Miesha Tate and Joe Rogan explore her UFC bantamweight title win over Holly Holm, dismissing early skepticism about women’s MMA as she credits visualization, ketogenic diet (guided by Dr. Edwards), and strategic adaptation—rejecting outdated rules like the 12-to-6. Tate contrasts her disciplined recovery (HRV monitoring) with fighters who push through injuries, like Cain Velasquez, while critiquing the UFC’s promotional demands and Ronda Rousey’s post-loss shift in focus. She questions PED ethics, arguing IV bans are flawed, and debates whether elite fighters can adapt skills quickly or if specialization remains key. Ultimately, Tate’s journey underscores how mental resilience, scientific training, and calculated risks redefine combat sports dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
I mean, I was 18 before I moved to the eastern side, which is very different.
Actually, a lot of people don't know this.
So the mountain range divides the state in half.
And on the eastern side of Washington, it's super dry.
It's like desert-y.
There's actually tumbleweeds and sand dunes and...
All that, it's completely different on the other side of Washington.
Moisture comes in from the ocean, hits the mountains, rolls back over, rains like double duty on the west side, and on the east side of Washington is really dry.
I think if I'm not mistaken, I should probably know those things, but I don't pay attention to a lot of things, as you'll probably find out.
I don't know a lot of statistics and stuff.
I'm kind of like, well, it was fly by the seat of my pants, like, whatever's going on is cool, but...
I think it's one of the biggest like circumference like the widest cities like not most populated but like most area in Washington anyway so on I live on the very outskirts like near Puyallup so I grew up on like five acres and like I had some land I wasn't like in the heart of it but it's a pretty cool place So going from there to living in Vegas, but I guess like as you're a professional fighter, your days are probably so filled with training and recovery and eating.
That's what's nice about it, too, is you can go down there and just enjoy a comedy show.
I mean, you come through often.
Like, a lot of acts come through.
Kevin Hart comes through.
A lot of musicians.
A lot of concerts.
So, it's nice because everyone comes to you, essentially.
You don't have to go travel to see anyone.
So, if you want to just set the cup down for a minute and, like, take a break from the train game, I want to go ride the, you know, the big Ferris wheel that they have there.
Well, and it's the home of the UFC, so it's nice there, too, because there's a lot of extracurricular things that I get to take part of because I'm local.
I get to do a lot more charity things with the Boys and Girls Club.
Then I felt like the carpet was kind of just pulled out from under my feet because they were like, just kidding, Holly's fighting and they announced it without telling me.
So that's why I was so upset because I was like, I don't take this shit lightly.
I was training my ass off.
I had already reached out to a girl in France.
I can't say her name right.
I think it's like Javry, I don't know, some French name.
She beat Ronda in judo.
So I'd already been making plans with her to train with her and fly her over here.
And she was changing things.
And I was like, I feel like such an ass.
I feel like an idiot.
I look like an idiot.
Because here the announcement was made and I didn't even know.
So I was kind of upset about that.
But we talked about it and we smoothed things over.
Like, the whole Conor McGregor situation is a perfect example of that.
Like, all of a sudden, if he had beaten Nate Diaz, or if he had beaten Dos Anjos, like, if Dos Anjos didn't get injured and he beat Dos Anjos, you fucking know for sure they were going to have him fight Robbie Lawler.
Beet juice also mimics things like the endurance properties of things like certain mushrooms.
If you take beets, like Rich Roll, who is an endurance athlete, was saying that he found significant advantages in taking beet juice and that blending beets in a kale shake or something along those lines really gave him an extra boost in training.
I wonder if anybody's ever done any studies where they've taken just arrowhead water and, you know, Fiji water from a shelf and just tested it and see how much funky shit is in the actual water itself.
It was over Valentine's Day and Brian and I were on this really beautiful dinner boat thing and they bring out all this food and we're eating foie gras and whatever.
They bring out cheese.
I am a cheese lover.
I love cheese.
I could never give up cheese.
I would venture to say, especially now, for sure, I'd pick cheese over cupcakes.
If I had to cut something out of my diet, bye-bye cupcakes.
I'm sticking with the cheese.
Anyways, they bring this cheese out, and there's three of them.
One is fine.
The other one's a little stinky, but I think I'll try it.
I'm sure you could get through it and then after it was over, you'd probably blank out that section of your mind that deals with that and just go into the zone, throw it in, and then you're like, am I good?
Yeah.
And then you'd run over to a garbage pail and bam!
That's what happened.
I saw more people throw up than probably...
I would say if you look at me and maybe cafeteria lunch ladies, we've probably seen the most people throw up in the world.
No, because he lived in the central Washington area, right on the other side of the mountain, so it's a little more greeny and dry and a little bit farther away from the water.
But he ate Dungeness crab.
This is what I was going to get back to, is that crab that we caught that day and killed and boiled, and we had this sweet butter to dip it with.
Yeah, actually, like, he ate it.
And I was like, yeah, it was pretty good.
That was the only seafood thing he's ever eaten in his life that he actually got along with.
Now, that's so crazy that Brian doesn't eat any seafood, because I would imagine that, especially considering that he cuts so much weight, that would be a good source of lean protein.
All three at the same time because my immune system was down from the chicken pox and then I caught that and then I caught hepatitis B. And, um, yeah.
So, so my parents took me obviously to the hospital and, um, they couldn't, they, they had a phobia of needles for a while too.
They got an IV in me barely.
And, um, you know how like they're supposed to leave the IV in you and then like they changed the tubing.
Well, the stupid nurse pulled it out and all my veins were so collapsed they couldn't get a needle in anymore.
So they would come in.
I w I was just passed out.
They would come in on the hour almost every day.
On the hour and I would wake up to like 10 or 15 people holding me down.
It felt like 10 or 15. I was five.
It was probably like three people.
But I'd just see lights and I'd see people holding me down and they'd be trying to stick needles in the top of my hand, in my ankles, in the tops of my feet, behind my knees.
And they'd just hold me down trying to get fluids in me because I couldn't keep anything down.
And so finally it was so bad that they told my mom to call if she's religious to call her pastor and have him come.
So they brought me in to give me a spinal tap.
It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my life.
Because I take fluid out and epidurals like I hear really painful too, but it's an injection as opposed to like removing the fluid, which is more painful.
I don't know.
I remember feeling the most excruciating pain in my life and then passing out.
Anyways, back to the chocolate part of it, before I went to the hospital, I was running such a bad fever and I was throwing up and my mom thought, you know, let's give her ice cream.
And she had like some Neapolitan ice cream downstairs.
And it was like the really cheap...
I didn't grow up with a lot of money or anything like that.
We struggled.
So it was like the cheap fake strawberry, the cheap vanilla, and the really shitty cheap chocolate.
