July 21, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:56:59
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| All right. | ||
| Why play around? | ||
| Hicks and Gracie is here, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| And my brother, Eddie Bravo. | ||
| Cue the music, Jamie. | ||
| Let's get going. | ||
|
unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast. | |
| Check it out. | ||
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day! | ||
| Joe Rogan Podcast by night! | ||
|
unidentified
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All day! | |
| All right, we're live. | ||
| First of all, thank you very much for doing this. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Out of all the people online, whenever things get brought up for mixed martial arts guests or jujitsu guests, it's always get Hicks and Gracie on the podcast. | ||
| So the clouds have parted, the stars have aligned, and you're here, and we appreciate it very much. | ||
| I'm very thankful too, Joe and Eddie, to be with you guys here and have this conversation. | ||
| It's funny because last time we talked in my house, a while ago, of course, you make me some questions, you're curious, you're all about knowing what has in my mind. | ||
| And at this point, I was the talker. | ||
| And, you know, in the past, and the time goes by, and today I can see, after all this process of evolutionary process in the MMA and the martial arts world, I mean, since then I've been watching you doing your job. | ||
| Commenting fights, analyzing other fighters. | ||
| And today I can see, man, you are a red belt in the whole extension of the world. | ||
| You know everything. | ||
| I mean, if I have a question, I have to call you and ask you what's up because I'm very, very, I mean, impressed with your career, with your charisma, with the way you position your opinions. | ||
| It's all very precise, so... | ||
| I'm very happy to be here and discuss some talks and talk with you here. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| That's an honor to me. | ||
| And it was an honor for me to hang out with you that night. | ||
| It was really cool. | ||
| We had dinner with your family and then we watched some fights. | ||
| And it was really interesting watching fights with you and watching you break down positions and break down mistakes that people were making. | ||
| And I've told a lot of people about that, man. | ||
| I've told a lot of people about that night. | ||
| That documentary, Choke, that is one documentary that I've told people. | ||
| If you're really interested in Jiu-Jitsu, you really want to find out what the spirit of Jiu-Jitsu is all about, watch the documentary, Choke. | ||
| That documentary is so inspirational. | ||
| They followed you, was it in 94, 95? | ||
| Yeah, 95 going into 96, yes. | ||
| 95 going into 96, and you were fighting in Japan, in the Japan Valley Tudo, and it documented a lot of your training, and it documented your philosophy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Man, if ever I need some motivation, I'll slap that DVD on. | ||
| You just get fired up. | ||
| You want to go do some yoga on the beach or something. | ||
| Yeah, it was fun. | ||
| How did that come about? | ||
| What? | ||
| That documentary. | ||
| Well, it was a project with a student of mine who was working with the Polygram and also... | ||
| So we decided to follow up to the event. | ||
| And so they have a crew following a couple of fighters, and I'll follow myself to see what's going to happen at the event. | ||
| So it was a nice introduction to a preparation, to the mindset of a fighter, either myself or Todd Haynes, who is another... | ||
| And also the Japanese guy was also involved in the filming. | ||
| So it was a cool, primal experience to an MMA fight, like a Valetudo fight. | ||
| Well, it was very eye-opening for a lot of fighters who looked at... | ||
| Mixed martial arts, a lot of them come from a wrestling background, and they looked at mixed martial arts more of like as a sport. | ||
| Just be tough, you know, you gotta get up, you gotta train hard, you gotta run hard, you gotta lift hard. | ||
| And your philosophy was much more like a samurai. | ||
| Your philosophy was much deeper, much more meditation-based, and we got to see you doing yoga. | ||
| I think you opened up a lot of people's eyes to a different mindset involved in preparation. | ||
| But also to yoga. | ||
| That was the first time I had ever seen a martial artist that was really into yoga. | ||
| Yes, I think for the athlete in general, the understanding of the breathing is a big plus because by hyperventilating, you stretch your physical potential. | ||
| By knowing how to breathe properly, you relax. | ||
| You can bring your heart beats lower. | ||
| There's a lot of elements in the breathing who are involved We're controlling emotions, getting more energy and so on. | ||
| So as I get exposed to breathing properly, I get addicted and I felt like it was a huge element of, you know, in addition to the techniques, in addition to the heart and to the heart training. | ||
| Learning the breathing is a huge beneficial thing for the athlete. | ||
| Now you see athletes like tennis players, they play in breathing, and the breath is much more into the sport today. | ||
| So it's a process of... | ||
| Knowing, now I see Krohn, my son, he's, I mean, before he's just like, see, oh, Dad, I see you training and breathing. | ||
| But now he's coming to me and said, Dad, this makes all the difference in the world when I really, you know, start to getting tired to make hyperventilation and keep my mind, like, sharp. | ||
| Because sometimes if you get tired... | ||
| There's not enough oxygen in the blood to feel your sharpness in your mind, so you become a little stupid, a little slower, you know? | ||
| So, by having a good Knowing how to hyperventilate, you're able to maximize this oxygen. | ||
| So even though the acetylactic take over your body, your mind is still sharp and you're still responding accordingly. | ||
| So it's a great thing to do. | ||
| And you were born into the greatest jiu-jitsu family, the greatest martial arts family of all time. | ||
| I mean, there's no doubt about it. | ||
| There's not even a second place. | ||
| There's the Gracie family, and then there's, you know, I guess you could have a debate about who comes in second, but it's kind of ridiculous. | ||
| That is the number one martial arts family of all time. | ||
| And you obviously learned Jiu-Jitsu from a very early age, but how did you get involved into the yoga? | ||
| Oh, it was, you know, I'm very happy to be related with this master called Orlando Cunny. | ||
| Which was the precursor of the Ginástica Natural. | ||
| I was learning at the same time, Alvaro Romano, who is the guy who is now making the tapes. | ||
| We're learning together, you know? | ||
| And at that point, I was just practicing with him, like he loved my father. | ||
| He's an older guy who's a very tough athlete and also a yoga teacher. | ||
| So he combined He developed some kind of style of yoga which is not exactly a postural, like postures and breathing to relax or to achieve meditation. | ||
| It was more like an active breathing for athletes. | ||
| In order for you to jump higher, you have to know how to have harmony between your jump and your breathing. | ||
| Keep more strength for a long time. | ||
| You have to know how to breed accordingly to promote that. | ||
| So he's always in the active breeding. | ||
| And then we started doing privates and I was in his place for a couple of months. | ||
| He's guiding me through the moves in front of a mirror in a nice room. | ||
| One day, we were about to start the class, and as soon as we were about to start, he was calling the phone, and he said to me, Hickson, you keep going and I'll be right back. | ||
| So for the first time, I was able to breathe, make my routine without following him up, without having my mind focused on what he was doing. | ||
| So I started to breathe and move and breathe and move, And then it has some woods on the walls. | ||
| We kind of imitate monkeys to climb the wood and stuff. | ||
| So at one point, I come back to reality. | ||
| And then I was on top of the highest frame in the wall, sweating like a pig. | ||
| And then I look around and start to come back to reality. | ||
| And I saw him on the corner crying. | ||
| And then I said, what's up, man? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| He said, man, you don't have to learn anything else from me. | ||
| You achieve the highest level of get empty mind. | ||
| And then I kind of said, why do you say that? | ||
| He said, yeah, because you're here for an hour and 15 minutes and completely off. | ||
| I mean, you didn't notice anything. | ||
| Because he was applying the development of the animal instinct, which takes your brain off... | ||
| Your mind, your concentration, and keep you more like an instinctive animal. | ||
| And that was the vision. | ||
| And through this, because before that, I was doing transcendental meditation, I did traditional yoga, and those never did great for me. | ||
| In the meditation, I was sleeping. | ||
| By doing that kind of routine, I was able to not just breathe properly, but also... | ||
| Achieve empty mind. | ||
| And I was like in a state, a meditation state for a long time, like not concentrating on anything like rational. | ||
| Oh, he's there or he's... | ||
| So I was able to achieve like an empty mind. | ||
| And after I noticed that, I started to practice my routines to get that same feeling of emptiness. | ||
| And that kind of meditation works for me as no other one. | ||
| And I felt like being an empty mind increases my, I don't know, my intuition, increases my sense of energy. | ||
| So it was incredible for me because I could... | ||
| Get in touch more comfortably with my, I mean, my third vision. | ||
| I don't know exactly what to explain, but I could achieve a completely peace of mind in that kind of routine. | ||
| So I was stick for life. | ||
| So you just got into this state and you could just exist. | ||
| No conscious thought, no thinking about anything around you, no past, no future. | ||
| Just exist in that moment with no context. | ||
| Yes, and that's a kind of a weird positive feeling because You're capable to be present in a sense which, if you have your mind set, if you have something, expectations, you're never there. | ||
| So I was able to be very comfortable and very easily to get into that situation where even prior to the fight, I'm able to sleep on the locker room, making my workout, getting a very high heartbeat. | ||
| And then like five minutes before, I make my praise, I make my meditation, and I kind of cool off my heartbeat to 60 heartbeats a minute. | ||
| So I was able to engage very hot, And with the hard, very low heartbeat. | ||
| And as the fight progresses, the pace is very hard. | ||
| If I'm 60, he is 80. When I'm 80, he's 100. When I'm 100, he's 120. When I'm 120, he's a 45. So when he started to have to regroup, I was still having to go forward. | ||
| So at that point, my opponents always lose a little bit. | ||
| So it was a time for me to make the kill, you know. | ||
| So it was always working properly for me. | ||
| The breathing was always working very well. | ||
| So this empty mind state enhanced your jiu-jitsu, this ability to achieve this state on top of all the techniques, on top of all the training and the instincts, this took it to the next level. | ||
| Yes, because, you know, at one point, if you allowed yourself to be present, you not commit to the offense or the defense, you commit to give nothing and take everything. | ||
| So you give me opportunity, I will be there. | ||
| If you try to surprise me, I will be there accordingly defending myself. | ||
| So it's all on the table. | ||
| It's like no surprises because there's no expectations. | ||
| So keeping a cool mind, even when it's boiling, is something I felt like was always like something which gives me an edge. | ||
| Because I was there just to either catch what is there or resolve the problem. | ||
| Never disappointed or never late. | ||
| No expectations. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| Yeah, and it's always late. | ||
| I mean, sometimes you get late because you're playing something in a fight and it doesn't happen. | ||
| So you start to be disappointed. | ||
| So for me, it was always like whatever happened, I'm there, I'm happy, comfortable, finding comfortable, finding the sharpness to... | ||
| To achieve success, you know, so it was great. | ||
| You grew up in this jiu-jitsu family, but you were always, at least from most people's interpretation, you were always the best guy out of the family. | ||
| How did that happen? | ||
| How did you rise above all the rest? | ||
| I mean, you grew up with a bunch of killers. | ||
| Yes, everybody was training hard. | ||
| Everybody was pushing to the maximum. | ||
| For one point, I feel like I'm dedicated, I'm perfectionist, I'm competitive in my heart. | ||
| But some elements I get was more like a God gift. | ||
| It's not exactly something I choose. | ||
| So, we're training all the same. | ||
| Why my brother... | ||
| I can play with my brothers and they cannot have a chance with me. | ||
| So, that's kind of hard to explain. | ||
| It's not me trying to do this. | ||
| This just happened. | ||
| It's myself trying to be my best. | ||
| Plus... | ||
| The emotional control, the peace of mind. | ||
| For example, my beloved brother Heuler, he's a great fighter, but sometimes he gets too emotional. | ||
| And that sometimes makes him choose the wrong path. | ||
| So Royce, he's a great fighter. | ||
| But sometimes he gets a little confused. | ||
| He's not having the sharp offensive attitude. | ||
| So sometimes something slips. | ||
| And so on. | ||
| So I don't exactly know why I'm the one. | ||
| I just have to represent and be, you know, happy to be the one. | ||
| And I tell you, man, all the opportunities I have to represent, I did already. | ||
| So I feel like completely comfortable in myself saying, okay, I have nothing to prove to myself. | ||
| I did all. | ||
| And, you know, I'm very happy with the results. | ||
| So, jiu-jitsu for life. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu for life, indeed. | ||
| Your brother... | ||
| That's not on. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's on? | |
| Jamie. | ||
| That's not on. | ||
| Check, check, check. | ||
|
unidentified
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There we go. | |
| You had a cousin, Hols Gracie, the legendary Hols Gracie. | ||
| Actually, Hols is... | ||
| In the DNA, he's my cousin. | ||
| But he was living in my house since I was born because my uncle, as he divorced from his mother, He gave... | ||
| My father was just to get married. | ||
| So he gave Hollis to be care to my father and mother. | ||
| So he was like your brother. | ||
| So he's my older brother because Horion came in just after and then Halston. | ||
| And then when I was born, like eight years, nine years later, I was the little one living with Hollis, Horion and Halston. | ||
| So he's my brother. | ||
| There's no way to... | ||
| See him differently. | ||
| He was known as a guy who went all over the world, studied Sambo, studied some catch wrestling and wrestlers, and he would bring that back, right? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Would you credit Holes in bringing leg locks into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? | ||
| Is he the one? | ||
| Yes, I mean, the leg locks specifically was not something I kind of get the major information From Halls. | ||
| It was funny. | ||
| One day, Eric Paulson was a good student and a very good friend. | ||
| He brought a tape for me from Japan with Shoto. | ||
| Shoto Wrestling. | ||
| And I saw the knee locks in the Shoto Wrestling, you know? | ||
| Some guys fighting, and I saw it. | ||
| And it was kind of interesting. | ||
| And then the next day, I started to apply it. | ||
| And then it was funny because he commented to me afterwards at Hickson. | ||
| I mean, I give you the tape one day, next day we're submitting everybody on the knee locks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, really? | |
| Yeah, it was fun. | ||
| So you would say you learned more leg locks from Eric Paulson's tape than holes? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, holes was not specifically a leg lock guy, you know? | ||
| There's a picture of him with a Sambo shirt on. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| People go, look, look, he's a master of Sambo. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| We go in Sambo as we go in any other. | ||
| We go in representing Jiu-Jitsu against Sambo. | ||
| And the Pan American Games we went in San Diego was very interesting because the fighters, they don't expect so much submissions. | ||
| And we start immediately because tough wrestlers, tough judo players. | ||
| So we start immediately bringing the fight to the ground and go for foot locks and knee locks. | ||
| And immediately, I mean, in the first qualification phase, they start to tap in a lot. | ||
| And then the referees start to become kind of a little skeptical about that. | ||
| They start to become more... | ||
| So once Halls grabbed them in the footlock, especially in the final match in his weight division, He got the guy on the footlock, the referee stopped the fight and said, no, you cannot get the footlock on the joint. | ||
| You have to get on the shin. | ||
| And then it's kind of confusing, you know, and cutting. | ||
| That's why Halls lost the finals in this event. | ||
| This was in the 70s. | ||
| It was, I think, 80s, 81 or 80s. | ||
| So they were trying to cut him out? | ||
| Yeah, the referees started getting upset because it was funny. | ||
| We're supposed to come in with a team from Brazil of 12 guys, and we're expecting support from the government. | ||
| And then the government at the very last moment didn't give to us. | ||
| So my father paid to us to come. | ||
| So just me, Carlos Gracie Jr., and Halls. | ||
| So we come in to compete in this event. | ||
| How old were you at this time? | ||
| You must have been like 18 or something. | ||
| Yes, 19, something like that. | ||
| And then we come in and I was in the My Way division, which is one above Halls. | ||
| And Hollis was below me, and Carlos was on top of me. | ||
| So we're kind of having one in each division. | ||
| And as the competition progresses, the referees start to see those three guys from Brazil just submitting everybody because in Samba, chokes are not allowed. | ||
| No headlocks, no collar chokes. | ||
| It's only knee locks, foot locks, or straight arm bars. | ||
| You cannot even do the Americanas because it goes in the... | ||
| So we just go and try to do footlocks because those are the easiest way. | ||
| So we start to finish the guys and they start to say, oh, this guy's coming and do footlocks. | ||
| And everybody may complain. | ||
| I don't know if... | ||
| But it's Sambo, though. | ||
| Sambo. | ||
| Yeah, that's what they do is footlocks. | ||
| It's now. | ||
| Now. | ||
| Back then, there wasn't footlocks. | ||
| Yeah, it's so interesting how that's changed. | ||
| No, it was legal, but it was not used, especially in the Sambo and American concepts. | ||
| Russia, maybe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| American Samba focus on what mostly? | ||
| They are more likely to control. | ||
| The rules are, if you pin the guy for 30 seconds, it's like wrestling. | ||
| Not as long, but you still win like judo. | ||
| And as you attempt the pin, every time the guy passes the back on the ground, you're still making points. | ||
| So in my final match, I guess a guy from the Air Force, very strong guy with maybe wrestling and judo background. | ||
| And he was whipping my ass, man. | ||
| He's just like... | ||
| In the first, like, three rounds, three minutes. | ||
| In the first round, he stay on top all the time. | ||
| And because being in the guard, you're losing points. | ||
| The score is about 12 or 14 points in the first round. | ||
| In the second round, it's about 18 or 20. I tell you, in the very final round, I was about 26 or something points against zero. | ||
| You know, and I was just trying to do my thing, and then one, like, maybe a minute before the very final round, I swept him and mounted. | ||
| And he, at the same time I mounted, he tried to push me away, and I got, like, a moving arm lock. | ||
| And he not even tapped. | ||
| He just yelled. | ||
| And then I win the fight in the very final seconds. | ||
| And you were down 20-something. | ||
| Yes, I was like... | ||
| Points are not even chance. | ||
| I'm not there to win by points. | ||
| I was there just to see if I can submit. | ||
| It's fascinating. | ||
| And then the guy tapped like 15 seconds before the fight is end. | ||
| And then the whole crowd was... | ||
| And then everything kind of... | ||
| And then just a few guys... | ||
|
unidentified
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It was pretty fun. | |
| So when Eric Paulson showed you these tapes of Shudo in the 90s, you were already doing leg locks a little bit, right? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I very like foot locks. | ||
| I always loved... | ||
| The straight foot lock. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then what Eric Paulson showed you was like fancy knee bars and stuff. | ||
| Yes, because from the guard you just spin around and go with the straight knee lock. | ||
| So I get amazed by this kind of... | ||
| And I start to develop, you know, very quickly. | ||
| It was just adapt to my game and was an... | ||
| In addition to the arsenal, it was great. | ||
