeah, and the timing of the training. | ||
We all meet as coaches, and we put together the intensity each week, up, down. | ||
If we're backing off, tapering, or if it's an intense part of the camp. | ||
Fascinating. | ||
Yeah, we really work together. | ||
Anthony's taking all the coaches that he works with from our team, so it's going to be great synergy for the girls who are on his team. | ||
And that's the part where it's really touchy to try to figure out how to peak an athlete correctly. | ||
I mean, for folks who are not familiar with that kind of training, you really can't keep it up for very long. | ||
No. | ||
What you're doing during a six-week camp, you could never do all year round. | ||
Yeah, we've really cut back. | ||
See, my guys train all year round, so they don't need to do 10, 12-week camps. | ||
10, 12-week camps are for slackers because they're trying to get in shape in camp. | ||
Anthony took the Henderson fight on a month's notice. | ||
He was at a going-away party for Danny Boy Downs in my backyard. | ||
He had a Negro Modelo in one hand and a plate full of steak archetta in another hand. | ||
And I said, hey... | ||
Dana wants you to fight here in Milwaukee versus Henderson. | ||
You might want to put the beer down. | ||
He did. | ||
He ran to his father's grave. | ||
He went for a crazy run, and boom, started running. | ||
My point being, they're human beings, but if you're training all the time, It's a lot easier to take fights on short notice. | ||
Like a guy like Donald Cerrone. | ||
All the respect in the world. | ||
He likes his Budweiser, but he's training constantly. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
He's ready to fight. | ||
He just mentioned he wants to fight at 170 if no one wants to fight him at 55. I love his attitude. | ||
I didn't like him when he fought Anthony, but I like Donald. | ||
You're my enemy when you're fighting us, but I like Donald. | ||
I love What he is, what he represents. | ||
He's a wild man. | ||
I love it. | ||
I mean, he's a savage. | ||
When you say fighter, it's Cerrone. | ||
You know what I love about him too? | ||
When he's in his off time, he does crazy shit. | ||
Like he's fucking jumping with jet skis through the air and done snowmobile jumps. | ||
You see that snowmobile shit that he was doing when he was training for his last fight? | ||
Like, what are you doing, man? | ||
This is on your Sunday. | ||
You have fight training in the morning and you've taken snowmobiles over the top of this hill. | ||
What? | ||
No, I mean, I think, you know, some of the best, what makes these fighters special is they're great risk takers. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know, you gotta be, there's gotta be something special in you that doesn't tick like other people that makes you want to get into a ring and fight for amusement for people. | ||
And for a bunch of people that are going to go online and call you a loser. | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
Call you a pussy. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know, people, what I miss the most about fights, it's not the paparazzi. | ||
I love that moment, especially if you're the main event. | ||
You go back to the locker room, there's no one freaking there. | ||
Like people thought like when all the people back home in Milwaukee, they're so supportive and we have this big circle of people to help out. | ||
So how was it when Anthony won? | ||
Well, we had a press conference. | ||
Everyone's long gone after the press conference. | ||
So did the ring girls hang out with you? | ||
No. | ||
Was there champagne in the locker room? | ||
No. | ||
It was me, Anthony, and I forgot who else walked out of there with our crap and the arena was close enough. | ||
We could walk to the hotel. | ||
It was pretty lonely, but not lonely in a bad way. | ||
It's our own little La Cosa Nostra, this thing of ours. | ||
I like it being in a small circle and what we share. | ||
The people who know what I'm talking about, it's like, that's what I miss, that moment. | ||
Yourself when you've accomplished it. | ||
Not the after five party, not everyone. | ||
That's cool. | ||
I appreciate that support, but I like the quiet moment after. | ||
Like all that work, hard work, dedication, the blood, sweat, and tears, and you soak it in. | ||
That's what I miss more than anything. | ||
You know what I miss the most is I love it, that feeling when you get hands taped. | ||
It's like in Gladiator when he grabs the sand. | ||
Dude, you're getting a hand tape. | ||
There's no turning back. | ||
You're fighting. | ||
You know, it's like... | ||
It's the best feeling in the world, man. | ||
When you're saying this, though, it seems to me like you want to fight again. | ||
Always, man. | ||
You're saying this like you're ready to... | ||
It's a drug, man. | ||
How old are you now? | ||
I'm 44. Do you stop and think, like, look, if I really want to fight again, I can kind of do it now. | ||
Oh, I could. | ||
But you see a guy like Bernard Hopkins, give you a little hope? | ||
Always. | ||
49 years old, wins a light heavyweight title. | ||
I mean, to me, it's... | ||
Like, it all comes down to time and schedule. | ||
But, that being said, I love my students so much, my fighters. | ||
Know what happened, I'd start training, and I'd stop because I don't want to jeopardize their success, you know? | ||
You know, I miss it, you know? | ||
But, you know, it's like... | ||
You know, cocaine addict. | ||
Man, I miss it. | ||
I miss that shit, you know? | ||
You miss it, but you're still getting a big amount of satisfaction from training. | ||
Oh, you know, there's nothing better than helping other people fulfill their goals. | ||
I'm not even just talking the fights, but I come to the gym. | ||
I spar with all my students. | ||
We have a ball. | ||
I mean, I'm seeing people change their lives through martial arts. | ||
So that's what I got to do to keep my drug... | ||
In check. | ||
I gotta spar a lot, train a lot, just to have fun. | ||
When I get hurt and can't train, that's when I, like, or I just, or if it gets to where I'm too busy and I can't be on the mat actually doing it, that's when I get crazy thoughts like, Ooh, I might need something to motivate myself, like a fight. | ||
I try and justify these stupid stories in my brain why I should do it. | ||
Do you ever justify, like, maybe I should fight MMA, it'll help my MMA coaching? | ||
I was supposed to fight in 2007 for the CFFC, the... | ||
It was me. | ||
I was going to fight this dude, Derek Panza, a kickboxer. | ||
I know he is. | ||
And then Kimbo Slice was fighting Tank. | ||
And then the winners of our two fights were going to fight each other. | ||
Wow. | ||
So yeah, I was training. | ||
I mean, I was into it. | ||
And yeah, I was digging it. | ||
And the thing fell apart like 10 days before. | ||
You know, Kimbo Slice is apparently going to fight for Bellator again. | ||
Yeah, I heard. | ||
You hear that? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Wild. | ||
Yeah, leg kick him. | ||
Nah, he's cool, dude. | ||
I met him when he fought. | ||
Very nice guy. | ||
Yeah, Mitrione. | ||
When I trained Matt Mitrione for the fight. | ||
Yeah, he's good. | ||
But you know what? | ||
There are guys like him who can come into our industry. | ||
They fight, and they have fans. | ||
I mean, look what Brock Lesnar did for our industry. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Well, Mitrione, man, that was a great performance by him. | ||
That was one of his best performances. | ||
Yeah, I mean, I just think stylistically. | ||
I mean, Matt... | ||
Matt told me this thing. | ||
He played in the NFL. He goes, I just wasn't athletic enough to make in the NFL. I'm like, Jesus H. Christ, then what are those guys? | ||
Because this dude is a freak, man. | ||
He's strong, fast, tenacious. | ||
I mean, all the attributes that you want in a heavyweight, he's a big, strong dude. | ||
Yeah, what do you think is going on with him in MMA? Like, what do you think about his MMA future? | ||
I mean, he's training down at Black Zillions. | ||
I think it's a good fit for him. | ||
Doesn't he have a fight coming up? | ||
I forgot. | ||
It's just so hard to keep up with everyone. | ||
But I think that's a good camp. | ||
They've got the right size guys. | ||
I mean, I can't help Matt. | ||
I don't have any big guys. | ||
I like Matt. | ||
He's cool. | ||
Some people, they saw the show, they don't understand. | ||
That guy's awesome at head games. | ||
Incredible. | ||
He knows how to get in people's... | ||
How to fuck with people. | ||
Yeah, I mean, I think that that verbal jujitsu, judo, and Jedi mind tricks, it's so important. | ||
Yeah, it is, right? | ||
That is an extra added element to psychological warfare, to fuck with a guy and get inside his head before a fight, right? | ||
Well, I'm the youngest. | ||
For the longest time, I was the youngest brother in my family before I had my younger brothers. | ||
My dad has five brothers. | ||
His two youngest brothers are almost the same age as my two older brothers. | ||
So basically, I got tormented growing up. | ||
So the only way I could mess with people for a while was verbally, and I had to learn how to... | ||
Mess with them, ball break, you know, just, you know, just, you know, and then I started, I didn't do it at first in fighting. | ||
That's how I got a little older. | ||
Then I, you know, started using little Jedi mind tricks. | ||
It's amazing how many good fighters come from a background where their brothers beat them up. | ||
Yeah, man, it makes you tough. | ||
Look at John Jones. | ||
Two big, giant, super-athlete brothers. | ||
Here's a coincidence. | ||
Here's a cool story. | ||
My really good friend from the Greek community in Milwaukee played for the Eagles for many years. | ||
He opened up the strength and conditioning place, my boys trained at. | ||
He's the agent for John Jones Brothers in the NFL. Huge MMA fan, too. | ||
He played for the Eagles for many years in Rose Bowl Camp in Wisconsin. | ||
Yeah, those guys are huge. | ||
They make John look like he's just a little wimp. | ||
John is a freak. | ||
Oh, no. | ||
He really is a freak. | ||
The nicest compliment I've gotten from someone at UFC 100, John said he learned how to strike from my DVDs from the old school. | ||
