Dec. 1, 2016 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:54:49
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Got a publicist with you, huh? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, she didn't want me to do this without, at least. | |
| Definitely don't chew that on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Boom! | |
| We're live. | ||
| People are going to get mad at you chewing that on the air. | ||
| They're hearing it right now. | ||
| They're like, God damn it, Jon Jones. | ||
| Almost finished. | ||
| You had all this time. | ||
| Almost finished. | ||
| You got to finish that fucking thing. | ||
| That's an athlete. | ||
| That's someone who works out a lot. | ||
| There's imperatives, right? | ||
| You got to get that food in there. | ||
| Nutrition is key. | ||
| It is key, but that's shit. | ||
| What are you eating? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| A kind bar thing? | ||
| That's all bullshit. | ||
| Oh, it is, but... | ||
| Is that a good one? | ||
| Is that one with the five grams of sugar or one of them Carmel fake candy bar type camis? | ||
| Yeah, five grams of sugar, definitely. | ||
| A little closer to that. | ||
| Jon Jones, how you doing, brother? | ||
| I'm on the road, you know? | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I gotta get you some stuff to bring with you, man. | ||
| Bring some good ones. | ||
| You ever fuck with that guy, Primal Kitchen, his stuff? | ||
| He's got some great stuff. | ||
| I'll give you some before you leave. | ||
| I'd love to try it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're doing the number one thing that people get mad at on this podcast. | ||
| When we do Fight Companion podcasts, it's chewing. | ||
| People get furious. | ||
| So sorry. | ||
| There's something about being in someone's ear. | ||
| Like, my daughter was in my ear last night and she was chewing. | ||
| She was trying to sit in my lap and she was chewing in my ear. | ||
| And I'm like, this should not be bothering me. | ||
| Like, why is this bothering me? | ||
| I was having an internal dialogue. | ||
| I'm like, honey, you're eating in my ear. | ||
| And to her, she's like, what do you give a fuck? | ||
| So I'm eating in your ear. | ||
| I'm your baby, you asshole. | ||
| What do you give a shit? | ||
| How old was your kid? | ||
| This one that was on my lap was six. | ||
| How many do you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's my youngest. | |
| I have three. | ||
| Oh, great. | ||
| I got a 20, I got an eight, and I got a six. | ||
| You got a 20 year old? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| How many you got? | ||
| I have four. | ||
|
unidentified
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Whoa! | |
| John Jones! | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Nine, eight, six, and three. | ||
| All girls. | ||
| It's crazy, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| I want to sound so bad. | ||
| Jeremy Stevens says it's the fighter's curse. | ||
| I've heard that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Badasses get all girls. | ||
| Mark Coleman, all girls. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I think Don Fry's got all girls. | ||
| Yeah, I want a son. | ||
| So there's a surgery that you can do where I guess they take my semen and they take out all the girl, like all the girl hormones or whatever, chromosomes, inject it into the wife, gives you like a 90-something percent chance of getting a little boy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Is that legit? | ||
| Have you Googled it? | ||
| I've heard a lot about it. | ||
| I haven't Googled it, but if it's a possibility, I think we're going in that direction for the next one. | ||
| Yeah, see, that's one of those things that I would Google. | ||
| I would make sure that it's not some horse shit created by some dude who just wants to collect your sperm. | ||
| I feel like, I think I heard Kanye did that to get a boy the second time. | ||
| Oh yeah? | ||
| And Kim, yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm obviously going to look into it extensively before even trying to go in that direction, but that's the plan. | ||
| Hopefully it's real. | ||
| Wouldn't you think in some way, now I'm not really too much of a spiritual, well, I wouldn't say I'm spiritual, but I don't believe in, I don't, how do I phrase this? | ||
| Would you worry that you would anger the gods by trying to fuck with DNA? That's so funny. | ||
| That's a great question. | ||
| So I actually thought that, you know, because obviously I'm a religious guy, I thought that my theory has always been God is going to give me a son when I am mature enough to raise a man, to teach a man how to be a man. | ||
| So that was always my thing, and I felt like God was waiting for me to get married before giving me and my fiancé this boy. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's deep. | |
| Yeah, that was my whole theory. | ||
| I was just like, when I'm mature enough and we're married, God feels like we're in this good place. | ||
| He's going to give us a boy. | ||
| And then I'm thinking, you know, but if we have another girl, that trial and error is so expensive. | ||
| That's 18 more years of raising another girl. | ||
| Because me and my wife already had three. | ||
| I call her my wife and my fiancé. | ||
| She's pretty much my wife for being together forever. | ||
| So I'm like, I don't want to risk. | ||
| I don't want to risk. | ||
| Do you think about it in terms of a financial risk? | ||
| I can afford to have a thousand kids. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| But that's something that gets ingrained in your head. | ||
| People always say, oh, the cost of raising kids. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And you start thinking about, man, the cost of raising kids. | ||
| It's more the time. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That time that you've got to put in. | ||
| You're raising another little girl and it's all trial and error. | ||
| So I'm thinking, let's just put a little science in there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I feel like God gives people the intelligence to come up with These ideas and these different, you know, surgeries or whatever to be able to... | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, God gives someone the idea to be able to do this, so maybe he's okay with you choosing boy or girl. | ||
| Well, they didn't have the foresight when they were writing the Bible to take out genetic diversity testing or whatever the fuck they're doing. | ||
| What would they be doing? | ||
| Like, some sort of DNA... Chromosomal jazz. | ||
| I don't know what they're doing. | ||
| I don't know what the process is, but yeah. | ||
| Well, people, I mean, wouldn't you say personally that people who are religious, almost all of them sort of pick and choose what they decide to agree with and not agree with? | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I mean, you're a religious person, but you have a tattoo. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You have a religious tattoo, which is double ironic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's funny. | |
| Because it says in the Bible not to get tattooed. | ||
| Right, not to mess with the temple. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But then you gotta... | ||
| Pick and choose, right? | ||
| What you want to listen to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not the way it's supposed to go either, but, you know, we're imperfect and he knows that. | ||
| Do you think, when we were talking about, like, um... | ||
| Wanting to wait until or that God would give you this opportunity when you are more mature when you're mature enough to raise a man Do you do you think about that like man? | ||
| Why do I have to wait? | ||
| Like why am I not mature enough right now? | ||
| Like if I can internalize that and if I can understand that like what is the difference between me in the future When I am mature enough to have a man and me right now like why why have I not learned enough lessons? | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Why haven't I balanced myself out enough? | ||
| I I feel like I'm learning lessons every year, every month, every day. | ||
| I feel like I'm growing as a person, as a man, but I know about some demons that I still struggle with, and I feel as if when I'm over those, I'll feel ready to be able to raise a man and teach a man how to be a proper man. | ||
| But you don't feel like you're over those yet. | ||
| You're in the middle of it. | ||
| You're in the struggle. | ||
| Yeah, definitely kind of still in the struggle of some things, you know. | ||
| But I've definitely got over a lot of things that I used to struggle with, which I'm excited about. | ||
| But, you know, life is a work in progress. | ||
| Well, you were telling me before the show that you don't do Instagram anymore. | ||
| You're not doing anything. | ||
| You're just sort of laying low. | ||
| You're not doing any interviews. | ||
| So before you were about to do this, you're like, oh shit, I haven't done anything like this in a while. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The main reason why I decided to come on your show was I'm getting ready to do this grappling match against Stan Henderson on the 11th. | ||
| And there's going to be a lot of media surrounding it. | ||
| And there's a lot of, you know, I got to do like a one-hour phoner with a bunch of different media guys. | ||
| And then there's a few reporters that's going to be there physically to do some interviews with me. | ||
| And I feel like there's kind of just like a lot of things kind of untalked about. | ||
| And, you know, people are just wondering how I'm feeling and what I've been up to and stuff like that. | ||
| I didn't want to have to answer the same exact questions over and over for a thousand people. | ||
| So I was just like, you know what? | ||
| Joe Rogan has a lot of respect amongst the MMA community. | ||
| His following goes obviously beyond the MMA community. | ||
| He's a smart guy. | ||
| And I was just like, let me just talk with Joe about kind of everything and get it out of the way. | ||
| But yeah, outside of this interview with you, I have not really done anything publicly since July when UFC 200 was cancelled. | ||
| You've been on a crazy ride, not just through July, but for the last couple of years. | ||
| You've been involved in a lot of crazy shit, you know? | ||
| Are you disappointed in yourself with a lot of this stuff? | ||
| Yeah, I am. | ||
| I totally am. | ||
| I totally am, yeah. | ||
| What does it feel like? | ||
| Give me the thought. | ||
| We can go through all of them, but give me the thought. | ||
| Probably the most I was disappointed in you, and I love you as a person. | ||
| I think you're a great guy. | ||
| I love you too, Joe. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I've always had a good time hanging out with you, but I was very disappointed with you with that car accident thing. | ||
| When you ran away from that car accident, that to me was like, God damn, John's in a bad place. | ||
| Yeah, I was in a bad place. | ||
| It was a messed up situation, man. | ||
| I literally was in a point in my life then when I was winning all these fights. | ||
| I was the it boy in the UFC, sponsored by Nike and Gatorade and, you know, greatest of all time, finishing legends after legend after legend. | ||
| Just really in this position where I felt so untouchable, and I just felt like everything was meant to go my way in that time of my life. | ||
| I was smoking pot the majority of my career, drinking. | ||
| Me too! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shit! | |
| Maybe it's happening in a minute. | ||
| Drinking, you know, every weekend pretty much, you know, to the point of blacking out. | ||
| Blacking out? | ||
| Yeah, just being hammered, you know, and just being a total party boy, but still training my butt off. | ||
| You know, working really hard, believing really hard, have big goals, big dreams, but just being a party boy. | ||
| And I think I just took everything that I had for granted because everything for the majority of my career has gone my way. | ||
| And that morning I got in a car accident, man, I just... | ||
| It was just... | ||
| It was a huge reality check. | ||
| And it was... | ||
| You know, I think in some people's mind they envision me... | ||
| You know, hitting this car and running up and seeing that it was a pregnant lady and then taking off running. | ||
| And then people said that I came back and grabbed a load of money, which is the stupidest thing ever. | ||
| Why would a millionaire need to grab cash, right? | ||
| Did you run back to the car? | ||
| I literally, I went through a light. | ||
| It was like a green light that said that I could turn left, but you're supposed to yield for the right-of-way, right? | ||
| To turn left. | ||
| The person came through, and I just assumed it was my green light to go, obviously being not completely clear-headed, and I ended up running into a car. | ||
| I was definitely disoriented. | ||
| Disoriented from the accident? | ||
| From the accident, for sure. | ||
| Just kind of like, what the hell just happened? | ||
| It was a really big hit. | ||
| But I was fine. | ||
| I had no injuries, and I just felt like, well, maybe it wasn't that bad of a hit. | ||
| So I literally step out of the car, and I realize, like, seconds later, I realize, my bull's in the car. | ||
| Your bowl. | ||
| My bowl. | ||
| Yeah, my pot bowl. | ||
| Pot, pot. | ||
| Yeah, and I wasn't smoking weed in the car or anything like that. | ||
| But it was in the car. | ||
| But my bowl that had residue was in the car. | ||
| So I literally, I opened my car door, I'd like take two steps away from the car, and then I'd go back to the car, and I'd like search the car, because I had it in my cup holder. | ||
| And when I hit, the bowl fell somewhere, who knows where it flew to. | ||
| But I knew... | ||
| I knew, shit, like, if I can't find that bull, that's going to get me in trouble, just having a bull in my car. | ||
| So I looked for, like, two seconds, couldn't find the bull, and I just took off running. | ||
| Did you look at the other person in the other car? | ||
| No, I had no clue that it was a woman. | ||
| I had no clue that it was a pregnant woman. | ||
| How much time were we talking about? | ||
| Literally, from the time that I hit, I had... | ||
| I was over a fence probably eight seconds later. | ||
| It was literally a super reactionary. | ||
| I just felt I hadn't been home yet. | ||
| I stayed at a friend's house. | ||
| I wasn't drinking and driving. | ||
| My decision was to sleep at my friend's house because I knew I couldn't drive home. | ||
| He woke up early the next morning to go to work, and he's like, John, feel free to stay here, and you can make yourself breakfast or whatever. | ||
| And the guy has a family. | ||
| He has a wife, and he has a newborn baby, and I didn't want to stay at his house while he's at work. | ||
| So I was just like, no, I think I'm okay. | ||
| But really, I had maybe like two hours of sleep, and I didn't realize that I still wasn't ready to drive. | ||
| You know, I wake up and get in my car, and, you know, I just wasn't ready to drive or whatnot. | ||
| Why didn't you look at the other car? | ||
| Because it all happened so fast. | ||
| Yeah, sorry, yeah. | ||
| So it all happened so fast, and I just knew I was... | ||
| I know I smelled like alcohol, and I just felt like if the police came, it would be a bad situation for me. | ||
| And I just thought the person that I hit had to have been okay, because I was totally okay. | ||
| I was like, maybe this collision wasn't that hard. | ||
| So I just feel like in a lot of people's minds, they see me as like... | ||
| I knew it was this woman. | ||
| I saw this woman hanging out the window crying and bleeding or something like that. | ||
| And, like, I just chose the lever. | ||
| And I didn't know what I hit. | ||
| I didn't know if I hit a truck. | ||
| I didn't know if I hit a punch bug. | ||
| I didn't know what it was that I hit. | ||
| I just knew it was another vehicle. | ||
| But you didn't even look. | ||
| No, I didn't look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And I didn't go back for cash. | ||
| But... | ||
| It doesn't make what I did okay. | ||
