Jan. 18, 2017 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:41:08
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| And we're live. | ||
| What's up, Joe? | ||
| Good to see you, man. | ||
| Not too much, man. | ||
| I'm pumped to be here. | ||
| I'm like a little kid here right now. | ||
| Me too, man. | ||
| Smiling around and loving it. | ||
| Well, I'm excited. | ||
| There's a big glory event this Friday in Los Angeles. | ||
| I'll be there. | ||
| And you got two world titles, right? | ||
| Yeah, two. | ||
| Is it two world titles? | ||
| There's two world titles. | ||
| You have Israel. | ||
| Jason Willness and Israel Edison. | ||
| That's a wicked fight. | ||
| Wicked fight. | ||
| Yeah, and then you're looking at Matt Embry, another Canadian kid, against Dutch beast Robin Van Roosmalen. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's right, that's right. | ||
| That's on the card too. | ||
| That's on UFC Fight Pass. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm so psyched that the UFC and UFC Fight Pass is embracing glory. | ||
| It's super exciting for me. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| And it was that huge collision card in Germany. | ||
| You had Rico versus Botter, and UFC ran that pay-per-view for us. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No kidding. | ||
| That was the first time the UFC has run anything other than UFC. Wow. | ||
| So that's huge, man. | ||
| That, for us, is a big accomplishment for kickboxing. | ||
| Well, we've talked about it in this podcast. | ||
| We were just talking about it a couple minutes ago. | ||
| I think kickboxing, especially high-level kickboxing like Glory, is one of the most exciting sports in the world. | ||
| And it perplexes me and many other people why it's not more exciting. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Because it's not hard to understand what's going on. | ||
| One of the things about MMA that is very important to me is when the fights go to the ground, I have to explain step-by-step what's going on. | ||
| Because otherwise, people that don't know ground fighting, they're all of a sudden like, why is he tapping? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| Like, you don't see exactly what's going on. | ||
| But when someone explains it to you, you see it. | ||
| Well, with kickboxing, it's pretty obvious. | ||
| It's pretty obvious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have kicks and punches and knees. | ||
| Yeah, just people getting smashed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| I seriously don't understand. | ||
| Dana White has a really good theory. | ||
| He thinks that PKA karate, from like, you remember the 1980s when they used to have those PKA karate matches on ESPN? Okay, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Remember when they wore the karate pants and the big booties on their feet? | ||
| Yeah, bouncing around. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was really just sloppy boxing with some shitty kicks. | ||
| But that's what, even American kickboxing, they have a kick rule. | ||
| So what would happen is they would throw eight kicks in the beginning of the round, and then all of a sudden they'd box for the rest of the round. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And for whatever reason, and above the waist as well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which I think, one of the things about kickboxing, as opposed to the traditional martial arts, or like taekwondo or karate, is as soon as you start adding leg kicks, it changes the whole game. | ||
| Oh, it's a totally different game. | ||
| It changes everything. | ||
| And we were talking before this fight about your fight, or before this podcast, rather, about your fight with Raymond Daniels, which is one of my favorite fights ever. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Because he is this traditional karate guy. | ||
| He was a point-fighting champion, and he has wicked kicks. | ||
| He's just one of the most spectacular and dynamic guys in kickboxing. | ||
| But your leg kicks, and your constant pressure, and just rock-solid Muay Thai fundamentals. | ||
| You just chopped him down, chopped him down, and then eventually head-kicked him. | ||
| Yeah, those movement fighters are very tricky. | ||
| And I think what made that fight super exciting was that old-school UFC mentality. | ||
| You had two different arts, you know, battling to see which one was better. | ||
| And Raymond Daniels was undefeated. | ||
| He was just knocking people out with spinning hook kicks every time he was fighting. | ||
| So you know, as a smart, intelligent fighter, you've got to put pressure. | ||
| And I remember we had a conversation about, you know, guys like Wonderboy Thompson. | ||
| Why isn't... | ||
| His opponent's calling someone like me to do it, but you had a good point. | ||
| It takes a special fighter to really close distance and pressure like that and to be able to execute a game plan with heavy low kicks like that. | ||
| Yeah, you have to really have a high-level Muay Thai game to deal with a guy like Wonderboy the same way. | ||
| Wonderboy is also real unusual in his use of the front leg. | ||
| He has that sideways stance, and he kind of bends a little at the waist and throws all those wicked front leg sidekicks and round kicks. | ||
| And on top of that, he's a really good puncher. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| He's impressive. | ||
| The rematch is happening, isn't it, with Woodley? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be in March in Vegas. | ||
| That's gonna be crazy. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good rematch. | ||
| It is a good rematch, especially because Woodley was dominating that first round with his wrestling and really never took him down again. | ||
| So I was like, wow, this is crazy. | ||
| Like, I wonder why he didn't take him down. | ||
| And I asked him after the fight, he goes, I have no idea why I didn't take him down again. | ||
| So he was just in the moment. | ||
| He's just loving it, man. | ||
| Just loving the moment, loving the experience. | ||
| It's exciting. | ||
| So you now have taken some time off from fighting because of concussions. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And tell me about that. | ||
| So yeah, it was actually, I think you were at my last fight. | ||
| I fought Mark DeBont, you know, rest in peace. | ||
| I remember we talked about the passing. | ||
| Yeah, what happened to Mark? | ||
| Did they find out what happened to him? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| A lot of the stuff is coming out is in Dutch and Dutch newspapers, and I'm asking all of the Dutch community kind of what's happening, and they don't really know. | ||
| You hear different things in rumors, but I don't want to listen to rumors like that. | ||
| I don't want to hear it from like a concrete source. | ||
| He just went missing. | ||
| He went missing, and then they found his body. | ||
| Then they basically found his body, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So why or who knows, but he was a great fighter. | ||
| He was amazing. | ||
| Excellent, excellent fighter. | ||
| And he was another guy, but boy, you look at him, he looked like a computer programmer. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's interesting how looks can be so deceiving. | ||
| He's a super, super high-level guy. | ||
| Yeah, but that was my last fight. | ||
| And from there, it was actually really tough. | ||
| I never really opened up about it, to be honest with you. | ||
| And it was a very tough experience. | ||
| You know, you've got to think, I just win the world title. | ||
| I'm going home to Canada, which my concussion was pretty bad where I shouldn't have even gone on a plane home. | ||
| And next thing you know, I'm at home and just the concussions got really bad. | ||
| I had to be hospitalized for a few days. | ||
| I was in a dark room for three weeks, man. | ||
| I could not get out of a dark room for three weeks. | ||
| I couldn't walk. | ||
| I guess something with the concussion started causing some nerve damage. | ||
| So it started causing some nerve damage in my back. | ||
| I was in a bed, man. | ||
| Couldn't even look out. | ||
| I had a little red light on my phone charger. | ||
| It was too much. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, it was bad, man. | ||
| The red light on the phone charger would hurt your head. | ||
| I couldn't even look at a thing. | ||
| So it was at that point, it was like, man, it's like I just won this world title, and it was a really tough time. | ||
| And this is actually the first time I've really opened up about it, but it was a tough experience. | ||
| And being in that, you know, down state where you're basically in a dark room for three weeks, doctors were just... | ||
| You know, handing me over a shit ton of Percocets and Oxys to kind of deal with the pain and it was a tough time, man. | ||
| And it really, I think what was the hardest was what was happening mentally. | ||
| I'm sitting there being like, man, I just want a world title. | ||
| I want to get back in there. | ||
| I want to, you know, do so much in this sport and my goal was to be a legend in this sport. | ||
| But, you know, and then it got to the point I saw my family and how much it was affecting my family, and that's when I decided, you know what, let's put this on rest for a little bit. | ||
| So, you win the fight, and after the fight is over, was it immediately that you knew something was wrong? | ||
| Honestly, I had some adrenaline rush, and I did the post-fight press conference, everything was fine. | ||
| Just when I got back to the hotel room, I was throwing up and couldn't leave my room, and I was surprised I'd even gone on an airplane home. | ||
| The doctors in Canada were like, how the heck did you get on an airplane home? | ||
| It was scary times, man, and it took a lot of good mental strength to get out of it, and now I'm actually in a position where I'm super happy and I'm loving it. | ||
| I got that whole color commentary roll with Glory, which has been incredible. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| It's great that you found a way out of it, but man, I would imagine that when you were in that dark room and you couldn't even look at the light on a charger, That must have been really, really, really uncomfortable to deal with. | ||
| It was tough, man. | ||
| How can I explain it? | ||
| It gets emotional sometimes. | ||
| It was a time where it was like, I finally achieved what I wanted, and no one has really gotten to that level in the time that I did. | ||
| Before I turned pro, I only had 11 amateur fights. | ||
| I only had 11 amateur fights, and right away into the pro ranks, I only had 14 professional fights. | ||
| So you gotta think, in 25 fights I was able to get in there, become a professional, win the world title in the biggest kickboxing organization. | ||
| All within 25 fights, amateur, professional combined. | ||
| And how old were you when you won the title? | ||
| Uh, 28? | ||
| So you're still young. | ||
| And I'm 31 right now. | ||
| But think about that, you know, like the amount of fights you had, not that many in comparison to a lot of these Dutch guys that have 100 plus fights, a lot of the Thai guys that have more. | ||
| It's crazy to think, yeah. | ||
| I think it's just bad luck sometimes. | ||
| And my style was a style that was really, man, you could watch any one of my fights and you're going to be entertained. | ||
| And I understood the value of, you know, it's more than just a sport. | ||
| You got to win, you got to dominate, you got to be exciting. | ||
| I think that's what I really did in my career. | ||
| And that's what I got such a huge following behind me. | ||
| And, you know, it was sucked because I had more I wanted to show, put it that way. | ||
| Now, when you see a guy like Mayweather who's gone through a career and he's like 49-0 and is probably one of the best, if not the best, defensive fighters of all time, and then you see what you went through with your situation, do you look at a guy like Mayweather and say, man, maybe I should take a different approach or maybe I should have taken a more safety-first approach? | ||
| I'm torn between that. | ||
| Because at one point, that's Floyd Mayweather, right? | ||
| And you're looking at a guy who makes multi-millions a fight, and he has that support around him. | ||
| And whether it's a boring fight, and most people who watch, the casual fans who watch Floyd Mayweather think he's boring. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But really, if you're a skilled fighter and you understand what he's doing, you understand how incredible of an athlete he is. | ||
| But I was just thrown in there with the Wolves, man. | ||
| It was kind of like, hey, you're fighting Kareem Gaji in your third glory fight. | ||
| It's only his hundredth professional fight. | ||
| And that's my eighth. | ||
| So what do I do? | ||
| Do I play the point games with someone who's been in that ring? | ||
| Probably had a hundred amateur fights, a hundred professional fights. | ||
| What do I do? | ||
| So again, I have to go in there. | ||
| I gotta build a name for myself. | ||
| You gotta think, Canada? | ||
| There's no professional fighting in Ontario, Canada, where I'm from. | ||
| So there's no professional fighting. | ||
| I had no experience. | ||
| So my approach was, I gotta bring the heat to these guys. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| I gotta bring the heat, I gotta be exciting, and I gotta finish. | ||
| Just turn it into a brawl. | ||
| Just turn it in. | ||
| But again, I wouldn't use brawl. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| People always say, oh, you're a brawler, you're aggressive. | ||
| No, I'm a technician. | ||
| And actually, when I'm coming forward and I'm stalking you, I'm waiting to counter kick. | ||
| I'm waiting to use my low kicks. | ||
| I'm waiting to counter you. | ||
| So it's very calculated. | ||
| I wouldn't say brawling. | ||
| Yeah, that's probably not the right word, but you turn them into very violent encounters. | ||
| Always. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Always. | |
| Now, when you watch high-level kickboxing, like Glory, and then you see what's going on in MMA, where I think the level of striking is certainly advancing, you're getting better and better strikers, but it's really not at the same level that you're seeing in, like, world champion kickboxing. | ||
| Yeah, it's totally different. | ||
| And people gotta understand it's a totally different sport. | ||