I like John. | ||
We have a great relationship. | ||
He's a cool dude. | ||
He really is a freak, man. | ||
I mean, you want to talk about a guy that's learned quickly and has his own way of doing things. | ||
The best at utilizing reach. | ||
There's not a single guy I've ever seen fight that knows how to keep a guy in his range better than John. | ||
I like DC a lot. | ||
I think DC could give him some troubles, but the thing is, John still is so good at what he does, and that reach plays such a factor. | ||
Huge factor. | ||
Yeah, I mean... | ||
John's going to get better, too. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's the thing. | ||
If you fight him six months from now, he's going to be a better fighter. | ||
If you fight him a year from now, he's going to be even better. | ||
And DC's going to go to surgery in July. | ||
He's getting his knee redone. | ||
His ACL is fucked, and apparently he's got some other damage going on in there. | ||
It's crazy, these wrestlers, how they can... | ||
Continue to train with their knees. | ||
Like, knock on wood, I've never had any knee injuries. | ||
I don't know what it's all about. | ||
Well, Chris Weidman, before he got his knees fixed, he got meniscus scoped on both of his knees. | ||
He had terrible knees. | ||
They said that he couldn't even get his heel to touch his ass, which is crazy. | ||
He's fighting for the world title, and he doesn't have full use of his legs. | ||
But still, he has enough that he can force himself into positions where it doesn't matter. | ||
It's just incredible. | ||
Alright, let's talk striking. | ||
I want to pick your brain. | ||
Who's the greatest... | ||
Kickboxer of all time, in your opinion. | ||
Ramon Decker. | ||
Ramon Decker or Rob Kamen. | ||
Those are the two guys that I look up to. | ||
Other than the ties, there's some great ties. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I mean, there's so many great tie fighters. | ||
For me, I love Decker's style, but for me, Rob. | ||
I mean, Rob is a big influence in everything I did. | ||
The reason why I went to my first gym in Thailand, sit your tongue, because Rob went there. | ||
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
Like I saw Rob, there's a great fight. | ||
He beats Ernesto Hoost with low kicks and a hook KO, but I mean, Ernesto's super athletic, but Rob systematically broke him down. | ||
And I really enjoy fighters who know how to systematically break someone down. | ||
Greatest boxer of all time. | ||
I would say, you know, classically people say Sugar A. Robinson, and I think Sugar A. Robinson is probably one of the... | ||
I look at it as terms of errors. | ||
Okay. | ||
Because I don't think anybody ever... | ||
If you look at their entire career, yeah, you know, you can say, well, this guy was better, that guy... | ||
At his best, Julio Cesar Chavez was one of the most impressive of all time. | ||
He had this unrelenting, marauding style where he never threw everything in every punch like Mike Tyson style, but he just wore you away. | ||
He would just come at you. | ||
And he was in a strong era of fighters. | ||
Yeah, very strong. | ||
Look at his fight against Meldrick Taylor. | ||
Systematically broke his body down and changed Meldrick. | ||
Meldrick was never the same after that fight. | ||
No, no. | ||
That fight broke him. | ||
Have you seen the Legendary Nights about that on HBO? Yeah, it's very sad. | ||
I think Roy Jones Jr. in his prime was one of the greatest of all time. | ||
There was a window where Roy Jones Jr. was untouchable. | ||
The only fighter ever to have gone a single round without a single punch scored on him. | ||
The Vinny Pacienza fight. | ||
He's the only fight in CompuBox history. | ||
They go, one guy landed X amount of punches and the other guy landed zero. | ||
That's madness in a professional boxing match. | ||
Roy Jones, when he was at his best, was a fucking freak. | ||
He wasn't technically sound, relied on his reflexes, but knew his body and knew his skills. | ||
You could say he wasn't technically sound, but no one was hitting him. | ||
Until Tarver knocked him out, no one was hitting him. | ||
He was fun to watch, you know, the rooster punch he threw. | ||
You know where I think he fucked up? | ||
Where I think he fucked up is I think when he went up to heavyweight. | ||
He went all the way up to heavyweight. | ||
He got real big. | ||
And then he went back down to light heavyweight. | ||
And messed his body up. | ||
He couldn't move. | ||
He fucked his body up. | ||
He looked like shit. | ||
His body physically looked like shit. | ||
And I think also hormonally he looked like shit. | ||
Because let's be honest about how he got up to heavyweight. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
He didn't get up to heavyweight taking fucking Frinstone's chewables. | ||
He had some help. | ||
And when you're in your 30s, especially, your body doesn't bounce back very quick from steroids. | ||
When you see someone put on over 20 pounds of muscle, it can't be done, unfortunately. | ||
Yeah, pull up Roy Jones Jr. vs. | ||
John Ruiz. | ||
You can see how good he was, that he was a fucking former middleweight in the Olympics, won the super middleweight championship, won the light heavyweight championship, went up to fucking heavyweight and outboxed the shit out of John Ruiz, who was a former heavyweight champion. | ||
Yeah, from your area, right? | ||
Yeah, quiet man from Boston. | ||
Who's he? | ||
Is he with Petronelli's or... | ||
I don't think he was. | ||
John Ruiz was with somebody else, right? | ||
But look at this. | ||
This is Roy. | ||
I mean, he was thick as shit. | ||
That was way thicker than you ever saw him at a light heavyweight. | ||
But he was only about 200 pounds. | ||
You know, even then, like even as a heavyweight, it was all about speed and movement. | ||
But he was so good and so hard to hit. | ||
Roy Jones Jr., when he was at his prime, man. | ||
You know, as a big overachiever, and I use his style to teach people well, is Oscar De La Hoya. | ||
Before he switched with Floyd Sr., his 90s fights, he was an incredible overachiever. | ||
Look how big fucking Roy Jones is in this fight. | ||
He'd never been that muscular before. | ||
And then he went from that to the Tarver fight, and he just looked terrible. | ||
And Tarver knocked him out. | ||
And then after that... | ||
Glenn Johnson knocked him out, and that was even scarier because he went out from a punch that didn't even look like that big of a punch, but was out completely out cold. | ||
Like, neck stiff, leg stiff. | ||
I got to hang out with Roy last year at Ben Askren's last Bellator fight. | ||
He was there in Albuquerque. | ||
Cool dude, man. | ||
Great guy. | ||
Great guy. | ||
I got a chance to meet him in Vegas recently to take a picture with him. | ||
I was so excited. | ||
I was with Evander Holyfield in Croatia. | ||
He's cool. | ||
He's cool. | ||
I mean, my brother used to box at Kronk, and I got to meet Tommy Hearns, nice guy. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
Yeah, I've met a lot of cool old-school boxing guys. | ||
I mean, there's just something we grew up on that sport. | ||
You can't discard it. | ||
You know, the thing about Roy Jones, man, is that he never had his Joe Frazier. | ||
He never had his Tommy Hearns. | ||
He never had, like, Tommy Hearns had Leonard. | ||
Leonard, you know, they had each other. | ||
They had that rivalry. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
Roy Jones was just so above everybody. | ||
He had nothing. | ||
Until Tarver knocked him out, there was really no rivalry. | ||
Yeah, you're right about that. | ||
Hey, you just made me think of something. | ||
You know, Tommy Hearns versus Leonard, the first fight, if that's in the modern era. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Hearns won because it was a 15-rounder. | ||
That's right. | ||
If it would have been a 12-rounder, he would have won that fight. | ||
That's right. | ||
The 15-rounder stopped after Boom Boom Mancini knocked out Dukku Kim, right? | ||
Is that when they stopped? | ||
I think they'll, yeah. | ||
And Dukku Kim died? | ||
Yeah. | ||
15 rounds. | ||
That's insane. | ||
Long fucking time. | ||
12 rounds. | ||
We used to do kickboxing rules 12 times 2. Stupidest thing ever. | ||
Getting off the stool 11 times. | ||
No, let's do one round. | ||
I don't want to sit down. | ||
No, with modern kickboxing, the championship fights are only three rounds. | ||
Yeah, five rounds. | ||
Five rounds. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I'd like to see boxing shrink it down. | ||
Would you really? | ||
Yeah, and force the action. | ||
I think that's why MMA and kickboxing are growing. | ||
What would you think boxing should be? | ||
Eight. | ||
Eight rounds? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah, I mean, think about our culture. | ||
You want to know what Joe Rogan's doing, you can click on Twitter, Facebook, everything. | ||
You want to order some cool stuff from Joe Rogan's shopping cart, you can click now. | ||
You want to go on the Duke Rufus Striking University, you can click now, get whatever you want. | ||
But... | ||
That's our culture. | ||
We're fast food. | ||
You know, sometimes a boxing fight, it's like jazz. | ||
You've got to wait for the jam to pick up. | ||
We're so fast food, everything. | ||
That's why I love MMA and kickboxing. | ||
The action's like now, and then, oh, that fight's over, a knockout, cool, let's bring another fight in. | ||
But don't you like a fight like the Maidana-Mayweather fight, where Maidana comes on strong in the beginning, but Floyd levels him out and starts to pick up the pace in the fifth and sixth rounds and starts to dominate the fight down the stretch? | ||
For the guys who are making a lot of money, the 12-rounders are great. | ||
The guys who fight on ESPN Friday Night Fights for 10 and 12, they're making 10 grand. | ||
And then they're so busted up, they can't fight as much as kickboxers and MMA fighters. | ||
How do they make a living? | ||
How do they survive? | ||
I mean, that's the tough thing about boxing. | ||
I'd like to see, and I've never understood why they go even rounds, because you've got a better chance for a draw. | ||
That is true, right? | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