| The fact that, you know, I didn't go back for cash and I really went back for my bowl. | ||
| That's no better, right? | ||
| The whole situation was just a shitty situation. | ||
| I was in a really bad point in my life, taking, like I said, everything for granted. | ||
| If you wanted to have a situation come up with just like worst case scenario, that is the worst case scenario, pregnant woman. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It makes me like a monster. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It makes me like a monster. | ||
| When you found out I was a pregnant woman, what was going through your mind? | ||
| I thought, man, I'm done. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| First, I was afraid that there would be some type of problems with her baby. | ||
| Because, you know, obviously, if she had a difficult pregnancy, then that's a whole different level of being in trouble. | ||
| God forbid if she was going to have a miscarriage, you know, I would imagine that that would be 1000% put on me. | ||
| So I thought about the fact that I went from just partying and enjoying this career and this amazing fairytale life. | ||
| I thought I was going from that to like literally being in jail, being labeled as a murderer. | ||
| So that was my number one thing was just hoping that the baby was okay. | ||
| What about what were you thinking about yourself like when you did that when you ran? | ||
| I mean, there's no way you could be happy with yourself that you know that What were you thinking? | ||
| Well, I I me and my mom have a great relationship. | ||
| I'm a mama's boy And then I'm the father of four daughters, so You know if anything my my my respect for for women is is I have tremendous respect for a woman and And I tried to, like, obviously, being a father, like, I tried to... | ||
| I just felt like a monster. | ||
| I felt like a monster. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I just felt terrible. | ||
| I felt really bad. | ||
| I was mainly just concerned with this woman's health and safety. | ||
| And I'm really glad that she ended up being okay. | ||
| I felt really bad. | ||
| I was just like, dude, even in the public's eyes, like, you just heard a pregnant woman. | ||
| Like, doesn't really get worse than that. | ||
| But, yeah, I had no clue. | ||
| I had no clue that it was even a woman that I hit. | ||
| And, you know, I felt terrible. | ||
| And what was the... | ||
| What was the reaction from your family and friends? | ||
| Surprisingly, it was okay. | ||
| They support me so much, and they love me so much, and they know that I have a really... | ||
| I believe I have a good heart. | ||
| They know that I have a good heart, and they were just thinking, Man, like... | ||
| Did anybody step in and say, hey man, you gotta get your shit together? | ||
| Oh, I've had a lot of people tell me I need to get my shit together. | ||
| And what was it about? | ||
| Besides that? | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Besides this one instance, what other things have people come to you and said, hey John, you gotta get your shit together? | ||
| Um... | ||
| Well, kind of all of it. | ||
| Everything that's happened over the last, you know, two years or whatnot makes people feel like they can tell me that I need to get my shit together. | ||
| I recently went outside to... | ||
| My garbage man was coming up and I was late getting one of the garbage out to the side of the road, so he waited for me and... | ||
| He even told me, he was like, he was dumping my garbage and he was like, hey man, like, I'm waiting to see you fight again. | ||
| He's like, you really need to get it together. | ||
| And I'm like, man, this dude's parked outside of my little mansion pretty much telling me to get my shit together. | ||
| Everybody feels like they have the right to tell me to get my shit together. | ||
| And at the end of the day, you know, I sit there and I humbly take it because They're right. | ||
| Yeah, they're right. | ||
| But at the same time, you know how many motherfuckers there are in the world. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, so many people are into all types of crazy shit. | ||
| Yeah, but you can't compare yourself to the losers of the losers. | ||
| I know what you're talking about. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you can say, hey, well, compared to dudes who like to go out and... | ||
| Fuck goats. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Who knows what weird shit this guy's in and he's telling me to get my shit together. | ||
| It's like, just because my shit's publicly don't mean you're any better than I am. | ||
| That's true, but you know what? | ||
| That conflict is never-ending and you can't get involved in it. | ||
| That conflict that you're starting up in your own brain right now, it's a rationalization conflict. | ||
| You start rationalizing your behavior versus, well, a lot of other people do worse. | ||
| That is a dead end. | ||
| It's a bad road that a lot of people go down to make themselves feel better. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The only thing that can make you feel better is to be pure. | ||
| And to actually get your shit together. | ||
| Yeah, because if someone comes up to me and says, hey man, you've been ripping off old ladies and stealing money from the church, I'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| It's not true at all. | ||
| So if someone says something to you that's rude, that's not true, it doesn't have any impact on you. | ||
| But when someone says something to you that's rude but true, then you have to rationalize. | ||
| Then you have to go, well, what about you, man? | ||
| What's going on with your life? | ||
| Maybe you're into some dark shit, you know? | ||
| That's a bad road. | ||
| And it's a defensive road. | ||
| And as a fighter, it's a natural instinct. | ||
| Somebody hits you, you want to hit them back. | ||
| If somebody attacks you, you go, yeah, well what about your weaknesses? | ||
| You want to try to search them out. | ||
| And I'm sure a lot of people go through that when they read social media and they see these anonymous eggs on Twitter saying mean shit to you. | ||
| You start thinking, I want to know who this fucking guy is and what's going on in his fucking life. | ||
| That is a trap, man. | ||
| That's a trap. | ||
| Well, you know, like I said, I do respectfully take it. | ||
| Like, I've never had someone say, hey, you know, get it together, John. | ||
| And then I sit there and be like, oh, you know, I always, I always, you know, you know, thank you so much for caring. | ||
| Thank you so much for, you know, rooting for me still. | ||
| And I really appreciate it. | ||
| And I'm working at it. | ||
| And I seriously have been working on my personal life tremendously. | ||
| And as of right now, I feel, I feel amazing. | ||
| I feel better now today than I did when I was, Beating everybody's ass and you know sponsored by the world and like I literally feel better today because I I feel like I've conquered a lot of demons in my personal life. | ||
| So you feel better meaning you feel more at peace? | ||
| You feel more calm? | ||
| More at peace you know like not worried about social media all the time like that that has brought a lot of peace to me not worried about what people are saying not even worrying about what's going on in the UFC like who has the belt or or You know Just being Jonathan Jones and having my group of friends across the country who genuinely love me, | ||
| focusing on my kids every day, you know, taking my girls to cheerleading practice, picking them up from school, dropping them off at school. | ||
| Basic stuff, like me and my fiancee. | ||
| Just living life. | ||
| Being on top of stuff. | ||
| Yeah, being on top of stuff. | ||
| No debts. | ||
| Everything's caught up. | ||
| Everything's spot on. | ||
| Things I wanted to get fixed around the house. | ||
| That paint chip is painted now. | ||
| Everything's so put together right now in my life. | ||
| Outside of sports, and obviously having the clear mind, something that I haven't had in a long time. | ||
| You know, I just feel really good right now. | ||
| And then also being in a position where I don't really need to fight again either. | ||
| Financially, you mean? | ||
| Financially. | ||
| But don't you, though, in your mind... | ||
| Oh, yeah, I have to fight because the story can't end like this. | ||
| Yeah, well, it's like the financial thing is beautiful and everything like that. | ||
| It's wonderful that you're set for life and you can just kick back and your children will be taken care of and your wife will be taken care of. | ||
| That's all beautiful. | ||
| But you have a responsibility of greatness. | ||
| There's very few people that ever get to the position that you not just were in when you won the title, when you were the youngest ever UFC light heavyweight champion. | ||
| Not just that. | ||
| The youngest ever UFC champion. | ||
| Not just that. | ||
| There's also a responsibility that comes with potential. | ||
| It's not just what you've done. | ||
| It's what you could have done. | ||
| You fought Alexander Gustafson. | ||
| Be honest about that. | ||
| How much did you train for that fight? | ||
| I trained. | ||
| I trained for the fight, but I definitely had this thing where I just felt invincible. | ||
| I did a lot of wild stuff leading up to the fight. | ||
| I definitely didn't give it my all. | ||
| As far as partying and not sleeping right? | ||
| Mainly partying, yes. | ||
| Drinking, staying up all night. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, when you win a fight like that, where you weren't 100%, does that sort of almost reinforce this idea that you could do anything you want? | ||
| And then, man, imagine if I trained. | ||
| Next time, if it's someone big, I'll train. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I have this. | ||
| I'm going to share something. | ||
| I'm not sure if I've ever shared this with anyone else before, but I had this crazy thing that I would do. | ||
| Where I would party one week before every fight. | ||
| And I did it throughout my whole career. | ||
| And this was stupid, but it was this mental crutch that I had. | ||
| I literally would, one week before every fight, I would go out and I would get blacked out, wasted. | ||
| And my logic was, if this guy were to beat me somehow, I can look myself in the mirror and say that, well, I lost because I got hammered the week before the fight. | ||
| So... | ||
| So it was a built-in safety net. | ||
| It was a safety net. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So I did it my whole career. | ||
| I would go out and get hammered one week before every fight. | ||
| Have you ever worked with a sports psychologist? | ||
| No. | ||
| But now, but now I don't... | ||
| My... | ||
| My Open St. Preview fight was the first fight that I... Did not do that. | ||
| It was my worst performance. | ||
| I don't think it was your worst performance. | ||
| I think you were very unjustly criticized for that fight. | ||
| Because I think Ovin St. Preux is a very tough guy. | ||
| He's a very difficult fighter. | ||
| He's very strong. | ||
| He's got a brutal left kick. | ||
| He's athletic. | ||
| He moves well. | ||
| I believe it was a good performance. | ||
| But it was still my worst performance. | ||
| See, I think Ovin St. Preux is a really tough guy, and it was a tough fight, and you hadn't fought in a long time. | ||
| Had a lot of stuff. | ||
| You were off for how long? | ||
| How many months? | ||
| 16 months or something? | ||
| Yeah, it was over a year. | ||
| Yeah, it was a long time. | ||
| Over a year. | ||
| Had a lot of stuff going, yeah. | ||
| A lot of pressure. | ||
| And then you're fighting a guy who'd been pretty active and fought some good guys, had a great victory over Shogun, and looked real good in a lot of his fights, and was an up-and-comer. | ||
| The main thing about Owens that really bothered me was he was the most... | ||
| Well, he was seasoned. | ||
| He actually has been fighting longer than I have. | ||
| A lot of people don't realize that. | ||
| But he was just so... | ||
| Green and raw still. | ||
| Skill-wise? | ||
| Skill-wise. | ||
| I study everybody extensively, and then I come up with their patterns. | ||
| I figure out the way they flinch. | ||
| I figure out their first favorite punch, their second favorite punch, their third, their favorite combinations, their setups to their takedowns, when they clinch, what side their head's going to be on. | ||
| Literally everything. | ||
| I know everything about every opponent. | ||
| What side they're going to shoot, whether it's going to be head inside, head outside. | ||
| What am I going to do about that, you know? | ||
| I figure out everything, why they shoot, what area of the cage they like to shoot, everything. | ||
| And with Ovin St. Preux, he doesn't know what he's going to do. | ||
| He's so... | ||
| Unorthodox. | ||
| Unorthodox. | ||
| You know, and he gets these random knockouts from these weird angles, and he just winks stuff, and he almost closes his eyes, and the next thing you know, he's knocked somebody out, you know. | ||
| So the scary thing about him was he's so unpredictable. | ||
| And I had a lot on the line. | ||
| So I just said, you know what? | ||
| This guy, he's in a shell pretty much the whole fight. | ||
| He was defensive the whole fight. | ||
| And I just thought I'd coast through the fight and not really risk anything. | ||
| Which I felt like I let myself down because normally I would just... | ||
| I mean, normally when you get someone like that, you just, you know, take them out. | ||
| You know, I should have just been able to take them out. | ||
| But I was content with... | ||
| Winning. | ||
| And I think that was one of the first fights where I actually just wanted to get the win, get my money, go back to my actual goal, which was DC, instead of wanting to finish this guy like normal. | ||
| So I had to really question myself on why... | ||
| Why I was like that, why I was content with coasting. | ||
| Well, that was a fight where you, that had the most pressure on you, in any fight you've had before, as far as, like, people wanting to see how you respond to the adversity outside of the octagon. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I had a lot of pressure, and I feel like I responded great to my adversity. | ||
| You know, I did all the things I had to do to get back to Get back to the stage. | ||
| You know, I handled all my probation obligations and I stayed healthy. | ||
| I started powerlifting and I hired a nutritionist. | ||
| I looked better than ever. | ||
| I felt better than ever physically. | ||
| I did everything I had to do. | ||
| I manned up and was responsible for my actions. | ||
| Yeah, was it Greg Jackson that thought that the powerlifting might have had a bit of an effect on your performance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He thought that you were doing too much of that? | ||
| Yeah, well, I was doing too much of it, so... | ||
| I literally... | ||
| I started powerlifting, and I took off seven months of martial arts training. | ||
| I didn't show up to Jackson's for seven months. | ||
| And I showed up to this place called Zia Strength Systems, a powerlifting gym, four days a week. | ||
| Just getting jacked. | ||
| Getting jacked. | ||
| I became obsessed with lifting heavy weights. | ||
| And I literally did no martial arts training. | ||
| And then about... | ||
| Four months out from the fight, I started to come into the room a little bit more. | ||
| And then only three months before the fight did I actually start a training camp. | ||
| Why did you do that as far as like cardio and things like that? | ||
| Wouldn't you think that your cardio would dramatically suffer from just lifting weights? | ||
| Well, I did a lot. | ||
| I had a lot of weight to lose because I had gotten big. | ||
| And I actually did a lot of cardio training. | ||
| But I was also... | ||
| I had these new coaches, new strength and conditioning coaches who specialized in powerlifting. | ||
| So I had to almost... | ||
| We had to come up with a plan together of how we were going to start not weightlifting and doing all cardio. | ||
| And even at the beginning stages, it was like, okay, well, let's just lift lighter weights more. | ||
| And I was like, no, no, no, I need, like, cardio, cardio. | ||
