John Wayne Parr details his brutal 315-stitch world title fight under Lion Fight’s MMA-like rules, contrasting Glory’s decline with Muay Thai’s technical depth and U.S. exposure struggles. He praises Ronda Rousey’s dominance but laments the sport’s lack of financial incentives, comparing it to MMA’s paydays. Parr defends intense sparring—122 fights with no long-term harm—while debating Dutch vs. Thai training methods, citing fighters like Fedor and Masato’s past glory. His December 5th Caged Muay Thai bout against Cyrus Washington (a Taekwondo black belt) highlights the cage’s striking focus, but he hopes ring fights revive tradition. Ultimately, Parr’s longevity and passion underscore combat sports’ cultural divide: Muay Thai’s discipline vs. MMA’s chaotic, fan-driven spectacle. [Automatically generated summary]
I thought I broke my foot, but luckily all the x-rays came back clear.
Swelling's going down a lot now, so at one stage, yeah, I didn't think I was going to be able to fight December the 5th, but it looks like I'm on now with Cyrus.
I saw a cyborg come into the change room to get a photo with me, and as I stood up to get a photo with her, then I realized the pain was rushing to my foot.
I was like, okay, I think my foot's broken.
Luckily, there was an ambulance there.
We got straight into the emergency, and then, yeah, got on to the painkillers, which took me into a different dimension.
This pink elephant came into the room and started chatting to me and said, Hey, I don't think your foot's not broken, but you are in a different galaxy now, so welcome.
Well, that's the knock on Muay Thai as opposed to glory, which unfortunately they just got...
They lost their deal with Spike TV or cancelled their agreement with Spike TV. I don't know what happens, but they pulled Glory off Spike, which is really very disappointing for me as a fan of kickboxing, and I was just hoping that that would translate into people getting more understanding in this country of high-level kickboxing.
In the cage or in the ring or wherever you're competing, the idea is to train so hard and train exactly how you're going to fight so that it all comes out automatically.
And when your automatic instinct for Nathan, I mean, how many fights has he had?
I think close to 70. Yeah, I mean, think about all those fights that he had throwing elbows.
Think about all those training sessions throwing elbows.
And then all of a sudden he's in positions where he's like, okay, don't throw an elbow.
Because that's normal.
You're getting in the clinch and it's just normal for you.
And then all of a sudden they tell you you can't do it.
I mean, it's problematic.
I mean, it's nice for these guys to be able to have another outlet.
I know Tyrone Spong is doing some boxing now, just some straight boxing, which...
I think probably at least he has shoes on, so he'll be just thinking that it'll help him not throw kicks and not thinking he can throw elbows and things.
The guys who are the best and the guys who are the best at that particular style of Muay Thai, it'd be great to see them use all their weapons.
It'd be great to see them utilize all the techniques of Muay Thai.
You see how technical Muay Thai is.
I don't think people from the outside that are watching it appreciate it for what it really is.
It's incredibly intense and technical martial art.
But I don't think you should ever Sort of make rules that are dictated just to make people that are at a low-level fight in a more fan-friendly, enjoyable way.
I think you should just allow the people that are watching it to see the difference between a novice and someone who's an expert and see someone who uses the clinch to their advantage and see all the different techniques that can be landed from the clinch, the use of the knees, the elbows from the break.
You know, there's a lot of beautiful techniques that can be used from the clinch that you don't see because what Glory has done is sort of adopt the rules of K1, which the Japanese had kind of decided, hey, there's got to be a way to make these guys fight in a more exciting and fast-paced way.
Let's make the rounds, you know, just let's make the fight shorter instead of having many rounds, like 10 rounds or 12 rounds or something like a boxing match.
Let's just do like three rounds and have them go fucking crazy for three rounds, you know?
You have a way of moving, a very specific way of moving inside the octagon, or inside the ring, rather.
If I watched you, like, just silhouette, if someone showed me a silhouette of you moving, I'd go, oh, that's John Wayne Parr.
Like, I could totally tell.
It's so interesting.
You have your own very specific style of moving.
And I would imagine that that style is like, I mean, you do a lot of things that other Muay Thai guys do, like you're very light on the front foot, but there's a way you have of throwing punches and combinations and so heavy off that front left leg is very specific to you, you know?
And I think that...
For a lot of guys, that's got to present them.
It's very effective, but it's unique.
In your style of movement, I can't think of another guy.
If I watch certain guys, I go, oh, well, that guy fights like this guy.
He kind of moves a little bit like him.
Or Tiago Alves is sort of like that guy.
You can kind of do that with a lot of fighters.
But not with you.
You've got this weird, sort of unusual timing.
Especially that left leg, man.
You're like one of the best guys I've ever seen at that front left leg counter to the body when a guy's throwing a punch.
My left leg's my counter, so I'm throwing that more than anything.
I started off with a really strong right leg, and my left leg was okay, and I just worked at it, worked at it, worked at it, to make it my main weapon.
Yeah, and then as soon as someone comes in to strike, I throw that left leg, and it's not only am I trying to score, but I'm using it as a break to try and stop you from throwing your combinations also.
If I don't land on your ribs, I'm hitting your arm, so I'm pushing you off balance, so you can't throw the right hand.
Or I want to try and break that right hand down, so that's taking the power away from your right punch.
Yeah, my theory is if I can get someone covering up, I'm not going to stop.
So if the opportunity comes, it might take me 30 punches, it might take me 50 punches.
But eventually, if I can find that gap and I hit you hard enough, I know I can drop you.
So I was just trying my hardest to try and land that big one to try and put him down.
And I knew that I've done enough work in the gym to throw all night.
My gas tank was full.
There was no way I was going to gas.
Yeah.
I just kept throwing, throwing, throwing, thinking, come on, just learn that good one to just give myself an eight count to get myself back into the game.
But yeah, I think he wore a 30-ish and then he got out of the corner and then shrugged it off.
We've fought each other three times now and then we've also fought on the same cards here in Jamaica and Australia and a few other places and nicest bloke.
He's just the most genuine.
And then even when we got put together for this fight, we were messaging each other privately on Facebook and Just talking about different things.
You know, that's interesting because that's a big part of fighting is the camaraderie between fighters.
But also a big part of fighting is the mental game when there is no camaraderie.
When guys are fucking with each other and it becomes emotional.
And there's a lot of fighters that have been tripped up by emotions.
Like Donald Cerrone was on the podcast and we were talking about his fight with Nate Diaz.
And Nate Diaz talked all kinds of crazy shit to him, knocked his cowboy hat off, you know, called him every fucking name in the book.
And then when they fought, Donald was all fucked up emotionally.
He was so emotionally invested in beating this guy's ass and not losing to this guy that he just couldn't perform at his best.
He just was so tied up.
And Conor McGregor, he does that to everybody.
He fucks with you so hard.
By the time you get in there, you don't even know who you are.
He's got you convinced you're a totally different person.
You just want to kill him, and then you can't even hit him.
It's such a mindfuck when you wind up hating someone.
So, in that sense, it's got to be a pleasure when you meet a gentleman like Cosmo Alexander, who's a great fighter as well, and you don't have to think about all that jazz.
As soon as you get emotionally invested in something like that and just you're dealing with that other thing which is even bigger and more central to your thoughts than your actual task at hand.
You're dealing with this like this talk jazz blah blah blah, which is you're gonna fight.
I mean you're gonna you're gonna engage in the most intense form of competition ever and you're concentrating on this bullshit like talking bullshit like what difference does it make what we say if we're gonna fight?
Well, the difference is, if you can fuck with a guy's emotions, he can't fight good.
Part of what Conor's doing is fucking with people.
That's what Muhammad Ali did to Sonny Liston.
When Muhammad Ali first fought Sonny Liston, he was screaming and yelling at him so bad at the weigh-ins that they weren't going to let him fight.
