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Sept. 8, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:59:52
Joe Rogan Experience #546 - Mike Dolce
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joe rogan
01:28:53
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mike dolce
01:28:56
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justin wren
00:02
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unidentified
5, 3, 2, 1, go.
joe rogan
It's on?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.
unidentified
Sorry.
joe rogan
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by your mother's vagina.
That's how you got here.
unidentified
Whoa.
joe rogan
So everything's brought to you from that.
To you, personally.
Not me.
I don't know your mother.
What a terrible way to start a show.
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unidentified
That sounds pretty good.
joe rogan
That's good shit, dude.
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That's a weird word.
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mike dolce
Furniture.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's fucking sort of dressing.
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Alright, without further ado, I try to keep these things in the minimum, ladies and gentlemen.
unidentified
I know people say, Tim Rogan, your fucking commercials take so much time.
joe rogan
They don't necessarily have to take so much time.
They take time only because I bullshit during the commercials, and also because I really do try to only have things on the podcast that we use.
LegalZoom was used by us to start on it.
The deskwad.tv, LegalZoom was used by Brian to start that.
Bring things on the podcast as a sponsor that I believe in.
mike dolce
I used LegalZoom to get Dolce Diet registered years ago.
joe rogan
Mike Dolce uses LegalZoom, you fucks.
Come on now.
Come on now.
All right, that's it.
Boom, shall lock, lock, boom.
Cue the music.
unidentified
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan
Fitness guru to the stars, Mike Dolce, my friend.
mike dolce
What's up, brother?
joe rogan
Good to see you, brother.
mike dolce
Likewise.
joe rogan
Thanks for coming back here.
mike dolce
Cheers to you.
Thanks, Jim.
joe rogan
Thanks for coming on, man.
I got a lot of questions.
Got a lot of questions.
Diet questions.
Nature Box questions.
Granola, quinoa, chocolate granola.
mike dolce
Let me check that out, please.
joe rogan
Yeah, please do.
mike dolce
See what's up with Nature Box.
There we go.
joe rogan
It's yummy.
I'll tell you that.
It's yummy as fuck.
You don't have to check that out.
But I want to talk to you about a lot of people who don't understand mixed martial arts or maybe they're casual fans.
They don't know that there's a lot going on in MMA. And one of the things that's going on besides the fact that it's a very dangerous, very...
It's a highly charged sport with a lot on the line for the competitors.
But one of the things that's on the line that a lot of people aren't aware of is a thing that we call weight cutting.
And so I can fill people in that may just not know much about MMA. If a fighter is going to fight at, say, 145 pounds.
That's one of our weight classes.
They probably don't really weigh 145 pounds.
It's very rare that you get a guy like Frankie Edgar, who was the lightweight champion, who lightweight in the UFC is 155 pounds.
That's what he actually used to weigh.
He was really fit, and he walked around at 155. He didn't cut any weight to weigh in for the weight class, and he was always smaller than almost anyone in his division.
He still won and beat some of the best guys in the planet just because he's really tough and very highly skilled, but that's the rarity.
The only division where that doesn't take place is in the heavyweight division, which guys don't have to cut any weight at all, generally speaking.
There was a few exceptions, like Tim Sylvia in his heyday used to be a little bit bigger, or Brock Lesnar might have cut a little, or...
Alistair Overeem, when he first fought in the UFC, cut a little.
But for the most part, those guys get to eat whatever the fuck they want.
For everybody else, essentially there's two different events going on.
There's the event where there's a fight, where you're training to compete against the best mixed martial arts fighters in the world, but then there's also the weigh-in.
And the weigh-in is an event in and of itself.
It is a huge thing, because you get guys like, a perfect example of extreme examples is Gleason Tebow, which I don't think Gleason's missed weight.
Has he ever missed weight?
mike dolce
Not that I know of.
joe rogan
He figures out a way to do it.
mike dolce
They get it done.
joe rogan
But Gleason is fucking enormous.
He fights at 155. I weigh in the high 190s and he's bigger than me.
So I don't know how the fuck he does it.
I really don't know how the guy does it.
mike dolce
He suffers.
joe rogan
He suffers.
And he gets down to 155 for a very brief window of time and then rehydrates the shit out of himself.
mike dolce
Yeah, and that's the goal.
Ultimately, what we're trying to do is trying to be on weight for the shortest time possible to minimize the ill effects of being at that weight.
A guy like Nick Lentz, 145 pounder, you brought up 45s.
So Nick Lentz, he does most of his training camp around 175 now.
joe rogan
Whoa!
That's so crazy!
mike dolce
Massive!
And we want to touch down at 45 and be there for really under an hour.
I want my athletes still kind of dripping that last sweat when they step on the scale so they can just graze the contract weight and immediately we hydrate them right back up again.
joe rogan
And when you say Nick Lentz walks around at 175 pounds, for folks that are listening to this, you go, oh, he gets fat.
No, he does not.
mike dolce
No, at 10% body fat.
joe rogan
Okay, that is so crazy.
How is it possible that a guy can be 175 at 10% body fat?
By the way, I'm a fat fuck.
I'm about 17% body fat.
mike dolce
You look leaner than that.
joe rogan
I don't know.
Maybe a little self-deprecating.
Maybe 15. Let's be nice.
Say I'm 15% body fat.
So this guy is 5% less body fat than me, and he's going to cut 30 fucking pounds.
How does a guy do that?
mike dolce
It's through...
There's a multi-stage process.
So when I back up, when I talk to an athlete or when I talk about weight cutting, I say, number one, it's not the best case scenario.
Weight cutting is something that unfortunately has to be done by a lot of athletes in order to minimize advantage as opposed to gaining an advantage.
But the weight cut should start 52 weeks before competition, which means this should be a lifestyle.
These athletes, and this is what they need to understand, and hopefully we can spread this message, is they need to be training and living and eating and breathing like professional athletes 365 days out of the year so they can minimize the downside of the weight cutting practice.
They need to be eating the proper foods.
Training intelligently, resting completely, so their body is able to endure the grueling practice of cutting weight.
So with Nick Lentz, he's fresh in the mind right now.
I was just with him in Connecticut last week.
He made weight 146, Charles Oliveira, his opponent.
He missed weight by four pounds, which was absolutely ridiculous, unprofessional.
But there's a saying that the first fight is with the scale.
So the athletes, when they get to the fight week or when they get to the location, they're focused on the scale.
They don't even think about the fight for the most part.
joe rogan
Is that a good thing?
Does it keep them from getting distracted about the fight?
mike dolce
Yeah, and that's actually one of the positive benefits of it is that they're not focused on the fight.
They're not burning all that nervous energy thinking about the fight.
But that sets in pretty quick as soon as they step off the scale and they have that first face-off.
joe rogan
In that case, maybe every fighter should have just a really fucking crazy girlfriend that demands all their time and only hook up with her the week of the fight so that she just demands all your, you know, all you fucking care about is what you eat!
You don't even care about me!
I'm not even the most important thing to you!
And just have like the most crazy, narcissistic, psychotic relationship.
And girls should have ridiculous guys.
unidentified
Let me check your phone!
joe rogan
Let me check your phone!
Who's fucking texting you?
unidentified
Your fucking trainer's too comfortable with you!
mike dolce
That actually happens.
joe rogan
I'm sure it does.
I'm sure it does.
For men and for women, right?
Now that we have a lot of women in the UFC, I bet it happens for them more.
mike dolce
Sure.
joe rogan
I bet guys are more psycho with their popular star women girlfriends.
Those fucking weird guys that are in the background that aren't famous and they have famous girlfriends.
unidentified
Ew.
Ew.
mike dolce
Mean Mug and all the coaches, all the training partners, all the reporters.
joe rogan
Creepers.
Creepers, each and every one of them.
Not really.
mike dolce
I don't give a fuck.
joe rogan
Do whatever you want to do.
Okay.
But the point is that this is a genuine issue.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
And it's a genuine physical issue as well as a genuine psychological issue.
mike dolce
Yeah.
An amazing training camp.
Eight-week, 12-week training camp can be blown during fight week or in the 24, 48 hours before they step in the octagon or in the competition.
Because they blew their weight cut.
And then even if they do make weight, typically most athletes, a large majority, even at the high level, they blow their rehydration.
They step on weight.
They think, oh my God, I made it.
And they grab a sandwich from the deli or they go and get pasta, fettuccine Alfredo from the local Italian restaurant.
And they eat food that they haven't eaten in weeks or months before.
They totally screw up their digestive system.
Body goes to shit.
And they're a shadow of their former self.
joe rogan
Well, I know Chris Lieben talked pretty openly about how he did that.
In one of his weight cuts, he ate a bunch of gummy bears.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he went into shock.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, his body literally went into some sort of a sugar shock because he just couldn't help himself.
mike dolce
Yeah, Lieben.
I've known Lieben since 2004 when I started working up at Team Quest in Oregon.
So I was his coach for a long time.
Worked with him for a few fights, not many of the fights recently.
The Vanderlei Silva fight was the most recent fight I worked with him.
joe rogan
That was one of his most spectacular victories of all time.
unidentified
It was.
mike dolce
And that's when he was so motivated.
And that's the Chris I would have loved to have seen in all of his fights.
Because he was lean.
He was sharp.
He was ready.
He was confident.
He chased away a lot of the demons.
And quick Lieben story.
So we back up to a fight previous, years before that.
And I lost contact with him.
Hadn't seen him in a while.
And I see him.
I'm with another athlete in the casino.
I see Lieben.
And he's, you know, he's partying.
And this is right before the fight.
I'm like, bro, what are you...
joe rogan
How many hours before the fight?
mike dolce
It's like the day before.
joe rogan
So he's drinking?
mike dolce
He's, well, he's reeking of it, you know.
Yeah, I'm partying in whatever, whatever, you know...
joe rogan
Who is he going to fight?
mike dolce
God, I don't know.
And hopefully by the end of the show, I'll remember who it was.
And I think he actually won the fight, which is insane.
I mean, I got multiple leaving stories.
But I was like, Chris, what are you doing?
And he's like, Dolce, sometimes you just gotta dance with the girl you came with.
And I was like, motherfucker.
Alright, alright, Chris.
High five, good luck.
And I'm pretty positive he did go out there and win that fight.
joe rogan
I would imagine he did.
He's a wild motherfucker.
For real.
That's a great quote from Lieben, because that is literally how he got there.
He got there being a wild man.
mike dolce
That's exactly what gave him his edge and what got him to the top.
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Is this a weird maturing process, isn't it, for some fighters where they got into fighting because they were so wild and reckless and somewhere along the line, they have to be cautious and calculated.
They have to really think of themselves as pro athletes.
And I say that not just about their training and diet, but also about their approach to fighting itself.
I'm a huge Forrest Griffin fan.
I love Forrest, just as a person, and I'm a huge fan of his as a fighter.
But I think that one of the best and worst things that ever happened to him was that fight with...
that that like i would say it's one of the greatest most important fights in mma but the fight with stefan bonner in the finals of the ultimate fight of the first season which was such a crazy fight people don't realize how bananas this situation was spike tv was a new network it was like some fucking country music channel or something before that right wasn't it the country station or some shit it became spike which was like a the the guys channel
and then they put on this thing the ultimate fighter and then you know people watched it it was a good show but in the finals stefan bonner and forrest griffin went on it won at it so hard that the ratings went through the They can monitor the ratings while the fight's going on.
And it went from a million people watching it when it first started to 10 million people at its peak, which is insane.
Absolutely.
Which they can track is directly related to people calling each other up and going, dude, you gotta fucking see this.
Turn on channel 248. These motherfuckers are throwing down.
And then people started calling each other and then they see through the fight.
It was a wild fight.
It was because you got two guys who knew each other super well, trained together for the six weeks they were in the house, and then went to war.
And they were so evenly matched that there was no winner in that fight.
At the end, Forrest Griffin won.
He got the decision, but it was so close that we actually talked about it inside the cage.
I said, why don't you give both these guys a fucking contract?
And they talked about it, and Lorenzo and Daniel were like, let's give both these guys a fucking contract.
And then, boom, they both got this big six-figure contract with the UFC. But...
That kind of style was so rewarded that it became how Stefan Bonner fought.
And I think he still kind of fights like that.
But Forrest Griffin, I think that it turned out to be his downfall in a lot of ways.
Like this face-forward, charging, aggressive style.
And that's how he lost to Keith Jardine.
I believe the more strategic Forrest Griffin was the one who beat Shogun.
He made some calculations.
He made some adjustments in his career.
But that style, he learned how to be this wild, reckless motherfucker because that was so rewarding.
mike dolce
And it's hard for an athlete sometimes to change their natural instinct.
I think.
And you see that in the gym where an athlete, either they're very tentative and calculating when they first get into the gym and they kind of have to bring out that monster a little bit and learn to be a finisher.
And they tend to look a little bit boring and maybe like an underachiever.
Or you get a guy like Forrest or Lieben that goes out there and they just go balls to the wall throwing big shots and sometimes they get knocked out and sometimes they get their hand raised.
And you have to walk that fine line.
And, you know, unfortunately they're playing with their brains.
You know, they're putting all, they're going all in, you know, every, every fight they're going all in and they don't know how they're going to walk out of it.
Um, so it's really interesting.
It's interesting to see how far the sports evolved.
I mean, every couple of years, the sport evolves to a brand new level.
You see these young kids coming in now that are, you know, better equipped and better skilled than the champions of 10 years ago.
joe rogan
And they're not even contenders yet.
mike dolce
They're outside the top 20, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, there's guys that are just coming up that are 21 years old that have a better skill set than world champions of 10 years ago.
It's amazing.
mike dolce
It's insanity.
joe rogan
It is amazing.
One of the issues when it comes to weight cutting and rehydration or dehydration rather is head trauma.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
And it's one of the reasons why rehydrating with an IV is so critical.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because if you look at boxing, the majority of the instances of men suffering in-fight brain damage, Gerald McClellan, Duck Ku Kim, like there's a lot of these cases and almost all of them involve someone weight cutting.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
And because of that, boxing and now MMA has adjusted its schedule where the fighters weigh in the day before, where they used to weigh in the day of the match.
Old school boxing matches, you would see them weigh in the day of the match, and they would still cut weight, and then they would try to rehydrate, and they didn't know what the fuck they were doing back then.
And guys had dry brains.
I mean, literally.
And because of that, it made them more susceptible to cerebral hemorrhages and brain damage and all sorts of different things.
Very few heavyweight fighters suffered from brain damage in an actual fight.
It was usually years and years of repeated head trauma that got them, but not like one event like a Gerald McClellan event.
mike dolce
Sure.
joe rogan
And for folks who don't know what Gerald McClellan was, he was one of the great light heavyweights of...
Well, he was a light heavyweight and he was a super middleweight as well, wasn't he?
unidentified
I believe so.
joe rogan
And he was one of the guys who was eventually going to fight Roy Jones Jr., fought Nigel Benn in an epic contest, had Benn really badly hurt.
They collided heads and he was all fucked up and he went back to his corner and he took a knee and wound up bowing out of the fight and then immediately went into a coma and had some horrible brain injuries because of that.
And that was a fight that changed a lot of people's ideas about weight cutting and about the dangers of head trauma because before that fight, Gerald McClellan was thought to be like an invincible destroyer.
I mean, people had seen him.
He was just knocking everybody out.
He was one of the Kronk stars.
Kronk boxing being Emanuel Stewart's team that produced Tommy Hearns.
You know, so many great, great fighters came out of that gym and they all were just assassins and he was one of the best.
Gerald McClellan was a fucking vicious, vicious killer.
And everybody had to watch that.
And, you know, and he's still alive to this day.
He's blind and he's all fucked up and sad shit.
Directly related to dehydration, right?
mike dolce
Dehydration.
I would say so.
I mean, it certainly contributed, right?
It assisted in the damage.
And that's something that I pound my soapbox when I talk to athletes, when I talk to anybody, is about health.
You've got to be healthy.
If you're not healthy, you can't perform.
You can't compete.
If your body is healthy, then you can do absolutely anything.
It'll do anything you ask of it if you maintain its health for a long period of time.
Not just fight week, not just start eating organic and green fight week when you start cutting weight or two, three weeks beforehand.
It has to be before training camp even starts.
You have to be eating a lot of food, the proper food at the right times consistently.
Get your body weight down to a, you know, your body mass down to a solid ratio.
Somewhere around that 10% range if you're a male mixed martial artist.
For females, anywhere between 18-20%, let's say.
joe rogan
What if guys dip below 10%, is that dangerous?
mike dolce
It's not, but that's really for competition time because with Lentz and all my male athletes, I try and keep them right around 10%.
The bigger guys, maybe we get a little closer to 12%.
The littler guys, the leaner guys, maybe between 8 and 10, but right around 10 is the sweet spot.
So we keep them around 10. That means they have weight to work off because they need that for the first few phases.
When I work with training camps and such, we break the training camp down into multiple three-week phases.
So we can actually go through the proper training protocols and then peak towards the very end.
So we can deal with the rigors of the training, the bumps, the bruises, the bangs, the slams.
We have the extra body fat to kind of insulate us so we can keep our joints and ligaments strong and pliable.
joe rogan
So extra body fat actually does that?
mike dolce
It does.
Absolutely.
It does.
It's just another layer of insulation when you're constantly grinding on guys and being wrenched against the wall and picked up and slammed 50 times because you're drilling whatever move.
You need that little bit of insulation.
The leaner you get, the drier your joints get, the more susceptible to injury you become.
joe rogan
Is that a scientific fact?
Like your joints get drier when you're leaner?
mike dolce
When you're leaner, absolutely.
Absolutely.
joe rogan
How does that work?
Is there fat in between your joints?
mike dolce
I don't think I can speak intelligently enough to break down the true science of it, but it's something that certainly remains.
I know when I was a power lifter, we would increase our body fat in order to increase the leverage points within our joints.
When I was a power lifter, I would intentionally increase my body fat to 15-18%.
And my numbers would absolutely go through the roof.
I would get less joint pain, less injuries.
So call it, you know, bro science if some people like to throw that term around there.
But you just feel better, feel stronger.
And the leaner you get, specifically when you start heading into the peaking phase, which is now mild dehydration as we get closer to fight week sets in, the entire body becomes drier.
So there's less elasticity within the muscles.
You're more susceptible to those...
Injuries, overuse injuries and such.
joe rogan
Bro science is a very tricky word, right?
mike dolce
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
It's fucking...
justin wren
It's very limiting.
joe rogan
Like, they hit you with that bro science and they gotcha.
mike dolce
As if it's an accusation, but I don't...
It's almost a...
It means experience.
Unless you're just throwing shit at the wall.
joe rogan
But there's a lot of throwing shit at the wall, too.
I think more than experience...
There's certain things that you would say maybe would be bro science that turned out to be legit.
Things along the lines like...
We want to talk about experience.
Things like...
Ancient training methods that have turned out to be the right way to do it.
Like all those old-school Rocky methods.
Remember when Rocky was training in Siberia and he was running through the snow and dragging logs?
A lot of times people would, if it wasn't for all the data that we have now, people would consider that kind of bro science.
Because that's like, you know, you don't fucking have to chop logs, you dummy.
Actually, it's a really good way to exercise.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
You know, but for the longest time, most people thought, no, you had to use a Nautilus machine and you had to fucking, you know, do everything.
mike dolce
You have to be Drago.
joe rogan
Drago with the fucking heart monitors and all that stuff.
The computer's hooked up to him.
But bro science is a nice way they can shut you down and make you look stupid.
mike dolce
I know!
unidentified
And it fucking pisses me off because I get this shit all the time.
mike dolce
You know?
joe rogan
Because you're a bro.
mike dolce
I'm a bro.
joe rogan
Even a bro.
Like, you could call someone a bro and you limit their...
Anything that they have to say, anything they have to say about culture, anything they have to say about society, any opinions, any thoughts, any philosophies they might have, you're a bro.
mike dolce
You're a bro.
And that's, I will wear that proudly, but it's, we're evidence-based.
So we can say evidence-based bro science that, you know, we don't do anything unless it's been proven.
If we have a concept or idea, and I, you know, obviously in my office, I have a team that works with me.
So it's not just me in the black and gold shirt running around.
I have a team.
I have, you know, employees that have, um, degrees, masters in exercise physiology.
I've registered dietitians on staff.
So it's a complete team within the Dolce diet.
That puts this information out there and looks after the athletes.
So it's not just me running around and I stop watching my clipboard handing people bottles of water.
So it truly is a scientific process, but it's also based upon the experience.
And I've been doing this for 25 years, you know, since 93, professionally getting paid to do this.
And I have tremendous amounts of data.
I have almost all the data I've ever had collected on athletes and students and clients that I've worked with.
joe rogan
Anecdotal data as well.
Athletes telling you how good they feel after, what makes them feel bad.
unidentified
Yep.
mike dolce
What did they eat today?
What were their bowel movements?
What was their training systems like?
When did they get sick?
What's their sense of humor like?
I mean, I speak with the wives.
I speak with the husbands.