| The way you would fight in kickboxing, you're not gonna fight the same way in MMA. There's takedowns, and there's a lot of very successful kickboxers who don't do well in MMA. A lot don't, because they keep that traditional Muay Thai stance where they stand very tall, and they're fighting very tall, and of course a wrestler's gonna take you down. | ||
| An example of a good Canadian striker is Shane Campbell. | ||
| Shane Campbell fights in the UFC and he's got an incredible background in Muay Thai, but he stays true sometimes a little too much to his Muay Thai roots on the striking. | ||
| You gotta keep your hips back, you gotta move, it's a totally different game. | ||
| You got a four ounce glove, not an eight ounce glove, so shit changes. | ||
| Yeah, it also affects your offense too when you're worried about takedowns, you're worried about all these different aspects of... | ||
| Yeah, the clinch, the cage. | ||
| Have you ever fought in a cage? | ||
| No. | ||
| We've been debating a lot lately. | ||
| I talk way too much about it, people getting annoyed, because I think that they should do it on a basketball court. | ||
| I really think fights should take place on a large surface with no obstacles, nothing other than the fighters themselves. | ||
| Did you like the pride ring over the octagon? | ||
| No, I think rings are dangerous. | ||
| Like, you saw the Bernard Hopkins, Joe Smith Jr. fight, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's a good example of why I think rings are dangerous. | ||
| It's not often that that happens, where guys get knocked through the ropes, but it does fucking happen. | ||
| And in Pride, I think... | ||
| They did a good job of standing outside the ring. | ||
| The Pride organization was good where they had a bunch of guys waiting to catch people. | ||
| But it's still weird. | ||
| It shouldn't have to come down to that. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I get it for MMA, but for a kickboxing, I can't really see it being done in a cage. | ||
| I know I think you had him on John Wayne Park. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He does caged Muay Thai. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's your thoughts on that? | ||
| Well, he loves it. | ||
| And he does it with MMA gloves, too. | ||
| That's dangerous, man. | ||
| You're putting good strikers on Without a takedown, that's dangerous, man. | ||
| Yeah, it's a totally different thing. | ||
| I mean, it's a totally different thing with those little gloves, too, right? | ||
| Have you done any fighting with little gloves? | ||
| No, I was actually planning to fight a few times, because before Glory, there was nothing. | ||
| You've got to look. | ||
| Originally, it was K-1. | ||
| And K-1 only had a lightweight division and a heavyweight division. | ||
| So everyone in between had to kind of pick away. | ||
| I actually fought in L.A. It was against a UFC fighter, Mehdi Baghdad. | ||
| Okay, sure. | ||
| So I fought Medi Baghdad in LA and it was just, I tried making for the first time 160. And it was, it was hell. | ||
| You're a big guy. | ||
| What do you walk around at? | ||
| Well, my non-fighting walk around about 200. When I was fighting, about 190, 195. So you were trying to lose 30 plus pounds. | ||
| Yeah, it sucked. | ||
| It sucked. | ||
| But I think that's the other thing. | ||
| MMA guys know how to cut weight a little better than kickboxers do. | ||
| I think there's that wrestling, growing up with that wrestling helps. | ||
| Yeah, but I think it's more dangerous with, well I know it's more dangerous with striking than it is with wrestling. | ||
| And that's one of the problems with that wrestling mentality. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's your brain. | |
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| Your brain's dehydrated. | ||
| Yeah, but see that the advantage in MMA of being bigger, it's not the same as the advantage of being bigger in striking because being bigger in striking is important. | ||
| It's definitely a factor, but it's so much more of a factor when you're clinching. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, for sure. | |
| So much more of a factor when you take guys down. | ||
| You lose a little bit of speed sometimes and that mobility. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So when you were thinking about sparring with little gloves, what differences did you notice or you think about fighting with little gloves? | ||
| It was more about moving more. | ||
| And I coach a lot of MMA guys, and I actually got to work in the UFC. I got to corner twice in the UFC, which was pretty cool. | ||
| I had Mitch Gagnon, and I got to corner Antonio Carvalho. | ||
| Who was Mitch fighting? | ||
| When he fought, he fought... | ||
| Oh, I have to dig deep here. | ||
| A young kid... | ||
| I want to say he was Hawaiian, maybe? | ||
| Knocked him out. | ||
| I helped train him for... | ||
| He fought Wawel Watson. | ||
| Knocked him out with a left hook. | ||
| Who was that other kid that he fought? | ||
| But my last Antonio fight was against Derrick Elkins. | ||
| That was one of those fights where Antonio got caught, dropped, popped back up, and Eve Levine called it off. | ||
| It was an early stoppage, but yeah, he's protecting Antonio. | ||
| So, it's interesting that a guy like you, who is this very high-level world champion kickboxer, learning how to fight and move with the small MMA gloves, it kind of shows you that striking, in particular with MMA striking, is still in a learning, growing phase. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| Because guys like you come in, and you are, like, guys like Duke Rufus, a former world champion himself, who's really good at training guys and teaching guys. | ||
| Dwayne Ludwig's doing a good job. | ||
| Perfect example, yeah. | ||
| And there's so many different methods and so many different styles that people are trying to incorporate. | ||
| I think people focus fighting. | ||
| The way I look at fighting, it's not actually what you throw. | ||
| And I always get questioned, what's a good coach versus a bad coach? | ||
| And a good coach is going to teach you positioning, distance. | ||
| He's going to tell you more of the philosophies and strategies around fighting. | ||
| Where there's so many coaches, and with MMA being so popular, Every other corner has an MMA gym. | ||
| And these guys are basically putting these fighters on pads and they're just getting them tired. | ||
| Jab, cross, hole, kick! | ||
| Jab, cross, hole, kick! | ||
| More combination! | ||
| Combination! | ||
| They get tired and they think tired equals good. | ||
| Where there's so much more Where's your distance control? | ||
| How are you moving? | ||
| What are your counters? | ||
| How are you countering? | ||
| What are your defense? | ||
| People think there's defense, but there's different types of defense. | ||
| You've got head movement. | ||
| You've got shield defense. | ||
| You've got footwork for your defense. | ||
| You've got parries. | ||
| So there's so many different ways, but it does take good coaching, in my opinion, to take these guys to that high professional level, and there's not enough of it. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| And it's so hard for a young fighter to find really solid coaching. | ||
| When you start out, you're really kind of lucky if you walk into a great gym your first time. | ||
| Because so few people, especially in the beginning, really know how to differentiate between a great gym and just a regular gym. | ||
| It's very, very difficult to tell. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard. | ||
| Sorry, but back to your original question. | ||
| It's about mobility in my opinion. | ||
| Guys in MMA need to know how to move a little bit better. | ||
| I think footwork is one of the most important things in fighting. | ||
| And you got to be able to adapt. | ||
| If you're fighting a pressure fighter, you got to be able to move and fight on angles. | ||
| If you're fighting a guy who now likes to move a lot, you got to be able to pressure fight. | ||
| So you have to have the coaching and the knowledge to be able to adapt accordingly. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that a lot of people don't see when you're watching kickboxing or you're watching Muay Thai, you're seeing these guys are standing close to each other and they're throwing kicks. | ||
| It's hard to tell exactly why they're doing what. | ||
| It's hard to tell exactly why one guy is more effective. | ||
| But once you see it and once you practice it and once you do it, then it all starts opening up to you like a flower. | ||
| Now, when a guy like you is doing commentary, it really helps. | ||
| Because a guy who's been in there, a guy who's been a world champion, and you get to explain what this guy's probably thinking, what's going wrong, and it's sort of, I really like your commentary, man. | ||
| I've been trying, man. | ||
| I'm still learning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You do a great job. | ||
| It means a lot coming from you. | ||
| But you're explaining things in a way that's opening up the game to people. | ||
| It opens up the sport where you go, oh, okay, now I know what to look for. | ||
| Now I know what trends are happening there. | ||
| See, I'm trying to find the balance still. | ||
| I think that's one of my challenges. | ||
| If I come in there and I start talking, you know, his left heel is about two inches, which is causing this to happen, and his distance control is off, he needs to slip off. | ||
| It's too much sometimes. | ||
| So my challenge has been trying to kind of bring it down a little bit and try not to overly, try to over-educate. | ||
| That's been my challenge. | ||
| The other challenge is try not to use the same word all the time. | ||
| What a good left hook! | ||
| What a big left hook! | ||
| I'm trying to change words, man. | ||
| I need a thesaurus beside me and just try to write shit down or something, man. | ||
| Well, I can tell you I've failed on all those exact same things. | ||
| It's hard, man. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's hard. | |
| Talk too much. | ||
| Talk too much. | ||
| Say the same words too many times. | ||
| You know, call people too explosive. | ||
| And then, like, some people got mad for calling them explosive or athletic. | ||
| Like, how come you only talk about black guys who call them explosive and athletic? | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| There's white guys that are explosive and athletic too, but you can't tell me that certain guys aren't fucking explosive. | ||
| But how do you deal with it? | ||
| Are you okay with it now? | ||
| It's been hard for me, man. | ||
| People come out and they take all your words seriously. | ||
| You go online and people are like, you freaking don't know shit and they're talking crap. | ||
| Well, they can't say that. | ||
| Anybody who says that you don't know shit is an idiot. | ||
| And you're going to get that, but I think they keep you on your toes, man. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think for the most part, the majority of respectful fans, they might see something that maybe you don't know that you're doing that might be annoying. | ||
| And if it's annoying to them, it's annoying. | ||
| It might be only annoying to 2% of the people. | ||
| But there might be a way where you could eliminate that aspect of your commentary. | ||
| And I know I've worked hard on that. | ||
| I think it's good. | ||
| I think all the online criticism, as much as it's uncomfortable, it fucks a lot of fighters heads up, man. | ||
| Oh, it kills people. | ||
| Yeah, I've talked to a lot of guys, coaches, that were like, man, those trolls, man, they fucked with his head. | ||
| I'm like, really? | ||
| And they're like, yeah, he's always reading the comments and going on forums. | ||
| That could be dangerous, man. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| That could be freaking dangerous, yeah. | ||
| I mean, because you don't know who's making those things. | ||
| I mean, that could be a 12-year-old kid who's on Adderall, who's kicking his cat, and you're reading this guy's words as if it's gospel, and you want to argue with him, and guys get online, you don't know shit, and they're like, fuck your mother. | ||
|
unidentified
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What? | |
| What? | ||
| Oh, it's tough, man. | ||
| You think about it all day. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It's harder than it. | ||
| I thought commentary was going to be an easier job than I thought, but I think it's harder than fighting right now because it's still new to me. | ||
| I've only done 10 Glory shows, and I don't think it's official yet, but maybe I'll make it official here, but Glory signed me full-time next year. | ||
| Oh, that's awesome. | ||
| Glory's has huge shows. | ||
| I'm going to do 18 shows next year. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| And I don't know how much you know about my life, but I'm also a full-time high school teacher. | ||
| You are? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| No kidding. | ||
| So literally, in my morning, I teach phys ed. | ||
| I teach at a special education school, so I work with kids with special needs, behaviors, autism. | ||
| So I teach phys ed to them. | ||
| So that's 9, 9, like 8, what time do we start? | ||
| 8.55 to 3.30. | ||
| Then from three, I have an hour to eat my lunch, or my dinner at that point, and then I have my own gym, bazooka, kickboxing, and MMA. And so you teach classes after that? | ||
| I train and I teach classes a couple times a week, but we have a big program, man. | ||
| Our gym's huge, it's big, it's popular, so it's non-stop. | ||
| And then at night I go home and I have to do commentary. | ||
| What a bunch of lucky kids to have a guy like you as a coach. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| But I never really got to reach my full potential in all the things I wanted to do with kickboxing. | ||
| But this is where it's happening. | ||
| Glory having me full-time allowed me to take a year leave from teaching. | ||
| And again, if you look at my Instagram, you could already see the difference, man. | ||
| I want to educate people. | ||
| I want to get people hooked to Glory, hooked to the sport. | ||
| So I'm posting training videos, training tips. | ||
| I got Chris Camozzi just commented on one of my... | ||
| Videos being like, hey man, keep up the drilling. | ||
| I love the drills. | ||
| I had John McDessie just private message me saying like, hey man, good stuff. | ||
| I've been following you. | ||
| So it's just getting that word out, man, that kickboxing is the shit and glory is where it's at. | ||
| Yeah, sometimes it's just a matter of like staying the course and continuing to put out content. | ||