That they thought there was something wrong with him.
Because his heart rate was so crazy and his blood pressure was so high.
They were worried that this guy's not fit to fight.
And then he calmed down.
He's like, just relax.
Go ahead.
I know what I'm doing.
I'm just fucking with this dude.
And it turned out that he knew that Sonny Liston, although he's terrifying and he's this massive hard puncher and knocked everybody dead, he was scared of crazy people.
Hans said, when you talk to him one-on-one, he said he's just the nicest, politest gentleman you'll ever meet.
And then you put him in front of a stage, especially in front of those crowds that they're pulling at the Wayans and press conferences, and then he just shines and just becomes this different animal, which is a marketing genius at the same time, too.
He's just a brilliant entrepreneur that's going to be set up for life.
That's one of the things I was thinking about when I was watching you fight.
Unusual movement, you know, it's a very difficult thing for guys to deal with.
Like a lot of fighters will tell you that sparring with a person who has a very traditional style is almost like comforting sometimes.
But when you spar with a guy who might not even be as skillful, but is doing things all wrong, but has a lot of power, like does things like real weird.
The guy who just fought Sugar Shane Mosley, that crazy guy who smokes cigarettes from Nicaragua.
Yeah, Ricardo Mayorga.
Ricardo Mayorga is a perfect example.
When he used to fight the late, great Vernon Forrest, he beat that dude because Forrest couldn't deal with his weird, crazy punches coming from everywhere.
It was madness.
Those punches were coming from behind his calf and over the top and hit you on the nose.
What the fuck?
Everything was winking and wild and with murderous intentions.
It was so street.
It was not skillful.
It was not like fighting a Roberto Duran who was incredibly skillful but also raw too.
With Riccardo Majorga, everything was awkward.
It's like you didn't know what the fuck.
You couldn't get into this rhythm.
Like when you see like two very skillful boxers fight, you know, you see they're looking for openings, they're probing, but you see like a common rhythm or a rhythm that you've seen before, you know?
You watch two professional ties and they're training identical So when you put them against each other, now you're watching a chess game.
Well, back in the 90s anyway, then you chuck in your Raymond Deckers, or luckily for myself, you throw in the hands because they weren't really boxing back then.
And all of a sudden, you've thrown out the rhythm because all of a sudden they're like, what the hell's going on here?
They say that by the time he had his last few fights, his ankles were so bad that his doctors told him, if you break your ankle again, we might have to amputate your foot.
Do you think that though when you're fighting a really big guy like Cosmo Alexander who most likely lost a shitload of water weight the day before the fight and then IV rehydrated which is legal in Muay Thai still not legal in MMA anymore at least in the UFC Do you think that that is a detriment to you, though?
Jorina Barsch is her name and she's tall and long.
You know Dutch people are among some of the tallest Europeans.
The average height is six feet tall.
They're very big people, you know, and Jorina is like probably one of the most technical women in the world when it comes to Muay Thai and that you got to see that in that fight with Cyborg.
I mean when she pushed kicked her in the face and knocked her down.
But it's interesting what you said, though, about Jorina when she fought Cyborg, because I'll tell you what, I was super impressed with her technique and super impressed with her skill level, but I was impressed with Cyborg's grit and determination because she was getting her fucking ass kicked, and she hung in there, and she kept trying to win that fight.
She kept chasing that girl down, and she was getting beat.
She was getting beat, and she was losing, and she was technically outmatched, I think there's a difference in someone who's really good at hitting things hard and someone who's really good at Muay Thai.
Someone who's really good at setting things up.
I think that what she can do better than Cyborg is set things up technically.
It's not that Cyborg can't learn that.
She certainly can.
But when you see someone who's used to, like, takedowns and submissions and dealing with little gloves and dealing with fighting people that are nowhere near her technical level, that was without a doubt the best striker Cyborg's ever faced.
Because she's been fighting girls that, literally, there have been assaults.
You know, you've seen a lot.
Like, the toughest girl she ever fought was Gina Carano.
And, you know, that was a good fight.
It was a good fight up until Cyborg started beating her down.
But the level of Muay Thai...
In something like Lion Fight.
Who's the girl who fought Jorina this past weekend?
What Doreena brought to the table with the cyborg fight was a lot of front kicks to the face, which I don't think MMA people use as effectively because they can't use it because of the catches and the takedowns.
And also the straight-up knees because Doreena is so tall.
What a normal person would throw to the body, she can throw to the face, no problem whatsoever.
So, all of a sudden, you have those two different elements coming at you, and that's what kept landing over and over.
That kept dropping her, especially when she was holding the ropes and teeping in the corner, and Cyborg was rushing in to try and knock her out and running straight in on those front kicks.
Yeah, I... Man, I get frustrated when I see that Muay Thai is not more popular in the United States.
I really do.
You know, and I know I'm not the only one because the big thing that everybody always says about MMA, which of course I disagree with because I have a background in Jiu Jitsu, but that when it goes to the ground that it's boring.
I don't think it's boring because I understand what's happening and to me it's fascinating.
I want to see like a guy like Damien Maia, when he takes guys down and strangles them, to me that's beautiful.
That's art.
I want to see how he's setting things up.
When he fought Neil Magny in his last fight, I couldn't wait to interview him because he made some adjustments on the ground and took the guys back.
And the guy was defending in the first round.
I was like, what adjustment did you make?
And he was explaining it to me.
And I could see the technique and the art in his words.
To him, it was a problem to be solved.
And that's...
I see that in Muay Thai, too.
And I think for, you know, everybody that, like, the meatheads that watch MMA, oh, I hate when it goes to the ground.
Well, why don't you like Muay Thai, then?
Why isn't Muay Thai, like, the biggest, most popular combat sport in the world?
Because it's all stand-up.
And if you watch Lion Fight, man, you might see five, six knockouts a night.
Like, Dream Killer Bolanos, that fucking kid with his spinning elbow KO in his last fight?
Holy shit!
Wild stuff, man!
I think also AXS TV is one of those weird stations.
Mark Cuban owns it.
It's at the end of the dial on DirecTV.
You can't fucking find it.
I think that it's one of those things where somehow or another there has to be a consciousness shift where people have to be able to appreciate it.
You know, and I don't know what that shift is.
I don't know how to make that shift.
I don't know what it would be that would cause it to get on some big event on television.
You know, Yotsin Clyde, maybe you and Yotsin Clyde again!
They were fighting so hard that at one point in time, I believe the statistic was 10 million people were watching that fight, which for a cable TV fight was fucking insane.
And the reason why so many people watched it is they started watching it.
It was like 3 million people or something like that because it was the finals of Spike TV. And during the fight, the numbers went up like...
Substantially.
And they believed that people were literally calling people up and going, you got these crazy white motherfuckers are beating the shit out of each other on Spike TV. Go turn this on right now.
And they literally believe that it was through word of mouth during the fight.
That changed MMA history.
Because during that fight, because it was so crazy and so wild, and those guys just put the pedal to the metal and went nuts for the entire fight.
And they were so evenly matched that after it was over, a sport was made.
I mean, a sport was made by one fight.
That's not an exaggeration because to this day, Although it was a great performance by Diego Sanchez, nobody talks about Diego Sanchez versus Kenny Florian.
It was the fight between those two guys, between Forrest Griffin and Stefan Bonner, that literally made MMA. Yes.
The numbers just started going crazy like everybody started tuning in and it just picked up and then the ultimate fighter took off and then it picked up more and more and more and more and then It became a huge sport, but it literally was born out of one event.
Yep That was we need something like that for Muay Thai We need something like that for kickboxing one big thing where people go holy shit And if that can happen, I think, and you also need a promoter like Dana White and, you know, owners like the Fertittas.
You need some powerful organization that's got balls and money and really gets behind it.