I speak with the coaches.
I speak with the training partners.
I know everything about the athlete, the time they wake up, the time they have that bowel movement all the way through the day.
I know the intensity of the training.
I know the volume of the training.
I know the amount of rounds that they put in.
I know their caloric breakdown.
I know their lean mass ratios.
Oftentimes, I know what their blood work looks like.
We have a lot of data, and based upon this data is how we come up with our methodology and how we continue to evolve.
Because every time, I mean, it's like every week, you see me at the UFC quite often...
I'm not throwing shit at the wall.
I'm taking what I did on Friday, Saturday of that week, and on Sunday, I'm looking at the numbers and I'm retooling it because Monday I'm going to another fight week somewhere, and we're continuing to evolve this process as we move forward.
It's evidence-based scientific principles.
That's also battle-tested and proven viable with experience.
Because there's a lot of science out there that, you know, the guys in the suits and the lab coats, they're going to point to and say, that's the way to do it.
But they've never actually done it in the human element.
They've never actually seen it work.
They just sit in the classroom and they talk about it and they pontificate on it.
But it's never truly been proven in the real world.
And that's what we do also.
So we have the benefit of that.
Plus we have the benefit of all the scientific...
Evidence that's out there also.
And that's kind of what we roll into this.
joe rogan
Also, the stakes in MMA are so much higher than the stakes in any other sport when it comes to proven concepts in the real world, in quotes.
Because the real world in MMA, your fucking consciousness is on the line.
Your health is on the line.
Your body is going to get hit by...
Things that would ordinarily, like if you were in any sort of a real-life situation and someone kicked you in the head, that person would go to jail.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
Meanwhile, in this scenario, they're rewarded for being able to kick you in the head.
mike dolce
They get a bonus.
joe rogan
They get a fucking head kick bonus, yeah.
They get a KO of the night.
Well, it's performance of the night now.
Do you think, and this is a really touchy subject, but I think it's an important one to bring up.
Do you think that a lot of our ideas about what's physically possible when it comes to training and when it comes to fighting are distorted because of performance-enhancing drugs?
mike dolce
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think performance-enhancing drugs have set the bar in all sports in a culture, whether it's looking at the movies, looking at the magazine cover.
joe rogan
Track and field.
mike dolce
Track and field.
Everywhere.
Golf, NASCAR. Anywhere you look that there's money on the line, where you get rewarded...
For performance, there's some sort of ancillary good or commodity being used or purchased or consumed to improve your performance.
It's very evident in the world of mixed martial arts because these guys and girls are getting punched and kicked in the head and they're losing consciousness and they're breaking bones and getting limbs torn off.
So now you have these advanced superhumans Out there able to, you know, rip joints and punch brains and do all these other things.
So it does, I think the odds are much greater, you know, for the risk is certainly much greater for anybody who competes.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's where I took exception to a lot of people saying, like, who cares if someone juices, you know, I don't give a fuck, I'm gonna kick their ass anyway.
You know, like Chris Weidman said that about Vitor Belfort, and I appreciate the fact that he thinks that way, because he's a champion, and that's how a champion feels.
But, the reality is, there are punches that can be landed when you are on EPO and test and jacked to the fucking gills and whatever the fuck else you're doing, that you wouldn't have the energy to land in a normal scenario.
It's very rare that a guy can do like what TJ Dillashaw does and go balls to the walls for five fucking rounds.
TJ can do it as a natural athlete because he's got a fucking tireless work ethic, he's unbelievably dedicated and focused, and he's 145 pounds.
That's another big factor.
The difference between that and a guy like Overeem, who Alistair Overeem came into the UFC against Brock Lesnar, he was 265, shredded to the tits, looked like a fucking superhero out of a comic book, pissed hot, and has never been the same guy again.
And the reality is now he's being tested, he's shrunk, he lost body mass.
It just seems to affect a guy's chin as well.
The thing about taking performance-enhancing drugs is that it doesn't just seem to affect your cardio, but it seems to also affect your ability to take a shot.
We saw that in Mark Hunt vs.
Bigfoot.
Bigfoot, Silva, and Mark Hunt had one of the greatest heavyweight fights ever.
As far as like from a fan's perspective, like watching an entertaining fight, what a fucking war.
These guys went to war and Bigfoot absorbed everything that Mark Hunt hit him with.
One of the greatest knockout artists in the history of kickboxing and in MMA. Mark Hunt's awesome.
He's a monster.
Bigfoot absorbed it.
They tested him after the fight and He had apparently, he tested before the fight, thought that was it.
I don't have to worry about this anymore.
And they jacked him with a fucking giant hit.
Like they took a fucking big gulp full of tests and just shoved it right in his ass.
And he was just fucking, just completely juiced up when he fought.
His levels were through the roof after the fight.
And because of that, he was able to absorb.
I mean, I'm speculating as to why he was able to absorb those shots.
But I've got to think that it has something to do with it.
mike dolce
It definitely increases aggression.
It increases tenacity.
It brings out that killer instinct and maybe an athlete in that state, they can walk through punches more because they have more of that primal urge and instinct and those elevated hormones pumping through their body because that's really what testosterone does and God knows what else is out there.
I mean, I don't even think we're aware In this room of all the drugs and performance enhancers that are truly out there and these, you know, evil geniuses around the world are creating and sticking into the athletes and putting them back out there to see what the effect is.
joe rogan
No, and Bigfoot got popped on a simple urine test, which is quite fascinating because the UFC has taken a lot of flack about their stance on performance enhancing drugs and people's like, oh, it's just lip service.
UFC doesn't give a shit.
This is how much the UFC gives a shit.
They've tested all of their best athletes with blood tests in a way that has fucked up a lot of performances.
They have stepped in and it costs more than $40,000 every time they do this.
So every single athlete, they're doing this outside of the jurisdiction of the athletic commissions.
So the athletic commissions has their own specific protocol for how they test a fighter.
Then the UFC steps in and brings in Like, the highest, most stringent Olympic testing that they can find.
They bring in the best guys.
Not only that, they have a chain of command.
They have a chain of evidence, rather, of possession.
Where, like, say, if Mike Dolce comes to the gym and you test Jamie, you fucking carry that shit on a plane to wherever the lab is.
mike dolce
Yep.
joe rogan
Like, you have it in your possession.
It never leaves you.
When you take a shit, that fucking suitcase sits right in front of you.
Nobody can come into your hotel room, grab it.
No.
It goes directly from your hands to the lab.
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
The reason being is because there's no shenanigans with these blood tests.
And because of that, a guy like Chael Sonnen got popped for EPO, elevated levels of test, human growth hormone.
He's been popped for a bunch of different things.
Actually, the elevated test was the urine thing.
But when they got him with the blood, they got him with some thing that they use for fertility.
He was on Clomid, which is what you take when they take you off Of human growth hormone or testosterone to try to restart your body's system.
Everyone's a fucking chemical factory.
It's crazy.
mike dolce
It's crazy.
joe rogan
It's not everyone.
Obviously, it's some.
mike dolce
It's some.
And I think it's a smaller percentage than a lot of the articles and interviews come out with.
You know, a lot of athletes say, oh, there's 90% of the guys.
joe rogan
Well, Vitor Belfort says everybody uses.
That's one of his famous statements after he got caught.
He's like, everyone's using in camp.
Everyone.
mike dolce
It depends on which camp he's talking about.
I know that there's a ton of great athletes out there.
Ronda Rousey is one of them, a lifelong drug-free athlete.
Johnny Hendricks is one of them.
Nick Lentz is one of them.
joe rogan
BJ Penn.
mike dolce
BJ Penn is one of them.
joe rogan
John Fitch.
mike dolce
John Fitch is one of them.
There's a huge list of top-tier athletes that are clean and lifelong clean, and we have no reason to suspect otherwise.
And they beat the piss out of a lot of the PED users.
But, you know, so the guys and girls that are using PEDs, maybe they wouldn't be a top 5, top 10, top 20 even.
Maybe they wouldn't even make it into the UFC, if not for some sort of enhancement.
joe rogan
I would love to go back to Pride, the Pride days.
I'm a huge Pride fan.
Don't get me wrong.
Some of my greatest moments as a fan, as an MMA fan, watching just the best fights of Pride.
Fedor versus Krokop, where he's just absorbing every shot Krokop hits him with and plowing forward and blasting him.
Fedor beat Krokop in a fucking kickboxing bout.
That's what a lot of people don't realize.
And Fedor was the first guy that ever made me want to be fat.
mike dolce
He made fat sexy, didn't he?
That bald bastard.
joe rogan
He's beating the fuck out of everybody with this floppy gut.
And I'm like, this motherfucker.
He was kicking everybody's ass, and he looks like he just stepped out of his fucking station wagon and waddled onto the beach to play volleyball with some friends.
He was much bigger, actually, early in his career.
And then as he got older...
He lost a lot of body mass, a lot of muscle mass.
But, man, I would love to see what those guys were actually doing.
mike dolce
And in Pride, I mean, that's almost a gentleman's agreement that you're agreeing to compete on drugs because that was in the contracts.
joe rogan
Yes.
mike dolce
You know, when we saw that pretty recently, and I had known some guys back in the day that had said that's in the contract.
I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?
joe rogan
Well, Ensign came on the podcast.
He read it off to us.
mike dolce
Insanity.
But in that case, if you're going to sign that contract and then you're loaded up to the gills, I'm not going to sit here and judge morally because you're agreeing to those rules.
It's like kicks to the face on the ground if you're going to agree to it.
But in the UFC here where there's unified rules, it's a whole other ballgame.
joe rogan
Well, when Jason Chambers was training at 10th Planet, he went over.
He was fighting in Japan.
I won't even say the organization.
But they wanted him to fight at 185. And Jason's like, I walk around at like 170. Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Like, I want to fight 155. Like, no, no, no, no, no.
You're going to get on steroids.
unidentified
Much larger.
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
They wanted him to get on roids.
They literally told him to get on roids.
mike dolce
And is that legal over there?
I mean, is that just culturally, it's not an issue?
joe rogan
I don't think they give a fuck about that.
They just looked at him, you know, Jason's a handsome bastard, and they said, like, this fucking beautiful bastard, we need some muscles on this motherfucker to sell.
mike dolce
There you go.
joe rogan
Sell, sell, sell.
unidentified
Sell, sell, sell.
joe rogan
You know, you can't have a guy looking like Nick Diaz, kicking everybody's ass with a normal athlete-looking body.
You want a Kevin Randleman-looking fucking Jason Chambers with Kevin Randleman's muscles.
Jesus Christ, how much can we sell that?
Put that guy on a fucking cover, put a banana where his dick is, stuff it in his underwear.
unidentified
Super athlete!
joe rogan
Super!
Yeah, but they literally told him, I mean, from his voice to my ears, they told him, and we were friends.
We still are friends.
They told him to do steroids.
unidentified
Holy shit.
joe rogan
So they do.
I mean, and there was always speculation, like we would look at Vanderlei and we'd go, how?
How are you built like that?
How can a guy be built like that and go to war for 10 minutes?
A 10 minute round and just never get tired?
How is that possible?
It's not, right?
mike dolce
It's very rare.
Those are the outliers that are able to look like that and compete like that.
I've spent some time with Brian Stan and he was telling a story about how when he went to Japan or China and fought Vanderlei.
He's like, I'm flying on a flight.
I'm sucked out.
I'm dehydrated.
I'm cutting weight.
I show up and I see Vanderlei.
And he is just fucking jacked and veiny and like smiling and just spitting piss and vinegar.
And he's like, that's when I knew.
I knew he was fucking gassed up.
And then you go out there and the fight goes how it is.
They got fight at performance at night, fight at night, whatever.
And Vanderlei had a very good chin on that night because Stan hit him with big shots and back and forth it went.
And unfortunately Stan was the guy to fall down first.
joe rogan
Yeah, it is that thing.
Your ability to absorb punishment actually changes depending upon what you're on.
mike dolce
It seems to be.
joe rogan
It seems to be.
I mean, we're talking, we're kind of speculating, obviously, we don't have the evidence in front of us.
mike dolce
Bro science.
joe rogan
Yeah, we're bro science-ing the shit out of this.
Well, Stan recently accused Kung Lee of being on performance-enhancing drugs after he fought Michael Bisping.
mike dolce
Yeah, and that's...
No evidence.
No evidence other than a photo, but that photo was pretty fucking interesting.
joe rogan
Well, it's interesting because Kung Lee is 40, but in Kung's defense, he said that he had had a series of aggravating injuries, and this was the first camp where he had had surgeries, he had fixed up all those injuries, and he went on a pretty rigorous strength and conditioning regime.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
For that training camp.
Like, you can't definitely say that he was on something.
And he didn't piss hot.
mike dolce
And that's it.
joe rogan
So, I mean, I don't know.
mike dolce
And it's a tough call because we're just kind of being haters.
Like, oh, look at that dude.
He looks fucking great at 40. And like...
Well, I don't look that good, so he must be on Juice.
And there's that human element to it.
But if he doesn't piss hot, I mean, how can we accuse and blame him of doing something wrong when he didn't?
And it didn't affect his performance in a positive manner anyway, because Bisping went out there and...
joe rogan
Beat his ass.
mike dolce
Beat his ass, right?
joe rogan
Goddamn Bisping looked good in that fight.
That was the best version of Bisping we've ever seen.
Bisping's a tenacious motherfucker.
mike dolce
He's a mean motherfucker.
joe rogan
He's just tenacious as shit, man.
He's just still in the mix.
Still, you know, still believing that one day he's going to be the champion.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
He's just going to keep fucking chipping away.
He gets beat.
He comes back.
You know, in his defense, everyone that's beaten him has essentially been popped for steroids.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Dan Henderson, who knocked him out, wasn't popped for steroids, but he was on a legal version of testosterone replacement therapy before they outlawed that stuff, which I think is a good thing to outlaw.
And this is coming from a person who takes testosterone.
I'm 47 years old.
I take testosterone every week.
I used to take a cream.
Now I take a shot.
It seems to last longer.
It seems to work better.
But why do I do it?
First of all, because I'm not competing against anybody, and it makes me feel better.
My body works better when I take it.
That's what testosterone replacement is all about.
But when it comes to professional athletes doing it, man, it's very tricky.
Because on one side, an athlete can take it and it can make them feel better and they can perform better when their career would be over.
Like you take a guy like a Roger Clemens.
And I don't know whether or not Roger Clemens did anything, but most people believe he did.
And he's a baseball player, and then deep into his 40s, all of a sudden the motherfuckers, he's still throwing 95 mile an hour fastballs, and he looks fantastic, and he's built like a brick shithouse.
What's going on there?
Well, most likely he got on hormone replacement.
So the idea being that when you're getting older, you're getting wiser, and you have accumulated all this experience and all this knowledge, but...
Your body does not perform the way it did when you were younger.
It just doesn't.
The hormones, they go away.
Your body's preparing for death.
Essentially, that's what's going on.
But it isn't bullshit because it's kind of the way the world works.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
You know, I mean, we're only here for a short amount of time.
Otherwise, fucking Aristotle would be sitting right there.
You know, he'd still be around.
mike dolce
Love to hear him on this show.
joe rogan
He'd probably be a boring bastard.
I don't understand his language either.
Yeah, no, I'd love to hear him.
Just kidding.
But, you know what I'm saying?
It's like everyone has their time.
And this is obviously hypocritical coming from me because I just admitted that I did take testosterone.
But when you're a fighter, there's the guys that they've gone through all this experience, their bodies started to fade off, and then they get on it, and then boom, all of a sudden, they're world beaters.
The best example is Vitor.
Vitor Belfort, I maintain that TRT Vitor was one of the most spectacular fighters in the history of fighting.
His knockout of Luke Rockhold, his knockout of Bisping, his knockout of Dan Henderson, he was a fucking destroyer when he was on test.
He would show up with muscles on his fucking eyebrows, I mean, literally.
He had muscles on his gums.
His whole body looked like a muscle.
It was insane.
And he was so aggressive and so confident.
It was a completely different Vitor than the Vitor that fought like Sakuraba when he fought in Pride, which was a decade earlier.
I mean, it's crazy to see something like that happen.
And on one hand, I love it.
On one hand, I want to see Vitor fight like that.
I want to see a destroyer.
I'm a guy who likes watching entertaining fights.
I like watching spectacular performances.
But on another hand, I want to see someone fighting someone Where it's just will and determination and discipline and focus and you work towards something and then you achieve it and you do it just by hard work.
mike dolce
Sure.
joe rogan
I don't want it to be a goddamn pharmacy competition.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know?
mike dolce
And that's high-level sports.
It is quite that.
And kind of a moral conversation.
Let's skew this a little bit.
So you look at, like, stem cell research.
Now, is that a performance enhancer?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's going to be.
mike dolce
Reattaching an ACL from somebody else, is that a performance enhancer?
joe rogan
Sure, it can be, right?
I mean, well, it certainly can fix a bad body, and that will enhance the performance of that person.
It can be.
mike dolce
It's an interesting, and I've heard Vitor say this before.
And I'm not defending.
joe rogan
Did he say that?
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Surgeries, performance enhancing?
unidentified
Is that what he's saying?
mike dolce
I think he was making a reference to Weidman, who had gone over to Germany, I believe, and had some sort of...
joe rogan
Regenachine?
mike dolce
I don't know the exact...
joe rogan
Well, I've had that.
He's wrong.
That doesn't enhance your performance.
It just makes your inflammation go down.
mike dolce
Okay.
joe rogan
I mean, Weidman has mangled knees.
I mean, he's had arthritis in his knees so bad that he can't even get his foot to touch his butt.
Like, lift his heel up like this, like I'm doing sitting right here.
He can't do that.
He couldn't get his heel to touch his ass.
His knees are so arthritic, and yet he still beat Anderson Silva twice.
Like that.
mike dolce
With those knees?
joe rogan
With those knees.
Yeah, because he's a fucking monster.
mike dolce
Yeah, he's a beast.
joe rogan
He's a monster.
He's not even 30. Yeah.
He's a monster.
But what he did was not...
It's not going to make him...
It'll make his knees work better, but there'll be normal knees.
It's not like he's going to get to a point where he has...
When you saw Vitor's muscles, that shit wasn't normal, son.
unidentified
Yeah.
mike dolce
That was above average.
joe rogan
Yeah, like an average 16-year-old kid who works out once or twice a week has better knees than the middleweight champion of the world.
That's the point.
It's the actual pliability of his joints itself.
I mean, does that increase a mechanical advantage when the knees work better?
Yeah, but it only makes it like a normal person.
It's not like what you can get if you're tested up to the gills.
So I don't see how you can make that comparison ethically.
mike dolce
And where's the line on medical intervention?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
mike dolce
To performance enhancement or supplementation.
joe rogan
Supplementation's a good one.
mike dolce
Because that's...
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
Creatine.
joe rogan
Well, I remember BJ... It's something that simple.
BJ was shitting on...
And I'm a huge BJ Penn fan.
Will be to the day I die.
But BJ was shitting all over GSP. You know, hey, you're taking a test.
You know, you're taking GH. Tell the truth.
What's going on?
And meanwhile, you watch BJ working out.
And he had a fucking...
He had a counter filled with these different supplements.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's a bunch of shit that they would give him after every meal.
It was all legal.
It was all glutamine and things along those lines and fish oil and all these different various supplements.
But those various supplements, that's not food.
That's food that has been broken down and they've isolated very specific components that they've shown to enhance performance.
So you're taking performance-enhancing supplements when you're taking anything.
The reason why you take multi-minerals and multi-vitamins is you want to enhance the performance of your body, period.
That is what's going on.
It's just going on at an edge level, as opposed to a jump.
When you're tested up, Vitor tested.
They caught him before.
This is what made them cancel testosterone replacement in Nevada.
I mean, they had already had issues with it, but they started testing guys off, like, just randomly.
Like, come here.
Like, pee in that cup.
That's how they got Overeem.
Vitor tested, an average person, it's like an average male, 300 to like 800 is like a high level.
Vitor was 1,475.
That's insane.
It doesn't exist in nature.
It just doesn't exist in nature.
And that was one of the reasons why they were like, okay.
And this is not idle speculation coming from me, by the way.
This is me talking to people that are in the know, people that were actually there.
The whole conversation that went down, I was...
Privy to a lot of it.
And it was very tricky because you have to find out what's ethical.
I mean, they allowed it in the first place because doctors were saying, my client has low testosterone and he has an issue, gonadism or whatever, hypergonadism.
Whatever the issue is.
My client has low testosterone.
I, as a doctor, believe that he has a medical issue that needs to be addressed.
We're going to supplement his testosterone.
So the athletic commissions allowed this, but they didn't totally understand what they were allowing.
Because they didn't know that you could take testosterone.
And if you took testosterone and then got off testosterone, your natural levels crash.
So then you show up at the doctor and you say, Hey man, test me.
I feel pretty weak.
And the doctor says, You have low testosterone.
I'm going to write you a prescription for testosterone.
Then you bring that to the Athletic Commission.