And I had tried to eat some of the strawberry and the vanilla, and I fell asleep.
And I woke up, and I was really hungry and really thirsty.
And all the chocolate had melted.
So it was like a soupy bowl of warm ice cream.
And I took...
Tried to take a bite of it, because I was just a little kid, and I lost my shit.
I puked everywhere.
And to this day, it's ruined it for me.
Like, ruined anything chocolate-flavored.
But I can do, like, dark chocolate, a real chocolate, but it has to be quality.
And that's exactly what, that's why, yeah, that's why that happened.
Because my mom told me, she called the hospital and asked them, like, my daughter has chickenpox, what should I, you know, what should I give them, give her whatever.
And they're like, oh, just give her aspirin.
You know, give her some aspirin to help her with that.
No, and it was funny because he had like a news crew there and he had like 20 coconuts set out on like this bar and he starts just hacking at one, hacking at one, hacking at one.
Well, there's a gang of videos of these guys that are doing those chi things on people, and then their students fall to the ground and start twitching, and there's a great one where this guy in Harlem had this, like, kung fu school, and he had all these students, and he's, like, doing all this, like...
Literally, like, Dragon Ball Z-type shit on them, like, and they would fall to the ground and start twitching and spasming, and it's like really shitty acting.
But they are into it.
I think when you're in a cult like that, and that's what a lot of those martial arts are, they are a cult.
I think almost all traditional martial arts have cult-like attributes which can be beneficial.
Like the discipline and the desire to please your sensei or your sabonim or whatever you want to call them is like intense.
And you know, yes sir!
And they bow and all this stuff and they really believe that their instructor cannot do any harm.
There's like a lot of good in that because it makes you like have this really intense desire to succeed and this intense belief in yourself but...
It's not realistic, obviously, in a lot of traditional martial arts.
And until the UFC came around, we didn't really know how unrealistic it was.
But if you remember Pat Smith when he fought that ninja guy in UFC 1 or 2?
I think it was UFC 2. I don't remember which one it was.
But he fought some guy.
And this guy was doing these...
You remember they used to have the video of the guy training before the fight?
And the guy was like...
Throwing all these techniques around and flipping people to the ground and grabbing their neck and fucking karate chopping the top of their head and they'd fall to the ground.
Or at night, you know, that's kind of a state of an awake hypnosis and that you can kind of go in and out of those yourself.
You do all the time during the day, but a hypnotist can kind of guide you into that and then plant certain good seeds, you know, I guess or bad seeds if they wanted to, you know, but I always thought of that too, like a kooky guy who's going to like make you do dumb shit while you don't know what you're doing.
But that kind of was fascinating to me because he talks about how he helps people who have like phobias, for instance, someone who has a phobia of a dog.
He's like, so fear is like one dog, this dog bit you when you were a child, you're scared of that dog.
Phobia is this dog bit you and you're scared of all dogs now.
Some people are so terrified they get these phobias they can't even leave their house.
They're so scared of their neighbor's dog walking by and that's going to jump out of anywhere and bite them.
So they're crippled by these fears and he could put them in a hypnotic state and kind of Go back and remove that fear, essentially.
Like, there was a guy named Frank Santos, who was a big comedy hypnotist guy in Boston, and his son still does it, Frank Santos Jr. But Frank Santos would do this show, weekly show at Stitches, and all these comedians, we would come from, like, all over the town to watch this because we couldn't believe it.
We'd be like, how the fuck is he doing this?
And he would get people, and he would know when they were under and when they weren't under.
Like, he would know when people were faking it and when they weren't, and he would get them off the stage when they were faking it.
But the people that we're really under, you could see they just were baffled.
And he couldn't explain why it would work on some people and why it wouldn't work on others.
I remember a couple times I tried to maybe come forward and get her to the fence, and I couldn't tell whether she was going to jet out to the right or the left.
Like, she was just, like, two steps back, left.
And I was like, ah!
You know, like, I couldn't even tell.
Like, she gave no indication of which way she was going to go.
Well, you just did a fantastic job of varying your approach, too.
Your speed was different.
You did a lot of fainting.
You varied things up a lot.
And you could tell like she was like almost like waiting for these moments to happen when you're going to come forward and then you wouldn't come forward.
And then it becomes like a test of patience.
Like who's going to get outside of their comfort zone?
God, when you grabbed a hold of her and then eventually got her back and got her to the ground...
It was so crazy because every aspect from your initial entrance to the takedown to getting her back, there was nothing 100% about it.
It was all touch and go.
It was all a scramble.
It wasn't like you had complete total control over, like, Maybe like Damien Maia versus Rick Story.
Damien Maia gets Rick Story's back.
He's got him locked up and then he anacondas him and squeezes him and then he gets him.
It wasn't like that.
It was like you were fighting for your fucking life and you knew there was no time.
There was no time.
You were likely down by like at least one round and you were headed into the fifth and final round and maybe if you won that round you could have got the decision but fuck you're fighting the champ.
Who knows?
Who knows what's gonna happen?
You take her back, and then when she tries to shake you off the top, and you hang in there, and you hang in there, and you see her, and I watch her, I'm like, oh my god, she's gonna go out.
And when she went out, and you climbed off her, and she was unconscious, like, holy shit!
Holy shit, what a moment!
That was incredible.
It was incredible.
It was one of the best moments in all of women's championship fighting as far as like an extremely dramatic moment where you're trying to accomplish something.
She's fighting tooth and claw.
Neither one of you are exhausted.
So it's not like anyone's physically compromised.
It's just a fucking mad scramble between two killers.
And you get her.
And you got her back.
And then you get her back.
And you sink the choke.
And then she's trying to fucking shake you off.
And you hung in there.
And when she rolled.
And you're on top of her.
And you hung on to it.
And you realize, like, oh my god, she's going out.
And she didn't even tap.
She was throwing punches in the air while you were choking her unconscious.
I kept thinking to myself, I'm like, when is she going to tap?
It didn't, in my, in that instinctual moment, I'm so used to, in training, you get people in a choke, you know, they tap.
So I'm waiting for that tap and I'm like, good God, like, when is this girl going to tap?
Like, I know I've got her.
When is she going to, you know, tap?
And then I felt her like, and I saw her, you know, from my peripherals kind of do something.
I wasn't quite sure if she was tapping or what she was doing until I watched the video later.
And then I felt him pull me off and I'm like, that's the feeling that we fight for, is that feeling, that feeling of like, I did it, I established my dominance.
There's people that are just like that perfect balance.
They're walking between buildings that are hundreds of stories high.
It's kind of like that.
You have to have the perfect balance, and everything has to meet perfectly in that moment, including the training camp, not overtraining.
Did you ever hear that video?
The video's not that good, but the audio is awesome.