| And we've played a bunch of your stuff on here too. | ||
| That's been huge. | ||
| You just posted something. | ||
| I just got like almost a thousand new Instagram likes and follows. | ||
| So thank you, man. | ||
| Oh, you're welcome, brother. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, now that you are in this position as Glory Commentator and you've recovered from your concussion, do you have any thoughts in your head of fighting again? | ||
| To be honest, there's more money doing commentary than there is in the ring. | ||
| And that's where kickboxing is still at. | ||
| There's still not enough finances to make it worth, but it also comes down to, is any money worth health at that point? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You can make $10 million a fight, but if you don't remember that fight after and you don't recover from brain injuries again, What do you do? | ||
| I was having this conversation with some guys this week that are not fighters and they were asking me about certain fights where people got knocked out and you know how come you know when they came back you know they weren't as good and and my take on it was you never know how someone's gonna recover from a loss you don't know physically and your case is a perfect example we're talking about a fight you won where you won the world title we didn't get knocked out I got knocked down, but not knocked out. | ||
| Yeah, and you still had this concussion issue. | ||
| And when someone would look at you, like right now, you talk great, you look fine, doesn't look like there's anything wrong with you, people would be like, oh, he's fine, why can't he fight? | ||
| You know what, man? | ||
| It takes... | ||
| And I'm going to be honest with this whole recovery period. | ||
| It takes a lot out of you. | ||
| You really have to find something deep inside of you. | ||
| You have to find that mental strength to be, you know what? | ||
| Because a lot of what people don't understand, with concussions comes depression. | ||
| Depression is a big side effect. | ||
| Depression is a big side effect of concussions. | ||
| So a lot of these guys that you don't see it, yeah, they just get knocked out and then they're forgotten about. | ||
| Those guys go home, they're depressed, their brain chemistry is all mixed up, their brain's not recovering the same way, so it's actually hard. | ||
| And these fighters are at home probably crying themselves to sleep, they have headaches every day, but they just don't. | ||
| There's not enough education on what these guys are going through and suffering with. | ||
| And I know you're really big on it, but one of the big things that has helped me, and we can branch off on this, is the use of CBDs for brain injuries. | ||
| That's been incredible for my recovery. | ||
| Yeah, CBD is a non-psychoactive compound that's in cannabis. | ||
| And it's a crazy thing that's going on here in the States. | ||
| I don't know how you guys treat it up in Canada, but it's essentially being turned into a Schedule I drug now, even though it's not psychoactive. | ||
| Stupid. | ||
| Well, it's 100% shenanigans by pharmaceutical companies. | ||
| It's 100% influenced by these people that stand to lose money because CBD oil helps a lot of people with inflammation, a lot of people with chronic arthritis. | ||
| They're saying cancer. | ||
| There's a potential to cure cancer. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's not enough studies, but hey... | ||
| Yeah, it certainly helps treat it. | ||
| It treats inflammation. | ||
| And inflammation, apparently, if you talk to doctors, they'll tell you it's a huge issue. | ||
| And one of the biggest issues when it comes to diseases, discomfort, and things like arthritis, again, and headaches. | ||
| You know, like when you're taking a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for a headache, like if you're taking an Advil or an ibuprofen, what you're taking is something that reduces inflammation. | ||
| I mean, that's what it's for. | ||
| And CBD oil does the same thing, but it's natural, it's healthy, it's not bad for you, and it doesn't get you high. | ||
| It's not like something's gonna fuck you up at work. | ||
| It's been crazy because when I was going in that dark room there for three weeks, I literally, doctors were giving me like six to eight Percocets a day and they were giving me two muscle relaxants for my back pain. | ||
| So what happens... | ||
| What was going on with your back? | ||
| I don't know, something with the nerves from my brain because it must have damaged some of the inflammation and it was causing like this back pain that I couldn't even get out of bed with. | ||
| So they were giving me all of these things to cope with it and then all of a sudden I got my sisters and my family to do some research. | ||
| At that point, man, I would have taken anything. | ||
| You could have given me coke, heroin, acid, you name it, I would have taken it to recover. | ||
| Because those pills, they were messing me up. | ||
| I was living in a cartoon world in that darkroom. | ||
| I had no idea what was going on. | ||
| I was tripping out. | ||
| And then it got to the point where I was like, listen, I got people to research and they said, hey, these CBDs help. | ||
| My family did all their research and they ended up getting me some CBD stuff. | ||
| So in what form did you take it? | ||
| I got it as an oil. | ||
| So did you just take it on drops in your tongue? | ||
| Yeah, I put it underneath my tongue basically kind of thing. | ||
| And I was able to cut out all of those Percocets and everything just with CBD oil. | ||
| In how long of a time? | ||
| Right away. | ||
| Right away? | ||
| Right away. | ||
| I stopped because again with those concussions and brain injuries a lot of times you develop insomnia. | ||
| So I wasn't sleeping. | ||
| I wasn't eating much. | ||
| What is CBD's and cannabis good for? | ||
| Munchies. | ||
| Munchies. | ||
| And sleeping. | ||
| And it was good for my recovery. | ||
| So it helped manage to get off all of those painkillers and now I'm able to, you know, be healthy and control my brain headaches and stuff without having to take ibuprofen and Advils. | ||
| Are you still getting headaches? | ||
| They come. | ||
| Yeah, they're still there. | ||
| And you gotta remember, I'm working three full-time jobs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you're not, even if you... | ||
| You know, your brain is healthy and you're working three full-time jobs. | ||
| You're probably going to get a headache or two throughout your day. | ||
| Yeah, but when you get a headache, it's a different experience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a different one. | |
| Because you're also, you know, you're so aware of where it can go. | ||
| Yeah, it's scary. | ||
| So it's been helping, man. | ||
| And I know you have, it's on my list to watch, but because I was explaining, everyone's like, yo, you got to tell Rogan about your experience with CBD. And I haven't got to watch it. | ||
| I think you wrote, it was a 2007, you came out with The Union. | ||
| Yeah, that was a documentary by my buddy Adam, who lives up in BC, and that whole area is essentially run by the marijuana industry, even though marijuana is illegal. | ||
| So they made this documentary explaining how without marijuana, your entire economy is fucked. | ||
| Like it's this underground economy, and they call it the union. | ||
| It was a really, really good documentary. | ||
| It's on my list. | ||
| And then he went on to make The Culture High, which is also an excellent documentary that he made after that. | ||
| I'll watch both. | ||
| Well, we've been hoodwinked in this country, unfortunately, in all countries now because of the influence of America. | ||
| We've been hoodwinked by the propaganda that they came up with in the 1930s, which wasn't even about pharmaceutical drugs back then. | ||
| It was really about the paper industry. | ||
| Yeah, it's William Randolph Hearst, who was a real creepy guy. | ||
| And he was the reason why Orson Welles made that movie Citizen Kane. | ||
| He was the inspiration for that movie. | ||
| About one guy who was kind of dominating the world with his influence. | ||
| And William Randolph Hearst didn't just own newspaper companies. | ||
| He also owned paper mills, and he owned forests, these enormous forests where they would chop down trees and make paper with them. | ||
| And in the 1930s, they came out with a product called a decorticator. | ||
| And a decorticator is a machine that allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber very easily. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because hemp is a very unusual plant. | ||
| Like this table that we have here, this is oak. | ||
| And oak is a very hard wood. | ||
| Well, hemp Hemp is as hard as oak, but it's way lighter. | ||
| It's like a freaky alien plant. | ||
| Like, if you pick up a hemp stalk, like, this is a decorticator that they're, uh, this is a, this is a, like, a modern one, I guess. | ||
| So you throw the, the hemp fibers in there, and it grinds them up. | ||
| Which, by the way, hemp is still federally illegal, even though it's not psychoactive. | ||
| And there's so much stupidity that's all attached to this one amazing plant. | ||
| I always thought it was just because it was under so much, uh, TS, uh, Has to be under 1% THC or is that a myth? | ||
| I don't think that's it. | ||
| To make it legal to sell or something along those lines? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You can grow it in some states, but the thing is like federally. | ||
| Federally it's still illegal, but they're trying to change that. | ||
| It's just slow and painful. | ||
| And again, it's all the propaganda from the 1930s. | ||
| So William Randolph Hearst, who owned newspapers, They came out with this decorticator, and then Popular Science magazine had this cover. | ||
| See if you can find it, Jamie. | ||
| Hemp, the new billion-dollar crop. | ||
| Because of this... | ||
| See, they used to use hemp way back in the day. | ||
| Like, the drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp. | ||
| The sails that they used for boats were all made out of hemp. | ||
| All that stuff was out of hemp. | ||
| In fact, canvas, the word canvas comes from the word cannabis. | ||
| So the Mona Lisa is painted on hemp. | ||
| So they came up with that, and then when Eli Whitney came up with the cotton gin, cotton was more effective to use. | ||
| Yeah, so they were going to use it for clothes, and you see it on the cover of Popular Science magazine. | ||
| It was on the cover, though, Jamie. | ||
| Is it Popular Mechanics? | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
| Anyway, so they used to use it for parachutes, they used it for all these different things, but then when Eli Whitney came up with the cotton gin, it was easier for them to make clothes out of cotton, because hemp requires a lot to break down the fibers and turn them into cloth. | ||
| It's a crazy plant, and it makes this unbelievable paper. | ||
| Like, hemp paper is so superior to this paper that we all use. | ||
| Like, this paper that we use is shit. | ||
| It rips so easy. | ||
| Hemp paper is really hard to rip. | ||
| But it weighs the same. | ||
| It looks the same. | ||
| It feels the same. | ||
| But it's just a better fiber. | ||
| So instead of William Randolph Hearst embracing this, he would have lost millions of dollars because he would have had to replant these forests and turn them into hemp. | ||
| He decided to go the other route and just start making propaganda against hemp. | ||
| So he started calling it marijuana. | ||
| See, marijuana was never a name for cannabis. | ||
| Marijuana was a wild Mexican tobacco. | ||
| They took this name from this wild Mexican tobacco. | ||
| They started talking about this new drug that's making white women get raped by Mexicans and black people. | ||
| Plant wizards fight wartime drug peril. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| We need hemp, lots of it, for corrige, but hemp means marijuana too. | ||
| Can scientists take the drug menace out of this useful plant? | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| So all this shit came from this one asshole. | ||
| One asshole and Harry Anslinger, who was the guy in charge of, well, you know, they originally got a lot of people that were involved in the alcohol prohibition. | ||
| And once alcohol prohibition was done, they needed something else to fight. | ||
| So they said, well, look, we got something right here. | ||
| Which alcohol probably does more damage to your body than... | ||
| Oh, it does. | ||
| Trust me. | ||
| I was drunk as fuck Monday night. | ||
| I think Monday night I might have been blackout drunk. | ||
| You feel like shit for like three days probably? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I feel like shit today a little bit. | ||
| But, so, this propaganda, they're still fighting this. | ||
| They're literally still fighting this. | ||
| Well, that's kind of like, it's a little different, but why kickboxing, MMA, it was so hard to get into Ontario. | ||
| Stupid, you know, legislature and stuff from years ago that the language ruined. | ||
| So, it just ruins things. | ||
| What was the language? | ||
| It's something about the belts. | ||
| Like, we can't get kickboxing or Muay Thai in Ontario, Canada. | ||
| Because of belts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, it's because of some language inside legal documents. | ||
| Within that language, it said something about you cannot perform kicks. | ||
| That's why the UFC had so much difficult time to get into Toronto. | ||
| But it's in there now. | ||
| It is, but I think it's... | ||
| Not yet. | ||
| Kickboxing's not in Toronto? | ||
| Above the waist only. | ||
| You can't do low-kicking fights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What?! | |
| Or professional Muay Thai in Ontario, Canada. | ||
| That's insane! | ||
| All old shit from years ago that the commissioner was following from a long time ago. | ||
| Even if you ask fighters, I had a conversation with Matt Embry who's fighting Robin Van Roosmalen, and we were like, I don't even know why. | ||
| We don't even know. | ||
| It's in that legal document, the way it's written, and the terminology screwed us up. | ||
| But how's that the case when you can still have UFC fights and they're allowed to low kick in UFC fights? | ||
| I think it comes to money. | ||
| Probably comes down to money. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Everything else. | ||
| That's fucking crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is crazy. | |
| It's ridiculous, but you gotta think too. | ||
| We're off topic, but look at the Canadian kickboxing champions that have come out of Canada. | ||