My doctors allowed me to take testosterone.
Here's my blood work.
And they go, all right, it seems pretty good.
Go ahead, take it.
I mean, that was going on.
That's what happened with Nate Marquardt.
That's what happened with a lot of people.
That was the issue with when Nate Marquardt was pulled out of his fight with Rick Story at the very last minute is because the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission tested him and he was jacked through the roof.
And they were like, what were you doing is dangerous?
mike dolce
What was his number?
Do you remember?
joe rogan
I don't remember, so I won't say it.
But it was Vitor-esque.
mike dolce
It was astronomical.
joe rogan
It was very high.
It was not a number that exists in nature.
And that's the issue.
Same as Mark Hunt.
It was not a number that exists in nature.
These guys were taking hyper levels of testosterone.
When they give you testosterone...
Unless you are going to the doctor, and that doctor is the only one who administers testosterone, and they do it right in front of you, you can put as much in as you want.
mike dolce
Sure.
joe rogan
You know, if Mike Dolce gets a prescription for testosterone, and you go to your doctor, your doctor's going to give you a fucking month's supply, and you could say, I want to put the whole month in right now.
Let's see what's up!
Boom!
mike dolce
Look out!
joe rogan
And then you're just fucking running through walls, like the thing from the Fantastic Four, just...
It's very weird.
If you're on anything else, if you're on any other kind of medication, you take two pills in the morning, you take two pills at night, and here's your pills.
Take those pills.
But you could just decide to throw the whole bottle down your throat if you're fucking nuts.
The only way you could prevent that with testosterone is by restricting access and making that access only through that medical provider that does it right there.
Everyone knows.
And so they decided to just stop the testosterone replacement.
There was no way they could regulate it.
There was too many ethical concerns.
There was too many concerns with...
But the thing is, they started it, and they let these people get on it, and then they got them off of it.
And when you get people off of it, their whole endocrine system just crashes.
mike dolce
And there was no transition period?
unidentified
None.
joe rogan
You need a long transition period.
This Vitor-Weidman fight is going to be spectacularly interesting from that perspective.
Sure.
Vitor's previous performances have been some of the best performances I've ever seen in all my years of watching MMA. He just looked fantastic.
And if there was no concern whatsoever, if there was no issue with testosterone, if he wasn't on anything, he was just fucking training like a wild man and putting in, you know, if he was younger and this was all going on, if he didn't have like a noticeable I think?
Maybe you should look it up, Jamie.
Find out what Chris Weidman over Vitor Belfort is.
If you look at how Vitor destroyed Dan Henderson, you look at how he destroyed Luke Rockhold, you look at how he destroyed Bisping, you would say, how could anybody be a favorite over this guy?
And the reason is, is because of the testosterone.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
It's 100%.
No one wants to bring it up.
I mean, the UFC's probably upset that I'm talking about it right now.
You know, because they don't like bringing it up.
Like when I do those countdown shows, we don't talk about testosterone.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
I would like to.
I would like to talk about it.
I would like to bring in experts.
I would like to talk to a guy like you.
I'd like to talk to an endocrinologist.
I'd like to say, what is the recovery process?
How can a man bring his natural levels back up to where Vitor was?
You know, is it possible?
mike dolce
That's gonna be difficult.
Not knowing what his blood work or how bad off he was, you know, going into the TRT program, he's gonna come out worse off.
joe rogan
He said he was at 180. That was what he said, which is really low.
mike dolce
And I would believe that knowing a lot of the Brazilians, a lot of those kids get on in their early teens because it's a social medicine over there.
You walk into a gym and that's what the coach hands them.
And I've heard this story from dozens of Brazilians and it's nothing against the culture.
It's just something that's normal.
joe rogan
Well, it's legal there.
mike dolce
It's legal.
It's like walking into a GNC and getting some protein powder.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's not like it is over here.
When it's over here, you've got to get your, you know, if you're going to go to a gym and become a bodybuilder and you want to get testosterone or steroids, you're going to have to do dealings with some shady people.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
In Brazil, you go to the pharmacy.
mike dolce
You go in and you get it done properly, but unfortunately...
joe rogan
You open up four to one, that's almost five to one now.
5-1.
mike dolce
That's big.
joe rogan
Over Vitor.
The Vitor that destroyed Dan Henderson in the first round.
The Vitor that wheel-kicked Luke Rockhold into oblivion.
And someone's a 5-1 favorite over him.
That's incredible.
mike dolce
And that's because of that.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's amazing.
Everyone remembers Vitor when he fought Randy, when he was 240 pounds and looked like a lion.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
And those are the days, I think, that have caught up with him and caused the issue.
joe rogan
Well, that was back when he was training with his friend Curtis, who was his bodybuilder friend, who's dead now.
Guy died from steroids.
mike dolce
Oh, that's right.
I remember that.
joe rogan
We used to call him garden hoses.
Because we would work out with this guy, he would be at the gym, and he had garden hoses for veins.
I mean, he would stand there like this, and they were just garden hoses all over his body.
He was so big.
He was so big you couldn't believe that he was a human being.
mike dolce
It's...
Guys like that from the 90s era bodybuilding days, they're all fucking dying now.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
I've been seeing that.
joe rogan
Mike Matarazzo just died.
mike dolce
Just died, yeah.
Crazy.
joe rogan
Nassar, that big guy.
mike dolce
Nassar Elson body.
joe rogan
He's dead.
He died.
Those guys were just redlining the body.
Redlining the capabilities.
mike dolce
in the sport so we think of bodybuilding like the golden era is like the Arnold Schwarzenegger the Franco Colombo the pumping iron days and the bodies didn't change that much 70s to 80s they were kind of similar and then the early 90s that's when Dorian Yates came and just exploded onto the scene then Ronnie Coleman followed up in these 260 pound mass monsters 5'6".
Five-six.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
Fucking insanely crazy, ripped 3% body fat, garden hoses running everywhere.
And it wasn't as much from what I understand.
I've been working on a mass building, strength building book now, so I've been researching more of the bodybuilding side.
And I'm coming across all this information where they're talking now about insulin and IGF-1 and growth hormone.
When those things came into play in those early 90s, that's when the bodies changed.
But now you see what's happening.
15, 20 years later, these guys in their 40s and 50s are dropping dead of terrible, terrible conditions.
Almost directly related to that, where you see guys like Arnold and Franco, you know, still walking around, knocking on the door of 70s.
joe rogan
Arnold's back on the spike.
You've seen those muscles?
He's pretty fucking big now.
mike dolce
Get that Hollywood money, man.
Come on now, right?
joe rogan
Maria took everything.
I have to get bigger.
mike dolce
There you go.
joe rogan
Yeah, but he is...
But, you know, Dorian, in all fairness, is fine, too.
mike dolce
Right now.
joe rogan
Yeah, right now.
mike dolce
And that's the thing.
He seems like a smarter guy, just knowing a little bit.
Actually, when we were in Birmingham, I swung by Temple Jim.
I didn't get a chance to meet him.
It was historic.
joe rogan
Yeah, I want to meet that guy.
mike dolce
Fucking crazy, but we'll see.
And hopefully, you don't want to see anything bad happen to anybody, but those guys are on death watch to a degree.
joe rogan
What fails...
When they do that?
mike dolce
What fails in their body?
joe rogan
Yeah, what fails?
mike dolce
All these guys, it seems to be heart-related.
Their hearts are just exploding on them.
They're enlarged, for starters, and then they're just some sort of shutdown, breakdown, and they're just exploding, for lack of a more technical term.
But it's almost all cardiac-related.
Like, that's what Matarazzo, he was waiting for a heart transplant.
joe rogan
Oh my God.
mike dolce
He wasn't even 50 years old yet.
joe rogan
Wow.
mike dolce
You know?
He's a Boston guy, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
I remember when I was just a kid at that time, and I was watching these guys like, you know, that's what I wanted to be.
And I was like, well, maybe a couple of them.
So naive.
Take steroids.
But like, no, he's using muscle tech, and he's using EAS creatine.
And that's, I believe, that never Flex Wheeler, and Flex had a fucking kidney transplant.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He did?
mike dolce
Yes.
Don't quote me on the kidney transplant, but he had kidney failure, and that's what took him out of bodybuilding at his absolute prime.
I'm 90% sure it was a transplant.
joe rogan
But isn't that the kidney thing due to cutting weight?
They would dehydrate the shit out of themselves, right?
mike dolce
Massive prescription diuretics.
So cutting weight is one thing, using a very powerful pharmaceutical diuretic.
That's like water and fucking, you know, rubbing alcohol.
As far as, you know, putting that into your body.
And that's what, like, Mohammed Benaziza and I think Andres Muncer, some of these famous older bodybuilders, were just huge into those prescription diuretics.
And they just fucking blow their body up from the inside out.
Look amazing on the outside.
And then guys like Paul DeLette, you know, I'm kind of really, you know, going back 20 years of my remembrances of bodybuilding.
I remember these guys collapsing And just thinking like, oh, you know, they look like such specimens.
Why are they so unhealthy?
And that's really, I think, what turned me into what I am today.
I saw that, you know, and take my story back even farther.
I touched on it, you know, years ago, where I saw my father collapse, massive stroke.
I was an eight-year-old kid, and I was like, He was really in shape.
He was a thoroughbred horse trainer.
He just fucking had a massive stroke.
And I was like, how the fuck?
Like, spun.
How is this even possible?
And then all the doctor's visits and all this shit for years.
Well, he was burning his candle at both ends.
Fucking drinking coffee in the morning, not eating until late at night.
Working like 16, 20-hour days.
Really hard, hard-working days.
Sitting back, kicking some beers and whatnot.
Burnt his body out from the inside.
Family history of heart disease.
Hypertension.
Didn't take care of himself.
Boom.
Fast forward, I see this bodybuilding shit, and it really fascinated me.
I was fascinated as a boy all the way up through.
I was fascinated.
And as I continued, and I was a 280-pound powerlifter at some point.
Brought my body weight all the way up in my mid-20s, 280 pounds.
And one day I go to the doctor for a basic health test, wellness test.
High cholesterol, high blood pressure, hypertension, sleep apnea.
Get hooked up to a halter monitor.
Had heart palpitations.
Doctor's like...
What are you doing?
I'm like, I don't fucking know.
I'm trying to be big.
I'm trying to be Arnold Schwarzenegger over here.
And she's like, yeah, this has got to change.
And that's when my mind spun.
I just saw it for what it is.
I pictured my father.
I was like, I've got to fucking change this immediately.
And that's when I was performance science-based.
Lots of supplements and lots of micronutrients and protein ratios and all that bullshit, that bodybuilding bullshit.
And then spun it.
And that's when I became this fucking organic, like, pseudo-hippie health longevity dude.
And when I focused on that, I lost 110 pounds, you know, through my own personal experience.
But I was always working with athletes.
You know, like, since I was 17 years old, first of all, my training business, I was always working with athletes.
And I took that performance side, and I went to the longevity side.
And what I saw is once we all started focusing on longevity protocols as opposed to performance protocols, everybody's performance went through the roof.
joe rogan
So when you say longevity protocols, what do you mean specifically?
mike dolce
I mean real food, getting rid of all the supplements, getting rid of all the pseudoscience, getting back to what's most natural.
I use the term earth-grown nutrients because I used to say Whole Foods and people thought that meant go shopping at the supermarket.
No.
Eating food from the planet.
That was like really the first step for me.
And I don't care as much about micronutrient ratios and weighing because I used to weigh my food and I used to sit there and I would spend a half hour every night and program all my meals and come up with all these different training cycles.
And I was that dude, that insane dude about making these performance enhancements.
This is fucking ridiculous.
You just need to focus on eating real food, extremely nutrient-dense foods from the planet as fresh as possible, as live as possible.
And all the science that's out there shows that that's the healthier way.
And all these different cultures that eat like that tend to be much healthier, perform at a higher level for a much longer period of time, longer lifespan, and a high utility.
And that's really the difference.
Not only do they live longer, they have a very high utility while they're Living longer.
50, 60, 80, 90, 100 plus years old where they're still able to go out, fish, swim, do all these different things.
That's what really turned my mind and this is back 15, probably 15 years ago now.
And then I started implementing that with my athletes, whether it's the powerlifters, the wrestlers, or the grapplers.
And then early 2000s, it was with the NHB athletes before MMA. That's kind of how I got the start into the MMA world was through Team Henzo Gracie on the East Coast.
Guys like Kurt Pellegrino and Dante Rivera, when they were fighting for that ring of combat, NHB titles and whatnot, focused on those guys.
And it was all real foods.
Everyone was like, what do you mean?
I don't have to take my cytosport and my protein powder and pop all these fucking pills?
I was like, no.
It was almost like a leap of faith for a while for a lot of athletes to buy into, you mean I have to eat salads and fruit and make a smoothie?
Now that we talk about it and the culture is a little more advanced, I think the science is out there and it's been proven for a decade plus.
That people realize, well, that's the better way to go now.
But going back, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that was like, everybody was living out of fucking jugs.
You know, protein powders and GNCs and all that shit.
That was the big rage in the late 90s all the way into the early 2000s and such.
So, spun that, switched it, focused on the real foods, and that's what we've been doing with the athletes since.
So, going back to the longevity, when I work with an athlete, like a Tiago Alves or a Ronda Rousey or whoever else, My goal is not for them to win a world title.
My goal is not about their weigh-ins.
My goal is not about really anything sport-related within the next five years.
My goal is for them to be 120 years old.
Healthy, fresh, vibrant.
Showing their great, great grandkids photos of back when they won the UFC world title and all these great times that they have.
joe rogan
You think that's possible?
120 years old?
Has that ever been done?
mike dolce
It's possible now.
If we focus on it now, because we're talking, that's 80 years from now, and with the medical advancements that are happening, with the way science is continuing to evolve, it's possible if we don't fuck it up early.
And this is where I talk to the athletes about the weight cutting starts 52 weeks beforehand.
If we don't fuck everything up now, science is going to advance to the point to keep us healthier, longer, offset some of these issues at a later stage of life, instead of having a Mike Matarazzo.
You need a fucking heart transplant when you're 40 instead of, well, maybe when you're 80, it slowly starts to give out because you've eaten fucking great, highly nutrient-dense foods your entire life.
You've been resting your body completely, not burning your nervous system out.
You're training intelligently, enough to stimulate progress, but not enough to shut anything down and break anything down.
You're living a rewarding, happy life surrounding yourself with positive people, and that's something that you talk about here all the time, and that's almost the most important aspect.
Is being a very well-adjusted, happy, positive individual.
And this is something that when I work with athletes, a lot of people think, oh, this is just this fucking diet dude, or I'm just making eggs for you or handing my athletes water.
I think that's the least of what I do.
The most of what I do is I try and get inside the athlete's head and help them focus on their life and what they want out of their life.
Setting up goals and helping them develop action steps and eliminating this negative energy around them so they can truly realize their full potential.
And that's, you know, I call it, we put a bubble of positivity around the athlete, especially as we get closer to competition, because that's when it's most important.
But it's really, we will try and keep that around them their entire life, give them the tools, teach them the lessons now that they can carry on.
So, will we all live to 120?
I don't know, but I've read scientific research that assumes or believes that there's humans being born right now, on the planet right now, that will exceed 200 years old.
Now, will that happen?
Who fucking knows?
joe rogan
Jamie, look at him.
unidentified
It could be.
mike dolce
It actually could be.
unidentified
He's fucked.
mike dolce
Maybe he's fucked.
He's gone.
joe rogan
He's got to get more pussy.
mike dolce
Oh, that?
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you bring up some really important points about stress and about surrounding yourself with positive things and positive energy.
You can tell the difference.
If you have some bad shit in your life, you have some conflict, you'll feel bad about that conflict.
The key is to resolve that stuff as much as possible and then figure out a way to make peace with the rest of it and move on with your life.
The less you put out battling it, the better you'll feel about it.
When I was younger, I would argue with people about everything.
I was constantly involved in conflict.
And then I realized as I got older, the less conflict I have, the better I feel.
And the more I resolve conflict and not get in it, it's better for everybody.
It's better for that person, it's better for me.
There's certain shit that's unavoidable, but all these people that are running around suing people all the time, those are the motherfuckers that die of heart attacks.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
Those are the motherfuckers that have stress, because they're constantly involved in battle.
And not the right kind of battle, either.
either not like a competition you know but just trying to lash out and then dealing with people lashing out at you and all your day is spent thinking about it and if he says this i'm gonna say that and then if she says that i'm gonna tell her what the fuck is up and that kind of shit wears on you man you're grinding your gears all day eats you alive and people don't Think of it.
You don't think of that as being a stress.
They think of stress as being bills.
They think of stress as being traffic.
No, stress is every...
All those things are stress.
Relationships, friendships, work, conflict.
When you're at work all day and you hate your job, that's stress.
That is stress.
That grinds on you.
That feeling.
When you get out of work at the end of the day and you have that...
Weight lifting off your shoulders, that means you're in a bad job.
You gotta figure out a way where you don't have that.
If it's possible, if it's possible, find that way.
mike dolce
That was me 10 years ago.
I was a municipal tax assessor in the state of New Jersey.
joe rogan
Just saying all those things together makes me want to fucking jump off a roof.
mike dolce
Dude, on Friday, I would literally get depressed on Friday because I knew Monday was coming.
joe rogan
Yeah, I know that feeling.
mike dolce
It was goddamn hell, but I was making a shitload of money.
My mom was so proud of me.
I had the 401k and the six weeks off vacation.
I was living, quote, the American dream.
I fucking hated myself.
joe rogan
God.
mike dolce
I sat around.
I remember this was the turning point for me.
I sat around a boardroom table and I was a lot younger than my closest peer and I'm looking at all these older dudes and we're all sitting there in suits and like, we're so fucking important, you know, being those dickheads.
And they're all overweight.
They all have red faces and they're all talking about how they're going to fucking, you know, sneak off to the bar before they go home because they don't want to deal with the fucking family and the kids and all the fucking bullshit.
I gotta get the fuck out of here.
I have to get the fuck out of here or I'm gonna fucking die like this.
I gotta change my life and that's what we did and I kind of threw that away, resigned from the position, took the job as the strength coach at Team Quest up in Portland, Oregon, moved across the country for fucking minimum wage to clean toilets and left that job behind and I fucking loved it.
I loved scrubbing disgusting shitty gym mats at 5 o'clock in the morning and not sitting in a beautiful corner office for X amount of dollars per year Because I was doing what I loved and I gave myself the opportunity and a chance to do something with my life and get rid of the stress.
I think that's why I'm kind of veering off.
That's what it was talking about.
I was so stressed out.
I was riding my bike.
I remember it was freezing cold fucking raining and I'm riding my fucking stupid bike because we had one vehicle.
My wife had to go fucking work.
I'm riding my fucking bike six miles to the gym and I fucking loved it.
It was such a pure, crisp, cold morning and I was just so alive in life.
Everything was brand new again.
I was in my mid-twenties at that point.
Mid-later-twenties at that point.
Fucking cool shit, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
Taking chances and branching out on your own when it works out and rewards you, it lets you know that the universe rewards risk.
It rewards calculated risk and passion.
It really does.
And if you don't live your life like that, you're living your life afraid of risk, you're not going to get any reward either.
You're just going to be stuck.
You're going to be stuck in this bland, boring-ass, grinding existence.
mike dolce
And then it's over.
joe rogan
Then it's over.
Yeah, it's not like it lasts forever.
That's the number one thing.
Everybody wants to stay safe and comfortable.
Shit, this doesn't last.
This is not going to last.
You've got to be uncomfortable.
I'm uncomfortable all the fucking time.
I don't like 90% of what I do I don't like in some ways, you know, whether it's the exercise or writing or even performing or just...
I hate editing my...
I just had to edit my comedy special today.
I fucking hate staring at myself.
I don't like it.
It's uncomfortable.
You gotta do shit that's uncomfortable.
You get over it and then you get...
But you don't like certain aspects about it.
You gotta figure out, what don't I like about it?
What's not good?
What can I make better?
And then you make it better.
And you keep pushing and working and...
The more you do that, the more exciting it is.
The more you get a little bit of a reward, a little bit of juice out of accomplishing something, then you're on to the next thing.
But your life is constantly fun, filled with exciting shit, things going on all the time.
You've got to assess and move on and move forward.
If you don't do that, you're just stagnant.
Your pond water that you can't drink.
You know, you're fucked, man.
unidentified
Festering.
mike dolce
That's it.
Wait and die.
And what drives you?
Have you ever kind of analyzed, like, what drives you to get your ass out of bed, make yourself uncomfortable yet again on another day that you can just fucking put your feet up and lay by the pool and enjoy the sunshine?
joe rogan
Mental illness.
That's what drives me.
mike dolce
And there you go.
joe rogan
Something's wrong with me.
mike dolce
There you go.
joe rogan
But I don't feel like I ever deserve breaks.
The only time I ever feel like I have to have a fucking brutal day where I can enjoy television.