I mean, think about the small group of talent, the depth of talent in women's MMA. There's a perfect example.
The UFC 115-pound strawweight champion, Ioannion Jacek, is a Muay Thai champion.
Six-time world Muay Thai champion.
And she's just murdering chicks.
Just murdering them.
She's nasty.
She is so nasty.
But...
Other than her, you know, you have a bunch of people in her division that are really...
Honestly, there's a few with some experience that are getting better, but they're not world championship level.
You know, they're just...
And if you're a girl who wants to make it in fighting, and you look at the pool of talent that's in the UFC right now, in the women's division, especially 115-pound division, you're going to be compelled to try to make it there.
At 135, you get that murderer, Ronda Rousey, flipping bitches on their heads and shit.
She's so advanced that she's just smashing everybody they put in front of her.
That's a tough one because you would have to learn how to grapple at a very high level to even be able to hang in there with her.
And now her striking is getting way better too, so it becomes problematic.
But what is the one thing that no one's ever done to Ronda Rousey?
Kick the shit out of her legs.
Strike.
Keep her away.
Keep her away.
Stuff the takedown and kick the shit out of her legs.
We haven't seen that at all.
Like, at all.
We've seen no...
How much would you like to see a world championship level Muay Thai fighter like Ioannion Jacek who's fighting at a natural 135 who fights Ronda Rousey.
Someone who comes out there and you see this like super high level striking game with good takedown defense and sprawls.
I heard the same thing from Faraz when I was training with George.
He says, people don't understand that they fight in the prelims and then, because George has done it so many times, he's so used to the pressure.
But then you get the guys that are fighting George and then all of a sudden it's 5-5, you're on the posters, you're doing all the media, and then you have to walk out in front of that 25,000 people or whatever, the MGM or...
You fight Shogun in your first world title fight, you're 24 years old, and you beat his ass.
You stop him, and everybody goes, holy shit, look at this guy.
I mean, I think John was 23, actually, now that I think about it.
He was the youngest ever UFC champion.
And I believe that Josh Barnett won the UFC heavyweight title when he was 24. So I think, I might be off by this, but I think John was 23. But that's a special guy.
John, just a special competitor.
And I think that for someone like Kat Zingano, that media pressure is just as much pressure.
But I think someone like Ioana, who is a world champion already, she's so used to competing at an incredibly high level, and then she had to get her bearings in the UFC. She had that one really tough fight with Claudia Gidea, where it was neck and neck.
Very, very close fight.
And then, from then on, she's gone to just dominate.
And I think that a woman like that, like, if you could find someone like that at 135, it would be very interesting.
Because although Ronda is getting better at striking, you very rarely, if ever, see her throw kicks.
You know, I think you have to find someone that can fight going backwards as well.
Because as soon as that bellwings run the charges across the cage, and then anyone that's silly enough to stand in front of her and think they can strike standing on the spot, they're going to get taken down straight away.
So you're going to have to be mobile, otherwise she's going to grab you and flip you upside down on your head and inside out.
You're also going to have to be world-class as an athlete.
And I think that she is, but I don't think anybody she's ever fought is, except maybe Sarah...
You could say...
Not Alexis Davis, but Sarah McMahon.
Is that her name?
The Olympic silver medalist in wrestling?
She was obviously an excellent wrestler.
So you've got that.
She was obviously an excellent wrestler.
But as an MMA fighter, there's some holes in her game.
She's not very good off of her back either.
She gets put on her back and she doesn't do so well.
But I think Ronda, she's a winner overall.
That's the most important thing.
That person like the Jon Jones mentality, the person who just knows how to win, and is not going to get rattled by the pressure, is not going to get rattled by all the hype and all the bullshit talk, and is going to be able to go in there and perform at their maximum level.
Ronda obviously can do that.
And she even said...
Recently she said the more fucked up and crazy her life is, the more fucked up and crazy things are, the better she fights.
That was a wake-up call to a lot of people that she's like learning how to strike too.
But, with all due respect, Betch Cohea is a brawler.
Like her technique is, it's not that good.
She throws like kind of arm punches and she's like physically like She's bulldog-ish.
She's tough and strong, but she's not moving like Jacek.
She's not moving like an elite striker.
She's throwing barrages of punches, and the pressure for her must have been off the fucking charts in Brazil, fighting Ronda Rousey, talking so much shit.
And then she fucked up and talked about Ronda's dad and suicide and all that.
And the Brazilians kind of turned on her for that.
And then at the weigh-ins, the Brazilians were cheering Ronda, which never happens.
That's how much she's transcended.
She can go to Brazil and then the Brazilians will cheer her.
Yeah, people get a, they have a, for whatever reason, there's a misconception about what he's like, you know.
I think part of it's the Armenian thing.
You know, Armenians are just so, they're so masculine, you know, and they have this certain way about them that a lot of people, they misread that, you know.
I think in that fight, I think one of the things that happens in really high pressure fights, and I think this correlates with what we were talking earlier about pressure and about like, you know, we were talking about guys that put too much pressure on themselves from shit talking and get too much emotionally wrapped up in it.
When a fight is a fight where they say the winner is going to be the number one contender and will next fight for the title, those fights suck at least 50% of the time.
Because at least 50% of the time everybody locks up and nobody wants to do anything stupid because a win virtually guarantees you a shot at the title.
But but the fight wasn't good because neither guy pulled the trigger and it was like it was very lackluster It's like both guys were like hesitant and and even Arlovsky Even though he won the fight when I was interviewing him.
He was just crazy He won he won he he thought he was gonna have the next shot of the title But then you know then the fight was bad So that's one of the weird things about the UFC that people don't like Is that there isn't any, like, clear structure.
Like, when Misha Tate won, she was virtually guaranteed a shot at the title.
So she's, she's actually, she made some interview recently where she said that she should probably think about what she's going to do when she retires.
And she should probably at least consider that.
And I was like, whoa, she's, like, thinking about retiring?
And that's an interesting thing when you look at the number one person in the division, which is clearly Rhonda, who's made...
I think she made like $6 million last year or $7 million.
Something fucking crazy like that.
And that's in fighting.
Forget about all these ads she's doing.
She's in a million different fucking commercials.
I mean, she's probably made that much on top of that with just ads and endorsements and movies.
She's done two big movies.
She's making...
Fucking truckloads of money, right?
And then there's Misha Tate, who's the number two girl in the division.
Arguably, I mean, even though she's lost to Ronda three times, she's the number two girl in the division, right?
I remember Frank Shamrock saying to me once, he said he was going to get into acting.
He said, I'm going to take over the world of acting, same way I took over the world of fighting.
I'm like...
Good luck with that, dude.
You can't even control that.
It's not like you can run hills better than anybody and kick people's asses.
When you're fighting, you can be undeniable.
You're fighting, they lock you in that octagon, or you hop over the ropes into that ring, and when the referee says, fight, there's nothing that can save that guy.
You storm after him and knock him out, and you're the fucking king.
But in the world of acting, my God, there's so many hoops and ladders and so much bullshit.
And so when I watched other people that were chasing after it, I got to see the psychological aspect of it.
You see people kissing people's asses because you want everybody to like you, because you want to get cast in these movies, and you've got to make friends with the right social circles, you've got to be on the right red carpets, you've got to support the right causes, you have to have the right political affiliations.
It's a mess, man.
It's a fucking mess.
You can't say anything controversial.
You can't do anything too fucked up.
There's certain things you can get away with as an athlete you can never get away with as an actor.
Because if you did, they would just write, unless you're like some fucking Johnny Depp style, huge, undeniable movie star, you can get away with a lot of shit.
After I did the documentary with the Bus of Venom, we played around a little bit, and then we went to Thailand, and then I was lucky enough to work with some Thai stuntmen, and they'd work with Tony Jaar, and it was amazing.