| It's funny when you look back at old Eric Paulson fights from Japan, you look at the stuff he was doing, and people today still aren't even doing that. | ||
| He's way ahead of the game, too. | ||
| Eric Paulson was an encyclopedia of submissions. | ||
| Him and Matt Hume. | ||
| Those guys back then, it looked like Like advanced Jiu Jitsu, and of course, you know, anytime you got the mount, there was always an arm bar. | ||
| Yeah, but you know, that time, Eric was being training very consistently for us. | ||
| He's a good brother and a training partner. | ||
| He's always been a great warrior, and I have a lot of respect for him. | ||
| Great guy. | ||
| Very, very knowledgeable guy. | ||
| Isn't it fascinating that we've seen, just in the time that I started training from 96 on, this adoption of leg locks in Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| In the early, in the 90s, it used to be that leg locks were frowned upon. | ||
| When someone went for leg locks, people would get really upset. | ||
| Hickson, were you at the first Pan American Games in 1996 or 1997 here in El Segundo in L.A.? You must have been there, right? | ||
| Do you remember that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Probably, yes. | |
| It was the first Pan Americans. | ||
| There was like 500 Brazilians. | ||
| They shipped them all. | ||
| It was an invasion. | ||
| It was an invasion of Brazilians. | ||
| And the crazy thing is I was a blue belt in jiu-jitsu and I saw Ken Shamrock tape of a toehold. | ||
| So I was a blue belt doing toeholds at Jean-Jacques Machado's academy. | ||
| And I competed in the tournament, and so did Eric Paulson. | ||
| And when I went for a toehold in this tournament, all the Brazilians started throwing... | ||
| There was almost a riot. | ||
| They called the cops. | ||
| They were throwing shoes at me. | ||
| And Johnny Machado, I'll never forget, him running in slow-mo, sliding. | ||
| And I had the toehold, and Johnny goes, You gotta let it go! | ||
| So I had the toehold, and I'm looking around, so I let it go. | ||
| People are throwing shoes at me, and water bottles and stuff. | ||
| It was like a big deal, and I ended up losing. | ||
| I let it go. | ||
| And afterwards, Eric Paulson's in the parking lot. | ||
| It was just me and him. | ||
| He was a blue belt as well. | ||
| And he was like, he was a kid. | ||
| We were like the same age, but he was like, I was like a little kid. | ||
| He was like, you know, let me talk to you, kid. | ||
| He goes, let me show you a couple leg locks. | ||
| So he showed me a couple things, like this weirdest leg lock that It doesn't work. | ||
| And he admits it now that it was garbage. | ||
| But he showed me this leg lock. | ||
| He showed me this leg lock where you go like this, this weird thing, in the parking lot. | ||
| And I'll never forget that. | ||
| I was like, man, this guy's the only guy who understands that I like toeholds. | ||
| And he was on my podcast not too long ago. | ||
| And I asked him about that movie. | ||
| He goes, do you remember that movie? | ||
| He goes, oh yeah, it's garbage. | ||
| It's trash. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| Again, he raised that one. | ||
| Isn't it fascinating how these ideas, they get innovated and within our lifetime, they start to get implemented and they get weeded out. | ||
| The ones that work wind up staying. | ||
| The ones that don't work fall by the wayside. | ||
| What do you think about the IBJJF banning heel hooks? | ||
| You think that's a good thing? | ||
| I like to... | ||
| First, of course, it's a pleasure to talk about all this. | ||
| And I can answer that because I feel like the heel hooks... | ||
| It has to be implemented in the top-level fighters because it's a solid technique, but because it's designed to stretch the ligaments, not the joints, it's a difference between you going in your finger this way, you're going to feel pain before it breaks. | ||
| But if you go this way, you're going to resist until it pops. | ||
| So it's just ligaments. | ||
| It's not a joint. | ||
| This is a joint. | ||
| This is a ligament. | ||
| So when you twist the knee, the guy can still resist. | ||
| And when he feels, he's going to feel the pop. | ||
| He's not going to feel the pain to tap. | ||
| So this is in a way, if you don't have the experience, you're going to bust your knee. | ||
| So we don't want to see guys with busted knees just because they're tough or just because they don't know. | ||
| So we forbid in a whole... | ||
| The heel hooks. | ||
| But in an advanced level, like Metamores or like premium pros, I think they should bring back in. | ||
| Because this is part of the game and you have to be responsible to let it broke or tap. | ||
| And especially a guy like Tokinho. | ||
| When you see Paul Hares, he's such a master at it. | ||
| It's exciting to watch that guy fight to see how guys are going to deal with that. | ||
| Well, Abu Dhabi still allows heel hooks, right? | ||
| Abu Dhabi allows Metamores. | ||
| In my experience, I've been teaching now 10 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've... | |
| I allow heel hooks from day one only because I... As an instructor, I don't want some leg lock guy coming into my school and tapping everybody out with leg locks. | ||
| So I wanted all my guys to be very well-versed in leg locks. | ||
| And in my experience, we reap. | ||
| We heel hook white belts. | ||
| I can't even tell you the last time someone got hurt from a heel hook. | ||
| I can't... | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| Maybe... | ||
| Maybe once in 10 years. | ||
| Yeah, I think that kind of education is kind of positive because it gives the guy the sense. | ||
| If he feels the problem, he has to tap in advance. | ||
| He cannot allow the pop to happen because you're going to bust your knee. | ||
| And in Naga and Grapper's Quest, they allow heel hooks and you rarely ever hear about anybody getting hurt. | ||
| I think once you learn how to defend it, it's actually... | ||
| People will tap generally, and some people that don't tap, like Gary Tonin was talking about the first time, someone got him in a heel hook and his knee popped a few times. | ||
| He thought, well, if I tap now, it already popped. | ||
| Why should I tap? | ||
| I should just keep going now. | ||
| If someone... | ||
| I think if someone's going to let their knee pop or get hurt, I think it's their responsibility to tap. | ||
| And if it pops, is it really a big deal? | ||
| I mean, it's part of the game. | ||
| People get hurt. | ||
| People get their knees blown out in basketball way more than jujitsu. | ||
| Again... | ||
| Soccer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Again, in 10 years, I... I can't even tell you that maybe leg compressions a couple times guys have had their knees pop from leg compressions and even lockdown I've had a couple guys get their knee popped but heel hooks and reaping that's not something that I ever had to say we got to slow down be careful with the knee reaps just no one really gets hurt what seems to be a technique that when people were ignorant of it that's when people are really getting hurt more yeah Yeah, | ||
| sometimes when they really want to go for the hurt, they don't visualize the possibilities to hurt. | ||
| So they go and go full power from the beginning to the end. | ||
| So it's not even a chance to the guy tap. | ||
| He's already tapping late. | ||
| So that's more like the mindset of the guy who's attacking. | ||
| If he wants to break your knee, it's a great chance to do that in a heel. | ||
| And when we were adding wrestling to our jiu-jitsu classes, trying to combine it, now we separate. | ||
| We have separate wrestling classes and separate jiu-jitsu classes. | ||
| At a time when I was trying to combine it together, we would have a day where we'd just do wrestling and we'd do live wrestling drills and we're all standing up. | ||
| That's where everyone got hurt. | ||
| And it got to a point where... | ||
| Because people collided with each other? | ||
| Just trying to take someone down and tackling them. | ||
| They plant on their leg wrong. | ||
| Einstein broke his leg wrestling. | ||
| His leg broke because he planted on it wrong. | ||
| He got picked up. | ||
| So there came a point where I decided, you know what? | ||
| Too many guys are getting hurt on wrestling day. | ||
| So I cut wrestling out. | ||
| And, you know, if you want to wrestle, you go to the wrestling class. | ||
| In my class, it's just jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But we do allow reaping. | ||
| We do allow heel hooks. | ||
| And there's no one getting hurt from that. | ||
| More from the wrestling. | ||
| There's a famous match where you had with Mark Schultz. | ||
| What happened in that? | ||
| Because that's a very famous encounter and there's a movie coming out called Foxcatcher that's based on... | ||
| Do you know the story behind this movie? | ||
| What was the guy's name that was responsible? | ||
| Foxcatcher. | ||
| It was based on... | ||
| There was the two brothers. | ||
| Mark Schultz and David Schultz. | ||
| David Schultz got killed. | ||
| And it's based on this guy, John DuPont, who was this crazy rich guy who was... | ||
| Taking these wrestlers, and he was, I don't know, some weird gay shit. | ||
| There was something weird about him. | ||
| He'd pay for privates. | ||
| Well, not just that. | ||
| He'd set up a training center and pay them a lot of money and just get real weird with them and wrestle with these guys. | ||
| But he was like this old dude. | ||
| It wasn't like he was a guy who was really fit and really into training and learning techniques. | ||
| It was just real weird. | ||
| And he wound up shooting. | ||
| They creep through every now and then. | ||
| They do. | ||
| Well, he was a billionaire. | ||
| I mean, he was a super, super rich guy. | ||
| So this movie is actually about to come out now. | ||
| But his brother, Mark Schultz, fought in the UFC, Olympic gold medalist, fantastic wrestler, all-time great wrestler. | ||
| And you and he had an encounter. | ||
| Yeah, well, I was in Utah visiting my instructor, Pedro. | ||
| Pedro Sauer? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then we are invited to go to the BYU where he was coaching the wrestling team there. | ||
| And as I got there, you know, looking for training and stuff, and eventually he said, okay, let's train a little bit. | ||
| And then immediately we engaged. | ||
| Immediately he went to my guard. | ||
| And almost immediately, he's tapping out. | ||
| And then he was not happy at all. | ||
| Would you put him in a triangle, an armlock? | ||
| Yeah, triangle first. | ||
| From the guard. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then he becomes a little more smart, and he comes... | ||
| So it was a long second round. | ||
| Eventually, I went to his back and submitted him again. | ||
| And after a few sessions, I make him tap some. | ||
| And he was very impressed. | ||
| Like... | ||
| Well, nobody did this with me. | ||
| I mean, what's going on? | ||
| I mean, he was stronger than me. | ||
| I mean, of course, a warrior. | ||
| And he was not happy. | ||
| I mean, somebody said once, you show me a good loser and I show you a loser. | ||
| So he was not happy at all. | ||
| And of course I understood that. | ||
| But eventually he settled and he understood was a technique involved. | ||
| And he started to become training with Pedro and become passionate about Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| He trained a lot and he became like a supporter of the Jiu Jitsu cause in Utah. | ||
| And you know, it was a great experience because I can felt like the whole level of training and body control he has, but still like at that point the wrestlers have no clue what is, you know, submission. | ||
| So it was kind of, you know, a surprising thing for them, which doesn't happen those days. | ||
| Do you remember specifically what moves Holes brought from wrestling and from Sambo? | ||
| A good weight distribution, a good way to... | ||
| Like if the guy grabs you, you're able to make the movement to go to his back, like good turnovers, a good excellent sense of no-gi bass control, good grips to... | ||
| Arm drags and stuff like that? | ||
| Yeah, things like very, you know... | ||
| He was training a lot with Bob... | ||
| Bob Anderson. | ||
| Bob Anderson, yes. | ||
| So he was a good friend of Bob Anderson and Bob Anderson went to Brazil. | ||
| So it was like a... | ||
| He was the one who brought the wrestling ideas and concepts because he pushed us once to compete in Olympic wrestling. | ||
| So it was... | ||
| Halls was always, for me, a reference. | ||
| You know, as I grew up, he was the champion. | ||
| And he was just an unbelievable guy with a good heart and passion for Jiu Jitsu, love to represent. | ||
| He was my idol, you know, as I was growing up. | ||
| And I tried to follow his footsteps. | ||
| And as I was growing up, we all trained hard among each other, with others. | ||
| So, my goal was to beat Holes. | ||
| You know, my goal was to be better than him. | ||
| Let's suppose our last 30 trainings, maybe he beat me like in the first two or three. | ||
| And then we spend maybe 20 trainings or maybe 25 trainings even up like back and forth. | ||
| I start to get more and more into his game and what this strategy to catch me. | ||
| And I start to become more comfortable in the surviving. | ||
| And then at one point I start to getting the advantage in the training because no luck, either you better or not. | ||
| So, and consistently I start to become more comfortable and then eventually I start to get the advantage in some positions. | ||
| And then in one day, in the range of my father, like in a weekend, we all get together, it has a huge match. | ||
| So I was training with him and I submit him first time, you know? | ||
| Who'd you get him with? | ||
| Oh man, it was like a, you know? | ||
| Gui or no Gui? | ||
| Gui. | ||
| So, I don't even remember. | ||
| I think it was some kind of choke or something. | ||
| But what I remember, it was the feeling I felt by achieving my goal, I was making him feel like he was losing his position. | ||
| And I felt, the same way I felt happy, I felt sad because It was not his anymore. | ||
| It's myself, my responsibility now. | ||
| And we know that, and nobody knew. | ||
| I mean, of course, people saw the training, but at that point, I felt like I was there still to support him, but I was better than him. | ||
| And we're still competing in the events coming, and we always close the bracket because he goes in his weight division, I go in mine, and we go together in the open division. | ||
| So we always close the open, you know, and I never will fight, I mean, up to that day, he always being the first and I'm the second, the medal is his, even though I knew I could maybe change this, you know? | ||
| I never, ever will... | ||
| If he's still alive, he will be the number one and I'm number two, based on respect, based on hierarchy. | ||
| So, once he passes away, I have to take over. | ||
| You know and represent fully. | ||
| He's my inspiration and he's a great guy. | ||
| I miss him dearly. | ||
| He died in a tragic hang gliding accident. | ||
| How old were you at that time? | ||
| I was maybe 20, 22, something like that. | ||
| So he was there when you fought Zulu? | ||
| Yes, he was my coach. | ||
| He was in my corner with my dad. | ||
| For people out there that don't know what I'm talking about, the Zulu match that you had was one of the... | ||
| That's like watching an old Ali match, you know? | ||
| Can you put that up, Jamie? | ||
| Actually... | ||
| Hickson versus Zulu. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I really, you know... | ||
| This conversation goes very well. | ||
| And I... I mean, I really appreciate you talking about the past, but I'd like to make a little pause on this and really bring up the most... | ||
| Because we have to live today. | ||
| We have to be motivated. | ||
| And I'm very happy today to come here to explain and talk about this new venture I'm involved with, which is the new JJGF, Jiu-Jitsu Global Federation. | ||
| Because talking about Jiu-Jitsu, talking about rules, talking about the future of Jiu-Jitsu, I think we're having a huge problem to be resolved. | ||
| And that is crucial for the future. | ||
| I see like this new organization will bring to the table the elements to resolve our problem. | ||
| I think our biggest problem today in the Jiu Jitsu community is losing effectiveness. | ||
| We've been losing effectiveness drastically from the last 15 years because The way, in order for us to restore effectiveness, I felt very appealing to me to engage in this venture, which through this federation, We're going to try to resolve three important... | ||
| I mean, we have three pillars of action to try to resolve that problem Jiu-Jitsu has. | ||
| Effectiveness in what? | ||
| In MMA? Effectiveness. | ||
| In like a fight? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Effectiveness. | ||
| I'm going to explain to you because it's different. | ||
| Efficiency and effectiveness. | ||
| Today, I see the top camp champions very efficient on getting medals, but they're losing effectiveness in real life. | ||
| And if you see Jiu-Jitsu as I grow up, the core of Jiu-Jitsu was self-defense, is preparing the students to handle situations. | ||
| Today, the evolutionary process of jiu-jitsu brought the sport of jiu-jitsu and those rules, diminishing that effectiveness in the search for the medal. | ||
| So, and like, nothing can be boring for me, more boring than watch some fights in jiu-jitsu tournaments those days. | ||
| I believe you. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| They can choose between stepping the brake or stepping on the gas. | ||
| They can choose because the rules favor... | ||
| If you are strategically correct, you may want to go in the fight to fight a situation where you can control the pace of the fight, you can manage the whole thing, and eventually, by one or two moves, you get advantage and win the medal. | ||
| So, great! | ||
| You have the medal. | ||
| But sometimes, that shows... | ||
| A lack of desire to compete. | ||
| A lack of desire to engage in a fair fight. | ||
| A lot of times I see a white belt or a blue belt or a purple belt fight which is much more appealing, has much more open situations of changing positions than a black belt who sometimes sits on the floor and is stuck in a position who holds... | ||
| He's stalling the whole action. | ||
| So, by doing that, he's efficient on getting the medal, but he's losing effectiveness to handle real life. | ||
| That's why it's hard to see a jiu-jitsu representative on the cage who translates that. | ||
| I mean, I see jiu-jitsu translate today something I feel like I never will fight like that. | ||
| The guy is a jiu-jitsu practitioner for life. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| He's talented. | ||
| He's tough. | ||
| He's sometimes a champion. | ||
| But he don't fight the way I believe he's supposed to be fighting there. | ||
| You know, he has no idea of clinching. | ||
| He has no idea of sidekick. | ||
| He has no idea of a valetudo guard. | ||
| They have a sportive guard all the time trying to do homoplatas, you know, instead, and the guy on top just hamming them down. | ||
| So it's kind of weird because without that kind of efficiency, I mean, I'm sorry, effectiveness, Jiu-Jitsu is losing the integrity, the whole culture, the whole concepts I trust and I believe all my life. | ||
| So if I can clarify, your issue is with points and with advantage points? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| For example, this new situation will be this federation is not there to compete with other organizations. | ||
| I'm not there to... | ||
| I'm doing the job It was not done yet, you know. | ||
| Based on this platform, this state-of-the-art platform, we try to have three different elements to work with. | ||
| The information. | ||
| I think the vision is to perform something, a good service. | ||
| My intention with this is to serve the community In the sport community, the worldwide jiu-jitsu community, and the sport of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Thinking that, I have three different elements. | ||
| The first one is the communication aspect, the information. | ||
| Through the site, you're going to have a listing of all the academies on the planet. | ||
| We have a listing of all athletes. | ||
| Profiles, downloads of fights. | ||
| So they will have the option to request sponsors, show themselves. | ||
| It's like a Google slash Facebook for the community. | ||
| And also we're going to have a Masters Council which brings all the guys who have traditionally spent their lives in the Jiu-Jitsu community to have a voice, active voice for the community. | ||
| So in the forums... | ||
| Sometimes somebody makes a question about a position, so the masters will be involved in answers if they want, and they will be highlighted because that's his opinion, that's my opinion. | ||
| So people, the community is going to start to evaluate what's beneficial and what's negative, what the master has to say. | ||
| So it creates a network which is most needed to unify the community. | ||
| I see the community, should they completely split? | ||
| You know, some federations have their own circuits, some others. | ||
| So it's 30 events on one side, another 30 on the other side, and then has, you know, Naga 7, Grappler Quest, have Dream, have IBJJF. So all this is completely disorganized and completely split. | ||
| So my intention is bringing to the community a sense of Of unification. | ||
| Based on this information, who is good for everyone. | ||