It's between the fourth and fifth round, and it's my corners, what they're telling me, between the fourth and fifth round.
It's such an emotional video for me.
When I watched it, it makes me relive that moment.
And Brian came in there and essentially he was like, Misha, you've got to get after her.
You have got to put your chin down and Mike Tyson, this chick.
And that basically means just get after her.
Get in there.
Get after her.
Take the risk.
Risk getting knocked out.
Go for broke.
And it goes, you know, plays into the round.
And basically he was just telling me...
Fucking Mike Tysoner.
Like, get after her.
You know, Bulldog, do whatever you've got to do.
He's like, because you're running out of time.
And I remember in that fifth round still trying to get out of that That mindset of like, I have to find the perfect opportunity.
I have to be patient because the whole training camp was, you know, patient but persistent.
You know, patient but persistent.
Don't run into anything because, you know, you'll get caught.
You get knocked out.
You'll get kneed.
You'll get kicked.
You'll get punched.
So don't do that.
But you got to look for the opening when it's the right timing.
It's all about timing.
And after I took her down in that second round and I just beat her up that round...
She was so cautious in the third and fourth and so perfect.
Her game plan was perfect too to beat me, to stay just far enough out of the range and keep me from not wanting to come in.
I couldn't find a perfect opening.
I couldn't get in on anything.
There wasn't mistakes that she was making.
And then in the fifth round, I just decided, you know, you're gonna have to take the chance of getting knocked out.
This is what it's boiling down to now.
You've got like three minutes left on the clock, and now it's do or die.
It's either you go for it, you do rush in, she catches you, you get knocked out, you know you gave it everything you got, or you gotta make something happen.
But what I meant was the question watching it was like, when you were headed into the fifth round, what my question was was, I wonder if she got a 10-8 round for that second round.
I mean, anyone that watches that sport, that moment when you choked her out, and the whole exchange of the – even like that, really, the whole fight.
Because a fight is like, I mean, in a weird way.
I mean, we call this martial arts.
There's a lot of people that have a problem with that.
But in my mind, there is an art to what you guys did in that fight.
And even what Holly did.
Because up until that fifth round, like you said, especially the third and fourth, she was doing what she wanted to do.
And there was a display going on.
There was a performance going on.
On top of this being a competition, to watch it...
Someone sitting there watching it and calling it.
I mean this is a work of art and To have it in that way is such a masterful performance It was such a masterpiece moment and it to me is like one of the best moments in MMA Because it's such a fucking hard thing to achieve to become a champion and for someone like you had tried and tried again You won the title in strike force.
Yeah, you're trying and trying again trying to make this happen and And, you know, you think you're getting boxed out, and then the Ronda fight didn't happen after you beat Jessica Ai, and then all of a sudden you have this opportunity, and it comes together in one of the most powerful ways we've ever seen inside the Octagon.
Yeah, it was just something that I was doing to make me feel accomplished.
You can't put a price on how something makes you feel, you know, a memory, an experience, happiness, you know, those emotions, you know, people say, you know, like, the day that they got married, the day that they had their kid, the day, you know, those are like mile markers in people's lives.
Like, I guess if you ask someone on their deathbed, what were the moments that made you feel alive?
Like, what did your life amount to?
What, you And all of my fights have been markers in my life.
That's more than most people can say.
So I guess it was such a sense of fulfillment.
And the fact that it was so hard.
It was so hard.
And so many people were so against me.
I think that made me really determined, too.
Because a lot of people...
My grandpa, my dad.
My grandpa was really...
He was really chauvinistic, to be quite honest.
He was not...
He was embarrassed that his granddaughter was a fighter and he would give my dad a hard time all the time.
He didn't segregate me, I wouldn't say, but he saw me as a little girl.
He didn't take me four-wheeling or riding dirt bikes or anything like that.
He took me downhill...
Not downhill mountain biking, but it kind of turned into that.
We rode for miles out to a lake with my little brother...
And a friend of his.
And then, um, I remember I was like riding back and there was like big rocks and like boulders and, and my dad and his buddy have, have had downhill mountain bikes made for, I'm riding like a little street bikes, but they're, they're expecting that I'm just going to be able to like, I'll just carry it down the hill or whatever.
I try to bomb down the same rock hill as them.
I eat shit, like bad, eat shit.
I still have scars on my elbow actually here from, from when I, uh, when I fell and And I just got up and my dad says, this is like one of the moments I realized you were different.
He's like, you just popped up and you're like, brushed your elbows off, you got back on your bike, bombed down the rest of the hill and beat all of us home.
He's like, you were just crazy.
He's like, I never saw anything like that.
I thought we were going to have to like...
You know, call medical help.
And I thought, because he's like, you ate it hard.
My mom always told me, and this is something I realized when I was talking to Mark, hypnosis.
He was telling me about how much children can be affected by people who are negative in their life.
People who can, you know, you're never going to amount to anything and how that can affect the subconscious mind.
You know, having a dad who's like...
You suck.
You're terrible.
You're never going to be anything.
How that can create crippling ripple effects that translate on all the way through the rest of that person's life.
And I said, well, what if it's the opposite?
Like, what if you had a parent that was telling you that you're amazing all the time, that you could do whatever you want, and they really true-heartedly believe in you?
He's like, oh yeah, that can be amazing, you know, amazing too.
And it made me start thinking, because my mom and I, we've had a really rough relationship the past Three, four years or so, maybe longer.
It's been a struggle.
It's getting better.
But I will give her a ton of credit that as a single mom for part of my life growing up and even not single, she never made me feel like I wasn't capable of doing anything.
If anything, she always made me feel like I could be and do whatever I want and I could be the best at it.
Most people when I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, I want to be an astronaut.
Every little kid, they're like, yeah, yeah.
Or my grandpa was the first one to be like, that's not realistic.
You're not going to be an astronaut.
My mom was like, no, you will.
She's like, you will.
If that's what you want to do, you will.
She's like, Misha, whatever you want to do, you will be the best at it.
When you were on The Ultimate Fighter with Ronda, it was when it was highlighted the most.
Because she's so manic.
She gets so hot.
And it's one of the reasons why people love her so much is she gets so fucking crazy.
And she's so competitive and angry that when you guys did that wall climbing thing and she's like, fuck you, and she's giving you the finger, you're level.
I used to have issues with anxiety a little bit when I was in high school and I would have my track meets and something and I would have anxiety attacks.
I actually used to have a problem with it.
And I guess I've always been a very open-minded person and I always ask myself questions whenever there's something wrong with myself or an issue that I'm having.
I ask myself, why am I having that?
And then And it comes full circle.
And I was able to answer those questions.
And then I've never suffered from anxiety since.
So I kind of put myself in a Zen state of mind early on in my career because I hated it so much.
It's like, I don't want to live having anxiety issues.