| You had Simon Marcus. | ||
| You had, which again, I know one of your favorite fights was Joe Schilling. | ||
| Yeah, my God, what a fight. | ||
| That was insane. | ||
| Yeah, and then went to the fourth round, Joe knocked him out. | ||
| What a crazy fight. | ||
| What a crazy fight. | ||
| Yeah, you had Gabriel Varga, you had myself, now Matt Embry, Robert Thomas from Canada, and we're producing all of these crazy athletes, and we don't even have a professional system. | ||
| And it's crazy, because there hasn't been one U.S. glory champion. | ||
| Well, at one point in time, before MMA or before the UFC really got a foothold in Brazil, the Canada market was the biggest market for MMA. It was huge. | ||
| Outside of the United States. | ||
| The one show we had at the Rogers Center there? | ||
| 70,000 people. | ||
| It was gigantic. | ||
| 60,000, whatever the fuck it was. | ||
| It was nuts. | ||
| It was insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that was also, a lot of it was because of George St. Pierre. | ||
| And George being such a great representative of Canada, a great representative of the UFC, and a great champion. | ||
| People flock to him. | ||
| It's one of the things about Canada is how loyal Canadian citizens are towards their fighters. | ||
| Oh, even if you watch Toronto Blue Jays, the Toronto Maple Leafs, man, we're passionate fans. | ||
| That's why kickboxing has to come there. | ||
| If we're gonna build it, there's talks about it. | ||
| So can Glory make something happen here? | ||
| There's talk about it. | ||
| Is this the rules here? | ||
| The fouls, administering a kick to the leg. | ||
| Spinning back fists are illegal? | ||
| Striking the face with any part of the arm. | ||
| Elbows are illegal. | ||
| Chopping to the back of the neck. | ||
| Oh, they watch too much Flintstones. | ||
| Fucking karate chop. | ||
| Striking a blow to the groin area. | ||
| Okay, butting with the head. | ||
| What's the top one, Jamie, number one? | ||
| Striking a blow with an elbow or a knee? | ||
| You can't strike a knee to the body? | ||
| See, I still don't get how it works. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
| But how did the UFC? I think it's what it's got to be. | ||
| I think you need a big chunk of money to kind of even get the commission to look at you. | ||
| So look at this. | ||
| Professional boxing where blows may be struck with both the fists and the feet. | ||
| That is weird. | ||
| So this is the same laws that apply to boxing. | ||
| They use for kickboxing, but you can only kick with the feet. | ||
| Now what if you kick someone with a head kick and you hit with a shin? | ||
| Is it illegal? | ||
| They don't even know that you're shin-kicking. | ||
| No one even knows. | ||
| They think you're kicking with feet. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Sweeping above the ankle. | ||
| So you can't even sweep someone. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Above the ankle. | ||
| So you can't sweep right. | ||
| You can sweep shitty. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| You can fight shitty, but it's okay. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| Intentionally using the knee as a block. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't understand. | |
| You can't block with a knee. | ||
| You can't check. | ||
| Well, you can't even kick below the waist, so I guess there's no need to block a low kick. | ||
| But what if you wanted a body kick? | ||
| You can't block with a body kick? | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Intentionally evading contact. | ||
| Boy, they got a lot of fucking wacky rules. | ||
| Striking a blow with an open glove. | ||
| The commissioner who was kind of really strict to this is now out, so let's see what changes. | ||
| Using abusive language. | ||
| No Nick Diaz fights in Canada, folks. | ||
| Disobeying the referee, going down intentionally, intentionally using the knee as a block. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Extending the legs for the purpose of preventing an opponent from kicking. | ||
| What?! | ||
| Don't even ask. | ||
| What in the fuck is that? | ||
| It's messed up. | ||
| How weird is that? | ||
| Extending the leg for the purpose of preventing an opponent from kicking. | ||
| I'm guessing this was written in 1990. But that doesn't even make any sense. | ||
| Like, you can't even use a teep then. | ||
| Like, if you wanted to extend your leg, like, a teep is to extend the leg. | ||
| I mean, you're front-kicking a guy. | ||
| You're pushing him off. | ||
| You could say that that would... | ||
| I've been to one of the guys I train is Troy Sheridan. | ||
| He fought an above-the-weight kickboxing fight professionally. | ||
| He actually fought another old UFC fighter, Jesse Ronson. | ||
| Do you think he's fought twice on the UFC before he got released? | ||
| Jesse Ronson. | ||
| Who was, oh, Jean-Yves Theriot. | ||
| He was one of the best known Canadian kickboxers. | ||
| Yeah, he was a bad motherfucker, man. | ||
| Above the waist, yeah. | ||
| Above the waist kickboxer. | ||
| He was the man back in the day. | ||
| And he was one of the few guys that was like really exciting and would knock guys dead. | ||
| I didn't get to watch a lot of it, but I've done my research and watched a few of his fights after, and that's crazy. | ||
| I forgot about him for a long time, until just this conversation. | ||
| Well, you gotta think Rufus, Duke Rufus's brother. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| Rick Rufus, yeah. | ||
| Rick Rufus was... | ||
| One of the most popular, I would say. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| Well, he was so flashy, too. | ||
| He could do so many wild techniques inside the octagon. | ||
| Did you ever see the fight where he fought a TIE fighter? | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those low kicks, man. | ||
| That was an exciting fight, too. | ||
| But that was the first time. | ||
| Lawrence Kenshin did a breakdown of that. | ||
| His stuff's good. | ||
| He posted one with mine and Mark Dubon. | ||
| Yeah, he put a nice little, the way I set up that high kick, he's good. | ||
| Yeah, he's very good. | ||
| And it's interesting because that fight essentially changed a lot of people's ideas about low kicks. | ||
| Because even Duke Rufus, like they interviewed Rufus after the fight, I think he was like 19. And he's like, well, it doesn't take any talent to just kick the legs. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I remember. | |
| That was crazy. | ||
| Everybody had this weird idea. | ||
| You gotta ask him about that. | ||
| Oh, I've talked to him about it many times now. | ||
| Now he's a huge low kick proponent. | ||
| He became a world Muay Thai champion. | ||
| He loves his low kicks. | ||
| I guess seeing his brother at such a young age. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But that opened up everyone's eyes to low kicks. | ||
| Oh, yeah, man. | ||
| But the low kick, see, people think like my style or the low kick style is like this new thing. | ||
| It's actually a really old concept that was kind of forgotten about. | ||
| And then there's only a few people that came and stuck true to that low kick style. | ||
| I think it's underrated, especially in MMA. And I think I'm going to bring it up about MMA. Everyone's like, yeah, but the takedowns. | ||
| A good low kick is based off timing. | ||
| If I'm going to sit there and I'm going to lead with a low kick against a wrestler, absolutely. | ||
| He's going to take me down every time. | ||
| But I think it's the timing of the low kick that people need to understand. | ||
| If someone's exiting backwards, that's your time for the low kick. | ||
| So if you put, especially in MMA where people can't really stand in the pocket, they move and they exit. | ||
| As soon as they get outside of punch range, that's perfect low kick timing. | ||
| You'll get so many free low kicks on MMA guys, and their legs aren't strong. | ||
| MMA guys aren't used to that body damage that kickboxers are. | ||
| And I remember my coach coached Gary Goodridge. | ||
| And Gary once told me, he's like, when he fought both kickboxing and MMA, he came back and said, he's like, I knew I can go to the after party when I fought MMA. But he goes, and after a kickboxing fight, he's like, I'm not getting out of my bed. | ||
| You gotta think how much shin-to-shin kickboxers go through compared to an MMA fight. | ||
| How often do you see a leg kick checked in the UFC? It's getting better. | ||
| It's getting better. | ||
| It's getting better. | ||
| But I agree with you, and that's another thing that people always complain about me, that I'm always calling for low kicks and saying I'd like to see more low kicks. | ||
| I'd like to see him kick his legs more. | ||
| But I think you're right, too, that it takes someone who understands Muay Thai at a very high level to be able to pull that off and do it in combination. | ||
| What you're seeing sometimes in MMA is you would see a lot during the George St. Pierre era where guys were afraid to kick because George was so good at timing. | ||
| Explosive. | ||
| But again... | ||
| Who was he fighting against? | ||
| He wasn't fighting against a guy who actually knew how to use it properly. | ||
| Yeah, and we don't really see that many people. | ||
| I mean, you have a few in the women's division. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jose Aldo? | |
| Would you say Jose Aldo? | ||
| Jose has spectacular leg kicks, no doubt about it. | ||
| And he was killing guys with it. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, you look at the Uriah Faber fight. | ||
| It was horrendous. | ||
| I called that fight, and afterwards, you know, Uriah posted all these Instagram pictures and social media pictures. | ||
| Of that purple leg? | ||
| It was insane. | ||
| He had one leg twice the size. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have a meme on my phone I keep sending because a lot of times in sparring, I'll smash my guy's legs and then I'll send them the picture being like, tag someone who doesn't know how to block a low kick and I just keep sending that picture out, mess around with everyone. | ||
| But yeah, it was brutal. | ||
| Brutal. | ||
| Now what happens to your leg? | ||
| Oh, there's Uriah's leg. | ||
| Yeah, he had to go in a hyperbaric chamber to try to lessen the injury, try to heal the injury quicker. | ||
| But people don't understand the damage they do. | ||
| It's like, hey, if every time you punch, I smash your leg, you're not going to want to punch me. | ||
| And that's the timing I use. | ||
| So as soon as someone jabs, you take the leg. | ||
| Because when someone punches, they have to put their weight on their front leg. | ||
| And once you put your weight on the front leg, you can no longer block at that point. | ||
| So if you watch any of my fights or guys with good low kicks, they usually time the low kick off the hands or the step. | ||
| Because every time you step, you've got to be heavy on your front foot, and that's the opportunity to hit that low kick. | ||
| So you want to look for what I call free low kicks, ones where they can't block. | ||
| So as they're exiting up or as they step in, you try to find those free ones when they're planted on their legs and they can't lift up their leg to block. | ||
| Jamie, put up, see if you can find Joe's fight with Raymond Daniels. | ||
| Because, like I said before, there was one of my, and I'm a big Raymond Daniels fan, by the way. | ||
| It's not a knock on him at all. | ||
| I think he's awesome. | ||
| And I think his style is very important. | ||
| Because it's very important to know that there is a guy who can do the kind of stuff that he can do. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| He does that jump, sidekick, spinning back kick. | ||
| That was against Francois Ombang. | ||
|
unidentified
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Woo! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean he does a lot of wild shit inside the octagon and so this fight to me was a really important fight for just martial arts strategy and Technique to to see how a guy like you who's you know super high-level guy deals with a guy who's completely unorthodox in terms of traditional kickboxing techniques He's got a style that is impossible to emulate inside the gym. | ||
| And again, I fought Kareem Gaji over 100 fights. | ||
| Nicky Holtzkin over 100 fights. | ||
| I fought Mark Dubon over 100 fights. | ||
| He was probably the fighter I was most scared to fight. | ||
| Because of all this wild shit? | ||
| I'm like, man, the last thing I want to be is part of a knockout reel of Raymond Daniels spinning hook kick knocking me the frig out. | ||
| So, I mean, I was scared, man. | ||
| So, at this point, even in round one, it was just like, what the heck is this guy going to do? | ||
| I had no idea what the heck this guy was going to do. | ||
| One of the things I really love about watching you fight, too, is you always have a very high guard. | ||
| Very high guard, very good fundamentals. | ||
| And even when you're doing those training sequences that you put on Instagram... | ||
| Everything you do, your guard is high, you're doing everything by the book. | ||
| Solid basics. | ||
| The key. | ||
| Who was your original trainer? | ||
| My original trainer is Paul Minhas, and that was the one who trained Gary Goodridge through K1 and Pride. | ||
| But yeah, Paul Minhas, he's the one who really developed my low kick style, and I just was able to really put it together and showcase his strategy of low kicks. | ||
| The way he used to explain it is that people think a low kick is a low kick, but it's not. | ||
| You've got to think where on the shin are you landing the low kick, right? | ||
| If you land more of the lower part of your shin, that's more of a setup. | ||
| You might want to use your low kick to set up your hands. | ||
| You might want to have it as a feeler, just as a distraction. | ||
| If you start landing higher up on the shin, those are more finished low kicks. | ||
| The angle you throw it at, the timing you throw it at. | ||
| So when Paul was training me, he would kind of classify like nine different low kicks. | ||
| It's based on where on the leg it's hitting and where on your shin you're landing. | ||
| So there's so much more. | ||
| It's like a jab. | ||
| There's not just up jabs, there's jab with your head off on angles, there's low jabs, high jabs. | ||
| Each jab has a different purpose and same thing with a low kick. | ||
| You just lit him up with that leg kick, and you saw that little limp that guys start doing. | ||
| Once you start landing these big shots to the legs, you slow him down considerably. | ||