So these thumbmen that I got to work with, you throw an inch past their face and they literally throw themselves back 10 feet onto concrete, onto their back.
And then they lay there dead for three seconds, open their eyes.
Okay, do it again.
This time we're going to cut in a bit shorter.
And then they throw themselves again and again and again.
So many people were messaging me saying, Joe Rogan sent me here on the YouTube comments saying, thank you very much for Joe Rogan.
Great documentary.
So it's...
I was saying before, when it got released in Australia, it was lucky enough to be open in cinemas.
So we had cinema release and then, yeah, it just went nowhere.
So it's on YouTube now.
So if you want to have a look a bit, not only about my career, but also about Thai culture.
So about an Aussie going to Thailand and learning the Thai customs and culture and learning how to speak Thai and eating on the floor and sleeping on the wooden floor and training seven hours a day.
It's pretty...
And then fighting the killers too.
I wasn't just going in there and making up numbers.
I was lucky enough to start at the bottom and then work my way up to winning two world titles in Bangkok.
Yeah, it's a fascinating documentary, too, because, like, culturally, it's such a unique thing for someone to do, to immerse themselves in the world of the Thai and of these Muay Thai fighters and live like they live and train like they live.
And a guy coming from Australia and moving there and doing that, it's always, to me, amazing to watch someone just enter into a world that's so completely different than theirs.
Barely had a grasp at all of the language and you know, you're training with these guys that have been essentially preparing for fights the way they have the way they did it with you for hundreds and hundreds of years before you were ever born.
Yeah, and then what happened was so say I've moved into this camp and there's about ten ten fighters there and then One night I've had my fight.
I've won I've gone to patio with all the Westerners hanging out for a week's holiday and And I've come back and all the other kids had run away.
So then there was only me and the superstar.
So now I was giving them 50% of my prize money after every fight.
So now I was in the camp's best interest to try and make me as good as I could, as fast as I could, so I could win more fights, to make more prize money, so they get 50% more income.
So the only way they could survive is for me to become the best that I could, so they could get more money, if that makes sense.
Looking back, looking back, it was like the biggest blessing that could happen, because if there was 50 people there, I would have been stuck in a bag by myself, but because it was only me and the superstar, and then the superstar, Sang Ten Noe, he had no...
Because there's so much gambling in Thailand, so if he thought he was beating his opponent, at the end of the round, he'd give him a kiss on the cheek, and that would show all the punters, okay, I've got this, so they'd all bet on him, so they'd all bet him.
So if you're being kissed by him, it means he's kicked your ass.
He came to Australia and he hung out with me at my gym because he was fighting a friend of mine.
He was training a guy that was fighting Nathan, so they needed someone to train for the week to prepare.
So I was lucky enough.
The promoter rang me and said, do you mind if Raina comes and trains at your gym for a week?
It's like, oh, yes.
So, yeah, I hung out with him morning and night.
What was he like?
Just the dude.
He was just an animal.
And so many stories.
It's like me and you.
I could just sit here and just listen to you all day like a little schoolboy, just asking stories.
What's about this fight?
What about that fight?
Do you have any injuries?
And then he'd just go on.
He'd just...
Yeah, it was just a little boy just listening to greatness.
So it was really cool.
He gave me a pair of shorts that I have up in my gym that I'm so proud of that he fought multiple times in.
But yeah, just the wars.
Muhammad Ali of Muay Thai, pretty much.
He was the first one to put it on the map to say, look, there is a possibility for white people to beat Thais at their own sport in Thailand at the big stadiums.
And not only win, but knock them out in devastating fashion.
It was hard for him to get the same accolades as Raymond because Raymond was fighting the ties at their most craziest weight, the 63s, the 61, the 63s.
And then whereas Rob was a little bit bigger and he was fighting ties a little bit smaller so he was knocking them out but at the same time he should have been knocking them out because he's a big man.
And then when you're fighting Westerner versus Westerner you're not going to get the same worldwide sort of...
He was fighting like the pure killers at their weight and not just beating them but knocking them out.
So and then...
When the tires are paying attention and the country's stopping to watch a Westerner come to their country to knock out their best, then you know you've made it.
And that's one of those things that for people that don't know the sport or aren't aware of it, you can go right now to YouTube and go on a journey through the world of Of one of the greatest combat sport athletes ever.
And Ramon Deckers has so many fights on YouTube.
You can go and watch them, and you'll understand what we're talking about.
When you just watch that guy just slam those kicks in and attack with a barrage of beautiful punches.
He sort of looked at me as if he was shocked that he hit me so hard in my reaction.
He goes, what?
I said, oh, yeah, that was crazy.
And he goes, oh, in Holland, this is normal.
This is what we do because on the ring, there's no surprises.
So if we train like this on the ring, and I'm just looking at him going, dude, there is no way in hell I'd like to train with like this, especially every day for a couple of hours, every single day.
That's the eternal debate because like in in MMA as well Joe Duffy was supposed to be fighting Dustin Poirier this past weekend in Ireland in a huge card in Dublin sold out in like an hour just Irish love fights right and Joe Duffy's the last guy to beat Conor McGregor and he's an Irishman so everybody's excited to see him the Saturday before the fight a week before the fight he gets a concussion hey Yeah, sparring hard, sparring hard, going out for it, you know?
And they pull out of the fight.
So he pulls out of the fight the week of.
They gave him some examinations, and the doctor looked at him and said, Listen, man, you got fucked up.
Do you fucking go crazy like Melvin Manhoof in Mike's gym?
You just fucking attack, attack, attack and just take your lumps and deal with it and then when you fight, you'll fight like that because you fight like that all the time.
Or do you take a more intelligent approach?
Like many fighters do, like the Thais do, where they spar and they don't spar hard at all, right?
And you learn how to move properly and your body develops like that.
You know your body develops like there's people that are That started out like they had like a martial arts background when they were young and then they started putting on weight like muscle weight, but they're still like super flexible and It's because their body sort of developed throwing kicks and their body developed doing those motions And if you can learn like there's a lot of people that believe that as as a boxer That if you don't start when you're young, you'll never achieve a Floyd Mayweather level or a Roy Jones Jr. level.
It's about living healthy and training and training the body and getting flexible and It's about getting over the fear of getting in competition as well.
People that never fought will never understand what it's like to have that bond against someone to compete for a couple of minutes and then after that, no matter what happens, I've always...
With 122 people, I can say...
I'm not just a friend, but I've shared a moment in time with me and you.
We've...
We went into a different dimension for that time that we fought each other.
Well, when I was watching that Cosmo Alexander fight, I was actually thinking that.
I was like, these guys, they're sharing a crazy...
Because I was also thinking, like, you're 39 years old, and I don't know how much longer you can compete at this elite, world-class level.
You know, you're fighting in a world championship fight.
And I'm watching this, and I'm like, man, this is an intense moment that these two guys are sharing.
And afterwards, you guys are smiling and hugging each other.
And I was like, wow, those guys really did just share a very, very intense experience and a very intense moment that very few people will ever understand.
And then to erase that from childhood memories, like for young kids not to have that experience, I think that's so sad because what's better, especially coming from myself, to go to school fighting on Saturday in a tournament and go to school on Monday and tell them the boys, oh yeah, I've got a gold medal for whatever competition they've played.
It would be jiu-jitsu, taekwondo, karate.
It doesn't matter if it's more.
It could be anything.
Or even soccer, football.
You've gone out on the weekend and you've excelled at that sport that you've put your life into.
The boys come over to your house.
They have a sleepover.
You've got four or five Trevis up on the shelf.
Nothing can make you more proud than to be there from my fighting days.
I think it also teaches you how to overcome very scary moments, very difficult moments.
And I think when you don't overcome difficult moments, you always have that fear, like, how would I do under pressure?
What would happen to me under pressure?
I mean, how would I do when the chips are down, when I'm nervous?