Yeah, like there's nothing in this life, like if I want to do it, that fear is going to stop me.
Fear is a realistic thing.
It happens.
Yeah, it's scary to get in the cage.
It's scary to think about losing, you know, and I've tasted the most bitter losses you could ever dream of.
And it's devastating.
It's crushing.
That's the most scary thing.
It's not getting beat up.
It's not breaking your nose or breaking my orbital bone or...
Letting my arm get snapped in half.
That's not the scary part about fighting and what I do.
The scary part is not being adequate enough.
Not being good enough.
That you're 100% wasn't good enough.
That's scary.
That's really scary.
And I've had that.
I've had to face that point blank right in the face many times before.
And it's the hardest thing to do.
Bar none.
It's the hardest thing to look at yourself and be like, I wasn't enough.
I wasn't enough.
No one else could be responsible for that.
I fucked up.
I didn't do it.
I have to own this.
And to come back from something like that and think that you can still get it back or you can still do it again or you can still get better, you can learn from that, that's also the challenging part of it.
And that's something that I've had to to get to this point.
I've had to get over those situations where I thought...
That my world had ended.
You know, my second loss to Rhonda was the most devastating.
The first loss was devastating.
The second loss was, ugh, like it was horrible.
I thought my world was coming to an end, you know, and nobody cared.
Well, my family and friends, but...
The rest of the world, they don't care.
They don't give a shit.
They don't care about second place.
They don't care.
And they're mean.
People are harsh.
They're mean on social media.
You have to get thick skinned quick.
Nobody teaches you how to deal with that either.
There's no MMA, social media 101. You just sink or swim.
What other sports always boil down to when they don't like another person is fighting.
That's like the most primal way to deal with something.
So once your sport is fighting, then people feel like they have more justification to talk shit, even though they're just like, gosh.
I have to laugh because Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier, when we were in New York, they opened up the questions to the audience.
Yeah.
Big mistake because these little pipsqueaks, they got on the microphone and were like, so Daniel Cormier, I just want to say I have a really important question for you.
How's it going to feel when Jon Jones kicks your ass again?
And I'm just like, you idiot.
You wouldn't have the balls to say that if it was just you and Daniel in this room and no one was going to know the outcome of what happened after you said that.
And this guy comes up to him with a picture of, you know, there's an iconic photo of when Liotto knocked him out where he's like kind of crumpled up against the cage.
It's one of the most exciting things about it, is that it's so volatile.
Like, the Chris Weidman-Luke Rockhold fight, to me, is like a perfect example of that.
I see Chris Weidman training, I watch videos of him training, I'm like, what is going on in his mind right now?
Because Weidman was so dominant, and even in that fight, incredibly competitive, and he throws one kick.
One crazy wheel kick, one ill-advised wheel kick.
Rockhold takes him down and smashes him.
And I just wonder, like, how much does that kick haunt him?
How much does that fight haunt him?
Like, what is going on in his mind?
Well, here's a guy who destroys Anderson Silva, beats the fuck out of Lyoto Machida, Vitor Belfort smashes him in the first round.
You know, you watch his fights and you just go, okay, like, what is this Rockhold fight going to play off like?
And then when Rockhole beats him and beats him down the way he did and destroys him, you're like, oh, we're changing of the guard here.
These moments, these pivotal moments of your whole life changes.
You go from being Chris Weidman, UFC middleweight champion of the world, one of the best fighters on the planet, to Chris Weidman, former UFC middleweight champion of the world, now hoping he gets a shot at his title in a rematch.
And now that he's got it, and it's going to happen soon, it's like, whoa, the drama and the build-up, like, I can't imagine being him right now.
Like, the tension that he's under right now, and the pressure, and how much emotional connection he has towards this attempt to win his title back, and how intense it's going to be once they get in there.
I saw Holly once since the fight and I was really actually kind of nervous about it because I was like, she was at the Jones OSP fight that just happened.
And we were both at the VIP party and my friend Heather Clark used to train.
Heather Jo Clark, she's actually fighting this weekend in Rotterdam.
Anyways, she was like, you should go and talk to her.
And after my fight with Holly, I got to spend a little time in Australia, and then I went straight from Australia to New York, spent a day there, did a full day of media, went to Connecticut to ESPN, did a full day of media, went to Toronto, did a full day of media.
And it's just like, it's non-stop.
From like, you start your first interview at 8 in the morning, so you pick up at like 7, and you go until...
7 at night.
And even while you're driving to the next place, they'll have you on the phone with a radio interview.
There's no break.
It's pretty intense.
It's pretty crazy.
It's pretty exhausting.
So I get it.
I have been in those shoes before.
I don't know.
Maybe he was hurt or something.
Maybe he didn't want people to see.
I don't know.
What if there's even something like that?
What if he had hurt himself or something and he didn't want Nate to know?
I mean, it was going to be a difficult time just trying to find the moments to train and to stay in shape and then obviously being exhausted from flying and all that jazz.
And you are not perfect at all these other aspects of MMA. So if you are not perfect at all these other aspects of MMA, you have to say, okay, how much of this stuff is going to help me?
Well, a guy like George St. Pierre, he looked at gymnastics and he's like, you know what's going to help me?
If I can be stronger physically, and there's no better way, I think, as far as manipulating your body than gymnastics, like doing the rings and developing...
You're learning how to manipulate your body in all kinds of contorted positions and being upside down and understanding where you are when you're upside down and where you're going to be with the momentum you have.
You have to calculate that.
Your math is doing constant algorithms and math equations, essentially, when you're fighting, too.
You know, weight distribution, where are we at?
Especially when you tie up with someone else and you have to feel their weight and you have to manipulate it in a way to get it where you want, whether it's against the cage or whether it's on the ground.
Your body is using an equation.
You know, your mind is equating how much force do I need to make this happen?
How little force?
Like, what if I go the opposite direction because they're pushing into me?
There's all these different things that you have to over...
There's no other way to do it than a trial and error process and over and over and over and over again.
Isn't it the case that whenever someone loses, though, everyone always second guesses what they were doing?
Even if what they were doing was getting them to be like 16-0, totally undefeated world champion.
When you make a mistake or something goes wrong or something goes right for your opponent, we should probably say, immediately people start questioning everything you did.
Well, that's also the Ronda criticism in the Holly Holm fight.
Everybody was like looking at her like a dominating Betch Cohea with stand-up, you know, beating Sarah McMahon the way she did, Alexis Davis beating her down the way she did.
And you go, well, look, Ronda obviously is getting so good at striking.
She's such an elite athlete that she can do what she's doing to anybody.
And then her trainer saying that she could go box women professionals and knock them out.
And so you get this thing in your head that you can do what you have been doing.
And then you fight someone like Holly and you go, oh, well, okay.
