Feb. 23, 2015 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:48:03
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day Yes, ladies and gentlemen Yeah, my phone shit the bed, officially. | ||
| iPhone 6, done. | ||
| I think I dropped it too many times. | ||
| Or it got scared when it saw John Wayne Parr. | ||
| My phone decided to just... | ||
| Give up. | ||
| What's happening, man? | ||
| Welcome back, my friend. | ||
| It was very fun working out with you today. | ||
| That was very enjoyable. | ||
| John Wayne Parr, for those who don't know, multiple time Muay Thai champion, very famous in the world of combat sports, both for your accomplishments in Muay Thai. | ||
| And a lot of people in the UFC know about you for your work with George St. Pierre. | ||
| You did a lot of training with George St. For some of his MMA fights and got to show him some of your Muay Thai techniques, which I really learned a lot today watching you explain how you do things. | ||
| You have a very specific style that is very uniquely your own. | ||
| Yeah, I was lucky enough to go to Thailand to live for four years. | ||
| So I took the Thai concept and then I retired from Muay Thai and went to boxing for a year. | ||
| And then I just concentrated on my hands and then I liked boxing but then it sort of got a bit stale because the crowd's a little bit older and the Muay Thai crowd really pumps you up so I decided to come back to Muay Thai again and I sort of blended the two together with the top half of the boxing and the bottom half of the Muay Thai. | ||
| And then I just sort of created my own concept, and yeah, it's been very cool. | ||
| I've been very successful with it. | ||
| It seems like you also, like we were talking today, you incorporated a lot of the way Ramon Deckers used to throw combinations, who was a Dutch guy who became probably one of the most famous ever foreigners to fight in Thailand, one of the most successful in the lower weight classes especially. | ||
| Yeah, he was a beast. | ||
| And then because he was the first white person to beat the Thais, he was such a role model and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. | ||
| Still to this day, I still try and emulate everything that he's done. | ||
| And just to be that guy that went to Thailand and beat the Thais at the Marine Sport, it's something that I look up to him even though he's passed. | ||
| He's still my hero. | ||
| In the world of Muay Thai and the world of fighting, there's guys who have gigantic names. | ||
| If you were thinking about a sport like hockey, it would be like a Wayne Gretzky or like a Bobby Orr. | ||
| That's where Ramon Deckers was. | ||
| Most casual people, casual fans, they're not aware of some of the greats in this sport. | ||
| It's really unfortunate. | ||
| It's because America, like, kickboxing, for whatever reason, never really caught on. | ||
| And Dana White has a really good theory. | ||
| And he thinks it's because that in, like, the 1980s and the early 19... | ||
| I guess it wasn't even the 90s, like, mostly the 80s, they had that PKA kickboxing on TV. Which is where Rick Rufus came from, who turned out to be a great fighter. | ||
| But a lot of those guys were sloppy boxers who had to throw a certain amount of kicks per round. | ||
| They would make you throw six, seven kicks per round. | ||
| I forget what the number was. | ||
| And so they would throw these little flippy kicks with no power, and then they would just kind of sloppy box. | ||
| Yeah, Benny the Jet and Peter Cunningham. | ||
| Who else? | ||
| Well, Peter Sugarfoot Cunningham, he became successful outside of PKA. He did Muay Thai. | ||
| He fought a lot of different styles. | ||
| He was a more complete fighter. | ||
| I think there was a lot of fights that, like, they had on ESPN at 2 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| You watch these two white dudes kickboxing. | ||
| You're like, what the fuck am I watching? | ||
| It just wasn't at the level that... | ||
| It's unfortunate that some people still have that in their mind when it comes to kickboxing or to Muay Thai because... | ||
| In other countries, especially in Holland. | ||
| You were one of the guys who carried it over to Australia at a very young age. | ||
| It's very popular over there. | ||
| Yeah, like in Australia, Fox Sports, we were showing the fights at least once a week. | ||
| That was from 1996 up until last year. | ||
| Then they've just stopped showing the broadcast now, and now UFC's flooded the market. | ||
| There's no exposure for the kickboxes anymore. | ||
| It's hard for us to shine now. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Because of MMA? Yeah, well, UFCs, they're doing the pay-per-views, and they're doing the roads to the UFC, and they're showing all the replays. | ||
| So every time you put the Fox Sports on, it's just saturated the market, and there's no real... | ||
| If I was a young fighter now, and they said, what would you want to do? | ||
| Do you want a kickboxer and UFC? It's like, UFC for sure, because look at the superstars. | ||
| Whereas Muay Thai, there's... | ||
| There's no elite sort of place to go anymore. | ||
| The K1's dead. | ||
| Before it was K1, the K1 was the dream. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And now that's disappeared. | ||
| Well, there's glory. | ||
| Glory's amazing, but it's not what K1 was, if that makes sense. | ||
| Not yet, no. | ||
| And still, look at UFC. You look at the George St. Pierre's and the John Jones' lifestyles. | ||
| It's like, holy shit, that's a different league. | ||
| That's pretty cool. | ||
| Yeah, well, the world champions, that level is very different. | ||
| The Anderson Silvers, and they're rocking the sports cars, and they're amazing. | ||
| Well, you could look at it that way. | ||
| Yeah, I guess so. | ||
| I think that technique-wise, the kickboxing world is at a very high level, though. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| With the Muay Thai world, very, very high level. | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| Which is what was missing, like, when they were putting it on ESPN, which is too bad. | ||
| It's because it's like the... | ||
| If you watch Glory, like, the level of fighter is there. | ||
| It's a very high level of fighter, you know, but it's just... | ||
| People are just not aware of it yet. | ||
| Yeah, we need the media exposure. | ||
| Let's say... | ||
| For the Joe Shillings, for example, we need to go to his house and see what he is like a person instead of just seeing the bell ring, have his fight, put his hand up, and then he disappears. | ||
| Whereas the UFC, I know everything about George St. Pierre without even meeting him. | ||
| I know everything about John Jones without meeting him. | ||
| I know everyone. | ||
| And then when they fight, I feel I have that emotional connection. | ||
| And I really want to cheer for that guy because I feel like I'm emotionally involved. | ||
| Whereas the Glory guy is like, I can't tell you who's who and how many daughters he has or what kind of pets he has at home. | ||
| One of the things that I really love about just striking, I'm obviously a big fan of the MMA, but when you've got to think about takedowns and when you have to think about submissions and There's so many different things that a fighter has to consider. | ||
| They're not as open with their striking. | ||
| They don't have as many moments to just freely exchange without worried about being taken down. | ||
| When you watch real high-level Muay Thai, real high-level kickboxing, you get to see this next-level fluidity and this next-level technique. | ||
| You see it in boxing as well. | ||
| I've had conversations with people that say boxing is better. | ||
| You never see people land those combinations in the UFC. And I'm like, well, it's because they're going to take you down. | ||
| You can't stand sideways with your shoulders like that against a really good wrestler because they're just going to shoot in and take you down. | ||
| That style against someone, if you make that agreement, like it's only going to be stand-up, it's only going to be hands, you get to see the really high-level, the Manny Pacquiao's, the Floyd Mayweather's, you get to see this just next-level technique. | ||
| And I feel the same way with kickboxing. | ||
| I feel like with Muay Thai and with kickboxing, you don't get to see the real high-level stuff unless it's just two straight, pure strikers in a Muay Thai match. | ||
| When I got the opportunity to work with George, for instance, the first time that we sparred, I think George is so used to throwing one-twos, one-two-threes, and then I was literally chasing him from one side of the cage to the other, doing a U-turn and then going straight back at him again. | ||
| And then after the spar, he told me, it felt like I was sparring four guys at once because it was just relentless. | ||
| That's what I felt like today! | ||
| We were playing around today. | ||
| There was no pause. | ||
| There was just continuous. | ||
| Because there's no fear of being taken down. | ||
| So I can stand in the pocket and just keep punching and punching and punching and punching. | ||
| I've always equated it to like a conversation. | ||
| Like if you have a very crude grasp of the language and you try to have a conversation with someone, it can be very frustrating because you're searching for the words. | ||
| You don't know exactly what to say. | ||
| You're trying to figure out what that person's saying. | ||
| But if you're like you or me who speak English very fluently, you and I could have a conversation. | ||
| We could be rattling back and forth. | ||
| Well, you're that way with striking. | ||
| You could tell like striking is like a part of your body's language. | ||
| So it's so normal to you. | ||
| You're so used to it that the combinations just flow like water. | ||
| Whereas, like, you were trying to teach me some things today about the really unique style that you have of, like, when you were trying to teach me that crazy power jab and then the setups to those knees. | ||
| Like, you have a very specific way of moving that I was trying to emulate. | ||
| But to you... | ||
| This is ingrained in your nervous system. | ||
| For you, it just flows out of you, you know? | ||
| Yeah, I've spent my lifetime... | ||
| That's why I can't go to MMA, because I've spent my whole life learning stand-up, and I'm in fear that I have to spend another lifetime on my back if I want to reach the same sort of level. | ||
| And I wouldn't do it unless I had that perfection on the floor, too. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| It's 10 years. | ||
| At least... | ||
| Yeah, 10 years of jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I've invested 20-25 years of stand-up striking alone and I don't have any other hobbies. | ||
| This is my life. | ||
| All I do is go to the gym and come home and then what do you do for fun? | ||
| Well, that is my fun. | ||
| I don't have to do anything else. | ||
| I don't surf, I don't ride motorbikes, I don't do anything besides watch UFC and train myself. | ||
| It's my life and I love it and I wouldn't change it for nothing either. | ||
| Do you have any desire to train Jiu Jitsu just for fun? | ||
| Just for a goof? | ||
| No. | ||
| That's why I come up with the cage Muay Thai idea. | ||
| Because I want to fight in the cage and I want to experience the little gloves. | ||
| But I didn't want to learn the ground because as much as I respect it, I'm not good at it. | ||
| And I want to be at a high level. | ||
| So we do promotions in Australia already between me and my wife. | ||
| I said, well, instead of hiring a ring, why don't we just hire a cage? | ||
| So I studied a little bit on the YouTube, and I'd seen it done before, and they wore boxing gloves. | ||
| And I thought, well, how am I going to get the respect from the MMA crowd if I wear boxing gloves, and they wear little gloves? | ||
| I'm going to look like a pussy. | ||
| So I thought, well, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it properly and I'm going to wear the MMA gloves just to show that I'm just as a warrior as the MMA guys are. | ||
| So, so far, we've done five shows and it's amazing. | ||
| That's interesting that you say that because I can't imagine you would have to feel like you, at this stage of your life, with all your accomplishments, that you still feel like you have to prove yourself. | ||
| Oh, every time. | ||
| I still don't believe I'm there yet. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| That's actually hilarious. | ||
| I mean, do you ever look at your own resume? | ||
| Want to pull it up real quick? | ||
| Let's pull it up real quick. | ||
| I'll just let you know what you've done, just so you feel better. | ||
| I'm quite content where I'm at, but it always feels like I want to be more famous, if that's a word. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| Well, it definitely makes sense. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| I mean, all high-level athletes will tell you that. | ||
| They're never satisfied. | ||
| And I guess when you see guys fighting with striking with little gloves and you see that you're using the larger gloves, maybe that just makes you feel like you have to show that you're capable of doing that as well. | ||
| Yeah, I have the highest... | ||
| Because, like I said before, every weekend I'm investing in the pay-per-view on UFC. I'm watching the reruns. | ||
| I can tell you... | ||
| Like last night for instance, who was fighting two years ago? | ||
| Who won that fight out of such and such? | ||
| I'm so involved. | ||
| It's sort of taken over my life, the UFC. Even though I'm a Muay Thai guy, the UFC is sort of such a big part of me now. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard to explain. | ||
| When you read off your titles, it's almost ridiculous. | ||
| This is hilarious. | ||
| WKA world middleweight title. | ||
| WKBF K1 middleweight world champion. | ||
| WKA Thai boxing world middleweight championship. | ||
| WKN Thai boxing world super welterweight champion. | ||
| International kickboxing magazine champion. | ||
| WMC contender Asia runner-up. | ||
| WMC Thai boxing middleweight world champion. | ||
| K1 math. | ||
| This is hilarious. | ||
| K1 Max, World Final 8, WKBA, K1 World Welterweight Champion, K1 World Max, World Final 8, Thai Boxing World Middleweight Tournament Champion. | ||
| It just goes on and on and on. | ||
| Australian Boxing Middleweight Champion, King's Cup Tournament Champion. | ||
| It's like over and over and over and over and over the fact that after all these accomplishments, You still feel like you have to prove yourself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like I said, with the UFC, I see the Georges and the Jon Joneses and it's like, why can't I be that guy? | ||
| I want to be that guy. | ||
| You mean that guy, meaning getting the respect or getting the adulation or getting the focus on you that these guys are getting? | ||
| Yeah, that's what I appreciate. | ||
| It's it's crazy because if you watch it I've always said this it's not like the product isn't there I'll give you watch high-level Muay Thai and I watched a lot of your fights last night after we did the podcast together I went back and this morning I watched the documentary on your life, which was amazing and I watched some of your fights and You know, the product is there. | ||
| That's what's crazy. | ||
| It's like, it's a dynamic, exciting product. | ||
| I'm a boxing fan, but if you give me a chance between watching, a choice rather, between watching high-level boxing and watching high-level Muay Thai, I'll take high-level Muay Thai all the time, because the possibilities are more. | ||
| The knees, the elbows, the high kicks, the leg kicks, all those things together, it's more dynamic. | ||
| There's more things going on. | ||
| There's no reason why people shouldn't know about who you are. | ||
| I mean, it's weird. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| My popularity on the social media didn't explode until I started training George. | ||
| And then everyone started, oh, hang on a second, who's this bloke? | ||
| Why is he teaching George? | ||
| And then from there, it started to open up avenues. | ||
| But before that, I was just, yeah, I don't know. | ||
| The exposure's not there, I guess. | ||
| There's no opportunities there. | ||
| It's exactly where the UFC was at one point in time. | ||
| There was a time in the 90s when the UFC was banned from cable, when the UFC was only, you could only get it on direct TV. And fucking nobody knew who it was. | ||
| I mean, I was on news radio, which was a sitcom in America, and I was starting to do the interviews, the post-fight interviews. | ||
| I would tell them that I would do it and people would look at me like I'm ruining my life by being involved in this nefarious Adventure to go and watch people fight in a cage like I was gonna go watch Lions fight to the death or something. | ||
| It was just it was weird It was like like you were talking about porn or even worse than porn. | ||
| It was like animal porn or something It was strange, but now it's a normal like you tell people the UFC Oh, I've seen that even if the casual person is aware of it's it's Gotten into the public's eye enough where the casual person is, you know, it's a part of the zeitgeist. | ||
| Muay Thai's not. | ||
| I had the opportunity to fight in Thailand, and it was an eight-man tournament. | ||
| I had to fight three times in two hours, and it was live on Thai TV, and it smashes build up, and I fought three times, and I beat the Russian, the French, I beat a Thai in the final. | ||
| I won a world title, a million baht, which is about 35,000, and I won a trophy from the Prime Minister of Thailand. | ||
| I got back to Australia, and I rang the Brisbane newspaper. | ||
| There's a big newspaper in Brisbane. | ||
| And then they've come around, and then I said, I've just won this. | ||
| I've won this trophy from the Prime Minister. | ||
| And the lady on the other end said, well, it sounds like you're exaggerating all this. | ||
| Why don't you just try your local newspaper? | ||
| And hung up on me before I even got a chance to say goodbye. | ||
| She was like, we only deal in football and cricket here in Australia, because it's not a mainstream sport. | ||
| Yeah, just try your local paper. | ||
| Hopefully they'll do something for you. | ||
| That's hilarious that cricket is a mainstream sport, but Muay Thai is not. | ||
| Welcome to Australia. | ||
| I don't mean to be rude if you're a cricket fan, because I like a lot of stupid shit. | ||
| I'm aware. | ||
| I'm a big fan of professional pool. | ||
| I like watching billiards. | ||
| You know, people go, you really, you know, you're not even playing it, you watch it? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I watch stupid shit, but cricket. | ||
| Australia, we play India probably once a week, every week, and it makes the back page, the front page, the 6 to 30 news. | ||
| It's the main story every single day. | ||
| Such and such is the bowler. | ||
| Michael Clarke's got a sore leg. | ||
| And then, oh, let's interview Michael Clarke. | ||
| Oh, let's interview the NFL. And then one game lasts four days. | ||
| A cricket game lasts four days? | ||
| How many hours do they play for? | ||
| All day. | ||
| They rock up in the morning and they go and if they're not out they just keep going and going and going. | ||
| It's tedious. | ||
| What? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I know how to fix it. | ||
| Incorporate Muay Thai and cricket. | ||
| So, like, if you strike out, you just fucking duke it out. | ||
| Take off that stupid fencing helmet you wear. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| Well, so is baseball. | ||
| Baseball's kind of silly, too, and it's our national pastime. | ||
| But when you start using that paddle, you know, like that fucking boat oar that they smack that ball with, I just... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| But then the guys in the suits, the politicians in Australia too, the cage is still illegal in Melbourne. | ||
| They've just banned it in Perth in Western Australia. | ||
| They just banned it now? | ||
| Yeah, about a year ago. | ||
| It was okay, and then they've just come around and they've banned it. | ||
| I have a cage in my gym, and it's like, just step into a cage to realize how safe and protected it is compared to a ring. | ||
| Once you step into it and appreciate what it is for what it is, You'll understand that it's so much better than falling out of a ring that's a meter and a half high. | ||
| Yeah, the ring is not the best for MMA, for sure. | ||
| But I think for striking, it's good. | ||
| Even in Muay Thai. | ||
| Muay Thai, I think so, as well? | ||
| Because of the clinching and the throws and all that stuff? | ||
| I've seen more people fall out of a ring than a... | ||
| Well, never at a cage, of course. | ||
| But yeah, there's guys falling out all the time. | ||
| Well, Dylan, last time you were here... | ||
| He's not on camera right now. | ||
| Hey, Dylan. | ||
| What's up, buddy? | ||
| I don't know if he'll turn that on. | ||
| Dylan Reznikoff. | ||
| I said that right, right? | ||
| I said it right? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right. | |
| He's here with his brother Liam a while back, what was it, like a year ago? | ||
| You guys are here about a year ago? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, about a year ago now. | |
| About a year ago? | ||
| You guys showed a video of this dude who, he was like running and attacking and he went flying out of the ring, right? | ||
| Denver's Rainbow. | ||
|
unidentified
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Was it? | |
| Yeah, at Lumpini. | ||
| It was you guys that showed that video, right? | ||
| Wasn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Maybe. | |
| So as he's fallen out of the ring, he puts his hands out, the brace he's for, he puts a hand on a chair, and each hand, the chair's split, and it falls straight on his neck. | ||
| I think he was in a coma for like a month or two. | ||
| Because he fell from about two metres high. | ||
| He fell over the top rope, so incorporate that from the ring to the concrete floor. | ||
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unidentified
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Do you remember back in the day, they used to run events because the cage was banned in New South Wales. | |
| Oh, you're in Queensland, sorry. | ||
| And I think it was Tony Bonello's show. | ||
| And then they used to have not had a cage. | ||
| So what they did is they had the platform and they had all the big boys like Tama Tahuna and Jamie Tahuna and all those boys standing around with the kick shields. | ||
| Oh, the catch guys. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, and guys were getting like dropped and the heads were hit in the side and it was massive. | |
| Madness. | ||
| In pride. | ||
| They used to physically push guys back in. | ||
| And I think it was Paul Ophelio once caught some guy in a triangle through the ropes. | ||
| The guy was somehow or another trapped in the rope. | ||
| There was a limb out of the rope and a limb in the rope. | ||
| So the rope of the triangle was involved in the triangle. | ||
| I mean, the rope of the ring, rather, was involved in him securing the triangle. | ||
| It was like, the guy was, like, tangled in it. | ||
| Like, that's not good. | ||
| That stop, start, stop, start, drag you back in the center, and hang on, your arm was here, this is, and go. | ||
| I've been talking about this for a while, that if they can have a big room for basketball, a big flat surface, why can't they have a big flat surface for fighting, where everyone can see what the fuck's going on? | ||
| Because you don't see what's going on a lot of times with the cage, even me. | ||
| Like, I'm right there when I'm calling UFC fights, but sometimes a post is in the way, or it's around, they're like sideways, like I have to lean up to try to see, because it's kind of like I'm looking sideways through the cage. | ||
| I think that a flat surface would eliminate a lot of the stalling and a lot of the pressing, the clenching up against the cage. | ||
| Clenching in the center is a totally different animal than when you're leaning on someone, pressing someone against the cage. | ||
| It takes out a large factor. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| What do you think about that? | ||
| Do you think that's possible? | ||
| I reckon that's fantastic. | ||
| You wouldn't be able to cage walk either with your shoulders in the center of your head. | ||
| You get taken down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You've got to fight for it. | ||
| You've got to actually fight for it. | ||
| Or learn how to fight off your back. | ||
| It'd be hard. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, there's guys that are really dangerous. | ||
| Like, Charles Oliveira is one of the best in the UFC at fighting off his back. | ||
| You saw his last fight with Jeremy Stevens. | ||
| I don't know if you're aware of him, but he's got a vicious guard. | ||
| His guard is attacking all the time. | ||
| So when you take that guy down, it's no fucking picnic. | ||
| You know, he's constantly threatening your arm, your neck. | ||
| And those guys are gonna excel in a world where you can't just, you know, you can't just hold a guy against a cage, or if you take a guy down, he can't just wall walk. | ||
| A guy's gonna have to fight off of his back. | ||
| I feel like that's more honest, you know? | ||
| I mean, the cage is a real element of MMA, and guys train for it, and therefore you should be able to utilize it. | ||
| If you're a professional, you should understand it. | ||
| But it also puts a weird taste in people's mouths, like, oh, they're fighting in cages. | ||
| They're animals. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
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unidentified