| What did you do to prepare for his movement and this front leg style? | ||
| He was throwing a lot of front leg sidekicks to your front leg. | ||
| This fight, what a lot of people don't see when you fight, a lot of it is ring control. | ||
| You can't just chase Raymond Downs. | ||
| You have to get him against the ropes. | ||
| You gotta corner him. | ||
| And if you see when he blitzes, I don't move back. | ||
| If you move back, you give him an exit and an opportunity to escape. | ||
| Where if you stay, see when he blitzes, I stay right in his pocket and it opens up the low kick. | ||
| And you're forcing him to move backwards as well, which is very tiring. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Most people get way more tired moving back than they do moving forward. | ||
| It seems like you're both fighting at the same pace, but he's doing more work. | ||
| Well, this round was more of a feel-out round, and you've got to remember, after this fight, I fought Nikki Holtzke. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Same night. | ||
| It's 20 minutes later. | ||
| Fucking crazy. | ||
| 20 minutes later. | ||
| I'm not a fan of that. | ||
| I really am not. | ||
| I personally don't. | ||
| You've got to think, your brain is still shook up from that first fight, not fully recovered, and in my opinion, the best fighter doesn't necessarily come out on top. | ||
| In tournaments, yeah. | ||
| Too many variables. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's crazy. | ||
| It's fun to watch. | ||
| It's exciting when you're watching it, because it builds up to one eventual champion, and you get to watch all these fights take place during the night. | ||
| But I think, especially, you're getting hurt, and then you're recovering a little bit, and then going back in again, and you're still busted up from the first fight. | ||
| I probably lost a good ten years of my life after that night, but what are you gonna do? | ||
| Yeah, but there used to be eight-man tournaments. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Eight-man tournaments. | ||
| Yeah, that's three fights in one night. | ||
| Did you fight Nikki Holtzkin twice? | ||
| Just once. | ||
| And one night, you gotta think, I got one of the knockouts of the year in this fight, and I got the fight of the year. | ||
| Nicky and I won fight of the year that year, where we just sat and exchanged combinations for three rounds. | ||
| No, it was an awesome fight. | ||
| Now, there you see, like, he's starting to limp. | ||
| Now, did you bring anybody in that kicks like this, that throws those front leg sidekicks and the hopping kicks? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It was very tough. | ||
| I experimented with a Taekwondo guy, and it just wasn't the same. | ||
| And the problem is, a lot of these karate guys, they can't handle that constant pressure. | ||
| They're used to guys standing, keeping distance with them, letting them kick, but... | ||
| I was too much of a bully for those guys. | ||
| I was able to just stay in the pocket. | ||
| They'd try to throw spinning kicks. | ||
| I would just push them on the ground. | ||
| They couldn't handle the constant strong pressure style. | ||
| It's definitely interesting to watch how it's so much more... | ||
| Yeah, there it is over and over again. | ||
| You're seeing him limping now and you're noticing him as you're fighting. | ||
| You're noticing that and you keep hitting that same spot. | ||
| Now he's moving. | ||
| He's standing southpaw now. | ||
| You can tell he's done. | ||
| He mixes it up a little bit. | ||
| I mean, he does switch his stances, but you can see he's really trying to protect that left leg now. | ||
| He's keeping it back. | ||
| Now, when you did bring in those guys, was there anything that they could show you about how to avoid those kicks or how to move away from them? | ||
| It was more of just kind of like, hey, this is kind of the distance and the setup. | ||
| These are the kind of few things you need to look at. | ||
| But I was really... | ||
| In my fight career, which I kind of have a different philosophy now, now that I'm a coach a lot more and I'm looking at fighting a little bit differently. | ||
| But here I knew I was gonna fight my fight. | ||
| He had to fight my way. | ||
| If not, he was gonna be in trouble. | ||
| That was three in a row. | ||
| Boom, boom, boom. | ||
| Just chopping, chopping at that leg. | ||
| To me, this is like the fight that I show people. | ||
| When I show people the difference between a really good Muay Thai fighter who's fighting a guy who throws a lot of flashy stuff but doesn't really know the low kick game. | ||
| And he throws those things but there's not a lot of threat outside those spinning attacks. | ||
| He does have that explosive left hand but... | ||
| Good defense. | ||
| You can shut that down really good. | ||
| Well, he was a great karate point fighter, but his boxing has come a long way since this fight. | ||
| I think he learned a lot about a lot of things in this fight, but his hands weren't the big threat. | ||
| That's one of the things that differentiates him from Wonderboy. | ||
| Also, Wonderboy is obviously fighting with smaller gloves, but Wonderboy has nasty hands. | ||
| So if Wonderboy and Raymond Daniels were to fight in kickboxing, who wins? | ||
| That's an interesting question. | ||
| You know, I mean, Wonderboy's undefeated in kickboxing. | ||
| See, those are the other things I don't know. | ||
| I'm like, you hear about this guy. | ||
| He's like, oh yeah, he's undefeated as a kickboxer. | ||
| It's like, hey, we're the same weight. | ||
| If you're undefeated, how come we never heard of each other or saw each other? | ||
| What happens with a lot of these guys? | ||
| And with kickboxing, there's so many different organizations. | ||
| So you'll see guys that'll come around and say, hey, I'm a 10-time world champion. | ||
| I'm like, okay, where? | ||
| I think there's one world champion that matters right now in its glory. | ||
| So any other belt than that, to me, I don't think you're a world champion. | ||
| Well, what about Lion Fight? | ||
| What about Muay Thai? | ||
| It's a different class, I would say. | ||
| Muay Thai and kickboxing are very different. | ||
| What do you like better? | ||
| I'm a straight kickboxer. | ||
| And why do you like kickboxing better than Muay Thai? | ||
| Because I like to rely on pace, more aggression, and more... | ||
| I'm a combination-style fighter, so I like to always mix up kicks and punches, punches and kicks. | ||
| I fought two full rules-time fights. | ||
| One of them was a French fighter who... | ||
| It was, again, my sixth professional fight. | ||
| It was his, like, 70th. | ||
| And he came in, he was just, I beat him up on the outside. | ||
| But as soon as he came close, he clinched up with me, elbows, elbows, elbows, and he split my head open. | ||
| Six weeks later, I fought, and it's actually on YouTube, I fought Medi Baghdad. | ||
| That would be a cool one for you to watch. | ||
| And I put a little clip on if you want to find it after this one. | ||
| It's literally like, I made it into like a two minute clip. | ||
| And it's just beating the crap out of him. | ||
| And he landed two elbows. | ||
| And I got like 30 stitches at the end of that fight. | ||
| Covered in blood. | ||
| I got like a three inch gash in my head. | ||
| I had five stitches off my eyes. | ||
| He landed two elbows. | ||
| Two strikes basically the whole fight. | ||
| And those two strikes were the damaging ones. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Which I mean, okay, it's cool. | ||
| I knew I wanted to be a kickboxer, so I never focused on my elbows. | ||
| Could I be a Muay Thai champion? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But my focus was on kickboxing and, at that point, to get into the K-1 Max. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| I wanted to fight the Zambidis. | ||
| I wanted to fight all of the, you know, the bull cows. | ||
| I wanted to fight those guys. | ||
| So my focus was always on kickboxing from... | ||
| The day I started. | ||
| Well, that was the big organization. | ||
| K-1 was the big organization that kind of opened up kickboxing to the world. | ||
| And Japan did an amazing job of that. | ||
| And then they had, of course, It's Showtime. | ||
| And It's Showtime ran for a while. | ||
| They became glory, right? | ||
| Yeah, there's part of it. | ||
| They shut down. | ||
| The problem is there was a lot of problems happening in Holland. | ||
| There was a lot of illegal stuff happening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Illegal? | |
| Is this the finish right here? | ||
| Yeah, you're battering him now. | ||
| Just the amount of shots. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Head kick. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| The amount of shots that he took to the legs. | ||
| Now, when you were saying that MMA fighters, they don't have the toughness of the legs. | ||
| They're not used to taking the punishment in the legs. | ||
| What is the difference? | ||
| Like, how does your legs get tougher from getting kicked? | ||
| Well, it's like if you look at martial arts in your body, your body is your armor. | ||
| So you got to look at your body as armor. | ||
| If you don't strengthen that armor, you're only as strong as your armor can hold, right? | ||
| So if you're not training your body to get hit, you can't really take as much damage. | ||
| So if you're constantly taking low kicks every day in training, you build up that endurance and that tolerance and that strength to be able to take hard low kicks. | ||
| But a lot of guys, if you're not used to that, taking hard arm kicks. | ||
| My first professional fight, I left with like welts on my forearm. | ||
| My knees would be swollen. | ||
| I couldn't even get my shoe on after the fight because everything was just so swollen. | ||
| And you just take so much damage on the body that eventually it hardens and it gets stronger. | ||
| And like, I mean, you got to look at our shins and our kickboxes and Muay Thai shins. | ||
| We're going through bats, whatever you want. | ||
| We're just constantly kicking things where... | ||
| In MMA, there's not as much focus on conditioning and hardening the body because you don't need it as much. | ||
| But what does condition the legs to take that kind of punishment? | ||
| Just constant hitting. | ||
| Use in years of training or getting someone to constantly lightly touch your legs, build up the tolerance. | ||
| You've got to build a strong armor to be able to withstand that. | ||
| Whatever damage... | ||
| What I'm confused about, though, is what is the physical response that your body has to getting fixed in all those spots? | ||
| Well, I know the shin, for example. | ||
| Every time you shin, there's those micro-fractures that then calcify, which then cause the shin to harden. | ||
| And again, even if the difference between my right and left shin, my right shin is probably double the size of my left one because I use my right shin a lot more. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I mean it's just constant years of training your body to do it. | ||
| But what about the thigh? | ||
| Like what about your quads and all the legs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I wonder what it is. | ||
| Is it nerves? | ||
| Are your nerves able to withstand the pain? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's a big difference and it's weird because I've been doing it so long where I can usually stand in front of you, give you like little leg taps and I can kind of see how hard your body is if you can withstand a low kick or not. | ||
| It's a feeling mechanism. | ||
| So you feel how they're responding? | ||
| Well yeah, how soft it is, how they put their weight, their pressure on it. | ||
| You can tell. | ||
| You can really tell. | ||
| And when you fight someone, and that's where those guys that have 100 professional fights have that, there's a lot of wear and tear, but those guys have a body armor that really takes a lot to try to damage, you know, those forearms or those leg kicks or, you know, there's just years of accumulated damage and the body hardens up. | ||
| It is weird because, like, you see some of the ties that just blast each other and you're watching them low kick each other and you never see them limping. | ||
| No. | ||
| You know, I mean, then you see this fight that you had with Raymond, and you see, like, after, you know, a minute, two in the fight, when you kept chopping. | ||
| There was one moment in the fight in the first round. | ||
| I remember watching it live. | ||
| And you caught him with one low kick in the first round. | ||
| I went, uh-oh. | ||
| There it goes. | ||
| You see that little dip? | ||
| You know, bam! | ||
| And you see the little dip that their body gives? | ||
| Like, oh, this is not good. | ||
| And you gotta think, I've probably sparred with thousands and thousands of different MMA fighters, and as soon as we start sparring, I'll tap the leg once, tap the leg twice, three times, and they're like, no, no, no, can you lay off the leg? | ||
| I'm just like, okay, alright, cool, yeah, I guess so. | ||
| I'll just hit the other leg, and if I don't hit the other leg, I'll hit your body. | ||
| But I mean, yeah, it's a different type of body conditioning. | ||
| Is there any way to do it other than just getting kicked there? | ||
| I mean, does anybody... | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think so. | |
| Not that I know. | ||
| I think it's just years of accumulation. | ||
| I've heard of dudes rolling Coke bottles on their shins. | ||
| I don't know if that... | ||
| Does that even work? | ||
| I've tried to find research on that. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I did it when I was young. | ||
| I'm like, hey, look at me. | ||
| I'm putting a rolling pin over my shin, but I guess it kind of takes out the nerve damage a little bit. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Oh, the nerve endings. | ||
| The nerve endings, try to numb them out a bit. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, it is interesting. | ||
| It's interesting because it doesn't necessarily make sense. | ||
| Like when it comes to the muscle of the thighs. | ||
| It's got to come down to nerve. | ||
| It's not really bone that's getting stronger. | ||
| I would love to talk to a doctor who understands Muay Thai. | ||
| You'd be good. | ||
| Do you know anybody that's like a doctor that trains? | ||
| I'll start. | ||
| I'll find it. | ||
| I'll tweet you out the answer, man. | ||
| I'll find it. | ||
| Yeah, because it definitely seems like, I mean, especially like we said, the Thais, these guys that have 100 plus fights, and you see them getting low kicked, and it doesn't seem to affect them at all. | ||