| Like another important point is have contributors from all over to bringing the reports of what's happening in this event, who is the champion, who is that, news and everything. | ||
| Because some magazines today, they're completely partial. | ||
| They just will talk and explain about their athletes or in their society. | ||
| It does not cover the whole community. | ||
| So through this information, this solid, efficient, general information, the whole community will be informed, will be connected, will be asking and being listened. | ||
| So I think that's very important for the community. | ||
| Another big pillar of our federation is the competition aspect, which... | ||
| By changing rules, we restore effectiveness. | ||
| How we do that? | ||
| Cutting the advantages, because the advantage for me is like a ball in the ring. | ||
| It's just touch the ring, doesn't make a point. | ||
| How are you going to make a half point? | ||
| It's very hard to interpret what is really real and what is not. | ||
| It doesn't matter how many goals you try and hit the post. | ||
| The score is what matters, you know? | ||
| So a half point just creates a controversy and interpretation for the referee. | ||
| So it becomes a very confused way. | ||
| So back to the reality, you just go for clear points. | ||
| And also, another important thing is... | ||
| Give minus points for stalling positions. | ||
| What is a stalling position? | ||
| It's a position where you hold with the intention to preserve the position, to preserve the control of the dynamic of the fight. | ||
| You're stalling because you want to be in control by using what I call an anti-jiu-jitsu move, which prevents you from keeping action. | ||
| Because the idea is both engage and see who's the best, who's submit, who's passing, who's mounting, who's getting. | ||
| And sometimes people, to minimize that risk, they're kind of keeping the situation under control, a position they can control the sleeves, putting the leg, entangle it, so he's comfortable to... | ||
| To proceed until the point he needs to make a little advantage. | ||
| So this diminishes the effectiveness because this kind of strategy doesn't work in real life. | ||
| So they'll be punished for that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So they grab and the referee comes and says, hey man, watch your grip. | ||
| After 20 seconds, he already gets a minus point. | ||
| After then, he's going to get minus again and then eventually he's going to be de-kill. | ||
| Is it subject to interpretation whether a guy is stalling or if they're canceling each other out? | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
| Is it subject to interpretation, whether it's stalling or whether or not they're canceling each other out? | ||
| Like, one guy's trying to advance, the other guy's stopping him for advance, they're just both looking for the opening? | ||
| Yeah, but you can see easily who wants to progress and who wants to just control the position. | ||
| For this guy who don't want to progress, he will be... | ||
| I mean, you can know it. | ||
| I mean, in theory, maybe it's... | ||
| But if you see it, you can see who's just trying to minimize the action and try to wait for their opportunity, and the other one who's trying to make it happen, you know? | ||
| What about submission-only tournaments? | ||
| Do you like those? | ||
| The Federation also have this kind of rule. | ||
| We have two sets of rules. | ||
| The point rules, system for tournaments, And we have the challenge rules for matchmaking like the Metamorris kind or any promoter who will try to do something like the baddest purple belt. | ||
| So it's no way division. | ||
| There's no time limit. | ||
| He can approach the time as he wishes. | ||
| Like, okay, we'll be 20 minutes match. | ||
| We'll be 15 minutes match. | ||
| We'll be half hour match. | ||
| What do you think about Gracie Worlds and Gracie Nationals? | ||
| It's all submission only. | ||
| And after 15 minutes, if there's no submission, they're both disqualified. | ||
| Yeah, I disagree with that disqualification. | ||
| I spoke with Rose. | ||
| And she maybe... | ||
| I mean, we're going to get into the better for the jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But for me, it's the same rules in case of a bracket. | ||
| So I don't feel like... | ||
| Both who kind of didn't submit should be disqualified because sometimes in the same bracket, two tough guys, they fight each other and they could not submit to each other. | ||
| And then some two, I mean, halfway. | ||
| Busters. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| One submits the other. | ||
| So this guy advances and those two are disqualified. | ||
| So I don't think this is fair. | ||
| Somebody has to come in from this. | ||
| So the way I did is the first round goes full force. | ||
| And if the 20 minutes end or 30 minutes end, depends on the arrangement, after the 30 minutes you ask the guy, you want to fight? | ||
| The guy say yes. | ||
| And then you ask the guy, you want to fight? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So it's another round. | ||
| So in the second round, we still don't have positive points. | ||
| But every time the guy put himself in a position and he start to defend himself without attempting to escape or giving the combat, just protecting or resting or whatever, the referee is going to say, hey man, keep going, acting or you're going to be penalized. | ||
| So we have negative points for diminishing of combativity. | ||
| So at the end of the second round, if we see, like, somebody with minus points, this one will be the loser, you know, because he displays less desire or less guess or less techniques to be on top of the competition. | ||
| So he's minus because he's defending all the time, he was tired or whatever, so he gets minus points and then... | ||
| The other guy advances for the bracket. | ||
| So that's the only change for the submission. | ||
| Are you familiar with my... | ||
| I have a submission-only tournament as well. | ||
| I don't know if you're aware of that. | ||
| And it's very similar to Gracie Worlds, Gracie Nationals. | ||
| But both... | ||
| It's 15-minute matches, but both competitors aren't disqualified. | ||
| We actually have an overtime round. | ||
| And in the overtime, it's kind of like soccer. | ||
| I didn't want overtimes to be determined by wrestling in a lot of tournaments. | ||
| It's like you go into overtime and whoever's the best wrestler wins because you get the takedown and then they hold and then they win. | ||
| So a lot of wrestlers can go into tournaments and go, I'm just going to stall for regulation. | ||
| Take it into overtime and win with my wrestling. | ||
| So in order to eliminate that, I wanted to know who the best submission artist is, not who the best wrestler is. | ||
| So my overtime, each person, like if we went into overtime, you get to start on my back with the leg hooks and an over-under, and then we go. | ||
| If you submit me, then I get to go on your back, and if you escape, you win. | ||
| But if I submit you, then we go another round. | ||
| It's like extra innings. | ||
| And then the next round, you take my back, I escape, I take your back, and I submit you, I win. | ||
| That's in a dreamland, of course, but that way we get to find out who the best is at submitting. | ||
| We couldn't finish in regulation, now we go into overtime, and we start on each other's backs like free kicks. | ||
| Yeah, but I think this is valid, but you take the element of conquer the position. | ||
| I think... | ||
| The fight has to be... | ||
| Even standing up, if the wrestlers start to avoid... | ||
| Any avoiding of combativity is supposed to be penalized, but... | ||
| You could fake that, though. | ||
| A wrestler could fake it, like take shots. | ||
| One thing is for sure. | ||
| In this new federation, in the same way we have the Master Council, we're going to have the Development Council, and you're going to be invited right now to be part, because I see people like... | ||
| You guys are not just know the deal, know the sport, but also has opinion to make. | ||
| And my idea is not to ride my rules in stone. | ||
| My idea is to follow the best pattern to create more effectiveness and more dynamic aspect for the sport. | ||
| So the Federation has this open heart and open eye and open ears to kind of make the best conclusions for the sport. | ||
| So all the rules can be changed. | ||
| Everything can be adapted to a better, more defined display of effectiveness. | ||
| That's a beautiful thing. | ||
| When will this go into effect and when will your first event be? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I'm not playing only in events. | ||
| My idea is to service. | ||
| So I'm going to service through the information. | ||
| I'm going to service to giving reference and giving guidance for the events. | ||
| But even though they don't do my rules, I will legitimize everybody and I will start to relate the records of every event, who won here, who won there, and I start to put everybody to become part of the same profile, the same mindset, and I will hammer the idea of why we don't do the best rules for Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| Because I bet the champions today, many of them, they're going to say, oh, I don't like, I prefer to do this or that. | ||
| But I'm not here to educate those champions. | ||
| I'm here to educate 85% of the competitive community today who is still white and blue belt. | ||
| Those guys, they're being misled to understand the strategy of the game to get the medals, but they're losing effectiveness in real life. | ||
| So... | ||
| The change of rules, aside of the education aspect of the Federation, is very important. | ||
| How I see the service of the Federation in the educational level. | ||
| Because a lot of times, guys coming from the competitive background, from white to purple to brown and black, so they become tough competitors, sometimes champions, they become famous, then they open the school. | ||
| And as they open the school, They teach what they know. | ||
| Their techniques will make them feel champions. | ||
| So great. | ||
| But this is just like a percentage of what he's supposed to know to teach. | ||
| Because not everybody wants to go there to compete. | ||
| Not everybody has the skills and the toughness to engage in that kind of level of training. | ||
| I feel like jiu-jitsu is there to favor the community as a whole. | ||
| I feel like the instructor, he has to be knowledgeable about self-defense, about self-defense for women, about programs for kids, kids' class, and law enforcement. | ||
| So as the instructor becomes certified, I mean, I'm not going to validate all the skills, The instructors, all the black belts today. | ||
| I'm not going to say you don't deserve it, but I will suggest to them to get certified through the Federation, because they will get elements for their schools to become more efficient, retain more students, have better teaching programs, which are the core of effectiveness. | ||
| The other day I heard some black belts being asked for a student about self-defense. | ||
| He said, no, no, if you want to self-defense, you go to Grav Maga. | ||
| And I felt that this is just something that goes straight on my heart because for me the core of Jiu-Jitsu is self-defense. | ||
| If you don't know self-defense, basically you don't know Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| You have to be ready to defend yourself from a slapping, from a hug, from a headlock, from whatever. | ||
| And if you don't have those concepts lined up, you become sometimes very tough, with tough years, with very good grip, endurance forever. | ||
| But you're still counting on your own physicality. | ||
| You cannot teach that for children or for women. | ||
| So by having the Federation presenting those courses and spreading this all over the world, The teacher will have much more elements to have more students, to have more knowledge to feed his students in different levels and make a different job with Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| So this is beautiful. | ||
| So your motivation is just to improve Jiu Jitsu? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You see a bad direction that it's going in the competition? | ||
| Jiu Jitsu is losing effectiveness and we have to restore that by informing very well, by Understand the competition as a progressive thing to make you a better fighter, not to make a better competitor. | ||
| You know, if you're a competitor, sometimes a taekwondo guy, he's a great competitor, but he has nothing to do with real life. | ||
| I mean, you want to be a fighter. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu is something you learn to protect your honor, to protect your dignity, to represent, to fight, to make money in the cage, whatever your goals are. | ||
| Jiu Jitsu is there to support you in a very profound and deep cause which is effectiveness. | ||
| The transition between jujitsu and jujitsu competition and mixed martial arts is a very tricky transition for a lot of jujitsu fighters. | ||
| Yes, especially when they don't have that kind of strong background. | ||
| I think if everybody fights like Krohn, we don't have to set up rules because he wants to accelerate. | ||
| He wants to be progressive. | ||
| He wants to win by points. | ||
| He wants to go to the kill. | ||
| So guys like him or Buchecha or some other great athletes, they go and they choose to fight openly, you know? | ||
| To see. | ||
| Some other fights, they choose strategic elements to just give them more chances. | ||
| Just points. | ||
| Just points. | ||
| Just advantage. | ||
| Sometimes a 10-minute fight, nothing happens, just two advantages. | ||
| That's terrible. | ||
| I mean, I don't expect to see this in a fight and nobody expects. | ||
| So, by changing rules, we increase effectiveness. | ||
| We create a more dynamic fight. | ||
| It's more interesting to see. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Nobody wants to see something boring. | ||
| And we create... | ||
| Under this concept, the possibility to unify the whole community, not only this particular association or this federation, but everybody in the same part. | ||
| And then, without taking anything from nobody, my vision is to create a worldwide circuit of jiu-jitsu, which represents The same thing, the ASP for surf or the ATT for tennis, which brings major players, like big sponsors and television for the sport. | ||
| So first is unified, try to unify the rules, try to create effectiveness, try to give a better condition for the teacher, for the school owner, for the independent promoter. | ||
| Because I cannot think about, okay, I'm going to start to make my own circus, and I don't validate nobody, it's just me, like other people do. | ||
| So that's a wrong way to unify and educate the community and our culture for the future. | ||
| Krohn said publicly that... | ||
| He feels that part of the problem, the stalling problem, is the holding of the sleeves. | ||
| That's what I think, too. | ||
| I totally agree with him. | ||
| I think the fact that you have to have your sleeve tight because then your opponent can't grab it. | ||
| I think that is so backwards. | ||
| I think that it should be illegal to grab the sleeve. | ||
| Illegal. | ||
| I think it should be illegal. | ||
| I think it's possible to be legal. | ||
| What is unacceptable is that grip promotes only A cool-off situation. | ||
| I can grab anywhere I want if my intention is to progress. | ||
| If I start to say, okay, coming to me, coming to Papa, and I stay here waiting to waste your energy, and then when you make a mistake, I sweep you, that's kind of weak in your mindset, weak in your progressiveness, weak in your effectiveness. | ||
| But what if he's stuck there? | ||
| Like, he has the sleeve and he's stuck because he's trying to pass. | ||
| And if he lets go of the sleeve, then you're going to pass. | ||
| And you're kind of just stuck there. | ||
| And you're like, I can't let go of the sleeve because... | ||
| Let it go, man. | ||
| Let it go and go for the risk. | ||
| Don't you think that would cause problems with the ref and the ref's interpretation of what's stalling? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Whatever is holding, if you're not moving, is stalling. | ||
| So you should have the hip movement and the angles and the quick fast on the knees, whatever you do. | ||
| Because if the guy don't make a complete pass, he's still like almost no advantage. | ||
| So it's just keep going. | ||
| Do you think it's less of an issue with no gi? | ||
| Yes, stall is less because in no gi you can stall in 50-50s and different things. | ||
| It will be easier. | ||
| But you have much less elements to submit. | ||
| I feel like the Nogi is just take maybe 70% of the submission options. | ||
| Still some classic ones, but not that many. | ||
| So I feel like it's just less options, but it's still exactly the same fight. | ||
| When you did the Budo Challenge, we went to see that. | ||
| It was a great, great event. | ||
| What has changed since your ideas when you put that on today? | ||
| My ideas are the same. | ||
| The Budo Challenge is a great rule. | ||
| For a stream event, for a prime television event, it's not a sport competition event. | ||
| Because it aims the submission and only pros competing. | ||
| And it's like a premium sensational thing, which has no time for stalling. | ||
| It's all pushing forward, so the whole pressure. | ||
| I think it's almost that, but in the tournaments it has to be a little more sportive. | ||
| We have to have points, we have to have a time limit, which is accordingly to the... | ||
| The belt and so. | ||
| But it's the idea, the concept, a progressive concept of going to the submission has to be embraced. | ||
| I mean, it has to be in the whole mindset for every fighter, you know. | ||
| It doesn't change. | ||
| The way you fight has to be focused on the, submit the guy to be the best one out there. | ||
| When is your first big tournament? | ||
| Are you planning on having a big world? | ||
| I want to have, like in October, the first event. | ||
| But I already have, for example, next week, in the second and third, the Vulcan Open. | ||
| They will apply the new rules. | ||
| And it's all testing. | ||
| We're going to test the rules to see. | ||
| Because the idea is a positive, beneficial idea for the sport. | ||
| And if we need to adjust a little more and change, like I said, nothing is on the stone yet. | ||
| And we're going to allow the thing to, you know, hearing people and seeing the conclusions because the mission is very positive and the means will be adaptable. | ||
| That's a beautiful thing. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, it is a beautiful thing. | ||
| I'm very happy. | ||
| You've seen jujitsu progress from the time you were a boy to what it is today. | ||
| I mean, it's got to be an amazing thing. | ||
| An amazing thing also to have taken part in those first initial invasion moments when you guys came and you, like, there's so many of the Gracie in action videos where, you know, Horian is battling with the karate guys and, you know, you're battling with judo guys and people that had no idea what jujitsu was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I remember very clearly when I saw the first Ultimate Fighting Championship that I saw was number two. | ||
| They had a video tape that was out, and I watched it, and I watched Hoist win, and I remember thinking to myself, man, I didn't even know that there was anything like this out there. | ||
| I had no idea. | ||
| I had been in martial arts my whole life. | ||
| I had no idea that someone could do something like this. | ||
| I was doing karate, and man, I watched UFC 2 first, because UFC 1 They didn't have any highlights to show. | ||
| Well, they didn't release it. | ||
| Their idea was they were going to release two first and then they were going to release one for some reason. | ||
| No, but UFC 1 was. | ||
| They did have pay-per-view for UFC 1. Yeah, but it wasn't available on VHS. Yes. | ||
| And then so once I heard that UFC 1 was real, my friend said, hey, that... | ||
| Because I saw a preview for it and I thought, oh, that's... | ||
| Fake. | ||
| That's like WWF. That's not real. | ||
| So I ignored it. | ||
| And then my friend came home one day, my roommate, and said, hey, that Ultimate Challenge thing, it's real. | ||
| Some guy at Guitar Center told me it was real. | ||
| He said some Iranian guy was just choking people out. | ||
| He would just grab them by the throat. | ||
| He said Iranian. | ||
| The big sumo wrestler spit the tooth in the audience. | ||
| My friend, the guy who told me, didn't see it. | ||
| He heard it secondhand. | ||
| So he said, Yeah, some Iranian apparently was grabbing people by the throat and choking everybody out. | ||
| I said, some Iranian? | ||
| I go, he didn't fight. | ||
| I was doing karate for six months. | ||
| I go, it wasn't a karate guy, was it? | ||
| He goes, yeah, he beat karate, he beat boxers. | ||
| I go, by choking them out like this? | ||
| He goes, yeah, that's what they told me. | ||
| And I go, so the second one came out. | ||
| My friend called me and goes, the ultimate challenge thing is coming out again. | ||
| I go, tape it, tape it. | ||
| So I got home and I watched it. | ||
| And man, I hated Hoist Gracie in the opening rounds. | ||
| Because I wanted the Karate guy to win. | ||
| When he fought Minokia Jihara, I'm like, that was my hero. | ||
| I didn't even know who he was, but he did Karate, and I thought, okay, he's my hero. | ||
| But on the other side was Pat Smith, and I didn't like him. | ||
| And then I didn't like Hoist either, but then by the time the finals came, I fell in love with Hoist. | ||