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You like it? | |
| I love it. | ||
|
unidentified
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I love it. | |
| You're a madman. | ||
| Even for what we do with the CMT, the cage stuff, as soon as they close the door, it just seems like it's you and your opponent and the black of the fence just makes it like a black wall so you can't see the crowd, you can't see the judges, and then it just feels like the arena. | ||
| It's just you and him. | ||
| Yeah, that is cool. | ||
| That aspect of it, too. | ||
| But I just feel like visually, as far as being able to see, it's not the best. | ||
| Ring is better to see, right? | ||
| 120 fights, or 115 fights in a ring, and then in the cage, it just feels like it's all new again. | ||
| It's all fresh. | ||
| It's all exciting. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| That's why I love it. | ||
| So just changing the environment made it all totally different for you. | ||
| And a little girl. | ||
| Little gloves. | ||
| Little gloves make it more real. | ||
| Did you ever do kickboxing where there's no elbows like glory style, no elbows, no knees, no clinch? | ||
| I fought K1 for a couple years in Japan and then when I first started out was an amateur of course and I just started babies and baby steps. | ||
| I did the eight count rule back in the day. | ||
| We had to do eight kicks above the waist. | ||
| Oh, the PKA stuff? | ||
| PKA, we did that in Australia. | ||
| You did that with no leg kicks? | ||
| Only once. | ||
| There was leg kicks involved, but the leg kicks didn't score. | ||
| They had to be above the waist to get the count. | ||
| Oh really? | ||
| They didn't want boxing to... | ||
| There were so many guys that were doing karate that changed over the kickboxing, boxing that changed over the kickboxing, so they wanted to eliminate the hands and make more guys kick more. | ||
| So it had to be at least eight kicks above the waist. | ||
| But you still have a leg kick. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So you could still debilitate a guy and it wouldn't count point-wise? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's kind of crazy. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, Australia. | ||
| So, what is the rule of glory? | ||
| Like, they let you throw knees, but you can't clinch when you throw a knee? | ||
| K1 had it for you, you could only clinch with one hand for a while. | ||
| Yeah, 2004, as long as you were busy in the clinch, they'd let it go. | ||
| And then Borkow came along and just dominated everybody. | ||
| He was throwing them around like ragdolls. | ||
| He busted up Masato. | ||
| Yeah, I remember Masato. | ||
| And then, so the very next year, they said, okay, we've got a new rule, one hand, one knee, and then that gives the guys that are proper, more boxing-orientated, an opportunity to fight guys like Borcal, where they had no chance before. | ||
| Well, Alistair Overeem, too, used to just clinch guys with those gigantic fucking tree-trunk arms. | ||
| Just hold on to your neck, and you're Dunsville. | ||
| You just blast those knees into you. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You ever seen that fight that he fought, I forget who it was, Teixeira, where he hit him, he clenched with both hands behind the neck and hit him with a knee and it looked like he got shot, like someone hit him with a sniper bullet. | ||
|
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Boom! | |
| He just goes down. | ||
| That clinch, though, is such an effective weapon. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense to me to eliminate that. | ||
| When I see it being eliminated in kickboxing or making guys use one hand or something like that, it's so foolish. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense to me. | ||
| It's like you're eliminating a really exciting aspect and a crucial aspect of the art of Muay Thai. | ||
| Yeah, the ties are so efficient and they're so good and so powerful. | ||
| And you can see the shots and you can hear the noise. | ||
| But when Westerners get into the clinch, it's sort of like two dogs that are trying to make puppies. | ||
|
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It's not quite as good. | |
| They're just hopping each other. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| The referee gets a bucket of water. | ||
| Get off each other. | ||
| Two male dogs? | ||
| That's why I limit it, because the Westerners aren't very good at the tires. | ||
| They get airborne as they're throwing knee for knee. | ||
| They made it more entertaining for the crowd, I guess. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know, man. | ||
| I think even the crowd... | ||
| That's one of the things that drives me nuts about modern MMA is stand-ups when when guys get taken down and they're fighting on the ground and then they get stood back up I mean, I just I just think it's ridiculous like if you only have five minutes especially me coming from a jujitsu background if you have five minutes and you take a guy down It's a lot of times is a slow progression to a submission and you know you you can't be like you're like come on guys Let's work. | ||
| Let's work like they're fucking working. | ||
| Okay, but sometimes when guys are working, it's a stalemate and Like sometimes you're trying to pass the guys trying to stop you from passing you try to advance the other side the guy tries to stop you from the other side like there's there's a lot of shit going on there's a lot of shit going on and Unexperienced referees or referees that are unexperienced in grappling or referees that are easily influenced by the crowd like sometimes they'll hear booing and you know you just What are you gonna is this show for assholes? | ||
| You know people who don't understand fighting you? | ||
| Stand him up! | ||
| Okay, stand him up. | ||
| No, these guys are trying to fight. | ||
| Elite XC was the worst example of that. | ||
| Big Country, Roy Nelson had Andrey Arlovsky down, inside control, working at Kimura, and they stood him up. | ||
| It was fucking ridiculous. | ||
| They had like a 15-second thing, where if you went to the ground, if something didn't happen in 15 seconds, they stood you up. | ||
| Yeah, sometimes with the UFC as well, when they press against the cage and there's this stalemate where absolutely nothing's happening at all. | ||
| I think that's the same as the Muay Thai. | ||
| If you push someone against the ropes and you're holding, holding, and you're not throwing anything, alright, then you've got to do it. | ||
| But if they're busy, for sure, let it go, keep it going. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I just don't think you ever see that with high-level guys. | ||
| I think that's just a part of being a fighter who's not that good. | ||
| Or a fighter who's learning. | ||
| You see a guy like Cain Velasquez. | ||
| Cain Velasquez never gets warned to keep moving. | ||
| He's fucking punching you in the face. | ||
| He's taking you down. | ||
| It's like he's constantly in motion. | ||
| And that's why he's one of the elite of the elite. | ||
| You don't see that stalling, that kind of stalling on high-level guys. | ||
| I just think you've got to let them fight. | ||
| It's ridiculous enough. | ||
| Like five minutes is a small amount of time for a grappler. | ||
| And sometimes guys just are trying to work techniques and they're getting stalled out or someone's using good defense and the referee just standing them up. | ||
| Like, that's what jujitsu is all about. | ||
| It's all about the guy defends, and you try a different way. | ||
| Dai defends, you need to try to keep hammering at him until he can't keep the rhythm up. | ||
| And then you advance, and then eventually you catch him. | ||
| But sometimes you'll be, a guy will be defending like a wizard. | ||
| Like, if you watch two guys roll, two high-level guys, like, it is like we were expressing before. | ||
| It's like a conversation. | ||
| They're arguing about shit, and they're trying to find holes in each other's game, and it'll go on where it looks like it's a stalemate for five minutes, but... | ||
| Save like it's like a Marcelo Garcia character He's fighting a guy who's really athletic and you think you go man is how long can this guy hold Marcelo off and that's really what the question is It's not a matter of all this guy's just as good as Marcelo not really no Eventually he's gonna figure out the right combination of things to do to this guy And he's gonna have his back and then once he has his back that guy's fucked But it's like how long does it take to get him there and in an MMA? Halfway there, you're like, boo! | ||
|
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Stand him up! | |
| Stand him up! | ||
| Well, you're never going to see the most high-level practitioner succeed if that's the tactic. | ||
| You know, you're never going to see it get to that point. | ||
| And I think that's unfortunate about MMA today, is that They still have that stand-up thing. | ||
| I think stand-ups are... | ||
| I think it's a travesty. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Even in Thailand, say we kick three rounds on the pads or five rounds on the pads, that's 15, 20 minutes. | ||
| But then every afternoon you're spending half an hour on the clinch, just working the knees nonstop for half an hour. | ||
| So they're spending more time working on that than they are actually kicking and punching things. | ||
| And then when it's time to come to a... | ||
| when the Thais go to Europe and stuff, all of a sudden it's like a... | ||
| A one-knee combination before they break it up, so they're taking away 90% of their tools. | ||
| That's an interesting thing you were talking about last night about Muay Thai scoring, that the clinching is like a big part of the scoring, whereas we look at clinching as stalling out or like, you know, something that they're doing where they're trying to like wait, buy their time, figure out what to do next. | ||
| Like in Thailand, it's a big aspect of the fighting. | ||
| Yeah, this morning we mentioned it as well. | ||
| Round one, if they don't get in the clinch, no one bets. | ||
| No one bets until halfway through round two, all of a sudden they get into a clinch, and then it's like, boom! | ||
| You see the hands go crazy, because everyone's their own bookmaker in Thailand, so everyone's doing their own odds, and they won't bet until they know the other guy's got a solid base or a solid knee game. | ||
| That's so wild. | ||
| That's so wild. | ||
| The difference in their culture is so amazing. | ||
| I really have to get over there. | ||
| One of the things I want to do on my bucket list is go and watch a stadium fight in Thailand, like a real high-level fight. | ||
| Be there for the whole night and check it. | ||
| I'm almost willing to take a family vacation to Thailand and talk my wife into going to Thailand. | ||
| That's probably a fucking terrible idea. | ||
| So the boxing hardly score, leg kicks don't score, mainly body kicks, knees and elbows. | ||
| Body kicks, knees and elbows, and leg kicks don't hardly score? | ||
| Leg kicks don't score. | ||
| Because it's so easy to throw a leg kick, anyone can throw a leg kick, but it takes a high level to land a solid, even if it kicks the arms, that's considered a point as well. | ||
|
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Really? | |
| If you get kicked in the arms without attempting to try and block it, that's a free point. | ||
| How many guys get arms broken in Thailand? | ||
| I haven't seen many, no. | ||
|
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That's amazing, because it's really common in MMA. I've seen a guy get his thigh broke. | |
| That was pretty crazy. | ||
|
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Whoa. | |
| That was hectic. | ||
| I've seen he hit the ground, and then he was on his side, and he went to roll over, and his hip went first, and then his leg went second. | ||
| And I was like, oh, that's broken for sure. | ||
| And the next day, sure enough, completely snapped in half, had to get the pins. | ||
| It was all in the magazines. | ||
| It was very nasty. | ||
| Not only that, you have to get the pins in Thailand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thailand's really good. | ||
| Thailand, the hospitals are more hygienic than they are in Australia. | ||
| Oh, well, that's not good for Australia. | ||
| I'd eat off the floor at a hospital in Thailand, for sure. | ||
| Really? | ||
| So they have really good... | ||
| I'm just being prejudiced. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
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Fucking American asshole. | |
| American asshole that I am. | ||
| So what did he get his leg broken with? | ||
|
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It was a kick? | |
| Viking. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, the guy just, boom, just chopped it hard. | ||
| Goddamn, man. | ||
| Yeah, just snapped. | ||
| It was very... | ||
| Do you remember Stan Longinitas versus Dennis Alexio? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was the big hype in Australia. | ||
| That was massive. | ||
| Fuck, yeah, man. | ||
| In the last 15 seconds. | ||
| Stan the man. | ||
| He had a motherfucker of a leg kick. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| He used to work with my friend Shuki. | ||
| Shuki from Majiro Gym. | ||
| Shuki was from Israel, and he had a gym out here in Encino. | ||
| And he was set up for a hip replacement from fucking holding the pads from Stan Longinitas. | ||
| Holding that thigh pad, he said, that motherfucker would kick me so hard that it was like jolting his hips. | ||
| It fucked up the inside of his hip. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ow. | ||
| Fuck heavyweights kicking you, dude. | ||
| Fuck all that. | ||
| Stan, he's a big guy, right? | ||
| He's not very tall. | ||
| He's only about my height, but big boy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then that was his main weapon, was the leg kicks with the hands. | ||
| That was a first-round kick, too. | ||
| I mean, that was amazing. | ||
| That was amazing. | ||
| Snap a guy's femur with one leg kick. | ||
| The whole hype and the movie Kickboxing coming out, and then Dennis Alexio, he was the king back then, too. | ||
| Yeah, he was. | ||
| This was Stan's hardest fight, and the big lead-up, and then the sold-out arena. | ||
| And then Dennis Alexio came out in the grass skirt. | ||
| Yeah, that Hawaii thing, yeah. | ||
| He was thinking that was going to help the impact for the thigh kick, so it had a bit of cushioning, but it sort of reversed on him. | ||
| Because he checked it. | ||
| It was a check kick. | ||
| He checked it, and then he went to put his foot down. | ||
| That's when his shin snapped. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It was his shin? | ||
|
unidentified
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It wasn't his thigh? | |
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| It snapped through both his shin bones. | ||
| Goddamn! | ||
| Wow! | ||
| Why did I think it was the thigh bone? | ||
| It was so long ago. | ||
| They did a story on it because as he put his check up, he put his instep of his foot on his knee so there was no give instead of having the leg floppy and then he's locked it into his other leg and then as he's kicked through it, it's like kicking through a baseball bat. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| They've done Anderson Silva. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| It's rare that you see it on two high-level guys like that, where you see a leg break like that. | ||
| Maybe protein, injectable protein. | ||
|
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Injectable protein? | |
| I don't think you really mean protein. | ||
| I think you're using euphemisms. | ||
| Did you see his fight, Dennis Alexio's fight with Don Wilson? | ||
| That's when he got schooled on leg kicks. | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| Did you ever see that? | ||
| No. | ||
| Dude, back on the day when Dennis Alexio was a young man, he wasn't schooled in the ways of the low kick and he fought Don the Dragon Wilson and Don Wilson fucked him up with low kicks. | ||
| Defense and low kicks. | ||
| There's a guy that doesn't get enough credit. | ||
| Don Wilson had sort of like a weird sort of karate style, but he knew how to throw a good low kick. | ||
| You know, he was a very crafty fighter. | ||
| Yep, yep. | ||
| Geez, we're going back in time now. | ||
| Oh, fuck yeah. | ||
| Now we're in the 80s, I think. | ||
| And then you go before then, you go to, you know, you've got to go to what we talked about earlier, Dennis... | ||
| Superfoot. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But there were some, I mean, not just Dennis Legsko, you go Don Wilson, then you go Benny Orquidez. | ||
| Benny Orquidez was the fucking shit. | ||
| I trained at his gym when I first moved to LA. That was the first place I went to. | ||
| I was like, I'm going to the Jet Center. | ||
| I wanted to wear long pants so bad after watching all this stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What about the foot things? | ||
| Did you want to wear the foot cushions? | ||
| My first fight was the shin pads with the foot cushions. | ||
| And we used to spar with the foot cushions too, so they were in back then. | ||
| When Chuck Norris had that World Combat League, and he was doing a very similar thing that we were talking about, where they fight kind of in a small bowl, like a saucer. | ||
| Like, they didn't have a ring and they didn't have a cage. | ||
| They had just this sort of slightly elevated platform that had a lip to it. | ||
| So when they get to the outside edge, you know, the referee would bring them back in. | ||
| I thought it was a very smart way to do it. | ||
| Did you think about fighting in that at all? | ||
| Oh, I was still a puppy. | ||
| That was only a few years ago. | ||
| Yeah, I'm only... | ||
|
unidentified
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You're only 20. You're 38 now, right? | |
| 38. Yeah, we can tell people. | ||
| You're not a chick. | ||
| But that wasn't that long ago. | ||
| You had to be like 30 back then. | ||
| That was a while ago. | ||
| I don't think it was 10 years ago. | ||
| I think World Combat League was like, I want to say it was like, I know I was working for the UFC at the time. | ||
| Because I went to see one live. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And I got a hug from Chuck motherfucking Norris. | ||
|
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Damn it. | |
| Back in the day I was so mad that I didn't get a picture of it. | ||
| And you lived. | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
| I did. | ||
| I lived. | ||
| I felt different though. | ||
| It was like I touched a lightning bolt. | ||
| And you got pregnant. | ||
| I might have. | ||
| So you didn't think about fighting? | ||
| K1 was the dream. | ||
| K1 was the pinnacle. | ||
| The pinnacle, if you'd say. | ||
| That was a bummer that that kind of folded under. | ||
| I was trying to get the UFC to buy K1 a long time ago. | ||
| And the number one thing that I talked to Dana White about is like, ah, people don't like kickboxing. | ||
| That PK karate ruined it for everybody. | ||
| And I was like, that's so crazy to say that, because that's like saying that UFC 1 ruined it for what we're seeing today. | ||
| Because this is so not related. | ||
| The product itself, the kickboxing product itself is so high level. | ||
| When you go to... | ||
| The fights, the classics, the Peter Ertz fights, the Andy Hoog, the Mike Bernardo, those fights, those fucking Jerome LeBanner, those were crazy fights. | ||
| I mean, if you look at that product, I couldn't imagine anybody not wanting to put on those fights. | ||
| Yeah, the production level too. | ||
| Everything was high definition, the slow-mos, the highlight packages that make up, you couldn't help but feel like this was the I was lucky enough to fight there in 2004, 2005, and we were pulling 40,000 people every show. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| 40,000 people! | ||
| Yeah, and you'd walk out to the arena, and then you'd check out the stage, and sometimes you'd come up through the floor for your walkout, or it was just unbelievable. | ||
| Oh, they had like some elevator that would make you rise up through the floor? | ||
| I remember in the back room once, I was trying to find the stairs, and I've asked a lady, where do I go? | ||
| And she goes, oh, stand on that thing. | ||
| It's like, no way. | ||
| And she goes, oh yes. | ||
| It's like, fuck yes. | ||
| And then I remember coming up through the floor and then all of a sudden there's 40,000 people right in front of you. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's like, this is amazing. | |
| And then we had a TV audience of 20 million people in Tokyo also. | ||
| So it would be a delayed broadcast by about an hour. | ||
| So by the time we finished our fight and then on the bus, we'd have a TV on the bus. | ||
| You could watch yourself. | ||
| Pretty much watch your fight as you're way back on the way to the hotel. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| But Thailand was pretty cool too. | ||
| Thailand would have crowds. | ||
| Song Chai, who I was fighting for, he'd make all his money from the TV production. | ||
| So he'd do live shows in the middle of nowhere. | ||
| And people would drive for hours to be present for a live event. | ||
| And we'd have 40,000, 60,000. | ||
| There's this one big event once a year called the King's Birthday. | ||
| And we get 100,000 people plus every year on the 5th of December. | ||
| Holy shit! | ||
| I was lucky to fight on that four years in a row. | ||
| So the first time I went on the ring, it was the first time that my knees went weak, because as far as I could see was an ocean of heads, and I started trembling, and then I've come out in the first round, I've tried to finish him, and then by the fifth round I sort of spit my pennies, I fell over a couple of times. | ||
| And losing on points. | ||
| And then the next year I got invited back and I said, oh no, I'm not going to get spooked out this time. | ||
| Like the UFC jitters, like you talk about all the time. | ||
| I had the jitters the first one. | ||
| The second time I was like, no, this time I'm going to love it. | ||
| I'm going to absorb it. | ||
| I'm going to run with it. | ||
| So I got out there, big breath and 100,000 people. | ||
| And then I had the greatest fight of my life. | ||
| There was 10 Westerners versus 10 ties and I was the only Westerner to win. | ||
| I'm getting high-fived from Ty's on the way back to the change room. | ||
| And then the last time I did it, there was probably only 95,000 people there. | ||
| Ah, a little tiny crowd. | ||
| And I was looking at the back going, ah, jeez, where is everyone? | ||
| This is sad. | ||
| Yeah, it was nuts. | ||
| You could tell the difference between 95,000 and 100,000? | ||
| There was a little spot near the hot dog stand where you could have fit another 5,000 people easy. | ||
|
unidentified
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What is that like, 100,000 people? | |
| And then sometimes you'd have to get a police escort. | ||
| So you'd have three policemen either side of you and they'd push people out of the way for you as you make your way towards the crowd. | ||
| Just to get through. | ||
| And you're the Westerner. | ||
| So imagine you're one of three or four Westerners that are on the show and you're just surrounded by Thai people. | ||
| And at that stage I couldn't really speak Thai very well either. | ||
| And they're just looking at you like some sort of freak that you're dead. | ||
| You're dead. | ||
| You're fighting one of us. | ||
| And then you go and beat one of them. | ||
| And then all of a sudden they're high-fiving you and shaking your hand and want a photo with you. | ||
| It's just amazing. | ||
| So you didn't experience much racism over there? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| If you go out there and fight as hard as you can, win, lose, or joy, even if you lose but you fight like you're a man possessed, they love you. | ||
| There's no hatred. | ||
| There's no... | ||
| As long as you show heart, it's all about heart in Thailand. | ||
| That's true with a lot of Asian countries, right? | ||
| That's the same as Japan. | ||
| Japan, the samurai spirit. | ||
| If you go out there and give it your all, and you go out in a stretcher, they prefer you go out in a stretcher than you lay down from a knee and say, oh, it hurts. | ||
| Well, that's one of the major complaints from a lot of fighters, like Rampage said that many times about the difference between fighting in Japan and fighting in America, is that in Japan, they appreciate effort. | ||
| They want you to fight your best. | ||
| And if you fight your best, sometimes you fight someone who's better than you and you lose and that's just the way of fighting and it's a way of learning and that's how guys get better. | ||
| That adversity from loss and going back and regrouping and watching films and realizing where you have to step your game up, that's what creates champions. | ||
| I mean that is what creates a real champion is you have to be able to fight people who are better than you or as good as you or it's got to be a really high level that you're aspiring to and along the way sometimes you lose but in Japan They treat the losers in those really high-level fights where it's just incredible action and heart. | ||
| They treat the losers the same way they treat the winners. | ||
| That doesn't happen in America. | ||
| In America, that's the number one complaint is that people look at you like, oh, you're a loser. | ||
| You lost. | ||
| You loser. | ||
| I find Muay Thai and MMA, well, UFC especially, the crowd, I think, is a lot better than boxing. | ||
| If you have one loss in boxing, you're done. | ||