And people who compete, they have the experience of doing that.
And I think that's where character is built.
Character is built through adversity.
And I think to deny young kids the opportunity that, especially out of ignorance, because if they don't, they don't understand that young kids don't get hurt the way adults do.
When you're fighting, like, you know, you see a guy like Gokhan Saki fighting Tyrone Spong.
Big, heavy, throwing guys that are throwing fucking bombs.
There's a big difference between that and two six-year-olds that are fighting Muay Thai with headgear on and big gloves and shin pads in an amateur fight.
What those kids are doing is they're learning how to do something that's very difficult.
I've seen people fight in the streets that you could tell when they're fighting that they have no fighting experience at all.
They don't know anything.
And yet they're willing to take a chance and fight some guy they don't even know and they're going to somehow or another think they're going to kick this guy's ass?
And you're in a life or death situation where you just hope this guy doesn't kill you.
Let's hope somebody that rescues you beforehand.
It's terrifying.
Especially because there's a big difference and I think that's where a lot of people get confused when it comes to martial arts and they equate it with violence.
The competition of a fight or of an event like a martial arts event It's a very very different thing because you're preparing for a skill contest and the skill contest may be dangerous and there's a there's Possibly violent endings to these things but it's not violence in the sense of you're not like trying to go out and Find someone and make them your victim what you're doing is you're trying to compete you're competing and in doing so you you learn something
about yourself and you develop a confidence that for someone who's never competed like that you never totally understand and Yes.
If you're playing chess, you have so much time to think about it.
Unless you're playing that speed chess shit where they're hitting the clock.
But when you're playing chess and you're overlooking this board, I mean, not taking anything away from chess, because chess is a fascinating game, and there's so much complexity to it, and there's so many different moves, so many different possible combinations, but believe it or not, there are more possible combinations in fighting.
There's more possible combinations.
The outcome is more terrifying.
More is at stake.
Your physical health is at stake.
You're gambling your health.
On discipline, you have to get up in the morning, you have to overcome your body being tired and sore, and you gotta get up when you don't want to, when that warm bed is calling you.
You gotta put on your fucking running shoes, and you gotta go do your road work, and you gotta do your strength and conditioning, and you gotta spar when you don't wanna spar, and your body's starting to get run down, and you gotta make sure you get the right amount of sleep, you gotta make sure you get the right amount of nutrition.
There's all these variables, emotions, The physical fear, the fear of your own demise, not the nerves of a match.
I'm sure chess players get nervous before they have a match, but do you think they get nervous the way a fighter gets nervous?
Well, it's got to be an intensity that no one else could ever understand.
And that's probably a bond that you share with those people that you get into the ring with, like Cosmo Alexander, that the average person would just never...
Be able to understand what you guys have gone through.
Yeah, and then the idea you've been cut and the one eye is blurry from the blood and you don't want to wipe it because that's a tell from your opponent that the blood's starting to annoy you.
So you've got to try and stay there with one eye all red and bloody and yucky and you can feel the stickiness in your eye and you can feel the pain, you can feel your eye throbbing and then you've got to turn off.
You've got to go so much soul-searching to keep focused on being violent and trying to win no matter how.
Even though you're losing, you know that you have to try and come back and still knock this guy out.
And make adjustments and turn the pain off yet still trying to focus on what I'm doing is not working so I have to try and up the ante and try something else and that might get me in more danger again where I might get even more cut or more beat up or another knee to the face.
I think a lot of people have that thought about what it is.
And I did as well.
Like, oh, well, what you're going to do is it's going to solidify what you want and you go after it.
I don't necessarily think it's that.
Instead of hypnosis, what Vinny likes to think of it is you're optimizing the pathways for your focus.
And instead of saying, I know what I want, I'm going to go get it, it's sharpening that to a razor's edge.
And I think everyone should look into it.
Not necessarily saying that everyone should implement it.
Here's a perfect example.
Roy Jones Jr. in his prime, I would say...
Do everything you're doing.
Don't change a goddamn thing.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, when he was fighting and just moving like no one has ever moved before, knocking guys out with combinations that were just ridiculous.
Like, how could you say that guy needs to go to a mind coach?
You can't, right?
But...
I really honestly believe that even though I would say just do whatever you're doing, if he did go to a mind coach, he'd probably take it to an even different level.
Probably take it to an even higher level.
I think that everything you do, everything you do, As good as you're doing it, you could do it better.
I think everything can be optimized, you know, and I think everything has layers and levels to it.
And to say, this is good enough, we're done here, I just think, honestly, it almost like...
It disrespects the process of evolution.
It disrespects the process of getting better at it, of greatness.
Like, for every Roy Jones Jr., there's a guy watching Roy Jones Jr. and thinking, I gotta figure out a way to beat that motherfucker, and training harder, and maybe he has just as many physical gifts, and maybe he has just a slight edge in some sort of a weird, strange way because he's been watching Roy Jones Jr. compete.
I don't know, man.
I think that this sport is all about...
Like, minute differences.
Like, all combat sports.
Do you know who Nick Kurson is?
Strength and conditioning coach.
Really highly, highly respected.
Trains Rafael Dos Anjos, who's the UFC lightweight champion, and trains Ruslan Provodnikov, a famous boxer, and a bunch of other elite athletes.
Done some work with Joe Schilling now, too.
He's doing some work with Joe Schilling.
And he said something really interesting when Rafael Dos Anjos beat Anthony Pettis.
And he said, One of the things that we did with him, all these strength and conditioning drills, it's about executing and getting there just slightly faster.
And he's like, even though he dominated that fight, think about those exchanges.
He dominated those exchanges by maybe a half a second.
Like he landed a half a second quicker.
His recovery was just a little quicker.
He was able to re-engage just a little quicker.
And those little tiny edges, those little tiny edges, means he lands first, and it means he's dominating.
And even though his advantage, like physically, his advantage of execution was so small, it was enough.
Those little advantages are enough to win a fight.
And it's incredible when you think about it that way, that...
This sport is just a matter of these incremental increases in ability.
I guess I'm sort of in the caveman era too, where I believe I think what the mind coaches are doing are awesome, but at the same time, I don't need someone to pat my back and say, hey, you're doing a good job.
I think you're right too, because you're a proven champion.
And that mindset, the steely determination that you've developed, nobody needs to tell you how to do it.
I firmly believe you're one of those guys who wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and say, it's go time, and you put your shorts on, wrap your hands, and you don't know what the fuck to do.
Because there's a gentleman in Australia that's doing it, and then if someone's having a bad day, I know they call him and say, oh, mate, I had a bad session.
When I moved back to Australia from Thailand, there was no one for me there, so...
I opened a gym because I needed someone to train so I had to teach classes to pay the rent so I could still have someone to train and that sort of blossomed into the gym started being successful so then I started having more guys training underneath me that wanted to fight and all of a sudden I'm working their corners and learning how to wrap hands and now I'm trying to do everything.
And then also at the same time, trying to create my own career as well.
So I've been so lucky.
It just sort of happened.
It's not like I wanted a coach.
I'd love to have a coach, but at the same time, what I've been doing has been working and I've been lucky enough to be successful.
Yeah, they fought twice and he stopped them both times.
You know, Raymond Daniels is an interesting case because there's a guy who was elite at a very odd style of fighting.
He was elite at point karate.
And if you watch point karate fights online, you realize like, God, this guy just blitzes in with this crazy shit and then they would stop it.
And point karate, for people who don't know, is like a really high-level game of tag with karate.
Because once you touch the guy, like literally touch them, they stop it and they score the point.
So...
It's very difficult to transition from that into continuous fighting.
Like when you fight in kickboxing or in Muay Thai or in MMA, when you hit a guy once, he hits you back, you hit him again, and it's all about hitting and not being hit and movement.
What karate, what they get really good at is this blitz where they jump on you and ta-tack!