| Like, go Hoist! | ||
| By the time the finals hit, I was in love with him, and I go, I gotta find this. | ||
| Because I wrestled in high school a couple years, And I thought, either this is primitive wrestling or it's super advanced wrestling. | ||
| I didn't know what it was. | ||
| So I went in. | ||
| I found Jean-Jacques Machado. | ||
| I went in there and I got choked out 37 times by a purple belt by Dave Meyer. | ||
| Dave Meyer. | ||
| I remember Dave. | ||
| And I remember thinking, one day I'm going to be able to do this with someone who just walked in. | ||
| I was so, from that point on, I was obsessed with it. | ||
| This is like a changing life experience. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What was it like for you to be there, to not compete, and knowing that you were better than your brother? | ||
| There's all this talk about why you didn't compete in the UFC. I come here to support Hordeon and the cause of spreading the art. | ||
| And at one point, I was Horian's soldiers for whatever. | ||
| And at another point, I decided to follow my own path. | ||
| And of course, keeping the alliance, but going in my own direction. | ||
| And then Horian called me and asked me to train Horian. | ||
| I didn't know why. | ||
| And then he said, oh, I plan to do some events. | ||
| I said, okay, let's do it. | ||
| So I was his coach for the first and second event. | ||
| And then somebody asked me through Eric Paulson and the assistant of Denino Santo, Yuri Nakamura. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He was in Shoro. | ||
| Shoro, yes. | ||
| So he sent me an invitation to participate in a Shoro competition. | ||
| And then they sent me a tape to see what the rules are about. | ||
| And I didn't like the rules, but I liked the locks. | ||
| So I started training the locks and I said, no, man, this is, I mean, there's no, I don't like it. | ||
| So, and then we start to immediately say, I don't want to do. | ||
| And then my ex-wife, much more calm, started to negotiate with the guys and started to say, but if we change the rules, so it was kind of... | ||
| Talk and talk and eventually they decide to change the rules for a new open rules like and then I advise the way supposed to be the rules so we create the new VALITUDO 94 and then When I signed the... | ||
| I mean, when I about to sign the contract, Horion called me and said, Hickson, what are you doing? | ||
| He said, yeah, man, I'd be invited to fight in Japan. | ||
| I said, no, you should not go because this goes against the family. | ||
| UFC is our game. | ||
| We should be in support of the family and stay here as Roy's coach. | ||
| I said, man, that's not exactly what I vision for myself because, I mean, I'm here being coach. | ||
| I get one penny. | ||
| You put a lot of dollars in your pocket. | ||
| You give me nothing. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| You give me some money for me to sit on the bench, we are in business, but if you give me nothing, the guys offer me a lot of money to go. | ||
| You don't even have to give me what they offer. | ||
| You just have to give me some. | ||
| I said, no, no, you should do it for the love of the fans. | ||
| I said, yeah, man, I love you guys, but you love me and you give me nothing. | ||
| How am I going to love you? | ||
| So I went to Japan and deal in my tank and started winning there. | ||
| And then I got my direction towards Japan, which was very good for me. | ||
| The community there, the education, the culture there was... | ||
| It was very, I mean, I feel like home. | ||
| And that's pretty much where I direct myself, my career, my end of my career to Japan. | ||
| But now Crown is back to see what's going to happen. | ||
| So, were you worried at all with Royce doing the UFC? Did you think? | ||
| Because he was the youngest one of the brothers, right? | ||
| He didn't compete as much. | ||
| Were you worried at all that maybe it was... | ||
| Yes, but the idea, the primary idea of Royce going in is because he was not the best one. | ||
| But he was something that is going to be a good test for him. | ||
| It's a good, you know, to break the ice and stuff. | ||
| But not exactly... | ||
| If something happens, it's always a backup. | ||
| You were the backup? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So I was there to just jump in in case. | ||
| So if someone beat Hoyce, you would have jumped into the UFC? Oh, immediately. | ||
| What about after the chemo incident? | ||
| What about after that? | ||
| After that, I was already engaged in Japan. | ||
| It's too late. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You had a contract with them over there? | ||
| Yeah, not for many fights. | ||
| I never did many fights in one contract. | ||
| But I felt like... | ||
| Hordeon created a very awkward situation, you know, and was a kind of little division, you know, so I was not appealing to go there and show my support to Hoist and be there just... | ||
| So I allowed him to have his own destiny. | ||
| There was also the talk that Hoyce was a slender guy, he was younger, he wasn't as intimidating as you, and that it sort of accentuated the idea of Jiu Jitsu, that Jiu Jitsu was technique-based, whereas you're a scary guy. | ||
| You're a scary guy now, but you were a really scary guy then. | ||
| You were the only... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Muscular. | |
| You were the only yoked, shredded Gracie. | ||
| You were like 185, right? | ||
| Something like that? | ||
| Yeah, depends. | ||
| I start... | ||
| Zulu was like... | ||
| I have 74 kilos. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| 74 kilos, maybe 180. 180, okay. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Maybe a little less. | ||
| And then, my last fight in Japan, I did with... | ||
| Funaki? | ||
| Yes, I was 195. Nice. | ||
| Because he's like 220, right? | ||
| Funaki? | ||
| Funaki is 230. 230 something. | ||
| And then... | ||
| You know, I was making a preparation to go heavier than this, sometimes even 200, and then cut down to get my best shape. | ||
| When we spoke, it was 2000, when we had dinner, was it 2005 or something like that? | ||
| Somewhere around there? | ||
| You were still thinking about fighting like Fedor and the higher level guys. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| None of that ever materialized, though? | ||
| Never, yes. | ||
| After my son's departure in 2000, I was about to make the best contract of my life. | ||
| I just finished with Funaki and I received a proposal, a millionaire proposal, to fight Sakuraba. | ||
| He was still on the top. | ||
| And then, my son's departure, I have to have, like, a moment for the family and regroup as a whole. | ||
| By departure, your son passed away. | ||
| He passed away, yes. | ||
| So... | ||
| It was a moment I could escape by doing a fight. | ||
| Say, okay, I'm going to focus on the fight. | ||
| But I felt like my family will be completely unprotected and unsupported. | ||
| So I said, no, I don't care about the fight. | ||
| So I spent about two years to make the whole family feel good again. | ||
| And we all... | ||
| Regain strength and happiness again. | ||
| So, after that, I started to get a free agent for a couple of years. | ||
| We tried to make something closer to what I have, but the whole business itself in Japan, the fact that Sakuraba lost for Vanderlei and things like that, diminished that kind of huge purse. | ||
| And then I felt like, no, I just want to fight if it's that much. | ||
| So I started to be very resistant about my next fight, some opportunities, but I kind of pushed away. | ||
| And to the point, in 2008, I was already moved back to Brazil for a while. | ||
| A guy from Texas invited me to compete in a new event and pulled me to fight feather. | ||
| And I was looking for that, but I had a little injury on my hip. | ||
| And until I be able to feel good to train, I could not sign. | ||
| And because he has a deadline in terms of promotion and such, I could not sign without having 100% confidence because if I sign, I will fight. | ||
| I'm not going to... | ||
| And I feel I have the time I want to get. | ||
| So I said, you know what? | ||
| I don't want it. | ||
| And in my heart, I went to the beach and said, thank you, God, for everything I have. | ||
| I'm out. | ||
| So I stopped competing. | ||
| Not exactly the way I want, but I felt like I have to respect God's decision. | ||
| And I just don't want to just jeopardize my life properly. | ||
| For the money, you know. | ||
| Okay, the guy put me money, I go there. | ||
| So I feel like I have to go to represent Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| Either I go 100% or, you know, I hope somebody else coming. | ||
| And I'll see what Krohn does. | ||
| I'm sure he's going to do great. | ||
| Out of all the great fighters that you saw during that time, from the time Well, Hoyce entered the UFC till the time that you retired. | ||
| The guys like Mark Coleman and Bas Rutten and Fedor. | ||
| Was there any that you really wish that you could have had an opportunity to match up against? | ||
| I always visualizing myself against the number one. | ||
| You know, I could not even think about so... | ||
| At one point it was Coleman, the other point was, you know, I mean, you name it, the champions. | ||
| And then Fedor gets a rise and makes like a big expression. | ||
| So I could not think about the other guy to represent Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| You know, I have always true vision of that. | ||
| But the set of rules are different. | ||
| At the time, we could express technique with more because we had time. | ||
| Somebody asked me, oh yeah, you have only a few fights in MMA. I said, no, I never fought MMA. I always fought valetudo because MMA is a different animal. | ||
| You go there for three rounds, five minutes, It's better to have offensive techniques than defensive techniques. | ||
| The defense is not going to do good for you. | ||
| It's going to do good if you have at least one round 10 minutes and then another. | ||
| So if you have, like, my fights are endless rounds of 15 minutes. | ||
| It's endless rounds of 5 minutes. | ||
| So in that way, you can prepare yourself for a different strategy. | ||
| You know, you have to follow... | ||
| the movements and you cannot just go all the way empty your gas and then fill up and empty again because you know if you empty your gas in the wrong time you're in trouble So all the technique and stretching your gas and be calm and finding comfortable positions, those are stripped right now. | ||
| Now it becomes a very extreme, a very physical. | ||
| You see athletes in the same weight division, but a guy who fights in the 155 walks around with 180, 185. So the technology on the sport today is a huge thing, the physicality. | ||
| That's why technique is only a piece of it. | ||
| You know, what Krohn does today is not only training Jiu Jitsu and become comfortable in the skills. | ||
| He's training like a dog and all the elements he can do to become athletic and explosive and physical and going to lost weight like everybody else. | ||
| Plus... | ||
| The technique, which I feel at one point will be the edge he needs to make the difference. | ||
| Do you think there's something missing in today's mixed martial arts that the original jiu-jitsu sort of expressed? | ||
| This idea of having an open round, having a no limit fight. | ||
| Is there room for that today, do you think? | ||
| Or do you think we're hampered by this idea of a three-hour pay-per-view window or a two-hour television window? | ||
| Yeah, it's funny because, you know, the other day I got caught watching a four-hour match in tennis. | ||
| You know, it was a great match. | ||
| It was long. | ||
| And it's still going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Four hours? | |
| Oh man, you see... | ||
| I have no idea they were that long. | ||
| Are they that long? | ||
| I have no idea either. | ||
| You see, Diopovic and Nadal in the, I think, French Open last year, it was five hours. | ||
| I don't even know what that is. | ||
| Five hours? | ||
| Five hours nonstop, man. | ||
| And they go to the tiebreak and start again and the advantage. | ||
| It was unbelievable. | ||
| So if you're passionate about tennis... | ||
| Sometimes the game can be like 45 minutes. | ||
| Sometimes it can be a couple of hours. | ||
| Because you're there in the action. | ||
| So for me... | ||
| When we're talking about engagement... | ||
| We're talking about... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| The best one out there. | ||
| And when I see a fight after 15 minutes... | ||
| Because somebody punched once... | ||
| Or fell on top... | ||
| Or just gave a throw... | ||
| Both guys stand up. | ||
| They both desire. | ||
| And then the time is over. | ||
| Who wants the fight? | ||
| In my opinion, supposed to be a draw. | ||
| Because how the guy can win just because one more point? | ||
| The guys are warriors. | ||
| The guys are willing to go. | ||
| So, it's always like halfway to what's supposed to be. | ||
| You know, because, okay, you have to decide by points. | ||
| Okay, so, I mean, it's hard because, you know, sometimes the guy even have the best of it. | ||
| But that doesn't guarantee if the fight goes longer, if it's still that, because toughness, resilience, and heart, and technique, they all going to pay, in one point, going to pay a big situation, you know? | ||
| So, for me, not the rules today in the UFC and such, doesn't translate perfectly. | ||
| The best guy out there. | ||
| Translates the most agile, the most tough, the one who connect first, you know, because sometimes the fight can be either way. | ||
| Whoever connects first, whoever makes the first, can win. | ||
| So, it's kind of hard to evaluate. | ||
| But if you put two guys in the cage, and okay, man. | ||
| Whoever gets out first is the winner. | ||
| And that's a different animal because you have to be technical, you have to be patient, you have to be... | ||
| So, you know, I can see... | ||
| First is the expectation. | ||
| It's all in the... | ||
| How Crohn is going to do. | ||
| But if it confirms what I believe can be done, eventually... | ||
| I feel like Krohn will be comfortable to challenge anyone for a no-time limit fight. | ||
| Because, I mean, I don't care if it's Velasquez, I don't care if it's John Jones. | ||
| If Krohn do what he has to do, with the time he has to do, I believe on him. | ||
| Like, I believe myself. | ||
| If I have the health today and the physicality I like to have, I mean, I don't see a guy, just because he's winning on the cage, he can win me. | ||
| Because I don't see the opportunities happen on the cage, I'm not going to give those opportunities. | ||
| So, it's hard to say, but, you know, the weight division doesn't make too much difference for me if I have the time to cook and slow burn. | ||
| But if the things kind of... | ||
| If even in my weight division, 80 kilos, for example, if I'm going to fight a guy with 95 kilos and make a technology... | ||
| So I'm going to fight a different monster in five minutes rounds? | ||
| It's almost impossible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How... | |
| I mean... | ||
| So then that's kind of unbalanced now based on the extreme aspect of the sport, the physicality of the sport, and the technique that has to be applied. | ||
| So the difference between a fight and a match. | ||
| The difference between a fight and a sport. | ||
| And in a fight, they're just two guys going at each other. | ||
| And I agree that there's many, many, many fights where a guy win a 10-9 round, and another guy win the other 10-9 round, and then one guy win the final round, maybe 10-9. | ||
| Just for a little throw or something. | ||
| But it's a draw. | ||
| I agree. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a draw. | |
| It's not done. | ||
| It's like sex with Without an orgasm. | ||
| It's not complete. | ||
| Yeah, and it normally happens. | ||
| I mean, sometimes beautiful knockouts, but sometimes, you know, it's just, you know, too much strength, too much physicality, and every time he goes to the floor, the guy immediately stands up because if he knows, if he stays on the ground, he's losing time and he's not going to be able to capitalize because the time is not as long as enough. | ||
| So that's kind of, you know, a gray area. | ||
| It doesn't have the appeal for me to see a good... | ||
| A good match. | ||
| What about when Hoist fought Sakuraba and they had that crazy 90 minute match? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What about? | ||
| That was an idea of like having these long, long matches. | ||
| For us in Jiu Jitsu, we need time because we don't have... | ||
| I mean, we give the advantage of weight. | ||
| We give advantage of, you know, whatever. | ||
| So let's at least have the time for us to become strategical. | ||
| Would you have preferred that kind of a fight to be no rounds though? | ||
| Because that fight they broke up into a series of rounds. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, at that point, I felt like it was a lack of action. | ||
| I mean, Roy is supposed to fight better. | ||
| I was not on his side. | ||
| And I see a pattern on him to sometimes make little mistakes, which when I was there, I was focused on making him feel sharp. | ||
| And if I'm not there, I felt like a little fuzzy attitude mentally. | ||
| His focus was not... | ||
| So it's a lot of different elements for... | ||
| To justify it, you know? | ||
| Because I believe Royce has elements to beat Sakuraba, you know? | ||
| But he didn't, so... | ||
| He did the second time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The rematch. | ||
| Yeah, he fought him the second time in LA, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Were you there when he fought him the second time in the rematch? | ||
| No. | ||
| You know he beat him, right? | ||
| Royce beat Sakuraba. | ||
| Yeah, the rematch. | ||
| You were aware of that, right? | ||
| No, I'm not. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah, they had a rematch and he beat them here in LA. It was K-1, right? | ||
| It was K-1. | ||
| It was at the Coliseum. | ||
| Yeah, that was the first time Brock Lesnar fought, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, there's a lot of problems jujitsu guys have, world-class, mundial black belt champions have in MMA, is they get in the cage and... | ||
| I would say it's a big reason why they end up getting cut from the UFC. They end up fighting wrestlers. | ||
| Everyone at the top 10 is really hard to take down the UFC. So a jiu-jitsu guy will come in and he's fighting a guy who wrestled his whole life. | ||
| There's zero chance that he's going to be able to take down that wrestler. | ||
| So he's forced to kickbox. | ||
| So the wrestler is forcing the kickboxing fight because the jiu-jitsu guy can't take down the wrestler. | ||
| In those situations, Like, I don't know if you remember Noguera when he fought Tim Sylvia, the big giant guy, he could not take Tim Sylvia down. | ||
| So he eventually shot, Tim Sylvia sprawled a little bit, and then Noguera pulled guard. | ||
| He was on his back, he swept him, he got on top, and then he choked him out with a guillotine. | ||
| So in that situation, the guard pull saved Noguera. | ||
| What do you think about guard pulling? | ||
| I'm 100% confident in the guard. | ||
| Because what I see today in the display of great Jiu Jitsu fighters in the cage is they have the guard, but they have a sportive guard. | ||
| They don't have a valetudo guard. | ||
| They're not dangerous from the bottom. | ||
| So they become technicals from the bottom against the dangerous ground and pound. | ||
| So they're getting all that disadvantage. | ||
| So in my perspective, For example, Krohn. | ||
| He's been training to deal with tough wrestlers, tough boxers, but he don't try to apply wrestling against wrestling. | ||
| Because he's gonna need another life to become like a Schultz or like a Matt Hughes or like some other tough... | ||
| What is the strategy for Krohn when he fights a wrestler that he can't take down? | ||
| He brings to the guard. | ||
| So guard pulling is something that he's thinking about. | ||
| The guard is no other option. | ||
| On the ground, Jiu-Jitsu has to be happy on top and happier on the bottom. | ||
| Yes, people frown upon. | ||
| I'm a big advocate of pulling guard in MMA. There are fighters that have done it. | ||
| There's a guy named Paul Sass from England. | ||
| He pulls guard all the time. | ||
| He's a master of pulling guard. | ||
| He knows exactly how to do it. | ||
| He shoots deep. | ||
| The guy sprawls. | ||
| And as he's sprawling, he pulls guard. | ||
| And he puts people in triangles. | ||
| Nine triangle victories in a row. | ||
| But the triangle is risky. | ||
| Because once you know how to defend, like arm lock. | ||
| You're becoming available for ground and pound. | ||
| So if the guy is completely safe on not getting caught in the triangle, your attempts of techniques are kind of diminishing your capacity to survive and to defend yourself. | ||
| So you're attacking techniques from the bottom, but you're still on the reach. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So the idea of a perfect valetudo guard is to save your distance so you don't get pounded by those surprising elbows like John John. | ||
| So they clinch over hook? | ||
| No, no, you cannot clinch. | ||
| You have to use the legs and you have to hit with the legs. | ||
| So it's always a striking from the bottom, you know? | ||
| So you don't believe that you should be clinched? | ||
| Only if the guy promotes that. | ||
| If he wants the space to hit you, you need to be comfortable and hit him back. | ||