But this comes from wrestling and I think just experience and knowing.
Wrestling can translate.
A lot of sports can translate well into mixed martial arts.
I happen to think wrestling is one of the best translations, you know, as opposed to like someone typically boxers coming into the sport don't typically transition as well.
Kickboxers, you know, because they have so much more to learn.
I feel like the fundamentals of wrestling kind of...
They encompass a lot of what you need in MMA. And if you're the better wrestler, you can decide, do I want to stay on the feet or do I want to take it to the ground?
So with that being said, I think I learned how to use the pieces that work for wrestling in MMA and take out the ones that don't.
Because there's a lot of stuff in wrestling or any other sport that you're going to bring over that doesn't work for MMA. Because MMA is a sport of its own.
And I think maybe McMahon, she's such an elite level wrestler that she's so ingrained with just wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, that it's hard sometimes with the more elite you are at something to water it down again.
Essentially, that's kind of what you have to do.
You have to take pieces out for mixed martial arts.
There's some things that you don't want to do because, oh, you get choked if you do that.
That's a very good point and I think you could also use that same point when you're talking about strikers learning takedown defense and that like a lot of strikers like to stand up really straight and you know as soon as they get involved in exchanges with people they fall into their old striking ways and that's when I got like George St. Pierre who was so good at being unpredictable like you never knew if he was gonna take you down if he's gonna stand with you.
One of the most flawless fighters when you say as far as like a game plan sticking a game plan being disciplined never getting emotional never getting away from the game plan Well, in his prime, when you look at during his run, and no one keeps a run up forever, but during his run, I mean, he beat everybody they put in front of him, and he fought in some incredible fights where he fought some really, really dangerous, difficult guys and managed his way through the water to victory.
And that's all you could ever expect from a champion.
And people will say, like, oh, well, some of his fights were boring, or he played safety first.
Like, Jesus Christ, he fought the killers of the killers.
And he had five rounds.
And during those five rounds, you know, Carlos Condit head kicks him and drops him.
You know, Matt Serra knocked him out and won the title.
He's had adversity.
But he beat everybody.
Like, you can't ask for more.
Like, what do you think would happen?
I mean, if he just...
There's this mentality that some fans want where they want a guy who wants to bite down his mouthpiece and just swing away and like, come on, Seven, and hope for the best.
People, I think, sometimes tend to enjoy the excitement of amateur fights more because they're more chaotic.
People don't know what they're doing, so it's just like, stick two people in there that kind of know how to throw punches and maybe kind of know how to wrestle.
And they just go balls to the wall because that's all that they know that they're confident in.
It's also like a really good debate between two very articulate and very intelligent people.
No one is going to get the real upper hand real quick.
There's going to be points and counterpoints.
There's going to go back and forth.
Both guys are going to be very well prepared.
Both women are going to be very well prepared.
You're not going to get a very clear winner right away unless something crazy happens like Aldo and McGregor.
Like Aldo's just so mad at McGregor from all this fucking shit talking he's been doing for months and months and months that he just runs at him and gets clipped.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I wanted to talk to you about that, because you had mentioned that in the Holly fight, that you had made sure, you know, when you're training for a five-round fight in particular, how do you make sure that you're at peak performance level, but you're not overtraining?
Well, you know, I think a lot of it depends on athlete input.
Someone can design a program, but if you show up one day and you're supposed to be pushing sleds, you know, or do something heavy and hard, and you're like, I'm exhausted, then they're like, okay, we need to dial it back.
So basically it tells you how your heart is recovering.
So when you first wake up in the morning, from my understanding, the more that your heart is kind of like irregular, maybe for a better sense of terms, means that it's responding to things quickly.
If it's kind of sluggish and it's kind of like not really...
Not really reading that kind of quick reaction, then you're tired.
Your body's still broken down.
It's not recovered.
You're kind of looking for that irregular, bouncy...
I don't know if it's a rhythm, but there's something that the HRV reads.
Not just the heart rate, but something about the heart.
And it reads it, the heart rate variable.
And tells you whether you're actually recovered or not.
Well, that's one of the things that I think really does trip up a lot of fighters is that they're so tough and they figure out how to push through injuries.
They figure out how to force themselves through situations, but then they get these...
These damage to their joints or damage to their back, and a lot of it comes from not recognizing the difference between an actual injury and pain.
Just a little bit of discomfort and pain is normal.
It's constant.
It's never going to go away.
Everybody who does martial arts experiences that, but for someone like a Cain Velasquez, It almost becomes like a detriment, because he's such a fucking gorilla, and he just knows how to push through everything, that he blows everything out.
He blows his shoulder out, and then he blows the other shoulder out, and he blows his knees out, and he blows his back out.
I mean, in my opinion, when he was at his best, he's the greatest of all time.
It's between him and Fedor.
Those are the two possible heavyweights.
And the Fedor one...
Always has to have an asterisk because he was fighting in pride and it was, you know, the steroid era.
You could do whatever the fuck you want.
Not saying even that he was on it, but who the fuck knows.
But that I don't think the guys that he fought, even though he looked amazing against them, I don't think Hongman Choi is at the same level as like...
Junior Dos Santos, when Junior Dos Santos was at his best, when Kane fought him.
It's so hard.
And I think even Junior Dos Santos was over-trained for one of their fights.
And, you know, they talked about it.
Like, they had measured his creatine levels and his blood, and he just hadn't recovered correctly.
Because you see people go, you know, whether it's a three-round fight or a five-round fight, sometimes you'll see people gas out like a round and a half.
Sometimes I will go, like a fight week, and I'll be in the workout, you know, the mat room that they have in the hotel, and sometimes I'll see these guys in there, and they're just going.
I mean, they are going.
They're hitting mitts.
They're just, you know, they're ripping the big takedowns, and they're just...
You know, blowing it all out.
I'm just like thinking, dude, it's the fight week.
Well, you know, but he was, you know, he was a high-level athlete for a long time, and he knew how to harness what, and, you know, it's not saying that it can't work, but...
I still think that there's something to be said about preserving the longevity of your career.
Well, with a guy like Matt Hughes, it's so hard to say that now because he was such a pioneer.
I mean, he was at the early, early days of the UFC and was one of the great champions and One of the greatest champions ever.
And when you look at his title run and his reign of the 170-pound division during his heyday, this guy sort of paved the way in a lot of ways, especially for a wrestler that developed some really good submission skills.
I mean, he's got some excellent submission victories, including that armbar that he submitted George St. Pierre with.
I mean, he had some really good submission skills for a wrestler.
You'd have to get a karate or a taekwondo champion to train with.
It's all you can get, you know.
Well, it's people that don't understand that there's some skills that these traditional martial artists have, like a lot of karate guys and a lot of taekwondo guys in particular.