You should go nine rounds. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
You'd have a better chance for a victory. | ||
Yeah, I mean. | ||
Or 11 rounds. | ||
Yeah, something. | ||
I mean, you know, it's just one of those things. | ||
I mean, I do like the title fights, but I just think for the guy's brains, everything. | ||
How about two 10-minute rounds? | ||
Wow. | ||
That would be interesting. | ||
Could you do that with boxing? | ||
I would think that with boxing, it would actually be easier to fight a 10-minute round than it would be to MMA. Like, those pride guys that fought those 10-minute rounds. | ||
I had Ensign Inoue here last week. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Fucking awesome. | ||
So cool talking to him. | ||
But, you know, that 10-round... | ||
Mr. Yamamoto Dabemashi. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That first 10-minute round, man, was brutal. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You'd get into a crazy exchange, gassed out, you look up at the clock, eight minutes to go. | ||
What? | ||
Eight minutes to go? | ||
Yeah, I mean, and they were real. | ||
They didn't do stand-ups, too. | ||
They're just really... | ||
They would yellow card you, right? | ||
Yeah, if you were passive, but... | ||
Yeah, I fell in love with MMA first with Pride, so I love Pride. | ||
I was the one guy, oh, the Pride fighters are going to come over. | ||
Beat the UFC fighters. | ||
Wah, wah, wah. | ||
I didn't think they were. | ||
I thought Pride was fun to watch, but from a technical standpoint, I would watch the way they would fight. | ||
I would say, well, some guys are going to give people some problems, like Ninja and Shogun, and all these guys are going to give people some problems, but I would look at the elite of the elite guys. | ||
It's like, hmm, like George St. Pierre or someone like that. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know, someone in the higher weight divisions. | ||
Well, I mean, we saw it. | ||
Forrest Griffin whipped, you know, Shogun. | ||
Well, Shogun, you know, that was Shogun had some serious knee injuries, man. | ||
Shogun for a while had some serious knee problems. | ||
Couldn't train hard and... | ||
That's been the knock on Shogun, that he doesn't really enjoy completely dedicating himself to training and being an animal in the gym constantly. | ||
If you're not that guy, you're never going to be able to compete with those world-class fighters. | ||
You're not going to beat a Jon Jones if you don't like training. | ||
You know, it's crazy. | ||
Nicky Holtz couldn't take this fight, but if you follow his Twitter feed and everything, like this dude, he got in a car accident. | ||
When? | ||
Right before the last Denver. | ||
That's why he didn't fight for the title. | ||
They brought in Carpeccion, but he's been training, but he still didn't think he was ready for this fight. | ||
The kid trains all year round. | ||
Like Mayweather, the reason why Mayweather is who he is, I mean, he likes to train. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Guys, if you don't like your craft, then don't do it. | ||
Yeah, there's a lot of people that just do not like it anymore. | ||
I mean, I talked to Mike Dolce, who was working with Rampage for one time, and he would just say the guy didn't want to train. | ||
He would find candy wrappers tucked underneath his mattress. | ||
He would hide candy in his bed, and he just didn't want to train. | ||
It's like so hard when you got a guy who's so talented, so good, but just didn't want to do it. | ||
So hard to drag. | ||
And then you got other guys who, you know, they're supposed to be there at 5.50. | ||
They're there at 5.30. | ||
They're stretching out. | ||
They're skipping rope before the gym opens. | ||
Man, Pettis, the Lozon fight and the Cerrone fight was back in the gym Monday training. | ||
Sergio, Monday. | ||
Wow. | ||
You know what? | ||
They get so inspired. | ||
Hey man, the bonus checks remind me. | ||
That's what I love about the UFC, man. | ||
It's like, oh, bonus, okay. | ||
I mean, I was just counting up bonus checks from some of the guys. | ||
I think Alan Belcher's done 300,000 just in bonuses from the UFC. I mean, I love that. | ||
I'd like to see Glory maybe do that. | ||
I think that would make the fights even crazier. | ||
Like, knockout of the night, move in the night, and fight of the night. | ||
Now, what is it like being on Spike? | ||
Oh, enjoying that? | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
I mean, it's great. | ||
I mean, our production's pretty cool. | ||
It's fun. | ||
I mean, I definitely had to get better when I was the third guy at K-1. | ||
It was so different. | ||
I actually went to broadcasting school with Bruce Beck in New York, the original UFC. Bruce Beck gave me some good pointers when I worked with him. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah, dude. | |
He's a great guy. | ||
He's awesome. | ||
He helped me so much. | ||
It's all about your notes and preparing and, you know... | ||
Because I'm not a class, it's so much easier for you. | ||
You're an actor. | ||
You're a comedian. | ||
I can talk right here. | ||
I'm good in the booth, but those live opens, those are tough. | ||
That's the toughest part for me, the live opens, but we're getting better. | ||
That's the easiest part for me is the live opens. | ||
Oh, no, that's you, man. | ||
That is the easiest part of my day. | ||
We don't even rehearse it. | ||
Goldie doesn't even, they don't even tell me what they're going to ask me. | ||
I think you guys have a really tight production, and we're getting there. | ||
We're going to get some more shows under our belt. | ||
That's what it is, shows under your belt. | ||
I'm having fun, though. | ||
Actually, the other thing that's really helping me is my online striking university. | ||
I teach so much on there, and I'm filming, and I'm getting... | ||
really helped me. | ||
I'm having a lot of fun with that. | ||
I'm reaching people all over the world. | ||
Kind of like what Eddie Bravo is doing. | ||
I got this technique training site. | ||
Now we have an affiliation too. | ||
So if you want to affiliate with Rufus Sport Kickboxing, and a lot of cool benefits. | ||
People can come train with me as much as they want. | ||
It's having fun. | ||
Check me out at dukerufus.com. | ||
I'm having so much fun doing it because I even respond in my forum, Q&A, put up cool videos. | ||
I'm a teacher at heart, so I love interacting. | ||
I have a student now who's in from Ireland. | ||
I've just had someone coming from Tech. | ||
Well, you're saying something really cool about your university, your online university, that when you sign up for it, you get a free week at your gym. | ||
So if they decide to travel down to Mecca and make their way In Milwaukee, they could train with you for a week. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
I mean, I love it because, I mean, you never know who is training. | ||
There's different guys visiting me. | ||
And you just don't get my kickboxing. | ||
Dude, it's a buffet. | ||
You want to train wrestling with Askren. | ||
You want to train jiu-jitsu with Danny Vonderly. | ||
You want to train with the MMA team. | ||
You know, hey, there's Anthony Pettis. | ||
He was just playing around boxing with a few guys that visited. | ||
Like, they taped it and everything. | ||
That's cool. | ||
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I always say I have a great group of guys at I actually designed Rufusport to be like a camp in Thailand. | ||
When I went to Thailand, all the kids were so cool. | ||
The Thai kids, they all helped me. | ||
Especially if I worked hard and had a good attitude, they all took me under their wing. | ||
And that's what I try and teach my guys. | ||
They're just very welcoming. | ||
It's really good for my students because they get new looks and new people to train with. | ||
And it's just a fun time. | ||
That's awesome, man. | ||
And your university is a great resource for someone who maybe doesn't have a Duke Rufus in their city because it's hard to find a really good high-level kickboxing camp. | ||
It's really hard. | ||
If you're stuck in a town that doesn't have a good martial arts school, you can learn really high-level instruction online, apply those techniques, videotape yourself, analyze it, compare yourself. | ||
It helps a lot. | ||
Yeah, I mean, to me, I'm still a video junkie. | ||
I mean, Joe actually gave me some pointers today, some new techniques. | ||
We got into the think tank today, and I'm always looking for... | ||
It's a game of just milliseconds and milliliters, or millimeters. | ||
It's that little thing that'll make the biggest thing happen. | ||
People don't realize that. | ||
You know, it's Anthony Pettis, a showtime kick. | ||
No, it was four and a half rounds of a great game plan he did, executed doing great basics that led to a special moment in his life. | ||
If he couldn't do footwork, do the proper punching, kicking, defend takedowns, defend submissions. | ||
We never got there. | ||
Yes. | ||
People look at the outcome, they don't look at the journey. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
We were joking. | ||
Joe was doing a badass kick. | ||
He has a wicked sidekick. | ||
I said, Joe, you've got the 10,000 rule down. | ||
It takes you 10,000 hours to be an expert at something. | ||
People don't realize that. | ||
We have this culture. | ||
Yeah, I do teach a lot of wild techniques, but they work for the people who... | ||
You know, it's like, I want to do a flying arm bar in jujitsu. | ||
Well, you can't do an arm bar. | ||
You can't move your hips. | ||
You can't shrimp. | ||
You have no idea of position. | ||
So why are you going to do a flying arm bar? | ||
Right. | ||
You know, you got to build up. | ||
Yeah, definitely. | ||
And just like everyone asked Ben, Ben asked her, I want to do the flying Granby roll. | ||
No, let's work on this move first. | ||
You know, it's, I, culturally, we live in an ESPN sports center culture. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
We don't see the whole game. | ||
We saw the dunk. | ||
We saw the home run. | ||
We saw the cool soccer shot. | ||