But if my day is brutal enough, I'm like alright bitch, you can sit down and watch a little TV You know, that's the only way I'll allow myself Those those rewards but if I do do that I can really enjoy it.
I can really enjoy a nice foot up, you know Relaxing sit there, you know, have a have a cocktail watch some television.
I can enjoy that But if I don't I can't enjoy it I think a lot of people they're giving themselves rewards all the time, but there's no risk and And then there's also, there's no, like, sacrifice that led up to that reward.
And you gotta enjoy the sacrifice.
You gotta enjoy the grind.
You know, when I say that 90% of the shit I do I don't enjoy, I don't, but I enjoy that I can do it.
You know, like, who the fuck wants to lift weights?
No, you want the reward of the lifting weights.
And the only way you get a strong body is if you do shit you don't want to do.
When you get to that third rep, you're like, I'm good.
But you're not good, stupid.
You got seven more to go.
And if you don't do those seven more, you're going to feel like a fucking loser when you put those weights down.
You're like, I'm a bitch.
I should have fucking kept going and I stopped.
If you stop, you're missing out on the whole point...
That is the grind.
That is the keeping going.
The good kind of grind.
The working towards something grind.
mike dolce
People ask me, they're like, Dolce, do you cheat?
Or can I cheat?
Or do you have a cheat day?
And I always retort, why are you going to cheat?
Have you earned it?
And that's what we use.
It's an earned meal.
It's not a fucking cheat meal.
It's not a cheat day.
It's an earned meal.
Have you earned it?
And they're like, well, I don't know.
Well, then you have it.
Like you.
When you fucking kick your own ass, you're totally spent.
That's when you...
Reward yourself with your earned TV time or whatever it is, your cocktail.
Same thing when it comes to health and fitness, and this goes to the accountability side.
If you want to be successful, you want to set yourself up to succeed, well, you have to be accountable.
I can't fucking do it.
I can't do it for you.
I wish I could.
There's 7 billion people on the planet.
I can't do it.
I can barely do it for my own self, let alone every other fucking person out there.
And each one of us, we are entirely alone, 100%.
We're surrounded by all this stuff, which is just a facade.
It's all bullshit.
It's here to kind of amuse and entertain and often distract us.
But if we're going to be successful, it has to be because it comes from the inside, that driving force to make us successful.
So the people that want to cheat on Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they go to the gym, They do their little thing.
They eat their chicken and rice.
You know, Monday through Friday, maybe.
They're kind of okay.
They cheat just a little bit here and there.
They go off-menu, let's say.
And then Saturday's my cheat day, or Sunday's my cheat day, and football's on.
And what happens Monday?
They look fucking exactly the same.
And then they do the same basic workout for the same basic reps and they do that, you know, the same.
It's just the fucking same and they're on that rat wheel.
So if you really, you know, talking to people out there, if you really want to break out, you really want to be spectacular, you really want to start to fulfill your potential, you have to make yourself uncomfortable, you have to challenge yourself, and then you have to earn it.
So with my athletes, with myself, our earned meals are maybe once or twice a month.
And what is an earned meal?
I don't know, maybe it's my wife's birthday, maybe, you know, just...
Going to see a fucking movie or something is coming out.
And then what is my earned meal?
My earned meal is typically a little bit more food that I normally fucking love anyway because our recipes are fucking delicious.
I'm not going to eat some shit burger outside when I can make a kick-ass grass-fed fucking burger with baked sweet potato fries.
I'm going to eat four of those motherfuckers instead of just eating my traditional six or eight ounce one.
So that would be a basic earned meal.
joe rogan
No Krispy Kreme donuts.
mike dolce
Oh, God.
I would love to.
And the former Dolce...
Would.
I would, fuck, I was...
joe rogan
Former Dulce.
mike dolce
Former dude.
joe rogan
282 pounds.
mike dolce
You know, once upon a time, I was the dude that would, I'd get a whole pizza and I'd put a half a pound of provolone cheese on top, eat that whole motherfucker.
Half gallon of ice cream, big king-sized Snickers bar, and something colored to finish it down.
Colored beverages only.
Like high C? What high C, fucking crush, Hawaiian punch.
If it was colored, it had more calories than I was fucking drinking it.
Yeah.
Oh, hell yeah, grape soda.
Root beer in the summer.
joe rogan
And was that a cheat day or was that all the time?
mike dolce
That was performance science.
That was me trying to hit 10,000 calories a day so I could squat 700, 800 plus pounds and deadlift 600, 700 pounds.
That was when I was only goal-oriented, performance-oriented.
Tons of fucking protein powders, weight gainers, creatine, ZMA. What's in those weight gainers?
joe rogan
Like you see those tubs.
Is that just calories and sugar?
mike dolce
Garbage.
It's all fucking garbage, man.
Unfortunately, it's all preservatives, it's all chemicals, it's all coloring, it's all additives, and it's very little of the nutrition you're actually purchasing it for.
It's such watered-down components of what is on the front label, just enough so they can legally put it in there and not get fucking sued, and it's a shitload of everything else.
joe rogan
So your journey to becoming this MMA fitness diet guru, you've kind of like changed your own life in the process.
You've sort of figured out what makes you happy, what makes you consistently perform well.
And in the process, you've sort of become this guy by trial and error and education and application.
And now here you are in this position where, I mean, fucking 90% of the guys that I see That are doing well in MMA. I see guys with these Dolce Diet shirts on.
I mean, you have so many athletes that follow your protocols, and whenever someone is in trouble, and they have a hard time cutting weight, they come to you.
How did all this start?
How did you become this guy?
Was it through, like what you said, Kurt Pellegrino, and then Kurt told other people, and that kind of shit?
mike dolce
That was like 2002, 2003. I was working with guys on Team Henzo Gracie.
I started training under Henzo, and I'd been a powerlifter for years before that, and I was an amateur wrestler for years before that.
So I've been cutting weight since I was 13 years old.
I was a varsity captain as a freshman, so a four-year varsity letterman, captain of the team, and I was just, since I was eight years old, fathered fucking massive stroke.
I dove into bodybuilding and weightlifting at that age, and I was just attuned to it.
I was in honors, sciences, biology, mathematics, and I just had that type of analytical brain, and I would analyze everything and all this shit.
So, you know, I won't get too deep into that.
As I went through, I was always cutting weight, always trying to get bigger, always trying to get stronger.
I was rather short, had no money, family was broke, wanted to go to college.
How the fuck am I going to go?
Poor kid from fucking New Jersey.
How am I going to go to college?
Only way I could do it was through a scholarship.
There's no cash.
Mom's working three jobs, and there's no heating on it in the fucking house.
So there's no extra money for this kid number three to go to fucking school.
And that became my focus.
I had to focus on that, and I had a shit wrestling team.
Loved the guys, and they made me who I am.
But we were a parochial school.
I started on the team.
It was the second year.
The team was even in existence.
Our coaches were great dudes, but they didn't have the high-level experience from them.
None of my teammates did.
How am I going to advance?
It's not through technique.
It's not through experience.
It's not through grinding steel on steel.
It's just being in better shape than everybody.
I had to be that guy, and that's the guy that I actually became.
And that's what really started more of this focus on the strength and conditioning.
joe rogan
Do you work with guys on strength and conditioning as well as working with them with diet?
How do you balance that out?
Because I talked to Steve Maxwell about this, and Maxwell, who's a really well-respected guy and a very knowledgeable guy when it comes to strength and conditioning and athletics.
He believes that you should do all of your strength workouts and your conditioning workouts kind of building up to a camp.
And then when you're in camp, the majority of your work should be spent doing the actual sport itself.
mike dolce
Without knowing his entire protocol, I agree on principle.
And what I do and how I work best is not just overseeing the nutrition, the diet, and the weight cut.
It's, I call it the peaking program, and I bake it out into the traditional Western periodization program.
When I talk about 52 weeks, it's a 12 month periodized program.
When I started working with Tiago Alves in 2010, we came up with a seven year program for him.
Now, unfortunately he had some injuries along the way, but it's transitioning him from the body that he once had and the bad habits that he had once had to slowly rebuild, regenerate, and continue building him all the way through until he's 35 when he plans to retire and the specific goals that we have set.
So a guy like Nick Lentz, I took over five or six fights ago when he was a 55-pounder.
It'll be a little long-winded, but to kind of help explain your answer to the question here.
Took him over and he was doing a lot of the wrong things.
Training really hard.
Totally over-trained.
Over-reaching syndrome constantly.
Malnourished.
Couldn't understand why his body wasn't losing weight.
He was walking around in the mid-160s.
Could barely make fucking 55 without damn near dying.
Said, will I work with him?
I said, yes, but only at 145. And he's like, are you fucking crazy?
I told you I can't make 55. I said, you'll be a world champion at 145. I do believe that.
You're an undersized 155 pounder.
And you're not training properly.
What I want to do with you is I want to add 10 to 12 pounds of muscle and grow you into the 145-pound class.
Blew his mind.
It didn't make any sense to him, but to his credit, he said, okay, and just gave me the reins.
So from that point on, I looked at multi-month cycles, three-week cycles, three-month cycles, and then a 12-month cycle.
To put on lean mass.
And what we did, we took him from 163 pounds to 175 pounds.
We dropped his body fat from probably 13 to 14 down to right about 10%.
And then he's able to make 145 consistently now easily.
So using Steve's methodology in the off season, it's much more volume.
It's more strength building.
It's more muscle work.
Not exactly hypertrophy because I don't really believe in that, but we're always staying anabolic.
That's the goal.
We always want the body constantly regenerating, regenerating, regenerating.
Because once we stop regenerating, then we're breaking down.
Once we start breaking down, everything goes to shit.
So, with Nick, using him as the example again, build him up in the off-season, and that's where I start to break down these three-week mini-cycles.
Three weeks before the fight, that's the peaking phase.
That's when everything, the volume drops dramatically, the intensity goes up, but it's safe intensity.
You're not sparring your fucking hardest those last three weeks.
weeks you're sparring your most intense and most precise without that bone-on-bone collision weeks you know four five and six in the middle that's a little bit more medium volume maximum intensity that's when you're really getting your hard hard goes to build that um you know ability to withstand the damage that's going to happen in the fight to callous your body over and also to callous your mind you have to go through that the three weeks before that so that's you know seven eight nine
that's more of a volume your mind meaning you just you resolve like mental toughness mental toughness i mean we see guys unfortunately that they get into the octagon they get put a bad spot that they haven't been in before and they fold because they haven't been there you have to go to those spots unfortunately but you have to do it in a very calculated fashion because you go there too often you'll break in training and you'll give up in the fight you don't go there enough you'll break in the fight and again, it's going to be the same result.
So you have to touch it just enough, and this is where that periodization comes in.
So I help oversee the overall training program.
I help the athlete.
Usually it's spar less.
I try and pull them back because a lot of these athletes are sparring two and three times a week, and I try and only have them spar.
Once a week, really from six weeks out, one good hard spar, proper spar, and one tech spar is really the methodology that I push.
Save the brain, save the body, let's get more precise.
And then hit the other hard drilling in certain phases.
And then as we get farther out, it's more skill building.
We're looking to just add tools and see what tools fit the overall game.
You know, throw ten different techniques on the ground and see what fits.
And as we get a little closer, we take the ten, we put it to five.
As we get a little closer, maybe the athlete's only going to keep one or two usable techniques that will actually show up come fight day.
We're not trying to add new techniques six weeks out, three weeks out for sure.
At that point, it's just fine-tuning and perfecting, but that also comes into their physical preparation.
What's their body weight like?
What's the health?
Again, health is everything.
It's mental health.
It's physical health.
That's what allows them to perform at their ultimate.
So long-winded way of saying I agree with Steve quite a bit.
Strength building, that's off-season stuff.
We want to keep that type of strength, that explosive strength, that absolute or maximal strength that we build in the off-season.
We want to keep that, but now we want to turn it into a different type of strength, like a strength speed or speed endurance, as we get into this specific competition.
And that changes depending on what the sport is.
joe rogan
What happened with Charles Oliveira?
Charles Oliveira and Nick Lentz were supposed to fight this past weekend.
They did not fight because Oliveira showed up heavy, and then the day of the fight, they pulled him.
They said he was sick, apparently.
mike dolce
Normally, I don't really pull back the veil, but I think because this is such a public situation, and Oliveira and his team, they've already spoken on it.
Unfortunately, what they said was incorrect from what we saw.
So Nick and I, this fight's on Friday.
Nick and I, we get there on Monday, and we're already...
Nick gets to town at 164 pounds.
He's fighting at 146. That's the official weighing weight.
And that's actually lighter than Nick normally is.
But we tightened up his diet just a little bit for Charles specifically.
We knew Nick was going to overpower him.
We wanted Nick to be just a little bit lighter, a little bit leaner, a little bit faster for this fight in better condition in case it was a three-round dogfight.
Charles called Nick out, by the way.
So Charles asked for this fight after they had had a no contest years before.
So, Monday, Nick and I, we start doing our thing, cutting weight.
Now, my athletes don't work out.
I strongly suggest Fight Week.
They do not work out.
And a lot of, you know, coaches...
unidentified
At all?
At all.
joe rogan
What do you mean?
mike dolce
At all.
No, we don't put on the fucking gloves.
We don't grapple.
We don't hit mitts because we're now...
Oh, that work's done.
We're preparing for competition.
We're pulling the weight at this point.
And I want to feed the athlete as much as possible, hydrate them as much as possible, keep them as strong and healthy as possible so they can endure the process of cutting weight, whereas I like to frame it positively as purification.
We're purifying the body as we go through this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Step on the Scale Friday phase where the body is completely clean, pure, and we can just put the best possible nutrients back in When you say no working out, you mean nothing?
I mean nothing.
I mean the most that we'll do, and I talk about that in three weeks to shred it, what I do with Tiago Alves.
This is a great...
Maybe we should talk about this next.
Tiago's last fight, he weighed in at 171 the night before weigh-ins using this new protocol that we're using because they're fucking healthy.
We're not tearing them down during fight week.
Actually, I build my athletes to this scale.
Everybody else tears themselves down to this scale.
I build my athletes to this scale.
And it sounds counterintuitive, and a lot of people think I'm...
Fucking lying or whatever, you know, bro-sciencing out.
But no, this is the real fucking shit.
So with Nick, what we doing, we don't work out.
We're going downstairs to the hot tub and we're just hanging out.
He's playing his fucking, you know, whatever video games because he's a tech head.
He's playing his fucking games.
We're fucking chilling out to music.
We're just shooting the shit like you would do with your boys.
Just hanging out in the hot tub for a little bit.
Comozzi's coming down and hanging out with Ben Rothbro a little bit.
We're just shooting the shit down there.
Charles and his coach are in the fucking sauna on Monday in plastic fucking suits and sweatpants all goddamn day long.
Nick and I were in the hot tub for a half hour just to break a sweat, drinking water the whole time, eat beforehand, stay hydrated during, go upstairs and eat again.
This is what we do and that's what we did typically twice a day during fight week.
Every time we went downstairs to the spa, which was beautiful at this hotel, Foxwoods, Charles was in the fucking sauna.
Plastics on, in the sauna, and they would pick him up, carry him out, and just fucking let him lay on the floor, and then they'd cover him with towels.
So archaic, and this is what a lot of athletes do.
Charles was an extreme example.
joe rogan
They're doing this on Monday?
mike dolce
They're doing this on Monday, man.
Fucking Monday.
If you're doing that...
Maybe, maybe I can see athletes doing that like the night before in the morning of.
They're doing it fucking Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.
Now, we waited on Thursday.
On Wednesday, and this is fun, so we're watching him just break this fucking kid.
He's laying there in the sauna, I mean, just not moving, you know, and he'd get up and, you know, he'd do and he'd kind of like give us a thumbs up.
He was a nice kid.
Nothing bad to say about Charles.
Nothing bad to say about his coach, but what they did was wrong.
They broke him in the fucking sauna.
Nick and I saw it and we're like...
You know, high five.
I mean, it makes our job a hell of a lot easier because Nick's fucking great.
And, you know, Nick's there.
At one point, Charles comes in, sits in the hot tub at the very end, and he's looking at Nick, and Nick's just sitting there drinking water, you know, shooting the shit.
Charles is over there, dry mouth, just sucked out, big dark bags under his eyes after being in the fucking sauna for God knows how long.
And just kind of laid out on the wall.
So Wednesday comes in.
This is actually funny.
Wednesday comes, middle of the day.
Charles' coach, they drag him out of the fucking sauna.
They're just sitting there.
I took a photo of it.
I was going to tweet it like what not to do.
And I was like, ah, that's, you know, fucking bad.
Maybe I shouldn't do that.
Maybe I should have.
I don't know.
He comes over and he's like, hey, guys.
I want to have a proposition for you.
And I think, oh, this fucker's not going to make weight.
They want to catch weight.
I have a proposition for you.
What's up?
He's like, what you're doing right now, this is not going to work.
He's like, you're not going to lose weight like this.
In the back, I have salt and I have alcohol.
And I want to pour it in the tub for you.
So that in 30 minutes, you'll lose the same amount as you'll lose in three hours doing what you're doing right now.
I'm thinking, are you fucking kidding me?
joe rogan
Salt and alcohol in the water?
mike dolce
And I'm assuming he means Epsom salt and rubbing alcohol, which a lot of athletes use, and I have the data on that.
There's not a discernible difference, and there's actually negative effects from doing that.
I can touch on that in a...
In a second.
So, I say to him, I'm like, no, we're good.
I mean, Nick's losing a pound every 15 minutes and we're replacing it the whole time because, again, I'm a data head and I track all my athletes.
I know Johnny Hendricks, you know, between 195 and 185 pounds.
He'd lose 1.2 pounds of fluid every 15 minutes.
I know Nick Lentz loses a pound on the dot.
unidentified
Okay, hold on.
joe rogan
I'm going to stop you right there.
unidentified
Sorry.
joe rogan
I'm confused as fuck.
You make him lose weight and then you put it back on.
mike dolce
No, what we're doing is we're just training the body.
To sweat.
To sweat.
To just have the water purifying.
We're purifying, pushing out the toxins.
joe rogan
Are you giving them...
Is it distilled water?
Is it regular water?
mike dolce
No, it's regular, purified water.
joe rogan
Do they ever drink distilled water?
mike dolce
No.
joe rogan
There's some sort of a theory behind that, right?
That you drink a lot of distilled water and it forces your body to release all of its electrolytes or something?
mike dolce
And it leaches your body of all these healthy minerals, electrolytes and such, the distilled water.
We don't do that because we're trying to preserve health.
Again, we're not trying...
joe rogan
So how do you get them to lose 30 fucking pounds?
mike dolce
Speed up their metabolism through proper eating, proper meal size.
They eat small and often.
Usually it's, you know, written down for everybody in the fucking world to read.
It's small and it's often and it's meals that we've targeted based upon their physiology from the weeks beforehand.
Meals and ingredients that suit their body.
And they just eat consistently.
We play with, you know, carbohydrate timing.
We play with, you know, protein ratios.
We keep our fat levels really high.
We keep carbohydrates in the diet all on fight week.
We keep sodium in the diet for the most part, most of fight week.
We elevate and then lower, but we never drop completely.
A lot of people, they just pull the carbs, and they pull the salt, and then they just fucking drink the distilled water.
joe rogan
So how do you get Nick?
He weighs in.
The week he shows up, he's 164. He's got to get down to 145, 146. How do you get him to lose that amount of weight in a week?
mike dolce
We speed up his metabolism, which matters quite a bit.
joe rogan
So he gets to town at 164. So you change his diet the week of?
mike dolce
We change.
Usually it's 10 days out.
What we do is 10 days out, we increase sodium, but not a dramatic amount.
What I tell the athletes is add more salt to your foods, but not so much that it tastes bad.
Just add more than you normally do.
So let's say you're taking it the week beforehand.
So 10 days out typically should be your hardest training session.
Okay, because any more than 10 days out, now we're too close to the competition time, you might not be fully recovered and you're not going to perform at your best.
So right about 10 days out, usually the Tuesday before the fight or the following week, that should be the hardest day.
And then everything else we start to pull way back.
Light and medium workouts, much shorter intensities.
Start to increase your sodium just a little bit.
So you can taste it, but it's nothing that you don't like.
Never too much that it's not good.
Add a little bit more to your water.
We add pink Himalayan sea salt.
Love the Onnit brand, actually, for that.
That's the one I use almost primarily.
To the water, while they're training, just add a little bit more.
So we increase their sodium content just a little bit.
And then usually, depending on the athlete, Saturday or Sunday, sometimes even Monday morning, we pull that back.
We don't add any more.
We don't add additional salt.
So we rise the sodium up, then we pull it back down to normal levels, probably anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams, depending on the athlete, depending on their lifestyle, and we really focus on feeding them a similar caloric content, but more often.
So it's basically the same, let's say, 2,000 calories a day, but instead of 5 to 6 meals, now we're eating 8 to 10 smaller meals all day long.
The metabolism speeds up.
We're also focusing on more fiber, cleaning out their digestive tract.