There's some things that they can do with their legs that the average person just can't do.
And if that karate guy or that taekwondo guy, like a Yair Rodriguez, learns wrestling, learns jiu-jitsu, and learns kickboxing and has all that shit at a really elite black belt level, you're fucked.
Eddie, when you watch TV with Eddie, Eddie will never wear shoes.
He doesn't wear shoes.
He puts his fucking feet everywhere and kind of freaks people out.
But Eddie will sit there and he'll just be stretching himself out.
So he'll be sitting watching TV. That's pretty good.
I'm pretty flexible too.
But he'll be sitting there and he'll hold it.
And he can do that without pulling on it.
Like, he doesn't have to have arms that pull his legs in these positions.
So he could just, like, tuck his legs into places, and all of a sudden you're, like, locked up in a go-go plot, and you don't even know how the fuck he got his leg there.
It strengthens it and stretches it to the point where, you know, if someone gets you into a footlock and they're pushing down, like a toehold, and as they're pushing down on your foot, it's the hyperextending of the ankle that gets you to tap because you're like, oh, I think something's going to tear, and then people tap.
And this gets your foot into this flexible position where you kind of strengthen and make it so flexible that you can't get tapped in certain ways.
I knew this girl who was a ballerina and she had to have her feet fixed because she had smashed her toes for so long doing point and trying to stand on her toes that she had these scars over the top of her feet where she had to get her toes realigned and get her ligaments repaired.
Yeah, I think it used to be like 110. My mom's best friend growing up, she was Vietnamese, and they had a rule, but she was half Vietnamese.
So the Vietnamese side of her family, so she was a little bit bigger bone, gorgeous, beautiful, exotic, green eyes, dark black hair, half Vietnamese, really, really pretty.
And her family was so hard on her because she weighed over 100 pounds.
Like you were supposed to be under.
You're supposed to be 99 or less because they're all super tiny, but she was half.
So she got her half of her white dad's side and she was like 109 or something.
I weighed in at 145. I remember he wrestled for White River.
And he went out and just bulldozed me right over and Saturday night ride pinned me in like 18 seconds.
I mean, he crazy.
It's the most embarrassing.
If you're a girl in high school, that's the last way that you want someone to pin you.
So basically, they lay straight on top of you in a starfish position and they wrap both of your arms with their arms and wrap their legs with your legs so that you're just starfished out on your back.
But even in freestyle, remember when Mark Schultz fought in the Olympics and ripped that guy's arm apart and got him in a Kimura and sort of tossed him with a Kimura and just yanked his arm backwards?
I don't know if you're supposed to use like joint manipulation.
I think maybe that's the difference.
It's supposed to be like that you can control their body with your weight on top of them, not necessarily like contort their joint in the wrong direction so that, you know, that's jujitsu.
I wish I could have done more extracurricular school activities besides just what was offered by the school.
That was one thing.
We struggled a lot financially growing up.
We didn't grow up in a privileged household by any means.
And they couldn't afford, my parents couldn't afford to put me into gymnastics at the time, you know?
But I'm glad because I think that for, that's what I wanted to do.
I actually wanted to do gymnastics instead of wrestling.
But they were like, you know, we just, it's too, too much.
and But I'm glad that I didn't come from super privileged because it just gives me a whole different perspective Sure, you appreciate what you've earned.
And that's when the fighter really came out of me.
Because before that, I was still wrestling.
You were competing.
Competing.
That's when the fighter came out.
I got fucked.
Pissed.
And I was pissed not only that my nose was broken, not only that I got hit, but that she had my back.
That was like, that was what pissed me off.
Like the rest was kind of like, eh, you know, but I was the wrestler.
Fuck you.
Like get off my back.
Like you're the striker.
You're not allowed to be there.
So I like started bugging her and she fell down into the guard position and I stood up above her and I reached to the ceiling as high as I could.
And I just started raining down punches from the standing position.
And then Blood is going everywhere.
Like, she's soaked in it.
I've got it all over me.
I'm just bleeding like a stuck pig.
Like, everywhere.
And I remember her face.
She's kind of, like, wincing, like, trying to weather the storm.
And that's how the second round ended.
And then I went back to my corner and, like, the head coach was like, we can't let you go back out for the third round because your nose is just so, like, we don't know how bad it is.
And I was super bummed because that was the turning point in the fight for me.
This is where my very chauvinistic grandpa at the time, you know, he was kind of sexy.
He was old school.
He was like, you know, women do this and men do that.
Women don't do this.
So you're not allowed to do that.
And what are you doing?
I had to come home.
Oh my god.
That was the most dreadful drive I ever had because my nose was literally like three times the size.
I had no definition between the bridge of my nose and my cheekbones.
It just went straight out.
It was flat like a lion and then it just went straight out to my cheekbones.
That's how bad it was.
I mean, it got broken bad.
And then over the next night, I could barely even open my eyes and I had two giant black raccoon eyes.
So it was like, there's no hiding it, like, and you gotta look your grandpa straight in the face, and he's like, tsk, tsk, I told you, you know, and you're just like, motherfucker.
He was just like, you know, he just wouldn't, like, would not lay off of it.
This is why you shouldn't be doing this.
This is absurd.
This is ridiculous.
This is embarrassing.
And my dad's just like...
He's so embarrassed.
He was embarrassed.
In the back of my mind, I know that I can't say anything at the moment, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking, I'm not done.
I've got to do this again.
In the back of my mind, I was thinking, because everyone was like, good thing she got that out of her system.
She'll surely never do that again.
Thank God she learned her lesson early.
I was thinking, uh-uh.
I've got to get back in there.
I've got to prove that I can do better than that.
I was like, it was too embarrassing, you know, to have to face everyone that was telling me, like, I shouldn't be doing that.
And you know what everyone says to you, like, before you, like, at least back then, everyone would say to me, don't break your nose.
That was, like, my pre, like, good luck, you know, like, people say, like, oh, go kill it in that meeting, break a leg, you know, people were, like, the other way, like, well, you know, good luck in your fight, don't break your nose.
Nick Diaz had his bones shaved down and he had scar tissue removed.
But with Vandele, he probably had that done too, but he had a bunch of scar tissue removed because he had so much scar tissue that his eyes were drooping severely and his nose was flat.
I mean, just flattened.
There was nothing left.
So he had a piece of cartilage removed from his rib and then they redid his nose and he had his nose made big so that he could breathe out of it better.
I was so upset when they tried to give him a lifetime ban.
And you know what what they did was really wrong and sent him on his tailspin and he said a bunch of crazy shit about the UFC And it's like that the whole thing made me really sad because they were trying to make an example out of him But look that guy never failed a drug test.
I don't know who the fuck knows what he was doing He definitely did some shit, especially in pride for a hundred percent.