We didn't see the whole game. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Well, it's also what you were talking about earlier, about shrinking a boxing match down to eight rounds. | ||
Or the fact that you could download anything you want or order something on Amazon.com. | ||
dot com with one click this this want it now thing that doesn't apply to mma mma is a mountain that you have to build one grain of dirt at a time and it takes a long fucking time to become a martial arts master to be able to kick like anthony pettis to be able to wrestle like ben askrin it takes thousands upon thousands of hours and that's one of the things that we were showing today that we were working with like that sidekick the reason why people don't know how to do it correctly is because you don't you don't see anybody doing it like that | ||
So you see one person do it like that and you go, oh, that's possible. | ||
And that's all it takes. | ||
You see one person that can bang! | ||
That throws that thing like a fucking lightning bolt and you go, oh, okay, everybody else is doing it. | ||
Well, look what you said about Anderson Silva. | ||
He kicks one dude in the face, and now there's front kicks every fight. | ||
Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
Well, Edson Barboza with that wheel kick of Terry Adam. | ||
All of a sudden, everybody wants to throw wheel kicks. | ||
And then you see Vitor do it to Luke Rockhold, and then Junior Dos Santos do it to Mark Hunt. | ||
I mean, you start to see that everybody knows that this technique is really viable, and then you start seeing it over and over and over again. | ||
It's a copycat sport in a lot of ways. | ||
Well, I mean... | ||
We all have healthy egos. | ||
We all want to outdo one another. | ||
We're all alpha males. | ||
So the athletes themselves, especially, they want to one-up each other. | ||
All right. | ||
Jiu-jitsu question. | ||
Who can deal with Ronda's armbar? | ||
That's a very good question. | ||
We don't know because you're seeing girls who have been able to defend it a couple of times, like Misha Tate in the last fight defended it a couple of times. | ||
I mean, she did a really good job defending it until she finally got caught. | ||
But look at... | ||
I mean, there's... | ||
I think Liz Carmouche showed that there's some holes in Rhonda's game with that takedown that she likes to do. | ||
Because she likes to grab the headlock and throw girls down the ground and essentially giving up her back. | ||
She gave up the hooks! | ||
And then she got... | ||
You know, look... | ||
She got away with it with Liz Karmouche, who, I don't know what belt she is, but she came close. | ||
She fucked her jaw up, and Rhonda had to actually rely on her neck to try to release the hooks. | ||
She had to let go and just not defend for a second, and then got out of it, luckily. | ||
But she was tweaked. | ||
I mean, she couldn't chew food right for a week after that. | ||
If that happened, and let's say it's some real high-level world champion Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, what would happen then? | ||
I mean, that's going to be really interesting. | ||
But then again, the Ronda Rousey that fought Liz Carmouche and the Ronda Rousey that you're going to get today, you're getting a way better Ronda. | ||
You're getting a Ronda that's way better in the clinch at delivering shots, like Sarah McMahon knocked her out with that fucking liver body, the knee to the liver. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
She's just getting better. | ||
She's not stopping. | ||
She's going to continue. | ||
And she's getting more comfortable. | ||
She's getting more relaxed with fighting. | ||
She's getting more relaxed with the fact that she's the UFC champion. | ||
So it's going to be really hard for someone to deal with that. | ||
Yeah, Alex Davis has got a tough task. | ||
But she's tough. | ||
She's very tough. | ||
But, I mean, that's that one signature move. | ||
It's crazy. | ||
It's only been a few guys that have a one signature move that continue to pull off over and over again. | ||
Paul Sass comes to mind. | ||
He's submitted more guys by triangle than anybody I could think of. | ||
He's got a lot of wins by triangle. | ||
His triangle is fucking wicked. | ||
He just has it down. | ||
He just has it down. | ||
Alright. | ||
Greatest jiu-jitsu fighter. | ||
Just jiu-jitsu, not MMA. The most impressive I've ever seen is Marcelo Garcia. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Most impressive. | ||
I got to see him live in 2003 in Sao Paulo when he emerged onto the scene when he fought Shaolin. | ||
Yeah, and he hit Shaolin with an arm drag and he took his back and Shaolin rolled and he kept rolling with him. | ||
They roll, roll, roll, roll till the time he's done rolling, Shaolin was asleep. | ||
Wow. | ||
I mean, it was just wicked, wicked speed and his squeeze and his technique. | ||
He's the most impressive I've ever seen in real life. | ||
But I've seen him lose in real life too. | ||
Jacare tapped him. | ||
I saw Jacare. | ||
Jacare was very clever. | ||
He pulled guard and got him in a Kimura. | ||
Just fucking snapped his arm back in a Kimura. | ||
They're just all high level dudes. | ||
Alright, best MMA grappling. | ||
Well, grappling, grappling? | ||
Okay, there's grappling and then there's submissions. | ||
Okay, submissions, I've seen some pretty impressive MMA submission performances. | ||
Damian Maia, when he submitted Rick's story, I mean, that is pretty goddamn wicked. | ||
Maia's one of the best. | ||
Yeah. | ||
But, like, wrestling. | ||
Jacare. | ||
Jacare is a beast, for sure. | ||
Yeah, he's one of the best. | ||
But fucking Ben Askren is one of the best grapplers. | ||
As far as a guy who could take a guy that's a really tough, like really dangerous, big, lightweight, really strong, or welterweight rather, big, strong guy, and just toss him around, ragdoll him, take him down at will. | ||
Guy can't defend against it. | ||
Askren is impressive as fucking shit when it comes to that, man. | ||
Really impressive. | ||
Which is one of the reasons why me, as a fan of just the martial arts period, I'm a fan of... | ||
I think that one of the things that martial arts represents, what mixed martial arts represents, is potential scenarios and how do you overcome potential scenarios. | ||
If everybody agreed, okay, no more takedowns. | ||
From now on, no more takedowns. | ||
MMA would just become kickboxing. | ||
And there's fights where that happens. | ||
There are fights where that happens. | ||
But... | ||
I'm actually sick of Stan and Wang. | ||
As BJ would say, Wang, take him down. | ||
I can't stand watching guys. | ||
Not that they suck at striking. | ||
Dude, you're really good at wrestling. | ||
How much must that suck for Andy Wang? | ||
Sorry, Wang. | ||
Sorry, bro. | ||
Because it's based on him. | ||
High-level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. | ||
He decided to stand with people. | ||
And everybody's like, what the fuck is he doing? | ||
Well, here's a fact I tell people constantly. | ||
I don't think I'm going to get good enough to submit guys like you, my jiu-jitsu bro, Daniel Vonderwey. | ||
I'm going to need a cannon to take Ben Askren down. | ||
Fact. | ||
Fact is, you can knock me out, Ben can knock me out, and Daniel can knock me out. | ||
Striking, mathematically, is a much more chaotic sport. | ||
If I zig when I should have zagged, I get knocked out. | ||
There's no, hey, Duke luckily tapped me with... | ||
No, there's no luck in jiu-jitsu. | ||
Maybe in MMA, if I hit you enough and you fall into... | ||
You can sleep and get caught in an arm bar. | ||
But it's not as easy as... | ||
There's no lucky punches, but if I zig when I could, you go to sleep easy and striking. | ||
So, if you're not, that's why I teach all my guys to make sure they get good at wrestling, make sure they get good at jiu-jitsu, because if you're struggling, say you break your hand. | ||
Wait a minute, I hurt my foot. | ||
Let's take this to the mat. | ||
Like, in MMA, striking, if it doesn't work, can be your downflow. | ||
Really bad. | ||
And especially with hands. | ||
Hands are so easy to break. | ||
You hit someone on the forehead. | ||
Look at mine. | ||
It's just so jacked from years of... | ||
And that's with just normal gloves, man. | ||
My hand is just maimed. | ||
Yeah, you have like one shorter knuckle. | ||
Yeah, it's smashed out of there. | ||
Whoa, that's crazy. | ||
Yeah, it's missing. | ||
That one's really overdeveloped. | ||
Yeah, my... | ||
My hands are bad. | ||
It's been broken back there. | ||
There's a metatarsal there. | ||
Did you get it fixed? | ||
I've gotten a cast, but it's just years of doing it. | ||
Does it hurt when you punch with it now? | ||
No. | ||
What if you catch somebody with that funky knuckle? | ||
This one or that one? | ||
This one, the first one. | ||
This? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, but I have to put a bumper in there if I'm going to fight again. | ||
A bumper! | ||
Yeah, but a nice little gauze pad in there to make it even. | ||
So yeah, thanks to my man Stitch, he showed me how to fix that. | ||
Well, you know, Vitor has broken his hand something ridiculous like eight times. | ||
He's had seven operations on his hands. | ||
Yeah, it's just the MMA gloves, you got to learn how to punch accordingly with an MMA glove. | ||
You can't swing. | ||
Remember when Uriah threw down with... | ||
Mike Brown? | ||
Yeah, both paws were smashed. | ||
Broke both his hands. | ||
Yeah, I mean, dude... | ||
Early in the fight, too. | ||
Yeah, man. | ||
Uriah, he's a really good friend of mine. | ||
Man, that guy has an incredible heart. | ||
There's no quit in favor. | ||
Mental toughness. | ||
Yeah, dude. | ||
I remember when he got carried out of the cage by Master Tong and Fabio Prado after his leg with Aldo. | ||
He lost the fight, but there was no way that guy was quitting. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And that's why I respect a lot about Uriah. | ||
You know, I mean, he's one of those great fighters who might not get the UFC title, but man, he's got heart. | ||
And that just, you can't put a price on that. | ||
How crazy would it be if TJ Dillashaw beats Burrell again in a rematch, and then we see Uriah versus TJ? Wow. | ||
That's possible. | ||
Yeah, I mean, that's the hard thing when you have a lot of fighters in the same weight in your gym. | ||