| So it's a fight where... | ||
| Imagine a 12-year-old kid laying down on the ground with feet to you. | ||
| If he starts using the foot, it's going to be hard for even you as a big man to reach. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's no use of the legs. | ||
| People have no clue how to strike him, how to use. | ||
| I know in UFC has some illegal heel from the bottom. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you still can use different strikes, you know. | ||
| You can even have the distance to survive and to be completely protected against elbows and... | ||
| The issue though that if someone can disengage, if you're on your back and you're trying to not clinch and not hold on to him, you're a jiu-jitsu practitioner, the guy can just disengage. | ||
| They can stand up. | ||
| Once he's disengaged, he's escaping from the fight. | ||
| I can stand up again and keep the same process of Cleaching. | ||
| So now, Krohn's in a situation where he's fighting a wrestler and he can't take him down. | ||
| Then he pulls guard. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then he opens up his legs to kick. | ||
| The guy stands up. | ||
| Now he's got to stand up again. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So they could just keep doing that over and over again. | ||
| And if it's a wrestler like Chuck Liddell, who's an expert striker as well as a wrestler, very tough to take down, but also an expert striker. | ||
| When you get that guy to the ground, don't you want to optimize that opportunity as much as possible and hang on to him while you're on the bottom? | ||
| That depends. | ||
| Depends where the weight distribution is. | ||
| I have to obey the sense. | ||
| If he's on me, I will sweep him, I will be on his back in no time. | ||
| If he's away from me, if he wants to look for distance, I have to understand that and respect that and protect myself to don't get pounded. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And that process of, okay, I don't want to engage, he's moving back, and then you stand up. | ||
| In all this process, a lot of things happen. | ||
| What is important for a jiu-jitsu fighter is know everything about the anti-game of the striker. | ||
| I don't make Krone, I don't try to make Krone a good striker. | ||
| I want to make him comfortable to in and out. | ||
| I want to make very comfortable to fight inside with knees and elbows, you know, be dangerous inside, be comfortable on top, and be very comfortable on the bottom. | ||
| And the action, man. | ||
| Because it's a lot of... | ||
| Even though in those five minutes fight, it's a lot of action. | ||
| I mean, it's a lot of stalling. | ||
| It's a lot of... | ||
| It's a lot of disengaged. | ||
| I mean, they engage a little bit and then they separate. | ||
| And okay, now let's think. | ||
| Let's see who's fighting. | ||
| It's hard to see a guy who just goes like... | ||
| And I feel like the great element, the great strategy of Krohn is going to keep a consistent pressure. | ||
| That means he's not going to be studying or in a distance where the striker feels like waiting. | ||
| He's going to be either two out or two in. | ||
| And then once he's in, let's fight in fight, let's fight like, you know, elbows, whatever. | ||
| And then immediately the fight goes to the ground, no matter if it's on top or on the bottom. | ||
| And then the consistency of this, I feel like... | ||
| Opportunities will rise. | ||
| Do you watch MMA a lot today? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Did you watch BJ Penn's last fight? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That fight was very sad to me. | ||
| Very sad to watch. | ||
| And I was very frustrated watching it as a BJ Penn fan. | ||
| As a Frankie Edgar fan, I thought it was a great performance. | ||
| But one of the things that frustrates me about BJ is that he very rarely attacks from his back. | ||
| When he's on the bottom, he puts feet on the hips and he just kind of holds on. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Maybe he was not exactly... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, he did a poor game from the bottom in my perspective. | ||
| He's supposed to have a little more elements to not preserve his integrity, but also to attack, you know? | ||
| And I don't feel that, and I feel like, I mean, he's just not doing what he's supposed to do. | ||
| Eddie, we talked about that. | ||
| That sort of frustrated you a little bit too, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I don't know if you're aware of this, Hickson, but I'm obsessed with... | ||
| I've been obsessed with developing the best guard for when they're striking. | ||
| I analyze it to death. | ||
| And the guard that I comprised, I put elements from... | ||
| You know, my students helped me. | ||
| Nino Shambri helped me. | ||
| So I put all these elements together. | ||
| But it all started off when I was on this quest to put together the ultimate guard for MMA. Because I was seeing too many guys just get beat up in the guard. | ||
| And I thought, I felt like you. | ||
| The effectiveness is gone. | ||
| What is the problem? | ||
| Why are people getting pounded in the guard? | ||
| We have to change this. | ||
| So the first thing I studied was you and Henzo. | ||
| This was back in the 90s. | ||
| I go, okay, I'm going to... | ||
| Attempt to improve the guard in MMA. So I looked at you and I looked at Hanzo and I go, what are they doing? | ||
| They're in full guard and they're holding the overhook to prevent the punch. | ||
| Like anybody try to punch in the guard with their right arm, you would overhook it and when headbutts were legal, your left hand was like this. | ||
| You were like this, protecting the headbutt. | ||
| But then when they made headbutts legal, you don't have to do this no more. | ||
| You could hold the head now. | ||
| And now in this position with the overhook, you have full guard, you're holding the head. | ||
| There's a clinch there. | ||
| So to me, as trying to be a jiu-jitsu scientist, I'm like, that is the stance in MMA. That's it. | ||
| You and Hanzo, that's what you guys are doing. | ||
| You look at all the old fights, full guard, stop the punch, hold the head. | ||
| And so to me, that was the starting point. | ||
| Yes, I agree. | ||
| But Jiu Jitsu is an animal that has never stopped to grow. | ||
| And one day I was comfortably in California watching a fight in Brazil and then I saw an eight men tournament where Fabio Gurgel was fighting Mark Kerr and Mark Kerr was the first time I saw him fighting. | ||
| That was his first tournament. | ||
| He went to the finals with Fabio and I knew Fabio. | ||
| I trained with him. | ||
| He's a brother. | ||
| And I saw what he did with Fabio. | ||
| Like stay on top, ground and pound and smashing the elbow on his face. | ||
| After Fabio's tooth getting to his arm. | ||
| And it's like next day he was all inflamed, arm, and he would go into the airplane like this. | ||
| He may almost lose the arm because then they give antibody. | ||
| We're never. | ||
| But anyway, after I saw that fight and the lack of options, Fabio was there. | ||
| Next day in the morning, I wake up. | ||
| I call my son, Hoxon. | ||
| He's 10 to 11 years old, about 110 pounds. | ||
| I said, Hoxon, come here. | ||
| And then I went to the garage on my mats. | ||
| I said, lay down. | ||
| Put him lay down and I try to represent the same position because the size weight is almost the same from Fabio Gurgel to Marquer than me for Rochson. | ||
| So I kind of immediately put him in Fabio's position and I put myself in Marquer position and then I start to analyze his position and say, Rochson, Do this, do that. | ||
| Move a little more this way. | ||
| So we're not fighting, but I try to find him a position for him to be comfortable. | ||
| And I spend about 45-50 minutes searching, studying with him because I like that kind of unproportional size. | ||
| When I finish that section, I reinvent myself in terms of what I'm going to do if I have to fight Marquer tomorrow. | ||
| Because I was satisfied with the angles I could put hocks on in order to resist my leverage, my angles, what exactly I saw in the day before. | ||
| So that means, from one day to another, I kind of... | ||
| Focus myself and fix the problem I saw with Fabio. | ||
| And at that point, I felt like, okay, I'm fixed now. | ||
| I'm ready to fight Fabio Ruggiero tomorrow. | ||
| What is this stance? | ||
| What did you change? | ||
| I could not have him... | ||
| Hawkson could not have me in control. | ||
| He has to create distance. | ||
| He has to... | ||
| How? | ||
| Shin across the belly? | ||
| No, he has to use... | ||
| The feet more properly. | ||
| Feet on the hips? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He has to use the knee on the chest sometimes. | ||
| He has to use the element of, as I approach to getting better position, the bottom guy has to hit because if you don't strike, you don't make the guy kind of go back. | ||
| So it's a combination between fighting. | ||
| In Brazil, we have two different names. | ||
| When you brawl and when you fight. | ||
| Fight is more like a sportive. | ||
| And when you brawl, you're like, just do whatever. | ||
| So, technically speaking, when somebody wants to attack me as a brawler, I don't want to brawl back. | ||
| I want to be technical and survive and be comfortable. | ||
| And soon he starts to say, I cannot have anything here. | ||
| Let me be technical to see if I can advance. | ||
| And that's the time I will brawl against him and make him get confused. | ||
| So, I have to change strategies as he comes. | ||
| If he comes in to be a fighter, I will be aggressive, I will be mean. | ||
| If he come in to be a brawler, I will be technical and I will be comfortable. | ||
| So that kind of sense of change gives a perspective for the bottom guy to be on edge, to be on top of the offense. | ||
| Now, Mark Kerr, in that fight that you're talking about with Fabio Giorgio, headbutts were legal. | ||
| So that was a huge part of how he was getting busted up with headbutts. | ||
| But since then, headbutts have become illegal. | ||
| Were the headbutts a big reason you decided to change your guard stance? | ||
| Also, but the elbows and the reach and the way the guy positioned himself, you know, and the way Fabio was always with the leg crossed. | ||
| He was following exactly what he learned and what he saw and he could not have the time to improvise. | ||
| Nobody expected Mark Kerr being tough as he was. | ||
| It's so big. | ||
| The monster just happened in front of Fabio and he has to deal with whatever he has. | ||
| Did you know he was crying and throwing up in the locker room before that fight? | ||
| Yeah, he was always a little emotional. | ||
| He was very nervous. | ||
| I mean, shows and a little documentary he did. | ||
| He always had a little unbalance. | ||
| But at one point, his potential, he was the man to be beaten. | ||
| He was enormous. | ||
| You know, as a fan, as a fan of jiu-jitsu and a fan of mixed martial arts and Valley Tudor, man, I just wish you had had those opportunities to face those guys. | ||
| I would have loved to have seen that. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| Now, like I said, when I was trying to figure out the best MMA guard, I was looking at you, I was looking at Hickson, grabbing the overhook, but the one thing I knew is... | ||
| If that's the defensive posture, this is what I was thinking. | ||
| I didn't know you changed it up, but at that point, I thought that was it. | ||
| That's the defensive posture. | ||
| Someone was in your guard. | ||
| You have to defend first. | ||
| So I thought, well, okay, that has to be the stance. | ||
| So we have to... | ||
| Do we create offense from that stance? | ||
| So the defense is first, and do we have offense from the overhook? | ||
| And my instructor, Jean-Jacques Machado, he is one of the only guys I know of, out of all the top jiu-jitsu guys, that his whole game is based on the overhook and not grabbing the sleeves because his left hand, he was born without fingers. | ||
| So no matter what, whether it was gi or no gi, he needed that overhook because he couldn't control the sleeves. | ||
| So his overhook game was translated to his students, me included. | ||
| So I was always looking for the overhook because Jean-Jacques was my master. | ||
| And then when he got invited to Abu Dhabi, before he went to Abu Dhabi, there was a lot of legends there, a lot of jiu-jitsu legends that were going to Abu Dhabi. | ||
| And without the gi, there was no offense. | ||
| There was a lot of boring matches. | ||
| But Jean-Jacques shows up and he... | ||
| It just rises above everybody. | ||
| If you watch what Jean-Jacques did in Abu Dhabi, his left arm didn't change without a gi. | ||
| He's like, no, gi, I'm still going to grab that overhook anyways. | ||
| Everybody else was lost because they were used to their fighting stance. | ||
| Their guard fighting stance was sleeve, collar, collar, sleeve. | ||
| So without the gi, they had to change everything and they weren't used to it. | ||
| They didn't have any offense from there. | ||
| So to me, I took what you and Henzo were doing with the overhook and the controlling, but that's how Jean-Jacques fights with the overhook. | ||
| So all his sweeps, Jean-Jacques, look at all his sweeps in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| He's throwing people around. | ||
| His first year, he submitted everybody. | ||
| He was like the first Marcelo Garcia. | ||
| Everybody was freaked out. | ||
| Like, how is this guy doing it? | ||
| They didn't even understand it. | ||
| But to me, it was like, it was because his game didn't change. | ||
| When he's training in the Gi, he's training for Abu Dhabi. | ||
| The people that were training in the Gi before, they weren't training for Abu Dhabi. | ||
| He was, because it was all overhook. | ||
| He was sweeping wrestlers, all the... | ||
| Carl Uno, he was all over these guys. | ||
| So for me, that overhook, not as... | ||
| For Jean-Jacques, that overhook is important for grappling, not even for Valetudo. | ||
| So if he did Valetudo, or someone with that style guard did Valetudo, the overhook game... | ||
| Automatically takes away the punch and he has offense from that style too. | ||
| So for me that became the basis and the focus for the ultimate MMA guard was to master the overhook like Jean-Jacques. | ||
| Not only just defend, but put those butterflies in and try to sweep or set up triangles. | ||
| Like you have an overhook, you sweep, he bases, you grab that wrist, boom, triangle. | ||
| I thought that was based on what you and Hanzo did and Jean-Jacques style because it was like a blessing in disguise, him born without fingers. | ||
| It was a blessing in disguise. | ||
| He's an Abu Dhabi legend. | ||
| Everybody looks at Jean-Jacques as Yoda. | ||
| Like, how did you come into Abu Dhabi and finish everybody? | ||
| To me, it was just that overhook game. | ||
| He didn't really have to change much of his game. | ||
| So that's how Marcelo Garcia, that's his philosophy too. | ||
| His philosophy is, and he said this in interviews, that If you can't do it, if there's a gi technique that you can't do no gi, throw it out. | ||
| Only focus on the techniques that are going to translate to no gi. | ||
| So that way, when you're practicing the gi, you're actually practicing no gi as well. | ||
| So Marcello is very against being reliant too much on the collar and too much on the sleeve. | ||
| He stays away from that because even takedowns, he doesn't want to do judo takedowns because no gi, they're not going to work as much. | ||
| He wants to do... | ||
| Take down in the gi that translate no gi. | ||
| So that's just the conclusions that I came to. | ||
| That's how I train my fighters that are fighting in MMA. And it all started with watching you and Henzo. | ||
| Yes, I completely feel like that's a good standard position because you have to have a control and stuff. | ||
| But the evolutionary process brought other kinds of guards, you know? | ||
| And I can also find my comfortable those days and show. | ||
| A more spacey guard, more like towards my father's guard was because he was a very weak guy, always handled big guys, and he don't have like this kind of strength or control over his opponents. | ||
| So he was more like hip movements and using the ankles, using the foot, you know, it's more like a very lethal from the bottom, allowing the guy to get lost. | ||
| So it's a combination between the two. | ||
| I think today's is the perfect option. | ||
| Why do you think Ronda Rousey is the only fighter in MMA today that when she's pulling off... | ||
| Her arm bar looks amazing. | ||
| Have you seen her highlight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| As soon as she's in the guard, she's not going to wait. | ||
| She's going to go and attack that arm. | ||
| She goes right to it. | ||
| She doesn't wait. | ||
| And I've trained with her many times, and her arm bar is legit. | ||
| It's not a joke. | ||
| To me, I think she has the best arm bar in MMA today. | ||
| No one has pulled it off as much as she has. | ||
| And yes, she hasn't really gone against top-level jiu-jitsu girls, but based on me training with her, I think that she can tap out. | ||
| It's going to be harder, of course, but why do you think she's the only one? | ||
| And there's all these black belts in jiu-jitsu in MMA, and they don't look anything like Ronda Rousey. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| She's a special girl. | ||
| She's very competitive. | ||
| She's a very talented person. | ||
| But, aside of this, she has a heavy training in Judo which defines her character, defines her desire to train hard, to compete. | ||
| So, being an Olympic level Judo player, It's being a wrestler in that level. | ||
| That brings you to a different level. | ||
| It's not being just an athlete. | ||
| She's a super athlete. | ||
| She's very defined and very much specialized in one thing. | ||
| Her game is always going towards the same pattern. | ||
| And the opponents she's facing... | ||
| He's not exactly prepared for that. | ||
| I feel like nobody has the skills on the ground to fight her. | ||
| And nobody has the heavy hands in the situation to beat her in standing up. | ||
| So everything is kind of even up. | ||
| But when it goes to the ground... | ||
| The opponent gets the first throw and falls without seeing it. | ||
| It gets lost. | ||
| And then her movements are very, very effective and we'll capitalize on that. | ||
| But you know, maybe five fights, ten fights more, beautiful wins, but eventually... | ||
| She's going to have a person who has the same elements and then she's going to start to have competition. | ||
| Because so far, it feels like even too easy. | ||
| It's like not even a competition for her. | ||
| She's like a Mike Tyson. | ||
|
unidentified
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When Mike Tyson was in his prime, she was smashing the competition. | |
| Eventually, Cyborg Ronda is going to happen. | ||
| Dana is going to make sure that happens. | ||
| Eventually. | ||
| How do you see that going? | ||
| Oh, that's interesting because, you know, she will have the preparation, the mindset, the heavy hands, and also the skill to become a competitor for Honda, I think. | ||
| It's unpredictable, like any fight. | ||
| If you had to put your money down, who would you... | ||
| There's no reason for me to put my money in another person... | ||
| Than Honda. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean... | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Honda's in a good... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| She's getting better, too. | ||
| That's a scary thing about her. | ||
| Did you see her last fight? | ||
| Yeah, she's improving. | ||
| She's throwing combinations with the judo throws. | ||
| And her throws are just out of control. | ||
| Best judo in MMA. Yeah. | ||
| Best judo in MMA. She's throwing people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Misha, when she fought Misha, Misha is a legit wrestler. | ||
| Misha can wrestle. | ||
| She was making some big mistakes, though. | ||
| She was very high up on her. | ||
| Her weight was above the hips. | ||
| I mean, I think there was a lot of pressure involved in that fight. | ||
| She made a lot of mistakes. | ||
| You would think that when you... | ||
| In MMA, generally, when someone starts doing something that's effective that wasn't... | ||
| I've done before. | ||
| Like the front snap kick that Travis Brown is doing now. | ||
| Cerrone is doing it all the time. | ||
| Nobody was throwing that. | ||
| We need to see it first work in the UFC and go, oh man, the front snap kick or the rear leg snap kick to the chest, that's working now. | ||
| So that's huge now. | ||
| Five years ago, no one threw it. | ||
| They thought it was a waste of time. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| That only works in the movies. | ||
| But there's all these kicks, head kicks. | ||
| And now that we've seen Rhonda show the effectiveness of focusing and drilling that armbar over and over again, she talks about... | ||
| Do you think people aren't paying attention to it and aren't going, look what works. | ||
| Look what happens with the armbar when you do it 100,000 times. | ||
| Let's do that. | ||
| Do you think they're not doing it because she's a girl? | ||
| No one's paying attention, really? | ||
| You think it's easy. | ||
| I mean, her performance reflects a life. | ||
| Even her parents are involved in judo. | ||
| So it's a lifetime of achievements. | ||
| It's a subconscious reflex. | ||
| It's not something which you educate people. | ||
| You don't think you could learn it if you practiced hard enough? | ||