But they have to get used to you hitting back and the referee not stopping the action.
So credit to Raymond Daniels.
He went from doing this one style of jumping in and hitting a guy once to this continuous style.
And then also factor in leg kicks.
Because in these karate tournaments, you can't kick the legs.
So he's jumping in with all these wild kicking and punching techniques.
And then...
He goes from that to this incredibly difficult, grueling style of fighting.
The guys have their hands up very high.
They're throwing a lot of leg kicks.
And he's excelled at it, except at the very elite level.
When he's fought the very best guys, like Joseph Valtellini stopped him.
Same thing.
Attack the legs, attack the legs, get him to block the leg, goes up high and head kicks him.
But it's utilizing the Muay Thai style to defeat this style where he's got so many tools, but he doesn't quite have all of it together at a world-class level.
But if you let the guy fight on the outside, man, he's got that blitz.
But you've got to wonder, man, with a guy with those type of skills, If he could get his hands at the same level as a Nicky Holtzkin or a Valtellini and get those leg kicks at the level that those guys have, man.
Like, you know, you're talking about arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time, and you're going to have him fight a guy who's just nowhere near his league for a New Year's Eve show.
Yeah, there was talk of the UFC, then there was talk of going to Bellator, and then he was going to make the big announcement, and then, okay, we're going to Japan.
I think there's got to be some upstarts, some young, up-and-coming fighters out there all over the world that are very talented.
It's a matter of having a quality talent scout who really is deep in the game, who understands fighting, who can go out there and recruit those guys at a young age and then Well, the Japanese also, there's another angle that must be considered, is that the Japanese became big, the organizations, by having pro wrestlers fight in MMA matches like Takata.
When Takata fought Hicks and Gracie, Hicks and Gracie was the man in the fucking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world, right?
And he was the man in the Gracie world.
When Hoist Gracie was winning the UFC, he always said, listen, my brother's ten times better than me.
And he always said that.
And then his brother goes and fights for Japan Valley Tudo and becomes a superstar in Japan.
And then his brother, people don't know, Hickson fought in the very first Pride.
Hickson fought Takata.
And so when Hickson was fighting in Japan, Hickson was a superstar.
Takata was a pro wrestling superstar.
And that's what made Pride take off.
And then, obviously, they were doing these gigantic arenas, Saitana, Super Arena, and these huge fucking venues and New Year's Eve shows.
They have to figure out how to rebuild that.
But I don't even think pro wrestling is where it's at anymore in Japan.
I think Japan, they get fickle.
These young kids, they dress like Elvis, they dye their hair purple, and then next year, they become accountants.
He was an American boxer from, I believe it was Texas.
He fought Sexy Yama, I think it was 2005. I don't know who the fuck it was.
Yeah.
So anyway, he had the press conference, he was talking all this stuff.
So during the fight...
There were so many times that the American boxer was giving his arm, and then he just pushed the arm out of the way and just rained down punches more and more and more.
He wanted to punish him instead of tapping him out.
He was doing the Rolex commercials and he was driving the Ferraris and he had the hairstyle where he had the blonde tips and every single girl, every single 40,000 seat arena and all dressed pretty much.
And then the little golf clubs when they come out, just the pure excitement of just being in the same room as him.
And then once he retired, K1 collapsed probably a year later.
Isn't that crazy?
Because they didn't have the star anymore.
Without one fighter, he was the pinnacle.
And I wanted to fight him, and then every single person wanted to fight him because if you beat him, that was going to launch you to the stratosphere of just becoming an overnight phenomenon.
I think if it wasn't for Masato, there would have been no K1 Max.
He was the kid that shined that said, yep, we need to make a 70 kilo division because this kid's going to take us all away and put us on the war stage as legitimate as a country.
And then Holly Holmes even came out and said, I want what Ronda has.
I wanted what Masato had.
I would love to...
Ferrari.
I remember one commercial, he's in a Ferrari, he pulls up, you see that pull up, then the door opens.
Like a spaceship, and then they focus in on his Rolex watch, and it's like, damn, and he's in a suit, and he's looking stylish, and he's got, yeah, he's got just the king.
It's like, oh, look at this guy.
This is, what a hero.
And because you're both playing the same game, it's like, how come I can't be him?
Well, they'd had an eight-man tournament once a year, and when it was at its peak, they had the Tokyo Dome, 90,000 people, and it would sell out in two hours.
And then you'd have to fight three times in approximately three hours, and the grand prize was $500,000 US. Do you know how much profit they must have made?
If you have 90,000 people in an arena, and you're selling those, you know, just think about it, even if it's only 10 bucks, that is a fuckload of money.
That is a goddamn fuckload of money, and you're only paying out 500 grand to the winner, and you have pay-per-view.
And then just seeing to be those eight guys that would just keep knocking each other out year after year after year for about 10 years in a row.
And as a teenager, There was just the, someone would get a VHS of the latest Grand Prix, and then you'd sit there and you'd watch it, and it'd be so, yeah, you couldn't move.
Yeah, all the boys would sit around with the popcorn.
Back when he was, him and Ray Sefu, standing toe-to-toe, dropping their hands, taking pot shots at each other's chin, and just standing there and smiling.
And then another rally, it was, yeah, that's the sort of stuff that made legends.
Fights are so interesting live because you get this energy from being there in that arena.
You can't reproduce it watching it at home.
I don't think people that see it at home will ever truly know what it's like to see a live fight.
Also, there's something that gets...
I remember the first time I went to see a boxing match, I remember thinking, oh, there's no commentary.
This is weird.
There's something that sterilizes it a little bit about hearing Jim Lampley hear ABC Wide World of Sports or whatever the fuck it was back in the day when I was...
Watching boxing.
And then to go see a boxing match live, you're like, oh, there's no one talking.
You know, you're just hearing, thump, thump, thump, thump, bang!
You know, you're seeing someone, like I was there when Mickey Rourke, Mickey Rourke, Mickey Rourke?
Mickey Ward, rather.
Confusing people.
Mickey Ward was coming up in Lowell, Massachusetts before he ever had those crazy fights, a series of fights with Arturo Gatti.
I saw him fight when he was a really young professional and we saw him fight in Lowell.
Me and my buddy Jimmy Lawless went to see him fight live.
It was just being there in a small arena with a local hometown guy and see a local boxing match and hear the slap of leather on faces and bodies.
It's such a different experience than watching it on television, which is so much more...
It seems like it's not really happening.
Even if it's happening, even if it's brutal, you're not there, you know?
Same with our local promotion that I'm doing now with my wife, with the CMT. CMT meaning Caged Muay Thai.
So you actually feel the fight while you're in the room.
Not only watching it, but you're flinching as someone gets hit.
Your hairs are up on your body and back of your neck.
You've got goosebumps.
You can't not look away from the cage because at any given second someone's gonna get knocked out But you don't have that when you're watching on TV.
You're looking at your phone.
You're looking up you're looking down But why are they alive?
Yeah, you can you feel the atmosphere you can smell it and you can smell the tile you can yeah It's just it's a different beast when you're being you when you're present the Thai oil or the Yeah.
Right, but then if you're grabbing and you're fighting for the plum, right, and you've got that shit on your forearms, and this guy's turning away, and it gets in his eyes, does that happen to you?
that's why you can't use in the ufc ufc in the early days man dudes which is grease yeah and we can put vaseline all over our bodies well between the the liniment and the vaseline all over so yeah you come out and you and you're shining and you're glossy and yeah oh yeah we're catching the kicks and you can pull out of the catches oh right the only thing is if you're the last fight of the night so if you um teep someone in the stomach and then you put your foot on the canvas You get oil on the canvas.
By the time you're in the last fight, the canvas is just an ice skating rink.
It's terrible.
And then if you've got logos on the canvas as well, between the Vaseline and the stickers, it's a complete nightmare.