I mean when he fought crow cop He was 218 pounds You know, that's not from creatine.
He did some shit, 100%, right?
But back then, you were allowed to do whatever you want.
In the UFC, he never pissed hot.
He never got caught.
So to have this one time where he ran away from a drug test and to say that he's banned for life, it's ridiculous.
It's just a total abuse of power and a really callous abuse by these people that are a part of the commission because they are responsible for this guy's livelihood and they just decided to treat him as an example and not respect him.
It's so weird, too, because the TRT thing, which was around for quite a few years, and you saw the rejuvenation of Vitor and Dan Henderson, these guys that were on TRT, that all of a sudden started doing really well again.
It's such a gray area, and then that gets removed, and then everybody's got to go back to your normal hormone secretion.
I feel like we have to move away from this weight-cutting thing because there's a difference between this sport and any of this sport other than boxing.
And I think that the head trauma aspect of it makes weigh-ins 24 hours a day extremely problematic when we understand the science of rehydrating the brain can take as much as 70-plus hours.
So that to me says that we're doing a bad thing.
We're doing a silly thing and we're letting fighters compete compromised.
I think someone like you and someone like Holly, you're a similar size.
I think you guys should make an agreement and the UFC should say, okay, look, Misha, what do you weigh right now?
You weigh like 146. When you're in peak condition, what do you weigh?
143. Holly, are you cool with 143?
Yeah, okay.
Well, let's just weigh you guys during camp.
We'll weigh you guys sporadically, and we'll give you a couple pounds to play with.
Because realistically, the difference between a 143-pound person and a 145-pound person is nothing.
It's not enough.
And as long as no one's dehydrated, let's take hydration levels.
You know, like some people blow up between their camps and other people don't.
You know, and how do you, yeah, like you said, how do you really regulate?
Like, what if I said, you know, I walk around at 147 and Holly's like, well, you know, I walk around at 162. Then you're like, well, then you can't fight each other.
But it's like, she's like, well, when I diet and I do this and I come down, I can make the same weight as Misha.
It should probably be a diet thing more than a dehydration thing.
It's such a dangerous sport already, and to add this extremely dangerous weight cutting aspect to it, like the guy in Brazil who died last year from weight cutting, that can happen.
It's happened in high school wrestling, it's happened in college wrestling, and it's happened in MMA a few times now.
And the IV ban, from my understanding, it's kind of silly because they say, like, well, you know, because it can mask, like, what is it, EPO or something?
So from my understanding, what I understand is that cyclists used to use it, like, right before they knew that the person was going to come and test them, they would hyperhydrate their blood so that it would look like it was a normal...
Hemocrit levels that they would be dehydrated, you know, oh, hyperhydrated, so there wouldn't be as much when they would draw it.
But the thing is, is in our sport, we're, first of all, we're monitored for at least probably three hours before our fight.
We're taken to venue and a commissioner does not leave our side at all.
There's no way to, like, cheat.
There's no, you're not going to IV up for, you know, a real quick ten minute and, like, no.
Like, they're in the bathroom with you.
You're completely monitored.
And I feel like maybe if they were going to ban it, maybe they could do it under like a medical, like if you need an IV afterwards and like you have to go to the hospital and get one administered or something like that.
There could be a way around it because the thing about cyclists and other sports that they banned it and then they just transferred it over to MMA, it doesn't add up because we do cut weight.
The only thing that I would say is that what they're doing by the IV ban is keeping...
They're checking plastics, that plastic residue that comes from the tubes in your body, and that could be from blood doping.
So blood doping could be one way that you could have an advantage, an illegal advantage over your opponent, and they could eliminate blood doping by eliminating IVs because the small trace amount of plastic Plastics that show up in your blood from use of an IV in the bag and the tube and all that stuff.
You could actually use that with blood and gain an endurance advantage over your opponent.
You weigh in, and then once you weigh in, then they reintroduce that blood back in your body of much more blood because your body's replenished the blood that was missing.
Now you all of a sudden have a massive endurance advantage.
Well, I thought, because I didn't think about that, but I thought EPO is, it's like you can tell when it's, I guess, like the color of the blood or something is a little bit different when it's, or when you have EPO in your system, like they can tell if it's fake.
Well, there's going to be a lot of moves and counter moves.
Novitski was saying that they figured out a way to make testosterone out of animals.
They're taking testosterone from animals.
It's indistinguishable from the bio-testosterone that your actual body produces versus the stuff they make now, which they make in some sort of a laboratory environment with wild yams.
That's one of the reasons why a carbon isotope test can differentiate between exogenous testosterone and testosterone that's naturally produced by the body.
It's weird that technically I've been doing this for 10 years, but I still feel like I have so much to learn and so much to offer.
And I feel like I'm learning so quickly.
Man, you know, I talk about the law of diminishing return and all that.
I don't feel like that applies to me for some reason.
Like, I still feel like I'm just evolving so quickly and so rapidly, especially with my striking, because it wasn't something I ever focused on before.
Um, I started focusing on it more right before I fought Ronda, focusing on it.
But I moved my camp to Las Vegas, like halfway through that training camp, which was, it needed to happen, but it was bad timing in that I'm just, I'm getting like a couple new coaches and we don't have the lingo down yet.
And it's like a language you learn between your coaches.
And we didn't have that.
So there was definitely some hiccups.
But after that, you know, I've won five fights and won a title, you know, so I think I definitely made the right move.
Just maybe the timing was bad.
But I started focusing on it, you know, six weeks before that camp.
And then since then, I've been working with my coach, Jimmy Gifford, you know, and he's helped me tremendously and focused more on my strength and conditioning, actually making a regiment and doing all the things that I guess you're supposed to do as a professional athlete.
Because before what I was doing just was kind of, I was a little bit ignorant and, you know, I worked hard, but worked harder, not smarter kind of a thing.
Now I have people back me up, you know, a nutritionist, I have a sports doctor, I have a strength coach, I have a striking coach, I have a, you know, two MMA coaches and I'm a wrestling coach and I've got it all.
And I feel like I finally figured it out.
I finally have a good gym where I'm at and everything too.
Yeah, and I think with her, one of the things that I said about Holly in the Ronda fight is you look at how accomplished Holly is outside of the UFC and you wait.
Until the moment when she could put it all together inside the octagon.
And she might put it all together inside the octagon when the moment is the biggest.
When she has to rise to the occasion.
When you push her back against the wall, it might be when you see her at her best.
And it turned out to be exactly that.
And someone like Amanda, she's going to realize this is the time.
This is the opportunity to put it all together.
Can't half-ass a thing in training, a thing with nutrition, a thing with your mind.
She has to show up 100% focused.
And so for someone like you, you have to look at her potential.
I do not want to look past her because I think that would be a huge mistake.