A lot of times, athletes will step on the scale with impacted food matter still sitting inside of them.
Two, four, six pounds, who knows?
joe rogan
Is that real?
mike dolce
That's real, absolutely.
joe rogan
Four to six pounds, that's a lot of steaks.
If you looked at six steaks, slap six steaks down, like boom, boom, boom, six T-bones, 16-ounce T-bone steaks, that's a lot of fucking weight.
mike dolce
And the fluid that food absorbs as it comes out.
joe rogan
Is that much in a person's bowels?
Where does it all fit?
mike dolce
I would estimate, they say John Wayne had like 20 some odd pounds.
unidentified
That's all bullshit.
mike dolce
True or not.
joe rogan
That's not true.
mike dolce
True or not, I don't know.
But I estimate somewhere up to 3 pounds.
Of impacted food matter depending on when your last meals were or when you're high protein, you're harder to digest meals were.
joe rogan
I had heard that that's bullshit.
It's like one of those common myths.
The amount of impacted food the average American male has in their gut when they die.
Have you ever read that shit?
There's like a Snopes thing on that.
Hold on, I'm going to pull that up.
But please, keep going.
mike dolce
So we speed up their metabolism.
We increase their digestive efficiency.
We make sure they are completely clean.
And then what we focus on is these small sweats.
We keep the body sweating.
We allow them to be used to sweating, but we keep rehydrating them.
So it's easier for them to keep sweating.
And these athletes sweat a shitload during this time.
The only time is when we stop adding water is usually the night before, the day before.
Wayne's are on Thursday.
We stop somewhere midday Friday.
We pull the water out.
And then we'll use what I call the step method.
Where it's a very simple way to not break the athlete.
To keep them sweating properly.
And the weight again comes off.
And it's all through hot tub.
Hot bath.
It's never in the sauna.
So we don't train fight week.
We ain't going to the fucking sauna.
We don't put on plastics unless it's like that last minute.
It's freezing outside.
We need to pull off another few ounces on the way to the venue.
Then we'll throw some plastics on.
Um...
joe rogan
And how much actual dehydration is it?
The day of, when he wakes up on Friday morning, if it's a Saturday fight, what does Nick Lentz weigh when he wakes up?
mike dolce
Nick cut three and a half pounds on the day of weigh-ins.
unidentified
That's it?
mike dolce
Yeah, that's it.
He woke up the day before, 12 pounds over.
We ate three meals that day.
I think he drank almost a gallon of water that morning.
And just by drinking the water so frequently, it pushes the water out.
And then we cut...
So he woke up at 158 the day before.
He floated two pounds off by the time we got to the tub later on that night.
He went to bed at 150. So we lost about six pounds, and that's usually half.
And that's a good estimate.
The day before, we want to lose about half the night before.
You're going to float one to three pounds typically while you sleep, and then the next morning is usually two to four pounds.
So it's very small, controlled, you know, elimination of weight and it's water weight and he's still eating.
He's never not eating.
He's still picking.
He's not having these big meals, but we go from meals to, you know, kind of snack size to now it's handfuls just to keep his metabolism moving, keep his body processing the food, keep pulling the nutrients, keep his blood sugar stable, keep his brain on, keep his mood elevated so he doesn't feel like shit.
joe rogan
Hmm.
According to Snopes, John Wayne did not have that much impacted in his body, but Elvis apparently had a lot because he was taking drugs.
He was impacted.
mike dolce
He couldn't constipate it from the painkillers, right?
joe rogan
But I've heard that, too.
That's why I wanted to look that up.
Apparently, you would be in such incredible pain if you had that much food impacted in your bowels, which makes sense.
mike dolce
So if you were to eat, you know...
How many pounds of food do you think the average person, dude, eats in a given day?
200 pound guy.
6 pounds, 8 pounds, maybe 10 pounds of food.
You wake up at 190, you go to bed at 198 or so.
There's fluid in there, but you've pissed and shit out some.
joe rogan
Do you account at all for biological variability?
Does Nick Lentz have a different diet than, say, Tiago Alves?
mike dolce
Yes.
joe rogan
Does he?
And how do you know what to do for each individual guy?
mike dolce
So we stick with the principles never change, and that's really the scientific base.
The principles never change, but the individual application almost always does.
And it changes with the same athlete from fight to fight, because the athlete is never the same.
No matter what we're doing in this camp, three months, six months from now, it's a different athlete.
It's a different physiology.
It's a different training pattern.
It's a different mood.
It's a different lifestyle.
joe rogan
How so?
Give me an example, like Tiago Alves.
mike dolce
So with Tiago, what we did in the beginning, you know, he missed weight with John Fitch in 2010. I started working with him two days later, brought him down, fought John Fitch, John Howard, and His weight issue was gone.
And then he had some injuries.
He had his knees fixed.
He had his shoulders and arms fixed.
He was on the shelf for two years.
25 months actually.
We came back and he fought in Orlando in April.
And the new and improved Tiago had been on the meal plan almost the entire time.
Was eating properly those 52 weeks out of the year.
He does his Sunday fun day and he has a little barbecue, but that's controlled and that's okay.
We allow that to a degree, but he would really follow the meal plan from about 12 weeks.
When the fight was offered, he went on and he didn't break.
He didn't go off.
So when I got to him three weeks before the fight and Tiago is one of the few athletes I actually travel for, for an extended period of time anymore.
And I went and stayed with him and he was one 96 or one 98 three weeks before the fight jacked, probably, you know, 8%, 9% body fat.
And he's fucking looked awesome.
Slowly but surely, I tightened up his diet, I tightened the wheels and the switches just a little bit, really made sure he was getting enough food to fuel, but not enough to spill over.
And we were able to slowly bring his weight down to the lower 90s.
joe rogan
So if he's 8% body fat, and you're lowering his body weight, are you causing atrophy?
What are you doing?
mike dolce
To a degree.
With him, we're trying to eliminate a little bit of muscle or reduce some of the muscle volume that he has.
And it's all water weight.
joe rogan
Because you can tell that he definitely looked slimmer when he fought Seth Pazinski.
He looked great.
mike dolce
He looked awesome.
joe rogan
Fought great.
He had a great gas tank.
I mean, he looked really good in that fight.
But I found it fascinating that he weighed so little the day before the fight.
When he entered into the cage, what did he weigh?
unidentified
194. So how are you doing that?
mike dolce
Pulling him down.
The same exact principle, different foods for Tiago than what Lentz ate.
Tiago is much more of a protein and fat metabolizer.
Nick Lentz is much more of a vegetable and produce metabolizer.
They perform better or their analytics are much better when they have those type of foods and that just comes through experience working with these guys.
So Tiago was more heavy.
It was chicken and steak and eggs, avocados, different types of oils and seeds.
To really bring him down.
Anytime he has the heavier carbs outside of the breakfast bowl, oats and such, berries first thing in the morning, he tends to bloat up and really hold on to that water.
So we slowly eliminate that.
joe rogan
So no pastas for him or things along those lines?
mike dolce
I think we did pasta probably...
Two weeks out where we do a refeed.
Once a week we'll do a refeed where we go really high carbohydrate, but we'll stage that with a lower carbohydrate either before or right after.
So we'll do the refeed definitely once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on how close we are.
joe rogan
And what's the benefits of a refeed?
mike dolce
It's to refill the body of lost glycogen to make sure that usable energy is available.
And it's also a mood elevator because a lot of times the athlete starts to get a little, you know, shitty if they're not getting more carbohydrates.
And the brain runs on carbohydrates also.
So you can see the mood kind of decrease just a little bit.
And also performance.
I'm working with Manny Gamburian right now to drop him from 45 to 135. Got him on the first program, the initial program.
And it was just a little bit too low carbohydrate.
And he's like, oh, his mood was down just a little bit.
He didn't feel that snap in practice.
And we really just brought him up about 100 extra carbohydrates per day.
And he fucking felt amazing.
So it was really trying to find the line that is exactly what they need without spilling over.
And once we got that, we got him feeling good for 10 days.
We're able to stage it down just a little bit and he feels even better.
So now we're slowly into that last three-week phase, the peaking phase, and he's now 148 pounds yesterday, which his last fight for him to get under 155, he felt like he was going to die.
So now he's training at 140. It feels fucking amazing.
Fully fed, six-plus meals a day, but everything's kind of perfectly controlled.
joe rogan
Wow.
So this protocol that you make, you make a specific one for each fighter, and you sort of work with them.
mike dolce
Same principles.
joe rogan
What happened with BJ Penn?
Because BJ Penn was upset with you after his fight and said a lot of shit in the press and just really wasn't happy with it.
His exact quote was, without the IV, you're nothing.
He wanted to not use intravenous fluid retention.
He didn't want to get an IV to rehydrate.
mike dolce
Yeah.
The IV was available and ready, and the doctor was on call, and he didn't want the IV. Why didn't he want an IV? He didn't say...
Well, no, that's not true.
Days before, he had said he'd never used one before.
He was worried about how he would feel.
He said he would play it by ear if he did feel like he needed one.
But he didn't cut any weight.
And that's why I didn't disagree with him.
Now, he runs the show.
He's the boss of the camp.
Period.
The end of story.
And that was very clear.
He didn't want the IV and I didn't disagree with him because he didn't cut an ounce.
He was eating and drinking on weigh-in day walking over to weigh-ins.
This is not an athlete that was dehydrated.
It was not an athlete that was suffering.
It was an athlete that looked amazing, was bouncing around talking to everybody full of energy.
Did he need an IV? I'm not a doctor, but he didn't want the doctor to come to administer it.
I have to rely on the athlete.
It's his body.
It's his choice.
He said he'd never used one before.
He didn't want one.
He felt great is what he had said.
Perfect.
Well, here's a shitload of house full of food and fluid and everything that you need.
To consume.
So enjoy.
Now, that same fight card, I worked with Ronda Rousey.
Ronda Rousey didn't use an IV either, and she cut over 10 pounds.
She never IVs.
She had never used one before.
A little nervous to use it.
Chose not to use it.
Didn't use it.
And went out there and looked like Ronda always looks because she's just never had it before.
Now, if she had used one, maybe she would have looked even better.
Or maybe it would have thrown her off.
joe rogan
Well, in all fairness, her fight lasted 10 seconds.
mike dolce
I know.
When she fought Misha Tate, her fight lasted into the third round, and Misha's a very well-conditioned athlete, one of the better-conditioned female athletes in the game, and Ronda looked amazing, and that was a scrap.
unidentified
Yes, it was.
mike dolce
Not at one point did Ronda look like she was at a loss.
joe rogan
And she had no IV in that fight.
mike dolce
No IV in that fight.
joe rogan
And how much did she cut in that fight?
mike dolce
She cuts about 10 pounds.
She...
She fights at 35. Usually she'll get down into the lower 40s just that day before.
She gets in the fight week usually between 48 and 50. And she does most of her training in the low 50s.
joe rogan
How did BJ get down to 145 pounds?
BJ's a guy who fought at 170 because he didn't like making 155. So all of a sudden we see BJ training and getting ready and he looks so thin.
mike dolce
What did he do?
Back when we filmed The Ultimate Fighter, he was 162 pounds.
He was in the low 160s back then.
And then they broke off communication with me.
After the ultimate fight was over, I didn't hear from anybody from their team, their camp, until the very end of May, which is just a few weeks before fight week, and they were in a bit of crisis mode.
Now, I didn't get to...
Hawaii to first actually, you know, be a part of the camp and the team until June the 9th, which is less than a month before the fight.
When I got there, BJ had said he weighs, I said, wait, what do you weigh, champ?
157 pounds, but I went out last night with Dominic Cruz and we had some pizza.
I weighed 157 today.
And I'm thinking, fuck, why do you need me to be here?
You know, the fucking, you know, Dolce Diet dude.
If you're 157 pounds, I mean, you're 10 pounds over what the weight class is after eating some bad shit.
You're probably closer to 55-54, I'm assuming.
So it was kind of, it was an anomaly.
It was really an odd situation.
How did he lose the weight?
You know, just eating a little more, he's paid more attention to his food as he got closer to the fight those last couple weeks I was there.
I didn't prepare any meals for him.
I stayed in a completely different location.
He stayed in one area.
I stayed a few miles away in another area.
It was a weird situation.
It was one of the oddest training camps I had ever been a part of, and I was there for less than two weeks physically in Hawaii and had very little experience.
Influence, unfortunately.
And I made some very strong suggestions and I made, you know, very strong observations to members of the team of what I saw and what I am accustomed to and what I think would really benefit.
joe rogan
What did you have issue with?
mike dolce
It was the training, you know, frequency and just the...
joe rogan
Training frequency?
mike dolce
Yeah, I don't believe it was enough.
It wasn't training enough that for all the other athletes that I work with, train much more often.
joe rogan
How often was BJ training?
mike dolce
Once a day, but not quite every day.
And the type of training was less.
There was no...
And we'll just compare it to Frankie Edgar's team.
Now Frankie Edgar has Mark Henry there, who's a world-class striking coach.
He has Steve Rivera there, who's one of the top wrestling coaches in the country.
And then he has Carlo Mader there, who's one of the top Brazilian jiu-jitsu coaches, practitioners in the world.
And then Frankie's got a shitload of UFC-level guys that he's training with on a daily basis.
And BJ had none of that.
He had a coach who was a nice man who, from what I understand, has no experience in boxing or Coaching, you know, professional athletes, certainly not the world-class UFC MMA level.
There was no wrestling coach there.
And, you know, the only, the top-level jiu-jitsu guys, of course, BJ, who's very accoladed, but his brothers were there, and it didn't seem like they had any influence as far as technical proficiency or strategy or, you know, game plan or training.
And it was, you know, minimal.
The only training camps there of, you know, training partners there of value were the two guys I brought in at the last minute, which was Nick Lent and Mursad Bektik.
Now Lentz left very, you know, he got there and he left because he didn't want to be there.
He didn't feel like it was going to be a good training environment for him.
So he left early.
And then Mursad stayed, but Mursad's, you know, a young, tough kid.
Mursad was actually a great training partner for BJ and really tried to do his best to mimic what Frankie was going to do.
It was a tough situation.
joe rogan
Is it one of those situations where, in all fairness, BJ, who's a great champion, who's a real MMA legend, is almost too strong of a personality to be coached because he's been so successful and because he's been such a destroyer at points in his career that he has something in his head and who the fuck are you to tell BJ Penn what to do?
mike dolce
That could be.
That could be.
It was very, you know, I don't know why there was no coaches there that were able to truly make influence.
The suggestions that I made were, and I made them officially, and they were accepted but not responded or reacted to.
And it was just a matter of, you know, this is, that's the direction he's choosing to go, and he's either going to win and look like a fucking genius, or he's going to not win and he's going to make the odd makers look like a genius.
joe rogan
In all fairness, there's other issues besides diet.
There was also his upright boxing style that confused the shit out of a lot of people.
No one understood.
He had this narrow stance and he stood completely straight up.
It was very odd.
And when he was asked about it, he said that it was very effective for him in training and that they came up with it to, somehow or another, reserve energy.
So by not lowering his body weight, meaning by not lowering his stance and pushing off of his legs more, by standing up straight, he would extend less energy.
It would be less difficult for him to do.
I found that incredibly bizarre.
And the last thing you should ever be thinking about if you're about to fight Frankie fucking Edgar is conserving energy.
I mean, goddamn, you better be ready to go balls to the wall for five fucking rounds because Frankie is going to.
mike dolce
Frankie's going to.
When we were on the Ultimate Fighter set in October, Frankie was training...
He was training twice a day himself, and then he was training twice with the athletes on the show.
Frankie was seen at every gym in Las Vegas, training with their best and top guys, and he was surrounded by his coaches the entire time.
I mean, that's who Frankie is, and that's who I knew BJ was going to be competing against.
joe rogan
BJ was at his best when he was at the, sorry to interrupt you, but was with the Marinovichs.
mike dolce
Agreed.
Agreed.
Murnovich is and Jason Perlow was working on his striking, who was a Bisbank striking coach.
And they were able to really put together great performances.
Sean Shirk and Diego and Joe Stevenson.
That was amazing.
I don't know why there was the dramatic shift and change in training protocols and style.
joe rogan
To see what he wanted to do, I guess.
mike dolce
And that's, he's the boss.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's just, it's so hard when you're a fan of a guy like that, where you almost want to just be able to, like, get inside of his head and just, you know, man, if you had, like, a Matt Hume-type coach, someone that you could completely listen to.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Someone that you trusted and respected enough to run your entire camp.
This is the guy who's gonna tell you what your strength and conditioning protocol is.
This is the guy who's gonna tell you what kind of sparring you're gonna do.
This is the kind of drilling you're gonna do.
You're gonna do all this stuff that this guy says.
A guy like BJ Penn would almost be unstoppable.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It's hard, man.
It's really a fascinating sport in that this sport has evolved before our eyes and we've seen the training change and move and adjust.
It's one of the reasons why I brought up the idea of whether or not people have unreal expectations because of performance-enhancing drugs because it's very confusing in a lot of ways.
Everyone's sort of imitating the successful behavior that they see around them.
You know, this guy uses ropes.
He swings ropes around.
I gotta get some ropes.
You know, this guy likes to fucking use a tire and a sledgehammer.
Fuck, I need a tire.
You know, it's...
mike dolce
They're everywhere.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, that's what we see.
We see everyone sort of imitating what's successful and what people have done successfully before them.
And then there's guys like Fedor that confuse the shit out of everybody because he's throwing rocks and fucking, you know, throwing punches with little hand weights, and that's basically all you ever see from them.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, it's weird.
It's a weird sport.
And then it's not like pro football, where, you know, you go back to the Jim Brown era and you change to today.
You know, you've seen 50 years of evolution, and it's all sort of culminated in the last couple of decades, and you see science and nutrition.
Strength and conditioning protocols have all sort of adjusted, but with MMA, it's not just running.
It's not just moving left and moving right.
At the same time, you're learning the thousand-plus possibilities of any jujitsu match.
You're learning the 500-plus possibilities of any combinations in kickboxing.
You know, you're learning so many skills that The combination of wrestling and judo.
The combination of jujitsu, sambo, catch wrestling.
The combination of...
I mean, there's just so many variables.
There's so much shit to learn on top of all the strength and conditioning.
So it's not as simple as, this guy needs to learn how to squat 500 pounds and fucking push that sled.
No, there's a lot of other shit you have to do too, and if you do too much of one and not enough of the other, you won't be at your best.
It's this combination of the strength and conditioning and of being a guy who understands all the variables of mixed martial arts as well.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It's almost like no one really knows how to do it yet.
mike dolce
It's still young.
I mean, we're still evolving.
You know, as a sport, though people have been fighting for years, never like this, never at this level, never with so much on the line, you know, multi-millions of dollars available now for the top dog.
So there's a race, and that's obviously what brings in the PEDs, but it's also what pushes athletes like Ronda Rousey forward to constantly evolve and work on her striking more and find new ways to diet and do her strength and conditioning better and use her mental visualization approaches to really make sure she can be at the top of that cresting wave.
So she's not getting stuck behind it.
She's really at the forefront.
And athletes like that.
joe rogan
It's a crazy time when it comes to these things.
It really is a crazy time.
And the thing about the performance-enhancing drugs, I mean, they exist in all sports, of course, but in MMA, it's almost like there's not enough time in the day to do everything.
There's so many different things that you have to be on top of that an athlete almost doesn't have the time or the physical resources.
Like, their body can't do all the work that's required.
mike dolce
And that's where periodization comes in.
That way, you're able to What we're going to be working on for this three-week phase and then we're going to work on something different but synergistic on the next three-week phase and we're slowly going to be the best possible version of ourself at that time when we step into the octagon or step into the competition circle and then it all starts over again and we look to add more tools.
joe rogan
One of the other things that BJ's camp said was that you kind of restricted the amount of food that he ate the day of the fight.
mike dolce
That's not true.
A lot of the things, unfortunately, that said were factually incorrect and I chose not to...
This is the first time I'm even commenting about it.
I go on the underground every day, and a lot of the people on the underground seemed to have a pretty good take on what the reality of the situation was, and I didn't feel the need to personally comment.
What I'm going to say is that he had a house full of food.
I personally brought over tons of amazing food that was available.
He was two minutes from a Whole Foods that was right down the street from him.
You know, there's his house that, you know, shit, 10 gallons of water in it, and a gallon of coconut water, and a running faucet, and there's sea salt everywhere, and, you know, just, you know, a big, I brought a huge vat of the power pasta with grass-fed beef, and, you know...
joe rogan
What is that?
Power pasta?
mike dolce
It's a brown rice pasta, so it's a higher carbohydrate content food.
I made two 16-ounce boxes of it, which would basically feed a family of four really fucking big dudes or a family of six or so.
Two pounds of grass-fed ground beef was mixed up in there and just I think like two peppers and two red peppers and two green and two red onions and just really high quality nutrients.