| And so it was just a big learning thing that we had to do together. | ||
| So these guys, were they involved in martial arts at all? | ||
| Powerlifting coaches? | ||
| No, they weren't. | ||
| And they were giving you advice about martial arts training? | ||
| Sort of learning on the job? | ||
| Yeah, kind of learning on the job, but they weren't giving me advice about martial arts training. | ||
| It was just a learning curve. | ||
| I don't think they had ever worked with an endurance athlete the way that I am. | ||
| Mostly they work with football players or powerlifters? | ||
| They work with a Philadelphia Eagle and a lot of powerlifters, yeah. | ||
| But these guys, to their credit, they were really humble and they listened and they quickly adjusted what we were doing every day to make it more about endurance and not about maintaining muscle or strength and things like that. | ||
| And I felt like I got in really good shape with these guys. | ||
| And now we're at a place, because I'm still working with these same guys, now we're at a place where We realize the importance of endurance and we're going to start way farther out. | ||
| And like I said, these guys are humble enough to do what I need them to do is put me through some strenuous workouts that I think are a great idea to make sure my endurance is in the right place. | ||
| So other than the fact that you did so much strength and conditioning or so much powerlifting, what else, like, what did you feel when you got into the Octagon when you fought over in St. Preux? | ||
| Did you feel stronger? | ||
| Did you feel like your endurance had been diminished slightly because of all this powerlifting? | ||
| Well, like I was saying, I took off seven months of martial arts, and then I did a three-month camp. | ||
| And so, like anything, if you take off seven months of anything, your game is going to change a little bit. | ||
| So, literally, throughout my training camp, I found myself trying to get... | ||
| Learn how to fight again, pretty much. | ||
| I felt like... | ||
| Timing was off. | ||
| My timing was off. | ||
| My creativity was off. | ||
| The go-to moves that I used to do weren't quite there. | ||
| I would watch some of my old training practices or my old fights, and I'm like, man, I'm not doing this stuff that I was doing before. | ||
| So I was really nervous going into... | ||
| I knew that I was ready to beat D.C., Because I was so well-rehearsed and the drills and everything were so well-rehearsed to beat DC. But as far as going in the fight with Ovin St. Pru, I just felt like my creativity was kind of gone. | ||
| My ability to improvise wasn't quite there. | ||
| And that was just from taking off so much time from martial arts. | ||
| So in the fight with Ovin St. Pru, I felt really strong. | ||
| I felt really, really strong. | ||
| Like picking him up against the cage and taking him down felt effortless. | ||
| As opposed to the way you used to feel. | ||
| You felt stronger. | ||
| I felt really strong, yeah. | ||
| Stronger. | ||
| What else? | ||
| Endurance felt good. | ||
| It felt good. | ||
| It wasn't as sharp as normal. | ||
| Like a few times when I took him down, I remember I wound up in a punch. | ||
| And I threw a big punch and then I wound up and then I hit him again in D.C. They said it was in the back of the head, which it wasn't. | ||
| It was on the neck. | ||
| But I was throwing big shots on ovens instead of throwing a whole bunch of shots. | ||
| And that was because I was feeling lactic acid in my arms. | ||
| So that kind of made me nervous that I didn't have the normal level of endurance that I normally have. | ||
| Do you think that's because you had more muscle bulk? | ||
| Yeah, I think it is because I had more Mosa Boca. | ||
| But on the bright side, and not that this is a good thing to injure someone, but I did break or fracture his arm with a kick, and that's something that I've never done before. | ||
| So that showed me that definitely came, that has to be connected to just developing so much power in my hips and in my legs. | ||
| It's a point of, there's like a balancing tipping point, right? | ||
| Where it's like strength versus endurance and trying to find that perfect line. | ||
| Right, and right now, As I sit here today, I'm using my past experience to measure what I'm doing as we speak. | ||
| So right now, I'm strong as hell. | ||
| But my endurance is actually in a really good place right now, and I'm not fighting until July. | ||
| So I'm figuring it out right now as we speak. | ||
| When you got really big, were you thinking, hey, one day I'm going to fight heavyweight? | ||
| Let's see what I would be like as a heavyweight. | ||
| I didn't know what I was going to do at that point. | ||
| I just needed something to be passionate about, something to be competitive about. | ||
| While you were suspended? | ||
| While I was suspended, yeah. | ||
| I went through a real self-destructive state right after the car accident. | ||
| How so? | ||
| I just started to party more. | ||
| I was really depressed. | ||
| The belt had been stripped from me. | ||
| Not until Anthony Johnson and DC fought that first time did I join the gym and get myself together. | ||
| Why was that? | ||
| Just watching that fight, watching these guys competing for your belt? | ||
| Yeah, just seeing them compete for the belt, I thought to myself, man, I am wasting talent. | ||
| I'm wasting everything. | ||
| I believe I can beat both of these guys, and they're up there on TV where I should be, and I'm sitting here at home kind of living in this depression. | ||
| Literally the next day I called, I walked down there stoned, right? | ||
| And just like, hey, I need to get my life together. | ||
| I need something. | ||
| I need something to... | ||
| Be excited about something to inspire me, motivate me, get me up, get me out of the house. | ||
| And I just completely turned everything around from that day forward and just started to find a new passion, and that was weightlifting. | ||
| And I got so strong so fast, and it became everything to me, like just for my numbers to go up every week. | ||
| Which they did. | ||
| And I found myself really happy again. | ||
| Like, you know, squatting 500 pounds, being 6'4 and only weighing, you know, 225. You know, with these really skinny legs. | ||
| 500 pounds is a lot of weight. | ||
| Deadlifting 600 pounds. | ||
| You know, there are guys who have been training at that gym for years who still can't do those type of numbers. | ||
| And I was able to do it. | ||
| So I was just like, man, you know, I can do anything I put my mind to. | ||
| And I just thought I was going to become one of the strongest motherfuckers in Albuquerque. | ||
| That was my plan. | ||
| Well, powerlifting gyms are very competitive, and guys get super hung up on the idea of lifting heavier and heavier weights. | ||
| Yeah, I was hooked. | ||
| I had Mark Bell on the podcast before, and we also did a podcast in Columbus. | ||
| With Louie Simmons, who's a world-famous powerlifting guru, and he's a fucking maniac. | ||
| And it's all, with all those guys, it's all just about putting up big numbers, keeping going, keeping going, keep it going, heavier numbers, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I fell in love with it. | ||
| It's crazy sort of discipline. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Yeah, it's so simple, too. | ||
| You just lift it up. | ||
| But it's very satisfying. | ||
| For people looking at it, like, who gives a fuck if you squat 500 pounds? | ||
| Right. | ||
| But when you're doing it, like... | ||
| Yeah, you're screaming. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, exactly. | |
| Clink! | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Everybody high fives, chalks flying in the air. | ||
| It's the best, dude. | ||
| I'm telling you, I love it. | ||
| I really love powerlifting a lot. | ||
| Were you worried at all about getting injured, though? | ||
| Because that's a big part of powerlifting, too. | ||
| No, I have pretty good trainers, and they teach me the right way to do things, but they also allow me to be out of position a lot of times, too, because a lot of times people focus on the perfect form at everything, but when you lift a real big weight, you're not always going to be in the perfect form. | ||
| So they almost allow me to be out of position sometimes or not in the perfect form and still power through positions. | ||
| That way you're strong. | ||
| In a grappling sense. | ||
| Yeah, you're strong in every part of the movement, whether you're in good form or bad form, you're still able to lift big weight. | ||
| Well, that's the big theory behind functional strength, right? | ||
| That's why people like doing things like power cleans and presses because it's such an awkward thing to do with the weight and you're in weird movements and you're doing things with your whole body. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Now, what are you doing these days? | ||
| So these days, I have just been doing... | ||
| Are you back to Jackson's? | ||
| A bunch of powerlifting and a bunch of wrestling and jiu-jitsu. | ||
| That's been my thing lately. | ||
| No striking? | ||
| No, I haven't done any striking. | ||
| My whole goal is to not get punched in the head at all. | ||
| That's your goal? | ||
| Well, that's what my plan is, yeah. | ||
| I'm going to eventually alter my workout routine to where I'm doing a lot of mitts and working on my versatility. | ||
| Working on my versatility and just my abilities on my feet. | ||
| So you're not throwing any punches these days, not throwing any kicks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| That sounds crazy to me. | ||
| But my plan is to get into that. | ||
| That's not going to last for too long, but I won't be doing too much sparring, especially heavy sparring. | ||
| Right, but even without doing any sparring, you don't hit the bag? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Lately I've been doing a whole bunch of wrestling and jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And I'm really starting to love it, too. | ||
| Just jiu-jitsu. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, I'm really starting to love jiu-jitsu. | ||
| And jiu-jitsu has been the art that I've neglected the most over my entire career. | ||
| And surprisingly, I have the most submissions in light heavyweight history. | ||
| I think Ken Shamrock is right behind me with maybe five and I have six. | ||
| Ken Shamrock? | ||
| Or Frank, one of them. | ||
| One of the Shamrock brothers are behind me for most submissions. | ||
| Well, Ken was never a light heavyweight, right? | ||
| I mean, Ken went to light heavyweight when he fought Tito, but in the early days, like when he was a heavyweight. | ||
| I'm sure someone could figure out. | ||
| He was a light heavyweight in the Tito days, but that was Ken, you know, later on in his career. | ||
| How many submissions did Frank have? | ||
| Maybe it was Frank. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Ken or Frank. | ||
| I think one of the Shamrock brothers are right behind me on submission. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Legends. | ||
| Legends of the sport, yeah. | ||
| Pioneers, man. | ||
| But now I love jiu-jitsu, man. | ||
| Well, you're built for it. | ||
| That's for fuck sure. | ||
| These long arms, man. | ||
| I'm becoming a choke man. | ||
| I'm shocked. | ||
| I would assume that someone who's a professional mixed martial arts fighter has to at least maintain a maintenance level of striking constantly. | ||
| And my plan is to get back in. | ||
| July is still very far away. | ||
| Now when it's July, how does that work? | ||
| When you're suspended, because this is a question that I've always wanted to know, like if you're suspended for a PED or something along those lines, aren't you not supposed to train with other fighters that are in the UFC or is that bullshit? | ||
| I haven't heard anything about... | ||
| Because that sounds crazy, right? | ||
| That does sound crazy. | ||
| Especially if you're trying to help friends, which would be very therapeutic for someone who's on the outside. | ||
| I spend a lot of time helping other fighters. | ||
| Does that help you a lot when you're trying to get back into things? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| There's always someone at my house studying their opponents. | ||
| Yeah, that's one of the best parts about MMA and martial arts in general, I think, is helping friends. | ||
| Giving back. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Something that's new to me, too, because martial arts can be a very selfish sport. | ||
| You know, it's a team sport, but if you're not putting yourself first, then you're not going to make it to a certain level. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I've been really selfish my entire career, and that's one thing my coaches have always gotten on me about. | ||
| I know you live in New York. | ||
| I know you got a family, but you need to get back down here and help these guys. | ||
| They have a fight coming up. | ||
| And now that I live in Albuquerque, I'm constantly giving back and helping other fighters, especially since I've had all these suspensions happen. | ||
| Do you surround yourself with too many people that like to party? | ||
| I used to. | ||
| You used to? | ||
| I used to, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, I used to have a lot of wild friends. | ||
| And when did you stop hanging out with these people for the car accident? | ||
| Or like yesterday? | ||
| No, after the car accident. | ||
| When I decided that I was going to be completely sober, I lost a lot of friends. | ||
| And it was crazy because my phone used to blow up on Friday nights because everybody knew that John was going to be buying everything that people needed. | ||
| You know, like, I literally... | ||
| That becomes a problem. | ||
| I was the guy who went to the bar, and I would just buy, like, 40 shots of Patron. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I'm just like... | ||
| And literally, if you're standing around me, you're getting a shot of Patron. | ||
| I'm just passing them out, right? | ||
| And next thing you know, people who don't even know each other, they're all hugging. | ||
| I'm really good at merging people together and having... | ||
| Strangers and having a great time. | ||
| And that was my thing, like... | ||
| Walking to a bar where I know five people and now I have 20 new homies and everybody's just hanging out. | ||
| And so when you're like that, Friday nights come around 8 o'clock, everybody's like, yo, where are you going to be tonight? | ||
| If I'm out, there's going to be more people around. | ||
| You're going to have a way better time. | ||
| Your chances of getting laid is going up because you're hanging out with me. | ||
| It's just the truth. | ||
| So I just had a bunch of people around me. | ||
| And since I became sober, a lot of those phone calls, they slowly stopped. | ||
| They slowly stopped, you know? | ||
| And so now I've been sober for almost 16 months. | ||
| And now I have the best times. | ||
| I have the best times. | ||
| I remember everything that happens. | ||
| My friends don't try to ever encourage me to drink or anything, and they know I'm not going to. | ||
| I just have the best times. | ||
| I have the best times. | ||
| How were you able to make that transition? | ||
| Did you follow any program? | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| I stopped answering my phone call for a lot of people. | ||
| And I just kind of went into hiding for a while. | ||
| I just stayed away from the scene until I felt like I was strong enough to just not do it. | ||
| And it helped. | ||
| It helped a lot. | ||
| Now, do you ever go to bars now and order a water or anything like that? | ||
| Do you do that? | ||
| Yeah, I go out. | ||
| I go out. | ||
| And I'll drink Red Bull. | ||
| I'll drink Red Bull. | ||
| Whenever I'm in a situation where a lot of people are drinking, sometimes I feel like I'm just kind of chilling and a little bit too chilled out. | ||
| So, in order to keep up with a bunch of drunk people who are talking... | ||
| Do you drink Red Bull? | ||
| I'll drink a Red Bull, yeah. | ||
| Can't drink too many of those, though, man. | ||
| That shit's bad for you. | ||
| Yeah, it's terrible for you. | ||