That was a nightmare in MMA for a while, that they would have all these ads on the Octagon.
And they would spray these ads down with spray paint, essentially, or like an iron-on.
And it wouldn't absorb like canvas.
For people who don't know, canvas, when you get it wet, actually you get more traction.
It's actually kind of nice, which is why when you watch MMA fights, sometimes you see guys pour water on the ground and then they'll move their feet on the water because maybe their skin is dry and they want to get their skin nice and moist and it actually gives you like a little traction.
A dry canvas sometimes can be slippery, especially a fresh canvas.
But do you think that that is just because of all that sparring as well, that very technical, what we call playing, where you're just tapping each other, not hard, you know, Ramon Decker, Dutch-style fighting in the gym every day, but instead just working on technique?
I was never winded or never at a point where I thought, oh, if I get hit one more time, I'm going to get down.
There was no point whatsoever during the fight.
I was getting hit, but at the same time, there was never another moment where I thought, I can't not win this fight until the bell rang, and then it's like, okay, now I'm out of time.
When you watched the fight in the replay, did that fourth round incident where you cracked him with that punch and you started cleaning his feet, did that drive you fucking nuts?
So once my foot's sealed, I'll get back to Australia.
I'll get back on the roads, get back on the pads.
And now I'm more determined to make up for this loss.
I want to make sure that I'm not only going to beat Soros, but I have to go out there and destroy him to get back my credibility as one of the top guys.
I put up a highlight reel of his on Facebook the other day and the amount of people that watch that.
I'm just like, what are you doing fighting this guy for?
Because he's good.
Why do I want to fight him?
Because he's awesome.
He's going to bring such an entertaining fight for the Australian crowd that they're going to be crazy if they don't come along and watch it because it's going to be madness.
You're not fighting like when I watched you fight, I'm watching you fight Cosmo, who's a big, strong guy, and you're not fighting like a guy who's over the hill.
You're fighting like a cautious, smart veteran who's facing a very dangerous, fast guy.
And you fought very well.
It wasn't like a fight like, oh man, this guy's lost a step.
It wasn't like that, man.
I'm an honest dude.
If I see someone losing a step, it makes me very concerned.
Because that trying to pretend that that didn't happen is super dangerous.
And then also, like you were saying before, Randy Couture, he's also a gentleman that's proving that you can still fight with the guys that are in their late 20s, early 30s.
I honestly believe that, especially in MMA, since grappling is such an integral part of mixed martial arts, I don't think they should ever break things up.
I think if a guy's got you down and he's just holding you down, that's tough shit.
You've got to figure out how to get up.
I don't think it should score very well for the guy on top, but I don't believe in stand-ups because I feel like...
Especially for a striker, right?
You have five minutes and every round starts standing up.
Every round starts with your advantage.
No round starts on the ground.
You never start where like, okay, this round, John, you're on top.
You know, you start on top because he was like, no, but every round starts standing up.
And that's the advantage of the striker.
The grappler has to figure out how to get a hold of him, how to get him to the ground.
I think once you've done that, it's the guy on the grounds business to try to get back up.
People go, oh, that's fucking boring.
You're gay.
You like the fucking guy's bra...
I'm just saying there's only five minutes, okay?
And for grappling, five minutes is not that long.
Say, if you were grappling with another guy who was also at your level in grappling, and you guys were tangling for five minutes...
If you're both at the same level, there's going to be a lot of stalemates and it takes little incremental improvements and advances for you to get to a position where you finally get to a mount or you finally get an arm bar or you finally get a choke.
It's hard to do.
And you can't do it if you keep standing people up when they stalemate.
It's your job to figure out, if you're on the bottom, how to get up or how to submit them from your back.
It's the guy's job on the top to hold you down and to figure out how to get you in a better position and to dominate you and to figure out how to submit you.
When the guys get impatient, then they make mistakes.
Like if a guy's pressing you up against the cage and he's kneeing your legs and he's hitting you with short elbows and you're just waiting for the referee to separate.
If the referee doesn't separate, you might do something silly.
You might make a mistake.
And that's what they're trying to do.
Randy Couture was the master at that, at holding guys up against the cage.
They didn't separate him very often because he was constantly moving.
He'd be constantly punching you, constantly kneeing your body, kneeing your legs.
He was working you, and he was pushing on you and wearing you out.
That was a big part of his strategy.
I just feel like, you know, with MMA, they're trying really hard to make it more fan-friendly.
And they're trying really hard to make the action, like, more exciting to watch.
But I think in doing so, you water down the art a little bit.
And there's an art with two guys trying to figure out what to do to each other to defend and to attack and figure out who can win.
I don't know.
That's just my feeling.
But I think if you're going to have pure stand-up, just pure stand-up striking, I think what you're doing is the best way to do it.
I think small gloves and I think doing it in a cage where you don't have to worry about guys falling through the ropes.
I've seen that in a lot of events, especially when guys start clinching and they get up against a rope and maybe their butt goes through two ropes and they slid back or maybe they're ducking away from a punch and they wind up falling out of the ropes.
I was at a local Muay Thai show in the ring, and they had two gentlemen clinging away, and the other guys, they've fallen straight through the center.
And then they had the judges' table right beside the ring, and they had all the trophies lined up.
And it was those trophies where the angel was on top of the trophy with the hands clasped together, and it was like razors.
And the guy's head...
He missed the trophy by inches and it flopped onto the desk and if it had been a little bit to the left, he would have been pierced straight through his eye.
But in the cage, from a personal experience, I've had 118, 19 fights in the ring, but to be locked in that cage, not as a spectator, but as a fighter, It's such a different atmosphere and a different arena.
It definitely brings out a completely different beast.
When you know your opponent's wearing those little gloves, every single sense in your body is tingling because if you make a mistake, you're going to be completely dominated or wiped out or knocked unconscious.
Well, the argument is, I mean, I see what your point is, but the argument is that, you know, you're saying you wouldn't want to break your hands on someone's forehead.
The argument is that you could throw a shin kick with full power.
So shin, which is much more powerful than a punch, shin to the head, right?
Knee to the head, elbows to the head.
Why do you allow someone to tape up their wrist and form an unnatural bond, right?
And then tape up their hands and make it nice and hard so you can punch full blast.
Whereas the reality is, hands should be used judiciously because there's not a lot of room for error.
If you do make a mistake and you punch full blast and you hit someone in an elbow, they cover up like that and your knuckle slamming in the elbow, you might shatter your hand.
You might shatter your hand on their forehead.
You might shatter your hand in a lot of different ways.
And you have to be way more clean with your strikes and it makes it more realistic.
And they think, a lot of people think, that that would actually alleviate a lot of the brain damage.
I've had a little bit of difficulties in the past with them, so it's nice.
It's reassuring that when I have the hand wraps on, that's keeping my wrist into a nice firm place, so when I punch wrong, that I'm not going to break my hand.
And just having that cushioning over the top of the knuckles because the knuckles are so sensitive that I've broken them before.
And I know my hands are wrapped properly that I can hit with full force and not have any repercussions.
What I'm doing with the CMT gloves is with the fingerless because a lot of people are saying, well, why are you doing it?
There's so many problems with the UFC and the pikes.
Why do you want to bring that same element into what you're doing with the cage?
But at the same time, if you wear boxing gloves in the cage, it just looks so dumb.
It does because you spend every single weekend watching UFC and And then you're trying to get the same respect from the MMA fans for what you're doing with Muay Thai rules.
And you've got these big pillows on, yet the UFC guys wearing the fingerless ones.
And as a fighter as well, I know when I put them on, I feel like I'm a warrior.
It's a weird...
I know that when I close my fist and then when I clinch, I know that I have my fingers and I can catch the kicks a lot easier and manipulate the guard so I can throw elbows easier as well.