| I mean, it's landing, it's an effective strike, but the difference between the way it would affect them versus the way it affects a person who's never been low kicked before. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| It's the most underrated technique in all of martial arts, I think. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| Because until you've been low-kicked, like, once you get low-kicked once, you go, oh, Jesus. | ||
| And, you know, it's usually when you're at those parties and you're drunk. | ||
| It's like, oh, those leg kicks don't hurt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Those low kicks don't hurt. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, they're like, just give them one. | ||
| And I was like, no. | ||
| You don't want one. | ||
| I was actually messing with someone once, and I was like, Bruce Lee had the one-inch punch. | ||
| And I was like, I'll give you a one-inch low kick, and you won't walk for a month. | ||
| And he didn't believe it. | ||
| I'll give anyone, if anyone listening wants to have a one-inch low kick. | ||
| How do you set it up? | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| All I gotta do is put literally my shin one inch away and just bang! | ||
| Done. | ||
| So like... | ||
| It's hitting the right part. | ||
| You gotta know where to hit. | ||
| So you would have like... | ||
| A bent leg. | ||
| Almost like you're throwing a kick, like a controlled kick and stopping at them when you stop right before. | ||
| Yeah, right there. | ||
| And I'll just go, boom, right on that part. | ||
| I'm telling you, man. | ||
| I'm telling you. | ||
| One-inch low kicks. | ||
| I'm gonna start it. | ||
| You should. | ||
| You should make a video about it. | ||
| The one-inch low kick, I will. | ||
| One-inch low kick challenge. | ||
| I bet you I'm gonna do it. | ||
| Now, you were saying earlier, and I wanted to go back to this, that your thoughts on fighting have changed from being a fighter to being a coach. | ||
| How so? | ||
| Because I think right now I had, when I was fighting, I had to have a one-dimensional approach. | ||
| What worked for me? | ||
| And now as a coach, someone asked me the question. | ||
| A new student who's very talented comes to your gym. | ||
| He's not strong. | ||
| He's not really as athletic as you. | ||
| He doesn't have the training background as you. | ||
| How do you make that guy a world champion? | ||
| And I was like, huh, that's interesting. | ||
| I'm like, he's not big, he's not strong, so he's not going to be a great pressure fighter that's going to be able to withstand a lot of damage. | ||
| So what happened? | ||
| So I wanted to create a system of fighting that is kind of universal. | ||
| I don't really want to have... | ||
| I want to have a system in my fighting at Bazooka Kickboxing that you can go into a street fight, you can go into an MMA fight, you can kickbox. | ||
| You've got to have that knowledge and the skill set to be able to fight everything. | ||
| And that's my goal as a coach right now, is to make a universal system that can handle anything. | ||
| So if you've got a pressure fight versus move, if you've got to keep distance, if you need to jab or box, you've got to be able to have it all. | ||
| I don't agree anymore too much with a one-dimensional approach. | ||
| But the one-dimensional approach was good for you as a fighter because you found out where your skills were more directed. | ||
| The way I look at it is I was an exceptional case. | ||
| I'm an exceptional athlete that was gifted with a strong body, strong mind, good dedication, very motivated. | ||
| So it all worked in my favor. | ||
| But now I have a guy who's fighting amateur kickboxing. | ||
| How do I train that guy to be successful? | ||
| Do you think that that helps you as a fighter? | ||
| Huge! | ||
| Because I know a lot of jujitsu guys, they start coaching, and once they start coaching and teaching lessons, their game just jumps. | ||
| It was being a color commentator. | ||
| That helps a lot? | ||
| Huge. | ||
| Like, I gotta show you, like, after whatever, I'll show you my notes on what I do, and I'd be interested to see your thoughts on it. | ||
| Do you write your own notes for the events? | ||
| Notes as far as... | ||
| Like your fighter notes, or are you now just experienced enough to know about the fighters? | ||
| It depends entirely on who the fighters are, because many, many times I'm watching a guy fight for the first time. | ||
| And if I've never seen someone before, what I like to do is I like to watch some YouTube videos of them. | ||
| I like to watch them fight. | ||
| I read what their background is. | ||
| So you do do a lot of research still that you have. | ||
| See, I say I don't do any research because I would have done it anyway. | ||
| I'll do research for glory. | ||
| I don't work for glory. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| You're a fan. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Say if there's a big fight coming up. | ||
| Here's a perfect example. | ||
| Holly Holm, Jermaine Durandamy. | ||
| They're gonna fight for the UFC featherweight title. | ||
| Yeah, I saw the promo for that, yeah. | ||
| And what's interesting to me is Jermaine Durandamy is a multiple-time world Muay Thai champion and who's had a hard time dealing with the clinch, dealing with people taking her down, dealing with the other aspects of MMA. She's trying to find her groove. | ||
| Dutch girl, right? | ||
| Yes, Dutch girl, nasty striker, real tall, long... | ||
| I saw her, was it UFC 200? | ||
| Was she in that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Or was it the Brazil card with Cyborg or something? | ||
| She looked vicious. | ||
| She's vicious. | ||
| She's a very, very good striker. | ||
| So what I'm curious, it's very interesting because, you know, Holly, who looked like a fucking dynamo when she fought Ronda, because Ronda fought the absolute worst kind of fight that you could fight with Holly. | ||
| Run right at her. | ||
| Go straight, go at her. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, she wanted to bully her, and you just can't. | ||
| You know, Holly's so good at evasion, so good at using angles, and so good at stopping and then countering. | ||
| Straight punching. | ||
| Straight punching, and that weird oblique kick that a lot of the Winklejohn guys like to do to the thigh. | ||
| Do you use that kick at all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not really. | |
| It's a weird kick, right? | ||
| A lot of guys use that kick. | ||
| There's some guys that really know how to land that well, and I'm starting to see it. | ||
| I'm thinking, man, it's... | ||
| It's an interesting kick, but the Winklejohn guys in particular, or gals too, Hawley is really good at that. | ||
| It's like the front kick. | ||
| It's when Anderson Silva knocked out Belfort, and everyone was like, whoa, the front kick! | ||
| Look at this amazing new weapon! | ||
| It's probably the first kick ever taught in traditional martial arts. | ||
| It's just, he made it so popular, and then all of a sudden you see it as a new trend where everyone started throwing front kicks to the face. | ||
| It became like a new popular little trend there for a little bit that hey look front kicks work again It's just they were forgotten about and that's what I'm hoping with the low kick they were forgotten about and they come back Yeah, I think there's room for a lot of different kicks in MMA that aren't there yet And one of them that we're seeing in some organizations is axe kicks And I saw some well there was that guy that was fighting in MMA for a while. | ||
| Did you ever see Adlon Amagov? | ||
| He was a wild fighter, man. | ||
| He's no longer part of the UFC? No, he retired. | ||
| He stopped fighting in MMA. But he was really talented, man. | ||
| He knocked out... | ||
| Was it TJ Wahlberger, I believe, in the UFC? With an axe kick? | ||
| No. | ||
| I forget what he kicked him with and punched him with, too. | ||
| But he had wicked kicks and incredible flexibility. | ||
| So he had this ability to... | ||
| You know, utilize techniques that you don't necessarily think of as knockout techniques, but he would, you know, smash guys with axe kicks and front kicks and round kicks and just... | ||
| For those, uh, the kickboxing fans listening, Andy Hoog? | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Spinning hook kicks to the leg. | ||
| There's a guy fighting on LA on the show. | ||
| You're at Gudo Innocence. | ||
| He fought in the UFC twice. | ||
| He fought in Strikeforce once. | ||
| He has a kickboxing finish with a spinning heel kick to the leg. | ||
| I saw that. | ||
| Yeah, his wheel kicks are nasty, man. | ||
| What about that other kid on the last UFC? Yair, is it? | ||
| Yair Rodriguez, yeah. | ||
| That was hard to watch. | ||
| Yeah, it was very tough to watch, but the kid's incredible. | ||
| Oh, he 360 roundhouse kicked BJ Penn in the face. | ||
| I don't know how BJ didn't go down. | ||
| Oh, BJ's got an iron chin, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Lorenz Larkin. | ||
| Pull up Lorenz Larkin versus... | ||
| Who did he stop? | ||
| What is Lorenz Larkin's... | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| Why can't I remember this right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
John Howard? | |
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Lorenz Larkin's recent fights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Neil Magny, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Pull up Lorenz Larkin, Neil Magny, because I want to show him that oblique kick to the body. | ||
| One of my guys out there that's in the green room, Matt Special, he actually sent me the fight. | ||
| I was too busy with glory notes, but he sent me that exact fight to watch. | ||
| Lorenz Larkin is a motherfucker, dude. | ||
| He's really good. | ||
| And he does a lot of spinning wheel kicks to the thigh, too. | ||
| He does a lot of wild shit. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| I think any kick should be able to be thrown at different levels. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| And that's what makes that kick more effective. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you're constantly going at one level, it becomes easy to defend. | ||
| So you've got to change the levels. | ||
| That's why, same thing as southpaws. | ||
| Guys don't kick enough from a southpaw. | ||
| Or if they do, it's constantly one leg. | ||
| It's either the inside leg. | ||
| They're not attacking the back legs, the bodies, the heads. | ||
| You've got to change levels. | ||
| Not enough self-pause or changing levels with that left kick. | ||
| Do you experiment or use any traditional martial arts techniques? | ||
| Like, do you ever throw side kicks or spinning kicks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not anymore. | |
| Not anymore. | ||
| I've really been taught to keep really tight on a shield, but now my whole style has actually been trying to add dimensions to it. | ||
| So I've been boxing a lot more. | ||
| And even though, yeah, I've had the concussions, it doesn't mean I stopped being a martial artist. | ||
| This is when my real martial arts training has evolved. | ||
| When I was fighting, I couldn't do all this stuff when I was fighting. | ||
| I didn't have time to sit there. | ||
| For example, the last three months, I fought Southpaw. | ||
| I've been training Southpaw. | ||
| It's a new dimension to my game, so now's the time I get to be a full-time martial artist and learn. | ||
| Watch how he throws this oblique kick to the body. | ||
| Back up a little bit, because this is the end of the fight. | ||
| He's setting it up with the low kick? | ||
| Well, he sets it up with everything, but what's interesting is the distance where he throws this oblique kick. | ||
| He throws it like right there. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| See how he throws it? | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's kind of like heel in, toe out. | ||
| Yeah, heel in, toe out. | ||
| And he's so fast with it. | ||
| Do you know why I like that? | ||
| Because if the elbow's in, it gets the foot probably just outside of the elbow or inside. | ||
| It kind of follows the inside forearm nicely. | ||
| Yeah, Lorenz is the best I've ever seen, throwing that kick, and throwing it right in there. | ||
| He tried. | ||
| He tried right there and missed, but he throws it from tight quarters, and guys think he's gonna throw low kicks, so he mixes it up with that, he's using the low kick, and then he sets it up with either the oblique kick or the low kick, and he constantly varies him. | ||
| Because that kick traditionally is meant to hit with the heel, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, he's hitting it with the heel. | ||
| But it's so weird to look at because you're like, oh yeah, you can do that too. | ||
| His setup is unreal with the low kick though. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| His setup is great. | ||
| And this was a great fight for him because, you know, I knew Lorenz was super talented before this, but Neil Magny was a highly rated guy and Lorenz just ran through him. | ||
| I mean, is the difference in the striking? | ||
| Magny is a really good all-around fighter. | ||
| He's really well-rounded. | ||
| He's got incredible endurance, but... | ||
| What Lorenzo's able to do is avoid all this stuff, avoid the ground game, keep the fight in his wheelhouse, which is in the stand-up, and just show how much more technical he is on his feet and how much quicker he is at closing the gap. | ||
| And he's staying long, too, right? | ||
| Yeah, and he's fighting a tall guy, too. | ||
| Yeah, if you think about it, if Larkin's got the shorter arms, why is he going to sit there and want to box with a guy with longer arms? | ||
| You've got to change your distance and the low kick's perfect. | ||
| It worked set up perfectly. | ||
| Now back to, oh, that's it. | ||
| Now back to Muay Thai and elbows. | ||
| Don't you think that elbows are, well obviously they're really effective. | ||
| You know and elbows and elbows from the clinch and knees from the clinch are obviously a really effective techniques Why do you like rules that don't have those in? | ||
| I remember listening to your podcast and someone asked I think you were talking about how you feel Muay Thai is like the purest art of stand-up fighting and It makes sense. | ||
| I like all fighting. | ||
| I like MMA. You know, obviously. | ||
| Love it. | ||
| I think MMA is probably my favorite thing to watch. | ||
| But what I like about Muay Thai is when you're seeing the clinch, you're using all the potential weapons from inside that position. | ||