| But, I mean, it's way better than just getting turned up. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So it's funny because I've developed this way of just having so much fun, completely sober, where a lot of times when I'm leaving a place, someone will be like, hey, how are you getting home? | ||
| I'm like, I don't know. | ||
| Driving, dude. | ||
| I had a drink. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's great. | ||
| I really do appreciate my sobriety. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Now, you were saying you were having a problem with pot, too. | ||
| Yeah, dude, I've been a stoner since high school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Was that, like, stopping that? | ||
| Was that as easy as stopping drinking? | ||
| Or is it, uh, what's more difficult? | ||
| It was, um... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was... | |
| I think stopping pot was really tough because I literally didn't associate with too many people who didn't smoke. | ||
| That's the way I kind of like a lot of people on my own team. | ||
| I didn't hang out with them because I was kind of one of the hardest working guys on the team but a little bit of a bad boy and none of my teammates were really... | ||
| A bad boy meaning you smoked pot? | ||
| Just meaning I was just always down for a good time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I just kind of... | ||
| A lot of my friends were people who weren't martial arts, had anything to do with martial arts, and I would always kind of associate with just party people, people who like to have fun. | ||
| So I realized once I quit smoking that I really didn't know too many people who didn't smoke. | ||
| So I had to kind of start... | ||
| Hanging out with people who didn't smoke, which I kind of found, I thought was just like... | ||
| These people are boring. | ||
| You said it, Joe. | ||
| They don't talk about bullshit. | ||
| They don't like to stare up at space. | ||
| They don't want to go to the mountains and meditate in a fucking cross-legged position. | ||
| Yeah, I had to find people who were just straight, you know, who were always just straight. | ||
| And... | ||
| And I had to find different activities, too. | ||
| Because when you're hanging out with people who don't party, they have certain ways that they have fun. | ||
| And it's usually based around a lot more activities, I feel like. | ||
| So I got into mountain biking. | ||
| You know, jogging more, fitness, you know, fitness and things like that. | ||
| So now, you know, fitness is, like, my drug. | ||
| I really love being strong and being healthy. | ||
| And, like, I do mountain biking and jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I do a lot of jiu-jitsu these days. | ||
| And so that's kind of, like, that's, you know, what I live for outside of family, of course. | ||
| Well, it sounds to me that you've done an audit of your life and you've looked at all the issues that you're dealing with and you've decided to not engage in them anymore. | ||
| Do you write things down? | ||
| Do you write goals down or things that you demand of yourself? | ||
| Do you ever do that? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I have a list in my phone of different ways of thinking that I want to stand for. | ||
| Different things you're thankful for? | ||
| No, different ways of thinking that I... Oh, different ways of thinking? | ||
| Yeah, that I want to stand for. | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| Like how so? | ||
| Just little things that help me be patient and to be loving and to appreciate. | ||
| It's just how I had to look through my phone to kind of... | ||
| I just write down a lot of reminders of what I stand for, you know, and how I view things. | ||
| But I do write things down, yeah. | ||
| Now, when you look at the future and you see yourself from here on out, do you feel like from now on, from my time on this earth, no more drinking, no more pot, no more partying? | ||
| I do believe that I'll drink. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Just because I... Coming out of high school, I started drinking in high school, and I always felt like I needed alcohol to be cool or to put myself in certain situations, to conquer anxiety or whatever, to be a part of the crowd and to have fun. | ||
| To relax. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always thought I needed alcohol. | ||
| And so I got to a point where I couldn't just go out and have a drink. | ||
| I would always get to the point where everyone's getting crazy and things are getting wild, you know? | ||
| And I never really had the opportunity to develop a healthy relationship with it. | ||
| It just went from high school to college when you party even more to being famous and being able to afford to buy everybody drinks every night. | ||
| So my relationship with alcohol, it became unhealthy and I never went through a period of time where I had a healthy, mature, responsible relationship with it. | ||
| Now being sober for so long, I know that I can Have one drink and feel a little bit of a buzz and catch an Uber home or whatnot. | ||
| Or I know that I can go out and not have a drink at all and be the life of the party. | ||
| I know that I can go out and not have a drink at all and approach someone and talk to someone with zero anxiety or feeling like, You know, I can sit amongst a group of drunk people and know that I'm cool in my own skin just the way that I am. | ||
| And that's something I never really had the opportunity to experience until now. | ||
| And so now I feel like I'm in a mature enough place where if I wanted to have a drink in the future to celebrate a victory or something like that, or a glass of wine at home with my fiancé, I know that I could do that now. | ||
| So I just, my relationship with it has completely changed. | ||
| And I believe that I could drink in the future and not run into some of the wild, you know, crashing a Bentley into a pole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Stuff like that that I was doing before. | ||
| When you say you believe you could, it's interesting. | ||
| I'm kind of talking out of my ass here because I've never had a problem with alcohol. | ||
| But I know people that have. | ||
| And the people that have had a problem with alcohol, the way they describe it, they're like, I can't. | ||
| Do it. | ||
| Like, if I go back, I will go all the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's like that there's a thing that alcohol does to you where it says, or drugs, you know, like, just a little bit, man, just a little bit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Come on, we're just going to get a little bit, just a little bit, just a little shot, just a little beer. | ||
| What's a beer? | ||
| Everybody has a beer. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then that's the siren song that leads you back to the rocks. | ||
| I feel like I'm... | ||
| I had a problem with alcohol, but I never wanted to admit it. | ||
| When you say you had a problem, did you have a physical problem? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Like when you got off the alcohol, did you have withdrawals? | ||
| Did you feel weird? | ||
| No, I didn't feel weird, no. | ||
| I wasn't waking up and drinking every day. | ||
| So it's a psychological thing. | ||
| Yeah, I was getting hammered on the weekends. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I wasn't waking up and I didn't need alcohol, but I always said to myself, I don't have a problem with alcohol, but then when you run into a pregnant woman, you have a problem with alcohol. | ||
| The day that something affects you, the first GWI, you know, it's a problem. | ||
| You weren't thinking straight. | ||
| Something was causing you to not think straight, and it was your actions and what you chose to take into your body, and then you said, all right, I'm done with that. | ||
| But you feel like you could get back to that. | ||
| I feel like alcohol, I was never really addicted to alcohol. | ||
| I just really enjoyed partying a lot and I made a lot of bad decisions with alcohol. | ||
| So now I really have had the time to see clearly. | ||
| Where I went wrong with alcohol. | ||
| Obviously, being a public figure and living in a small town, I never need to be getting blacked out in public again anyways. | ||
| It's just something that I look back and I hear stories and my boys are like, yo, you remember the time you did this and we were at that? | ||
| You know, I'm like, I can't believe I used to get blacked out in public and living in this small town that I live in. | ||
| So I just... | ||
| I've had a lot of times they evaluate. | ||
| Marijuana, actually, is something that I don't think I want to go back to. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I don't think I want to go back to. | ||
| You feel like you have an unhealthy relationship or had an unhealthy relationship with marijuana? | ||
| I was smoking way too much pot. | ||
| I was smoking way too much pot. | ||
| Literally, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, in between workouts, to study film, to do everything. | ||
| For me, there's some functional smokers who can wake up and They have eight things they were going to do that day, and they do all eight things. | ||
| Like, me, I would wake up, and I had eight things I needed to do that day, and I'd be like, oh, I got three of them done today. | ||
| Like, I'm good with that. | ||
| Like, I just... | ||
| It just slowed me down. | ||
| It slowed me down. | ||
| And now that I haven't been smoking, I just feel a lot better. | ||
| I feel a lot better. | ||
| I feel... | ||
| I feel more on my game. | ||
| I feel sharper. | ||
| I'm thinking of sparking up a joint right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I'm like, what are you saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| It's probably hard for you to hear. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's probably... | ||
| Well, no, I mean, honestly. | ||
| It hits everybody differently. | ||
| It absolutely does. | ||
| It absolutely does. | ||
| And that's important. | ||
| And so does Red Bull, and so does alcohol, and so does everything else. | ||
| It was all day, every day for me. | ||
| But do you think that you, was it all day, every day because you were looking for an escape? | ||
| Or was it all day, every day because it had formed a habit and that's what you were used to doing? | ||
| It just became a way of life. | ||
| It became a way of life for me. | ||
| When you're dealing with the amount of stress and just the amount of pressure is probably a better word of being, you know, one of the great fighters of all time. | ||
| I mean, you're without a doubt one of the best fighters that's ever fought in MMA. And there's so many eyes on you. | ||
| And there's so much pressure, and there's so much money involved, and accolades, and all these different things. | ||
| You know, hey John, we've got a business meeting for you. | ||
| Hey John, this company wants to talk to you about doing this. | ||
| And hey John, there's just so much coming your way. | ||
| Do you feel like it's almost like you had set yourself up in a position where you needed some escape? | ||
| You needed an escape valve. | ||
| And that's what you had found through the drinking. | ||
| That's what you had found through the pot. | ||
| You had found these ways where you could not be Jon Jones for a while. | ||
| You could be this blacked out dude at a bar. | ||
| All of a sudden you feel normal. | ||
| As normal as you can feel by being a 20-whatever-year-old millionaire fucking throwing shots around in Albuquerque. | ||
| You found a valve to release you from some of the intense pressure of being one of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I agree with you. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| It definitely made you feel for those moments. | ||
| Take your hands away from me so... | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| It's all right. | ||
| So you're just blocking the microphone. | ||
| It's going to sound weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's an issue going on here, ladies. | |
| Is that him? | ||
| Um... | ||
| Yeah, I do agree that it, for those moments, made me kind of feel like normal, yeah, for sure. | ||
| Especially the bar thing. | ||
| Especially the bar thing, like going out and just having a good time. | ||
| Sometimes I forgot that I was a celebrity and that there was a lot of eyes on me. | ||
| But for those moments, I think that was one of my biggest problems. | ||
| I felt as if I was amongst... | ||
| I didn't really hold myself to a higher standard because of who I was and what I did. | ||
| And even to this day, I just feel like I'm one of the guys. | ||
| Well, you are. | ||
| Yeah, I am one of the guys. | ||
| I don't really seek hanging out with other celebrities. | ||
| All my friends are just normal, average Joe Geisen. | ||
| Back when I used to party, I used to feel like that was me just not being Jon Bones Jones and just being one of the guys, like, just doing the wild shit that everybody does. | ||
| And then when something bad happens, it's like you're quickly reminded that millions of people around the world know exactly who you are. | ||
| So it's just, it's like... | ||
| But it's a two-edged sword, too, because the people that get completely lost in the idea that they are this unique and special person, you eliminate yourself from all those other folks, and you separate yourself, and then it's extremely hard to relate. | ||
| There's a lot of celebrities that go into a shell, and everywhere they go, they have security that takes them places, and they get delusional. | ||
| They have a completely distorted perception of how people interact with them, because they don't just go hang with people. | ||
| Right, yeah, that's definitely not me. | ||
| I meet a lot of people and people say, man, you don't act famous. | ||
| And I'm just like, oh, I don't know. | ||
| I really have a lot of pride in just doing normal shit, like going to places that most people, even fighters in Albuquerque, don't go, just being amongst the people. | ||
| And I think a big part of me long to just kind of just be not famous sometimes. | ||
| Now my question, the reason why I asked you that is, how do you plan on handling that now? | ||
| Because if you're not going to be drinking, and you're not going to be smoking pot, and you're going to... | ||
| I mean, right now you're living life as just John Jones, the person, and happy with your family, and happy with your life, and just working out and having a good time doing jujitsu and all that stuff, but eventually... | ||
| Everything's going to ramp back up again. | ||
| Media obligations are going to ramp back up again. | ||
| All these things are going to happen and the pressure's going to be back on you again. | ||
| What are you going to use as that escape valve then? | ||
| Have you considered that? | ||
| No, I haven't really. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's very important. | ||
| I feel like I have matured in a way where I don't think it will affect me the way it used to. | ||
| I've really had the opportunity to step away from it all, realize what I had and who I am and what I was, and I just feel above... | ||
| What you used to be? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel above the way I used to... | ||
| Let so much consume me. | ||
| Like, even right now, like, I don't know, it's just so hard to explain. | ||
| I just, I don't feel like I'm in the same, I don't feel like I look at things the same. | ||
| Well, I'm sure you don't. | ||
| I mean, that's the thing about growth, and that's one of the things that when people are haters, what they try to do is lock you down to the old you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| They try to lock you down to you at your very worst. | ||
| Yeah, man, you remember that shit in 2010? | ||
| When you said that fucked up thing when you were blacked out? | ||
| That's you, bro. | ||
| And you're like, I don't even remember that. | ||
| I was blacked out. | ||
| What did I say? | ||
| You tell me. | ||
| You know, and someone can, you know, someone can believe that they are their past. | ||
| Yeah, but we're not. | ||
| No, you're you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're you. | ||