I mean, everyone's the same squirrel going after the same nut. | ||
DeBont and Carpecin were sparring the week he got the call for the fight. | ||
Wow. | ||
Then they had to go fight each other. | ||
It was like that movie with... | ||
With Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas. | ||
Remember the boxing movie? | ||
They had to drive to the fight together. | ||
They both trained in Holland. | ||
Hey, you're on the same flight as me. | ||
That's happened to me where I've been on the same flight as a guy. | ||
You see with MMA guys being real friendly with each other before they fight in a way that you never really see with boxing. | ||
Why is that, you think? | ||
You know, I think I noticed wrestlers will wrestle each other, train, wrestle each other, train. | ||
Same with jiu-jitsu, where, like, in Thailand, everyone's respectful, but no one trains with each other. | ||
In Holland, they're good sportsmen, but no one trains with each other. | ||
Like, I don't know. | ||
I mean, but then again, in, like, collegiate mean wrestling, like, Minnesota and Iowa are bitter rivals. | ||
They'd never, you know. | ||
Right. | ||
Iowa just, Iowa's their own little world. | ||
They don't do anything with anyone. | ||
They're just like feral cats. | ||
They don't mess with anyone. | ||
They're also in another place, like we were talking about Boston, about Boston and Women aren't the best looking. | ||
It's cold as shit. | ||
Everybody's angry and everybody wants a fight. | ||
That's nothing compared to Iowa. | ||
People in Iowa would vacation in Boston in January and go, this place is amazing. | ||
Everyone's hot. | ||
Look at all the teeth. | ||
Hey, Pat Militich, I hope you're listening. | ||
Just a fact. | ||
I'm sorry. | ||
But look, the plus side is Iowa creates some of the toughest motherfuckers ever. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I mean, not just the Militich camp and one of the legendary camps of MMA, but I mean, how many tough... | ||
And they grow giant fucking deer down there too. | ||
Holy shit. | ||
Some of the biggest deer you've ever seen in your life. | ||
I've got to give a quick thanks. | ||
Pat Miletic has been a big part of my development in MMA. He really took me under his wing. | ||
I come down, we used to bring a lot of our guys to cross train together. | ||
Pat's a dear friend of mine, and I love the way he calls fights. | ||
Yes, I do too. | ||
He's telling all those little extra details that people want. | ||
It's a punch, it's a kick. | ||
No. | ||
The what, the when, the where, the why, the how. | ||
And no nonsense, too. | ||
I like his no-nonsense approach to commentary. | ||
He'll tell you when a guy's in trouble. | ||
He's in trouble. | ||
He's losing this fight. | ||
This guy's got to get busy. | ||
He's got to go do something. | ||
He doesn't take a safe path. | ||
He doesn't sit on the sidelines and just sort of call the action. | ||
He'll tell you what a guy has to do. | ||
This guy's got to get busy. | ||
He's got to do this. | ||
If he doesn't do this, he's going to lose this fight. | ||
Now, Pat actually is one of the first innovators of true MMA, mixed martial arts, wrestling, striking, good at grappling. | ||
And was a bad motherfucker in his time. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Dude. | ||
Was a bad motherfucker. | ||
Dude, the first, I took, know what I did when I wanted to find out what Anthony Pettis was made of? | ||
I took him and Sergio down to, it was probably circa 07, or probably 07, 08, 07. So I took him down there, and Pat ran him through the... | ||
He sparred with both Serge and Ant, you know? | ||
unidentified
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Wow. | |
Oh, yeah. | ||
No, it... | ||
You know, it was cool. | ||
It was... | ||
That was before I built my camp. | ||
That was the testing ground. | ||
You've got to go. | ||
That practice room, oh my god. | ||
But that practice room, the way they did it back then as opposed to an intelligent camp. | ||
They didn't know any better. | ||
They were the innovators. | ||
And they were the innovators of the MMA camp. | ||
They were the original, what did they call themselves, the Black Legion? | ||
Yeah, it was based on the Croatian Black Legion. | ||
No, man. | ||
I've seen guys get knocked out. | ||
They drag them off the mat. | ||
Hey Pat, what's going on today? | ||
A lot of guys are going on. | ||
Gotta thin the herd, Duke. | ||
Yeah, okay. | ||
You know, I mean, it's, uh, but, I mean, I was there with, you know, there's Tim Sylvia, Rothwell, Cessna Levitch, Rory Markham, uh, Jens, uh, the dentist, Josh Sneer, um mcgivern uh just the list goes on of all the you know different killers on the mat and it was just fun i mean you know they had this crazy dude ackerman | ||
he was a former wrestler with his legs cut off and he had the craziest strength i guess I grappled him. | ||
He could do the weirdest submissions. | ||
He had like this shoulder lock where he'd stick his half leg into my hip and lock my shoulder and it was like the most painful submission I've ever been in. | ||
Nicest guy, but if his legs were not cut off, he'd be super tall. | ||
One of the best grapplers. | ||
I saw him actually, he did a submission tournament with Red Shaver. | ||
He Was getting put in the north-south and he did it back to him from the bottom and choked him unconscious. | ||
He countered, yeah. | ||
Whoa. | ||
Yeah, it was a really cool counter. | ||
How did he do it? | ||
Like, in what way? | ||
I'd have to pull the video up somewhere, but this guy just had crazy strength. | ||
So the guy had north-south on him, so he's underneath. | ||
Yeah, and he had a counter to... | ||
Yeah, it was crazy. | ||
I forgot what he caught him with, but he just, because of his unique strength, and we'd be warming up and he'd run on his... | ||
Cut off legs. | ||
Whoa. | ||
Yeah, but just a great guy. | ||
Incredible grappler. | ||
And he was a great wrestler, too. | ||
And because his legs are cut off, he could fight at a lighter weight class. | ||
Oh, my God. | ||
So he had the arms of a heavyweight. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
Yeah. | ||
Wow. | ||
Yeah, cool times. | ||
And just some of the old school guys that fought way back in the day. | ||
I forgot the guy's name, but he looked like Mr. Freeze. | ||
I've never been grabbed harder by one man. | ||
Mr. Freeze? | ||
What was his name? | ||
The guy from... | ||
I forgot. | ||
He fought in the old school UFC. He's a cop in... | ||
I'm having a brain fart here. | ||
What's he look like? | ||
White, bald guy. | ||
Pretty big. | ||
Not Monson. | ||
No, no, no. | ||
He only fought once or twice, but definitely... | ||
I mean, Pat had the history there. | ||
It was so cool. | ||
I mean, then he'd have Brazilians visiting, guys from all over the world. | ||
Kind of what I'm doing now, you know. | ||
He had guys in... | ||
What happened in Militars' gym? | ||
It just doesn't exist anymore? | ||
Yeah, it's there. | ||
I just think Pat's doing a lot of military teaching and... | ||
As well, he is doing his color commentary on Access. | ||
He's really into his family, too. | ||
I mean, his girls growing up. | ||
And so he doesn't train fighters anymore? | ||
He helps out a little bit. | ||
Yeah, I don't think it's something he wants to do full-time. | ||
It's not for everybody, you know what I mean? | ||
You've got to be able to ride the emotional wave. | ||
I've had some times where you have negative influences in your gym and team where I'm almost ready to give it up. | ||
Negative influences, you mean like disputes? | ||
People and attitudes. | ||
But I've got to tell you, I'm the happiest I've ever been coaching and teaching right now in my whole life. | ||
There's got to be some vindication now that you've got a world champion. | ||
Not just a world champion, you had Bellator with Askren, but now you've got the big one with Pettis. | ||
I think that's cool, but I'm going to tell you, Joe, know what it's all about. | ||
The people you do it with. | ||
The faces you're there with every day. | ||
That's what it's all about for me. | ||
I would be doing this if I didn't have champions and didn't have famous UFC and guys on the high level. | ||
But it's the feeling you have when you walk into that place every day. | ||
The people that look back at you. | ||
That, to me... | ||
I can only do things that make me happy. | ||
Unfortunately, I'm not the guy who shuts up and will do it just to do it for a paycheck. | ||
It's not me. | ||
And so that's what I'm happiest about. | ||
Well, that's why you're so good at it. | ||
Thank you. | ||
You're so good at it because you have so much passion for it and because you throw yourself into it, because you commit to it 100%. | ||
And because you're so deeply engrossed in the world of MMA and kickboxing, you're just... | ||
You're so... | ||
I mean, you're living in it all the time. | ||
If you didn't work for Glory, you and I could have the same conversations. | ||
Yeah, definitely. | ||
For sure. | ||
I mean, I can watch fights, talk fights. | ||
Like, people come into the gym, visit, and I'm like, holy crap. | ||
It's like, what time I could keep going and going and going. | ||
I love it. | ||
This is... | ||
Again, getting back to the team, I love the people my guys are. | ||
They're not saints. | ||
Well, it trickles down. | ||
Yeah, I just love who they are. | ||
You set a great example in that gym. | ||
I've trained at your gym before, and it's a very, very friendly environment. | ||
It's really cool. | ||
Hard workers. | ||
Thank you. | ||
Everybody's there to do their job. | ||
Everybody's there to work hard, but it's a very friendly, very family environment. | ||
It's a really cool gym. | ||
We tried to set up the new place, especially like a clubhouse. | ||
So if you're not training, you're hanging out. | ||
We've got the flat screens. | ||
Everyone's going to watch the free fights and the World Series of Fighting at the gym Saturday. | ||
I wanted to create a community, a real community. | ||
Again, that's kind of how Thailand was. | ||
All the guys lived at the gym and, you know, when fights were on, you guys would watch one of the guys fight on TV. It's just in general. | ||
I mean, I think that's what martial arts is. | ||