And a full fucking smoothie, massive handful of kale, handful of spinach, handful of red grapes, handful of blueberries, handful of strawberries.
joe rogan
So you don't restrict their calories at all the day of the fight?
mike dolce
I don't restrict anything.
And again, I had very little...
Very little influence.
And that's clear.
I was more like a chef.
I would bring some really delicious food and some things would get eaten and some things wouldn't.
It was nothing.
I was saying, don't eat this or don't do that.
And everything was available.
joe rogan
So who was saying that you had restricted his food?
Because that was one of the big things that was going around.
mike dolce
I know.
A lot of it's just internet hearsay and somebody hears things and they create a thread.
joe rogan
There was people in his camp.
Wasn't it?
mike dolce
It wasn't anybody in his camp.
It was people that seemed like people from his area or information was fed to them by somebody.
And I'm not really going to speculate because it's not worth my time to comment and I don't want to turn into anything bigger.
But it was factually completely false and incorrect.
And I spoke with very high-ranking members of his team and we've had the factual conversations.
We're all in alignment.
As to exactly what happens, which is a really nice thing, but it's kind of the public conversation that just continues on, and it's just not correct.
joe rogan
So do you think that what happens is after a fighter loses, there's an interesting thing that happened with Travis Brown.
Travis Brown did this interview, and I really love Travis.
I think he's an awesome guy.
I think he's a great fighter, but he's also super honest, which I thought was really cool.
And he said that after he lost to Fabrizio Verdum, he goes, I went through the whole process.
I blamed myself.
I blamed everybody around me.
I took turns blaming people.
He goes, I fucking cried.
I did the whole deal.
And then I figured out, all right, what do I need to work on?
What do I need to change?
What do I need to adjust?
He's working with Edmund, Rhonda's trainer, on his striking and trying to tone things up and change some things and learn some new skills and learn some new variables that he could add to his fight game.
But what I love about the fact that he was honest about how after the fight there's this instinct to sort of blame.
Blame himself, blame others, rotate, you know, no, fuck it, it was everybody else's fault.
It wasn't me.
And after the BJ fight, I kept hearing all this shit about, you know, blaming Mike Dolce.
I'm like, man, how much fucking impact can a guy who's telling you what to eat have on how you fight?
Because what I saw in that cage was a guy getting overwhelmed by a guy with a fucking incredible gas tank with a better strategy.
mike dolce
By the number two guy in the world who has two wins over him previously.
So, you know, there's just bad matchups.
joe rogan
Right.
mike dolce
And maybe that was one of it.
Frankie's been more active.
He was the number two guy in the world at the time.
BJ was coming off of a massive layoff.
And we knew it was a very uphill battle.
I was as shocked...
I mean, I was really hurt when I heard the first comment and I saw the things being said and kind of the finger being pointed my way because I know what happened.
And I know what my influence or lack of influence was.
And I will go down with the fucking ship.
Any athlete that knows me, that I work with, knows the type of person I am.
And I think I've built a solid reputation within the industry.
And it was just uncalled for.
It was unfair.
And I kept my mouth shut because I wanted to be a professional.
And I didn't want to say anything because BJ's got a lot of fans.
I'm a fucking huge fan of the kid.
I still am a huge fan of the kid.
And I understand because I've fought before.
I've lost before.
And I've been hurt before.
And I've wanted to blame.
And I still could blame.
But what is that going to get?
And with my, you know, defend myself here for a second...
I know what I did, and I think I was probably one of the only bright positives with true world-class experience that was around him.
I didn't have to be a part of that camp.
joe rogan
Is that a part of, just because he's isolated, he's on Hilo, you know, on Big Island?
It was very difficult, man.
mike dolce
It was very, very difficult.
When you're the most famous fucking person, and you've got people showing up at your house, knocking on your door to get an autograph...
It was difficult.
It was a very hard situation.
joe rogan
He has people knocking on his door?
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Trying to get autographs?
Yeah.
mike dolce
I mean, I feel bad for the guy that's, you know?
joe rogan
Luckily, there's not that many people.
After a couple hours, you're done.
mike dolce
You're done.
joe rogan
You get the whole town.
mike dolce
Anywhere he goes, people are honking the horns at him.
He's a superstar.
Here he's a superstar.
There, he's like the king over there.
And it was hard for a lot of different reasons.
But to see the things said and basically the way that they were, man, you look at the fight, you look at what happened.
That had nothing to do with food.
It had nothing to do with body weight.
We posted a video of him two days before Wayne's.
He woke up at 148, fully fed, fully hydrated, saying it's the best he fucking felt in his entire life.
joe rogan
I understand what you're saying.
I found it incredibly fascinating that you said the athletes don't work out at all the week of.
And one of the reasons why is because I happened to be at Uriah Faber's gym this past weekend when TJ fought and when Danny Castillo fought.
And when I got there, Danny Castillo was working out the day of the fight.
He was hitting mitts with Dwayne.
And, you know, they put in, like, a good fucking 20-minute workout.
I mean, he was hitting mitts, man.
I mean, he wasn't just, he wasn't going, like, 10% speed, like, just moving his body around.
He was working out.
Footwork drills, you know, combination.
He looked great.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I was kind of shocked, and I asked him why, and he said, well, when he rehydrated, he felt a little bloated, but he always does that.
He always gets in a workout.
mike dolce
This was after weigh-ins when he rehydrated?
joe rogan
Yeah, after weigh-ins, rehydrated, then the day of the fight.
He worked out the day of the fight.
mike dolce
And I do agree with something along those lines.
Day of the fight, to get the fluids moving, every athlete's a little bit different.
We do that with Nick Lentz, and he's the one who gave me the fucking black eye on Friday before Charles canceled the fight.
We put him through usually, you know, abbreviated three rounds just to get him moving and make him feel good again.
I approach, and a lot of the athletes I work with, we approach fight day like another fucking day.
It's like a hard sparring day.
joe rogan
So, oh, I see what you're saying.
So you treat it like as if he's just going to do some hard sparring that day.
So when you have him work out to get the fluids moving, as it were, what's the idea behind that?
Is that like the rehydration process, the IV and everything like that?
You want everything moving through the body?
mike dolce
We have to make sure everything's working properly so there's no surprises, but we're not overworking the athlete.
We're warming them up and then we're just cooling them right back down again, making them...
A big part of it is also building confidence because they go through the weight cut process and sometimes you feel a little shitty and you're like, fuck, do I still have it?
I felt like, you know, shit yesterday.
I felt weak yesterday.
God, he looked so big yesterday.
And you get in there and they feel, you know, obviously Nick weighs in at 46 and he was probably 46, closer to, you know, 65 the very next morning and felt like a fucking machine.
And he left that room with a smile on his face like, I'm going to fucking kill this dude.
joe rogan
What do you do when it comes to guys like heavyweights?
mike dolce
Most heavyweights, in my opinion, I'm not saying that they should cut weight, but they should all be fighting somewhere between 10 and 12% body fat.
The chubby heavyweights with the fat belly, that's a lazy athlete.
What about Fedor?
Fedor could have been better, I believe.
unidentified
What?
mike dolce
He could have been.
God forbid he could have been better.
joe rogan
What about Kane?
Kane looks a little fat.
mike dolce
I know.
joe rogan
But he's a monster.
mike dolce
Look at Daniel Cormier.
These guys, just because you compete in an unlimited weight class or nearly unlimited weight class, doesn't mean you can have an unlimited body weight.
What's the proper body weight for performance?
For most athletes, it's somewhere between 8 to 12 percent.
joe rogan
Is there a proper body weight for a heavyweight as far as like when you get too heavy, you're dealing with gravity, you're dealing with mass that needs to have blood pumped through it?
Because isn't the one variable that's not very different in people the size of your actual heart?
mike dolce
That the heart tends to be similar in size, slight variables, more similar in size.
joe rogan
So like a guy like Bigfoot Silva, or Brock Lesnar is a better example, because Bigfoot actually has gigantism, he has a real issue.
But Brock Lesnar, an enormous giant, and then a guy like, say, Chris Cariasso, who's fighting for the flyweight title.
Their heart is probably way more similar in size than any other part of their body.
mike dolce
I would agree with that.
joe rogan
So maybe the cock.
I don't know about that.
I'd just throw that out there for some reason.
mike dolce
Or Chris is bigger, probably.
joe rogan
Maybe he's got a giant hog.
Kid's got balls.
I'll tell you that.
Tough guy, Chris Cariasso.
Interesting fight coming up.
But my point being, is there a number where a heavyweight shouldn't...
A lot of people think the most effective weight is somewhere around 240. For a heavyweight?
mike dolce
And...
I agree.
joe rogan
I think they think that because that's what Kane is.
mike dolce
That's what Kane is, but Kane eating properly, and he's the fucking dominant champion of the world, so I'm not saying he should do anything, but there's no reason why any professional athlete should be walking around with excess non-functional weight.
And a lot of what's floating around Kane's midsection are athletes like Kane, and he's one of the better conditioned, but without that 8, 10, 12, 16 additional pounds, how much faster would he be?
Force production would probably be very similar, unless he really sits down on a single punch or one single blast, but he'd probably be faster, he'd probably be more agile, he'd be more capable of scrambling, he'd be able to do a few more things with no loss in strength.
joe rogan
So you think if he got down to about 230 and lowered his body fat to about 10%, he'd be even better than the best heavyweight ever?
mike dolce
I believe so.
joe rogan
I mean, I don't know if Kane's the best heavyweight ever, but in my opinion, it's between him and Fedor.
There's two best heavyweights of all time, in my mind, and they're Kane and Fedor.
mike dolce
Look at Tyson.
Add 20 pounds of fat to Tyson.
What happens to Mike Tyson?
He no longer becomes one of the most dominant heavyweights in the world.
joe rogan
Is that true, though?
I mean, I don't know about that, man.
Like, the Tyson that knocked out Larry Holmes, you put on 10 pounds on him, he's still going to fuck Larry Holmes up.
mike dolce
Put 20, but is he still able to cover that distance?
Is he still going to have that fast twitch movement for 8, 10, 12 rounds?
First three rounds, everybody looks like a fucking monster, you know, in boxing.
We're first five minutes in MMA, first round.
Everybody can move really quick.
But then as time goes on, that weight starts, gravity starts to pull on you.
joe rogan
But okay, in response to that, the two guys that we were talking about, both Kane and Fedor, are both guys that had high body fat who are known for their high output and their long fights with incredible endurance.
mike dolce
And they could have been better.
joe rogan
Is that really true, though?
mike dolce
I believe so.
joe rogan
Is it possible that carrying around a certain amount of fat aids your endurance?
Is that possible?
mike dolce
Absolutely.
But what would that line be?
Just me, visually, I'm not in their camps, I don't know, so we're just kind of throwing shit at the wall right now.
I say, and all the athletes just experience, we're going to throw some bro science out there right now, 8-12% body fat.
For the heavyweights, closer to 12%, not down to 8%.
For the lighter guys, 8% or so.
Makes more sense.
joe rogan
When Fedor was at his prime, what do you think his body fat was?
mike dolce
He held a lot of fat in his belly, but there's some fights where you could see veins running through his shoulders and arms.
He had rather skinny legs, so he was kind of ass-heavy and stomach-oblique heavy, and that's where he was carrying a lot of the weight.
What was it?
Probably 14 to 16. Did you ever talk to him?
joe rogan
Did you ever find out what his diet was or anything?
mike dolce
No, I would love to.
joe rogan
I'd fly to fucking Russia to find out what's going on with that guy.
I think he's just a tough prick.
Well, certainly the skill involved.
I mean, he had tremendous judo, sambo skills.
Yeah, I know what you're saying.
I mean, without a doubt, he had incredible mental toughness, and his ability to perform under pressure was fantastic.
There was a lot going on there.
But I would also like to know what his actual training protocol was.
You got to see those highlights when he did Strikeforce of him working out and stuff.
But you don't know what the fuck that is.
A lot of times guys would just tell you, alright, hit the bag for our promo.
And you'd have them fucking throw casting punches at the bag.
You don't really know.
What is he actually doing?
What's his actual training?
mike dolce
And most of that stuff on TV, it's mostly fake.
Most of the athletes, they don't run with the fucking parachutes.
They don't do a lot of that type of training.
I call it sexy training.
It looks awesome on TV, but that's not really what they're doing on the daily.
And the higher level athletes really train very basics.
They focus on the basics.
They get really good at the fucking basics and they start adding some higher level technique.
Same thing on the strength and conditioning side.
joe rogan
Well, Matt Brown does a lot of really wild shit, man.
He does a lot of really wild strength and conditioning shit.
Do you work with him at all?
mike dolce
The Immortal Brown?
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
No, I don't, unfortunately.
We've played with it, and we were cast members on The Ultimate Fighter years ago.
We're still buddies, but I haven't worked with him specifically.
I'd love to down the road, though.
I think that'd be a fun part of my career.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's a guy who I've seen some of his workouts.
They're fucking brutal.
He does a lot of really unorthodox stuff.
A lot of crazy lifts, deadlifts, and all kinds of things.
Obviously, a very thin guy, but obviously very physically strong.
mike dolce
We've trained together, you know, even after the show.
Matt's strong as hell.
He's a lot stronger than he looks.
He looks like that thin, lean guy.
He's fucking strong.
When he gets his hands on you, he's like, granted.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, as we're talking about this and talking about different styles and different people's training, it is interesting that there's no one answer.
Like, this is what you have to do.
In order to do X, you have to start out with Y and put in W. There's no answer, right?
It's like everybody has to figure out what works well for them.
And when you see guys like readjust and rebound and try to reassess their career, like Overeem is a perfect example.
Overeem is now at Jackson's and he just fought against Ben Rothwell and got knocked out in the first round.
Looked great for a little bit until he got clipped.
Yeah.
But, you know, he was doing things a lot differently.
Throwing those oblique kicks to the knee, which a lot of people don't like.
They're upset about that.
mike dolce
I don't like those either.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's a weird technique.
Because you're not supposed to attack the knee itself, right?
Isn't that the story?
mike dolce
That's what the rule is.
I think it's like within an inch or two of the knee, depending.
I forget the exact rule now.
joe rogan
But nobody calls you on it.
mike dolce
I haven't seen it.
joe rogan
If you throw an oblique kick an inch over the knee, no one's going to say, hey, don't attack the knee.
mike dolce
Nope.
joe rogan
Especially when you're lying on your back and you're throwing up kicks.
People throw them right at the knees and no one says a word.
Like when Funaki and Hicks and Gracie fought.
Remember that?
Hicks and fucking blasted them right in the knees off of his back.
It's interesting, man.
mike dolce
You look at Eddie's style of jiu-jitsu versus the Gracie style, or bang Muay Thai versus Duke Rufus.
It's like different philosophies, different approaches, but they all fucking work really well.
And if you speak with Dwayne, he's going to say, no, this is the system.
And you're going to say, well, he's got it.
unidentified
And then you watch Pettis fight, and you're like, No, Duke Rufus has got his own system.
mike dolce
He's got his own, and that shit fucking works out.
joe rogan
Fucking works real good.
mike dolce
Strength and conditioning, I think, is very similar, and it's...
The athlete is really going to gravitate towards what suits them, but it's all...
You know, like I said, the athlete changes, which is why my...
We have the principles, so the principles don't change.
You know, Dwayne, let's say, throw a punch with your right hand, left hand has to be blocking.
I think Duke would say the same thing.
But the individual application, that's where it changes on...
The individual basis per athlete, per time they compete, or on different athletes.
So the principles are always the same, but we always have to evolve the application.
I'm sure just like Eddie's doing every night he goes in the gym, he's like, oh shit, I saw this fucking white belt do something that just totally killed the black belt's move, what?
Let me fucking try that.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's variables in jiu-jitsu that don't exist in striking, but there's also striking variables that don't exist in jiu-jitsu.
Like the idea of throwing things at like a 50 or 60% output instead of 100% with each technique.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whereas some guys, like Jeremy Stevens, perfect example.
Jeremy Stevens is a fucking murderer.
He throws everything designed to knock your face into the dirt.
I mean, everything he throws is 100% on it.
And he just works hard to be able to do that.
But his volume is much lower than, say, a guy like Nick Diaz.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Nick Diaz will come at you and he'll throw many punches at 50-60% and put it on you and then throw some hundreds in there.
Dig to the body with a hundred.
Go upstairs with a hundred and then more.
50-50-50-50.
And he just puts volume on you.
So you don't see that in jiu-jitsu.
You very rarely see guys hit moves at less than 100%.
When you're trying to guillotine someone, you don't try to guillotine them at 50%.
You lock that bitch up, you're squeezing with everything you've got.
So it's a fascinating thing, the different approaches for different body styles, because some guys also, they don't have...
Like Dominic Cruz, great fighter, great athlete, great champion, does not have that sort of one-punch Jeremy Stevens power.
He just doesn't possess it.
He doesn't have the body for it.
This is what the universe has given him.
He's a high-volume, high-output, high-discipline...
Excellent condition.
That's important.
It's imperative for him to be able to put on the kind of performances that he puts on.
Whereas some guys just go out there and try to Paul Daly it.
Excellent technique, but everything's designed to murder you.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
It's an interesting growth and evolution of the sport and it's really cool to see the different athletes different body types and see this new generation now Coming out there because what we're seeing guys like Cruz and Dillashaw He's the champ now, but he's part of you know a younger generation But there's another tier below him now that's gonna be coming soon and make Dillashaw look a little you know not one-dimensional But a little slower Let's say you know two three years from now.
There's some fucking kid in the middle of nowhere that's gonna come out I can't imagine that, but I know you're right.
It's going to happen, right?
Remember when GSP came out?
And we were all like, God damn, this dude is like an Olympic gymnast.
Look at what he's doing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
And then, you know, you have a guy like Dillashaw coming out, moving the way he does, putting his wrestling together, all the feints that he's doing, hitting with power, you know, kind of like what you were saying about Diaz, where they're able to off-speed their punches and their strikes and really change angles.
That's fantastic.
unidentified
Awesome stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah, and you've seen the level of the wrestlers and athletes are just coming in.
They're just off the chain, too.
Like, guys like Hendrix.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, guys like Cormier.
Just like when Cormier fought Henderson.
You're like, what the fuck?
unidentified
That's insane.
joe rogan
Who the hell's ever done that to Dan Henderson?
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Cormier's got him flying through the air.
He's hitting him with trips as he's moving back.
He's doing, like, a lot of crazy shit that you very rarely see.
mike dolce
That's when...
I think I realized how high-level Cormier really is.
Like you said, no one's ever done that to Dan.
Dan's lost a couple fights, but no one's ever been able to do that to Dan fucking Anderson before.
joe rogan
That's also, interestingly enough, Dan off testosterone replacement.
He's one of the first guys that we've seen compete on and now off.
And he had competed off before against Rashad Evans, lost a decision against Rashad Evans, a very close fight, right?
And that was because they were fighting in Winnipeg, and Winnipeg's Athletic Commission didn't...
mike dolce
That's right.
joe rogan
But I believe Dan when he says that he takes very little.
I believe him.
mike dolce
I believe Dan too.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, who's on it?
But a lot of these guys also, one of the reasons why they test low is because they're overtraining.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
And that's something that people need to take into consideration when they discuss training protocols is that what's happening with a lot of fighters is they're going through the same sort of thing that they went through in wrestling practice.
And what wrestling practice is fantastic for is developing mental toughness.
I believe there are no tougher athletes in the world than someone who goes through high-level wrestling camps.
Someone who goes through Purdue, like a John Fitch.
When you go through these fucking camps, you go through Iowa, you go through these high-level wrestling camps, amateur wrestling, college wrestling camps, those people are fucking animals.
mike dolce
Yes, sir.
joe rogan
They have a level of mental toughness that if you don't understand it, they're going to wake up 15 minutes earlier than anybody else because they know that no one else is awake.
They're going to run an extra mile because they know no one else is going to run it.
They're going to do all these different things because they pride themselves in being uncomfortable and in grinding it out.
And there's good in that, but there's also bad in it.
And the bad in it is the physiological reality of the body's ability to recuperate.
And that if you tested any of these high-level professional wrestlers, or amateur wrestlers rather, at their highest level, when they're going through camps, I guarantee you a lot of them are going to have low testosterone.
mike dolce
Absolutely, I would agree.
joe rogan
And it's just because their body's being broken down and it's just the sheer dogged determination of their own mind that allows them to get up every morning and keep doing it.
mike dolce
Yeah, look at Hendrix.
He, when he fought Robbie, fractured shin, torn bicep.
joe rogan
He had a fractured shin too?
mike dolce
Fractured shin.
joe rogan
During the fight or from the fight?
mike dolce
From training.
In training, he was fractured chin, torn by his, partially torn by his, that would tore all the way during the fight, and didn't even blink.
Didn't complain one time.
The only way I found out was just kind of like in passing.
He was just joking about it.
Any other athlete, most of the other athletes, they're canceling that fight.
They're pushing it back three months, six months.
And then Johnny goes out there and is able to get a win.
Because of that mental toughness.
And that's one of the things that makes Johnny so fucking great.