| And if you have not had fuck-ups, then you don't understand the consequences. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you've had considerable amount of fuck-ups and a lot more than the average person in a public sense. | ||
| There's a lot of people that have done a lot of fucked-up things, but no one knows about it. | ||
| And the repercussions they feel, it's not the same as yours. | ||
| You feel the repercussions of millions of, first of all, millions of people that loved you, that were disappointed. | ||
| Millions of people that were jealous of you. | ||
| They're like, I fucking told you he was going to throw it all away. | ||
| There's a lot of that, too. | ||
| A lot of people psyched that you fucked up. | ||
| Far from throwing it all away. | ||
| Sometimes I get people who write me and say things like, Oh, you ruined a great career. | ||
| Or like, you... | ||
| People have this mindset that it's all over. | ||
| Yeah, I saw a lot of people saying that. | ||
| People that I like said that. | ||
| And I was like, you're crazy. | ||
| You're an idiot. | ||
| You're crazy. | ||
| He hasn't thrown it away. | ||
| I haven't thrown it away. | ||
| Right now, there's a pause going on. | ||
| But as far as it being all over or whatever, it's just so far from being true. | ||
| Do you follow boxing? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Do you know Bernard Hopkins' story? | ||
| No. | ||
| Bernard Hopkins, one of the greatest boxers of all time for sure, and he'll fight December 17th for his last fight at 51 years old because he's a goddamn defensive wizard. | ||
| He still does commentary for HBO, still sharp as a tack. | ||
| But Bernard Hopkins went to jail and he decided when he went to jail, when he was a young man, he decided that from that point on he was going to be disciplined and that there's no more bullshit in his life. | ||
| No more robbery or assault or any of the shit that got him into the position where he's in and then he was going to dedicate his life to being a world champion boxer. | ||
| And from that point on he became one of the most disciplined boxers ever. | ||
| Never ate bad food, never drank, never did anything stupid, always was in shape. | ||
| And we'll go down in history as one of the all-time greats. | ||
| Guaranteed shoe-in Hall of Famer. | ||
| And I feel like Bernard Hopkins was created by the darkest moment of him being arrested and him doing time in jail. | ||
| And when he came out of that jail, one of the first things that one of the corrections officers said to him was, you'll be back. | ||
| And he he used that as fuel and he knew that like there's no fucking way I'm gonna look at that dude again. | ||
| There's no way there's no way he's right. | ||
| There's no way and Ultimately Bernard Hopkins escaped his demons by facing them by being in hell by being in hell I think he was in jail for I forget how many years but Just enough, just enough to cement in his eyes, to harden him to the fact that what he needed was discipline and control over his own destiny. | ||
| And I think that for a guy like you, you can take all those dark moments that you've experienced over this, and fuck, man, think about it, man, you got away pretty light. | ||
| That girl could have died, you know, horrible things could have happened while you were drunk driving when you slammed into that Bentley into the tree, all the All these terrible things could have gone wrong that you kind of got away with. | ||
| Boy, if you wanted to think that someone's looking out for you, you've got all the evidence in the world that points to someone actually looking out for you. | ||
| Yeah, that's great, for sure. | ||
| Something out there, whether it's luck Or whether it's intention or whether it's God or whatever the fuck it is, man. | ||
| The bottom line is, right now, at this moment, you are still in your athletic prime. | ||
| You're still only six months away from a... | ||
| When is your suspension, George? | ||
| About eight months, yeah. | ||
| Eight months away from a suspension being released. | ||
| And, I mean, that's... | ||
| This is all a great thing. | ||
| How old do you now? | ||
| You're 30? | ||
| About 29. 29? | ||
| When's your birthday? | ||
| July 19th. | ||
| So you'll be 30 when you come back? | ||
| I'll be 29 still when I come back. | ||
| It's your fucking athletic prime. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's at your best. | ||
| Really, your prime is like 32. That's why I put the Jordan meme up, the Jordan crying face, as my Twitter picture. | ||
| Have you seen that? | ||
| I put that up. | ||
| Is it with you with the belt on? | ||
| The Jordan face? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The reason I put that up is because I know that right now I'm in a position to do some magnificent and extraordinary things. | ||
| I know that because I've made so many mistakes, I make the perfect role model. | ||
| I make the perfect person to still be able to inspire millions of people. | ||
| There's very few people who are perfect and flawless and just that clean cut, never did anything wrong athlete. | ||
| Way more people who are like me who have struggled with drugs or just being an idiot or just doing wild shit. | ||
| Way more people who have let their parents down, let their families down, let their friends down, let themselves down. | ||
| And because I made so many mistakes on such a public, you know, such a big scale and so public, I feel like all the great things that I do from here on out are going to be that much greater. | ||
| Because of where I came from to do it. | ||
| I feel like my best is yet to come. | ||
| I feel like I'm in a position to really touch a lot of people and inspire a lot of people because of where I came from. | ||
| So I'm really excited. | ||
| Is that something you concentrate on? | ||
| I do. | ||
| Do you concentrate on that as much as you concentrate on just doing it for yourself? | ||
| Doing it for other people motivates me probably more than doing it for myself. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Is that from all of the accolades that you receive from all the fans and you just realize that you have all this love out there from all these people? | ||
| Yeah, I just feel like I don't need it. | ||
| I don't need any more. | ||
| I feel like I've done everything already. | ||
| I've been in all the wildest situations already. | ||
| I've had all the craziest experiences. | ||
| I've stayed at the nicest hotels. | ||
| I've seen the world. | ||
| I've ate at the nicest restaurants. | ||
| There's nothing else that I really need out of this thing. | ||
| I've literally been there and done that already. | ||
| I feel like, I just feel like, ultimately, I've already gotten so much out of this sport, and what I need to do is to truly get something. | ||
| What I really need is to know that I'm changing lives. | ||
| Like, that motivates me more than anything else right now. | ||
| The story, the legacy. | ||
| And... | ||
| So the reason why I put that laughing meme up is because I'm laughing at my pain and my struggles right now. | ||
| I'm laughing at what I'm going through right now because I know my future is just so incredibly bright and I know the impact that I have. | ||
| I know what I can do and what I'm going to do. | ||
| Right now I'm in a waiting period where I have to wait before I can show the world what I'm actually capable of, what I can be and what I'm going to do for someone else one day. | ||
| And it's also laughing at, like, people who actually think that I'm out, down and out. | ||
| Like, people who actually think that my story is over. | ||
| Or, you know, it's just like, I'm just laughing at it all because what I've done is, like, I've seen some athletes come back from way worse stuff. | ||
| Rape charges and murder and attempted murder and all this type of crazy shit. | ||
| If anything I've done, I've partied too much and I've done a lot of stupid stuff from being a party boy. | ||
| I know I'm not a bad person. | ||
| I'm not this evil athlete. | ||
| Does it bother you when people think you are? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| Because when I ask people, it's like, No, I don't. | ||
| It's people who wants to believe that I'm this terrible, you know, just one of the worst things that has ever happened in sports. | ||
| You know, people want to believe that because they just don't want me to be all that I can be. | ||
| And I'm still laughing at him. | ||
| Well, it's also because people look at the worst case scenario. | ||
| They look at the worst possibility. | ||
| You know, they look at you as this guy's had so much success, so many things handed to him that maybe he thinks he's better than everybody else. | ||
| Nothing's been handed to him. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they don't think about it that way. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| But they don't think about it that way. | ||
| When they see the worst case scenario, I mean, the way it was played out, a pregnant woman in a car and you get in a car accident and you took off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it is like, for the haters, it's like a dream come true. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| But I can, man, one thing I've learned about myself is that I can't be held down. | ||
| I don't, I'm not held down very easily. | ||
| Unless you... | ||
| I just can't be held down, man. | ||
| I deal with adversity very well, man. | ||
| I always find a way to get my shit together and dig myself out of situations and, like, ultimately rise above situations. | ||
| That's beautiful, as long as you don't count on it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Oh, well, I'm at a position now where I'm sick of getting in my own way and, like, UFC 200. Let's talk about that. | ||
| I literally... | ||
| What happened? | ||
| I did everything that I could to be back in the position to win that belt back. | ||
| I was getting ready to just show this triumphant, amazing story of someone who just made it through a hit-and-run situation and had everything taken from him and got it all back. | ||
| And then... | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm thinking about so many things at once when I'm having a... | ||
| So let's just talk about what happened. | ||
| You tested positive for some... | ||
| Estrogen inhibitors. | ||
| Yeah, estrogen blockers. | ||
| Estrogen blockers that a lot of people associate with people who take steroids. | ||
| People take steroids and they want to restart their system. | ||
| Or if you want a testosterone boost, you take Clomid or Clomiphene. | ||
| These are standard drugs in the steroid user's world. | ||
| Yeah, this is all new for me. | ||
| What did you take? | ||
| So I took an off-brand Cialispil. | ||
| Off-brand. | ||
| It wasn't actual Cialis, but it was described to me as being a Cialis, and so I thought it was a Cialis, and I just took it. | ||
| Why is a guy like you need Cialis? | ||
| I have a huge cow Joe. | ||
| It's too big? | ||
| It's too big. | ||
| That's a good answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You don't have the resources to get it normally? | |
| Yeah, you know, I... You were partying. | ||
| No, I wasn't even necessarily partying, no. | ||
| I've taken, like, Mel Enhancement before, and for people who haven't taken it, you literally, you know, you go from being like that to just, it puts the twist at the end of a punch. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It, like, it, it's, it's a good time, you know? | ||
| And, uh... | ||
| It's a good time! | ||
| That's gonna be a quote, John Jones. | ||
| It's a good time. | ||
| Now, what was this, like one of those gas station rhino pills? | ||
| It's one of those things? | ||
| No, I had a teammate basically tell me, hey, he was talking about how his girlfriend's a pharmacist and he's capable of getting all this stuff and all that type of stuff. | ||
| And I was like, well, I don't do drugs or anything like that. | ||
| And he's like... | ||
| You ever take a Cialis? | ||
| And I was like, yeah. | ||
| He's like, I got a Cialis. | ||
| But you said you don't do drugs or anything like that, but you had done drugs. | ||
| Well, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But no, he was talking about all these painkillers and all this different shit that he has. | ||
| Oh, so there's other things on top. | ||
| That he has because his girlfriend's a pharmacist. | ||
| Where is she getting this off-brand stuff from? | ||
| It's like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| People get a lot of stuff from China. | ||
| I mean, that's what happened with Anderson. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anderson got liquid Cialis from China, and it was tainted. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Look, this happens. | ||
| I know for a fact it happens. | ||
| I mean, everyone knows for a fact it happens. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The supplement industry has a giant issue with the people that mix the stuff. | ||
| Like, if you have a vat, and you're mixing up whatever creatine or something like that, and right before, I mean, if this is done in some country or some place that doesn't have excellent standards, it's not scrupulous, You could have been scooping up steroids in the batch before that, and you just throw the creatine in it, and some of it gets contaminated if they don't clean it. | ||
| Yeah, and that's pretty much... | ||
| Well, I'll get to that, but... | ||
| Okay, so you take this off-brand Cialis. | ||
| Yeah, the guy's like, you ever do Cialis, Viagras, and all that stuff? | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, I've had melanin hand-spit pills before, and he's like, oh, I got Cialis. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, this is great. | ||
| So I ended up taking one of the Cialis pills, and... | ||
| And I thought everything was fine and dandy. | ||
| I had no clue that I was now having something else in me that was illegal. | ||
| I took the Seattle spill on June the 14th, June 16th. | ||
| USADA came over to my house 6 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| Hey, what's up guys? | ||
| Got coffee going. | ||
| Offering everybody water bottles. | ||
| Super nice, hospitable. | ||
| Come in. | ||
| Laughing and joking with them. | ||
| I had no clue that that test was going to be the test that derailed my life. | ||
| And, you know, right before UFC 200, my manager, Malky, calls me over to his hotel room and he's like, hey, I want to talk to you, man. | ||
| I'm like, what's going on? | ||
| He's like, hey, you're not going to be fighting. | ||
| I was like, What are you talking about? | ||
| It's like, you know, you didn't pass your drug test. | ||
| And the level of hurt and just, and confusion, and I literally had an anxiety attack, and I had never had one of those before. | ||
| What does that feel like? | ||
| I felt like the whole room just came in on me. | ||
| Like, the whole room came down on me, and I was just... | ||
| I couldn't breathe. | ||
| I remember opening up his hotel window, looking for a balcony so I could just breathe and realize that I'm, like, not trapped. | ||
| There was literally... | ||
| The window opened that much. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck? | ||
| So you don't jump out. | ||
| Hotel in Vegas? | ||
| Where was it? | ||
| Yeah, in Vegas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fucking... | |
| I'm freaking, I'm breathing. | ||
| They don't want gamblers leaping. | ||
| Through the fucking... | ||
| I'm breathing through the thing. | ||
| Calm myself down, and I instantly started thinking about the weight of the world literally on my back. | ||
| I knew that I wasn't going to be fighting a few hours before everyone else knew, the public knew, and I could already start hearing everything. | ||
| Even my own coaches have been looking at me like, Just their hearts were on the floor. | ||
| I had done so much to get back to fighting at UFC 200, getting my life in order, getting the people around me in order, getting my health, my mind, just being in order to beat DC and Literally, | ||
| right now, I've done so much of the right things to be back in a good position, and right now, people look at me as if I still don't have my shit together, but the only thing that I did was I took a pill that I thought was going to give me a boner, and literally, it's caused me a lot of heartache and a lot of disappointment and a lot of It just threw me back in here. | ||