| You can be 26-0, 24 knockouts, one loss. | ||
| Oh, he has been. | ||
| He should retire. | ||
| He's done. | ||
| And then if you have two losses in boxing, don't talk about it anymore. | ||
| You're out of there. | ||
| Especially KO losses. | ||
| KO losses. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But in MMA or in Muay Thai especially... | ||
| As long as you fight hard and you lose to a good guy, your crowd base is still going to be there next time around. | ||
| You're not going to lose anybody. | ||
| As long as you fight hard and if you get knocked out, going out in your shield, they're still going to be next time to support you. | ||
| Well, there's a few fighters that still have that kind of support just because they're so exciting. | ||
| Like Vanderlei Silva is a perfect example. | ||
| Vanderlei has been knocked out quite a few times, but he still has a gigantic following because there's no such thing as a boring Vanderlei Silva fight. | ||
| Every Vanderlei-Silva fight, it's like, ready, ready, chaos! | ||
| Are you ready? | ||
| Are you ready? | ||
| Fucking mad violence until that guy's last heartbeat. | ||
| I mean, every time he fights, he fights like a man possessed, which is why he has so many people that love him. | ||
| But a lot of guys, they felt like Quentin, Rampage especially, I hate to keep bringing him up, but he experienced a lot of hate after beating Chuck Liddell. | ||
| And he was like, I can't believe people are upset at me for being good. | ||
| Because I'd beat their hero. | ||
| All these people would say horrible shit to them. | ||
| I think in that sense, the United States crowds, there's something to be desired about some of the people that are excited about fighting. | ||
| MMA crowd. | ||
| I noticed with George, especially hanging with George, when we were training together, he put a few photos up. | ||
| I'd go to his page. | ||
| And I was astonished by the amount of hate that George has on his page. | ||
| He has like four million people that follow him and his Twitter. | ||
| And then all is, when you're going to finish a fight, George? | ||
| Or, if I need to go to sleep, I just put a George St. Pierre photo and I fall asleep halfway through the first round. | ||
| It's like, fuck, man. | ||
| This is one of the greatest fighters of all time. | ||
| How can you not appreciate him dominating someone for five rounds? | ||
| Why does he have to knock out someone every single time he fights? | ||
| Floyd doesn't knock out everybody, and he's the highest paid athlete in the world. | ||
| Why can't the same be for MMA guys? | ||
| If someone dominates someone, why can't you appreciate his skills instead of, oh, it has to be a knockout. | ||
| It has to be a knockout. | ||
| Oh, believe me, if you go and watch Floyd and see him interact with the public, that guy gets fucked with as much as anybody. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, they showed it on his 24-7, like one of his last, those HBO things for 24-7. | ||
| Like when he was out at a burger place, people were heckling him. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| They were heckling him at a cheeseburger place because the camera was on. | ||
| In his, in front of his, because he's a little guy. | ||
| It was like right in front of his face they were fucking with him. | ||
| Well, didn't he get punched by T.Y., didn't they? | ||
| Someone supposedly punched a brother. | ||
| You know, I have a hard time believing some stupid fucking rappers gonna punch Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| You know, and if he did, he knew that other people were there, you know? | ||
| Put those two, yeah, okay, you want to hit him? | ||
| Okay, how about we do this? | ||
| How about we lock the two of you in a conference room? | ||
| Let's just shut the door and see what the fuck's going on without your buddies in the room. | ||
| Getting punched by a rapper. | ||
| Could you imagine this indignity of being one of the greatest, if not the greatest, boxer of all time? | ||
| A lot of people give that guy shit. | ||
| I'd say he's not the greatest, that Sugar Ray Robinson is the greatest. | ||
| I had this conversation with Max Kellerman about it. | ||
| I respect Max Kellerman very much, but I don't think that Floyd Mayweather would have lost to Jake LaMotta. | ||
| What about Julio Chavez? | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| It was time. | ||
| 97-0 before his first loss. | ||
| But Meldrick Taylor has beaten him until he got tagged and I don't think Meldrick Taylor is the same boxer that Floyd Mayweather is. | ||
| I think Floyd Mayweather defensively is the best ever. | ||
| We've seen him get hit like three times in his whole career. | ||
| You know, Maidana cracked him in the last fight, but he only cracked him in like at the end of the round. | ||
| And you could see like he got rocked in that fight. | ||
| He got rocked by Shane Mosley, but he's just so good defensively. | ||
| He's so good. | ||
| He just never really experiences much danger in his fights, you know? | ||
| I mean, you go back to all the other greats and they were in wars. | ||
| He's never in a war. | ||
| He's just never in a war. | ||
| And you could talk all the shit you want, but look at the guys he's fighting. | ||
| You know, he's fighting Juan Manuel Marquez. | ||
| Look what happened with Juan Manuel Marquez and Pacquiao. | ||
| I mean, they're in a war and Marquez caught him and knocked him out. | ||
|
unidentified
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Dead! | |
| You know? | ||
| Good luck trying to catch Floyd like that. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| He's just never gonna make those kind of mistakes. | ||
| And one of the things that's so exciting about Pacquiao is that he throws himself into danger. | ||
| He's so aggressive and he's so fast and he's willing to... | ||
| He tries to finish fights. | ||
| He tries to put himself in the line of fire in order to achieve victory. | ||
| Floyd doesn't do that shit. | ||
| Floyd's shoulder rolling and popping you with jabs and moving on you. | ||
| You see guys like Canelo Alvarez just look so flustered. | ||
| They don't know what to do with him. | ||
| A lot of guys look like they're giving up halfway through the third round. | ||
| The first round, they're like, I'm gonna make a statement today. | ||
| No one's gonna be able to do what I'm gonna do. | ||
| And then by the third round, they just come out like beginners. | ||
| And they're too afraid to throw because Floyd's already a step ahead of him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If he had strong hands, if his hands didn't break all the time, you know, like Floyd, he's had quite a few, like, broken hands. | ||
| He's had a serious problem with hand breaks. | ||
| If he didn't have that man, god damn, you know, if he had punching power as well as that insane defensive technique, he's, in my opinion, he's the most masterful of all the boxers I've ever watched. | ||
| Bernard Hopkins, right up there. | ||
| Andre Ward is another one. | ||
| He doesn't get enough credit. | ||
| Like, a lot of Americans, for whatever reason, are not aware of how good Andre Ward is. | ||
| But goddamn, he's a good boxer. | ||
| Another one, just brilliant defensively. | ||
| Very rarely see him in trouble. | ||
| And he's so different, too, because Andre Ward fights different styles for different fighters. | ||
| Like, some fighters, he'll fight on the outside, he'll fight long range, and he'll box them. | ||
| And then on other fighters, he just fucking gets right up in your grill and he's throwing these combinations and cutting angles on you and never letting you breathe. | ||
| He's very versatile. | ||
| Very smart too, man. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I miss the 90s. | ||
| I miss the boxing in the 90s. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| I miss the Oscar de la Hoye's, the Shane Mosley's, the... | ||
| Back in them days when men fought men, it was... | ||
|
unidentified
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Men fought men? | |
| Yeah, it was crazy. | ||
| What are they doing now? | ||
| What's going on now? | ||
| They're sort of, I don't want to fight you because you might beat me, or I got that zero that might disappear if you beat me, so I don't want that happening. | ||
| Do you think a guy like Floyd Mayweather, because he's 47-0, that it contributes to that because he makes so much fucking money? | ||
| Him being 47-0, I mean, that guy, the money team, and rolls around and Rolls Royce, does that drive you crazy? | ||
| Why hasn't it taken it so long for Mr. Pacquiao to get this fight to be done in this five-year-old fight that should have been done ages ago? | ||
| Well, probably because Floyd is smart, which is why he's 47-0, and he wants to fight him when he knows he can beat him. | ||
| Yeah, true. | ||
| And make $120 million. | ||
| I mean, that's what's up. | ||
| I mean, what's up at the end of the day? | ||
| Look, if they fought in their primes, and I'm not saying Pacquiao... | ||
| Let's be real about this. | ||
| Let's be totally real about this. | ||
| Pacquiao went up eight weight classes and retained his punching power. | ||
| And there was always all sorts of allegations of special proteins that came in needle form. | ||
| Mexican supplements, if you were. | ||
| I don't know what the fuck was going on, but that's one of the things that Floyd always was saying, and a lot of other fighters have said it too. | ||
| I don't know if it's true, but if it is true, and Floyd wasn't doing those same things, and they did fight and Pacquiao did have that unnatural advantage, you know, a few years ago, like back when he fought Margarito or, you know, back before Marquez knocked him out. | ||
| You gotta wonder like maybe it's intelligent to not fight a guy like that at that time If you know something that that you and I and the regular people that aren't involved in the deep deep in the boxing world Maybe smart might be smart. | ||
| Just you know, nobody wants to see a guy cheat his way to victory That's like that's something that drives everyone crazy. | ||
| There's no doubt about There's no doubt in the fact that Pacquiao works hard. | ||
| I mean, Pacquiao's discipline, he's focused, he's an amazing fighter. | ||
| I mean, no doubt about it. | ||
| But, man, there's a lot of fucking allegations connected to his camp. | ||
| That Alex Ariza guy, the guy that left and was, who the fuck was he training with? | ||
| He was training with one of Pacquiao's opponents. | ||
| I forgot which fight it was, but that guy's got a lot of weird shit attached to him. | ||
| There's a lot of these guys that have a lot of weird allegations that may or may not be true, but if you're smart and you're a guy like Floyd Mayweather, why not avoid those guys? | ||
| And that's something that we were talking about earlier today because George, when he was talking about, when he left the UFC, And when he said, I'm gonna take a break and I'm gonna relinquish my title, one of the things that he talked about was the problem with PEDs. | ||
| He talked, he said, this is a huge problem in MMA. And a lot of people poo-pooed him. | ||
| We don't need to name names. | ||
| A lot of people said that, oh, he's exaggerating. | ||
| But now, man, it's now with these more stringent tests that are being performed, fucking Anderson Silva pisses hot. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I mean, everybody, look, Hector Lombard, who saw that coming? | ||
| Who saw? | ||
| I can't believe Hector Lombard. | ||
| That doesn't make any sense. | ||
| He doesn't look like a guy who was on supplements. | ||
| But, you know, it's a part. | ||
| It's a part of the sport. | ||
| It's very unfortunate. | ||
| In Thailand, if we wanted a pick-me-up, the only thing we would get from the chemist was a ginseng. | ||
| Ginseng? | ||
| That's it? | ||
| I'd go down, I'd get 20 ginseng for 20 days. | ||
| For 20 days? | ||
| And they cut you off after 20 days? | ||
| Let's not get crazy, foreigner. | ||
| I only had a small budget. | ||
| I'd have to wait for my next fight to get prize money to buy another 20 for my next fight. | ||
| Well, how much does ginseng cost down there? | ||
| 20 baht or something, a tablet. | ||
| What is a baht in American money? | ||
| 50 cents. | ||
| 50 cents? | ||
| Oh, damn. | ||
| 10 bucks for 20 ginseng tablets. | ||
| Yeah, I was poor. | ||
| I was only making $30 a fight back then. | ||
| Jesus fucking Christ. | ||
| And then I'd have to give 50% of that to the camp too. | ||
| What is the cheapest you've ever made for a fight? | ||
| $30. | ||
| $30? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And I was fighting ties with 100 fights. | ||
| And you had to give how much back? | ||
| 50%. | ||
| So the deal with my camp was I live for free, train for free, and eat, train, and live. | ||
| And then every time I fought, I'd give 50% to the camp. | ||
| So if I made 1,000 baht, 500. If I made 10,000 baht, it was 5,000. | ||
| And then I was lucky enough to win a million baht, so then I'd have to give the camp 500,000 baht. | ||
| And that was like, oh my god, that's like... | ||
| Four lifetimes of prize money right there. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| A million baht would be how much American money? | ||
| It was $35,000 Australian. | ||
| So about $10 Australian. | ||
| No, $10 American. | ||
| No. | ||
| What is a million? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I think the Australian dollar is about equivalent to a peso. | ||
| I don't know what that means. | ||
|
unidentified
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About $35,000. | |
| So a million baht is $35,000? | ||
|
unidentified
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Probably about $35,000 now, yeah. | |
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| That was the most you made there. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| No wonder why you're angry at Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| And then I had to give 50% to the camp, too. | ||
| So $17,000. | ||
| Well, at least you were living for free. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, true. | ||
| But sometimes I wouldn't fight for ages, too. | ||
| So I needed that and then eating for free and I had somewhere to roof over my head. | ||
| I want to talk to you about your journey because as a young man, as a teenager, you chose to move to Thailand. | ||
| You didn't know the language and you immersed yourself in Thai culture and became a Thai fighter. | ||
| I mean, that is an incredible adventure for a young man to take part of in a very rare and brave one that not a lot of people Ever. | ||
| Not a lot of people really stick their neck out like that and do something along those lines. | ||
| The movie Kickboxer came out, the Van Damme. | ||
| It's like, I want to walk in this guy's footsteps. | ||
| I want to be this guy. | ||
| So I had 13 fights in Australia. | ||
| I won an Australian title, a South Pacific title. | ||
| And then I had a relationship with a guy called Richard Vell, who owns a Thai restaurant. | ||
| And he said, you fought amazing tonight. | ||
| I want to know, do you want to go to Thailand and learn from the best? | ||
| I said, I'd love to learn from the best. | ||
| That'd be amazing. | ||
| He said, if you can organize your passport, I'll do everything else. | ||
| I'll do your plane ticket. | ||
| I'll find you a camp. | ||
| I'll train. | ||
| So I went and got a passport. | ||
| And then sure enough, he bought me a plane ticket. | ||
| And he said, you must promise me you can't come back for six months. | ||
| If you come back before, then me and you are done. | ||
| Done and dusted. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow! | |
| So you've got to promise me you'll stay. | ||
| Okay, I'll stay. | ||
| So I went to Thailand, moved to Bangkok. | ||
| No one could speak English. | ||
| I had one of those ones where there's a hole in the ground and you had to pull in the little shit. | ||
| And then there was no toilet paper, so you had to pour water in your hand to wipe your bum. | ||
| You had no hot water, so we had to rinse on, soap up, then rinse off. | ||
| It's hilarious that that is what you would complain about when people are kicking you in the fucking legs, body, and head all day. | ||
| It's like, yeah, you gotta wipe your ass weird. | ||
| You're shitting into a hole. | ||
| Sleep on a wooden floor next to ten other dudes, and there's no beds. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And that's not included in the seven hours training of Thai boxing, too. | ||
| So when you finish your three and a half hours at night, you've got a wooden floor to look forward to to go to bed on. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| No cushion at all? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| I put a big blanket down as a bit of cushion in between that and the wood. | ||
| How much snoring was involved? | ||
| The worst one was the arms and legs. | ||
| The tires would throw an arm over you in the middle of the night and you'd have to get it off in case they took advantage of you. | ||
| And then, yeah, so I had five fights for five wins, four knockouts. | ||
| Came back to Australia and then the Thai camp rang my sponsor and they said, hey, he looks like he's got a bit of promise. | ||
| Can you send him back again? | ||
| So he rang me up and said, do you want to go back to Thailand? | ||
| I said, I'd love to go back to Thailand. | ||
| I don't want to work. | ||
| I want to live this Thai boxing dream. | ||
| So I said, okay, this time you've got to promise me 12 months. | ||
| Don't come back within 12 months. | ||
| You've got to commit your whole life. | ||
| I said, sure. | ||
| So I went over. | ||
| And then I was fighting on the little shows back then. | ||
| And then the opportunity, the main guy that was at our camp, Sang Tan, he was fighting on a big show. | ||
| And then I went to support him. | ||
| And then a guy called Danny Bill from France, he was supposed to fight one of the big ties, and he never rocked up. | ||
| He disappeared somehow. | ||
| And they said, oh, Danny Bill's not here. | ||
| Who's going to fight this guy? | ||
| My trainer put his hand up and said, this guy will. | ||
| He'll fight him. | ||
| And I absolutely pooed my pants. | ||
| I shit myself. | ||
| How many fights did you have at this point? | ||
| 13, 14, about 16. And I said, he'll fight him, he'll fight him. | ||
| This guy's had like 250 fights, and my young teenager here, he'll fight him. | ||
| And then he said, oh, he can't fight him. | ||
| I'll let him fight, though. | ||
| Does anyone in the room want to fight the white guy? | ||
| And I kid you not, about 60 hands went up in the room. | ||
| They said, well, we'll fight him, we'll fight him. | ||
| So they said, oh, you two, you're about the close size. | ||
| So I ended up fighting this guy in front of 40,000 people. | ||
| I got cut in the fifth, bloodstreamed in my face. | ||
| I ended up doing enough to beat him every round. | ||
| And then the number one promoter in Thailand said, okay, done. | ||
| From now on, you're going to start fighting for me. | ||
| And then the next minute, I'm starting to fight at 60,000. | ||
| I'm starting to fight at Lumpini Stadium. | ||
| I'm fighting on TV, all the fights. | ||
| I'm the first Westerner to make the number one selling Muay Thai magazine in Thailand. | ||
| And all the Thais started calling me the dangerous kangaroo. | ||
| Then I started reaching the A-class guys, which was a bit of a shock. | ||
| I fought a guy called Orono, and I had 20 fights, and he had close to 300, and he was the household name. | ||
| He was the Anderson Silva, almost, of Muay Thai in Thailand. | ||
| And then the third round, he cut me 21 stitches. | ||
| The fight gets stopped. | ||
| So I went down a few pegs. | ||
| And then from then on, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. | ||
| And then the year 2000, I got to rematch the Orono again. | ||
| And this time was on the King's birthday in front of 100,000 people live on Thai TV. And then I schooled him every round and won his world title in front of all his Thais. | ||
| And then from that moment on, all of a sudden, I started becoming a... | ||
| Sort of a celebrity in Thailand. | ||
| Not a celebrity, but in the Muay Thai world, I was a somebody now. | ||
| Wow, that's amazing. | ||
| And then from there, I come back to Australia, open the gym, and then I had no trainer. | ||
| And then so I got a few of my friends, even to this day, I get my friends, hey, can you hold the pads like this? | ||
| I watch the fight, the promoter ring, hey, do you want to fight this guy? | ||
| Okay, so I'll tell my friend, hey, can you hold the pads like this? | ||
| And then I'll go and fight, hey, do you want to come and give me some water in between rounds? | ||
| So when you were training in Australia, you were self-trained? | ||
| Self-trained. | ||
| To this day, I'm still self-trained. | ||
| To this day? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But your time in Thai, in Thailand, you were training with the best Thai trainers? | ||
|
unidentified
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The best Thai. | |
| So the Thais, they said, okay, you pretty much, after being here for five years, you pretty much know our system now. | ||
| All you have to do is get fit. | ||
| And then I come back to Australia, and that's all I've been doing, just getting my friends to help me. | ||
| Do you feel like there's anything that you miss when you do that as opposed to training in Thailand with those guys? | ||
| If you had your druthers, if you had a choice, would you have a world-class Thai trainer come and train with you in Australia? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But at the same time, it's been working. | ||
| What I've been doing is working. | ||
| I've been quite successful the last 15 years doing it by myself. | ||
| And there's no middleman either. | ||
| I don't have to worry about a manager or someone telling me what to do. | ||
| And I push myself in my training to a high standard where I'm, I guess, doing okay because I've won another eight world titles by myself. | ||
| And I've been lucky enough to travel the world too, going all over Europe and fighting in Japan 16 times and, yeah, beating everybody in Australia already set for my last one. | ||
| But, yeah, no, it's been good. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| You fought some legends too, man. | ||
| I mean, your record, if you look at all the names, like the legends of Muay Thai, you fought quite a few of them, man. | ||
| Yeah, it's been cool. | ||
| And like you were saying before, to get famous, you've got to fight the famous guys. | ||
| I don't want to be one of those ones, like, I'm not afraid to step up. | ||
| And if I lose to him, at least I had to grow. | ||
| I tried. | ||
| But the majority of the time I'm winning, it's like, yes, I can't believe I beat that guy. | ||
| I shit myself for the last six weeks getting ready for you. | ||
| And I've won, so how good is this? | ||
| This is awesome. | ||
| And then sometimes I'll match myself as well with someone. | ||
| The crowd's going, why are you fighting this guy? | ||
| You're old. | ||
| This guy's going to wipe the floor. | ||
| And then I win again. | ||
| It's just such a self-satisfying feeling to know that I can still compete with the elite. | ||
| Do people give you a hard time because you're old? | ||
| Well, you're not that old. | ||
| You're younger than me. | ||
| You're 38. But 38 in combat sports is... | ||
| But I've been getting told I've been old since I was 27, 28. Even when I was in the K1, I was the old guy then, being 28 years old. | ||
| 28 was older than K1? Really? | ||
| Yeah, they were going, when are you going to give it up? | ||
| It's one of those ones, I want to ride it to the last wave until, once you're dead, you're dead. | ||
| And I don't want to regret not doing what I'm doing and just holding pads. | ||
| I'd rather be in the limelight and still try to reach that pinnacle, the Mount Everest of fighting. | ||
| How many more years do you think you can do it at 38 years old? | ||
| Do you have a number in your head or do you just do it while your body is healthy and while you enjoy it? | ||
| I just want to keep going. | ||
| Bernard Hopkins is 50. He was supposed to retire when he was 40. He promised his mom he was going to give it up when he was 40 and he's lasted another 10 years and he's still fighting the elite and still winning world titles. | ||
| Did his mom die? | ||
| He's like, well, I'm good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Some guys like that, you know. | ||
| Well, I promised her, but she ain't even here anymore. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He's so good defensively. | ||
| You know, he's another one. | ||
| Yeah, he's a killer. | ||
| Yeah, he's a great... | ||
| I was amazed that he was willing to fight Kovalev at this stage of his life. | ||
| At 49 years of age, fights one of the best knockout artists, like, in the last decade in that division. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| Skills. | ||
| It's just skills. | ||
| Having skills. | ||
| Having the ability to know what to do in any given time. | ||
| Step. | ||
| Know where to step. | ||
| Know what's coming. | ||
| Like we were saying, know that language. | ||
| He knows the language of boxing so well. | ||
| You don't get famous holding pads. | ||
| You don't get famous writing cool Facebook posts. | ||
| I've tried, but it does happen. | ||
| You're repeating that. | ||
| You've repeated that many times, like the getting famous. | ||
| That's a big part of what motivates you. | ||
| Since I was about five or six years old, every time I look into the sky and see a single star, I wish I can be remembered. | ||
| When I blow my birthday candles out, I wish that my legacy, once I die, I can be that guy that people go, yep, Wayne Pa. | ||
| Wow, that's interesting, man. | ||
| That's a weird drive for a young man to have. | ||