Is that physically, I mean, he's a really strong dude, but he's not tall.
He's not long.
He's got fast hands.
You know, he is fast.
But his feet aren't very fast.
He doesn't cut angles or move his head movement too well.
It's his brain.
It's his mentality.
He's got that championship mindset that's just been ground into him through a whole lifetime of wrestling.
joe rogan
Also, his dad's a fucking psycho.
mike dolce
His dad's fucking awesome.
joe rogan
You know, it's funny.
Well, he had two options, or three options.
Wrestling, wrestling, or wrestling.
unidentified
That's awesome.
joe rogan
Well, you could wrestle, or you could wrestle, or you could wrestle.
And, you know, like how he made him do, you know, push-ups and sit-ups and chin-ups and shit when he was a little boy.
He was doing fucking 500 push-ups.
I mean, he just had that kid as a youngster with a very high tolerance to work and just this drive.
He pushed him so that everything else would be easy.
I mean, he made it so everything at home, all the training he did, all the wrestling practices were so fucking hard that everything else would be easy.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
And look at him.
UFC fucking middle welterweight champion.
And should have been the first time he fought GSP. Agreed.
In my opinion.
I mean, he got the title with the Robbie Lawler fight, but I thought he beat GSP. And the only people that disagree that I've talked to were people that were in that Henzo Gracie camp that were a little bit biased and thought that George won round one, which I didn't understand.
I think damage is more important than anything, and I think Johnny, without a doubt, did more damage in that fight.
They pointed to the guillotine attempt in the first round, but I didn't think that was a successful attempt.
I thought it was never close.
Did you see Scoggins vs.
John Moraga this last fight?
The first guillotine was very close.
The second guillotine locked it up.
George never had a guillotine like that.
You know what I'm saying?
It wasn't like one of those where it was like Scoggins barely got out of that first guillotine where Moraga locked it up.
But he was in deep shit.
And then he caught him with the second one.
That's not the kind of guillotine that Hendricks was caught in in that first round.
So I didn't understand anybody saying that they thought that GSP won.
mike dolce
A little biased, I think.
joe rogan
Sure.
mike dolce
But I'm biased towards Hendricks, and I'll admit that.
But watching and trying to be impartial, I think Hendricks clearly won.
And I believe George and some of his team, I think they know.
Because the two athletes, when they walk out...
You know, if you kind of won or lost.
And I think that won, and it felt their mood, their energy, and just the way that they, you know, we interacted afterwards.
Very professional, respectful.
But I think they knew that Johnny had won that fight, truly.
unidentified
How do you tell a fighter to stop?
joe rogan
Is there a time where a fighter should be told to stop?
Because if George was my friend...
I would tell George to stop.
And the reason why I would tell George to stop is because we did some sort of a fight metric thing where we calculated all the times he'd been hit inside the octagon.
And he had been hit in the head 880-something times over the course of his UFC career.
And I'm like, what's the number where a guy can walk?
Because if you talk to George now, he's lucid.
He speaks well.
But I know that he was having migraines.
I know that he was having memory issues.
And I think there's only a certain amount of times a guy can fight.
There's only a certain amount of blows a guy can take.
And George, if he stopped now, could he have another fight?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, he definitely could.
Could he come back and be great?
Very possibly, but could he come back and take some damage that five years from now we're gonna see a much compromised George and that's possible as well, right?
mike dolce
Probably and I've had this conversation with athletes before and it's it's difficult and it's emotional and And it's, you know, it's in their best interest and sometimes, you know, they've gotten mad, but they know it's out of love and care and concern.
And it's, there's a risk to reward.
And, you know, anytime an athlete, whether you're an amateur or you're making millions of dollars, there's a risk.
And what is the reward?
Is it some sort of personal challenge?
Are you trying to scare away a demon?
Are you trying to provide a college education for your daughter?
These are things that they get put on the scale and they become intellectual conversations to have.
And then you say, all right, is this worth the risk?
But a guy like GSPE, I mean, he's proven everything.
He's a legend.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, without a doubt.
He really has proven everything he can prove.
I mean, he can come back and beat other fighters, but is he ever going to elevate the status of his legend?
He's one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest welterweight of all.
It's him and Matt Hughes.
Those are the two greatest welterweights of all time.
And, you know, Matt is from a slightly different era.
Their eras overlap, but, you know, in my opinion, Matt, it was a game changer.
So I think he still goes down as possibly, you know, it's in the debate for who's the greatest.
mike dolce
Sure.
joe rogan
But George, he's not going to ever elevate where he's at.
Where he's at is a fucking all-time legend.
Yeah.
He's more of an all-time legend.
I'll have one more fight, he'll be another all-time legend.
No, he's an all-time legend.
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
I mean, as far as I know, he's very wealthy.
I know he had to give a lot of money up to his fucking former manager, though.
unidentified
Ouch.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
And there's a lot of grossness involved in that, man.
mike dolce
Yeah.
I've spoken about managers recently and it kind of got spun the wrong way.
I don't know if you heard anything.
joe rogan
No.
What'd you say?
mike dolce
I'm talking to Ariel.
I said, and the quote, so I hope nobody out there is going to quote this out of context, was athletes need to get rid of their, need to fire their managers and hire attorneys.
And it wasn't meant to be that every athlete needs to get rid of the manager because I said there's some great managers out there.
But there's some managers out there that they have their hand too deep inside the athlete's pocket where the athlete can't excel and can't develop themselves as a professional because they're spending 20 and 30 percent of their purse and all their earnings going straight to their manager.
And then the athlete has to pay for an attorney to come in and do contract review.
Then they have to pay for an agent to come in and bring in sponsorship.
Then they have to pay a striking jujitsu, wrestling strength coach.
Then they have to pay their income taxes.
Then they have to put food on the table for their family.
And at the UFC level where these contracts are much more strict, and that's really what I was talking about.
It was during the Kelvin Gastelum comments.
Was at the UFC level, there's not a lot of negotiation room for most.
It's more of contract review legalese.
And some of the managers came out and they said, yeah, they were pissed at me.
And I asked all of them specifically.
I said, how many of your clients have come to you because their manager fucking sucked?
And they're like, oh, shit, a bunch.
That's what I'm talking about.
Maybe you're awesome.
But at the same time, these athletes, they need attorneys.
It's nice to really look at the paperwork.
And yeah, there's a building phase and you're getting them notoriety and such to get to the UFC level.
But because you get them there doesn't mean that you should stay there.
And a guy like Mike Pyle, he fired his manager a few fights back.
He talks directly with Joe Silva.
He does all the negotiation.
He gets to keep all of his money.
He makes more money now.
And he hires an attorney to come in and do the contract review and such on a per hour basis or a per contract basis.
He speaks very openly about this.
He's one of the guys who's in the UFC and he's one of the higher paid athletes out there doing it.
joe rogan
Well, you know, obviously, I love the UFC. Obviously, it's a huge...
It's a huge honor for me to call the fights and to be a part of the organization, but I think the only way that the UFC is ever going to satisfy the athletes, I mean, the only way the athletes are ever going to be in a situation where they're completely, totally happy with what they get paid is if they're at the top of the heap.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, when people compare it to Floyd Mayweather, like, Floyd Mayweather made X amount of money.
Do you know how many fucking people are Floyd Mayweather?
One.
It's Floyd Mayweather.
mike dolce
Period.
joe rogan
And everybody else who fights him, they take a drastically reduced purse and they're super lucky that they get that.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like whatever Maidana got for that first fight, a million bucks or something like that.
mike dolce
Biggest payday of his career.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And by the way, that's not what GSP get for fights.
GSP got a lot more money than that.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And GSP, as big as he was, is never the draw that Floyd Mayweather is.
Floyd Mayweather is a draw, like, internationally, nationally.
He's gigantic.
Yeah.
And he's also the promoter.
I mean, he's got a lot of shit going on.
Unless a fighter becomes a part of a promotion, I mean, it's just not the same thing.
You know, if the UFC, like when Oscar De La Hoya was Golden Boy Productions and when he was fighting as well and making insane amounts of money in that, again, there's only one Oscar De La Hoya.
And there's also, the UFC, like it or not, and I love it, they're essentially the number one game in town.
And it's not like there's a close number two.
Whereas, Bob Arum, Golden Boy, you know, there's all these different promotions.
The money team, there's a lot of different promotions when it comes to promoting fights.
Whereas the UFC is like, there's Bellator.
You know, Bellator's not bad.
They're on Spike TV. They're doing real good.
You know, I'm a big fan of Scott Coker.
I'm a big fan of Spike TV. But the reality is there's a goddamn huge...
Who the fuck is the UFC heavyweight champion?
Cain Velasquez.
Who's the Bellator heavyweight champion?
I don't even know who he is.
unidentified
I don't even know either, yeah.
joe rogan
I don't know who it is.
I know...
Was it used to be Cole Conrad?
Was he...
No, maybe not even, was he?
mike dolce
He was, but he retired because there was no money.
joe rogan
Ben Askren used to be the welterweight champion.
Who's the welterweight champion now?
mike dolce
No idea.
joe rogan
Is it Lima?
Is it Douglas Lima?
mike dolce
I couldn't tell you, man.
joe rogan
He's world-class.
mike dolce
I think he won on leg kicks, right?
Was he the one?
joe rogan
Maybe he did.
I mean, I know he wins a lot.
He's world-class.
Lima could compete, in my opinion, and everyone else in the world.
But Ben Askren kind of ragdolled him.
And Ben Askren now is fighting for 1FC. So it's like, the difference...
Okay, there's Schlamenko.
He's the middleweight champion.
But someone from his fucking camp talked him into fighting Tito Ortiz.
mike dolce
Hope he got paid for that.
joe rogan
That was like, I mean, it's like a grown man fighting a guy who is in high school.
That's what it looked like.
I mean, Tito was fucking enormous in that fight.
mike dolce
Flamenco's probably truly a welterweight inside the UFC, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, in my opinion.
And somehow or another, he's fighting Tito.
When Tito got on top of him, I'm like, this dude is not getting off the bottom.
Tito has very underrated submission skills as well.
mike dolce
He's good.
Yeah, he can knock him, but huge disparity.
joe rogan
Yeah, just giant.
I mean, that's your middleweight champion.
You just saw your middleweight champion get choked to sleep.
mike dolce
Not good for anybody.
joe rogan
By a guy who could fight at heavyweight.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
What the fuck are you guys doing?
And they did that just to sell a pay-per-view.
And the whole thing was just preposterous.
And I think that, you know, unless that changes, the amount of money fighters get, it's not going to be the level that you're going to get in boxing.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Until boxing in the UFC, I mean, maybe it'll be one of the new champions.
Maybe it'll be Ronda Rousey that gets her first $50 million.
Because she kind of has that transcendent appeal.
I mean, she really is sort of transcending the sport.
She's the biggest star right now in MMA. Sure.
mike dolce
And it's because of...
What she does outside of the octagon as much as she does what she does inside.
And that's something I try and talk to athletes about, the athletes that I have the ability to influence.
And that's what I see other athletes do, a guy like Alan Belcher.
Alan Belcher makes far more money running his gyms and online training business than he does when competing as a professional athlete inside the UFC. And he makes a good payday inside the UFC. And the athletes, they need to understand that they're as big or as good as they want to be, and they can certainly build their brand in areas like yourself.
You find areas that you enjoy and that you're good at, or you're not good at yet, but you want to be good at, so you bust your ass to push your way into that field and that niche.
And athletes, they have more than enough time to do that, whether it's flipping real estate like Bristol Marundi's doing right now.
Who's Bristol Mirondi?
Bristol Mirondi fought in UFC a couple times, fought for Strikeforce.
He was on The Ultimate Fighter a couple seasons back.
He's flipping real estate in Las Vegas.
An article came out about him recently.
He makes a shitload more money doing that than he does fighting.
And he's fighting because he enjoys fighting.
You know, Alan Belcher, what he's doing, what Ronda's doing, priming Ronda's outside the octagon money is going to eclipse what she makes inside the octagon.
joe rogan
She's such an anomaly, though.
I mean, how many hot chicks can beat the fuck out of dudes?
mike dolce
I know.
But she's going with what she has, and there's a lot of athletes out there that can go with what they have.
They all have something.
Look at what Ludwig did.
He went from being a high-level fighter.
At the end of his career, he transitioned into a coach, and he'll be a much more successful financially and business-wise as a coach, growing his affiliate system, building his brand that way.
And he made good money as a fighter, as a top-tier fighter, knocked out Jen Pulver, won the K1 Max North Americas.
I mean, he did some really good things inside the sport.
So just taking that concept.
And I'm not shilling for the UFC here, but I'm saying if athletes are sitting home and they're looking at their paycheck at the end of the year, saying they're not happy with it, there's a lot of other ways that they can monetize, that they can use their brand, they can use what they do to get out there and build.
And it's not sitting back waiting for sponsors to just hand them a check to put on a T-shirt or to hold up an energy drink.
There's other ways to go out there and take care of it.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's tricky for fighters to find that and sort of explore that while they're also trying to improve their skill set, improve their conditioning, and also to have the energy to do it.
People are fucking exhausted after they're done training.
You know, at the end of the day, they're just like, oh, Christ.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It's hard to think of, I mean, I don't know how fuck Ronda does it, but that chick never runs out of energy.
I mean, she's just a dynamo.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that's also one of the reasons why she's so damn successful.
Not just outside the UFC, but as a fighter, you know?
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
Because she has that fucking rah!
Whatever it is inside, I don't know why I did that.
unidentified
Rah!
mike dolce
She's got that rah!
joe rogan
It's more like...
Whatever it is, it's a monster.
There's a monster inside her that comes out, like legitimately.
She just happens to be hot.
But it's all those other things that make her who she is.
And it's hard for people to find that.
She also has that sort of personality that...
Polemic, you know, sort of like...
She's a controversial figure.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
She's, you know, naturally.
You know, she's naturally a fuck you bitch.
Like, that's her.
Like, all that shit she did with Misha Tate on the show.
People are like, she's fucking crazy.
Yeah!
Yeah, guess what?
Everyone's great.
It's crazy.
They're all crazy.
When Jon Jones and Cormier, when they had their mics hot and they didn't know it and they recorded that, it's like, hey pussy, you still there?
Like, that's the...
You...
Guess what?
That's what you get.
You want a guy who's a fucking destroyer like Jon Jones?
You're going to get that guy.
That's what you get.
Those are the type of guys that win world titles.
Those are the type of guys that become the youngest ever UFC champion.
Those Jon Jones type characters.
They're naturally controversial.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
They're not like the rest of us.
Fortunately or not, that's what makes them special.
I agree.
joe rogan
But I don't know why John is not more loved or popular than he is.
I don't understand it.
Because in my opinion, I will never miss a fucking John Jones pay-per-view.
mike dolce
Hell yeah.
joe rogan
And I would think that anybody who, like, I've heard people say, oh, he's cocky, oh, he's this, and I wonder what the fuck is going on with that.
And I'm going to throw this out there.
I'm just going to say it.
I wonder how much of it is racism.
mike dolce
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
I really do.
mike dolce
You went there.
joe rogan
I did.
mike dolce
I did.
joe rogan
You know why?
Because I think they look at him as this cocky black guy.
And I think a lot of people have an issue with that.
And I think that if he was a white guy and he was doing the same thing, a la Chael Sonnen, I think he'd be way more popular.
And Chael was never the successful athlete that John is.
But I think that Chael was way more successful as a promoter than John is.
And John has not been nearly as cocky or outwardly braggadocious as Chael was.
But somehow or another, when Chael did it, first of all, Chael was very entertaining, very articulate, best shit talker, bar none, in my opinion, combat sports has ever seen.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
I've said he's better than Muhammad Ali.
And people are like, you're crazy.
I'm like, I'm not crazy.
I'm telling you the truth.
I think he is a better shit talker.
As a fighter, no.
No, not the best fighter.
But as a shit talker, I think he's one of the most articulate, funniest shit talkers ever.
I mean, I really do believe that.
mike dolce
Do you think people, Chael resonated with the public because we all knew or felt in the back of our mind that he wasn't truly serious?
unidentified
Maybe.
mike dolce
And we were appreciating his art, his skill of doing it, where with John we think.
joe rogan
Yeah, maybe.
mike dolce
He's serious about this, isn't he?
unidentified
Maybe.
mike dolce
And I'm a fan of John like you.
I'd love to watch that kid fight, guy fight.
He's a superhero and I think he goes through a couple more wins and beats some tough guys.
If he beats Cormier, he will become the Ali of our sport.
He has that type of young, brash, outspoken outlook.
And I want to see the next, you know, chapter two or the second act of John Jones and then the third act.
I'm really excited as just a fan of this sport to follow his career, follow his arc, and, you know, I'm friends, you know, with Cormier, of course, also, so I'm not going to pick a horse in that one, but it'd be really interesting to see how Jon goes.
joe rogan
It is, without a doubt.
I always found it odd when everybody would get upset at him and say that they didn't like that he's cocky.
He's 25 and he's the UFC light heavyweight champion.
He's the youngest ever UFC champion.
He destroyed Shogun to win the title.
And I mean destroyed.
He threw a flying knee and hit Shogun on the chin five seconds into their fight.
I mean, Jon Jones is a motherfucker.
Period.
He's a motherfucker.
But for whatever reason, people have had an issue with that.
I know I'm going to get a bunch of hate tweets.
Fuck you, you fucking bullshit.
You fucking...
What, you got white guilt?
Calling out racism?
That's okay.
I'm still reeling from the fucking pro wrestling fans mad at me for the last episode.
Not really, folks.
It doesn't bother me.
Pro wrestling fans are really mad at me because my friend Tony Hinchcliffe was on.
I was mocking him.
And joking around about pro wrestling.
I really don't, just for the record, I don't hate pro wrestling at all.
And I loved it when I was in high school.
When I was in high school, I was a fucking huge pro wrestling fan.
Me and my friend Steven Arruino, we would get together and fucking, we were on a wrestling team together.
We'd always...
Joke around about being super fly off the ropes.
I was a huge wrestling fan, but I was 14. Do I watch it today?
No.
But I understand and appreciate it.
I was busting my friend Tony's balls because it made for a fun podcast, but the fucking wave of misspelled hate tweets that have come my way.
Holy shit, folks.
Relax.
There's other things to be upset about, okay?
I'm not really mad at you.
Settle down.
But I'm probably going to get an equal amount from the Aryan race.
mike dolce
There you go.
joe rogan
Mad at me for defending Jon Jones, the cocky negro.
I really think there's something to that.
I think people want a guy who is so physically gifted and young and brash and black and rich.
They want him to have more humility or fake humility, as it were.
And I think John's trying that a little bit.
That's one of the reasons why Cormier was like, you are so fake.
Like, you're so fake.
Cormier was saying that to him because they think he's trying to counteract how people feel about him.
mike dolce
It's got to be hard to be that young and successful and still emotionally developing.
I don't want to say immature, but he's still learning to be a man in his own skin.
And to have that type of success.
So he just...
He deserves to be fucking cocky for what he's accomplished.
joe rogan
No doubt.
It's inevitable that he's cocky.
It's almost impossible not to be at that age and at that level of accomplishment.
I think everyone is evolving.
You evolve till you die.
You change and grow and learn.
If you're not, you're stagnant and you're rotting away.
Because I think I'm a better, whatever I'm better at now, I'm better than I was a year ago.
And if I wasn't, I'd be disappointed.
And I'm 47. I mean, when I'm 48, I guarantee you I'll be looking back saying, whatever I do, whether it's podcasting or comedy, I'll be better at 48 than I am at 47. And when I'm not, that means I'm fucking dying.
It means the gears stop turning.
The nootropics stop working.
The testosterone replacement's failing.
There's going to come a wall.
You're going to hit that wall.
I haven't hit it yet.
When I hit it, I'll know I hit it.
But I think that when a guy like John Jones is 30 and looks back at who he was when he was 25, yeah, he'll have said some things that he didn't think he should have said.
But the trials and tribulations of being that guy are almost unimaginable.
Just the stress and the pressures and all that jazz.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
With now the scrutiny that's on a guy like that with all the social media available, all the cameras in his face, just the attention at a 25-year-old.
All of us, everybody listening at 25, we're all fucking idiots.
And if you're 25 right now, you're going to look back 10 years and be like, Jesus, I was an idiot.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
You know, so it's fun to watch, you know, what John's going through, and I would love to see him just go straight heel, fuck you all, you know, double fingers up in the air, I'm the best in the fucking world, fuck you, and not try and play, not pander to the comments anymore, not try and be the Christian dude, not try and, you know, make people happy.
joe rogan
I think that's real, though.
I think there's a part of him...
Look, he has the fucking biblical tattoo on his chest.
I don't think he put that there for a show.
I think there's part of him that really feels like that, but there's also the part of him that's this remorseless warrior.
mike dolce
Sure.
joe rogan
There's both.
There's both of those things.
It's a constant conflict going on.
I mean, I think he definitely tries to be a good person.