| Did you think in any way, shape, or form when someone gives you this pill and you don't know where it came from, you don't know what... | ||
| Did you think, man, I don't know what's in this. | ||
| No, I didn't think of it because I have been dealing with the Athletic Commission. | ||
| I've been in the UFC for a long time. | ||
| And I've taken little gas station dick pills before, like, you know, like... | ||
| And I've never failed a drug test. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| But did you ever think that you might have got lucky? | ||
| No, I didn't think I got lucky. | ||
| I thought that you failed drug tests when you're doing sketchy shit. | ||
| Right, but didn't you think there might be some sketchy shit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Some Chinese castation rhino dick pill? | ||
| What do you know about the rhinos? | ||
| My friend Ryan, my friend Brian called it. | ||
| He was on the podcast. | ||
| He said, you know, John likes to party. | ||
| I bet he took one of them dick pills. | ||
| No, that's funny. | ||
| He called it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Well, he was on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've taken them several times before. | ||
| And with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, I always pass my drug tests. | ||
| And I know that I would never do anything to cheat this sport. | ||
| I have a lot of pride in my work ethic. | ||
| And knowing that, dude, I've been skinny my whole career, whooping people's ass. | ||
| I'm not a knockout artist. | ||
| I win because I'm smart. | ||
| And, you know, I work hard. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But with the Nevada Athletic Commission, I never had an issue. | ||
| And then I was suspended when USADA came. | ||
| So I was never really educated on how serious USADA really was. | ||
| I came back to the game and I was like, oh, we got this new company named USADA instead of Nevada. | ||
| What were you suspended for when USADA came? | ||
| Oh, you mean when they came into the sport. | ||
| I understand what you're saying. | ||
| Not when they came into your house. | ||
| No, when USADA came into the sport, I was suspended because of my hit and run. | ||
| And so I never had even met anyone who worked for USADA. I'd never been sat down on a USADA seminar, what to do and what not to do and how serious it is and what could happen if you do this. | ||
| Only thing I knew is I had to report where I was at. | ||
| Like, if I go to LA for the weekend, I gotta let USADA know that I'm in LA because they can drug test me at any time. | ||
| That's the only thing I really knew about USADA. I didn't know that doing something that I had done several times before could ultimately lose me a fight. | ||
| So, the only difference was I had taken like little gas station pills and I've taken Viagra before. | ||
| This teammate gave me something that was Seattle's. | ||
| I thought the only thing that it would do was make me bigger and stronger for longer. | ||
| That's all I thought was going to be happening. | ||
| And then when I find out that I just failed a drug test... | ||
| Do you know that Viagra is actually illegal in the Olympics? | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah, you can't take that stuff. | ||
| Viagra is a performance enhancer. | ||
| It's a vasodilator, I believe. | ||
| I believe that's how they describe it. | ||
| And it actually has athletic performance enhancing properties to it. | ||
| How does it help you? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We'd have to look into that. | ||
| But I think it's similar in a lot of ways to nitric oxide supplements. | ||
| Like a pre-workout? | ||
| Get your blood cells open? | ||
| It does something to open up your blood cells and get you pumped. | ||
| It does something not just to your dick, but to all of your muscle. | ||
| I don't know if I would want to be pumped up during a fight. | ||
| I don't think it works that way. | ||
| I think it actually can possibly potentially help endurance. | ||
| But I know that athletes take it for that reason. | ||
| That's why it's banned from the Olympics. | ||
| But yeah, you know... | ||
| I understand that it wasn't your intention. | ||
| It was not my intention. | ||
| I had no clue that I needed to report this to USADA because I thought, you know, literally I was reporting everything else. | ||
| What supplements, what pre-workout, what, you know, my amino acids, my protein powder. | ||
| Like, USADA had all my stuff. | ||
| So what happens once you find out? | ||
| How did you narrow it down to this pill? | ||
| I literally went through my supplements, and I hired a private lab and a lawyer, and we started giving them everything that I took, which isn't really a lot of stuff at all. | ||
| Stuff that everyone should take. | ||
| Fish oil, basic supplements. | ||
| Protein. | ||
| Protein powder, fish oil, liver cleanser, or whatever. | ||
| Just grape seed extract, that kind of stuff? | ||
| Yeah, just very, you know, multivitamins for men. | ||
| Very basic stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And then... | ||
| And then Gat Nutrition was like, you know, we've scanned all of our stuff. | ||
| We know it's not from... | ||
| That Gat Nutrition website, though, is fucking hilarious. | ||
| We went to the Gat Nutrition website the moment we found out about it. | ||
| Someone said, John's sponsored by Gat Nutrition. | ||
| So we go, okay, let's check that out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gat Nutrition is some fucking dude who's just jacked to the tits. | |
| They have a lot of great products. | ||
| If you want to get big and strong, then you can definitely go to them. | ||
| But as soon as we saw that, we were like, what in the holy fuck is he taking? | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| But people saw you. | ||
| You got gigantic from the powerlifting. | ||
| I got huge, ironically. | ||
| Completely natural. | ||
| I have great pride in being a natural athlete. | ||
| So, they got all the GAT stuff tested and clear, right? | ||
| Everything was clear. | ||
| Does GAT have other things that USIDO don't regulate? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But the things that they gave me, they were super smart about and all the products I was taking were clear. | ||
| And so my manager was like, think outside of the box. | ||
| Like, did you take anything that could have possibly been? | ||
| And I was like, I don't think so. | ||
| And then I was like, well, one of my teammates did give me this dick pill. | ||
| And he's like, I need those. | ||
| So we got those pills tested. | ||
| And sure enough, in their ingredients, they listed about five products in their ingredients. | ||
| And there was actually like seven products. | ||
| Two that weren't listed in the ingredients. | ||
| The two estrogen blockers were never in their ingredients. | ||
| So it was a tainted pill. | ||
| You understand what I'm saying? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So the USADA was able to tell, okay, this was totally inattentional. | ||
| There's no way in hell... | ||
| John would take these estrogen blockers on purpose. | ||
| First of all, there was very small traces, so it wasn't like I was loaded up with estrogen blockers. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Why the fuck would they put estrogen blockers in a dick pill in the first place? | |
| We believe that the factory that created these dick pills were maybe manufacturing these pills in a dirty laboratory or whatever. | ||
| So it's just tainted. | ||
| Yes, because each pill that we had tested, some of them had more estrogen blockers, some had almost no estrogen blockers, some had small traces, none of the pills were consistent, so it was obvious that, and we tested several different packages, so it was obvious that these pills were probably getting made in the same machine, and there were just traces. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which is enough to show up in your system when you get drug tested. | |
| Literally we found some of these dick pills that had none, no estrogen blockers. | ||
| And you're like, damn, why did I get that one? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So I took one that was just contaminated enough and literally I got tested two days later and it was in my system. | ||
| So it was obvious that it was a complete accident. | ||
| And even if I would have reported the dick pill to USADA, They would have read the label, and the label would have never said that it was an estrogen blocker in there, and I still would have had a dirty... | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because it was a contaminated pill. | ||
| Where does that leave you? | ||
| How much time did they suspend you for? | ||
| I got suspended for a year, starting from back in July. | ||
| So now I fight in July of 2019. I love USADA. I love what they're doing. | ||
| I don't agree with things like that. | ||
| I don't agree with things like that because what you took does not enhance your performance. | ||
| No, it doesn't. | ||
| Especially in such a trace amount. | ||
| I feel like in certain circumstances, like there's been several fighters, like Chad Mendez, he has, I believe he has eczema, and he was taking an eczema cream that had some sort of, was it a hormone precursor or a hormone peptide, I believe. | ||
| Some sort of hormone peptide, I think, that enhances the use of this cream. | ||
| I don't know the full... | ||
| I'm obviously not a doctor or a scientist, but there's something about suspending someone for something like that that seems ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, in my situation, they... | ||
| Even you saw his lawyer, he showed a little bit of remorse. | ||
| I could feel that he felt bad about what was happening to me because I think he could really, even the arbitrators, they could tell what had actually happened. | ||
| But their problem was, they said, John, it was just negligent. | ||
| You should have reported this pill. | ||
| But it seems to me that's silly. | ||
| But even if I would have reported the pill, they would have read the ingredients and they would have never saw that there was a trace of something that wasn't advertised. | ||
| So why suspend someone for something like that? | ||
| Because they said it. | ||
| They have a zero tolerance policy. | ||
| It was just like I was the first fighter to ever take them into arbitration and... | ||
| And they were more upset that I didn't let them know that I took the pill than what actually happened. | ||
| The rule is, you tell us what you take, and we can point you in a different direction. | ||
| But I never told them what I took. | ||
| My whole argument was, even if I told you what I took, it still was never on the label. | ||
| So unless you guys were going to spend all the money to take it to a laboratory to test this individual pill, you get what I'm saying? | ||
| I still would have ran into the same situation. | ||
| I think it's great to protect people from people that are cheating. | ||
| I don't think it's great to punish someone for taking something that has a trace amount of something that does them absolutely no benefit whatsoever and clearly... | ||
| And wasn't supposed to be in that pill. | ||
| And wasn't supposed to be in that pill and clearly wasn't being taken to enhance athletic performance. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That seems silly. | ||
| It seems like a mess. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Seems like a mess. | ||
| I mean, I understand there's zero tolerance policy. | ||
| I don't agree with it. | ||
| Or the Chad Mendes situation. | ||
| You know, there's weird ones like Yoel Romero. | ||
| He tested positive for something. | ||
| They found out that it was in one of the protein powders or something he was taking. | ||
| It wasn't supposed to be in there. | ||
| It wasn't listed that way. | ||
| And they gave him an abbreviated sentence. | ||
| You should have had no punishment whatsoever. | ||
| My whole thing, Joe, is I'm so grateful. | ||
| I'm so optimistic, man. | ||
| I'm always looking for light in every situation. | ||
| And I think that's the way I deal with things. | ||
| I always believe there's going to be good at the end of the day. | ||
| That's just how I am. | ||
| I'm just so grateful. | ||
| Where most people will be so upset with themselves and all this type of stuff, I'm really not. | ||
| I'm upset about the fans that I let down who flew out to UFC 200 and things like that. | ||
| But as far as the whole situation, I'm just glad that my name will no longer be associated with steroids. | ||
| I'd rather be Boner Boy or whatever you want to call me. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Whatever you want to call me, but steroids, that was really bothering me. | ||
| So I'm just glad that it's out what actually happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why did they choose to suspend you for so long? | |
| Just because of the negligence behind it. | ||
| They didn't like the fact that I was handed a sex pill and I never turned it into them to check it out. | ||
| And if they did, they still would have kicked you off of UFC 200. Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I mean, they would have given you maybe a more abbreviated suspension, but still, it's just... | ||
| It just seems ridiculous. | ||
| I wonder when we hand pills into USADA or hand anything into the USADA, do they read the label and say, oh yeah, you can take this? | ||
| Or do they actually take it somewhere and test it? | ||
| I'm sure they read the label. | ||
| So we still would have been in the same position. | ||
| Yeah, they're not going to test things. | ||
| I mean, that's expensive. | ||
| And if it doesn't say it's on there, there's no reason. | ||
| I mean, if somebody gives you whey protein powder, well, hey, let's test this and make sure that it doesn't have Clomid in it or whatever. | ||
| It would take weeks to get it back and it would cost thousands of dollars. | ||
| And if you're doing that for every UFC fighter... | ||
| So, yeah, that's my whole thing. | ||
| I'm like, even if I would have told you guys I took it, you guys would have read the label and gave me the okay. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Because we're allowed to have what's in Viagra and Cialis in us. | ||
| Those aren't actually allowed to. | ||
| But because mine was tainted and I didn't ask, they were just like, well, you never asked, so we're going to suspend you. | ||
| I don't really know why they decided to go ahead with the full maximum punishment, but I tend not to just question things. | ||
| I'm really young, and I believe that my best years and my prime is even still ahead of me. | ||
| So I'm not even tripping about it. | ||
| I'm like, you know, whatever. | ||
| I believe in God, so I try to always... | ||
| Point things back towards God. | ||
| I'm just saying, you know, maybe this is God's plan for me. | ||
| Maybe I need this time away from the sport just to continue working on my own personal development and growth as a man. | ||
| And I do believe I'm in a good place right now. | ||
| So I'm excited to see where I'll be in July when it's time for me to actually compete again. | ||
| When in July are you released? | ||
| I think around July... | ||
| When was UFC 200? | ||
| July 8th? | ||
| July 5th? | ||
| No, UFC 200 was December 10th or 11th? | ||
| December 11th, I believe. | ||
| No, that was... | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| That was UFC 205. UFC 200 was... | ||
|
unidentified
|
July 9th. | |
| July 9th. | ||
| Okay, so July 7th, I'll be eligible to fight. | ||
| Two days before UFC 200. July 7th, 2017, I'll be able to compete. | ||
| And I'd like to fight right in July. | ||
| Yeah, there's a big UFC July 4th card that we put on every year, but you're going to miss that. | ||
| Um... | ||
| What do you think now when you look at the UFC title picture? | ||
| Cormier just had to pull out. | ||
| He injured himself. | ||
| And Rumble Johnson decided not to fight Mousasi. | ||
| He decided to step back and wait for Cormier. | ||
| I don't blame him. | ||
| I don't blame him. | ||
| I think that's a smart idea. | ||
| Mousasi is capable. | ||
| He's a very smart fighter of beating Rumble Johnson. | ||
| It's a high risk, low return. | ||
| Yeah, low return. | ||