| What do you attribute that to? | ||
| To want to be remembered? | ||
| Yeah, my whole life, that's my only goal. | ||
| Winning a world title was always, I didn't want to win a world title. | ||
| I wanted to win a world title in Thailand against a Thai, against a genuine. | ||
| I don't want to win against someone down the road. | ||
| I always wanted to take it to the next level. | ||
| And once I did win the world title, I ended up winning two in Bangkok. | ||
| But now it's about the legacy. | ||
| It's about the... | ||
| Yeah, it's like any human being. | ||
| Once you pass, you just turn into flowers. | ||
| I want to be... | ||
| I want people to look like Dicker. | ||
| The amount of respect that I show him after he's passed away for the last couple of years, I want people to look at me in exactly the same light, hopefully one day. | ||
| He died of a heart attack while riding a bike, right? | ||
| Yeah, in the park. | ||
| By himself. | ||
| No one would give him any CPR. He just passed away. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| Do they know what was wrong with him? | ||
| It doesn't even make sense. | ||
| Yeah, who knows? | ||
| I'm 42 years old, and then to die on a push bike is crazy. | ||
| You were talking to me earlier about the injuries that he had suffered, that he had his foot fused to his ankle? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, he's broken his leg that many times. | ||
| This is what I've seen from the documentary. | ||
| I could be wrong. | ||
| I'm sure Bass would have a better understanding of being Dutch. | ||
| But yeah, from the stories that he told me, his leg was, they were going to amputate it. | ||
| They got to the stage where he said, well, what else can we do? | ||
| Oh, we can fuse your ankle to your shin. | ||
| So he used to say, I used to just do pads. | ||
| I wouldn't spar and just save it to the fight. | ||
| And then if it broke, it broke. | ||
| But I just, or I'd change the southpaw and then hopefully not use it. | ||
| But then he was so adamant that he had the win, he'd just go back to orthodox and just start using it. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Just that crazy mentality. | ||
| They kept breaking it. | ||
| If you kept breaking it, they were going to have to amputate it. | ||
| Yeah, that's what the documentary said anyway. | ||
| And he's still kicking it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So nuts. | ||
| I remember when he fought Dwayne Lugwig on his last fight on K1. We caught an elevator together. | ||
| I said, how are you feeling? | ||
| How's it all going? | ||
| You feel good? | ||
| And he showed me his arm, and his arm was black from his wrist to his shoulder. | ||
| And he said, I've pulled my bicep. | ||
| I can't punch right. | ||
| But it's okay. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| I win. | ||
| No problem. | ||
| And sure enough, he dropped Dwayne Legwig three or four times. | ||
| I don't know if it was by points or by knockout. | ||
| He won by points. | ||
| With one arm. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| And then you see something like that and you think, fuck, I want to be that guy. | ||
| I'm so torn on that because on one hand, I admire mental toughness. | ||
| I mean, obviously. | ||
| I mean, that's just the ability to block that out and say, it's okay. | ||
| I'll win. | ||
| No problem. | ||
| I mean, that's incredible. | ||
| But on the other hand, he's the example of what happens when you are really mentally tough. | ||
| His legs were shot. | ||
| His ankles were fucked up. | ||
| His body was falling apart. | ||
| It's like you redline your body. | ||
| Because that's how he fought. | ||
| He fought redline. | ||
| I mean, if you've never seen Ramon Decker's fight, if you're someone who... | ||
| If you're not aware of Muay Thai, just do yourself a favor and Google Ramon Decker. | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of people that folks will talk up and, you know, and you watch it and it's like, well, they kind of exaggerated. | ||
| You can't do that guy justice. | ||
| You can't do him justice. | ||
| You gotta watch how violently he fought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just so hyper-aggressive. | |
| And vicious knockout power, beautiful combinations, and everything he threw was 100%. | ||
| Everything he threw. | ||
| There was no setups. | ||
| Everything was... | ||
| It was just so exciting to watch, man. | ||
| But look, his body just eventually just deteriorated and fell apart. | ||
| Where's the line, though? | ||
| Where's... | ||
| He did it, but the legacy is shot past the longevity. | ||
| So he'll never be forgotten for how tenacious and how crazy and how violent he was. | ||
| So that's what I want. | ||
| I want to go until I can't go anymore. | ||
| And then if I pass, I want to be a member for that guy that... | ||
| It seems interesting that it's sort of maybe the only way to be great is to kind of like... | ||
| Break your body trying to be great. | ||
| It seems like, look at Cain Velasquez. | ||
| He can't get through a training camp. | ||
| I mean, he's fought two times, I think, in the last few years, and it's because everything keeps breaking. | ||
| His knee keeps fucking up, his shoulders keep fucking up, and it's because he's so mentally tough. | ||
| It's because any injury that guy has just goes in the back of his brain, and it's just... | ||
| He's a champion. | ||
| It's just juggernaut. | ||
| Press forward. | ||
| You know, attack, attack, attack, attack. | ||
| And these guys that have that ability to, you know, Chris Weidman is another one. | ||
| He just keeps injuring himself. | ||
| He's had knee surgery. | ||
| He just fucked up his ribs. | ||
| Dominic Cruz. | ||
| Yeah, Dominic Cruz is another one. | ||
| It's like this drive to attack and succeed oftentimes forces their body to just, like, their body says, listen, dude, you're being crazy here. | ||
| You can't keep doing this. | ||
| We're just going to check out. | ||
| How about we give you a little knee injury here and take six months off, you know? | ||
| It's like, It's that adrenaline drug. | ||
| Getting in front of that crowd of the 5,000, 10,000, 20,000. | ||
| You can't buy it. | ||
| I've tried. | ||
| You just cannot buy it anyway. | ||
| Do you worry about being in it past your prime or do you think that you'll know when it's time to stop? | ||
| I retired three years ago. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| And then I thought, I thought, I'll go in on top. | ||
| I've had, I was on a five or six fight winning streak. | ||
| But then in six months, it was driving me insane. | ||
| Just that not being that, the famous guy anymore, not being in the magazines, not being on TV, not people coming up and not giving that recognition anymore. | ||
| And then I came back and I went on another five fight winning streak. | ||
| And it was so good to be back amongst the mix and to be in front of that crowd again. | ||
| I understand why people can't give it up and they keep coming back out of retirement because it is the most exciting thing that you could possibly do on earth is to stand in front of someone and try and knock each other out. | ||
| When you're done, do you think that you will become a trainer? | ||
| I mean, do you think you already have a gym? | ||
| I've got my gym for the last 15 years, and I've been lucky enough to tour the world doing seminars and teaching, which I get a kick out of. | ||
| But yeah, it's not fighting. | ||
| It's not punching on me. | ||
| Do you ever think you would run a gym in Thailand? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| That'd be a disrespect to the Thais. | ||
| The Thais are so good, and they have a Western that come in. | ||
| It would be a disrespect? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Even calling myself crew. | ||
| I cringe when people call me a crew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Because I'm not a Thai, and I don't deserve that honor of being called a crew. | ||
| I'm... | ||
| I'm a white guy trying to be the best possible version of a Thai person. | ||
| That's very interesting because Americans use that term all the time. | ||
| Like, crew Mark Delagrate is a good example. | ||
| He's my friend Mark Delagrate. | ||
| Yeah, I know Mark. | ||
| And then so many people that I've met that I know I don't respect and I call someone on crew, I'll call them the crew crew Mark or crew this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to cover my t-shirt up now. | |
| What does it say? | ||
| Crew Rhino? | ||
| What does crew Rhino mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crew is teacher. | |
| I know what that means, but why does it say Crew Rhino? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, it's just my fight name. | |
| Oh, how dare you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was literally just putting my jacket on there. | |
| I was like, oh my god, why did he say that? | ||
| So, the term crew is like a deep term of deep respect in Thailand. | ||
| I've spent five years there. | ||
| I've been a monk. | ||
| I've done my whole business. | ||
| You've been a monk? | ||
| Yeah, I was a monk for seven days. | ||
| I went to Thailand. | ||
| Oh, that's a long time. | ||
| Lived in... | ||
| Every Thai male has to be a monk once in their life. | ||
| So even if it's seven days, you're still a monk. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Every Thai what? | ||
| Every Thai male has to be a monk. | ||
| Oh, Thai male. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You have to be a monk? | ||
| For how long? | ||
| You can do seven days, a month, three months, six months, one year, two years. | ||
| But whatever you commit to, you must stay there for that amount of time. | ||
| You can't give in. | ||
| So you were a monk for seven days? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I had all my possessions taken away. | ||
| I had my head shaved, the eyebrows shaved. | ||
| I lived in the toilet. | ||
| Your eyebrows shaved? | ||
| Yeah, they shave your eyebrows too. | ||
| Why do they shave your eyebrows? | ||
| To make you look like a monk. | ||
| What about... | ||
| What about other parts of your body? | ||
| Do you shave your legs? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| So you have this bowl and then every morning you walk this track and then there's Thai people on the side of the road giving you offerings. | ||
| So they give you rice, they give you meat, they give you this, they give you that. | ||
| And then you say a chant to them and that's helped to give them good karma for either that day or that week or maybe in a future life. | ||
| And then every morning we had a blind lady, and her sister would come out, hold her hand, put the spoon into her bowl, would say this chant, and it just was so special that every day we said this thing to her to help her have this good energy because life must be shit, not being able to see. | ||
| And it just meant so much for us coming around. | ||
| And then every day we had Buddhist studies, and then they were saying how the Buddhist is the oldest religion out of everything. | ||
| It was 500 years older than Christianity, which is a few hundred years older again than a Muslim. | ||
| And then they took everything. | ||
| There's five main things with Buddhism. | ||
| Don't kill, don't steal, don't cheat, don't do drugs, don't lie. | ||
| And then Christianity took those and they added a few things to them as well. | ||
| But the best thing about Buddhism, there's no supernatural guy. | ||
| It's just an old prince that was stuck in a kingdom and then he didn't see the real outside world, didn't see poor people, didn't see sickness. | ||
| And then one day he went out of the kingdom and he realized that his whole life was a lie. | ||
| So he went out into the forest and started doing meditation, and that's when all these different things come in, different aspects. | ||
| And then from the meditation, that's when he made these five basic principles. | ||
| If you don't drink, you're not going to tell lies, and you're not going to get in trouble, and you're not going to kill anybody. | ||
| So if you stay away from those things, life should be okay. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| That guy's so incorrect. | ||
| There's a lot of people that don't drink that are full of shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, and if you don't screw your neighbor or you don't steal nothing, you don't have to... | ||
| Yeah, so all these basic... | ||
| Just easy stuff. | ||
| Just the idea of doing good behavior and being a good person, keeping your karma clean. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| So, did you have a desire to do it for longer than seven days, or did you do it just because you lived in Thailand and you did it out of respect? | ||
| My Thai sponsor, his two boys were doing it, and they said, they're going for seven days. | ||
| Do you want to join them? | ||
| He said, you've done everything Thai. | ||
| You speak Thai. | ||
| You live like a Thai. | ||
| You fight like a Thai. | ||
| The only thing you haven't done is being a monk. | ||
| And then once you've done the monk, you're the complete circle. | ||
| You're the white version of one of them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah, it was amazing. | ||
| It was so cool. | ||
| So when you went there, you'd shave your eyebrows, you'd shave your head, they'd give you a bowl, and then what do you do during the day? | ||
| What is the day spent doing? | ||
| So after we have breakfast in the morning, we do Buddhist studies for about an hour, two hours after that, and then we're either sweeping around the temple, keeping everything clean, and then afternoon we do Buddhist studies again for another hour or a half and two hours, and then we sleep in the temple and try not to get attacked by ghosts. | ||
| Yeah, the ghosts were scary. | ||
| Yeah, Thailand, the ghosts are so full on. | ||
| They really have this thing where they really believe in them. | ||
| So the ghosts have more of a tendency of showing themselves or coming to you in dream form. | ||
| And then it's so realistic. | ||
| It was life-changing. | ||
| I had a few different dreams where I came out of the temple thinking, fuck, I'm changing the way that I do things from now here on in. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Just making me a better person for just basic things. | ||
| The ghosts were making you a better person? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, they just give you deep inner thoughts while you're dreaming. | ||
| And you wake up, you think that it was real life, but it was... | ||
| Yeah, it's hard to explain. | ||
| No, please do. | ||
| So, you saw ghosts as well? | ||
| I used to get attacked about three or four times a week. | ||
| They call it a PM. So, have you ever heard of sleep paralysis? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So in Thailand, they believe it's a ghost sitting on your chest. | ||
| And then if the ghost doesn't like you, the ghost puts his hand across your mouth and nose and suffocates you in your dream, in your sleep. | ||
| And that's why you die in your sleep. | ||
| They're wrong though. | ||
| Do you know that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's not fucking ghosts. | ||
| So when I told the Thais, I had this crazy dream last night. | ||
| I felt like I was getting held to the floor. | ||
| I couldn't move. | ||
| And they said, oh, that's just a PM. So what's that mean? | ||
| Oh, it's just a ghost sitting on your chest. | ||
| Oh, no worries. | ||
| That makes me feel better. | ||
| Ghost trying to fucking kill you. | ||
| It's so crazy that they would be like, no worries. | ||
| And then you say I'm sleeping right beside someone and then the ghost would sit on your chest. | ||
| You want to scream. | ||
| You want to reach your hand out so someone would wake you up, but you're just stuck. | ||
| There's nothing you can do, and the harder you try and scream, the more you get stuck to the floor. | ||
| So this would happen on a consistent basis? | ||
| Four or five times a week. | ||
| How old were you at the time? | ||
| 19. 19. 19 to 23. So, if I had to guess, you're a young man, you're in Thailand for the first time, you're experiencing this incredible culture shock, you're also experiencing the anxiety of preparing for fights, this whole new world that you're living in. | ||
| And you probably have a lot of questions and doubts about life and, you know, there's anxiety, a lot of built-up stuff. | ||
| And then you're hanging around a bunch of people that are telling you that ghosts are trying to kill you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so you're experiencing these ghosts, too. | ||
| Regularly. | ||
| Now, did you see anything? | ||
| Did you physically see something? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| What did you see? | ||
| One night, I was laying in bed, and then one of those ones where the eyes were closed, it had been about five minutes, and I heard the... | ||
| There was only me in the room at the time, too, so I heard the fly screen open. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| I'm thinking... | ||
| And I heard footsteps. | ||
| Immediately think ghosts. | ||
| No, I'm thinking, hurry up and close the door before the mosquitoes come in. | ||
| And I'm waiting, waiting, waiting. | ||
| No one's going to close the door. | ||
| I roll over my eyes and there's this person standing at the door. | ||
| And then he looks at me. | ||
| And then he turns. | ||
| And I hear him walking down the steps. | ||
| Motherfucker, you didn't close the door. | ||
| Mosquitoes. | ||
| So I get up. | ||
| I'm awake. | ||
| I get up. | ||
| I close the door. | ||
| Go back to sleep. | ||
| Close my eyes. | ||
| Within another couple of minutes, the door opens again. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| No one's closing the door. | ||
| No footsteps this time. | ||
| I look over. | ||
| There's a cat sitting at the door. | ||
| And it jumps up on the shelf and jumps out the window. | ||
| I think, fuck. | ||
| So this is the second time I get up. | ||
| I close the door. | ||
| This time I go back to sleep. | ||
| The next morning I go and see the Thai train. | ||
| I think, I swear your brother was here last night. | ||
| He must have come to the room, but he couldn't. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He left the door open. | ||
| I got up. | ||
| He said, no, no, he's not here. | ||
| He's in Chiang Mai. | ||
| He's about a 12-hour drive away. | ||
| I said, no, no, I've seen him. | ||
| He was here 100%. | ||
| He said, no, watch your ring. | ||
| He's like, hey, hey, brother, where you at? | ||
| He's like, oh, shit. | ||
| So, yeah, that was my seeing the ghost firsthand. | ||
| The ghost of a dude who's alive and lives 12 hours away? | ||
| Yeah, sorry. | ||
| I wish I was there to talk you through that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's really common in Thailand. | |
| This is not about me. | ||
| It's all about John. | ||
| But it happened to me a lot as well. | ||
| And I think it's because we're around the Thais as well. | ||
| So the suggestion, the power of suggestion, the culture? | ||
| Do you know about the ghost houses? | ||
| Ghost houses? | ||
| Every Thai house has a ghost house. | ||
| So say your house looks this nice, and they have a little house in front of their house, and they decorate it more so it's more attractive for the ghost to live in there. | ||
| This is a true story. | ||
| And then they put food, little bits of rice, little bits of drink, and then little bits of whiskey sometimes. | ||
| And then before you fight, you pray to the ghost house that the ghost will hopefully give you good inner strength for when you go into battle. | ||
| Well, it's easy to ridicule. | ||
| It's easy to ridicule and it's easy to make fun of, but I think that when you look at things like the power of suggestion and the placebo effect, what that means, what it really means is that the mind has incredible capabilities. | ||
| The mind has the ability to heal you if you're sick. | ||
| The mind has the ability to do all sorts of things that you think you need a drug or medication to fix. | ||
| I mean, that's, the mind is amazing. | ||
| And if you're around a bunch of people that really believe These things, your mind is almost preparing you for these things being real. | ||
| I don't know if ghosts are real or if they're not real. | ||
| I've never experienced it. | ||
| But everyone I know that has, like, studied it, there's two types of people. | ||
| There's either, and maybe I haven't met enough of them, but there's charlatans who, like, you know, they're just the guys who do those shows where they've got, like, night vision, they're in a basement somewhere, and they're like, did you hear that? | ||
| And then they cut to commercial. | ||
| You know, never hear shit like those ghost hunting shows like you want to talk about a show like a genre with the least amount of success It's like it might be ghost hunting shows those motherfuckers have never seen a ghost like there's never a goat like you see it you go. | ||
| Oh shit. | ||
| That's a ghost I got held down in Australia once. | ||
| Held down? | ||
| So my Thai trainer came, and then I had him out for Australia for a couple months. | ||
| So he's got his Buddhas in his hand. | ||
| He's saying this big prayer before sleep. | ||
| I said, oh, don't be worried. | ||
| We're not in Thailand now. | ||
| There's no ghosts here. | ||
| We're sweet. | ||
| So you got held down by a Thai ghost after you? | ||
| So I've gone into my room, and then it's one of those scenarios again where I'm just drifting off, and I hear the door open. | ||
| I'm thinking, oh, someone must be coming in to get something out of the room. | ||
| And then I hear footsteps. | ||
| And then, boom, I'm held down as hard as I can into the mattress, and I've got enough energy to open my eyes, and there was nothing there, but I could hear the breathing, the ha, ha. | ||
| And then I tried to relax. | ||
| I tried to relax. | ||
| I felt the pressure come off my chest. | ||
| And then as soon as it let me go, I grabbed my towel and my blanket and I went and slept in the Tyrus bedroom for two weeks on this floor because I was too petrified to sleep by myself for about two weeks. | ||
| I shitted myself so bad because I had my eyes and I could hear it. | ||
| Again, if I had to guess, one of the things that I would say is not only are you young and the power of suggestion, all these things are a factor, but also the fact that these things are happening to you while you're sleeping. | ||
| When you're sleeping, your mind produces all sorts of crazy psychedelic chemicals. | ||
| It's very possible that what you're experiencing is some semi-dream state. | ||
| And that in this semi-dream state, especially if you're convinced that ghosts are real, your brain starts, your imagination starts flooding your consciousness with all sorts of physical experiences, all sorts of physical sensations. | ||
| Or, ghosts are real. | ||
| That's possible, too. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I might be wrong. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| It's there's so much fuckery and ghosts You know when you when you look at the people that are telling you about them and the people that say that they've seen them It's just it's so it's such a weird subject. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a big big part of Thailand though Like you know work for the rescue team like we spoke about last time And it's actually quite nice hearing you say this stuff because I'm like, oh my god, I'm not crazy. | |
| Like, one of my heroes, John White, had this too. | ||
| But, yeah, I mean, like, everyone I know in Thailand has had something, and they're so superstitious. | ||
| It's not even funny. | ||
| It's ridiculous how superstitious they are. | ||
| They believe the ghosts live in trees. | ||
| So when you chop a tree down and then build your house, the ghost comes with the house. | ||
| The ghost comes with the wood. | ||
| So then there's certain poles that might be a bit more crazy, more powerful. | ||
| Even the ring, the ring's made out of wood. | ||
| So we used to decorate the ring with ribbons and powder and perfume, and then we'd pray to the ring just before a fight because it helped get us fit for that six weeks, eight week prep. | ||
| And then we'd decorate with flowers, we'd buy flowers just the day before the fight to say, thank you for my preparation. | ||
| So just little, tied to traditions more so than anything, I guess. | ||
| Even if it's not true, like if... | ||
| I'm joking around, obviously. | ||
| I really don't know if ghosts are real. | ||
| But even if they're not real, there's something to be said for eliminating a certain amount of anxiety just by having this ritual, having this process that you go through in your mind where you believe you've appeased the ghosts. | ||
| So you believe that you will have good luck. | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| Yeah, you have good karma, you have good spirits with you. | ||
| I mean, if you believe in ghosts and you're worried about the unknown and you find a ritual that appeases that and then settles that fear, I mean, there's a benefit in that. | ||
| There's a benefit in a lot of crazy beliefs. | ||
| Even with the Ramoy before a fight. | ||
| So you're down there praying and you're thinking of the people of the past, the people in the present. | ||
| For people who don't know what you're talking about, explain what that means. | ||
| The pre-fight dance that we do in Thailand. | ||
| We should put up a video of that so people can see it. | ||
| It's pretty fucking cool. | ||
| And it doesn't exist in any other combat sport. | ||
| Most combat sports, the most you get is someone walks around and touches each corner of the ring and maybe bows or puts their hands up. | ||