| You have to be at least in a classification phase to go to the top ten in judo. | ||
| It's not just learn. | ||
| Is dedicate yourself, your sweat and tears and blood to get there. | ||
| You know, it's like being a Jiu Jitsu champion is one thing. | ||
| Doing what Crone does today is another thing. | ||
| He is not only fighting hard, but he goes and trains hard and runs hard and lifts weights. | ||
| Whatever he does, he does with the compromise to excel. | ||
| And that's a mindset. | ||
| It's not exactly you teach. | ||
| It's something... | ||
| I believe Honda is a special girl because she put herself in that kind of level of stress and she handled and she... | ||
| I mean, the training is hard. | ||
| The focus is hard. | ||
| She's serious. | ||
| And the whole formula is there to support her victories, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, that's... | |
| It's not a flake, or it's not a luck, or it's not, oh, you learn, come here, let me show you how to defend the arm lock, and now you go, you're ready to fight. | ||
| It's not like that, you know? | ||
| So, anyone in the mixed martial arts coming from a background, because they see mixed martial arts as a good exposure, as a good situation to make money, to make... | ||
| So, they come in with an average background to try, you know, their best. | ||
| They sometimes have it from the wrestling family and then learn some box, some jiu-jitsu, some defense and go. | ||
| They come from the judo and go. | ||
| They come from the jiu-jitsu and go and learn a little bit here and there. | ||
| But very few are like Randy Couture, which is already an established champion, like Coleman. | ||
| Guys who have defined their lives in one thing, and then they breed to another, but they have already the sense of, you know, they believe in themselves, they can capitalize on the mistakes, they forward forever, so... | ||
| Those things, you know, you don't buy it on the... | ||
| The work ethic. | ||
| ...on the supermarket, you know. | ||
| Those things is lifetime experience and it's hard to... | ||
| Yeah, the intensity that Ronda Rousey brings to training, just to life itself, is very difficult to replicate and that it has, it resonates throughout everything she does. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| She's crazy. | ||
| Now, when... | ||
| In the best way. | ||
| When Crone went against Shinya Aoki, I'm assuming that you studied a lot of Shinya Aoki tapes. | ||
| I personally think he's one of the best at Jiu Jitsu in MMA. He's gotten so many submissions. | ||
| He'll get you with leg locks. | ||
| He has a great rear naked choke. | ||
| His guard's really good. | ||
| Were you impressed by watching tape of Shinye? | ||
| Shinye is not only impressed by tapes. | ||
| The first Budo challenge I did He win with honors, you know. | ||
| He win the Buddha Challenge and submitting everybody, you know. | ||
| He won your event? | ||
| Yeah, the Buddha Challenge has different weight divisions. | ||
| In his weight division, he make two fights and submit both. | ||
| And who were the guys? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| Carl, he fought two guys. | ||
| Well, I didn't even really know who he was in 2005, to tell you the truth, and you already knew. | ||
| Yeah, so anyway... | ||
| I felt how tight, how precision his submission. | ||
| He got a flying army lock in the first guy and the foot lock in the second guy. | ||
| So I felt like he's very versatile. | ||
| He has a highlight reel in judo where he would do flying arm bars in judo, just one after another. | ||
| And that was something I absorbed. | ||
| And then in our training with Krohn, I said, we kind of decided to... | ||
| He was very comfortable when you engage on the grip. | ||
| So, from your grip, he can go for a flying triangle, flying arm locks and such. | ||
| So, Kron was pressing him without any engage. | ||
| Using the foot and trying to make him feel like he has to engage, not Kron grabbing. | ||
| So, that's kind of give the first The first way for him to feel like lost. | ||
| He was expecting Krohn to attempt, but Krohn was pressing without grabbing. | ||
| If you see the fight again, you see. | ||
| So at one point, they engage. | ||
| Krohn pull to the guard. | ||
| And he was kind of trying to stay, and Krohn go to the head once, he can escape, and then Krohn finish with the headlock when they roll. | ||
| But the guy is very tough. | ||
| We are not worried about the jiu-jitsu back and forth, like the attempts him to submit Krohn. | ||
| Those are hard to catch, because Krohn is very skilled to defend. | ||
| Is he good at defending leg locks, Krohn? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| But still, the opportunity was raised based on his desire to act. | ||
| So we forced him to act, he gave what we want, and Kron Ketch precisely and sharp and it was over. | ||
| Every morning, every time I work out and go to the gym, I warm up on the Stairmaster and I just go ADCC Marcelo Garcia or whoever. | ||
| And I just want to warm up and watch people do Jiu Jitsu at a high level and that just gets my blood boiling. | ||
| I just want to go lift weights, right? | ||
| I'm watching Marcelo and Krohn, and man, recently, and I haven't watched it in a while, but man, I'm so used to Marcelo just going through everybody. | ||
| Marcelo just crushes. | ||
| He is unbelievable what he does. | ||
| People go to his gym, he's like, hey, you can come to my gym, I'll roll with you, but we're going to videotape it and we're going to put it on the internet. | ||
| Deal? | ||
| And everyone that goes is like, oh man, they're walking into the slaughterhouse, right? | ||
| Everyone's going to see the role. | ||
| And he just crushes everybody, big dudes. | ||
| And then for him, when he went against Krohn, he passed Krohn's guard for a couple seconds. | ||
| But then after that initial, it was a double leg drag and he jumped. | ||
| And then Krohn's ability... | ||
| To recover full guard is unlike anybody I've ever seen. | ||
| You rarely see full guard in Abu Dhabi. | ||
| People stay away from full guard, but Krohn will force you. | ||
| Force Marcelo Garcia and Krohn into full guard. | ||
| Marcelo was having a hard time, and then he finally broke open his full guard. | ||
| Then he tried to pass again, and then he's back in full guard again. | ||
| And then Krohn put him in a guillotine. | ||
| And the word is, and Marcelo I think admits this, that he went out. | ||
| Like, he went out, right? | ||
| He said, oh, it was tough, you know, I almost passed out, and then, but Krohn, because he was going in the end of the mat, the first, like, the round, he was trying to save himself for the next round, so he put pressure, and then he kind of said that, I kind of just tried to hold instead, keep putting all my power, so, and then, I mean, nothing happened, and The guy kind of survived and he kind of won. | ||
| He won on a takedown. | ||
| So he could have put him to sleep there? | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| That's always the thing with the guillotine, knowing whether or not to exert all your energy and if you do, you gas your arms out. | ||
| Yes, but Krohn specializes in the guillotine. | ||
| He's coming in the next, for the next, for the last Abu Dhabi, prepared to face Marcelo again. | ||
| And he's escalating. | ||
| His progress is being very, very, you know, progressive. | ||
| And he was ready, but unfortunately, Marcelo didn't come. | ||
| And he made great fights, and he displayed, like, especially the guillotine against Antonio Otavio. | ||
| What's great in the final... | ||
| The guy just... | ||
| When he jumps... | ||
| And I feel like you guys talking about this fight and about the chicken and stuff. | ||
| I didn't believe it at first. | ||
| I didn't believe it. | ||
| I'm like, someone said... | ||
| Explain it to people who didn't hear our other podcast. | ||
| Well, Crone went... | ||
| In 2013 Abu Dhabi, Crone showed up and did what only... | ||
| I think maybe... | ||
| John Jock did it. | ||
| Marcelo did it. | ||
| And I think maybe Hondra Gracie did it. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| He went in and submitted all four of his opponents. | ||
| And he submitted Gary Tonin in an amazing match where Gary almost won. | ||
| Best fight I saw. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
| Yeah, it was incredible. | ||
| I was losing my mind watching that one. | ||
| And he submitted JT Torres, who's a beast. | ||
| JT Torres is so good. | ||
| And he got him from the guard. | ||
| He just had the overhook. | ||
| And he just flipped his leg over his face and just held on to the overhook. | ||
| So it was kind of like one of those overhook armbars. | ||
| And then he beat... | ||
| Who did he beat first? | ||
| I don't know, but... | ||
| The first one was like, I'm not sure his name, but he put a guy to sleep. | ||
| And then get this Gary guy. | ||
| And the first day. | ||
| Yeah, and then JT Torres. | ||
| And the second day, JT, and then Otavio. | ||
| And then Otavio in the finals, well, the match we're talking about, and me and Joe talked about this, and they made a... | ||
| Stuart Cooper made a film on it, but... | ||
| Otavio Souza, his strategy was to not be on his back, stay on top, and just kind of maybe get a takedown late. | ||
| You know, because in that rule format or that points format in Abu Dhabi, that happens a lot. | ||
| People will just wrestle and wrestle and wrestle. | ||
| And he wasn't engaging. | ||
| And Krohn is like... | ||
| Just like Hickson's saying, he's like Marcelo. | ||
| He goes after it. | ||
| He's gonna go 100%. | ||
| All he wants is the submission. | ||
| That's Krohn. | ||
| He's a special grappler, a special fighter. | ||
| All he wants is the submission. | ||
| And Otevio wasn't really engaging. | ||
| And as a father... | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Not as a fighter. | ||
| As a coach, I saw his coach, as the fight progressed, The guy saying to Otav in Portuguese, okay man, that's it! | ||
| That's all you want! | ||
| Okay, keep going! | ||
| It's perfect! | ||
| Perfect! | ||
| Perfect! | ||
| And I see a guy just running from the fight and making a strategy which kind of upset me completely. | ||
| I mean, there's nothing perfect on that in my sense, but in this strategic aspect of his... | ||
| So I have to counter in somehow. | ||
| And then I start to make Try to suggest the referee, he was escaping. | ||
| He was trying to avoid the fight because it's not positive points in the first 10 minutes, but it's negative points. | ||
| So I was hoping for a negative point without all this stalling. | ||
| So and then I start to say, referee, the guy starts moving like, you know, he don't want to engage. | ||
| He's just moving back like a chicken. | ||
| And as the thing starts boiling, I start to say, hey, man, this guy like a chicken. | ||
| And And the whole stadium is just quiet watching the fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's just this noise kind of overwhelming everything. | |
| It's like throwing a chicken inside there. | ||
| And for a jiu-jitsu competitor, first of all, I mean, I know you're right here, but I just have to be honest. | ||
| Everybody says you're the greatest ever. | ||
| You're the greatest jiu-jitsu competitor of all time. | ||
| So you're here, the greatest jiu-jitsu representative of all time. | ||
| Your son is competing. | ||
| This guy has to respect you and admire you. | ||
| And you're going... | ||
| And the whole crowd is listening to this. | ||
| I mean, that's a lot of pressure on that guy. | ||
| That had to get into his head. | ||
| Yeah, because I was suggesting the referee, he needs to be punished. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And eventually, like with 90 minutes or so, he get minus points. | ||
| And that's what's exactly what generates him to say, okay, now I'm running behind, so I have to make it happen. | ||
| And as we're talking afterwards with Krohn, Krohn said, Dad, when I started talking like a chicken, I felt like he won't explode. | ||
| I don't want to make a mistake, wasting the opportunity, but I know he will come, so I was just ready for it. | ||
| So we kind of working together, you know, like it was a father and son. | ||
| It was perfect. | ||
| He shot right in. | ||
| And then he's already waiting. | ||
| Boom, it's over. | ||
| Go home. | ||
| It's ice cream. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| That's the one thing Jean-Jacques would tell me because training for Jean-Jacques obviously trained me for Metamorris and we would talk about Krohn and Jean-Jacques said, I asked Jean-Jacques what is Krohn's best technique? | ||
| He goes, man that guillotine He wraps his arms around your head. | ||
| He's got an incredible squeeze. | ||
| The guillotine used to be a strongman move. | ||
| I used to think, even the arm and guillotine, that's a strongman. | ||
| I never got into guillotines, but over the last 10-15 years, they've gotten so technical. | ||
| I tell you, I've always been trying to specialize myself in all the submissions. | ||
| And I have my guillotine, which gives me some victories, but you know... | ||
| And then, one time I was talking with Kron, and it was not even on the mat, it was in the locker room. | ||
| And then I said, yeah, but get your tinkering. | ||
| The guy can escape. | ||
| He said, no, that doesn't escape. | ||
| I said, no, escape. | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| He said, no, if I get it. | ||
| I said, oh, come on, grab me. | ||
| Man, I tap, you know. | ||
| And then I have to rethink my whole strategy. | ||
| I said, yeah, this guy has, you know, he already has something to tell me. | ||
| There's just levels of squeeze, right? | ||
| There's levels. | ||
| No, it's a level of grip. | ||
| It's a level of grab. | ||
| The way you hold, it's all technical. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And the regular escape doesn't work anymore. | ||
| So... | ||
| Of course, we have escape for Crohn's guillotine, but it's different than I was visualizing. | ||
| So I have to relearn how to escape from average guillotines and Crohn's guillotine. | ||
| So it has to be special, the defense. | ||
| Those levels, the technical levels, are lost on a lot of people that are just watching it. | ||
| The difference is subtle variations. | ||
| That is the essence of jiu-jitsu, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I believe the biggest aspect of jiu-jitsu is invisible. | ||
| I preach the invisible jiu-jitsu because it's invisible because you see it, but you don't see it. | ||
| You see the same guard position, you see the same mount, but you have to feel it. | ||
| I base my jiu-jitsu on how you feel, not what you see. | ||
| And that's totally different when I go to seminars and stuff. | ||
| The guy feels different. | ||
| They say, wow, man, I've been doing this all my life and I never felt this way. | ||
| So, so good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So much leverage. | ||
| So, based on the weight distribution, based on the sense of leverage, all this can change. | ||
| The same position you see in a picture cannot be worth it or can be very much effective depending how the grip, the angle, the elbow, the weight. | ||
| So, it's amazing how the invisible jiu-jitsu is It's not what you learn superficially. | ||
| What do you think about Marcelo Garcia's variation of the guillotine? | ||
| Some people call it a high elbow guillotine. | ||
| A lot of people call it the Marcelo team. | ||
| He doesn't believe it like this. | ||
| Is that part of something that you've taught or is that new to you? | ||
| No, it's not new. | ||
| It's an option which is developed by him. | ||
| He's the master on this. | ||
| So you see different submissions from the break. | ||
| So it's adaptations, you know? | ||
| If you focus and you know what's coming and you have defenses, I don't believe a guillotine is effective regardless. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All the guillotines you can defend. | ||
| But you have to be precise. | ||
| If you make one mistake, if you're thinking about defense one and the guy coming with a little twist, the defense one is not going to work. | ||
| And if you think about change for the second, you're already tapping or you're already slipping. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you have to be precise on the adaptation of each... | ||
| So now, if Crohn gets me, I know exactly where I have to go. | ||
| If I delay two seconds, then it's going to be... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's over. | |
| Yeah, it's over. | ||
| And that goes for any technique. | ||
| There's so many different ways to squeeze a neck. | ||
| I would, off the top of my head... | ||
| You know, including all the arm and chokes, like the darts and the Japanese necktie, the arm and guillotine, the different grips, all these different neck cranks. | ||
| There's got to be just on the neck. | ||
| Those inverse ones, like how you call the neck breaks from, like the one, the twister. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| That was not really a choke, though. | ||
| That's just straight neck crank. | ||
| But there's so many ways, just no gi. | ||
| There's so many ways to put someone to sleep. | ||
| I would say there's... | ||
| 15 to 20 different ways. | ||
| No-gi to squeeze a neck. | ||
| Everyone's got their own different styles. | ||
| Did you get into, because one of the most popular chokes over the last 10-15 years in the no-gi grappling scene is the darse. | ||
| Are you familiar with- What is the darse? | ||
| Like Bravo choke? | ||
| It's the bravo choke. | ||
| It's a squeeze, but it's the arms in. | ||
| From the back? | ||
| No, no, from top side. | ||
| Oh, like... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm in half guard. | ||
| Like in half guard and you come in. | ||
| It's like you have an overhook and you come and you squeeze that one. | ||
| That's become just one of the most basic standard chokes. | ||
| And it came sort of from a wrestling three-quarter Nelson technique that was used to flip people over. | ||
| And then I think it was Dave Terrell... | ||
| Showed it to Joe Darcy, and then Mark Lehman started calling it Joe Darcy because he learned from Joe Darcy, but he actually, I don't know, John Danaher, there's a whole story, but the name stuck to Darcy. | ||
| Was that something that you guys were doing back in the 70s and 80s? | ||
| That's more of a newer show, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it's more newer. | ||
| Fascinating. | ||
| The origins of the triangle, like just the leg triangle, there's so many different theories on how that got injected into heliostyle. | ||
| Do you know the origins of a triangle, or is it just an old judo technique? | ||
| No, I mean, if you go in an old book, techniques, you're going to see all the submissions, you know, like... | ||
| The application of triangles in my life starts to come by understanding the concept and seeing longer guys like macarons, guys with long legs. | ||
| Macarron? | ||
| Was that Carlos Barreto? | ||
| Marcio Macarron. | ||
| Old school guy? | ||
| Old school. | ||
| I saw guys doing this and I started to apply. | ||
| My legs are not too long, so I have to pick the perfect positions to do, but I started to get familiar with it. | ||
| It's hard to say where I come from, but I have my open mind, like the Eric Postle situation with the new... | ||
| I always have an open mind to accept, to embrace things that are functional. | ||
| You know, and discard everything which I don't like. | ||
| It's not about theory. | ||
| It's about effectiveness. | ||
| It's about results. | ||
| It's about to feel comfortable there. | ||
| So anything I see, no matter if it's from Bruce Lee or from any wrestler or Catch Catch Con, if I see and I like it, I'm going to go and experiment immediately because I just add to my arsenal. | ||
| That's the concept. | ||
| Which leads to development, to progression and to success. | ||
| It's one of the beautiful things about jujitsu is that it's constantly growing and evolving. | ||
| There's always new techniques. | ||
| The idea that, you know, the darts choke wasn't around when you were competing and now it's a staple, a mainstay. | ||
| It's fascinating. | ||
| I have to bring this up because if I didn't bring this up, everybody online would go crazy. | ||
| There's a videotape of when Yoji Anjo showed up at your dojo. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you, you, you know. | ||
| You saw it? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, I've never seen it. | ||
| No, you didn't. | ||
| Let's make the next barbecue in my house. | ||
| Definitely you're going to see it. | ||
| Let's plan it. | ||
| The world wants to see it. | ||
| Yeah, the world wants to see it. | ||
| Will you release it to the world? | ||
| Probably, eventually. | ||
| Oh, you gotta release it. | ||
| That's one of the number one things that people are asking for. | ||
| When I hit a couple of million people on my site, I may do that. | ||
| We'll do it. | ||
| Just for free on the site. | ||
| I'll make that happen. | ||
| I will make that happen. | ||
| Tell us that story. | ||
| How did that story come about? | ||
| Oh, just when I finished the Valetudo 95, it was a legit eight-man tournament, and I won. | ||
| It started, like the WWF, like the UFO in Japan was very strong with pro wrestling, like big magazines, like a huge Japanese love pro wrestling. | ||
| So, and then based on that kind of exposure of this new event, The champion of the wrestling association, one of the champions of the UFO, called Takada, starts talking. | ||
| Oh, I like to fight him. | ||
| They ask him and they start talking like all the pro wrestlers talk. | ||