| Why do you need to beat Musashi? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The title fight picture is sort of waiting. | ||
| A lot of it is waiting on you. | ||
| That's a big part of it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Waiting on you to return. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm excited to go back and get my baby. | ||
| Have they had conversations with you about when you do return, what kind of fight you would have? | ||
| Would you go right to a title fight? | ||
| Would you fight a contender? | ||
| No one has spoken to me about whether I get an immediate shot or whether they make me fight at least once or twice before. | ||
| No, I have no clue what they're actually planning on doing. | ||
| How often do you communicate with the UFC? I literally haven't spoken to Dana White since like a week before UFC 200. Now that the UFC's been sold... | ||
| Actually, not a week before. | ||
| Fight week of UFC 200, yeah. | ||
| Anyways. | ||
| Now that the UFC's been sold, and there's these new owners, what's your thoughts on all this? | ||
| I'm excited to get to know the new owners of the UFC. I've had a few interactions with Ari before, but obviously I've never dealt with him on a business level. | ||
| But I'm excited. | ||
| I do miss Lorenzo Fertitta. | ||
| I think I had a great relationship with him. | ||
| He was always the calm, cool, collective one, the one I could actually leave emotion behind and really have a good conversation with. | ||
| So we had a great relationship in that way. | ||
| But I'm excited about the new leadership. | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting, right? | ||
| It's a new chapter, and there's a lot of who knows. | ||
| That's what gets exciting. | ||
| And they're obviously very entertainment, business savvy. | ||
| And we'll see where it leads to. | ||
| When you look at the state of mixed martial arts today, what problems do you see in MMA? Hmm. | ||
| Do you see anything that stands out glaringly? | ||
| Like, here's some things that I think about. | ||
| Weight cutting. | ||
| Weight cutting's a giant issue. | ||
| When you see all this work that's being put in by USADA to make sure that people aren't taking things to the point where someone like you, who's taking something that's not a performance enhancer, gets suspended for a year, and the idea is that you're supposed to be protecting fighters from someone who's doing something that's dangerous, right? | ||
| That's the take behind it, the cheating, and somehow it could cause potential danger or damage to people. | ||
| But what about weight cutting, man? | ||
| I mean, isn't extreme weight cutting one of the most dangerous things? | ||
| So we're going to have to put this on pause. | ||
| I have to piece. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead, Pete. | ||
| I was drinking this water and coffee. | ||
| One second, guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Talk about weight cutting. | ||
| John's going to be right back. | ||
| Go right to that door, take the eggs in the light, and don't let your publicist talk you out of coming back in here. | ||
| She's probably listening. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Very forthcoming with the boner pill talk. | ||
| I think that's important. | ||
| I mean, if anyone's going to believe him, that's the only way to really get it out there. | ||
| I fucking hate weight cutting. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I had a conversation with Ari Emanuel about it. | ||
| I'm going to have a conversation soon with Nowitzki about it. | ||
| I just think it's the most unnecessary and dangerous aspect in fighting. | ||
| The most important aspect in fighting is fighters being healthy and in shape and competing to the best of their abilities. | ||
| And if there's anything that inhibits that, other than not training, it's the dehydration effect of weight cutting. | ||
| I think weight cutting is terrible, and now that they can't use IVs, I'm obviously, again, I hate to have to say this again, I'm not a doctor, so I don't know what... | ||
| What is the most effective method of rehydrating? | ||
| I've talked to doctors and I guess they vary in their opinions because some people say it's orally is the best way through drinking water slowly, but some people say it's not. | ||
| Some doctors say no, IV is a far superior method, especially when it comes to rehydrating the brain, which could take as much as 72 hours. | ||
| I think it's interesting that in boxing, most of the deaths have come from the lighter weight divisions. | ||
| And they attribute that also to weight cutting and dehydration. | ||
| Hey, so yeah, my boss just said that I'm talking way too much and we're gonna have to end this thing. | ||
| I knew it. | ||
| I knew it. | ||
| She's like, you said too much about the dick pills? | ||
| Mom on the dick pills! | ||
| Longer, faster, harder Jones, really? | ||
| How much weight do you cut? | ||
| I don't really cut a lot of weight at all. | ||
| I get myself down to about... | ||
| 220 on fight week. | ||
| And then... | ||
| What do you weigh right now? | ||
| Right now I'm 230. 232, 230. But I get myself down to about 220 during fight week. | ||
| And then I make sure that the day of weigh-ins, I cut about five pounds of water. | ||
| That's nothing. | ||
| No, it's nothing. | ||
| But that's a testament to just, you know... | ||
| Preparation. | ||
| Yeah, I've been doing it for so long now. | ||
| I know my job is to be, you know, to have my weight together. | ||
| When you see Conor McGregor weigh in at 145 and he looks like death. | ||
| When I see those, that's what scares the shit out of me. | ||
| When I see people that are just clearly cutting way too much weight. | ||
| Or the worst one I ever saw was Travis Luter when he fought Anderson Silva. | ||
| Travis Luter, his lips were dried up and cracked and he was shuffling to the scale. | ||
| He couldn't walk. | ||
| He didn't have the strength to pick his feet up and walk. | ||
| He was like just shuffling towards it, and he still didn't make the weight. | ||
| Yeah, it's shitty. | ||
| It scares me the most because there's not a lot of options when it comes to weight classes. | ||
| If someone's 185 and they go, you know, man, I'm having a hard time fighting 185, then they look at you and they're like, fuck that. | ||
| This is 205? | ||
| That's a 20-pound jump. | ||
| Right. | ||
| 20 pounds is a big jump. | ||
| It's huge. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, as far as weight cutting for me, I just, you know, it's never really been an issue for me. | ||
| I've always made weight. | ||
| I've never come close to missing weight. | ||
| But aren't you lucky, though, that you're in the neighborhood of 205? | ||
| Like, what if you were just a little bigger and you're in the heavyweight division? | ||
| If I was a little bigger, then I would go to heavyweight. | ||
| But, you know, a part of our job is to keep our weight under control. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, if you know you're going to be fighting at 205, you have no business walking around at, you know, 250. Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So, you know, you're just... | ||
| Do you think there's enough weight classes? | ||
| No, I would like there to be at least another weight class when it comes to us big boys. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I would love it. | ||
| Like a 225? | ||
| Like a 225, yeah. | ||
| I believe if there was a 225 point weight class, I'd be a two belt holder myself. | ||
| Do you feel like that would be a better weight class for you? | ||
| Uh... | ||
| I love 205. I make 205 just fine. | ||
| But 225, I compete against the 225 founder any day. | ||
| Face the guy who's showing up fight night at 240 or whatever. | ||
| I spar against heavyweights pretty much every... | ||
| I've been doing it my whole career anyway. | ||
| It'd be great to see something that bridges that gap a little bit from 205 to 265. Yeah, I would like to see it. | ||
| I would like to see between 55 and 70, 70 and 85. Just 15 pounds is a giant leap. | ||
| 20 pounds from 85 to 205. And then, of course, 205 to heavyweight. | ||
| That's a huge leap. | ||
| That's 65 pounds. | ||
| That's gigantic, yeah. | ||
| A lot of people are like, why don't you go up to heavyweight and try to win the belt there? | ||
| I'm just like, you realize what you're asking me to do? | ||
| These guys are very skilled. | ||
| These guys are very skilled. | ||
| And they can weigh, what, 60 pounds more than me? | ||
| That's very dangerous. | ||
| But have you thought about doing heavyweight? | ||
| I do want to challenge for the heavyweight title, but I'm waiting for the perfect opponent. | ||
| And when you do do that, when you challenge for the heavyweight title, are you going to gain weight? | ||
| Or are you going to fight at the weight you're at? | ||
| I'll fight right around 230. So you'll just not lose any weight at all? | ||
| Yeah, I try to eat a lot and make sure my endurance and speed and agility is where it needs to be. | ||
| And I've beaten up a lot of heavyweights, man. | ||
| You know, only people who are at Jackson's have seen that. | ||
| I've submitted a lot of heavyweights. | ||
| I've slammed a lot of heavyweights. | ||
| I've manhandled a lot of heavyweights. | ||
| And I've done it right at the weight I am now, so I know that I'm capable. | ||
| I just want to make sure that I compete against the right stylistic matchup for me when I do go to heavyweight and challenge for that title. | ||
| One of the things you said earlier that I thought was really interesting is you said you're not going to spar hard again. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| Not until it was time. | ||
| I feel like I've been majorly preserving myself. | ||
| So leading up to the Owen St. Pru fight, I took no concussions whatsoever. | ||
| And then I've been suspended now for another year, and I've taken no concussions. | ||
| So while I feel like a lot of these guys are in this race to get better, I'm getting a lot better. | ||
| I'm getting a lot stronger. | ||
| My wrestling and jujitsu is getting a lot sharper. | ||
| But I've completely... | ||
| My brain is feeling great right now. | ||
| I haven't been polluting it with shit and I haven't damaged it. | ||
| And so I just feel like you got the best fighter in light heavyweight history who's still the youngest guy in the division who hasn't taken any damage whatsoever and is completely regenerating himself. | ||
| And I'm going to come back and have this explosive second half of a career. | ||
| Now, there's a lot of guys that are doing that now where they're not sparring hard. | ||
| Cowboy barely spars at all. | ||
| I don't think he even spars. | ||
| He does like some tactical sparring where, you know, it's just tap, touch, just move around, but he's mostly just doing drills. | ||
| That's what I'm going to get into. | ||
| He said he changed that after the Dos Anjos fight. | ||
| He said when he lost to Rafael Dos Anjos, he just felt like maybe he had diminished himself too much with hard sparring. | ||
| Dude, a lot of these guys, they leave their career in the gym. | ||
| You get no points. | ||
| There's a few guys that come to mind right now at Jackson's who get punched in the head. | ||
| I'm sitting there watching them. | ||
| I watch a lot of fighting, and I'm still a huge student of the game, but I'm not doing it myself. | ||
| These guys laugh, and they get punched, and they start giggling. | ||
| And that's the dumbest shit to me ever. | ||
| Like, you know, getting punched in the head pisses me off. | ||
| If I leave practice with a headache, I'm pissed. | ||
| You know, I feel like I just took away from myself or just that was one more punch I could have saved for an actual event. | ||
| So right now... | ||
| You know, I have a great chin. | ||
| I've never been rocked or wobbled. | ||
| And I want to keep it that way. | ||
| I'm going to preserve myself because the skills will come. | ||
| But, you know, that brain, once it's jello, it's jello forever. | ||
| It is Jell-O forever. | ||
| And that's a scary thing when you see guys go. | ||
| When you see a guy like maybe Chuck Liddell is one of the best examples ever because he had an iron jaw at one point in time. | ||
| He was just indestructible. | ||
| And then you saw him just get wobbled by shots that normally he would just eat like a Tic Tac. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And when it goes, it just goes and it does not come back. | ||
| Yeah, I'm saving my shit, Joe. | ||
| I hear you. | ||
| I'm saving it. | ||
| I want you to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, Jackson's is such a crazy place because it's a hotbed of MMA talent and it's a magnet for talented people to come there to get better because they know they're going to be training with a bunch of animals there. | ||
| But I'm hearing now with the opening of the new place that you guys just got so many tough dudes coming there trying to make a name. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Do you have an issue with that when it comes to sparring, where guys want to try to make a name sparring you? | ||
| I personally don't have an issue with it. | ||
| So me, since we've had our new gym, it's a gigantic facility, and we need people to pay the bills. | ||
| So we literally re-allow a lot of people to come into the gym who I don't think are always qualified to be in the gym. | ||
| But we allow everybody to come. | ||
| So anybody off the street? | ||
| Like any normal person? | ||
| No, you can't. | ||
| So our gym manager, he does have an extensive tryout thing that he does where he puts you through jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and kicking and striking and makes sure you're knowledgeable about the game. | ||
| So you have to have experience. | ||
| How much experience do they have to have? | ||
| Do they have to be an amateur MMA fighter, a blue belt in jiu-jitsu? | ||
| You can't be a guy off the street who doesn't know shit. | ||
| But outside of that, if you have a general idea of martial arts, we're opening the door to a lot of people right now. | ||
| So is it like a pro fight gym or do they offer classes for beginners? | ||
| There's amateur classes. | ||
| So if you know almost nothing, you're in the amateur classes. | ||
| And then there's the pro practices where you literally get guys who aren't very knowledgeable training next to me and Holly Holm, Cowboy Cerrone, and all of us. | ||
| So it's a fan experience for sure and it's an experience of a lifetime for a lot of people and I'm happy for a lot of these guys who come in here inspiring martial artists and get to train with me and the rest of us because I can only imagine wanting to, you know, you get to play ball with Lebron James and you just got out of college or you never went to college. | ||
| I am happy for them as long as they don't get in my way. | ||
| That is the big difference, though. | ||
| As someone who wants to come and play with LeBron James, you know, you want to make a name for yourself. | ||
| So with me... | ||
| You could dunk on LeBron James and everybody's like, oh, I can't believe you did that. | ||
| But it's the big difference between that and fighting. | ||
| I have a way of not letting this affect my game personally. | ||
| I'm a decent judge. | ||
| I can read people's character a little bit. | ||
| And if I see you for the first time, you are obviously about 260, 205, whatever, 220. And it's all about the way you look at me. | ||
| So if you come in the gym and you even look like you have an ounce of a chip on your shoulder, or like an ounce of, holy shit, that's John Jones, I'm getting ready to spar him today, or anything weird that's going on with your eye contact with me, then I'm just not going to mess with you. | ||
| I'll say hi to you, and welcome to Jackson's. | ||
| And what if they say, hey, Megan, do you want to spar? | ||
| I'm like, hey, no, no. | ||
| I just, I don't have any room for people trying to prove anything with me. | ||
| There's a lot of that there, isn't there? | ||
| Yeah, it happens. | ||
| So me, the best way you can work with me when you come to Jackson's is come up, introduce yourself, be kind, be polite, be respectful, and show me that you are here to get better, and that you're not here to, you know, even some guys, they come in and ask for a picture their first day here, and I'm just like... | ||