| In Thailand, it's a live Thai band too, so they have a guy on the drums, a guy on the cymbals, a guy on the flute, and then while you're dancing, you might be 100,000 people there, and then you just turn it all off, and then you're just praying for your, asking permission from the earth, the wind, the fire, the water, from God to give you all this inner strength. | ||
| Myself, I think for my mother, my father, my grandfathers, my grandmothers, Past, present, future, former trainers. | ||
| Every single person that helped you get to that present point in that particular second that you're thanking for helping you get right there in that time. | ||
| And then you take a big breath and all that energy just fills up your whole body. | ||
| And you get pins and needles in the hair stands on the back of your neck. | ||
| And then once you finish the dance, it feels like you're invincible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And these guys are doing it right now, and they have the traditional hand wraps. | ||
| We're starting to see that come back. | ||
| You're seeing a lot of bouts that are being made today with really hand wraps and no gloves. | ||
| Yeah, it's pretty hectic. | ||
| They do it once a year in Thailand forever. | ||
| They have Thailand versus Burma. | ||
| And they have two referees. | ||
| And then what happens? | ||
| You can only win by knockout or cut. | ||
| If it goes the distance, it's a draw. | ||
| No matter how much someone's winning, it's always a draw. | ||
| So you have to win by violence. | ||
| How many rounds? | ||
| Five. | ||
| Five rounds. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And you can't win by any other way, by knockout or cut. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's brutal as well. | |
| And then there's not many kicks on these, because you know you're wearing two weapons on your fists, so it's just hell for leather. | ||
| Technique goes out of the window. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| So it's survival. | ||
| Well, weapons on your fists meaning that it's like rope, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Because those are not like traditional hand wraps where it's like soft and cushiony. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Yeah, it's a proper rope. | ||
| And it goes all the way down the forearm too. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Is that like to protect you from kicks? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just traditional, I think. | |
| Tell me a bit about the bedding with the Waikura as well. | ||
| Yeah, so a lot of ties will make judgment on who dances better also and who is more relaxed and who has a better... | ||
| Rhythm and style with their dance as well, so they can see who's... | ||
| If you're stiff and fucked up, or another guy is just flowing like a ballerina, then you go, ah, this guy's got this for sure. | ||
| And when you're watching this, like when they're doing this dance, is there a specific routine they follow, or are they just being... | ||
| Are they just going with the flow of things? | ||
| Some gyms have their own style. | ||
| The majority of the time, it's pretty much the same thing, but... | ||
| Yeah, different. | ||
| The way you're praying at the start, that's my biggest thing, is getting connected to the universe and trying to get good energy. | ||
| And then the rest of the stuff that they're doing now, it's more so of a limber. | ||
| So as you're going from rope to rope, you're warming up your body, you're stretching out the shoulders, you're stretching out your legs. | ||
| A guy explained to me once also that when he did it, he would relax because he was sort of performing in front of all these people as he was doing it and it helped him perform better in his fighting because it wasn't just like, are you ready? | ||
| Are you ready? | ||
| Go! | ||
| Like he'd already done something in front of all these people and then it sort of loosened him up. | ||
| Before I ever did commentary for the UFC, I got to commentate on one of Koban's fight. | ||
| Koban Laksam Toi- how do you say it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's in New York, I think. | |
| Isn't he? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| This was way back in the days, before 2002, which is when I started commentating for the UFC. I was the post-fight interview guy in like 97 to 98, and then I commentated from 2002 on. | ||
| In between then, I was working at, not working, I was working out at John Jock Machado's and me and Richard Norton. | ||
| You know, Rich, he's an Australian guy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Martial arts guy. | ||
| We showed some stuff together. | ||
| Yeah, he and I did, we commentated on Koban's fight. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| It was amazing to see, like, a real Thai legend who's had who knows how many hundred fights. | ||
| You've got to get the Bangkok. | ||
| Bangkok's amazing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Eventually. | ||
| Maybe they'll do a UFC out there. | ||
| But is UFC even legal there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cage fighting. | |
| I think they've tried to ban it a couple of times. | ||
| I think the Thai's a little bit funny about the cage because it's taken away from their... | ||
| They don't want it taking over the sport of Muay Thai. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like it's taken over every other country in the world. | ||
| It must have been an amazing experience for you just I mean what Just to go there as a young man as a teenager and just get immersed in this life It's so different than just like taking a Muay Thai class at a gym or even getting obsessed with Muay Thai in Australia or in America where you know You're working out all the time and you love Muay Thai but to be living there in Thailand the best part that I look back one upon is not just the The training and the fighting but the ghosts becoming a white tie and Oh, | ||
| white Thai. | ||
| Because I was the only Westerner. | ||
| I'd go months and months on end without seeing another white person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So I was like the freak, if you will. | ||
| And then I'd go to the shops and every single person would stare at me and I'd love it. | ||
| And then I could speak Thai, so I'd start talking to them and they'd freak out. | ||
| And then I'd start going to the nightclubs and, for instance, sometimes I'd have a live band and then I'd go up to the band and say, hey, do you know this song? | ||
| And then they'd give me the microphone and I'd sing Thai songs to the crowd and the crowd would bounce. | ||
| Everyone's like dancing and stuff. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| It was such a good buzz to live like one of them. | ||
| That sounds insane. | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| It was so cool. | ||
| Wow, this must have been such a whole new universe. | ||
| Yeah, you come back to Australia and you just blend in with everyone else and then you go back to Thailand and you're back to being that special person in the suburb again. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then I used to run on the road and everyone used to flash their lights at me and toot their horn because I was the fighter kid, the Aussie guy. | ||
| So I was special. | ||
| It was really amazing. | ||
| So you really enjoyed that aspect of it, just being unique? | ||
| Yeah, getting in a taxi and talking to either the taxi driver. | ||
| I could just have a conversation for wherever I was going and just talking about... | ||
| Everything would be about Motoi, of course, but wherever I went, it was just so cool. | ||
| In a sense, is that place like your second home? | ||
| I don't go there anymore now. | ||
| The last time I went there was probably three or four years ago when I fought Yotsinglai, but yeah... | ||
| Because now the fights are so hard for such little money. | ||
| Like if I went back now, I'd be lucky to make $1,000 a fight. | ||
| I'm better off fighting Westerners and I can make 10 times the amount of money for an easier fight, if that makes sense. | ||
| It's just amazing that you get paid that low amount to fight in front of 100,000 people. | ||
| If I live there, the currency is quite high. | ||
| But then as soon as you transfer that over to Australia, then you can't even buy McDonald's. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Talk about taxis. | |
| I was actually in a taxi, oh God, about six, seven years ago. | ||
| He goes, oh, what are you doing here in Thailand? | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I'm doing Muay Thai. | ||
| He goes, oh, you know Raymond Decker? | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I know Raymond Decker. | ||
| He goes, where are you from? | ||
| I'm like, Australia. | ||
| He goes, oh, you know John Wayne Park? | ||
| I'm like, no shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's awesome. | |
| That was a long time ago. | ||
| How long did it take you to learn the language? | ||
| Three months before I could hold up a conversation. | ||
| So I remember the very first... | ||
| I used to learn, okay, eat, kin, drink, dum nam, and then I got my first sentence. | ||
| I still remember it. | ||
| They said, okay, we're going to send you to the shop. | ||
| We want you to say, I would like one bag of ice. | ||
| Pom tong gan nam kang nung tung. | ||
| So as I walked down the street, in my head, and then from there, I worked, okay, if instead of saying ice, and then I started getting sentences, and then I'd start asking questions, okay, what's this? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| What's this? | ||
| And then before I knew it, all of a sudden I was one of them. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I can't read or write, but I could start watching the soap operas on the TV. I could watch the news. | ||
| I started picking up the songs. | ||
| Now the songs had meanings besides just noise. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's got to be bizarre when it sort of starts revealing itself to you. | ||
| And then I started thinking Thai. | ||
| I was there for that long. | ||
| I stopped thinking English, and I started thinking in Thai. | ||
| That's when it got scary because I came back to Australia and I start my sentences in English and I finish them in Thai, but I wouldn't know that I was finishing them in Thai. | ||
| And people were looking at me going, what the hell did you just say? | ||
| And then I started to speak in pidgin because the Thai, I started, me hungry? | ||
| Me thirsty? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was doing that to Westerners and I was like, what am I doing? | |
| But it was just normal, because that's the way I lived for so long. | ||
| Wow, just trying to figure out how to readjust. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it took a while. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Took a while. | |
| That's so bizarre. | ||
| It was cool. | ||
| It was... | ||
| That's fascinating that you did it without any books. | ||
| No, and there's no internet. | ||
| So if I wanted to talk to mum, I'd have to write a letter. | ||
| It would take seven days to get to Australia, and then she would reply, so it'd be a seven-day return. | ||
| So it was a two-week waiting period between no Facebook, no Google, no forums. | ||
| So she had no idea if you were okay. | ||
| Every now and again she might ring for my birthday or ring for a special occasion or if someone passed away, hey, bad news. | ||
| If the phone rang and it was for me, it'd be either really good news or really bad. | ||
| Did you have any desire to try to learn how to write it or how to read it? | ||
| I tried, but there's like 27 vowels and... | ||
| If you put one letter at the start of a word, it's a completely different noise if you put an end of a word. | ||
| And it's all tones. | ||
| So one word means five things. | ||
| So the word kau means rice, white, mountain, news, ni. | ||
| So if you say it in a different tone, I'd like to have a plate of ni's. | ||
| What are the different ways to say it? | ||
| Kau. | ||
| Kau. | ||
| And I forget that one. | ||
| Kau. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then, yeah, it's all tone, so the whole time you're talking, it's almost like you're singing. | ||
| Wow, Asian languages are so fascinating to me. | ||
| But a lot of the words are the same words, like the word cow, for instance, cow, or luck. | ||
| So it's the same word, just a different meaning. | ||
| So I try and learn five words a day. | ||
| I go to bed, lay on my pillow. | ||
| All right, got it. | ||
| Next day, okay, now five new more things. | ||
| Okay, doop, doop, doop, doop. | ||
| You can only kind of keep those things in your head if you're practicing it on a regular basis, right? | ||
| Yeah, and because I live with kids as well, there was kids in the camp, and then you could joke around with them, and if you said something wrong, they'd laugh and go, no, stupid, you say it like this, but if you said it to an adult, you'd feel a little bit sort of shy and embarrassed, but to a kid, you just slap them in the back of the head, and they don't laugh anymore. | ||
| Child Beating by John Wayne Parr. | ||
| This is how you learn a language properly. | ||
| Speaking of beatings, Thailand. | ||
| So back there, they still beat their boxers. | ||
| No one looks down upon it. | ||
| So if they're not training hard, it's nothing for them to get a slap across the face or a kick in the leg or a punch in the mouth. | ||
| Yeah, they want their boxers to exceed everything else, so the child cruelty is still pretty normal. | ||
| So child cruelty meaning, that's one thing that maybe people aren't aware of, they start fighting very young. | ||
| Yeah, so if you fight and you're afraid of your opponent, they have a thing called round six, and then that might include you getting bashed by one of the trainers after you get home, and then it's like, okay, Round six, meaning you fight five rounds, and then you come back and they kick your ass. | ||
| And then you get your ass kicked. | ||
| And then it's like, what are you going to be scared of? | ||
| Are you going to be scared of the trainer kicking your ass when you get back? | ||
| Or are you going to be scared of your opponent, someone your size and weight with rules? | ||
| Or are you going to be scared of me? | ||
| So they get a lot more scared of the round six than they do their opponents. | ||
| And then they turn and they'll be men very fast. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's crazy. | |
| They used to make kids walk home. | ||
| I've tried to pick up a kid that I knew from my camp a couple of years back and the trainer shouted at me, forgive me, lift home. | ||
| I got in a lot of trouble with the camp because he lost and he had no heart and they just said, no, he's got to walk home. | ||
| It was like a 30 minute drive. | ||
| I've never known like a walk. | ||
| It's like one in the morning. | ||
| It's weird because they don't get a chance or like they don't get a choice rather. | ||
| Whereas like if you have a young kid and they really aspire, there's some young kids that they aspire to fight at a very young age and that's what they're driven to. | ||
| These kids, a lot of them don't get a chance to decide. | ||
| They're just kind of pushed into these camps. | ||
| Imagine the average salary is $500 a week. | ||
| If you're a famous boxer, you might make $5,000 a week. | ||
| So there's this drive that if I can be just a normal Joe Bloggs cooking rice on the side of the road, or if I'm a famous boxer, all of a sudden I could be the next Thai version of Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| Like Sanchai or Yotsin Klai or Borkha or somebody. | ||
| So there is a chance to get out of poverty through fighting. | ||
| A guy like Yotsin Klai, how much does that guy make? | ||
| What's the equivalent American? | ||
| Not money, but what it's worth in Thailand. | ||
| He's a rockstar. | ||
| He has a nice house, nice cars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who knows? | |
| With Thais, I don't know about that generation, but most Thai fighters I've known over the years, They don't know how to spend the money. | ||
| There was a fighter, I think he fought here in America the other day, and I know him very well since I was young. | ||
| I'm not going to say his name. | ||
| He's fought in America. | ||
| He'd be making, let's say, $5,000 a fight. | ||
| That's a lot of money in Thailand. | ||
| And he still lives in just a little... | ||
| Who knows what they do with the money? | ||
| You give them the camp 50%, you might send your mum and dad 30%, and then you just live off that 20% until your next fight. | ||
| And then you might drink that. | ||
| You might drink it and smoke it. | ||
| So when you say he's a rock star, he's not really a rock star. | ||
| I mean, he's just famous. | ||
| He's comfortable for now. | ||
| So who's making all the money over there? | ||
| The promoters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The camps. | |
| Promoters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the gambling is fascinating. | ||
| That's a huge aspect of it. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| So good. | ||
| You love it. | ||
| Everyone's their own bookmaker. | ||
| So you're watching two fights. | ||
| You're watching red and blue. | ||
| And then after the first round, it might be two for one for the red. | ||
| And then he's still winning. | ||
| Round three, it might be five for one. | ||
| Five for one. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| So if you bet 100 baht. | ||
| Oh, five for one odds. | ||
| Yeah, five for one odds. | ||
| And then round four, all of a sudden, blue starts dominating. | ||
| And then the odds start changing. | ||
| But you've already locked in your five for one this way. | ||
| Who is deciding all this stuff? | ||
| Everybody's their own bookmaker. | ||
| So you're in the crowd. | ||
| He's offering four for one, but this guy's offering five for one. | ||
| I'm going to go with him. | ||
| I'm going to kick this guy's ass. | ||
| And then once you've got your bed on, your lock eyes, yep, locked on, done. | ||
| And then after the fight's done, you walk over. | ||
| Yep, got the money. | ||
| Cheers, mate. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Wow, that's interesting. | ||
| So it's completely unorganized. | ||
| Yeah, it's chaos. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's controlled chaos. | ||
| That sounds fascinating. | ||
| It's brilliant. | ||
| Sort of brilliant. | ||
| Because it's like going to the horse races. | ||
| Nobody cares about the fights. | ||
| Who cares who wins? | ||
| You're seeing crazy matches, and then once you've got your bet on too, now you're cheering this guy home like the last final couple hundred meters for a horse race. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go! | |
| Go! | ||
| Kick! | ||
| And then they hear the crowd, boo! | ||
| And it just raises after every kick, every punch, and then... | ||
| They have a thing called a money injection. | ||
| So say you're losing the first three rounds, and then they call it a chi dia. | ||
| So I'll give you 50,000 baht bonus. | ||
| End of round four, tell him I'll give him 50,000 baht bonus if he wins by knockout. | ||
| And then, hey, you want another 50,000? | ||
| Hold on a second. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| That thing froze again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Did you call them after the last time it froze? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I looked. | |
| I'll call them. | ||
| Call them. | ||
| This is bullshit. | ||
| This is two out of ten podcasts. | ||
| That thing's crashed on us. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| We'll get the audio of it. | ||
| We'll sync it all up. | ||
| The Ustream is down. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I don't mean to interrupt. | ||
| So they're screaming, cheering. | ||
| 50,000 baht bonus. | ||
| So if you're losing and then someone says, I'll give you 50,000 if you win by knockout this next round, all of a sudden you're tired, you're losing, and then 50,000. | ||
| Yeah, all of a sudden you've got this second win and you want to go out there and hurt him and then you knock him out and then the guy comes up and he's your 50,000. | ||
| I've just made 200,000. | ||
| You can have 50,000 of it. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| So when this is all going on, that's also why the ties tend to fight slowly in the first round. | ||
| The first round, they kind of pace themselves. | ||
| Yeah, so it's almost like you want to lose the first round. | ||
| So the odds go to the favor of the other corner. | ||
| You put the money on your guy. | ||
| You might get your three for one or let's just ten for one. | ||
| He's losing bad. | ||
| He's getting his bash. | ||
| There's no way he can come back. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Once he gets the red light from the trainer, and then he's on full steam ahead, boom. | ||
| Knocks the other guy out, and you've just won. | ||
| It's so strange that the culture of fighting, like the sport, the art itself, is so influenced by gambling. | ||
| And then what you have now is, well, forever, the Marvel influence. | ||
| So they might say, look, you're earning 50,000 baht for a normal fight. | ||
| We'll give you 300,000 fight if you happen to lay down round two by a head kick. | ||
| Really? | ||
| So you might be, today, you're unbelievable. | ||
| And then the mafia might come along and say, okay, do this. | ||
| And then next round, you don't know how to hold your hands up. | ||
| And then you get a head kick. | ||
| And then the referee will go, stop, stop, stop. | ||
| Mate, I've seen you fight 400 times. | ||
| You're a legend. | ||
| There's no way no one you don't know how to throw a jab. | ||
| This fight is now considered a no contest. | ||
| This will go to the Tribunal, and you're looking at six months. | ||
| And that could be the worst possible thing for any Thai boxing camp, because now you've brought dishonesty and distrust, and your camp's name is now Mud. | ||
| Did you ever get offers? | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| Does that happen all the time? | ||
| All the time. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| At least five, six, seven times a week. | ||
| Five, six, seven times a week. | ||
| How many times has that happened to you? | ||
| To me, I've never been offered money because they know I'm Wester. | ||
| So they know they can walk over me if they try. | ||
| But I've seen it happen on TV so many times. | ||
| They know they can walk over you? | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Just a Westerner. | ||
| If they know I'm beatable. | ||
| Where you've got two, there's so many Thais in Thailand that there's so many guys in the waiting line that know they can, like Yod-Sing-Guys, that haven't got a name that is just machines. | ||
| It's hard to say. | ||
| Yeah, I know I'm not elite, that I'm never going to be beaten. | ||
| So the Thais just believe they can just walk over. | ||
| So because you're a Westerner, they believe that they can beat you so they don't offer you bribes to lose. | ||
| I've never been offered a bribe, no. | ||
| Because a guy like Yodson Klai, who's such a heavily favoured fighter, that would be the type of guy that they would try to influence. | ||
| Yeah, they'd probably ask Yodson Klai to lay down before they'd ask me because he's such a favourite to win. | ||
| So I'd be the long shot. | ||
| And then if I won, all of a sudden, yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| So for fighters like that, is it super critical to be involved in a very influential camp so that you don't get asked to lay down? | ||
| Yeah, if you're one of the big gyms, let's pretend TriStar, and all of a sudden George goes down from fighting someone that he shouldn't, and then all of a sudden TriStar, and I don't want to put TriStar guys on my shows anymore. | ||
| Because they're obviously mafia influence, so we don't want to deal with them anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| The system over there is so full on. | ||
| That's so crazy that they have to think about that as well as fighting the best fighters in the world in Muay Thai. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then they have to worry about being influenced by gambling and by the mafia. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Without saying any names or any camps, I know of a camp in Thailand that two of the guys did happen to lay down and brought disrespect to the camp, and they might have passed away. | ||
| And then for a certain amount of money to the Thai police, that file goes missing. | ||
| And then it's just a warning to the other boxers that it's not a good idea to lay down from my gym, otherwise you could also go missing. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And I'm not talking rubbish either. | ||
| That's true stories. | ||
| Oh, I'm sure. | ||
| I mean, it only makes sense if you're talking about that amount of money. | ||
| Could you imagine? | ||
| The trainer's invested so much money in these fighters. | ||
| He's fed them. | ||
| He's looked after them. | ||
| He's given places to sleep. | ||
| And then they discredit him by doing that to fill their own pockets. | ||
| And they go, oh, fuck you. | ||
| I'll teach you a lesson, one you'll never forget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So what kind of influence does the Mafia have over Muay Thai in Thailand other than that? | ||
| I mean, obviously they're going to try to get people to fix fights, but is there any other influence that it has? | ||
| I mean, how prevalent is it over there? | ||
| Imagine sometimes they're in front of the Thai TV, and then a guy will have a clipboard with Velcro phone. | ||
| He'll have ten phones on a clipboard, and he'll talk to everyone at once. | ||
| Okay, it's now a 7-4-1 for the blue corner. | ||