The dojo is an extension of the community center. | ||
Yes. | ||
You know. | ||
For me, I really like reaching out because I have a lot of guys, besides Pettis' dad was shot or stabbed and killed. | ||
My guy, Mike Biggie Rhodes, who fights in UFC, is fighting in New Zealand. | ||
Great kid, moved from Iowa. | ||
Actually, his cousin is Mike Van Arsdale. | ||
He has a tough story growing up. | ||
His parents are Bain and his grandmother. | ||
You know, raised him. | ||
He went, earned his degree in college, once he graduated from college, moved up to Milwaukee, won the RFA title, and then he's now in the UFC living the dream. | ||
But what I love about him is he's so positive about the shit life he comes from. | ||
He doesn't complain. | ||
He's about, same with Anthony, he don't cry about what he was. | ||
He's focused on what he wants to become. | ||
And what he has become. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, exactly. | |
His life is happy now because of that, because he's overcome. | ||
Yeah, and just, I mean, even my guy Rick Glenn, his sister's dying of cancer, and he had to cancel out of the fight earlier this year, and he's struggling. | ||
He's going to win that belt Saturday, and he's going to dedicate it to his sister, who's, you know, been in hospice struggling. | ||
I love the character and the strength of the people I'm around. | ||
It's inspiring. | ||
It makes me, you know, want to do more. | ||
So when I say I want to fight, that's selfish. | ||
Those guys make me not want to fight and focus on them. | ||
Yeah, because man, I love people who dedicate to themselves. | ||
There's nothing worse than watching people waste their potential. | ||
Because this fight game is so hard, man. | ||
It's such a grind. | ||
That's true with everything in life. | ||
Yeah, you're right. | ||
Even you probably know comedians, actors who just are self-destruct. | ||
Comedians especially. | ||
Yeah, it's the roller coaster, man. | ||
It's so hard to watch guys who have everything, but they just won't. | ||
It's hard to be dedicated. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Very hard. | ||
That's why a gym like yours is so important to be around a bunch of other dedicated people you inspire each other. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
You know, like I have a bunch of dedicated comedian friends, and I call upon them all the time for inspiration. | ||
We inspire each other. | ||
And being around guys that are constantly writing and pushing and going for it, it makes you want to do the same. | ||
The same thing with training. | ||
When you're around guys that are training twice a day and training hard and really enthusiastic about it and pushing everybody and going for it, it brings that up in you. | ||
You want to do it yourself. | ||
I don't have to raise my voice too much anymore. | ||
I love that. | ||
I don't want to be a dick in the practice room. | ||
I want to be cool. | ||
I want to laugh if we're working hard. | ||
My pound sign is having fun getting it done. | ||
If we're doing work hard but have fun. | ||
It's cool. | ||
I mean, I got my other guy Dustin Ortiz fighting, tough fight in Scoggins. | ||
So some of the, you gave me some tips for the fight that I, thanks, you know, some techniques with the side. | ||
Scoggins has a very interesting side stance and a very good wrestler too, which is a real weird combination with that karate background. | ||
Big fan of that kid. | ||
No, no. | ||
I mean, that flyweight division, I don't care what you fans are talking about. | ||
That is a sick stack division. | ||
Wild, wild, wild division. | ||
How are you enjoying transitioning to commentary? | ||
You're doing commentary now for Glory, and it's very nice to see high-level kickboxing on Spike, and I commend them for putting it on. | ||
I was so happy when Glory got on Spike. | ||
I was one of the first people tweeting about it. | ||
I've watched every event. | ||
I fucking love it. | ||
I'm a huge, huge fan. | ||
What is it like doing the commentary? | ||
Are you enjoying that? | ||
Yeah, I mean, I'm the biggest fan myself. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
I really am. | ||
It comes across, I think. | ||
I love it. | ||
I mean, even before, like... | ||
I surprised myself that I became a world champion in kickboxing. | ||
I just wanted to fight to validate my coaching, and I just kept on winning fights. | ||
I'm like, oh, I guess I'm all right at this. | ||
But at the end of the day, I'm still the biggest fan. | ||
You're going to have to kick me out of here today. | ||
You want to look at more fights? | ||
I can watch it until the cows come home. | ||
I'm with you, man. | ||
I'm with you. | ||
That's why I don't watch other sports, because I think we're in the Coolest sport. | ||
You know what the two oldest sports on the planet are? | ||
Wrestling? | ||
No? | ||
Fighting and running. | ||
Bookers? | ||
Oh. | ||
You either run, not to be food, or run to get your food. | ||
You either fight, not to be food, or fight. | ||
They're the two most primal things you can do, especially fighting. | ||
I mean, that's what this kind of, kind of a, it's a Cicero quote on my arm. | ||
The best protector of the sheep is the wolf. | ||
I believe that some people are wolves, and some people are sheep. | ||
You know, people love fighting. | ||
They're the wolves. | ||
They're the protector. | ||
So, you know, And it's kind of like Training Day. | ||
You're talking about it takes a wolf to catch a wolf. | ||
But, like, fighting is, dude, it's the most primal thing. | ||
I still miss that. | ||
That dude wants to kick my ass. | ||
I gotta kick his ass. | ||
It's the most nerve-wracking. | ||
It's like... | ||
Alright, so I was a little experimental when I was a child and teenage. | ||
After I lost my sister, I saw about 25 or 26 Grateful Dead concerts. | ||
And I'll use this analogy. | ||
I'd say that fighting, your first fight, if you've never done it before, it's like taking acid to either find yourself or lose yourself. | ||
I've seen people who are the baddest ass person on the planet. | ||
They're the best fighter in the gym. | ||
And they go to the fight and they just melt like butter. | ||
They just can't, you know, it's like they trip out, you know? | ||
And that's what I love about fighting. | ||
You got to take who you are in the gym and you're a god in front of 20 people. | ||
Now do it in front of 20,000 people. | ||
Or in a local show, do it in front of 20, 200 people. | ||
It's still... | ||
I love that vortex, that rush of... | ||
It's a proving ground. | ||
Yeah, I mean... | ||
A real true proving ground. | ||
An exposure of truth like nothing else. | ||
Because that's what I think. | ||
It's like, I've seen so many people lose themselves. | ||
Dude, alright, bring up... | ||
Just being dwarfed by the moment. | ||
Bring up this clip. | ||
This is when I knew Anthony Pettis was special. | ||
Um... | ||
Anthony... | ||
Alright, I'll give you the fight. | ||
He gets his shoulder popped out and he gets up and knocks a dude out with a head kick. | ||
Like, check this out. | ||
And this is when I knew, like, and I have a lot of kids like this who just have that thing. | ||
Anthony Pettis versus... | ||
unidentified
|
Dead air. | |
Mike Lembrecht. | ||
L-A-M-B-R-E-C-H-T. And this, you'll see rot, but you want to talk about how you find yourself and lose yourself in life? | ||
This is one of those moments. | ||
Like, and, you know, that's why I love that, you know, whether it's you go do it at a jiu-jitsu tournament, wrestling match, whatever, man. | ||
Like, getting in a mano-a-mano situation is... | ||
Until you've done one-on-one sports, you just don't know what I'm talking about. | ||
There it is. | ||
So how did he get his shoulder fucked up? | ||
You'll see it here in a second. | ||
He's teeing off on this guy. | ||
That's old Anthony. | ||
That's hood red ant. | ||
Just come out, the bell rings, and that don't look like new Anthony, right? | ||
Yeah, he's throwing wild shit, man. | ||
Yeah, yeah. | ||
Bang! | ||
Right there. | ||
Boom. | ||
He got taken down. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Fucked his shoulder up. | ||
Yeah. | ||
So now... | ||
How bad was his shoulder fucked up? | ||
Wait till he stands up. | ||
You're going to see something just crazy. | ||
What I do is I always judge people on their potential. | ||
Not about each performance. | ||
When I saw this, I knew that this kid had super potential. | ||
Hip escape. | ||
Yep. | ||
Finds a way. | ||
See it dangling? | ||
Oh yeah, it's fucked up. | ||
So watch this. | ||
This is why this kid's special. | ||
Alright. | ||
Moves. | ||
unidentified
|
Boom! | |
Switch off the front leg too, right? | ||
Yep. | ||
So that's when you find yourself. | ||
With a fucked up shoulder. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Didn't tap out. | ||
Didn't think about quitting. | ||
Show that again, Jamie. | ||
Jesus Christ. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Wow. | ||
Everyone thinks he's just this flashy kid. | ||
unidentified
|
Boom! | |
In deep shin. | ||
Yeah, that's perfect. | ||
That's beautiful. | ||
unidentified
|
Look at him. | |
He can't celebrate his shoulders so bad. | ||
Now, what happened to his shoulder? | ||
What did he wind up doing to it? | ||
Popped it out. | ||
Dislocated it? | ||
Yeah. | ||
He never gets injured in training. | ||
It's in fights, man. | ||
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
And that shoulder was hurting him for a while, and he had to go through it. | ||
And he got it fixed, and here he is. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Wow. | ||
Yeah, just crazy. | ||
I mean, like, you just got that thing. | ||
That's what competing in the ring, the octagon, like, you know, it's just... | ||
I love that. | ||
That's what I miss. | ||
When I'm in the locker room, I don't care how badass, your mind's fucking with you. | ||
It's like you're on a trip. | ||
You don't feel so good today. | ||
You don't want to fight. | ||
You've got to be like, fuck you. | ||
Come on, let's go. | ||
Everyone has doubts in your mind. | ||
That's the key. | ||
You've got to keep all those voices out of your head. | ||
It looks kind of ferocious. | ||
Seriously, man, you're tripping out back there. | ||
And then, you know, it's like... | ||