| Whereas in kickboxing, they will separate you. | ||
| For me personally, why I don't like the clinch, it slows the fight down. | ||
| I'm not saying it's because you can be a crappy outside fighter, but be so strong and dominant in the clinch and win all your fights in the clinch. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, I mean, I think it's just a rule set. | ||
| And, I mean, each guy's going to be different from what they're good at or not good at. | ||
| It's how you train. | ||
| You have to change your style. | ||
| You have to change. | ||
| Even if I were to fight, we talked about kickboxing and MMA, you have to change your style. | ||
| But even if you fight between kickboxing and Muay Thai, you have to change quite a bit. | ||
| You have to stay longer. | ||
| If you're a fighter like myself who doesn't want to get into the clinch, you have to fight differently. | ||
| You have to use triangle stepping in your footwork. | ||
| You've got to use more distance. | ||
| You've got to stay away. | ||
| I can maybe only throw a A 2-3 hit combination before I have to exit and move again because I know he's going to try to grab me and clinch me and slice me up with his elbows. | ||
| Is there a more difficult transition? | ||
| Do you think that the transition between kickboxing and Muay Thai is more difficult or the transition between Muay Thai and kickboxing? | ||
| Because we're seeing a lot of Muay Thai champions that are now entering into kickboxing. | ||
| I'm going to say kickboxing to Muay Thai. | ||
| More difficult. | ||
| It's more difficult. | ||
| Why's that? | ||
| Because you're adding all these new weapons. | ||
| So you all of a sudden now have these weapons that you're not used to. | ||
| Where with Muay Thai, you kind of take away some, but you still have your other weapons that are effective. | ||
| And I had this conversation with a lot of the Muay Thai fighters. | ||
| They were saying how you got to look at the success of... | ||
| Muay Thai fighters in kickboxing. | ||
| You have Siddichai, Sitsong Pinong, who's a savage. | ||
| He's the current lightweight champion. | ||
| Fighters like Sanchai, Muay Thai legend, came in and his first kickboxing fight dominated. | ||
| This young Thai kid that just came in in France... | ||
| He came in and just left-kicked one weapon, shut down an aggressive punch to low kicker. | ||
| Just one kick, left-kick, left-kick, left-kick. | ||
| And these guys have been fighting for so long, it's fighting to them. | ||
| Fighting at the end of the day is still fighting. | ||
| So these Thai guys who are following traditional Muay Thai are still being very successful in kickboxing. | ||
| One of the biggest... | ||
| That guy dominated. | ||
| Yeah, Book has a great example of it, and it's still around too. | ||
| Sanchai is really interesting. | ||
| She watches Glory fight? | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| Yeah, he's fun to watch, man. | ||
| Oh yeah, tricky, slipping. | ||
| He'll fight big guys, small guys. | ||
| He put a whole social media campaign to fight Conor McGregor. | ||
|
unidentified
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In MMA? Yeah, I think so. | |
| Does he know how to wrestle? | ||
| No, I don't think so. | ||
| Well, good luck with all that. | ||
| What's your thoughts on Conor and Floyd? | ||
| That's a big thing right now. | ||
| Could that even happen? | ||
| It could happen. | ||
| Floyd is, again, the best defensive fighter ever. | ||
| In a straight boxing match, you've got to give the advantage to him. | ||
| You just have to. | ||
| Traditional wisdom would say that he's going to box Conor's face off. | ||
| You would look at what he's been able to do, but... | ||
| Connor's a fucking freak, man. | ||
| He's a weird guy. | ||
| His mind is so fucking strong, and he eats pressure. | ||
| He just eats it. | ||
| When he stepped into that ring with Jose Aldo, he looked like he didn't have a care in the world. | ||
| That confidence and that belief, man, is just through the roof. | ||
| Staggering. | ||
| And he had talked so much shit for so long and Aldo was just fuming. | ||
| He was steaming at the brain when he got in there. | ||
| Oh, he was so emotionally invested in that fight. | ||
| It was almost like he had never been disrespected like that and to be disrespected for months. | ||
| I mean, they had done this huge world tour where Conor stole his belt at a press conference and was yelling at him. | ||
| I mean, it was madness. | ||
| And then to have the fight and then Conor starches him with one punch 13 seconds into the fight. | ||
| Like, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That... | ||
| That stirred up a lot of attention. | ||
| Obviously Floyd is not Jose Aldo. | ||
| Floyd is, you know, it would be a boxing match. | ||
| In an MMA match, Conor would fucking kill him. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| He would kill him. | ||
| He'd kick the shit out of him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally different. | |
| It wouldn't even be close. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally different. | |
| Floyd would never get close to him. | ||
| Conor kicked his fucking legs out from under him. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| Yeah, it would be brutal. | ||
| But in a boxing match, one thing that Conor's got going for him, he's a way bigger guy. | ||
| I mean, I know he fought at 145, but Jesus Christ, he looked like a dead man when he made 45. Oh, yeah. | ||
| His shoulders are broad. | ||
| He's walking around in 170-ish, somewhere around then. | ||
| And I don't think Floyd is. | ||
| Floyd is a smaller guy than that. | ||
| And again, what you were saying about with kickboxing, I think the same holds true with boxing. | ||
| Those fighters, they're not cutting the kind of weight that MMA fighters are cutting. | ||
| So I don't know what they would weigh in at. | ||
| I would assume it would probably be like 155, somewhere around there. | ||
| And then once they got into the octagon, or the ring rather, it would be a boxing match, Floyd would probably have a disadvantage weight-wise of somewhere around 15 pounds. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| I can't see it happening. | ||
| But if they did, Floyd, look, Canelo had a big weight advantage over him in that fight too, and Floyd shut that shit down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's so good at boxing, man. | ||
| He's just so good. | ||
| He's so skillful. | ||
| The more I follow and train and learn boxing, something I wish I started a lot earlier on in my career, It's, man, it's like you only have two weapons, you know, and you all of a sudden have to make this complex strategy through, you know, creating openings. | ||
| And with kicks, you have a whole other dimension. | ||
| Elbows, clinch, but with boxing, man, you got two fists that you have to make land. | ||
| It's tough, man, and I get why it's called the sweet science. | ||
| Now, when you are training, are you sparring? | ||
| Uh, right, yeah, I do. | ||
| But I make sure I spar with the right guys and that kind of thing, but I still do spar. | ||
| And are you worried at all about getting hit when you're doing this? | ||
| Yes and no. | ||
| Yes and no? | ||
| You just love it too much? | ||
| I just love it, man. | ||
| I'm not stupid. | ||
| And that's the last thing you could ever call me. | ||
| I do everything very calculated, very smart. | ||
| So if I know there's an issue, I slow it down. | ||
| Or if there's an aggressive guy, but I still spar and I still start very controlled and I could pick it up if I want. | ||
| It's just, why? | ||
| was the question sometimes. | ||
| I don't need to get in there and have those sparring matches where I'm trying to take the guy's head off. | ||
| It just doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Well, obviously the consequences for you are so much more obvious and intense, knowing what you've been through. | ||
| I mean, is that in the back of your head at all while you're doing it? | ||
| Sometimes. | ||
| What's your take on these fighters taking a new approach on not sparring anymore? | ||
| Well, Donald Cerrone is taking that approach, and it seems really effective for him. | ||
| But I think part of what's doing well for him... | ||
| I mean, obviously, he has excellent timing. | ||
| Obviously, he's very experienced as a fighter already, and he likes to stay active. | ||
| But his take on it was that he was beating himself up too much in the gym, that he was sparring too many hard rounds, and he would go into these fights already damaged. | ||
| He just couldn't take shots. | ||
| Well, that's the philosophy in Muay Thai. | ||
| They don't really spar hard in Thailand. | ||
| It's because they fight very often, too. | ||
| But if you're not fighting very often, would you need that sparring? | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| I think there's... | ||
| Stupid sparring, and then there's quality sparring. | ||
| I think there's so many different ways to spar. | ||
| If you're constantly going in there and you're trying to slug it out and getting sloppy, that's not good sparring. | ||
| But you can get a good guy that kind of really sets his shots up really good, goes hard to the body on low kicks. | ||
| When I spar my guys, we're trying to take each other out with body shots and low kicks. | ||
| If I finish my training partner to the body, I feel like the king. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I walk around. | ||
| I'm just like walking like I own the place, man. | ||
| To the body. | ||
| To the body. | ||
| Low kicks. | ||
| Those are okay, but you don't need to finish guys to the head in sparring. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the Dutch way, right? | ||
| They would go 100% to the legs and to the body. | ||
| Speaking of some of the Dutch guys, like Jason Willness, who's fighting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His coach was telling me they do somewhere along the lines of 50 rounds of sparring a week. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| Again, I don't know how intense or the type of shots, but they rely a lot on sparring. | ||
| Well, Willis' fight with Simon Marcus, what a fight that was. | ||
| Jesus Christ, that was an amazing fight. | ||
| And Simon Marcus looked so fucking good in the beginning of that fight. | ||
| In the first round. | ||
| Oh my God, he was just exploding. | ||
| But it seemed like he drained his gas tank. | ||
| Yeah, got too cocky with that head movement. | ||
| Yeah, what was that about? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He, at one point in the fight, almost invited him to punch him and just kind of moved his head a little bit. | ||
| Then they gave him a count for that, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wouldn't have called that one a count, but the referee did a good stop on that because Willis was just unloading. | ||
| Well, definitely on the stoppage. | ||
| But it seemed like when they gave him a count, maybe the referee was seeing some shit we weren't seeing. | ||
| Because it seemed like Simon, from that point on, started to wither. | ||
| That was crazy, because you look how good he looked in the beginning of that fight. | ||
| He was blasting those kicks in. | ||
| He was like, Jesus. | ||
| And he was fucking going for it, man. | ||
| Which is, when you look at Simon, he's so shredded. | ||
| He's a beast. | ||
| He's a specimen. | ||
| And his style is so predicated on that. | ||
| He's reliant on that. | ||
| He's just, ba-bam! | ||
| You know yells in the ring like yeah, yeah intense, but he just couldn't keep it up man Couldn't keep that pace up. | ||
| This is why I like this fight with Adesanya. | ||
| Did you ever see his real stuff? | ||
| They call him the style bender guy is all like wicked He's throwing low line technical good distance control southpaw orthodox spin kick boxes. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| He's so on paper That is the style to beat that Dutch style straightforward fighting, right? | ||
| You want to fight on angles, use distance, use movement. | ||
| Where, how do you beat someone like Stylebender? | ||
| Constant pressure, you know, head-to-head fighting, low kicks. | ||
| So you're going to see Willness try to use that head-to-head pressure fighting like we saw with me and Raymond Daniels versus Adesanya trying to use that movement on the outside, pick his shots, fight on angles. | ||
| So on paper, both of these guys have the style to beat one another. | ||
| I think that's why that fight's super exciting for me to watch. | ||
| Well, Stylebender has been toying with the idea of fighting in MMA, too. | ||
| He's 9-0 in MMA. Nine knockouts. | ||
| Toying with the idea of fighting in the UFC, I should say. | ||
| And I'm really interested to see how he manages training and competing in both sports. | ||
| Because that was a giant issue with Joe Schilling. | ||
| Joe Schilling was trying to do both things at the same time. | ||
| When he just decided that it's just not really smart and he wasn't able to fight to his best ability in MMA. No. | ||
| Too many limits. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you don't have much time. | ||
| He's in his 30s. | ||
| How much time is there in a day? | ||
| How much time is there in your life? | ||
| If you want to be excellent at one thing. | ||
| That's why if you're a real perfectionist, MMA is tough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have to be okay with not being excellent at everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's a hard concept for a martial artist and an athlete to be like, hey, you know, your striking is just going to be okay, but we got to work on your ground, so don't worry about your striking now. | ||
| There's only so much time in a day you can do training. | ||
| That's a really interesting thing that you just said. | ||
| You have to be really okay at that. | ||
| Because, like, if you do jujitsu, you're going to get strangled by black belts. | ||
| But you go, well, if we were kickboxing, I'd fuck that dude up. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And you have to have that in your head. | ||
| But then again, you know, if you're doing kickboxing with a guy like Bukow, you know, like, well, you know, you're not as good as him. | ||
| A kickboxing, well, I'll fucking take his ass down. | ||
| Then you can't kick me. | ||
| You've got to be okay with it, you know? | ||
| Well, that was one of the things that George was so amazing at. | ||
| St. Pierre was so amazing at being able to do whatever he wanted to, dependent upon what you thought he was going to do. | ||