I think he definitely tries to be a good father.
I think there's definitely...
But he also is the guy who choked Lyoto Machida to sleep.
He's also the guy that submitted Vitor Belfort.
He's a real destroyer.
mike dolce
So when Chael was fighting him, I was helping Chael for that one, and John wouldn't look at Chael, and there's a photo, and I made a comment on the photo, like, you know, Jones must be scared.
He's not even looking at Chael.
Just, you know, some hype in the fight.
And John saw me backstage, and he's like, man, he's like...
What the fuck?
He's like, why are you saying that?
I'm not scared of him.
Like, was, you know, in my face a little bit.
I'm like, god damn, champ.
Like, you know.
joe rogan
Just hyping shit.
mike dolce
Just hyping the fight, bro.
joe rogan
Right.
mike dolce
And then, you know, I see him like, you know, a week or two later and he was just such a sweet guy and he's like, man, I'm sorry about that.
He was like, I was hyped up at the fight.
I know you're just kidding around.
He's like, I was just in that zone.
So, the dichotomy of character, you know, in my face, like, you know, fuck you.
And then, remorseful afterwards, not far after.
He's like, man, I feel really bad about that, Dolce.
You're a good dude.
Like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
joe rogan
So, Yeah, and I think that's real.
I don't think he was just doing, like, some sort of PR. No, we were alone.
mike dolce
There was nobody around, nobody watching both times.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think it's damage control.
I think, you know, it's a...
Look, the unimaginable pressure of being that guy.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, and knowing there's Rumble Johnsons out there that are rising up, putting people to sleep.
You know, Rumble Johnson.
mike dolce
That's a scary dude, man.
unidentified
Woo!
Woo!
joe rogan
He's the scariest, in my opinion.
He can do things to you that other guys can't do.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
joe rogan
That fucking fight with him and Phil Davis opened a lot of people's eyes.
That was terrifying, to watch Phil Davis just in this full defensive mode that we've never seen him in before.
mike dolce
Phil didn't get him down once, did he?
No!
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
He didn't even come close.
mike dolce
That's a scary man right there.
joe rogan
Yeah, and Rumble connects on anybody.
It's nighty-night.
What he did to fucking Little Nog, man...
I mean, people have beaten Little Nog, but they haven't beaten the fuck out of him like that.
He beat the fuck out of Little Nog and put him to sleep.
I mean, that was terrifying.
He's a terrifying guy.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
It'd be fun to see.
joe rogan
He's a perfect weight-cutting example.
He started out fighting as a fucking welterweight, weighing 230 pounds, dropping down to 170. Insanity.
mike dolce
And we spoke multiple times about the possibility of working, and I told him, no.
unidentified
No.
mike dolce
I don't think it's good, and I think you should move up.
He's a good guy.
For anybody that doesn't know, you just know the persona of Anthony Johnson.
He's a really good, smart guy.
And he felt committed to 170 for whatever reason at that time.
But going to 185, 205, and he's had success in heavyweight also, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
Success in heavyweight.
205, I think that's where he's just a killer.
You know, obviously couldn't make 85 against Belfort back in the day.
205 is just a nasty weight class for that dude.
And he's not a young, he's not an old guy either.
joe rogan
No, he's 30. Yeah, he's 30. And he's also emotionally very mature now.
He's a different guy.
And he's not, you know, he would get overwhelmed in fights like the Koscheck fight or some of the high-pressure fights that he had before.
But I think also having the failure...
The losing his position in the UFC, leaving, going somewhere else, and then deciding to fight all the way up at heavyweight.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fought Andrei Olovsky and fucked him up as a heavyweight.
He's a monster, man.
He's a fucking monster.
Rumble Johnson.
And it's, again, he's gone through the journey, and he's become a better man because of that journey.
And talks openly about it.
I mean, after he fought Little Nog, and I interviewed him, he thanked the UFC for cutting him.
mike dolce
That's awesome.
joe rogan
It's like it's one of the best things that ever happened to him that made him wake up and realize what he was doing wrong.
Yeah.
And he was saying, yeah, and I said about the weight cutting thing, he's like, yeah, don't cut so much weight.
I agree.
He's a fucking big guy, man.
mike dolce
He's a fucking big dude.
joe rogan
He's a big guy.
I would see him in between fights.
unidentified
It was unimaginable that guy can make 170. Yeah, he said he would go in the sauna for an hour just to lose a pound.
mike dolce
Like back when he was making 70. Oh my God.
Just killing, killing, killing his body to get it done.
joe rogan
His body failed.
One of the fights, Vitor, or one of the fights where he didn't make weight, his body failed.
Like, his legs stopped working.
Like, he couldn't walk.
You know, I mean, he was on death's door.
mike dolce
Literally.
joe rogan
Yeah, literally.
mike dolce
That's fucking...
joe rogan
How about Baral?
We were almost out of time here, but that's a perfect example of a guy who's fucking up, cutting weight.
The day of the weigh-ins, they change opponents.
He gets pulled out of a fucking title fight because he can't make weight, and he falls asleep.
He blacks out, getting out of the tub and bonked his head.
mike dolce
It's a comedy of errors right there, not to point fingers.
I think the whole team has to accept responsibility for that.
Taking the fight way too soon.
Pushing for the fight, taking the fight.
The kid was concussed in the first fight against Dillashaw.
joe rogan
He's fighting three months later.
mike dolce
He should have been out for six months before they even thought about scheduling a fight.
We all know that.
joe rogan
I agree 100%.
mike dolce
And then to have to cut all the way back down again, there's no way we can expect his body to respond.
I'm not sure how they cut weight, but I know those guys, they don't cut weight In the healthiest manner, they really struggle and sacrifice to get down.
We see them all the time.
So they just tortured this poor fucking kid.
And then you don't let an athlete, just from experience, you don't let an athlete stand up.
Athletes, if you're in the bathtub, you roll out of the bathtub onto the floor and you slowly stand up.
You use hand grips.
You have two people in there to help you stand.
Never should a coach's hand be off you and whatever cream allegedly they put on him.
That stuff, Albaline and stuff, doesn't work.
I have the analytics to show it.
I'm not bashing any companies.
joe rogan
Well, Albaline is not designed No, it's not.
It's a moisturizer.
mike dolce
It's a moisturizer.
And it's a lot of these old wives tales.
That's the Epsom salt and alcohol, rubbing alcohol, like I was talking the story before about aloe vera.
So you put alcohol in the tub and what that does, those fumes, they create respiratory distress, tons of headaches.
Chris Camozzi was like, what the fuck, man?
They came in, they put alcohol in the tub.
He's like, now I got a headache.
Because of what Olivera's team did downstairs in the spa at the fucking hotel.
joe rogan
They poured it in the spa at the hotel where everybody else got in there and had to deal with that?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
mike dolce
Just like insanity.
What world is this?
Come on, you're professional.
joe rogan
Well, Epsom salts is good for you.
It's a natural source of magnesium.
It's good to take Epsom salt baths.
It's one of the best ways for your body to absorb magnesium.
It's one of the added benefits of sensory deprivation tanks because the salinated water is Epsom salts.
Your body actually absorbs magnesium.
It's a great way to get it through your skin.
Excellent.
mike dolce
It's not going to make you lose additional weight.
And that's something, and we can argue back and forth with people listening, or I do that all the time.
Try to do the same tub with the same temperature in the same physical state with and without the Epsom salts and watch what you lose.
It's going to be almost identical.
joe rogan
And you have all this documented?
unidentified
I do.
joe rogan
Okay.
mike dolce
I do.
joe rogan
Well, that's the difference is you, a lot of these guys that are, you know, these weight cutting guys and these people that people get brought in is the amount of documentation that you have and the amount of just raw data just from dealing with various athletes.
mike dolce
Yeah, it's all, everything we do is data-based.
It's data-based, it's experience-based, it's research-based.
I mean, it's proven, and then it's never perfected, but it's always evolving.
What worked last time against, you know, with everybody, well, that's what we're sticking with, and if something was an anomaly, well, we consider it, and we look into it, we research it, but we don't add it to new protocol.
joe rogan
Is there any failure that you've had?
Like, is there any one fighter that you worked with, you're like, man, I wish I could go do that one again?
mike dolce
I've never had an athlete miss weight other than myself freshman year of high school in the state wrestling tournament.
joe rogan
I don't think that counts.
I'm not going to take you back to freshman year of high school wrestling.
mike dolce
No athlete under my watch has ever missed weight, but the one I would like the redo, I mean the Hendricks one in Dallas, I would have loved to have made weight on the first time with that one, but there was a whole comedy of errors.
joe rogan
Well also you've got to stop to think about the fact that he's pretty seriously injured.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
Torn bicep, cracked shin, pretty fucking crazy in the first place.
unidentified
Absolutely.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
Medical checks in the middle of the day.
We had to stop cutting and then start cutting again.
We left the scale.
This is our fault for leaving the scale in an open gym with a bunch of knuckleheads jumping on his scale.
So there was quite a few things in looking back that we could have done better.
I would have loved to have rewound that one.
I should have had another commissioner come over and check the scale again when the first commissioner called him at 171.5.
Which he wasn't 71 and a half, he was 70 and a half, and he had his underwear on.
joe rogan
There was quite a few guys who had issues with that scale, in all fairness.
There was a backstage scale that weighed very different than the onstage scale, which can happen occasionally, and it's a real issue.
People were calling for calibration, for recalibration, and they're like, we can't recalibrate.
That does happen in certain commissions and time to time.
It's tricky.
It varies with commission.
A lot of folks don't realize that.
When you see a few fighters miss weight, oftentimes it's because the backstage scale is different.
They thought they were fine and they get on the onstage scale and it's a different weight.
mike dolce
Absolutely.
I've been at events, and I won't say the promotion, where the scale got dropped, and then you get on the scale at the early day pre-weigh-ins, the scale got dropped somehow between the venue and the hotel, and now all of a sudden it's got a crazy reading like you're saying right now.
The last minute the scale gets switched because it goes to the wrong place where it doesn't get through.
So I've seen almost every odd issue I've been at.
I don't even know how many weigh-ins now.
And it's not as easy to weigh in properly when you're trying to keep the athlete as healthy as possible.
You're not just trying to get the athlete to 170 pounds and just leave them there for four hours.
You're trying to minimize that period as much as possible and really just skim the top of the weight and let them bounce right back up because we're trying to preserve their health, which is going to increase their ability to perform to the best of their ability.
So, you know, like with Hendrix and the weight, it was a matter of get him out of here, get him calm again, because he's freezing cold.
It was so cold in that place.
He's freezing cold, shaking.
On the scale, the chaos begins.
Tidal fight on the line.
Let's get him out of here.
Let's calm him down.
And then let's get the weight off of him.
Let's keep him healthy.
Let's keep him confident.
Let's keep him happy.
And get him back on.
So that's what I would like to redo.
joe rogan
When you got a guy like Hendrix that has a torn bicep and a crack shin, how close were they to not taking that fight?
mike dolce
There wasn't even a consideration.
joe rogan
Even if the arm was completely useless, was he going to just fight with his left?
mike dolce
He was going to go and fight with one hand.
unidentified
Fuck.
mike dolce
That's fucking Johnny Hendrix.
That's why I love the kid.
There's no quit in him, no matter what.
There's just no quit in him.
joe rogan
But that seems ridiculous.
If you have a torn ACL and you can't move, you fight anyway?
mike dolce
If it were up to me...
I wouldn't let my athlete fight in that one, and that's either good or bad.
We can debate that also.
I'm not going to put an injured athlete out there to get his bicep torn off and possibly lose his only opportunity to fight for a world title.
Let's say Robbie went out there and won that last round, or Johnny had to default because he tore the bicep and couldn't lift his arm.
Ref saw that, judge saw that, medical doctors saw that, called the fight on the stool.
Crazy things happen, and then he loses his bit.
And now he goes to the back of the line.
He's got to fight three, four fights against its stacked division.
Maybe he never gets there again.
So that would be one consideration.
But a guy like Johnny, man, two-time NCAA Division I national champion, he goes out there and he knows how to get it done.
And ultimately, he's the boss.
joe rogan
That's the mental toughness that comes with that amateur wrestling background that we were talking about.
It's a real thing.
It's real.
They are all of them.
All amateur wrestling champions are fucking mentally strong.
mike dolce
They're a special breed of human.
Absolutely.
joe rogan
And it's crazy, because we're talking about how you should rest, and you should train smart, and you shouldn't overtrain, but it's like the overtraining is what made them so mentally strong, and that becomes one of their biggest weapons.
So it's such a catch-22.
mike dolce
Yeah, I think the genetic superiors rise in that area.
I mean, not many guys actually make it to the top of that podium, and the genetic...
Superiors make it to the top where they're able to be the anomaly, the outlier, where the rest of us were just not able to.
We break somewhere along the way due to whatever reason.
But it's not in their best...
I don't think it's part of the proper longevity protocol.
You see a lot of wrestlers in their 50s and 60s and they're kind of...
joe rogan
Fucked up.
mike dolce
Fucked up.
joe rogan
Dan Gable's fucked up.
unidentified
Fucked up.
mike dolce
But they got Olympic gold medals, and they have some things that some of us will never have, so it's the risk-reward.
joe rogan
Well, Mark Coleman's like, what, 48, 49?
He has a hip replacement already.
mike dolce
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
mike dolce
Yeah, it's crazy.
joe rogan
Still wrestling with it.
mike dolce
He's a crazy son of a bitch, right?
joe rogan
He's an animal.
And it's the same thing, what we were talking about.
The tough motherfuckers.
I don't know if this is real or not.
I have a question.
Is there...
Is, like, a piece of protein, like, say, like, 10 ounces of fish versus 10 ounces of lamb or elk or game meat, is there...
A higher quality protein?
Is some protein more effective to some animals?
Do they have more energy?
Is there more energy in a grass-fed piece of beef versus a corn-fed piece of beef?
mike dolce
Yes, and this is now my opinion based upon a lot of scientific research.
There's other research that says the opposite, so now we're just going to throw it up in the air.
So my philosophy, the Dolce Diet Principles, number one is earth-grown nutrients, and that's eating real food from its natural source and its natural habitat, raised and bred in the natural way.
You cannot beat that when it comes to nutrient quality, nutrient density.
And that's what we always go after.
So I want line-caught fish.
Salmon primarily.
That's one of my top choices.
Line-caught salmon.
Excellent.
Grass-fed beef.
And when I say grass-fed beef or meat, I want that roaming in, you know, the trees somewhere.
And I want to, you know...
Take it out myself with a bow or with a bullet where it doesn't even know any humans within 100 miles.
That's the best possible.
So there's no anxiety.
There's no cortisol.
There's no stress state.
It's eating the exact food it's supposed to be.
It has no illness, no injuries, no disease, no chemicals.
Same thing, really anything.
With your vegetables, with your spinach, with your blueberries, the most natural cannot be beet.
And that's...
That's the number one principle.
If you're only eating earth-grown nutrients, real food, and you don't pay attention to the time of day, you don't pay attention to the quantity, you're going to be much better off than most of the other people.
joe rogan
But is there more energy in, say, a piece of elk than there is in line-caught salmon?
Is there more energy in grass-fed beef than there is in lamb?
Is that quantifiable?
mike dolce
I don't believe so.
And what we do is we eat as much of it in moderation as we can.
So I want the elk.
I want the salmon.
I want the lamb.
I want the chicken.
I want the turkey.
I want all of it.
I don't want to have just the beef every day and just the eggs every day.
joe rogan
So you like mixing it up?
mike dolce
You have to mix everything because each one has a different nutrient profile.
And I want all of those nutrients to cycle through my body.
Not just one type because you can build up some sort of allergy.
Or you can create a deficiency.
So as much of everything as possible.
Whatever is local is best.
Whatever is in season is best because that again has a higher nutrient quantity.
So whatever is seasonal, that's what we typically cycle through.
joe rogan
Have you ever had to work with someone like a Jake Shields who tries to fight as a vegan?
He's sort of vegan.
He eats eggs.
mike dolce
Yeah, I speak with Jake.
We've toyed with it a little bit, never worked together officially.
Do I work with any specific vegans?
No, I do.
I mean, not professional athletes, but in our normal business that we do, we have some vegans, and that's pretty easy.
A lot of my recipes are vegan-centric, which is easy to do.
But if you're a combat athlete, it's really hard to excel.
It's possible if you're an outlier.
But it's very hard to excel without that animal protein.
And most vegans agree with that.
It's very difficult unless you're dogmatic about your sourcing of nutrition.
It becomes a full-time plus job in order to eat the right foods at the right time and you have to go to the market and you always have to have that supply.
You can't miss meals because your body is just constantly breaking down.
joe rogan
Is it harder for them also to get high enough calories from their proteins and things like that?
mike dolce
Yeah, it's harder for them to get.
They have to have what's called complementary proteins.
You have to get multiple nutrient sources in order to get all the amino acids.
joe rogan
Like pea protein and hemp protein and rice protein and all these different powders and stuff that they mix in.
mike dolce
Yes, so vegans need a very diverse diet in order to make sure they're getting all the proper nutrients.
It just becomes a lot of work and Jake has said that.
Just a lot of work.
joe rogan
And even then, is it 100% what you would get if you were eating elk and steak and chicken?
mike dolce
I don't believe so.
I personally, and I've never lived a 12-month, I've lived for three months as a vegan, and it was very difficult.
I leaned out, I lost a lot of weight, I lost a lot of power output.
My endurance went up.
I mean, my blood panel looked awesome.
So it was definitely a give and take.
I didn't do it for a full 12 months, which I think I would really have to go through all four seasons to truly understand and feel it.
joe rogan
I know Fitch tried it for a while, but then he went back to meat.
He said he feels much stronger, much better.
So many vegans were tweeting Fitch.
They were loving it that he was vegan.
Love that you're a vegan, man.
It's amazing.
And then afterwards, he's like, fuck, this sucked.
unidentified
It's hard to do.
I lost weight.
joe rogan
I'm not as strong.
I'm not as aggressive.
I don't have as much energy.
He goes, and now I feel much better now that I'm eating meat again.
They're like, mm, sad face.
mike dolce
Sad face.
joe rogan
Vegans get bummed out if you're not a vegan anymore.
When they lose one of theirs, they get fucking bummed.
They love when they get one, but when they lose one, man, it hits them hard.
mike dolce
It's tough.
It's tough.
And I do believe that there's a life force also that comes from certain foods.
I do believe that.
Maybe it's a placebo effect.
joe rogan
I think it's true.
I've had this philosophy, which is total bro science on my part, but my philosophy is that things that run quicker are better for you.
Because that's why there's a reward for getting them.
That's why before people figured out nets and hooks and lines, it was really hard to catch a fish.
And if you caught a fish, fucking strong protein.
You catch a salmon, that's very high in protein.
mike dolce
High protein, high in essential fats.
joe rogan
I mean, a piece of elk has less cholesterol and more protein than the same piece of chicken that weighs the same amount.
mike dolce
You can catch easily enough.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mike dolce
Yeah, I agree with that.
And bro science, absolutely.
joe rogan
Maybe, probably.
mike dolce
But, you know, until science...
joe rogan
Maybe cheetah's the best shit for you.
Maybe we should start eating cheetahs.
mike dolce
Could be.
It could be.
joe rogan
Maybe.
Well, I know they eat mountain lion.
Everybody thinks that hunters that kill mountain lions are assholes.
But first of all, you need to control the mountain lion population.
Otherwise, they kill all the deer.
They kill all the pigs.
They kill everything.
Mountain lions are motherfuckers.
But also, people eat it.
They eat mountain lions.
It's supposed to be really delicious.
unidentified
Huh.
mike dolce
I never had it.
joe rogan
Never had it either.
mike dolce
Is that a Colorado thing?
joe rogan
No, it's, you know, places, Colorado for sure, Utah, places where they hunt it on a regular basis.
They choose mountain lion over pig in a lot of places.
They really like it.
Yeah, it's supposed to, like, the back straps, the loin from mountain lion, it's supposed to be delicious.
We ran out of time, my friend.
If people want to get a hold of you, how do they get a hold of you on Twitter?
mike dolce
That's TheDolceDiet.com, The Dolce Diet on Twitter and Facebook and all the places that you normally go.
joe rogan
And is that your book that you have there?
mike dolce
That is for you, my friend.
It's Three Weeks to Shredded, our new book that's out right now.
It details the Tiago Alves weight cut and also the one I had done previous, so it's the original and the expanded version.
joe rogan
Dude, we could do about 15 more of these, I'm sure.
And when more things come up and more issues nutritionally or exercise-wise, let's do it.
mike dolce
Absolutely, brother Joe.
joe rogan
Thank you very much, my friend.
Really appreciate it.
Mike Dolce, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you, sir.
You know how to get a hold of him.
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unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
We will be back, my friends, my friends.
Many, many podcasts this week.
Tim Burnett from Solo Hunters is here on Thursday.
Joe DeRosa will be here on Wednesday.
Until then, big kiss.
Have fun.
Take care.
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