| And then some guy will have a marker on his top pocket and it'll be blue. | ||
| And then the red starts turning around. | ||
| He'll take his marker out and change it over to white. | ||
| And all of a sudden the bedding starts changing. | ||
| So there's all these different... | ||
| Oh, it's amazing. | ||
| It's so full on. | ||
| Unless you know the game and how to do it. | ||
| I'm still learning. | ||
| I'm still watching things going, holy shit, this isn't... | ||
| It's a different league of sport. | ||
| Do they ever have issues with people not paying their debts? | ||
| Like people look at you and five to one or whatever the fuck they do. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then big money too. | ||
| It might be $100,000 and $50,000 or $500,000 and all of a sudden, yeah, they might possibly go missing also. | ||
| So fascinating. | ||
| That aspect of it. | ||
| And gambling in Asia seems so prevalent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, all throughout the casinos here in America, we see a lot of people from Asia, a lot of Asian people gambling there. | ||
| And in Macau, obviously, they have that. | ||
| Macau, they say, is like way bigger than Vegas. | ||
| They say the gambling there is just off the charts and people who are just stupid wealthy gambling ridiculous amounts of money. | ||
| Well, they have a Muay Thai paper that comes out every day, and they'll tell you what the odds are for each fighter tonight, what the odds are tomorrow, who won big last night. | ||
| It's all about gambling. | ||
| It's not about the fights or the match-ups. | ||
| Making money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And gambling's illegal, I think, in Thailand. | |
| Thai boxing, they turn a blind eye. | ||
| If you're playing poker at home with six of your mates from next door, one of the other neighbours could look through the window, ring the police, and then they'll come in with six SWAT cars and race everyone in the house from the kids to the grandparents for playing poker indoors in their own lounge room. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| And that happens on a regular basis? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| They come in and arrest people for gambling with their family. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| But you can bet on the fights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And what's the logic behind that? | ||
| There just seems to be, for some reason, there seems to be a turn of blind eye. | ||
| And it's run by the army, too. | ||
| The big stadiums are run by the army, too. | ||
| Wow, that's so fascinating. | ||
| So that, to me, has always been one of the most bizarre parts of Muay Thai is watching all those people screaming and betting and throwing their hands up in the air. | ||
| And me, as someone who's never been over there, I never understood what was going on. | ||
| But it's crazy that you being over there didn't know what was going on either. | ||
| You're still trying to figure it out after all these years. | ||
| When I fought my first fight at Lumpini, I was losing the first two rounds, and then I started landing a few kicks. | ||
| I must have been like 10 for 1, 20 for 1 even. | ||
| And then I started landing a few punches, and then the crowd just changed. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| And then it got to the stage. | ||
| It was so deafening that it gives you that second win. | ||
| Every time you land a shot, all of a sudden, it feels like you're invincible now. | ||
| And then I ended up mucking the guy in the fourth round. | ||
| So I made every single, well not every single, but all the guys in the stadium, so much money. | ||
| Put down a thousand baht and you get 20,000 baht. | ||
| It's pretty cool. | ||
| So that is probably one of the reasons why it's so popular over there. | ||
| So it's almost like their version of horse racing or something like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Lumpini is gone now. | ||
| Back then, Lumpini was the most famous stadium in the world. | ||
| You were pretty much the only main western that was fighting there back then, eh? | ||
| Heaps of westerners. | ||
| Decker was there and Danny Bill and even Manu Entos. | ||
| You know Manu? | ||
| He was fighting there regularly also. | ||
| But the tyres will come into the change room and instead of looking at it, they'll come and feel your arms like a horse, see how fit you are, look you up and down like you're just a piece of meat. | ||
| Should I put money on him? | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| He looks pretty good. | ||
| Or he looks a bit flabby. | ||
| Nah, nah, a bit on the other guy. | ||
| So they'll just check you out and talk in Thai. | ||
| Come and feel you and everything. | ||
| Touch you. | ||
| Touch your belly to see if you have a strong stomach. | ||
| These are just gamblers. | ||
| Yeah, just gamblers. | ||
| How fucking weird. | ||
| And then at Lompini, the change room is next to the Thai toilets as well. | ||
| So as they're coming in for a piss, they might come in and feel your ass while you're pissing. | ||
| See what kind of quads you got? | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| How bizarre. | ||
| Did anybody ever get angry when people are touching them like that? | ||
| It's just so normal that it's not even frowned upon. | ||
| It's just like, oh, yeah, how you going? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They still do it today. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| They still do it today, eh? | ||
| Yeah, it's just normal. | ||
| It's just Thai culture. | ||
| Just they're allowed to squeeze you? | ||
| Yeah, pretty much. | ||
| How strange. | ||
| Do they have women fighting over there? | ||
| It's just started before the last 10 years or so. | ||
| Before the Thai, the women, even to this day, they're not allowed to touch the ring on the main stadiums. | ||
| In the country, in the smaller stadiums, they're allowed to fight, but they've got to go under the bottom rope. | ||
| They're not allowed to climb the top rope. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, when they get into the ring, they must hop on their belly and roll under. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, because of it. | ||
| And then the Lumpini and the Rajadam Dunes, they're not allowed to touch the ring yet because they give girl germs. | ||
| Girl germs. | ||
| Girl germs. | ||
| So in case you get cut... | ||
| Oh, so you want to hear a funny one? | ||
| Periods. | ||
| So as a Thai male, you're not allowed to go down on a girl before a fight. | ||
| Otherwise, there's a chance you'll get cut by elbows. | ||
| Good call. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What? | ||
| They think that you get cut by elbows because you eat pussy? | ||
| Yeah, because you've taken your head down past their waist and the head's sacred and below the waist is considered dirt. | ||
| So to go down on a girl is considered really bad and really bad luck. | ||
| But I've had 290 stitches. | ||
| Mmm, so you eat a lot of pussy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's see what's up. | |
| You've had 290 stitches? | ||
| That's a real number? | ||
| That's a real number. | ||
| You look great. | ||
| You made a fucking good connection with some doctors. | ||
| They stitched you up properly. | ||
| I would have never guessed. | ||
| I have a rubber band in the back of my head and I just pull the skin back. | ||
| Pulls all the wrinkles out. | ||
| That's crazy, man. | ||
| 290 stitches. | ||
| It's crazy that they won't let the girls touch the ring. | ||
| What do they do when they're fighting? | ||
| On the outside ones, they used to make the girls fight last So, there was no girl germs when the boys fought earlier. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| But before, they couldn't touch the ringer at all. | ||
| Everything's back up, Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Been out for a while. | |
| Been out for a while? | ||
| That's bizarre. | ||
| That's so strange that they have such ancient, ridiculous, superstitious ideas when it comes to women. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What about Nong Tum? | |
| What happened? | ||
| Nong Tum. | ||
| Nong Tum was the ladyboy. | ||
| The ladyboy that used to fight at Lampini. | ||
| They made a movie about her because she used to save all the prize money and then she eventually saved up enough to get a sex change. | ||
| And then she started doing the hormones. | ||
| Then it was all over the news because she started taking these injections that make boobs. | ||
| And then she wouldn't take her shirt off when she fought. | ||
| And then she was a big spectacle. | ||
| She was making main events in Japan but she stopped fighting in Thailand because she didn't want to fight other Thai boys. | ||
| And they were paying like thousands of dollars just to have dinner with her because she was such a freak, or he was such a freak. | ||
| And then eventually after, they said, we've got to give you injections, grow the boobs, make sure you want a sex change first before we chop your doodle off. | ||
| And then they eventually chopped the doodle off, and now she fights chicks. | ||
| But because she's had all the hormones, now she doesn't hit as hard. | ||
| Well, not as good as she was. | ||
| She's lost that testosterone. | ||
| What'd you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's a beast. | |
| She's still fucking up with me? | ||
| Not as much. | ||
| Not as much. | ||
| She's not as tough as she used to be. | ||
| Well, she used to be a man. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| She used to be fucking totally different. | ||
| So she's allowed to fight females? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, all she does is fight females now. | ||
| Does she lose? | ||
| Sometimes. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, I wanted to fight her back when I was in Thailand. | ||
| Well, back when she was a heat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course you did. | |
| Yeah, but he wouldn't fight me because I was a little bit of a threat. | ||
| And then he got to the stage where he'd only fight Westerners or Japanese because they were a bit easier than other toys. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So was that the first person that's become a transgender fighter over there? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| The most famous anyway. | ||
| And then he started going on catwalk models because he had the jiggle in his bra. | ||
| The jiggle in his bra. | ||
| I think that's a rap song. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he was not, like, world-class before? | ||
| No, he wasn't A-class. | ||
| Probably B-class. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And how, amongst women, what class is she now? | ||
| When... | ||
| When it was just before the operation, a big star in Japan. | ||
| They used to main event in a lot of the big shows. | ||
| Before the operation. | ||
| So one time, they made her fight a female rock and roll wrestler that had never thrown a punch before. | ||
| And they put boxing gloves. | ||
| And then she had the face painted up in the wrestling stuff and had the get up with the lycra. | ||
| And then the bell went. | ||
| The wrestler come and charged me across. | ||
| The transgender grabbed her by the back of the neck, elbowed her three times in the face, and then knocked her out unconscious for about two or three minutes. | ||
| It didn't go well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the dance before the white crew, like John was talking about, I think she does the, like, lipstick on the mirror as well. | |
| Oh, that's pretty cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's cool, yeah. | |
| Combs the hair and does the lipstick. | ||
| So she fought a woman that had never fought, never done any training, and beat the shit out of her and knocked her out. | ||
| The tie was about 66, 67, and the female wrestler was about 80 or 90 kilos. | ||
| So looking at it, it looked fair. | ||
| One was big, one was small. | ||
| One you had a fight, one you had a wrestle, but in a Muay Thai match. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Yeah, it didn't go well. | ||
| Was that Japan? | ||
| That was Japan. | ||
| Japan's crazy like that, man. | ||
| Yeah, Japan's amazing. | ||
| They love putting on freak shows. | ||
| They love doing that, man. | ||
| They love having people who have never fought before fight someone who's a world champion. | ||
| Like, they do weird shit like that. | ||
| They always did weird shit like that in Pride and K1 and Dream. | ||
| Bob Sapp and the Hongman Choi days. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| It was full on. | ||
| They had a lot of crazy matchups. | ||
| Bob Sapp was a part of a lot of them, but they loved putting that guy up against... | ||
| I mean, they put Bob Sapp against Ernesto Hoost. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he beat him twice. | ||
| He beat him! | ||
| Just with steroids. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just with steroids and a lot of momentum. | ||
| And, I mean, he's tough. | ||
| Look, he took some fucking beatings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, Ernesto Hoost hit him with some bombs. | ||
| Naguera and Pride. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was a good fight. | ||
| That was exciting. | ||
| They fucked up Naguera's neck forever. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| A pile driver. | ||
| He hit him with a pile driver in the first round. | ||
| He was 370 pounds with abs. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And Noguera, you know, to this day, his neck's probably fucked up from that fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I remember Crow Cop was the first person to beat him in K1. Yeah. | ||
| Hit him with a head kick. | ||
| Well, he broke his eye socket. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He hit him with a straight left and fractured his eye socket. | ||
| It wasn't a head kick. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then he went down and he crumbled. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I remember that one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His eye was never the same after that. | ||
| He had like one of those weird eyes after that. | ||
| You know how some dudes get? | ||
| Some dudes, if their eye gets, their orbital gets so shattered that they have to repair it and do reconstructive surgery on it, whatever you're doing is picking up on the microphone over there, fella. | ||
| Are you eating nuts? | ||
| Just push it away from me. | ||
| We don't hear it. | ||
| But he had one eye that was always really weird after that. | ||
| And because of that, he pretty much never was willing to take a punch after that. | ||
| From then on, all his fights started laying down. | ||
| Whenever he got tagged, the fight was over. | ||
| There was no comebacks. | ||
| He made a lot of money. | ||
| Fuck yeah, he did. | ||
| He made a lot of money. | ||
| Well, he was a superstar in Japan. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They made a Bob Sapp dildo. | ||
| What? | ||
| They did. | ||
| They molded it and the Japanese loved it. | ||
| They thought it was the greatest thing ever. | ||
| They molded it after his dick or did you just take a guess? | ||
| Apparently so. | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| They had a book of 50 bobsat facial expressions. | ||
| Here's Bob happy. | ||
| Here's Bob sad. | ||
| Here's Bob raising one eyebrow. | ||
| And it was like a number one seller. | ||
| The dolls, the bobset was a big deal. | ||
| They're so strange. | ||
| It's such an unusual, unusual culture. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you have any weird things happening in Japan? | |
| Just men crying. | ||
| That was probably the weirdest thing. | ||
| When we used to go to the hotel, there'd be people that would camp in the foyer for like three or four days. | ||
| And every time we'd come in at a lift, they'd sort of rush up to the thing trying to get pictures and signings. | ||
| Sometimes walking the street, I had one male guy. | ||
| He just broke down in front of me and just started bawling his eyes out. | ||
| And then he pulled out a watch out of his pocket and said, I was coming to the hotel to give you this. | ||
| I can't believe I'm meeting you on the street. | ||
| Here's this watch. | ||
| And just, yeah, it was bizarre. | ||
| And then women crying too. | ||
| Like women would cry all the time. | ||
| That was sort of normal. | ||
| That's normal in pro wrestling circles. | ||
| If you follow an American pro wrestler, they'll start crying if they meet you. | ||
| It's fanatics! | ||
| It's just fanatics. | ||
| Japanese fanatics are different than any other fanatic. | ||
| They're very strange. | ||
| It's cool, but it's fun. | ||
| Japan was fun. | ||
| I got to fight their 16th home, so yeah, it was awesome. | ||
| Well, the culture is very bizarre when you're walking around there. | ||
| When you just walk around Tokyo, it doesn't feel like any other city anywhere else. | ||
| It's very modern, it's very advanced, very technologically advanced, like everything is like neon and big screens and high def this and that. | ||
| But everybody's, like, super polite. | ||
| Everything's super clean. | ||
| Sometimes you go through fads, too, where people would have silver hair. | ||
| And the next time you go back, everyone would be tanned, like ridiculous orange. | ||
| Well, the next time you go back, it'd be something else where they had the... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But it was just, yeah, bizarre, like you said. | ||
| Well, that's one of the things that happened with fighting over there, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fighting was a big fad. | ||
| 90,000 people in Tokyo Dome, down to 40,000 people to pretty much disappeared from... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| How do you mess up a promotion that's got 90,000 people? | ||
| How do you screw that up? | ||
| Well, K1 doesn't exist anymore, right? | ||
| Yeah, it's done. | ||
| It's sort of coming back a little bit, but it's not what it was. | ||
| It'll never be what it was. | ||
| When was the last event? | ||
| I think they're doing a 63 kilo now, but they might only get 5,000 people compared to the old days of the 40s and the 60s and the 90s. | ||
| So it's never going to have the same appeal. | ||
| Before, when we used to fight KLMX, I believe the promotion paid 50% and the TV paid 50%. | ||
| So between them, they just made this super promotion. | ||
| So it was the big build-up on the TV and then all the graphics and the highlights and they'd fly to Australia and they'd interview me. | ||
| Like the UFC does. | ||
| All the fans felt like they knew the fighter before the bell rang. | ||
| That's what the sport needs for the Muay Thai and the kickboxing. | ||
| Yeah, it certainly does. | ||
| It's so strange that in Japan it achieved this insanely high level of popularity. | ||
| And then just... | ||
| Yeah, and then the Bob Satin, the Ernest Hoos, and the Peter Ertz's, they'd be on all the game shows, and then they'd be on all the Wheel of Fortune Japan sort of style, and they were just celebrities. | ||
| They were not just fighters, but celebrities. | ||
| And then that's all just vanished now. | ||
| What's replaced it? | ||
| I mean, and there's no combat sports that are particularly popular there right now, right? | ||
| Yeah, well, the Pride and Pride was so massive, and K1 was so massive, and what's now? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Sumo. | ||
| The UFC got totally schooled in Japanese business when they bought Pride. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Because they really didn't understand how much different Japanese business is than American business. | ||
| Like, one of the things they did was, it's really kind of interesting how they did it, The Japanese would talk about selling Pride. | ||
| They'd be like, you know, we would like to sell Pride. | ||
| And they'd go, okay, let's sit down. | ||
| Let's talk. | ||
| Let's go over numbers. | ||
| And so they'd make this big announcement. | ||
| The UFC is sitting down with Pride. | ||
| They're talking about buying Pride. | ||
| And then they'd go, eh, we're not going to sell. | ||
| And they would sit down, they'd reach some sort of an agreement, and then, hmm, not gonna sell. | ||
| They went for a long time. | ||
| They're like, what the fuck is going on with these guys? | ||
| Like, they say they're gonna sell, and they don't sell. | ||
| But what they were doing was, I mean, they had Vandelay Silva come over, and he got in the cage with Chocolatel, and they mean-mugged each other. | ||
| Eh, we're not gonna sell. | ||
| And what they did was they hyped up Pride through the UFC. And they made Pride more exciting by pretending that they were going to sell Pride to the UFC. By pretending they were going to bring fighters over and fighters were going to fight in Pride. | ||
| And they had Chuck Liddell go over and fight in Pride. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| Rampage Jackson and Chuck Liddell fought and then Chuck came back to the UFC and then finally they said they were gonna sell Pride. | ||
| And they sold it for $65 million. | ||
| The UFC got it and once they went through all the paperwork, all the money's exchanged hands, they realized they'd bought bullshit because all the contracts were invalid. | ||
| They were all bullshit contracts. | ||
| They didn't hold up. | ||
| So, like, they didn't have Fedor. | ||
| They didn't have a lot of the stars. | ||
| And they had a video library. | ||
| That's all they had. | ||
| They got a video library for, like, $65 million. | ||
| Then it gets even crazier. | ||
| So they say, okay, we're going to run Pride in Japan. | ||
| We're going to maintain the office in Japan. | ||
| We're going to use these Pride employees. | ||
| We're going to build up Pride, and we're going to start running Pride in Japan. | ||
| So they start trying to do that, and the people that were working for them started a dream. | ||
| So they're working for them. | ||
| They're working for the UFC, and all the while, they're putting together this dream promotion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| And so then they went off and started Dream, and then, you know, the UFC's like, ah, we're just going to close up shop. | ||
| So now all they had from that $65 million, I think they were going to try to sue Japan, the Japanese businessman that sold it to them. | ||
| It was a big deal for a while, but then they dropped that shit, too. | ||
| And now all they have is the best of Pride that's on Fox Sports 1. I mean, that's the revenue source. | ||
| It's also something they show on Fight Pass. | ||
| You can watch all the old Prides on Fight Pass, which is kind of cool, but it's like, fuck, man. | ||
| It's just different. | ||
| It's very different over there. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Did you make good money fighting over there? | ||
| It started the ball rolling. | ||
| It definitely got me out of the... | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it helped start. | ||
| And then once I started getting the UK won money, then it sort of snowballed, which helped me get to where I am now. | ||
| Did they give you... | ||
| Is it all in cash, like they do with the MMA fighters? | ||
| Oh, it's one of those ones where it was a month waiting in between pages. | ||
| Yeah, you'd fight, and okay, where is it, where is it, where is it, where is it? | ||
| Well, that's one of the things that fucked Bob Sapp over. | ||
| Bob Sapp was, they had some sort of a contract dispute, and they tried to get him to fight without a contract in the main event of one of their events. | ||
| Is it in Holland? | ||
| I don't think it was. | ||
| It was a Japanese event. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| He walked out of one of the events in Holland, and Peter Ertz was in the crowd after a few beers, and he ended up putting his hand up and saying, oh, fine, I'll save the show. | ||
| And he did it, too. | ||
| He got beat, but he had to borrow someone else's shorts. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, true story. | ||
| After a couple beers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Peter Ertz, man, you want to talk about a dude who's fought the best of the best forever. | ||
| Yeah, he's the king. | ||
| God, that guy's had some crazy fights. | ||
| I watched a highlight reel of his the other night on YouTube, and you forget. | ||
| You forget how many high-kick KOs that guy had. | ||
| I was going to better say the same thing, because Crow Cop's got the reputation for the head kicks, but then you look back at Peter Ertz, there's Well, Crow Cop has a reputation for head kicks in MMA. Yep. | ||
| But in kickboxing, I mean, there's no comparison between Crow Cop and Peter Ertz. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| But it's also, Crow Cop had a really good style for MMA because he's like this Explosive sprinter type dude like his style for kickboxing He might have not had the best style to compete against like the Ernesto who's or the the best kickboxer guys Like they were like a little bit more technical than him. | ||
| They had a little bit more classic kickboxing training You know, he's over in Croatia, but he's just a savage You know, and just had lightning-fast kicks. | ||
| That left high kick, man. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| He was a good guy for when he went to Pride because we had someone that we could relate to that was doing so well in MMA. It's like, yes, everyone cheered for Crow Cop because he was one of us prior to going over. | ||
| Well, you got to see... | ||
| With Krokop, what happens when you get a really high-level kickboxer and they learn how to sprawl and they learn how to stay on their feet? | ||
| Everybody was getting fucked up. | ||