You find it, you get your hands taped, and you figure it out. | ||
But it's such a head trip. | ||
Mike Tyson used to talk about that. | ||
There's a cool speech he has where he's like, five minutes before in the locker room, I'm getting my gloved up, I'm pounding the leather, and I'm scared. | ||
He's been training for me, and I go out there. | ||
But then when I walk to the ring, I feel like a god. | ||
And then when I walk to the ring, I look at him. | ||
And I don't take it. | ||
I look for a chink in his armor. | ||
You know, it's just, I love that. | ||
Such an intense moment. | ||
I know, I love that. | ||
When you see him, and that's one of the reasons why fights are so intense when you watch them on television. | ||
When you see Chris Weidman step in there against Anderson Silva in two weeks. | ||
Or excuse me, against Liotta Machida in two weeks. | ||
And you see those guys opposite each other on the other side of the octagon. | ||
You know those are the two best 185 pounders in the world. | ||
And they're about to go. | ||
And the referee, whoever it is, looks at him, are you ready? | ||
And looks at the other one, are you ready? | ||
And you're like, holy shit, here we go. | ||
Well, I'll give you my perspective. | ||
Like, I always get these dudes who are like, ah, I could be the best fighter. | ||
I'm great at street fighting. | ||
So you're good at going, hey, bang, I'm going to hit you by surprise. | ||
You want to know what it takes to be a real gangster? | ||
I don't like you. | ||
I gotta fight you. | ||
I'm fighting you for the world title. | ||
Guess what? | ||
We gotta go on press tours. | ||
So every time I see you, my adrenaline spikes. | ||
Man, I hate fucking Joe. | ||
Why do I gotta be here with him? | ||
Alright. | ||
We got another press conference. | ||
Oh shit, we're in the same hotel room all week. | ||
I keep running into this asshole. | ||
So every time, it's like, I gotta think about this guy more than anything. | ||
Oh, we're at the weigh-in in the back. | ||
And I gotta stand next to him. | ||
Oh, now we gotta walk out. | ||
Now we gotta stare each other down. | ||
Oh shit. | ||
And this is all you think about. | ||
Then you walk out. | ||
You walk out first. | ||
Now you gotta hear his song. | ||
You're in the ring waiting for him. | ||
And then, you know, how many times on the high level you confront with each other? | ||
That's what I love about little shows. | ||
You see the dude at the weigh-in and then you show up and kick his ass. | ||
But on the big show, man, you're constantly forced to be with that dude. | ||
And that's something that folks don't... | ||
Take into account when they think about a fight, a championship fight, the amount of press these guys have to do, and the amount of interviews they have to do, the same questions they have to answer over and over and over again, morning radio shows, interviews with reporters, enough, enough, enough, enough. | ||
It's an added element, stressful element. | ||
People who can handle the big light media. | ||
I mean, that's, you know... | ||
Yeah, that's a tough thing at Glory. | ||
I mean, you're over there. | ||
Get that fucker, man. | ||
You know, the restaurant's small. | ||
Where we're at, there's not a lot of stuff around there, so it's like... | ||
Man, I used to hate it in K1. We'd take the same bus to the fights. | ||
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
My first time I fought in Japan, they didn't have separate locker rooms. | ||
My opponent was on the table next to me. | ||
That's how it is in Thailand at Lumpini Stadium. | ||
Then you've got to sit in a chair waiting to go right next to the dude you're going to scrap with. | ||
It's just like the Coliseum. | ||
Wow. | ||
Walk out with your opponent. | ||
It's a trip, you know what I mean? | ||
People don't understand the head trip about fighting. | ||
Again, that's why I say it's like taking some hallucinogens. | ||
He can trip out a little bit, you know? | ||
It's very distorted. | ||
Very reality distorted. | ||
Yeah, man. | ||
I've seen people crumble under those situations. | ||
Like I've seen the toughest, most athletic people who can't handle the psychological side of this. | ||
And when a fighter loses, that's when things get weird too. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
Because then you start to question everything. | ||
Your camp, you start questioning your conditioning program. | ||
You start questioning how you're setting your training up as far as how much emphasis is on this and how much is on that. | ||
Maybe I need a new jujitsu coach or maybe my striking coach doesn't understand striking for MMA. | ||
Maybe I need to move to Albuquerque. | ||
Maybe I should live in Seattle with Matt Hume or go to Montreal with Farah Sahabi. | ||
Yeah, I mean... | ||
Your mind starts fucking with you. | ||
Yeah, I mean... | ||
Especially people, if they've been an alpha male successful their whole life. | ||
My biggest advantage, I've been an underdog my whole life. | ||
So I'm really good at... | ||
I'm like Henry Hill. | ||
I know that once in a... | ||
Like he said, everyone's got to take a beating once in a while. | ||
So I'm mentally strong because I know like... | ||
You've taken beatings. | ||
You know what it's like. | ||
Yeah, whether it's verbal, abusive, you know, physical... | ||
People who've never had the struggle, those are the people that drop off the worst. | ||
Well, that's one of the reasons why those guys who have brothers are so fucking dangerous. | ||
You, who's had brothers. | ||
John Jones, who had brothers. | ||
Chris Weidman was beat up by his brother his whole life. | ||
And Weidman's brother put him in the hospital, dropped a metal plate on his head. | ||
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of shit with those guys. | ||
Matt Hughes, he had a fucking twin, just as badass as him. | ||
Another gorilla growing up, beating the fuck out of each other. | ||
Yeah, he decided not to fight so his brother could be championed. | ||
Isn't that crazy? | ||
I know. | ||
Think about what his brother could have been. | ||
Yeah, he probably could have been. | ||
His brother was good. | ||
Very, very successful. | ||
He fought once in the UFC, didn't he? | ||
Yeah. | ||
I mean, he fought in other organizations too, I believe. | ||
I believe so, but yeah. | ||
Another gorilla. | ||
He's huge. | ||
I mean, so again, that mental side of this sport, that's, I know what I like to do. | ||
My new, I run my, um, My older fighters are kind of like Navy SEALs. | ||
On the base, Navy SEALs don't have to wear their uniforms. | ||
They don't have as much protocol. | ||
But my newer fighters, I put them through my Spartan training. | ||
I try and see what you're made of early on in your career. | ||
If you have any aspirations, if you can't get through the Spartan stage, you're never going to get to the top level. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
So what difference? | ||
We're a little harder on them than my pro guys. | ||
The pro guys are made guys, man. | ||
They've been doing it. | ||
It's the difference the way you talk to a high school football player as opposed to... | ||
I don't do it to be mean. | ||
I want to see what you're made of, man. | ||
If you break down because a coach got in your ass, you're kind of a pussy, aren't you? | ||
Sorry I wanted to make you great. | ||
Sorry I want you to win. | ||
Sorry I don't want you to get your face rearranged. | ||
Yeah, dealing with adversity in all forms. | ||
Verbal adversity and if you can calm yourself down during those horrible moments of Duke Rufus screaming at you. | ||
Yeah, I mean, that's not always, but I mean, I just know, my brother, you know what, I'll describe, my sister died when I was 15, and I found her dad, she died of SIDS, it was pretty tough. | ||
It's probably why I didn't have a kid for a long time, honestly, that's why my wife and I, you know, later in life, and it's pretty traumatic for me. | ||
Needless to say, it's not feel sorry for Duke, it's just what I figured out, and I feel better now about it, but I was 16, I I've been doing martial arts my whole life, but I said I want to be a fighter. | ||
My brother is older than me, he's 20, he's already world champ, and Rick was a killer. | ||
The scene out of Godfather, remember when Michael goes, you know, I want to be in the family business. | ||
And my brother's like Sonny, a hothead, like, this ain't for you, kid. | ||
Remember he goes, you're used to shooting him from far away. | ||
We kill him up close. | ||
And my brother was kind of like scoffed at me, like, you want to be a fighter? | ||
So I had to go through the Rick Rufus indoctrination. | ||
My brother, man, he used to lay beatings on me like you wouldn't believe. | ||
Hit me with spin back kicks, wheel kicks, back foot. | ||
I mean, that kid was, you know... | ||
Dude, my brother was amazing, especially in his game, PK-style kickboxing. | ||
But I was like a Rocky movie. | ||
I just kept coming back every day. | ||
I just... | ||
I was so messed up, but I just wanted it so bad. | ||
But... | ||
I'm not saying that bad. | ||
I'm glad my brother did that to me. | ||
He made me so hard. | ||
He made me Bane, man. | ||
I was molded in the darkness, as he said. | ||
Remember Bane in the Batman movie? | ||
You guys nearly choose the darkness. | ||
No. | ||
I was molded in it. | ||
I had to go to hell every day. | ||
I used to box in the inner city of Milwaukee in the Martin Luther King Center. | ||
It was like that scene out of, remember, True Romance? | ||
Is it a white boy date? | ||
No, I don't think so. | ||
You know, my nickname was Snowflake. | ||
You know, the only white guy in the room, you know, is like years of oppression. | ||
You know, but it's cool. | ||
I got my ghetto pass. | ||
Now I'm all, like, everyone knows back home that I can throw, you know, but that's what made me. | ||
You know, a lot of guys don't want to go through that. | ||
I'm so happy I had to do it that way because... | ||
It made me so mentally tough that I have gotten my ass kicked. | ||
That's the hardest thing in the world. | ||
Get the crap kicked out of you and then have to go beat someone else. | ||
Dude, what's the worst humiliating thing you can do in life? | ||
Get your ass kicked. | ||
In front of God and everybody. | ||
Yeah. | ||
God and everybody. | ||