| It's like, dude, earn. | ||
| How about you come here, work your ass off for a few days, a few weeks, or whatever, and then get to this place where you feel like you're comfortable with an expert picture instead of just being here and being a fan. | ||
| People want those fucking pictures instantaneously. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, bro, you're here. | ||
| You're in the church right now. | ||
| You're in the Met. | ||
| You don't take a picture here. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I know what you mean. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's not where your mind should be at. | ||
| Look at my Facebook page. | ||
| Yo, look who I trained with today. | ||
| Told you I was a bad motherfucker. | ||
| Or you'll see that they'll tag you in a picture and say, yeah, just train with the GOAT. And really, we didn't even train together. | ||
| You were just in the room. | ||
| Little stuff like that. | ||
| But I do see the benefits of having so many new people coming in. | ||
| I mean, everyone has something to teach. | ||
| And you can learn from anybody from any country if you have an open mind enough. | ||
| A lot of the guys come in with a great attitude, and they're just really grateful to be there, and they go with a lot of the top dogs, and we can kind of beat them up a little bit because they're the new guy or whatever. | ||
| But every once in a while you get that one guy with something to prove, and I really came up with a great way to protect myself from those type of people. | ||
| But you've run into those? | ||
| Most people, I'm always very defensive when I'm going with a guy who I feel like he could be trying to prove something. | ||
| Even when we're drilling, my defense is always on. | ||
| I don't give someone the opportunity to take a swing or take a punch. | ||
| I've had one guy hit me with a monstrous overhand right while we were drilling that was intentionally to knock me out. | ||
| And instead of retaliating, I said, I said, man, you okay? | ||
| And he's like, yeah, I'm alright, I'm sorry, I just, I don't know what happened. | ||
| And I just, okay, well, that was fun, man. | ||
| Nice working with you. | ||
| Just never, ever work with you again. | ||
| I had one guy punch me in the balls intentionally, too, not too long ago. | ||
| And that was his last time ever training with me as well. | ||
| So, it's... | ||
| Smart. | ||
| That's a smart strategy. | ||
| I just stay away from you. | ||
| But you do find those disturbed people that get involved in fighting. | ||
| And they do want to take a chance at a guy like Jon Jones. | ||
| Just take a swing at you, man. | ||
| What if I connect and knock him out? | ||
| I knocked out Jon Jones. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I go like... | ||
| The few times that it has happened, too, I'll let my teammates know I'm gonna match what you're trying to do to me. | ||
| So, you know, don't be surprised if I fuck you up with something that's a little bit more than what you would do to a trainer partner if I realize you're trying to hurt me. | ||
| Do you meditate, John? | ||
| I used to meditate a lot. | ||
| Now I'm more big into visualization. | ||
| When did you used to meditate? | ||
| Right around 2010, 2011, I went through this huge spiritual thing where I became obsessed with the power of the mind. | ||
| I got into it deep, like really deep, just meditation, visualization, and just realizing how powerful our minds actually are, like how we really do paint our world with our thoughts and our level of self-belief. | ||
| And so right around 2010, I just took myself to this different mental level where I took myself on being Average Joe, kind of. | ||
| You probably hate Average Joe, huh? | ||
|
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Doesn't bother me. | |
| I took myself... | ||
|
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I'm so used to that name. | |
| It's such a goofy name. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| It's like a blank. | ||
| It's like cardboard. | ||
| It's like there's nothing to it. | ||
| Yeah, so I took myself from being very average-minded to actually believing that I was the shit and believing that I could be the shit and that I could be the GOAT and be the greatest and never lose. | ||
| I took myself to a different place mentally and a lot of it came from mental practice and meditation and visualization and just seeking knowledge from people who are strong believers. | ||
| Les Brown and Tony Robbins and guys like that I just became really obsessed with just learning about the power of the mind. | ||
| So I used to meditate. | ||
| Now I just kind of, I have a lot of things that stuck with me, a lot of ways of believing that stuck with me that just subconsciously I know who I am, what I'm capable of and how I believe and how powerful my mind actually is. | ||
| I'm a firm believer in meditation because I believe that human beings can get caught up, especially someone involved in a very difficult endeavor like you are. | ||
| You can get caught up in the momentum of your life and sometimes it's very hard to reset. | ||
| It's very hard to separate yourself from it and get a balanced and as much as you can objective perspective. | ||
| I think one of the best ways to do that is to take time where you sit and you close your eyes and you do nothing. | ||
| And just concentrate on your breathing and just set it all aside and extract yourself. | ||
| Extract your consciousness from the momentum of your life And I think a lot of people don't do that and they get caught up in this hurricane of existence Where everything is just constantly going on your phone won't stop ringing this fucking people knocking at your door You got this going on that going on you got to go catch this flight and oh shit You got a fight coming up and oh shit. | ||
| You got this not and sometimes you lose yourself Yeah, you lose yourself in that wave of life. | ||
| I I definitely lost myself at one point in my life and I feel like right now I'm at this position where I am myself and I can see Jon Bones Jones and I can look at my career from a fan perspective. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| And actually make fun of myself. | ||
| Like, damn, you fucking idiot. | ||
| Like, what have you done? | ||
| Like, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I have a good way of detaching something inside of me and seeing what's happening. | ||
| And okay, oh no, it's not over. | ||
| All you gotta do is just do this, do that, do that. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I'm not necessarily meditating these days, but... | ||
| I do have the capability of taking away who I actually am at this point and realizing that this is just a part of me or this is just a situation in my life. | ||
| This isn't my actual life. | ||
| This isn't my final destination. | ||
| This is just a small moment in time that I'm going through right now. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| Right, I get what you're saying. | ||
| So that's my form of meditation. | ||
| I step away from terrible situations and look at myself as if it's the future. | ||
| And I'm looking back on what's happened to me or what's happening. | ||
| And I say, okay, how can I get myself out of this? | ||
| How can I make this better? | ||
| What do I need to do to turn this around? | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| Instead of being completely emerged in the moment and thinking that, oh, I can't get out of it. | ||
| I said earlier that UFC 205 was in December. | ||
| I know it's November. | ||
| That's what I fucked up. | ||
| 205. Yeah. | ||
| Oh, 205. Yeah, but what I'm thinking of in December, when is your grappling match with Dan Henderson? | ||
| December 11th. | ||
| That's December 11th. | ||
| Okay, that's what I'm fucked up on. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Is this EBI rules? | ||
| So this is submission only. | ||
| Is this Chael Sonnen's event? | ||
| I think he's the president of it or something like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you have the information for all that? | ||
| Let's put it up to tell people how they can see that. | ||
| What made you decide to do this, just to mix it up while you're off? | ||
| Yeah, they reached out to me. | ||
| I did a small grappling event. | ||
| I was at an autograph signing. | ||
| I saw that. | ||
| Yeah, some guy was like, hey, you ever roll competitively? | ||
| And I was like, no, actually, I haven't since 2009 or something. | ||
| I did one jujitsu match my whole career, and I won it with four submissions against these guys or whatever. | ||
| He's like, man, you should come over and roll with me. | ||
| And I'm like, what belt are you? | ||
| And he's like, I think the guy who challenged me was a purple belt or something. | ||
| And I'm like... | ||
| Uh, you know, I really don't do that type of stuff. | ||
| I, you know, I would have to go home. | ||
| I don't have any clothes or anything. | ||
| And he's like, oh, we're selling geese over here and rash guards. | ||
| And I'm like, I was like, I don't think I'm going to roll, man. | ||
| Like, I, you know. | ||
| And so he's like, uh... | ||
| Well, at least come over and say hi. | ||
| There's a lot of kids over there, a lot of people who would just love to see you. | ||
| Come show some support to the jiu-jitsu community. | ||
| I'm like, alright, I can do that. | ||
| And so when I went over there after my autograph signing, there was a bunch of people standing around and I was greeting everybody. | ||
| And the guy was like, hey, are you going to roll with me or what? | ||
| And a lot of people heard him. | ||
| And I was just like... | ||
| I feel like when someone's trying to... | ||
| I feel like someone wins when they call you out and you don't oblige them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I was just like... | ||
| And this guy's head, it's a small victory knowing that I backed down. | ||
| And we're not punching. | ||
| It's jiu-jitsu, right? | ||
| So no one's going to get hurt. | ||
| And it's like, you know what? | ||
| Let me live a little and just do this. | ||
| You know, I'm sure the kids are going to love it and people are going to love it. | ||
| So I was like, all right, give me a rash guard. | ||
| So they gave me a rash guard and I literally, I didn't even warm up. | ||
| I just kind of did one of these. | ||
| And then I ended up tapping these two guys out fairly quick, and I think some of these people from Submission Underground, they saw those videos and they're starting this new promotion where they're actually paying fighters pretty well. | ||
| They're taking care of the athletes, you know? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And do people watch it on pay-per-view? | ||
|
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Is that what it is? | |
| So I think you can watch it online. | ||
| You can stream it online for a price. | ||
| Okay, so here it is. | ||
| Okay, it's flowgrappling.com, FLOgrappling.com, Sunday, December 11th at 2.30. | ||
| And I think this is EBI rules, if this is the Chael Sonnen thing. | ||
| See if you can see that in there, Jamie. | ||
| Scroll up and see what the rules are. | ||
| I still don't even know what the rules are. | ||
| I think it's submission only. | ||
| Yeah, it's submission only, but I think EBI rules is a very interesting... | ||
| Educate me, bud. | ||
| EBI is Eddie Bravo invitational rules. | ||
| What he did is he figured out a way to avoid draws. | ||
| And what he does is he has guys, they fight for, or they grapple for a determined time period. | ||
| Then at the end of the time period... | ||
| Eight minutes, I heard. | ||
| Yeah, they exchange bad positions. | ||
| Like one guy will start off... | ||
| Well, you start off with what's called spiderweb. | ||
| So spiderweb is side control with not the arm bar locked up, but the arm hooked. | ||
| You know, the arm hooked. | ||
| So you have your legs across, the arms trapped, and ready to go. | ||
| So the guy on the bottom is trying to escape. | ||
| You're trying to hold him down. | ||
| Or you can start off with the over-under from back control. | ||
| So you don't like have a choke locked in. | ||
| But you have over-under, you have both hooks in, and you're on the back. | ||
| And they say, ready, go. | ||
| So it's how fast the person can escape versus how fast you can submit them. | ||
| At the end of the exchange back and forth, say if you submit your guy and then he has an opportunity to try to submit you, if you submit him faster than he submitted you, you win. | ||
| If you submit him and he doesn't submit you, you win. | ||
| What if you escape faster? | ||
| You both escape, and you do it again. | ||
| And then if you both escape again, you do it one more time. | ||
| And then they calculate all the time it took for each one to escape, and the person who has the least amount of time and escaped the quickest winds up winning. | ||
| Oh, I'm winning this. | ||
| I'm winning this shit. | ||
| Dan Henderson. | ||
| Dan Henderson is quite a bit smaller than you, too. | ||
| Yeah, I would imagine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wonder how much he weighs right now. | ||
| Well, he fought at 185, and I don't think he's cutting a whole lot of weight. | ||
| He's not a big guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's interesting, him fighting Michael Bisping. | ||
| I think that's probably going to be his last fight. | ||
| A lot of people thought he should have won that fight. | ||
| Super close fight. | ||
| He retired, didn't he? | ||
| He did. | ||
| Yeah, I think he did. | ||
| I think he decided that's it. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm sure this means a lot to him. | ||
| To be able to beat me, even in a grappling match, that's quite the way to end your career. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I don't know how hard he's training, but I'm putting a little effort into it for sure. | ||
| Yeah, well, you tell me before, you're just getting really in love with jiu-jitsu now. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I do love jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Yeah, my professor has, he's a great coach, man. | ||
| They call him Tusa. | ||
| I think it's Portuguese for, like, buck tooth or something like that. | ||
| But his real name is Roberto Alucar. | ||
| He's a several-time world champion in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| I think he's beat Vinny Magdalene quite a few times. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| He's won all these. | ||
| That's huge. | ||
| Yeah, all these world champions. | ||
| I think he's, Five-time world champion. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And he literally is right there with me every practice. | ||
| I've never done gi training, but he doesn't settle. | ||
| I'm technically a white belt, but every position, he's like, you've got to do this right. | ||
| Put your hand here. | ||
| Make this tighter. | ||
| Super technical. | ||
| Yeah, super technical. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| I feel like I'm getting pretty good right now. | ||
| That's awesome, man. | ||
| If you just dedicate yourself to that before you come back, a guy like you, you have a big jump. | ||
| People are going to hate me, bro. | ||
| My style is going to be like, Maya, I'm just going to take people down and freaking ride your ass out and freaking submit you. | ||
| Don't expect any more stand-up striking from me. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I'm joking. | ||
| Yeah, you can't. | ||
| I'm telling you. | ||
| Who knows what you're gonna do, right? | ||
| I don't know what I'm gonna do at this point, but I'm getting better, and I'm preserving myself. | ||
| Listen, man, it's good to see you smile, it's good to see you laugh, it's good to see you happy, it's good to see you optimistic about your future, and I think you got a great perspective right now, and I really hope you keep it together, man. | ||
| I'm a big fan as a person, as a fighter. | ||
| I'm glad we did this. | ||
| I am too. | ||
| I am too. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| Alright, brother. | ||
| That's it, folks. | ||
| We're done for today. | ||
| See ya. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Jon Jones! |
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