It's a different element of fighting.
I've had so many fights with gloves and then you put these little things on and then the bell rings and then I feel free.
Because when I'm training, I train for 10 weeks with no gloves.
When I'm clinching, I train when I play spa with the kicks.
And then all of a sudden I'm restricted when I put boxing gloves on.
And then I can't execute the same game plan when I'm training to when I'm fighting.
It's funny you say that because that was always like a thing that people thought was holding MMA back because MMA was in a cage and people didn't like the idea of cage fighting, in quotes, cage fighting.
Only UFC. You know, there was an article that was recently out about the World Series of Fighting, which has some really good fighters in it.
The World Series of Fighting...
You know, there's some super high-level guys in the World Series of Fighting.
You watch some real good fights, and they're not making any money.
They're losing money.
They're on NBC Sports, you know, and I don't know how much NBC Sports pays them, but there was some article on The Underground about them losing money and being in dire financial straits.
And for me as a fan, I hate hearing that, because I want guys to have options.
Because when guys get cut from the UFC, a lot of times they'll go to World Series of Fighting, one of these other organizations like Jake Shields or John Fitch, and they'll build up, win a few fights over there, and maybe they can come back to the UFC. And I like hearing that.
And then I go to a local MMA show and I'm bored shitless.
They've got two guys that...
And then it's Australia too because we don't wrestle.
So within 10 seconds they're both on the ground and they don't have the skill set to stand back up and they sort of get stuck for five minutes.
But when you watch UFC, they're at such a high level that it's like two worms.
The next minute they're up again, they're down.
The Jiu Jitsu is so crazy.
The striking is so amazing.
You've got the Cerrone's and it's such a...
And then what I want to do with the CMT too...
I've heard Dana White say in interviews, if any competition promotion had any brains, they'd steal everything that I'm doing in the UFC and try and replicate that for their own promotion because what we're doing is a winner formula.
So that's what I want to try and do with my show.
I'm trying to bring internationals in.
I'm trying to create every single aspect, as much as I can, similar, but in the striking world.
When you watch MMA and say you watch like UFC or high-level UFC, what is the one thing that you think that when you see striking, is there anything that bugs you?
Is there things that you watch that you see people doing wrong or things you would like to see them improve upon?
That's why I love it because I'm on the edge of my seat every single...
That's why UFC is so good too.
You don't have to wait till the main event to watch the fights.
You can sit there from the prelims to the last fight and enjoy every single fight because you know that every single fight is going to be completely different to the last.
But as a world-class striker, when you watch guys in the UFC, do you see holes in their style?
Or when you watch MMA, it doesn't even have to be UFC, just any MMA. What do you think about the level, coming from a world championship Muay Thai fighter's perspective, what do you think about the level of kickboxing in MMA? If it was pure kickboxing rules, yeah, it's...
Hendrick was a southpaw, so we're working on keeping everything basic and then lots of right-hand left hooks, lots of inside thigh kicks with the right leg for taking out that lead, southpaw leg, moving away from the power left hand because he's a monster.
And then every time we spar, I replicate Johnny's sparring style.
So I throw lots of overhand lefts and just being that craziness exploding in.
And then George was...
John Denneher, after a week of having George on the pads, he was blown away about how much power I was starting to get out of George's punches and kicks and then freestyling on the pads that he'd never done before.
Yeah, we had such a good time.
But then I came too early in the camp.
There were still 14 weeks between Our training session and the fight.
So by the time I went back to Australia, he sort of went back to the old training regime.
I had the pleasure of working out with you and one of the things that I found was really interesting is that even when you throw a jab, you're throwing a jab almost like a right hand.
You're throwing a jab like you're pulling back with your right hand and fucking thrusting with your left hand.
George, when George was double jabbing before, it was a long jab, short jab, whereas I had him cocking that shoulder for both jabs, so both of them were, and they'll make them big cracking noise, bam, bam.
And then we've gotten in through the VIP, and then we're walking to our table, and then we're about maybe 15 feet from our table, and someone says, Jazz P, Jazz P. And without a word of a lie, the whole dance floor stopped dancing.
Everyone's looked at us, turned, and the whole club's walked towards that table.
Oh, no.
And without losing a beat, we've turned straight back around and walked straight back out of the nightclub because...
It was like a tsunami of fans that had just come in.
And even a red light, we're driving in the car, me and George got the radio on.
We stopped by the red light, and all you hear is GSP, GSP, and for, to his credit, the champion is, he always looks, waves, smiles, and then solo just drifts forward just a fraction, just so he's out of eyesight of the fans.
Overwhelming.
He'd rather, from your car park even, he'd catch a taxi from the front gate to the back gate because from walking 100 feet would be a half an hour with photos and handshakes and high fives.
And people are rude.
People are crazy.
People just come up and they stick their phone in his face like this.
Yeah, I would think Montreal would be probably a little bit more crazy, but yeah, at that level, I mean, George, when he was a champion especially, I wonder if he can get around now a little bit better.
Yeah, and then even the websites, you notice all the, I read the MMA websites every single day, and then there's always, at least once a week, there's something about George is doing this, or he might come back, or this is happening, and so he's still relevant, he still hasn't disappeared yet, they still need him in that circle.
I know Sage Northpett was in TriStar recently, and he had done some training with George, and I think, you know, George still has a little bit of the itch, but...
Yes, and then even a lot of people change after once they reach that superstardom, whereas George has always stayed grounded, and then people would come up, and the majority are great, and then some people, the time I spent with him, hey, every time I get a photo of a celebrity, I get carried, so pick me up.
I think I've seen you in a few confrontations on YouTube where people are a bit aggressive when it comes to asking for your stuff and you have to give them a slight, hey, just...
I was reading that and I was like, what am I reading this for?
What am I doing?
I'm not even taking my own advice.
And meanwhile, if you found that guy, he probably weighs six pounds.
He's in his mom's basement, shit in his own pants.
Like, who knows who you're listening...
When you...
Read a sentence on the internet and it starts with a letter and it ends with a period.
It looks like a normal person wrote it.
And you just read it.
Like if you wrote a sentence or if he wrote a sentence or some crazy dude who has no fucking grasp of reality at all, it still looks the same because it's a sentence.
And you don't know, like when you read someone's opinion, you don't know what the, what's that guy like?
Like, that's the thing about opinions.
There's always guys, and you know them, everybody knows them, there's always guys in the gym that'll see someone, and they probably don't know what the fuck they're doing, but they'll see someone hitting the bag, or they see someone doing a technique, and they'll come over and correct them, right?
There's always those fucking morons.
You know, there's a million of those fucking morons, right?
Well, when you meet that guy and you know he's an idiot, and you know that guy from the gym, you can just go, oh, Mike is the guy who gave you advice.
Listen, Mike's half retarded.
He got shot in the head when he was two.
You know what I mean?
There's a difference between that and seeing the guy's written words.
It's the beautiful thing about the internet, is that anybody can say anything.
You have a full, open, free forum for expressing yourself.
But the reality is, If you have a million people, okay?
At least 1% of those people are gonna be out of their fucking mind.
At least 1%.
So if you got a hundred people, that's one person.
But if you got a million people, or a hundred million people, look at the United States, 300 million people.
How many of those people are out of their fucking mind?
It's at least three million.
At least.
Three million douchebags that are leaving comments on YouTube.
And they're getting John Wayne Parr to talk about them.
Yeah, yeah.
I was right!
It was right!
He can say it all you want.
Your fucking technique's dog shit, bro.
unidentified
I don't know how you got to be a world champion, bro.
When you go to those events, you very rarely hear stupid shit being yelled at.
Even though people are drinking, there's applause for both the winner and the loser.
There's a tremendous amount of respect that's involved in it because it's not that popular and because it's not mainstream, those people in the audience have a deep appreciation for the art of Muay Thai.