Yeah, some guys, they have one loss, one big loss, and they just never recover. | ||
They're never the same again. | ||
Toughest thing I had to do in my whole career. | ||
I fought 2001. They needed a quick replacement for K1 at the Blasio. | ||
I took the fight like on three weeks notice. | ||
I had another fight planned. | ||
I was just starting my major strength and conditioning for a fight seven weeks later. | ||
No, or like 45 days after that one. | ||
So a decent amount. | ||
But hey man, it's K-1. | ||
If I win, I'm back in the Super 16 to go to Tokyo. | ||
So I come out there. | ||
I threw down with Steph on Letko. | ||
It was a great fight. | ||
I think it's on YouTube actually. | ||
We were going in. | ||
I felt so great first round. | ||
I sit down on that stool. | ||
unidentified
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Boom! | |
Hit a wall. | ||
And then, man, we're going at it. | ||
We're going at it. | ||
He drops me once in the second round. | ||
Then the second round, I go to uppercut, and I just reach too far. | ||
I see that frickin' uppercut coming. | ||
It's like, that's the worst thing that can happen in your life. | ||
See a counter? | ||
Oh, fuck. | ||
I'm gonna get hit with that. | ||
Next thing you know, I'm looking up at the lights. | ||
But the thing is, I was suspended 45 days. | ||
I think I was fighting 46 days later. | ||
So I had to go fight. | ||
That one's on YouTube too. | ||
Me versus Pedro Fernandez. | ||
So you lost by stoppage and then 46 days later you fought again? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Against a guy who only, his only losses were to my brother and Marie Smith coming into that fight. | ||
Wow. | ||
When you do that. | ||
That was the toughest challenge of my career. | ||
unidentified
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Wow. | |
How much time do you wait until you spar again? | ||
I waited a good amount. | ||
I really didn't spar at all. | ||
I shadow box, pads, everything. | ||
unidentified
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Wow. | |
Yeah. | ||
Just to give your brain a rest. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's so important. | ||
Yeah. | ||
There's so many guys that get knocked out in training, and then they go to the fight, and then they get clipped by one shot, and their body just gives out. | ||
I know a couple guys. | ||
I won't rat them out to the UFC that have gotten knocked out in training and still fight. | ||
I'm like, man, you can't do that. | ||
So yeah, I mean, that was the toughest fight of my career. | ||
Not only that, but man, I just got knocked the F out. | ||
That takes a piece of you away. | ||
You think you're some bad mofo, you know? | ||
I don't think I had gotten stopped by someone since Mike Bernardo in 96. So I hadn't been stopped, rocked, put on my ass by anyone since that point. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
So it's years. | ||
When you get dropped on your ass, it's like Maverick. | ||
And Top Gun. | ||
Can't get it, I beg. | ||
You know, but that was, for me, the toughest fight in my career. | ||
I ended up winning. | ||
I stopped the guy in three rounds. | ||
But, you know, that's the thing people don't realize in golf and tennis. | ||
Yay, you lost, bro. | ||
Oh yeah, he lost a basketball game. | ||
When we lose, it's catastrophic. | ||
A guy loses in an MMA fight, or a kickboxing fight, or even in wrestling. | ||
It's like someone just stole who you are. | ||
Yeah, definitely. | ||
Stole a part of your essence. | ||
A guy submits you in a jiu-jitsu match, triangles you. | ||
He just owned you. | ||
It's like Ben Henderson. | ||
You could see... | ||
Not rubbing it into Ben, because I like Ben, respect him a lot. | ||
Great performance, by the way, Ben. | ||
I told him personally at the fight. | ||
The Rustam Hobbylaw fight was fantastic. | ||
He looked so good in that fight. | ||
Dude, he has the Pettis factor. | ||
Anthony creates his own little Frankenstein. | ||
He's making this dude get better, man. | ||
He's coming back. | ||
God damn it. | ||
Stay down. | ||
Don't come back. | ||
I can't wait to see that rematch. | ||
Yeah, shut up. | ||
I can't wait to see it. | ||
I know, because it's hard to beat a guy three times. | ||
You know, I always say that. | ||
It's always hard to beat someone, you know, sooner or later, like how Marquez got up to Pacquiao. | ||
But, you know, it You could see Ben just crushed. | ||
That's the hardest thing. | ||
I respect him. | ||
That's the hardest thing about the sport. | ||
You see your opponent crushed. | ||
I'm glad he tapped. | ||
I'll tell you that. | ||
It drives me nuts when guys don't tap and they get their arms snapped. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And then they're fucked for it. | ||
Well, Jon Jones lost his title or could have lost his title to Vitor Belfort, but he decided not to tap. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And when Vitor was cranking on that arm and it was hyperextended, John made a decision. | ||
He made a decision. | ||
I'm going to let this arm get fucked up. | ||
And his arm was fucked up for a long time. | ||
That's why he coached on The Ultimate Fighter with Chael. | ||
Because he really couldn't train or fight. | ||
So he's like, just coach, you know? | ||
What's the worst lock break you've seen? | ||
Is it Noguera or Tim Sylvia? | ||
Well, Noguera's just as bad if not worse. | ||
Maybe Noguera's worse. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Because it was Noguera. | ||
Remember my boy Danny Downs? | ||
I can't believe... | ||
Remember when the Kimura he got put in? | ||
Yeah. | ||
That kid is so tough. | ||
Yeah, amazing. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
He's actually coaching in San Diego at Victory MMA, and he writes for the UFC. Oh, beautiful. | ||
Yeah, he's got some funny stuff, man. | ||
He's cool. | ||
But that's one tough Irish kid. | ||
Fuck yeah. | ||
Yeah, I couldn't believe, like, he just... | ||
You know, again... | ||
Sometimes guys don't do as well as they'd like to do in the UFC, but I'll tell you one thing about that kid. | ||
Heart, courage. | ||
He went out on a shield. | ||
Sometimes as an athlete, you're the hammer, you're the nail. | ||
Your job is to entertain the fans. | ||
The kid came out to fight every time. | ||
Oh yeah, he was very fun to watch. | ||
Very fun to watch. | ||
As all your guys are. | ||
You produce really exciting fighters. | ||
I try to. | ||
Something I learned years ago from growing up. | ||
My dad was a promoter. | ||
You know, you want to be a promoter's delight. | ||
You know, you want to be the guy that, hey, we got to get these guys on there. | ||
You know, it's fun. | ||
You know, I mean, to Sergio's credit, he tried to finish the fight. | ||
He was winning against Bruce Leroy, and he dropped for a submission, made a tactical air. | ||
He wanted to finish with a heel hook. | ||
Bruce Leroy got him, you know. | ||
I'm a big fan of Bruce Leroy. | ||
I think he's underrated. | ||
I think he's a very... | ||
What do you think about him versus Uriah? | ||
Interesting. | ||
I mean, it just... | ||
You know, he's a tough fight. | ||
Yeah, tough fight. | ||
I mean, Uriah's a veteran. | ||
I mean, if he does what he did to McDonald, just runs at him, makes a street fight, throws him on the ground, vintage. | ||
That's what I like seeing Uriah do. | ||
I think Uriah's doing good striking, but I think when he comes out, Uriah Caveman, yeah. | ||
unidentified
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Rawr! | |
Alan just chokes people out. | ||
He's kind of a blueprint for what I want to see a lot of my wrestlers do. | ||
Go punch him, take him down, throw him down, choke him out, and let's go home. | ||
That McDonald fight was probably his finest performance in the Icon. | ||
It was spectacular. | ||
I think older fighters, he kind of reminded me a little of Oscar De La Hoya. | ||
Oscar switched training with Mayweather's dad, and you get bored with certain styles. | ||
You put weapons into your arsenal, but sometimes learning new weapons actually hurts you more than helps you. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Because it gets you confused? | ||
Yeah, or almost too much. | ||
I used to do that. | ||
I'd be like, man, I'm really into this technique, but it's not helping me. | ||
It's actually hurting me. | ||
We're running out of time. | ||
Okay, cool. | ||
We just about hit the three-hour mark here. | ||
Oh, sorry. | ||
So how do people get a hold of Duke Rufus University? | ||
How do they get there? | ||
DukeRufus.com. | ||
DukeRufus.com. | ||
Yeah, D-U-K-E. Sign up for it. | ||
It's all for a dollar rate now you can join. | ||
Check it out, man. | ||
unidentified
|
Beautiful. | |
And Duke Rufus on Twitter. | ||
Yep. | ||
Instagram, Facebook, all that. | ||
And this Saturday night, Glory is going to be live on Spike, the prelims, and then pay-per-view for the main tournament. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I'm going to be there. | ||
I can't wait. | ||
Yeah, Joe's going to be in the house. | ||
If you're in the LA area, come on out, meet. | ||
There's going to be a lot of fun people. | ||
At the Forum, right? | ||
Yep. | ||
Yeah, of course. | ||
Joey Karate. | ||
He's making a comeback. | ||
Yeah, Joey Diaz is coming down, too. | ||
He's coming with me. | ||
And that guy who annoys you, that Brazilian guy. | ||
He's my buddy. | ||
About the heat. | ||
Yeah, Master Orange. | ||
He'll be there. | ||
We're going to get him high. | ||
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
Should be a good time. | ||
All right, bro. | ||
Thank you, brother. | ||
Oh, no, man. | ||
It's my pleasure. | ||
Hey, all you guys, keep listening to Joe Rogan Podcast. | ||
It'll change your life. | ||
I don't know about that, but we'll give it a shot. | ||
Thanks to LegalZoom. | ||
Go to LegalZoom.com. | ||
Use the referral code ROGAN at checkout and save yourself some money. | ||
Thanks also to Onnit.com. | ||
Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN and save 10% off any and all supplements. | ||
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, many, many, many podcasts to come. | ||
Lots of good guests next week. | ||
Much love to everybody. | ||
Enjoy your weekend. | ||
Talk to you soon. |