| I mean, there was a period of time when Krokop was in his prime where, I mean, before he lost to Fedor, I mean, he was just lighting people on fire. | ||
| You know, you look at some of his head kick victories in Prime. | ||
| These dudes had no business standing up with him. | ||
| They had no business. | ||
| It was like they were blue belts and he was like a ninth degree black belt and striking. | ||
| He would just fucking head kick everybody to oblivion. | ||
| But he didn't have that kind of success in kickboxing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's sort of like what we were talking about earlier, where when you're fighting, when you see guys that are fighting in kickboxing or in Muay Thai, you're seeing the highest level expression of that art, of striking art. | ||
| Like the Yotsin Kalais, the Bull Cows, John Wayne Pars. | ||
| Who was, do you think, your toughest opponent that you ever fought? | ||
| Yosin Klay. | ||
| Yosin Klay. | ||
| I fought him three times. | ||
| The first time I fought him, he kicked me in the head the second round. | ||
| And then, like last night, when I talked to Brendan, I couldn't remember the rest of the fight. | ||
| I went the distance, but I have no idea what happened after the head kick. | ||
| And then the second time we fought was the final of the Contender Asia reality TV show. | ||
| He dropped me round one and then dropped me again round two. | ||
| I did okay three, four and five, but yeah, he's a beast. | ||
| And then the third time we fought was down in Melbourne. | ||
| And I was just lucky enough to the punches with the Australian judges scored a little bit higher than the round kicks. | ||
| If it was in Thailand, I think I would have lost, but because it was in Australia, I was lucky to get the single victory over him too. | ||
| That's interesting though because it's kind of arbitrary like that they decide that the punches don't score as much in Thailand like the only way you can score I don't think you mentioned on this podcast but you talked about it yesterday in the fight pass that a guy could like box the shit out of a Thai fighter and And if the tie was kicking his arms, the tie fighter would win. | ||
| I fought Borkow in Jamaica, and they had three Lumpini judges there. | ||
| And then everyone that watches the fight, I get a lot of emails to this day that just watch it on YouTube and say, I think you beat Borkow that time. | ||
| But because it was the tie influence of the judges and the tie scoring, that's how I lost. | ||
| It would have been nice to have that one victory over Borcao as well. | ||
| That would have really sort of shot. | ||
| Because he's the man now. | ||
| He's more famous than Jod Singlo. | ||
| Even though I think Jod Singlo would beat Borcao if they ever fought. | ||
| I got a chance to see him fight once in Los Angeles. | ||
| I forget the name of the promotion. | ||
| But they had a really high level. | ||
| Artem Levin fought. | ||
| Borcao fought. | ||
| But to see him fight live was beautiful. | ||
| He doesn't hit very hard. | ||
| Compared to Yod-Singlai, he's very fast. | ||
| But Yod-Singlai is very powerful in South Pole. | ||
| So Yod-Singlai's punching and defense is world standard too. | ||
| He punches crazy. | ||
| Whereas Borkau is realizing that fast left kick and that fast teep. | ||
| It's one of those Floyd-Pacquiao fights, the Yod-Singlai vs Borkau fight. | ||
| But I'd put my money if they ever did happen to meet. | ||
| Is it too late for those guys to fight? | ||
| Different promotions. | ||
| Different promoters, sorry. | ||
| So too much support politics that learned. | ||
| Like Bob Arum, Don King type shit. | ||
| It's never gonna happen. | ||
| God damn it! | ||
| And then Borkow signed a contract now where he's not allowed to fight other ties apparently. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, he's got taken over by Singha Beer. | ||
| They've taken over his management and they've made some contract where he can't fight other ties anymore. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| How come he can't fight other Thais? | ||
| I think it's got to the stage now where he's become a brand. | ||
| He's not just a fighter, he's a brand. | ||
| He's sponsored by Singha, Thai Airways, Thai Tourism. | ||
| He's the face of Thailand for the Muay Thai. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| How'd that happen? | ||
| Because he got ripped off by his old manager. | ||
| He had about 200 fights for Popomuk, and then he won the K1 two or three times, two times, won $50,000, $100,000 both times, and then he kept asking his trainer, so how's my money going? | ||
| Oh, don't worry, I've put it in a bank, I'm investing it for you, and he went out and bought five houses for himself. | ||
| The manager did. | ||
| And then he said, okay, where's my money? | ||
| He said, you have nothing. | ||
| He had a pillow and a suitcase of clothes after 200 fights to show you for his name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So he quit. | ||
| He quit the camp. | ||
| He said, that's it. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| And then the manager was going to sue him. | ||
| I went to court. | ||
| And they told, yeah, it was big time. | ||
| The manager's going to sue him? | ||
| Yeah, because he still wanted his 50%. | ||
| Oh, fuck Christ. | ||
| If Borkow went to fight for Japan again, he was still making big money and he still wanted his cut. | ||
| Even though he ripped him off? | ||
| Even though he ripped him off. | ||
| In Thailand, the manager was still right. | ||
| He still had the rights. | ||
| That was his horse. | ||
| Remember how we were talking about the horses? | ||
| That's his property. | ||
| Borkow is his property. | ||
| Borkow didn't have any claim to all the money that he got ripped off from? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's Thailand. | |
| It's Thailand. | ||
| Okay, so he leaves and then somebody else manages him? | ||
| Yeah, so Borkow, he declared... | ||
|
unidentified
|
He made a statement, remember, at the fight night and he brought the king in and said, you know, I fight for my country, I fight for the king. | |
| You mean brought the king in? | ||
| You're holding your hands up like you're holding a photo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, he did. | |
| He was holding a photo of the king up. | ||
| He wasn't actually holding him up. | ||
| And then I think he announced his retirement too. | ||
| He said, oh, I'm done. | ||
| I'm just going to open my own gym. | ||
| And then I believe Singha Beer, they had a friendship with him. | ||
| They said, hey, we're going to take you under our wings. | ||
| We'll counter sue. | ||
| They got the money to do whatever. | ||
| And then Borkow had permission to all of a sudden start fighting again. | ||
| And then they have a lot of influence. | ||
| So the entire tourism come in and said, oh, we'll give you a hand as well. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, Borkow is driving a BMW and owns his own place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he's a good face for, like, he's a good man. | |
| Okay, well, where does he live? | ||
| He lives still in Thailand? | ||
| He's got his own camp now. | ||
| In Thailand? | ||
| In Thailand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's on a farm. | |
| I always see him with farm pictures and stuff. | ||
| He's got a massive gym. | ||
| Well, that's a great story, you know, that this terrible tragedy and this horrible theft turned good. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, definitely. | ||
| He's still young. | ||
| I mean, how old is he? | ||
| Oh, he must be nearly early 30s, probably. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So that age where it's like almost, you know, he's got enough time. | ||
| Yeah, it was the full Rocky story. | ||
| His whole possessions taken away and then to come back and now to be to where he is is pretty cool. | ||
| And is he only fighting Westerners? | ||
| Like, how does it go? | ||
| Yeah, Westerners and Asians, but no ties. | ||
| That's so weird. | ||
| Why no ties? | ||
| Dangerous. | ||
| Dangerous. | ||
| He could lose. | ||
| Dangerous. | ||
| He could lose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a brain. | |
| Oh, I didn't think of it that way. | ||
| I thought it was a nationalistic thing. | ||
| Like, you know, you don't want to beat it. | ||
| Like, a lot of Brazilians do not like to fight Brazilians. | ||
| There's the handful of ties that are there that are quite, quite dangerous as well and then could take away that. | ||
| And then that reputation in one fight has disappeared. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Ooh, that's a terrible little velvet prison to be living in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Does that make him lose faith in Thailand or in the Muay Thai community? | ||
| He's a god. | ||
| He's a god. | ||
| Doesn't matter. | ||
| He's a god. | ||
| And every time he fights, there'll be 20,000 people in a park somewhere cheering his name. | ||
| How many? | ||
| Just for instance, like we were talking about before, how if you can do a promotion outside, people will drive for hours to be amongst the promotion. | ||
| And then I think he's on tight commercials. | ||
| He might even be on the side of buses and billboards. | ||
| He's the man. | ||
| He's the... | ||
| What could he be? | ||
| He's the Michael Jordan of Thailand. | ||
| So does Yotsin Klai sit around looking at him on billboards and go, damn motherfucker. | ||
| I dare say he would. | ||
| He'd have to. | ||
| He'd have to. | ||
| Damn, because those are the two big names that people talk about in Muay Thai in America. | ||
| I mean, I don't know what it's like over there, but... | ||
| When you talk to people who train Muay Thai that are fans of the sport, those are the two big names. | ||
| Yeah, Borkao had the opportunity to fight for K1, which blew his career up before that, and he was just fighting on Channel 7, just a small time, and then got in front of the K1 walled scene, and then he blew up, and then Yad Singlai never had the same opportunities as Borkao did. | ||
| Well, Yad Singlai's fighting for lion fights, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they're putting that on AXS TV. It's... | ||
| It's just not that much coverage. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's too bad, because AXS TV has amazing fights. | ||
| And Lion Fight, you know, they have Kevin Ross, who's an American and does very well. | ||
| He's one of their champions over there. | ||
| He's a bad motherfucker. | ||
| He's really exciting to watch fight. | ||
| Yeah, Kevin's cool. | ||
| He's so good. | ||
| And his Muay Thai, it's such pure Muay Thai, you know what I mean? | ||
| It's not like a boxer or a kickboxer. | ||
| Like, there's some guys, like, no disrespect, because he's a very good fighter, like a Wayne Barrett. | ||
| He's a very good fighter. | ||
| But, you know, you see, like, he's got more of sort of like a boxing style, and then he's adding the Muay Thai techniques to it. | ||
| Whereas, you see Kevin Ross, like, just looks like, you know, your classic Muay Thai style of fighter. | ||
| Yeah, Kevin's sort of like the version of me. | ||
| He's gone and lived and breathed and done everything in his power to make that transition, so his whole life's consumed of the... | ||
| Yeah, I love Lion Fights, man. | ||
| I went to see that live in Vegas. | ||
| I really hope that promotion takes off. | ||
| Yes, it'd be good for the sport. | ||
| It'd be so good. | ||
| Well, this is the only one. | ||
| I mean, that's the big promotion in America. | ||
| That's the promotion with TV coverage is showing full Muay Thai. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you got brought in to work with George. | ||
| You got brought in to work with George St. Pierre before which fight was it? | ||
| Hendrix. | ||
| Hendrix. | ||
| And what was that camp like? | ||
| What was it like? | ||
| How did you guys make this connection? | ||
| So I had the opportunity to come to Canada and I did seven seminars all around Canada and there was about three days left on my schedule before I had to fly back to Australia. | ||
| And then the gentleman that brought me over said, hey, would you like to travel to Montreal and go to TriStar and meet George? | ||
| I said, holy shit, that'd be pretty cool. | ||
| Get a photo with George and Facebook status and that'd be amazing. | ||
| So we drove to Montreal and I said, hey, Ferez was so nice. | ||
| He goes, oh, I know who you are. | ||
| I'm happy to put you up in a hotel for tonight, and then tomorrow is Muay Thai sparring day. | ||
| Would you like to spar a few of the boys? | ||
| I said, holy shit, that'd be pretty cool. | ||
| So the next day, I brought on my gear, and then we're stretching out, and I say, all right, John Wayne, you go and spar George. | ||
| It's like, whoa. | ||
| And then I touched George's glove and then I was like a little schoolgirl. | ||
| Oh my God, I can't believe I was right. | ||
| George, you're not moving. | ||
| It's like I did with you today. | ||
| Exactly the same I did with you today. | ||
| And then the first 10 seconds I was so afraid of George's jab. | ||
| And then I've waited, waited, and then he's thrown something I counted. | ||
| He threw something else. | ||
| I counted that. | ||
| He threw a jab. | ||
| I come over the top, and I place my shin across his neck, and I just left it there just long enough for the whole gym to stop and stare. | ||
| And then George's eyes lit up, and then I chased him from one side of the cage to the other side of the cage, and I felt pretty good. | ||
| And then next round, hey, all right, John Wayne, you go Rory. | ||
| So I sparred Rory, and I said, holy shit. | ||
| I said to Rory, are we going to go light? | ||
| Because I thought he was a pretty psycho. | ||
| And he was really cool. | ||
| He was a really nice guy. | ||
| And then we sparred him, and did really well against Rory as well. | ||
| All right, back with George. | ||
| Sort of did really well against George again. | ||
| So I took some photos, and then I thought that was it. | ||
| I thought it was all done. | ||
| And then about two months later, Ferraz gave me a call. | ||
| He said, hey, George is getting ready for Hendrix. | ||
| We've got about two months. | ||
| Any chance you want to come back to Montreal and train George personally for Muay Thai? | ||
| I said, holy fuck, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So I jumped on the plane. | ||
| George picked me up at the airport. | ||
| He took me to the hotel. | ||
| He said, oh, this is the hotel in St. Catherine's. | ||
| This is where I like to hit Freddie Roach. | ||
| I said, holy shit, this is big time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And then, yeah, George picked me up every morning. | ||
| We'd go train. | ||
| We'd go eat lunch. | ||
| We were together every day for two. | ||
| After a week, he said, hey, do you want to go to New York? | ||
| New York's like my second hometown. | ||
| I'd love to show you around. | ||
| We'll go and meet John Danaher. | ||
| So we went to New York and then we did some training at the Gracie Academy there. | ||
| And I got to meet Phil Nurse. | ||
| It was really cool. | ||
| Everyone was really nice. | ||
| Were you training jiu-jitsu or were you just training Muay Thai? | ||
| I was George's Muay Thai trainer personally for two weeks. | ||
| Perez says you don't have to do any classes or any seminars. | ||
| We've just got to train George personally for two weeks. | ||
| So basically every day? | ||
| Every day. | ||
| Every day we do pads and spa and just have fun. | ||
| Did you do anything differently the way you trained him than you would train any Muay Thai fighter? | ||
| We had to get ready for Hendrix, who was a southpaw. | ||
| So I become Hendrix when we sparred, so I'd throw this overhand right and try to rush him a little bit. | ||
| Overhand left. | ||
| Very cool. | ||
| That's why you're on the big bucks. | ||
| Doubt it. | ||
| That's all it took. | ||
| So yeah, I become Hendrickson when we sparred. | ||
| And then I had George just doing basic stuff, as you would have fighting any saupour. | ||
| But unfortunately, I think Phil Nurse, my style didn't complement Phil's style. | ||
| Phil was more about the spinning kick and the jumping elbow and the spinning something or other. | ||
| And I just wanted to keep George one stall, just to keep it inside. | ||
| You just wanted to be more conservative? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So after two weeks, it was still 12 weeks before the fight happened, so George probably went back to his stall. | ||
| Because it's so hard, you've got to stay with someone that whole time. | ||
| You can't just train them for a couple of days and hope they stay that way. | ||
| And then so I got back to Australia and this is cool. | ||
| So this lady, she sends me this email. | ||
| She goes, I just want to know, are you going to go to George's fight? | ||
| And I said, oh, unfortunately, no. | ||
| If I go on the team, they're going to have to kick someone off and I don't want to cause any controversy. | ||
| I'll just cheer for George in Australia. | ||
| She goes, no, no, no. | ||
| You deserve to be there. | ||
| I want to pay for your plane ticket to go and watch George fight live. | ||
| You deserve to be there. | ||
| Who is this lady? | ||
| Just some lady from Facebook. | ||
| With some cash? | ||
| Wow, so she just flew you? | ||
| So she goes, what would you like? | ||
| Isla Window. | ||
| And I was like, holy shit, this is really happening. | ||
| She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'll send you over there. | ||
| You deserve to be there. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then she goes, good news. | ||
| As I was looking for flights, a deal came up for MGM. So I've got your three nights at MGM also. | ||
| So you just got to rock up and go. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| It was so cool. | ||
| And did George know you were coming? | ||
| No, I don't think so. | ||
| Then Goyo from Mexico that trains at Albuquerque, he's seen I was there, and he asked me if I could walk him to the scales on the night. | ||
| And then I got to see George in the back room, and he's looking at me, how the hell did you get that puppy? | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| It was pretty cool. | ||
| That's when we met? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's how I got you tickets. | ||
| That's how you got into the fights. | ||
| So everybody hooked you up. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| And then, yeah, watching George fight from the grandstands, he fought the complete opposite fight to what we were training for. | ||
| He fought Hendrix like he was going to fight an orthodox fighter instead of a southpaw fighter. | ||
| So he was throwing outside left kicks instead of inside right kicks and big body kicks like we were working on. | ||
| I thought he won. | ||
| It was a very close fight. | ||
| I thought going into the fifth round... | ||
| It was anyone's fight. | ||
| It was 2-2. | ||
| In the fifth round, I believe George just did it slightly enough to get the edge. | ||
| So that's my theory anyway. | ||
| But you didn't enjoy the way he was doing it? | ||
| Did it bother you? | ||
| Yeah, it did a little bit. | ||
| Considering what we worked on and then how we fought was a complete contrast. | ||
| So I think he could have won a lot easier if we had stuck to our game plan. | ||
| But yeah, I was too far out of camp to make that game plan stick. | ||
| I didn't know that Phil Nurse liked a lot of spinning techniques. | ||
| What kind of spinning techniques does he emphasize? | ||
| He's more about the spinning elbows and the upward elbow and the spinning back kick. | ||
| He's more about the crowd-pleasing moves instead of the stick into the basics. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I wouldn't have thought that. | ||
| I thought he was like real traditional Muay Thai. | ||
| More flashy. | ||
| More flashy. | ||
| But he's the one that gets the crowd standing up. | ||
| When people do his stuff, it's the, oh yeah, that's pretty awesome. | ||
| Oh, I see what you're saying. | ||
| I'd rather punch someone in the face really hard with a jab than I would a spinning back key, if that makes sense. | ||
| I keep everything low-key so I can win instead of risking it. | ||
| Well, you have a real power-based style, which is really unusual. | ||
| I've worked with a lot of different guys over the years that are training MMA fighters or train Muay Thai, and your style is completely unique. | ||
| Your style of standing, that power jab you have is ridiculous, man. | ||
| It's really the only guy who I've ever talked to that had a similar philosophy but slightly different was Bas Rutten. | ||
| Bas Rutten also believes that your jab should be as hard as your left as your right hand. | ||
| He's a fucking psycho. | ||
| You want to hear a Bas Rutten story? | ||
| You have a Bas Rutten story? | ||
| Everybody has a Bas Rutten story. | ||
| I was at Disneyland and then I was with the family and then I've gone to go to the toilet and I've seen Bas with his family. | ||
| And then I was wearing a UFC shirt. | ||
| And then at the corner of my eye, I could see that he'd seen me. | ||
| And I was sort of this little fan, this little sparrow, this little annoying little bug. | ||
| How long ago was this? | ||
| Maybe two or three years ago. | ||
| Oh, annoying little bug that happened to have ten world titles in Muay Thai, whatever. | ||
| But I had the UFC shirt on, so I stood out like dog balls. | ||
| And then I finally got the courage to go up and ask him for a photo. | ||
| And then he said, just a minute, just a minute. | ||
| I have to buy my son an ice cream first. | ||
| I'll come back. | ||
| And I felt this big. | ||
| I felt like a little midget. | ||
| And then sure enough, he come back over. | ||
| Hey, I'll get that photo with you now. | ||
| And I felt... | ||
| If you didn't know who I was, I introduced myself, but he's just a polite smile, took the photo, wished me on my way, and then he came to Australia, and then he did seminars here, and the guy that organized the seminars got him to give me a call. | ||
| Hey, talk to John Wayne, and then I told him the story, and it was pretty funny. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Did you say your name to him? | ||
| You said I'm John Wayne Parr. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He gave me a polite smile, though. | |
| You got me a polite small. | ||
| Boss rooting out of the loop. | ||
| He was the first guy to bring real technical striking to MMA. He's amazing. | ||
| He's the man. | ||
| The best is the man. | ||
| Him and then Maury Smith was the one who brought real high-level Muay Thai to the UFC. Yes. | ||
| You know, like you watch Maury's leg kicks were just fucking brutality. | ||
| Yeah, he gave Stan the Man a touch-up too. | ||
| Did he? | ||
| Maurice was a bad motherfucker in his day. | ||
| He won a fight recently at 50. He's 50 and he won an MMA fight by head kick. | ||
| He's still going at it, man. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Maurice just decided. | ||
| He took a few years off and decided to fight one more time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that was MMA? Yeah, MMA. He fought some dude who had no business. | |
| By the way, you know, but I mean, hey, I mean, he's 50. You don't know, you know, I mean, there's guys that have come back after all those years and, you know, but Maurice was in great shape. | ||
| He did it the right way. | ||
| He was always known for his discipline and his cardio. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's when we're talking about pioneers just before he's definitely one of the men. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| That brought the sport up. | ||
| Well, he was one of the first guys that showed how important cardio was in MMA when he fought Mark Coleman. | ||
| Because Mark Coleman came at him like a fucking bat out of hell in the first round. | ||
| But Maurice just showed poise and discipline and stayed calm. | ||
| And then after, you know, the first round was over and Coleman started to gas out, then Maurice starts landing those heavy leg kicks. | ||
| You hear that thump. | ||
| That fucking thump. | ||
| That disgusting baseball bat to meat sound. | ||
| Yeah, it's been very interesting to see the evolution of the stand-up striking in MMA. Now for a guy like you standing on the outside and watching this, it's got to be really interesting for you too, you know, coming from that pure striking background and seeing all the things that MMA fighters and, you know, in the stand-up aspect, what they do wrong. | ||
| Yeah, what works in my sport doesn't work in MMA either. | ||
| You can't throw body kicks really in MMA, otherwise they can catch it and take you straight down. | ||
| There's a lot of guys winning by body kick now. | ||
| A lot of guys are stopping guys, especially with that left kick to the liver. | ||
| Man, that left kick to the body, when they're standing in the southpaw position, you're seeing Liotta Machida won by that. | ||
| A lot of guys are winning by that kick. | ||
| The Steven Seagal tipped in the face? | ||
| No. | ||
| That's rare, but man, that fucking shit works. | ||
| You know, it's weird. | ||
| Teeps very rarely knock anybody out in Muay Thai. | ||
| No one teeps in MMA. Well, a few guys do, but we were talking about it last night that the stance is so different in MMA and you're still worried about the takedowns and the grappling aspect. | ||
| You might open the door to front kicks and things along those lines. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It's one of my main weapons. | ||
| I wouldn't be able to throw it hardly as much. | ||
| When I came over to America to try and learn a little bit of MMA, I had a fight back in 2007 against a gentleman called Tony Bonello. | ||