| I gotta kick his ass, this and that. | ||
| Start talking, a lot of gossip. | ||
| And at this point, I'm back to LA. Maybe after two or three months of this kind of talking around my name forever, some guy, one of the friends I have in Japan, they come and say, Mr. Gracie, They're talking a lot about you, and you should have an official answer for that. | ||
| You know, you cannot just let... | ||
| Because people start thinking you're afraid. | ||
| So you have to have an official answer. | ||
| So I said, okay. | ||
| So I make a letter stating I never will fight on their ring because they're not legit. | ||
| They fix fights. | ||
| So that's against my... | ||
| If you want to come and fight in my event, like... | ||
| Not mine, but the event I fought in the Japan Open. | ||
| He was welcome to come and we want to face each other for sure. | ||
| If in other cases, we can fight even on the street. | ||
| But I'm not there to fight on his event because that will jeopardize my real fighter status. | ||
| So with this being said, maybe a few weeks later, Takada went out of the gossip and then Anjo showed up in the magazine and started saying he will come into LA to beat me up. | ||
| He will do this because he said, oh, he's going to fight for free, so I'm going to dare to fight, to kick. | ||
| And then the guy came and said, hey, Mr. Angel said he's coming, he said this. | ||
| I said, man, I cannot lose my sleep based on just speculations. | ||
| He said when he came, no, he didn't say, okay, so I'm going to keep my life. | ||
| And if he show up, okay, he show up. | ||
| So the past maybe couple of weeks or so, even more, one day I was at home in the morning, My assistant at the school called me and said, Hickson, some guys here, some Japanese guys are here waiting for you, want to talk to you. | ||
| And immediately I figured out could be that situation. | ||
| So I put my camera in my hand. | ||
| Hickson wants to come in with me. | ||
| He was about 11 years old. | ||
| I was going back. | ||
| Driving my car, taping my hands because I was putting tape in my hands as I was driving on the freeway. | ||
| When I arrived, I saw a van full up with photographers outside. | ||
| I passed through my parking lot and I saw a camera full of Japanese with cameras, full of reporters inside. | ||
| So I went through. | ||
| When I got into school, I saw a huge, tall Japanese guy, very well-dressed, and a lady. | ||
| And I immediately, hey, how are you? | ||
| Oh, Mr. Gracie, I'm the president of the UFO Association. | ||
| I come here to officially invite you to participate in a fight in Japan. | ||
| I said, man, are you crazy? | ||
| I told you I don't want to fight in Japan and under your association. | ||
| And then when I kind of deflect the direction, I said, yeah, but you also said you fight for free, for your honor. | ||
| I said, yes. | ||
| I'm here to fight. | ||
| I expect fighting, but you coming to negotiate? | ||
| No, no, no, but the fighter is outside. | ||
| Can he come in? | ||
| I said, yes, he can come in. | ||
| So I tell my student to say, hey, you stay on the door, let the lady with the fighter come in, but don't let the reporters come in. | ||
| Block everybody outside. | ||
| I didn't know what's going to happen. | ||
| I don't want to press. | ||
| So as Anjo came in with an ugly face and attitude and stuff, I immediately asked my instructor, said, Limão, grab the waiver and tell him to sign. | ||
| It's like if I get hurt, whatever, those waivers. | ||
| So he looked at the waiver with an ugly face and then spoke with his guy in Japanese. | ||
| And then the Japanese guy said, Mr. Gracie, You mean, if he don't sign, you don't fight? | ||
| Immediately, I felt like, if I say, yeah, he has to sign, they may leave, and they're going to come in with all the excuses. | ||
| Oh, he chickened out, whatever. | ||
| I immediately said, no, forget the paper. | ||
| If you come in to fight, let's fight. | ||
| Forget the bureaucracy. | ||
| Let's make something here more simple. | ||
| So, in the end, he came into the ring, and we started fighting. | ||
| Immediately, I felt his intention to hit me. | ||
| Immediately, I clinched, put him on the ground, and started to punch. | ||
| He turned back, but different than a normal event where just putting him to sleep or whatever. | ||
| In that particular case, I had to display, showcase his punishment. | ||
| So I was not happy just to put him to sleep. | ||
| So I started to hit him with the elbow, expecting him to turn. | ||
| Eventually he turned, and I punched him in the face until I broke his nose and made it all bleed, all cut up. | ||
| And at that point, when I felt like he was just smashed enough, He turned again backwards and I put him to sleep. | ||
| And then I let him sleep in his own blood. | ||
| And then I said to the press, okay, now let them in. | ||
| So when the press came in, saw him passing out, waking up with the guy trying to hide his face from the pictures. | ||
| And the guy is all dizzy, waking up, all blood, you know, a big, big mass of blood on the floor and stuff. | ||
| In the crowd, my students kind of lift me up. | ||
| My t-shirt is all bloody and I kind of hang on the wall like a trophy and stuff and we're all yelling. | ||
| So the guy stood up and left. | ||
| And then like three or four days later, Andrew came back to me. | ||
| And at my school, I was teaching. | ||
| He came with a package and said, oh, I like to talk. | ||
| He was still like all bruise and stuff. | ||
| He said, yeah, I like to apologize. | ||
| And I like to give you this as a gift. | ||
| And he gave me a samurai helmet. | ||
| And then he left to Japan. | ||
| And when he got there, he said to the crowd, he was jumped. | ||
| You know, I was jumped. | ||
| The guys jumped me. | ||
| Because the press didn't saw. | ||
| And then I get my assistant, my Japanese guy who's working with me in the Valetudo 95, and I said, listen, Yuri, you take this tape, you go to Japan, Make a press conference. | ||
| Display. | ||
| Don't make one copy. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Make sure. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| So go there. | ||
| Make. | ||
| Show the press. | ||
| And come back. | ||
| And bring this back. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So he went. | ||
| Make the press conference. | ||
| And then my reputation. | ||
| When they saw it was like a fair fight. | ||
| And what happened. | ||
| My reputation went to the roof. | ||
| And, you know, it's just a big step for me in the publicity, because I capitalized on all the wrestling publicity, which is national in Japan. | ||
| So, and then my next fight eventually was with Takada. | ||
| He accepted the fight and made an official fight, and then we created the Pride. | ||
| I help in the formulation of the rules. | ||
| A lot of folks don't know that. | ||
| You were a big part of the original Pride. | ||
| Yeah, they asked me if I want to fight Takada and for that they want to create a new event. | ||
| I said yes, I fight him and then we discussed numbers and in order to make a good rule I help in the rules because, you know, I introduce the gloves and the mixed martial arts. | ||
| We have to put gloves because without gloves it can be too bloody. | ||
| We have to cut headbutts and stuff. | ||
| So I make like a draw of The backbone of what could be. | ||
| And then from that, they start the Pride. | ||
| I fought the Pride 1, the Pride 4, and then the Pride becomes like huge in Japan. | ||
| And then because they have a little involvement with the Yakuza, the sponsors they have, Fuji TV, like pull it off, and they're getting problems to the payroll, which is huge. | ||
| They have maybe 50 top athletes making a lot of money. | ||
| So they could not handle. | ||
| And then UFC come and take over and get all the footage and the fighters. | ||
| Now it brings to a next level. | ||
| They took a huge bath because UFC paid $65 million for Pride and all the contracts were fake. | ||
| They were all void. | ||
| They were invalid, rather. | ||
| None of them were legal. | ||
| So I didn't know that. | ||
| So USC had the worst of it. | ||
| They had way the worst of it. | ||
| They tried to sue Japan. | ||
| They tried to sue the organization. | ||
| It's kind of funny. | ||
| This is how crafty they were. | ||
| While the UFC purchased Pride... | ||
| The people that were running Pride were starting another organization while they were working for the UFC. So they were working for the UFC, running the Pride offices for the UFC in Japan, but then they were running their other organizations. | ||
| Oh, fleeting interests without knowing, with disregard of everything. | ||
| This is a Japanese style. | ||
| There's a classic match, or not a match, fight that's on video, it might be on YouTube, with Hugo Duarte, old Luta Libre guy on the beach where you guys are fighting. | ||
| Is that on YouTube? | ||
| Oh yeah, yeah, parts of it. | ||
| It's hard to see the whole thing. | ||
| Yeah, it's a famous fight. | ||
| It's a famous fight on the beach. | ||
| You know who was holding the camera that day? | ||
| Who? | ||
| Heian, my cousin, with 12 years old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And Hoxson was seven. | ||
| Jean-Jacques was there. | ||
| There's Jean-Jacques running. | ||
| What was the reasoning behind that fight? | ||
| How did that go down? | ||
| Okay, let's make this the last tale, alright guys? | ||
| Because if not, we're going to talk forever here about things from the past. | ||
| I'd love to talk about present. | ||
| But anyway, it was a great time because at this point Marco Rua was just finishing fight Fernando Pinduca in an event after my second fight of Zulu in Rio. | ||
| The jiu-jitsu community has a little friction with the luta-livre community. | ||
| So they set up a fight between Marcelo Bering against Fabio Molina, Renan against Eugenio Tadeo, and then Pinduca against Marco Rua. | ||
| And they draw. | ||
| And after that draw, Marco Rua creates a good status of being a great fighter, as it is. | ||
| He's a good, you know, tough guy. | ||
| And the gossip starts to become like, oh, and then people may ask him, what about Hickson? | ||
| So, in the kind of small world, is a position where Marco Rua is as willing to fight me. | ||
| And I also, of course, willing to fight him, but I don't want to wait Or give him the reputation where I challenge him. | ||
| It's not the case. | ||
| He was just... | ||
| I was already famous, established. | ||
| He was already coming up, like, just make a good fight. | ||
| So, to make things more simple... | ||
| My father, myself, Marcelo and Sergio, my best friend, we went to his school in the night time. | ||
| He had maybe 50 guys training, all without gear, they're all tough, they all have a lot of pumping, a lot of iron, so they're all big guys, you know? | ||
| So I went to his place, said, Ruaz, I'd like to talk to you. | ||
| So he came in to me, I said, hey man, I heard you. | ||
| You're showing desire to fight me, so I like to fight you anytime you want, regardless. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| If you want to do now, you can do tomorrow, whatever. | ||
| And he looked at me and said, yeah, but it's not like that. | ||
| If you challenge me, I may accept, but I need four months to train. | ||
| I said, man, you're crazy. | ||
| You think, like... | ||
| I use other names, but it's like... | ||
| You think the Lakers will challenge a college basketball team from... | ||
| from... | ||
| from... | ||
| Cucamonga? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| You come here to challenge? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not... | |
| I come here to... | ||
| Because I heard you planning to fight. | ||
| And if you fight, I'm here. | ||
| You want to fight or not? | ||
| So when this conversation starts to become a little... | ||
| My dad coming as a mediator and said, hey guys, don't want to discuss. | ||
| Let's make a list. | ||
| If somebody wants to fight Higgs, let's make a list. | ||
| And then eventually, you guys can fight. | ||
| And then Hugo from the back, yeah, you can put my name on that list. | ||
| And first time I saw Hugo in my life, and I look at him and said, yeah, man, you tell me... | ||
| This is not a, because it has a game, a gambling in Brazil, like a popular game, not official, but unofficial game called Jogo do Bicho, means game of the animals. | ||
| You put a name, a number, like 24 is the deer. | ||
| So a guy put $1, and if he wins, he gets maybe $50, something very popular, in every corner has this kind of underground game. | ||
| And I said to him, this is not a game of animals, man. | ||
| This is just a serious business. | ||
| You don't have to put your name in the list. | ||
| If you want to fight, let's fight right now. | ||
| And the guy kind of got me a little confused. | ||
| And nothing happened. | ||
| And then we decided to leave. | ||
| So we left. | ||
| After that... | ||
| The whole gospel, every corner. | ||
| I heard Ugo was training to fight you. | ||
| Ugo, Ugo, Ugo, Ugo, Ugo. | ||
| Start talking about Ugo, Ugo, Ugo, Ugo. | ||
| And I felt like this has to have an end, you know? | ||
| Another guy I could not challenge officially because he's a nobody. | ||
| But he's a guy, if I just disregard, he's something who's going to be against me too because I know he has the potential. | ||
| He's a fighter. | ||
| He just don't have the name. | ||
| But he's a legit tough guy. | ||
| So, based on that, I could not just ignore, and I could not challenge him officially. | ||
| So, I have to do something in between, which fight him on the street. | ||
| So, we decided to find, okay, let's make a profile, where he goes, what beach he goes, where he walks about. | ||
| So, we decided, oh, he goes on this beach, which is a very popular beach in Rio. | ||
| Every Saturday, Sunday, he's there. | ||
| Okay, so, next Sunday, we're going to be there, Saturday. | ||
| So I was at this point separate from my relationship. | ||
| I was living like a single in Rio and that's very hard to do because a lot of options. | ||
| So I was not concerned about the fight at all. | ||
| I was no sleep on the Monday, Tuesday, like just going party a lot. | ||
| Wake up on Wednesday kind of afternoon, walk on the street. | ||
| Close to my neighborhood. | ||
| And then I saw a friend of mine who's always in the gossip, said, hey, and as I leaving home, I said, I think I'm going to postpone Hugo's fight for the following week. | ||
| I don't think it's going to be a good idea because, man, I'm just too much party. | ||
| When I get on the street, man, the first guy I saw, it was this, my friend, Bauru, who's just coming and said, man, you should see, oh, everybody's prepared, everybody talking about the fight will be great, they're all waiting, they all will be there. | ||
| And I say, oh my God, no postponement anymore. | ||
| I have to go regardless, so... | ||
| So as I approach the weekend, I try to just recover, sleep, eat well, but still, like, not enough. | ||
| Anyway, Saturday morning, we're all gathering in the Gracie Barra Academy, which is close to the neighborhood, and we're gathering, like, the students, because we have to have a team to To be there, you know, to hold and whatever. | ||
| So it's about 50 to 60 guys there, and we all kind of strategizing. | ||
| Okay, you guys make this and that. | ||
| And then my son was seven years old, all pumping up. | ||
| And then at one point, everybody quiet. | ||
| He's just jumping in the middle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I said, yeah. | |
| And if his son will be there, I'm going to kick his ass. | ||
| I said, good. | ||
| And everybody laughing. | ||
| So he's already with the DNA of battle. | ||
| So it was funny. | ||
| And then eventually about 10 o'clock or so, he arrived on the beach. | ||
| The guy, the messenger, come. | ||
| He says, hey, they are there. | ||
| So he went to the beach. | ||
| And as we approached the beach, I have the camera. | ||
| Nobody wants to hold the camera. | ||
| No, no, no, not me. | ||
| So I give the camera to Ryan, which is 12 years old at the time. | ||
| And he could not get through. | ||
| He's just yelling at everybody. | ||
| He could not get through to film the fight. | ||
| The filming was not even important. | ||
| So... | ||
| We engaged. | ||
| At the moment, the first engage, after I slapped him, we engaged very quickly, and then we started to hassle on the sand. | ||
| He fell on top of me. | ||
| I was kind of having a hard time from the beginning, and then I was able to sweep, mounted. | ||
| And he escaped from the mount one more time, because the sand gave me no base, so I kind of messed my knee on the sand, so he came up. | ||
| I have to sweep him again. | ||
| Mounted again. | ||
| At that time, much more concern of keeping the position. | ||
| So I grab his hand like from the back and I start to punch him. | ||
| Like a Funaki. | ||
| Yeah, exactly like Funaki. | ||
| I start to punch him, punch him, elbow punch, punch, punch, punch. | ||
| And then at one point I was dead, dead tired. | ||
| I asked him, you want to give up? | ||
| He said, you have to kill me. | ||
| I said, okay, man. | ||
| Keep punching, punching, punching. | ||
| And then immediately afterwards, he said, okay, stop, stop, stop. | ||
| So I immediately stopped. | ||
| We went to the water, dive on the water, come back. | ||
| As we come back, he said, yeah, I'm not happy. | ||
| I said, okay, let's do it again. | ||
| I said, no, no, not today. | ||
| And I said, okay, man. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| And then Hanzo started fighting Marcelo Mendes at the beach. | ||
| They started getting... | ||
| Then he doesn't have the end. | ||
| He just kind of messed it up a little bit. | ||
| Hanzo confronted with the guy, but it was not an end fight. | ||
| Anyway, I put stitches on my hand and back, like, all swallowed. | ||
| My hands all swallowed. | ||
| So I went back home, training, resting, giving my life. | ||
| One week later... | ||
| You know, I was in a friend of mine's apartment, you know, resting tired from some little fun. | ||
| I was laid down, you know, in my underwear, my hair. | ||
| I had long hair at the time, but all messy. | ||
| A guy, a student of mine, just stopped on the street on the bike and said, Hickson, Hickson, they're inviting the school. | ||
| He's invading. | ||
| It's a big invasion. | ||
| I said, I kind of wake up and run down. | ||
| And when he saw me running in underwears, you go like that. | ||
| I said, hey, man, I jump in the bike. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| So I went to my school. | ||
| In your underwear. | ||
| In my underwear with the hair all crazy. | ||
| This needs to be animated, by the way, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It will be. | |
| It will be. | ||
| And as I approach the school, because they're coming from a different neighborhood walking, and one of the guys, like Eugenio Tadeu, was a black guy who lives in a ghetto. | ||
| As they approach, they come in walking maybe three or four miles, you know, something like that, a different neighborhood. | ||
| They come in like from the street. | ||
| Let's break it up. | ||
| So as they come in, like, it's not only fighters, it's bad guys, guys with like all the eyes, I mean, only the uncovered eyes with... | ||
| With guns, with knives, with bottle break. | ||
| So it's a lot of convulsions, a lot of energy, bad energy, not coming from a real fight situation, but it's more like a street dangerous. | ||
| So as I approach and I'm coming through the crowd, which is already controlling maybe two-thirds of the street, which is passing cars, just could not pass in cars anymore, just like, just the car passing a very fine line. | ||
| It's a big crowd in front of the school. | ||
| So I went through with the bike, When I come up to the school, he's already coming down with my father, the new son, which is his instructor, other guys, they're coming down. | ||
| And we kind of crush each other in the middle of the stairs. | ||
| I said, okay, man, let's go down, let's talk. | ||
| So we went down to the parking lot and like crowded, maybe 20 guys from my school. | ||
| One guy has a weapon, but the other guys maybe five or six, ten guns and knives. | ||
| I mean, it's a bad, bad weather, you know? | ||
| So before I start the fight, I said, Hugo, I'd like to talk to you. | ||
| Come over. | ||
| Let's talk. | ||
| Let's walk to the backyard here. | ||
| So my father, myself, Denilson, Heuler, and Eugenio Tadeu, we kind of move away from the crowd to like a backyard. | ||
| And I said, man, I want to talk to you something very important. | ||
| Listen. | ||
| I fought to you last week as a man, and I come here and I respect you as a fighter to challenge me to rematch. | ||
| So all this is cool, regardless who win, who lost. | ||
| But if somebody touched the fight before the fight is over, because you bring here a lot of people without no martial arts code. | ||
| So if somebody touched the fight before it's over, I guarantee you, man, you wake up on the ditch. | ||
| And he said, no, no, it's a man to man. | ||
| Okay, let's go back. | ||
| Let's talk. | ||
| So we went back to the crowd. | ||
| They make an arena. | ||
| People make a circle. | ||
| And it was on the concrete. | ||
| And I felt, when we start, I felt like his mentor or whatever, supposed to say to him, hey man, the first fight last week, you engage too quickly, you give the grappling too quickly, you should punch him in the face. | ||
| So I felt a completely different animal because he was already trying to, by his approach, his position, the way he moves, I felt like he wants to punch me. | ||
| Different than was before. | ||
| And I kind of make myself like a vebo. | ||