It's not one that I want to make as a veteran in my career.
That would be a rookie move.
But in the back of my mind, of course, the fight with Rhonda is something I want to happen.
And I don't know when it will happen.
It could be anticipated for November.
I've heard that be tossed around in the UFC that she's planning on coming back and maybe it might be Madison Square Garden.
That would be great.
I want to focus on that.
I want to focus on Amanda.
But I know in the back of my mind, and I want that fight.
I want that to happen.
I think...
It's so important to me in my career to go and beat Rhonda and prove everyone else.
I've been an underdog in most of my fights.
I've been the person that people have always counted out in my entire career, my entire life.
Most people are telling me, you can't, you couldn't, you shouldn't, you wouldn't.
And I'm, you know, that's, I'm fine with that.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
I am at the best point of my career and Rhonda is at the worst.
You know, she's going through what I've already been through, you know, time and time again.
And I have built myself back up from that point time and time again.
I know that I can do that.
I'm confident in that.
Here I am standing the strongest that I've ever stood and I've already been through that.
I've already been head kicked and knocked out.
That happened to me before.
Like, I picked myself up, pulled myself up on my bootstraps, put one foot back in front of the other, and worked.
Got my Strikeforce world title.
I lost to Chironda.
Picked myself back up, put one foot in front of the other, got back on the horse, fought, fought, fought.
Fought Rod again in the UFC. Was devastated.
Crushed.
Thought my world was just falling down around me, coming to an end.
I got back up, put one foot in front of the other, got back on the horse, and now here I am the world champion.
I know that I'm tough.
I know that I have what it takes to beat Rhonda.
Many people don't believe that.
That's okay.
I've been in this position before.
Most people didn't think I was going to beat Holly.
Most people didn't think Holly was going to beat Rhonda.
It doesn't matter to me what other people think.
It matters what I believe and what I know.
And the question mark is, how is Rhonda going to come back from this?
I know what I've been hearing from Rhonda in the media and the press.
She's been a little quiet lately, but before that, it wasn't what I would have expected to hear from someone who really wants to come back and who's really, really a fighter at the core.
She's a great athlete.
She's a great fighter.
She's accomplished a lot of things.
Credit where credit's due.
You know, I give her a round of applause for everything she's been able to accomplish.
But I'll tell you what...
Every time I've ever lost in my career, I went bananas to get back in there.
Ballistic.
I was like, I have to, like, right now.
Just like Holly was like, they're like, when do you want to fight again?
She's like, tomorrow.
Against Misha.
Now.
That's what you want to hear when someone has a devastating loss.
They want to get back in there right now and face that person right now or someone else.
Just get that loss off the record.
Erase it.
When I lost to Kat Zingano...
I freaked out.
I freaked out.
I called Sean Shelby and I was like, get me another fight right now.
He's like, your nose isn't even healed.
I don't give a fuck.
I want to fight.
I want it now.
I want to know when it's coming up right now or I'm going to freak out.
I don't know what to tell you, but I'm going to lose my shit if I don't have a fight on the horizon.
I'm going to lose it.
And then I hear Rhonda like, I'm going to take a year off and I'm going to do this.
I'm like, that just doesn't sound like someone who really wants this anymore.
And I think that fight might have broke her.
I could be wrong.
But I think something inside of her is different than it was before.
She has job security outside the UFC, so she doesn't really need that anymore.
And I think maybe that's also something on her mind is like, does she really want this?
Because winning is awesome.
It's great.
It's easy.
It's like when you win, everybody loves you.
Everybody supports you.
Everybody's there.
Everybody's on your train.
When you lose...
It fucking sucks.
It sucks.
And only the people that really love you are still really, really there for you.
Everyone else is just like, whatever, loser.
And then you have the social media, you know, white knights that come out and want to tell you what a piece of shit you are and how you're never going to accomplish anything and you'll never win another fight and you might as well just quit and retire, blah, blah, blah.
So those people...
And you have to make a choice.
My choice has always been to keep fighting.
There's a lot of things I recognize in Rhonda that I can recognize her greatness.
I can recognize her championship.
I can recognize things.
I don't identify with that.
I don't identify with sitting on that loss for a year.
I cannot understand it.
If it was me, it would have eaten me alive inside and out.
But the other thing, too, is she's like, you know...
She had her, you know, her downs, her really, really low, which I empathize with.
I've been there.
You know, but then she said, you know, I was thinking about, you know, all these negative thoughts and then I looked up, she said this on the Ellen Show, I looked up and I saw Travis Brown and I realized, you know, I've got to stick around to have his babies.
And I thought, like, what went through my mind is, like, I gotta get back and get my title back.
I gotta get back and, like, win a fight.
Like, it just seemed like her mindset was different than what I would expect a fighter's mindset to be.
Does that make sense at all?
Like, what I'm saying is, like, it didn't seem like her motivation was to fight and win a Again, there was other things.
Now, I'm not saying she's not going to come back and be great or come back and fight.
I'm not questioning that.
I'm questioning where her true motivation is coming from because I think while she was winning, it was so awesome.
She's like, well, yeah, I want to keep doing this.
Of course I want to keep it.
I'm crushing girls.
I'm demolishing them.
I'm a star.
All these great things are coming.
Now she already has that.
She's already making movies.
She already has millions of millions of dollars.
Is her true motivation, was it just, you know, keeping that undefeated streak?
Because she talked about that so much.
You know, I will retire undefeated.
And then she even said, like, I don't, you know, I'm questioning what am I doing now?
Like, you know, now I'm not going to ever retire undefeated.
So what is my, you know, maybe I'm meant for this.
Maybe she doesn't really know.
That was her identity.
identity was like to be undefeated in this sport.
So if that's not the goal anymore, I just don't know.
Like I feel like I sent something off.
I sent something is not right in her mindset.
And I think she's going to come back and I think she's going to fight and think she'll fight hard.
But I just don't know if she still has it after a brutal loss like that.
You know, is she still hungry Those are fighting words.
You know, like I heard when you guys did your interview...
She said something like that I called a promotion and like tried to get Chris Beal like mess with him before like his fight or something that I guess he I guess he was contracted to another promotion and he wasn't supposed to be while he was on the Ultimate Fighter and I guess that Dana received a call and then they thought that I she thought that I like did that.
I'm like, first of all, I didn't even know he signed to another organization at all.
If he was, it wouldn't have even crossed my mind.
Like you said, I'm too easygoing to even think of something like that.
And I'm not malicious by any means.
I have nothing against Chris Beal, but I think she thought that I tried to mess with him.
I called the promoter of whatever organization, little small contract.
I don't even know how I would have known that.
How would you even know that?
How do you know?
But this is the same girl that ripped Paige for congratulating Holly.
She has her way of thinking and she's going to hate me until the day she dies.