| And then I got over here, and then everything I tried to do, they said, oh, you can't do that. | ||
| You can't do more than three or four punches, otherwise you're going to get taken down. | ||
| You can't body kick, they'll catch you, they'll take you down. | ||
| This is the coach that's telling you this. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, and I got to the stage where I was like, what? | ||
| What's your coach? | ||
| Who's the coach telling you that? | ||
| Thomas Denny. | ||
| Hmm, okay. | ||
| He's a good dude, but you should have been with a guy like Farras. | ||
| A guy like Farras would have figured out what to do with him. | ||
| Looking back, he was closest to my wife's family, so it just seemed to make sense. | ||
| I actually trained with the guys down at Orange County. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| What's... | ||
| Eric Poulsen. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Eric Poulsen. | ||
| A lot of crazy grappling. | ||
| He's got a lot of cat wrestling history. | ||
| It's a few-hour drive. | ||
| Do you want to hear a funny story? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Should I tell this one? | ||
| I was going to say it. | ||
| So I meet Cub Swanson. | ||
| Cub Swanson's a cool dude, and we're hanging out. | ||
| And then my first day at Eric Paulson's gym, it's Muay Thai day, okay? | ||
| And I'm the new guy. | ||
| I know nothing. | ||
| No one knows who I am. | ||
| And then Eric Paulson's like, okay, Muay Thai guys, put your gear on guys. | ||
| Okay, so Josh Barnett, you spy this guy. | ||
| He points to me. | ||
| So we start, and I'm moving around, inside kick, jab, and then Josh throws something, I'm like out, and then I'm in, boom, boom, boom, and I'm going again. | ||
| He throws a kick, whoa, air. | ||
| I like the sounds. | ||
| He's a big dude. | ||
| He's a big dude. | ||
| He's quite a big dude. | ||
| I'm in and out, in and out, fearing for my life, just tapping away. | ||
| And then we do two rounds. | ||
| After two rounds, he takes his glove off and he throws it across the room. | ||
| He takes his shin pad off, throws it across the room. | ||
| He packs his bag. | ||
| He storms out. | ||
| And then they go on to Tokyo the next day to fight on the New Year's Eve Pride tournament. | ||
| I forget who it was against. | ||
| And then about a week passes. | ||
| Josh loses his fight. | ||
| I got a phone call from Eric Poulsen about three or four days later, once I got back, and I said, Hey, this is Eric. | ||
| How are you going? | ||
| I just want to let you know that we blame you on Josh's loss because he was fine right up until he spired you, and then some kid that he'd never seen before owned him in the sparring and took away all his confidence. | ||
| So when he got to Japan, he was a mess. | ||
| No way. | ||
| This is a true story. | ||
| I kid you not. | ||
| Well, first of all, how ridiculous are they to take a guy like you where they don't, you know... | ||
| I was just that new guy in the gym. | ||
| It's like, oh, yeah, you spot him. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Why would they do that? | ||
| That's one of the problems with high-level MMA as opposed to, like, high-level boxing. | ||
| Could you imagine Floyd Mayweather preparing for a fight not knowing the training partner? | ||
| Training partner goes in. | ||
| It turns out to be some fucking unbeatable world champion. | ||
| Boxes him up and fucks him up right before a big fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| It never would happen. | ||
| An 80-kilo kid versus a 130-kilo guy, and then he's fighting on pride, which he shouldn't. | ||
| Yeah, it didn't make sense to me, but I found it quite amusing, though. | ||
| It is kind of amusing, but I mean, I can see it from Josh's point of view, too. | ||
| He had no idea. | ||
| No, no idea. | ||
| I mean, imagine you're expecting just some average guy in the gym that's smaller than you, and then you just run into some multiple-time world Muay Thai champion who just happens to be in town. | ||
| I think, sorry, the day before might have been Jiu-Jitsu Day. | ||
| So the day before, there was my first ever Jiu-Jitsu Day. | ||
| This is not the day I broke my finger, but it's like... | ||
| So you were there getting strangled? | ||
| So I went in, I think, Cubs Guard, and then Eric's like, all right, go! | ||
| Go where? | ||
| He goes, try and do something to him. | ||
| I don't know what to do. | ||
| And then I'm putting there, I'm getting tapped every 30 seconds. | ||
| And the next day is Muay Thai Day and all of a sudden I put my cape on, I take my shirt off, I've got a big S on my chest. | ||
| I turn into Superman. | ||
| And yeah, I light up Josh Barnett and then all of a sudden, yeah, he's very cranky. | ||
| Yeah, I would imagine. | ||
| That's one of the things that a lot of fighters who are really good at one style have a huge issue with is learning. | ||
| Like a lot of wrestlers, they never really developed the ability to strike because they would start sparring and they would get fucked up and they'd be like, I hate this. | ||
| I just want to take these guys down. | ||
| That's what I do. | ||
| Or a lot of jujitsu guys, they didn't want to learn how to kickbox. | ||
| Or a lot of strikers, they just didn't want to learn jujitsu. | ||
| It's just like you were saying, you're a world champion and then you would go in there and you wouldn't know what to do and you didn't like it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it wasn't mine. | ||
| And then the whole thing, for me personally as well, was in between another gentleman's legs. | ||
| It's okay, push your hips in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, oh, I don't know. | |
| I can't push my hips in. | ||
| We'll get some. | ||
| There's only one way. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You've got to fuck your way to victory. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| It gets weird. | ||
| Well, also, dudes sweat in your mouth sometimes. | ||
| Sometimes people are mounting you. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| The 69 position thing? | ||
| Yeah, that's rough. | ||
| North-South is called. | ||
| North-South. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't remember, my brother was telling me in one of the camps he went to with one of our boys, the guy had dip in his mouth. | |
| While he was training? | ||
|
unidentified
|
While he was training? | |
| I'm not saying his name. | ||
| Kevin Randleman. | ||
| Was it American wrestling camp? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think it was Kevin Randleman or someone. | |
| I'm not sure it was. | ||
| Randleman had dip in his mouth? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But yeah, they had dip in and they were just doing a little private lesson with them. | |
| The dip was just going all over. | ||
| Jesus fucking Christ. | ||
| That's so disgusting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know who it was. | |
| Yeah, well that's the thing about MMA as opposed to like we said like boxing like their camps are incredibly organized and they bring in people to mimic a very specific opponent. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They would never have a situation where they just have a class and a world-class fighters is taking a class with a bunch of strangers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| That still exists in MMA. You know, and some people think it's a good thing. | ||
| You know, some people think it's cute. | ||
| But I just think, you know, what you were saying before about George preparing for Johnny Hendricks, very specific style, and this is the things that will work best against this very specific stance and style. | ||
| I mean, I think that's the future. | ||
| I think when you're dealing with the highest level athletes in combat sports in MMA, you're going to have to have these really meticulously designed training camps. | ||
| For me, I watch the Rotor UFCs and they're coming up and they spend so much time hitting the tire with the hammer. | ||
| They've got the ropes on this and they're doing all the sprints with the parachute but they can't throw a straight jab. | ||
| It's like all those hours spending getting fit when you could have spent in the gym just perfecting that style. | ||
| And then I go back to Thailand and the Thais don't lift weights. | ||
| All they do is hit pads, run, kick back, like cavemen. | ||
| And it's been for 2,000 years, but everything's so perfect. | ||
| And their bodies are ripped up. | ||
| And I think to myself, I'd rather look like a Thai fully ripped and fit than a half-bodybuilder trying to pretend I'm a rock-on-one wrestler with the... | ||
| Well, there's a lot of fighters that believe that there's sort of a point of diminishing returns when it comes to strength and conditioning, but there's a balance that has to be achieved. | ||
| When you're dealing with grappling and you're dealing with takedowns and the ability to explode and shoot a double... | ||
| A double leg takedown. | ||
| It's like, I think a certain amount of strength and conditioning is necessary. | ||
| I think it's different though with striking. | ||
| I think with striking, efficiency of movement, you know, also your body becomes accustomed to those techniques, so you have, with more efficiency of movement, you have more, you use less energy. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you don't get exhausted. | ||
| Whereas you're seeing a lot of these guys that are in great shape, Great strength and conditioning programs. | ||
| They're fit. | ||
| They're physically strong. | ||
| They have a lot of muscle, but they don't have a lot of physical efficiency in their movements when it comes to striking. | ||
| And they're emphasizing strength. | ||
| You see them fucking, fucking... | ||
| Everything is like wide punches. | ||
| It doesn't look as fluid. | ||
| Whereas if you're watching like, you know, like Yotsin Klai or like you or like Bula Khao, you're seeing like a really relaxed, like the execution is very relaxed. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and the excess muscle mass that makes you more tired as well, whereas you'd rather be like a lean greyhound. | ||
| But then you got these motherfuckers that take you down, you know, and you can't get back up and you get exhausted from the takedowns and, you know, the grappling is a different... | ||
| It's so different when you add the grappling. | ||
| Because the way George beat BJ Penn was so clever. | ||
| Because BJ was a very good striker. | ||
| And he's wicked with his hand speed. | ||
| So George just tied his ass up and made him exhaust his arms. | ||
| And BJ was not known for a guy who concentrated on strength and conditioning until really after those fights. | ||
| After the fight with George is when he got down with the Marinovichs. | ||
| And the Marinovich era of... | ||
| When he was at his best, I think, was when he was doing, maybe, why did I think he fought George after that? | ||
| I might be wrong. | ||
| The best BJ Penn, though, was BJ Penn, who went through that Mark Marinovich strength and conditioning program, because it was just unbelievably brutal. | ||
| They would show it on, you know, the countdown shows. | ||
| You just see all the shit that he was doing. | ||
| And he was talking about he couldn't even hold his kid at night. | ||
| He was so sore and exhausted. | ||
| His body was just broken down. | ||
| But Marv Brnovich put him in like this insane... | ||
| He was famous as like a strength and conditioning guy because his son was like his prodigy and his son kind of went crazy because he disciplined him so hard. | ||
| He was so like... | ||
| Into training, but his son was like a football prodigy from his dad's strength and conditioning programs, and he instilled this program on BJ Penn that he just was fucking unbelievable. | ||
| But what happened out of it was you got this BJ who didn't get tired, and BJ Penn had so much skill. | ||
| He had so much talent and so much heart and determination, but all of a sudden he has this never-ending gas tank, which you never saw from BJ Penn before. | ||
| So in MMA, man, it's like sometimes it's necessary, and sometimes it's like trying to find that balance, though, of how much skill training and how much strength and conditioning. | ||
| Because all the skill training in the world, if you get exhausted because you're wrestling with a guy who's just shooting on you and taking you down all the time, it's just... | ||
| Yeah, they don't understand. | ||
| It's almost like MMA has too much going on. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It looks like that on the road of UFC shows. | ||
| It looks like someone's training here, then they're jumping in a car for four hours and doing something over there, then they're back over here for two hours from in a pool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| It's almost like there's too much going on in a fight, too. | ||
| But that's also what makes it so crazy. | ||
| It's like to be the best at that. | ||
| You know, you be the best at that. | ||
| But one of the things you're seeing is the guys that are the best They're good at certain things, you know? | ||
| Like, you don't see Anderson Silva shooting double leg takedowns, mounting guys, spinning for arm bars. | ||
| I mean, he's caught a few submissions in his day, but usually catches him after he fucks somebody up, like Dan Henderson. | ||
| He fucked him up and then he got his back and choked him. | ||
| Or like Chael Sonnen, where Chael Sonnen just fucked up and laid in his guard and he caught him with a triangle. | ||
| But what you're used to seeing him do is kickboxing guys, you know? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Rumble Johnson is a perfect example. | ||
| He's one of the top contenders at 205. You're not going to see him guillotine anybody. | ||
| He's not triangling anybody. | ||
| He's stepping forward and blasting people with punches and kicks. | ||
| I mean, that's what he does. | ||
| And it's almost like to be the very best is really hard to be good at everything. | ||
| There's only a few guys that are dangerous everywhere. | ||
| Like Anthony Pettis is so weird because he's dangerous everywhere. | ||
| He's dangerous standing up, and then you catch him on his back, and he's fucking catching you in armbar. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| It's like he's one of the few guys who's just dangerous everywhere. | ||
| Cerrone. | ||
| Cerrone's dangerous everywhere. | ||
| Cerrone. | ||
| Dangerous off his back, which is one of the reasons why he's so willing to kick. | ||
|
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Yep. | |
| Not worried about getting taken down. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| You know, his triangle, his arm bar, all his guard games, vicious. | ||
| Yeah, that fight with Miles Juri. | ||
| It was unbelievable. | ||
| Oh, dude, the end when he's throwing those kicks to his legs. | ||
| The first 30 seconds when Miles went to take him down and he turned it into a shoulder lock. | ||
| Yeah, I was like, whoa, that's pretty high level right there. | ||
| He's no joke. | ||
| Yeah, he can do everything. | ||
| I mean, I think he's only got a brown belt in jujitsu, I think, like on paper or whatever. | ||
| But the way I see him move, it's black belt level. | ||
| He's very razor sharp on the ground. | ||
| But again, how many of those guys can do everything? | ||
| What would happen if Johnny Hendricks was fighting off his back? | ||
| Do you think Johnny Hendricks has a triangle? | ||
| How many times has Robbie Lawler caught a guy in an armbar? | ||
| Some of the really best guys in the sport, they're good at a certain aspect of it. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Do you see yourself working with more MMA fighters? | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| I really enjoy working with everyone and moving around, training different people, and then meeting celebrities like yourself, and then doing stuff with you even. | ||
| Today was so much fun. | ||
| Dude, I wish you lived close. | ||
| I do it with you every week. | ||
| That was fun, man. | ||
| I learned a lot today. | ||
| It was a short amount of time, but especially that style of punching and movement in combination with kicks and knees. | ||
| Yeah, I believe I've got a lot to offer when it comes to just broadening people's idea of how to execute different strikes. | ||
| I want to try and maximize the power out of every single thing that I throw. | ||
| Whether it be a hook, uppercut, a knee or a head kick, I want to try and destroy anything that I land on. | ||
| Let it be forearm, thigh, nose, face, neck. | ||
| That's a very different approach than, say, a modern boxing approach. | ||
| Whereas you're seeing guys in corners, they'll come back to the corner and the corner will say, just touch them, touch them with the jab, touch them with this, touch them with that. | ||
| There's a lot of guys, maybe like Nick Diaz is a good example, who's throwing a lot of punches, he's just touching you. | ||
| 30, 30, 70. Yeah. | ||
| But also that intimidation factor also. | ||
| If I hit you hard, you don't want to be hit by me again. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I want to just keep chipping. | ||
| If I hit you with a jab, that hurts. | ||
| Okay, I'll go just something off. | ||
| I hit you with a leg kick. | ||
| Okay, I want to make that really hurt also. | ||
| And it gets to the stage where I'm in your head now. | ||
| And then once I know I'm in your head, then it makes it a lot easier for me to start picking things. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| Is there a different approach to fighting in a Muay Thai fight where it's three rounds with no grappling as opposed to MMA which is five rounds with grappling and then maybe that sort of style of like so much fucking energy and hard to maintain conditioning for that? | ||
| Michael Johnson last night Fuck yeah! | ||
| Yeah, that was amazing. | ||
| Goddamn, he looked good. | ||
| That was awesome. | ||
| And he maintained the whole three rounds too. | ||
| 15 minutes are just crazy. | ||
| Michael Johnson, man, he's really looking good these days. | ||
|
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That was cool. | |
| Last night was probably his most impressive performance because Edson Barboza is a very good striker and he just attacked, attacked, like right from the beginning. | ||
| He's a wrestler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's another guy, you know, just a great athlete who has immersed himself. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Have you ever trained with Henry Hoost, the guy who's the head coach of the Black Zillions? | ||
| No. | ||
| It'd be interesting to see Hoost. | ||
| He's got a lot of guys down there that he's really improved in big ways. | ||
| He's got that Dutch style, the Holland kickboxing style. | ||
| He's teaching these guys, showing big improvements, too, in a lot of the fighters. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I'm here for just the one week and I'm lucky to do a few seminars around town. | ||
| Where are the seminars if people want to go? | ||
| You have one on Friday night, right? | ||
| I know you have Friday night. | ||
|
unidentified
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So tomorrow night we've got one at Faction MMA, which is Gracie Hermita, Carlsbad. | |
| It's at 6.30. | ||
| Carlsbad, California. | ||
|
unidentified
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And then the next night is at the Art of Eight. | |
| The Art of Eight, Art of Eight Limbs, 8 Weapons, Melcher. | ||
| Where's his place? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's in Miramar. | |
| Sort of convoy road area. | ||
| And then that was Wednesday night. | ||
| Thursday night is that elite training in Redondo Beach, I think it is. | ||
| And then Friday night is at Joseph's, which is the Sub Factory. | ||
| Which place? | ||
|
unidentified
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Sub Factory. | |
| Sub Factory, where's that at? | ||
|
unidentified
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Which is the North Hollywood one. | |
| It's one of Eddie's gyms. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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And then Saturday morning is with Muay Thai School of USA. Saturday morning, the day of the fights? | |
| Yep, at 10 a.m. | ||
| Oh, great. | ||
| Where's that? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's in North Hollywood, too. | |
| Okay, cool. | ||
| That's a big gym out here, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| Yeah, really big. | ||
| They've got a lot of guys coming. | ||
| Is there a website where people can go that are listening to this and didn't get a chance to write it down? | ||
| We'll just put it on John Wayne Parr's fan page. | ||
| Okay, John Wayne Parr fan page on Facebook and John Wayne Parr's Twitter account. | ||
| All the dates will be up on there and all the times and all that stuff? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Anything else, brother? | ||
| If you get an opportunity, I have a documentary that I've just released on YouTube called Blessed with Venom. | ||
| It's a 90-minute documentary. | ||
| When it was released in Australia, it had two weeks in cinemas. | ||
| And then the company that put it out for me, once it was finished, they sort of lost my phone number. | ||
| And I didn't hear anything from them for like three or four years. | ||
| So now I thought, you know what, fuck you. | ||
| I'm putting it on YouTube for free. | ||
| So if anyone wants to see it, it's up there. | ||
| They lost your phone number? | ||
| Literally lost your phone number or they just stopped calling you? | ||
| They stopped calling me. | ||
| They were going to do DVD sales. | ||
| I don't know what happened to that. | ||
| I was getting messages from people in Brazil saying, we've just watched a documentary in Brazil with subtitles. | ||
| Absolutely amazing documentary. | ||
| And I'm thinking, where's all this money going? | ||
| They surely wouldn't have gave it to the Brazil TV for free. | ||
| I didn't make one cent from the documentary, so I thought it got to the stage. | ||
|
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Who are these people, just so nobody else has to know who they are? | |
| They know who they are? | ||
| Yeah, but it was amazing. | ||
| I can't thank them enough for making the documentary. | ||
| But now it's on YouTube for free, so if anyone wants to watch it, it's called Blessed with Venom, and it's going to Thailand, visiting my old camp, interviewing Yod-Sing Lai and other Thai opponents, Sanchai, the traditions about going to fighting at Lumpini Stadium, and lots of highlights of old fights. | ||
| I watched it this morning. | ||
| It was pretty fucking badass. | ||
| It's really cool. | ||
| It's got to be cool having a documentary on you like that. | ||
| Yeah, and when you're still alive, too. | ||
| We know it's not bullshit that way. | ||
| When it was released in cinemas too, the first night that premiered, it had a red carpet and we had 450 people in the cinema. | ||
| And then I flew my mum and my nana and the family together. | ||
| And it was... | ||
| then my head was three stories high. | ||
| It was such a cool buzz. | ||
|
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Wow. | |
| One of those things where you pinch yourself and you can't believe this is happening. | ||
| But now it's on YouTube, so it's pretty cool. | ||
| And then if you don't know much about Muay Thai and you want to find out about the culture, this is the perfect documentary to realize that we're not bad guys, we're not thugs, we're just everyday guys trying to make it in a sport where it involves punching other people in the face. | ||
| Well, you're people that are involved in a very unusual quest, you know, the quest to get excellent at using your limbs to fuck up other dudes who are really good at using their limbs to fuck up other dudes. | ||
| I mean, it's about as exciting a sport and as exciting an endeavor as you could participate in, you know? | ||
| It's beautiful, man. | ||
| And it was an honor to have you on here. | ||
| Honor to train with you. | ||
| In my world, you're a huge star. | ||
| And you've always been a big name in Muay Thai and kickboxing. | ||
| So it was cool to meet you when I met you at the UFC. And it was cool to do this, man. | ||
| I really, really appreciate it. | ||
| I have no idea how much it means for me to watch you from the UFC every single weekend. | ||
| And then to talk to you on Twitter, I think a little bit of we come out when you replied to me for the first time. | ||
| It was so cool. | ||
| And then to have a relationship. | ||
| A little bit of we. | ||
| To have a relationship. | ||
| I've traveled all the way from Australia to arrive here yesterday to actually sit across from you and to be in this room is so surreal and so amazing. | ||
| Let's do it again, man. | ||
| Let's do it again. | ||
| Tell me when you're going to be back here again. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| I'll be in touch. | ||
| Yeah, let's set it up. | ||
| Let's set it up and try to set up some seminars, too. | ||
| Maybe we can connect with some people that would like to do more seminars out here in America. | ||
|
unidentified
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That'd be amazing. | |
| Let's make it happen. | ||
| John. | ||
| Wayne motherfucking Parr, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| His actual name is Wayne Parr, just so you know. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's my secret. | |
| They made him go by John Wayne Parr. | ||
| But they call you John Will in... | ||
| John Will. | ||
| In Thailand, right? | ||
| In Thailand, Thailand. | ||
| All right, brother. | ||
| Thank you very much, man. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| My pleasure. | ||
| Thank you. |
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