| I kind of play dummy, you know. | ||
| I play kind of statue. | ||
| And he come and punch me right there. | ||
| I deflected very quick. | ||
| Grab him around the waist like high. | ||
| Make a little hip movement and put him horizontal and throw him on the concrete. | ||
| So he fell flat on the concrete. | ||
| I try to mount. | ||
| He escaped. | ||
| I move like to the other side and mount again. | ||
| And I end up by mounting on him like with 15 maybe 20 seconds. | ||
| I just mounted on him. | ||
| I punched. | ||
| He covered up. | ||
| And I could not punch anymore. | ||
| So I get his everything and bang his head against the concrete a few times. | ||
| You know, he kind of banged the head on the floor. | ||
| And then he softened up a little bit. | ||
| I give him a couple of punches. | ||
| He kind of quit immediately. | ||
| Stop, stop, stop. | ||
| For me, it was not exactly the well done job because it was just too quick. | ||
| And he quit very quickly. | ||
| So I want to do something else, but the crowd was already trying to... | ||
| It's too much. | ||
| I said, if I insist here after his ask for mercy, it can jeopardize the whole thing. | ||
| So even though I was not happy, I stood up. | ||
| And he stood up and he said, yeah, man, I'm happy. | ||
| I'm satisfied now. | ||
| You really demand. | ||
| Shake hands. | ||
| I said, yeah, man, you have a very valuable guy too. | ||
| Very strong. | ||
| Keep training. | ||
| You can be good. | ||
| So we kind of end up our... | ||
| Difference. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So once we're out of that, Reulers start to fight Eugenio Tadeo. | ||
| Because they're already having a little... | ||
| So they start fighting. | ||
| At that point, the police come in. | ||
| A guy with a gun machine, just because nobody would listen to the position, nothing. | ||
| So he kind of... | ||
| make a shooting the roof. | ||
| The bullets come up and bring in some ricochet down and somebody get hit. | ||
| And then he comes, he's a very small guy with a cigarette. | ||
| I said, I want to see who's the tough guy now. | ||
| So he's a very small guy with a gun machine. | ||
| So everybody like quiet. | ||
| So and then I talk with the news and said, hey man, the fight has just started here with Hoyer. | ||
| It has to go next week. | ||
| We're going to set up something that's not end yet. | ||
| So we set up for a different day. | ||
| Then it's over for me and Hugo, we kind of end up with a respectful, honorable way and that's pretty much it. | ||
| That's a great story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So no more old stories, that's it? | |
| I could hear those all night. | ||
| We can go forever here, man. | ||
| What's wrong with that? | ||
| Some guys, you know, this is the biggest response ever on Twitter for a guest. | ||
| Like, I don't know about your Twitter, but my Twitter, people are going nuts that you're doing the podcast. | ||
| People are losing their minds. | ||
| And they've been going nuts ever since the Yoji Anjo tape. | ||
| They're screaming, please release the tape. | ||
| Please release the tape. | ||
| Will you release it? | ||
| Yeah, let's do that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But let's keep the couple of million people in the sights. | ||
| Okay, we'll do our best to get as many people on the site as possible. | ||
| So where are you sending people? | ||
| What's the site? | ||
| What's the address? | ||
| It's JJGF.com. | ||
| Jiu Jitsu Global Federation.com. | ||
| So just the initial, JJGF.com. | ||
| It's all set up right now. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| So I wanted to ask you something about what's going on today in MMA. There's like Nick Diaz and there's been a bunch of guys that have been suspended and fined for having cannabis in their system. | ||
| And there's big controversy because in a lot of states, now it's 23 states in the United States where it's legal now. | ||
| So how do you feel about banning cannabis as a performance enhancer? | ||
| I mean, what do you think about that? | ||
| I mean, I think, you know, we are... | ||
| I mean, since the beginning of the times, drugs are always involved with us. | ||
| Not just drugs for party drugs or... | ||
| We're talking about painkillers, we're talking about coffee, we're talking about alcohol, we're talking about... | ||
| I mean, teas and herbs. | ||
| So we all are accustomed to use medicines and drugs to enhance, to diminish, to accalm. | ||
| So this is there. | ||
| You know, I think that kind of judgment goes from person to person. | ||
| You know, some people can have a little bit of some drug and get a reaction which can make him crazy or can make him addicted or can make him... | ||
| So the chemical in the brain can respond differently. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| For some people, cannabis is a medicine as they play. | ||
| For others, it can be a stimulant or can be a... | ||
| Below, I mean, lower self-esteem, becomes bipolar. | ||
| If you smoke, you can be... | ||
| I mean, you don't know. | ||
| It makes you more of what you are, kind of, right? | ||
| It's hard to say what is... | ||
| So, at that point, I feel like we have to obey the law, you know? | ||
| And if some kind of drugs are forbidden by law for you to become a pro athlete, you have to obey that if you're in that career. | ||
| What you do in your life... | ||
| You know, it has to be respected, has to be, you know, whatever. | ||
| But what's the rules for MMA? I mean, I try to input in the jiu-jitsu the anti-doping, you know, because you see guys in the same way division, but one guy has 10 times more endurance, 10 times more power, 10 times whatever. | ||
| So the guy, you know, has addictive, like he has an extra enhancement. | ||
| So, we have to balance this in order to make a fair sport. | ||
| How much the cannabis affects the athlete, I'm not sure. | ||
| But I know others like steroids or hormones, those are proving. | ||
| So, whatever is being proved against using the cannabis for... | ||
| Fighting for sports activities if it's proved this kind of support of I mean the drug use can be enhancing some maybe we cut I don't know it's up to the real problem is it's it's there they're testing people for something that stays in your body for a long time after it's psychoactive so if you took cannabis like a week before your fight I You're not going to be high when you're fighting, but it's still going to be in your system, so you're still going to be penalized for something that has nothing to do with it. | ||
| But what's the reason? | ||
| What's the reason why they took it? | ||
| Yeah, because you can have caffeine in your blood. | ||
| You can have, like, another kind of... | ||
| Why the cannabis has to be... | ||
| Because I don't think it's an enhancement of performance. | ||
| I think it's only control your emotion or give you some kind of feeling of happiness. | ||
| Sometimes it gives you, like, a little laziness. | ||
| You know, I don't think that will help you as an athlete. | ||
| I think if you get high before an event, you're going to lose your sharpness. | ||
| So I don't think that will support. | ||
| So I don't see why they have to bother and legalizing or forbidding. | ||
| I don't know, maybe... | ||
| It's just because of the law. | ||
| Just because it's illegal. | ||
| And the reason why it's illegal has nothing to do with whether or not it's safe or dangerous. | ||
| It does nothing. | ||
| It's all political at this point. | ||
| But they did lower it, right? | ||
| Now, it used to be that if you were in Colorado, let's say, where it's totally legal. | ||
| It's not illegal there. | ||
| Anybody can smoke in Colorado. | ||
| You could buy it. | ||
| You could buy it in vending machines. | ||
| You have to stop a month before your fight because it's still gonna show up in the test. | ||
| And you could lose the fight. | ||
| The fight's a no contest. | ||
| You get fined. | ||
| So now they're kind of changing it and adapting. | ||
| Now, I guess, according to the numbers, I think you have to stop two weeks before a fight or something like that. | ||
| Maybe, eventually, depending on the card, they have to change the fight for Colorado. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or the training camp being in Colorado, so everything there is legal. | ||
| But they're definitely... | ||
| How do you say? | ||
| Relaxing the rules? | ||
| You wouldn't say that though. | ||
| What's the word? | ||
| They made it from, it used to be 50 nanograms per milliliter to 150. So it changed quite a bit. | ||
| 300% increase. | ||
| So you have to have 300% more marijuana in your system. | ||
| Well, that's a step in the right direction, I think. | ||
| Now, as far as performance enhancing, surfing is a serious sport that requires serious technique, lots of hours. | ||
| And generally, you hear that surfers will be under the influence of cannabis while they're surfing. | ||
| Wouldn't it, if it makes your reflexes, some people believe that it dulls your reflexes, how can surfers Be under the influence of cannabis and ride a 25-foot wave. | ||
| No, the ocean is an animal. | ||
| You know, it's alive, it's in movement, it can be dangerous. | ||
| It has this kind of... | ||
| You have to have the perfect... | ||
| I mean, you have to have the perfect mapping, the way out, the way in. | ||
| So it's a lot of strategy, it's a lot of technique. | ||
| And there's also a lot of harmony between you as a surfer and the ocean. | ||
| So you have to find yourself comfortable. | ||
| You have to find yourself spiritually connected to the force. | ||
| And sometimes, some of my friends who normally smoke some, they feel peaceful. | ||
| And they get in the harmony. | ||
| It's not about tenuous physical. | ||
| Only if you get caught in the bad situation, against the bad ripcord, you have to swim like a dog. | ||
| You're a good surfer. | ||
| You've surfed your whole life, right? | ||
| Yeah, I surfed my whole life. | ||
| What's the biggest wave you've ever surfed? | ||
| 30 feet? | ||
| No, man, no. | ||
| I'm about 12 feet, solid. | ||
| It's dangerous. | ||
| Longboard, shortboard? | ||
| Shortboard. | ||
| I'm a shortboard, I guess. | ||
| And Crone surfs too? | ||
| Crone surfs. | ||
| But he's just... | ||
| He's more passionate about jiu-jitsu than surfing. | ||
| How often do you surf still? | ||
| Oh, depends on the swell. | ||
| I have to check the surf line today. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| So you might surf every day? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If the swell is good... | ||
| You love it that much, huh? | ||
| Oh, yeah, man. | ||
| What is it about surfing? | ||
| It's about... | ||
| For me, it's about the water, the ocean. | ||
| Because I believe in energy. | ||
| I believe in... | ||
| And the ocean being the most, the most, the hugest electromagnetic pole in Earth. | ||
| All the electricity coming from. | ||
| So, as I go in the ocean, if I'm stressed, I get energy. | ||
| If I'm, you know, lazy, I get energy. | ||
| If I'm too tense, I get relaxed. | ||
| So, it's an equalizer for me because I feel like... | ||
| The contact with the ocean keeps me in balance. | ||
| So, for me, it's not about the perfect wave. | ||
| It's about going to the ocean, making my routine, making my exercise, breathing. | ||
| You know, I'm a tropical rat. | ||
| I'm born and raised in Rio, so I cannot stay away from the water. | ||
| It's just, you know, somehow... | ||
| The energy flow and how spiritually that's kind of have empowered me in a sense. | ||
| And you would say that physically surfing does translate to jiu-jitsu as far as the balance, right? | ||
| Because you need incredible balance? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I think it is, of course. | ||
| You stimulate your neuromuscular activity in surfing and skate and jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But I think the most important thing in surfing is As you become under pressure, you have to strategize. | ||
| You have to be in control of your emotions. | ||
| You have to be focused and everything do right. | ||
| And if things go wrong, you have to find your comfortable zone in hell. | ||
| And the mindset is similar because devotion is not your enemy. | ||
| But he's there to do his thing and he's very powerful. | ||
| So you have to find your mental, your mindset to find comfortable in all this turmoil. | ||
| You know, it's all, you know, it's... | ||
| If you get caught in the wrong position and if you get panic, it's gone. | ||
| So you have to be calm. | ||
| Same thing than fight. | ||
| You have to have the focus, the strategy, and even when the problem rises, you have to be in control. | ||
| What do you do with your time these days? | ||
| What's a typical day for Hicks and Gracie? | ||
| Right now, I'm back to teaching Krohn's place because I wanted to have him more distressed with how the academy goes. | ||
| So I picked two times a week to teach there, giving self-defense classes. | ||
| At this point, before that, I was doing seminars once a month, at the most once, twice every couple of months. | ||
| To make my living and also because I feel like the best things in life, money cannot buy. | ||
| And I feel like the quality of my meals, the way I eat, the way my relationship, my sleep, those are very, very valuable assets, you know, plus the time I have to do things I love to do. | ||
| That's kind of when I feel like I'm happy enough to be my best at service, because I always try to be at service, helping somebody with jiu-jitsu, with knowledge, with nutrition, with breathing. | ||
| It's not about the price, it's about the service. | ||
| And then I put my head and said, yeah, I have a nice day, I make a good speech with Joe Hogan, I have a nice talk with Ed Bravo, it was a great day. | ||
| So somehow, in a purpose for the Federation, so I always try to be positive, but I have no schedule fixed like I have to wake up, go to, no. | ||
| Because at this point, I create a lifestyle which makes me feel good to engage in different elements like this Federation now and having classes on Crohn's and be here, to be full of energy, | ||
| you know, because Sometimes you don't notice, but based on your commitments, your obligation, you're becoming more like a robot and you lose the perspective of what you need to be at your best. | ||
| And if you lose that perspective, even though you're still doing your routine, sometimes you're just minus. | ||
| You're just 80, 70, 60% of what you should be. | ||
| So you're not going to be the best husband, you're not going to be the best father, the best employer, the best employee. | ||
| You just, you know, it's just... | ||
| So at this point, I feel like I have to be at my best physically. | ||
| If I feel like I have to stretch, I'm going to stretch, breathe, joke, have fun, listen, party, whatever. | ||
| You know, and then when I feel like, man, I'm so happy, I could not eat. | ||
| So, and then I can go and do my service, you know, and, you know, because the window of life is smaller. | ||
| Now, for me, it becomes, I don't have too much time. | ||
| So, I don't waste time to do what people expect from me. | ||
| I try to do things that are really relevant to my soul, like this Federation now. | ||
| When I dream, I don't dream small. | ||
| I dream like I make a very space for the biggest dream I can dream. | ||
| And I see that level of need for the community and the level of Of position I have to be the reference for that shift in the direction of our culture and our knowledge, I feel like I could not be more motivated, more happy to engage on this. | ||
| And that's always what life is about. | ||
| Just do your best and be excited, be motivated to the next day. | ||
| There's such a refreshing attitude, your attitude, your philosophy on life. | ||
| Because I think it's very easy, and I've trapped myself in it sometimes, where you concentrate too much on making money, concentrate too much on being ambitious, and you forget the quality of life. | ||
| Your focus is almost entirely on your quality of life. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, because, like I said, man, How much costs your motivation? | ||
| How much costs your friends? | ||
| How much costs your health? | ||
| How much costs your intelligence? | ||
| Those things, it's priceless. | ||
| I mean, if you take those of your life, you take your motivation of your life, it can be Bill Gates, it can be the biggest... | ||
| So if you ask me if I want to have Bill Gates' life, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know him. | ||
| So it's not based on his bank account. | ||
| It's based on how happy he is, how horny he is, how... | ||
| How motivated he is to wake up and do his thing. | ||
| He don't look too horny. | ||
| I don't think he's horny at all. | ||
| So that's a very essential thing which sometimes slips through people's fingers and the priorities and the daily payments. | ||
| So I put you in a role where I feel like If you tell me in the past, what's the courage, what's the opposite of courage, I'm going to say cowardness. | ||
| Because either you're tough enough to challenge and to fight, or then you're a coward and you chicken out. | ||
| So that, in the past, was like the opposite of courage. | ||
| It's very hard to measure this in those days. | ||
| And I believe the opposite of courage today is conformity. | ||
| You know, as people get conformed. | ||
| Oh, I don't like my wife the way I used to like, but I'm never going to divorce because I'm afraid to lose my house. | ||
| Or the situation is so established, so I don't like this job, but I'm going to keep here because it's better than his. | ||
| So, in other hands, if you get caught on that kind of compromise to maintain because you're afraid to risk, Let's keep you like one step behind from follow your heart, follow your ambition. | ||
| If you're 18 years old, you don't think twice. | ||
| The guy says, hey, let's go to Australia. | ||
| You think, okay, let's go, boom. | ||
| But when you're 50, you say, Australia, what are you going to do there? | ||
| Maybe I'm going to... | ||
| So it's different, you know? | ||
| That's me. | ||
| Am I getting paid or what? | ||
| Where are we going? | ||
| Yeah, so that's kind of pretty much where keep you from be at your best. | ||
| Because if you're willing to sacrifice... | ||
| If you're willing to broke new challenges, if you're willing to... | ||
| You're in a stage of liveness and excitement and unpredictability who make you feel like you're in heaven. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Every time I was engaging in a compromise or a fight was something I thank you, like... | ||
| I have my routines prior to fight. | ||
| One of them is at the day of my fight I wake up and I thank you God to be alive and I Acknowledge how perfect it will be that day if I die today. | ||
| Say, fuck, it was going to be a perfect day if I die. | ||
| Because I have, you know, I accomplished my thing. | ||
| I'm in my mission. | ||
| I'm representing my family. | ||
| So I don't go there to tap. | ||
| I go there to die. | ||
| The guy had to kill me. | ||
| I'm never going to tap. | ||
| But that's not a sport-like orientation. | ||
| This is a philosophical... | ||
| Honor representation. | ||
| It's not something I teach. | ||
| No, it should not happen. | ||
| No, it's not like that. | ||
| It's about how I feel, how I feed my kids, how I follow my tradition. | ||
| So in engagement, I'm not going to be the one who's going to quit. | ||
| The guy has to kill me. | ||
| My brother, he can throw the towel. | ||
| But for me, it's unacceptable. | ||
| You know, I give up from my life. | ||
| So based on that kind of spiritual guidance, my life is very intense. | ||
| My life is very, I mean, directed to accomplish. | ||
| Give up is not an option, you know? | ||
| I can direct my focus. | ||
| I can give up from something to go somewhere else, but I never will give up from something because I feel like I cannot reach there. | ||
| I may say, okay, that's not for me. | ||
| I go somewhere else. | ||
| But if I still focus, I will take those falls, I will take those obstacles as a motivation to just set up a new strategy to try again. | ||
| You know, I'm very competitive in a sense I like the perfection of things. | ||
| So this is like a situation where put you in a situation where you have no, either you go forward or you don't. | ||
| But don't stay in the middle. | ||
| Don't say just waiting for people or waiting for more. | ||
| Those are kind of things kind of stuck you back in life and just make you feel like Passing through life as you're irrelevant. | ||
| It's very weak. | ||
| That's a beautiful way to end this. | ||
| Thank you very much, brother. | ||
| I really, really appreciate it. | ||
| It was fantastic. | ||
| Let's make this sometime again and talk about more things. | ||
| Anytime. | ||
| We could do this forever, I'm sure. | ||
| And anything we could do to help your association, I'm 100% Committed to making the state of jiu-jitsu better, improving on what is going on. | ||
| That's what I'm all about. | ||
| JJGF.com So we are true on that, and definitely you're going to be invited for the Development Council. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| My pleasure, brother. | ||
| So go there. | ||
| JJGF.com. | ||
| Enjoy it. | ||
| Hicks and Gracie, thank you very much, sir. | ||
| Thank you, bro. | ||
| Thank you to our sponsors. | ||
| Thanks to Squarespace.com. | ||
| Go to Squarespace.com. | ||
| Use the code word Joe and save 10% off your first purchase. | ||
| 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. | ||
| We will be back in a little while with Bert Kreischer. |
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