| Oh, he was definitely above average in everything. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But you put George St. Pierre in a kickboxing fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It wouldn't be the best. | ||
| It wouldn't be the best. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I mean, he's great. | ||
| He's phenomenal at everything else. | ||
| I think that's what made him so dominant. | ||
| He's above average on everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And also incredibly unpredictable and creative. | ||
| And athletic. | ||
| One of the most athletic guys I've seen in the sport. | ||
| Yeah, he's a really interesting case too because George didn't really wrestle competitively in college or in high school. | ||
| He learned wrestling from a bunch of Russian nationals in Montreal. | ||
| Which could be good. | ||
| You lose a lot of those things that aren't needed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, George is also, he's so humble. | ||
| Like, as confident as he was as a champion, and as a dominant champion, he's so humble. | ||
| Like, you could teach George things, and he would just completely absorb it. | ||
| He would never, you know, he wasn't the type of guy that would have a hard time learning new things. | ||
| He was very open to stuff. | ||
| Because I always follow him on social media and stuff, and I hope, I'm actually trying to get out to TriStar, I was talking for us a little bit. | ||
| I would love to go out there and train with their team and to see how we can connect together. | ||
| I think that would be an awesome connection. | ||
| It would be awesome. | ||
| I think he's still going to fight. | ||
| I mean, he's still talking about it. | ||
| Actually, when I heard that, that's when I hit up for Ross. | ||
| I was like, hey man, shit, call me in, man. | ||
| Let me help you guys on striking. | ||
| Yeah, tag me in. | ||
| I got to do some work with GSP when he did that Kickboxer Vengeance movie. | ||
| And it was cool because he came in, he's like, never met George in my life at this point. | ||
| He's like, Valtellini, I'm a fan of yours. | ||
| I watch you fight Raymond Daniels. | ||
| I was like, what? | ||
| And so for him, because he comes from that karate background, so for him to, you know, say that he liked my style and he was a fan of mine from my Raymond Daniels fight, I was like, shit, that's awesome. | ||
| Well, they brought Raymond Daniels in to prepare Roy McDonald. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And they were always... | ||
| Then I think even GSP went to Daniel's fight, Bellator kickboxing. | ||
| Yeah, he did. | ||
| Yeah, he did. | ||
| Yeah, well, it's another good thing, too, that Bellator is holding those really high-level kickboxing bouts, too. | ||
| You know, Kevin Ross is over there. | ||
| Yeah, he's been doing well. | ||
| Gaston Bolanos is now going to fight MMA for Bellator. | ||
| I saw that. | ||
| I was actually talking to their coach today. | ||
| I was like, man, we've got to get Gaston. | ||
| He'd be good in the UFC, but if we get him on Glory, I think he needs that good platform to really grow and be consistent with it. | ||
| I think he'd be a perfect fit for Glory. | ||
| You mean as far as coverage? | ||
| Yeah, he gets that full-time attention. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| We'll see how good he is in MMA. Is he just a phenomenal striker trying to test himself in MMA? How is his ground skills? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I know he can wrestle. | ||
| I know he's a good wrestler. | ||
| But like at a professional wrestling level, like ready to go kind of style? | ||
| It's hard to say because what I'm hearing is from just guys who train with him and guys who have trained MMA with him, they're surprised at how good his wrestling is. | ||
| Like he's just a really strong athletic guy, learns quick, but his Muay Thai is obviously very, very good. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very high level. | |
| Elbows, I see those spinning elbows. | ||
| He's killing guys in line fight with it. | ||
| Yeah, but he'd be perfect for glory. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, do you follow all these other organizations? | ||
| You follow Bellator Kickboxing? | ||
| I follow it. | ||
| I follow all fighting. | ||
| As much as I can. | ||
| Now, when you watch, like, say, if you watch Lion Fight or you watch Bellator or any of these other organizations, do you, like, make notes? | ||
| Like, oh, I'd like to see this guy over in Glory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| I do. | ||
| I try to hint it out. | ||
| I try to hint it out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What is Glory's plans? | ||
| I mean, I know you said that they have 18 events this year, which is amazing. | ||
| And they're going to be split between, we got some good investors in Glory from China, so we're going to actually try to get a few shows out in China. | ||
| We're looking at South America, and then the rest mixed between the U.S. and Europe. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| 18 shows. | ||
| This is the first time that Glory's coming out and saying, listen, there's 18 shows. | ||
| In our December Collision show, we got to announce Glory LA. We're going to go to Chicago next. | ||
| So we're having that time to show everyone that, hey, man, there's two, three shows coming up. | ||
| Here's time to prepare and plan. | ||
| Because when you don't have that funding all the time, it's kind of hard to have those multiple events and have that time to... | ||
| You know build up the shows properly and now that we have it I think the sports is gonna go crazy. | ||
| I hope so man. | ||
| I really do and I think it's awesome they're gonna have more than one a month. | ||
| I mean that's incredible. | ||
| People need consistency. | ||
| One a month plus six more. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| I mean you know every other month they're gonna have two events then. | ||
| That's what we want. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| That's really good. | ||
| And as far as coverage, I know you guys are on UFC Fight Pass. | ||
| It's also sometimes on ESPN, right? | ||
| It's on ESPN 3 and sometimes we get ESPN 2 live. | ||
| So it's all depending, but I'm hoping we can get on. | ||
| That's a huge step because we started off on Spike TV. Which was great. | ||
| It was okay. | ||
| It was going well. | ||
| It was great for me. | ||
| I can watch it. | ||
| But then what was happening was when we went to ESPN, it's just a whole different market now. | ||
| If we want to hit those casual fans, ESPN is going to be the place to do it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| ESPN 3, though, is weird. | ||
| We need to get it. | ||
| When we're live on 2, it seems to do well. | ||
| But we just gotta keep it keep it going. | ||
| Now, what are they gonna do with Rico and Bader? | ||
| Because the Rico Verhoeven-Bader Hari fight is probably one of the most most hyped-up heavyweight fights of all time. | ||
| Oh, there's 13,000 people. | ||
| Nuts. | ||
| Was it really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Like, when Bader Hari is in the building, like, people know he's a superstar. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like, he doesn't even have to fight and he's a superstar. | ||
| And it was in, uh, Uberhausen, Germany, which is where it borders Holland. | ||
| So all the Holland fans, a lot of the Dutch-Moroccans came in. | ||
| When he came out... | ||
|
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Crazy. | |
| People are just going nuts trying to rush and get him. | ||
| He's a superstar. | ||
| So it needs fights like that. | ||
| And it's kind of like that Conor McGregor. | ||
| He builds that energy around him that people just need to tune into. | ||
| And I think that's what Botter does. | ||
| So that rematch is going to be crazy. | ||
| So I think Rico is going to go fight. | ||
| He has some other fights that he has to fight. | ||
| There's contender tournaments that winner, he gets to fight. | ||
| He has a fight with Ishmael Lant planned, I think. | ||
| If you watch Collision, there's Benjamal Sadiq, who was that big monster heavyweight. | ||
| He's looking good. | ||
| You have guys like Jafar Willness, who are doing really well. | ||
| Benjamin Atticboy. | ||
| So there's so many fights for Rico, and I think Botter's going to be, once he heals up, and then maybe they'll do another one next year. | ||
| But nothing planned right now. | ||
| There's got to be another fight. | ||
| It has to happen, but how long does it take before Bader can be back in action? | ||
| He had a broken forearm, is that what happened in the fight? | ||
| He tore a ligament. | ||
| That's what it was? | ||
| I think it was a torn ligament. | ||
| I've re-watched it a few times, trying to see where in the fight it happened. | ||
| It's very tough to actually see where it happened, but apparently he tore a ligament in his forearm. | ||
| And it just wasn't working right. | ||
| You could tell he looked down. | ||
| Cause it didn't look like, when trying to find it, there was no real time where the damage happened where you seen him do it. | ||
| I don't know, it was weird. | ||
| But I think somewhere it must have torn and he just couldn't take the pain anymore. | ||
| God, that was so weird. | ||
| But it was interesting because Botter, who's just a notorious psycho, came out in the first round pretty controlled and measured, you know? | ||
| And approached the fight intelligently, too. | ||
| Said, no, we're going to do three rounds. | ||
| I haven't been fighting in a long time. | ||
| I want a five-round fight. | ||
| I want a three-round fight. | ||
| Didn't care about the title. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It wasn't for the world title. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think what he wanted to do was have this three-rounder Then let them meet again for the five rounds. | ||
| So if it's a torn tendon, or a ligament rather, that is a much more invasive issue, right? | ||
| That's a long recovery. | ||
| I haven't really gotten an update. | ||
| I'll try to find out for us. | ||
| Usually ligaments take a long time to heal, like maybe even need surgery or something like that. | ||
| And if that's the case, you might be out a year, unfortunately. | ||
| That fight needs to happen. | ||
| We need to get more people. | ||
| We need to get more people on. | ||
| And that's what got everyone hyped. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Got everyone excited about kickboxing again. | ||
| Botter's such a personality, you know. | ||
| That's the kindest use of that word, personality, ever. | ||
| Just got to keep him out of jail between now and the next fight. | ||
| Even in the post-fight interview, he goes to Rico and he looked at him and he said, you know what? | ||
| You did good. | ||
| You did good. | ||
| But next time, I'm going to knock you the fuck out. | ||
| And everyone was like, holy shit! | ||
| Like already, the next fight's already hyped up. | ||
| Even after the loss, we're like, yeah, this is what this sport needs. | ||
| Let's get attention. | ||
| And I keep trying to say, and I came out publicly a little while ago, fighters need to... | ||
| In the kickboxing realm need to do more to promote themselves. | ||
| They can't constantly rely on glory or other people to kind of promote them. | ||
| They got to go out there and really try to build themselves. | ||
| And the more they build themselves, the more the sport's going to build. | ||
| Yeah, I completely agree. | ||
| It's just so hard for fighters to figure out how to promote themselves. | ||
| It's hard enough to be a great fighter. | ||
| It's hard enough to train hard and get in shape and fight smart and to concentrate on social media, too. | ||
| And you see a lot of fails. | ||
|
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Yeah, tons. | |
| A lot of fake trash talking that just comes out clunky. | ||
| Terrible. | ||
| But then there's always these guys like Connor that do it, and you just go, Jesus, he's so effortless with it. | ||
| Chael Sonnen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But that's their personality, you know? | ||
| It just happens naturally. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sure, everyone would love to be Connor, right? | ||
| Fuck yeah. | ||
| Not many people can. | ||
| I mean, look, he's got Floyd Mayweather saying that that's the only fight that he's interested in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hey, Jamie, what the hell's going on with that thing up there? | ||
|
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I don't know. | |
| Started doing that. | ||
| I think it's like resetting itself. | ||
|
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I can't change. | |
| Is it YouTube? | ||
|
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I'm not controlling it right now. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| It's the TV. Oh, the TV's whacking at it? | ||
|
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I don't know. | |
| Oh, wow. | ||
|
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I'll turn it off and reset it. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Because I wanted to see that other fight that you were telling me about, the highlight reel. | ||
| Oh, with Medi Baghdad? | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| Yeah, that's a wicked one. | ||
| And it's a little clip of just me throwing different combinations and then you see that big elbow. | ||
| It's on YouTube. | ||
| Valtellini versus Medi Baghdad. | ||
| We'll put that up and we'll talk about that too. | ||
| So right now you are a hundred percent commentating on Glory. | ||
| You're taking some time off of your high school teaching. | ||
| So what do your days look like? | ||
| Right now, it's just me training again. | ||
| And I feel I want to get back into the first time. | ||
| I want to try doing different things. | ||
| Like my body needs to be stretched out a little bit. | ||
| The years of damage on my joints, I want to start doing more yoga. | ||
| I'm going to try some yoga out. | ||
| I want to create a kickboxing, a professional kickboxing program for other pros to come in and have daytime training and stuff like that. | ||
| That's beautiful. | ||
| There's lots of things. | ||
| So this whole fight was all about different. | ||
| And he's good. | ||
| He's doing pretty well in the UFC, I think, isn't he? | ||
| He's a tough guy. | ||
| That's such a gorgeous combination, man. | ||
| That left hook to the body and the low kick. | ||
| You know, that Ernesto Hoos combination. | ||
| He's another one of my all-time favorites. | ||
| He is my favorite. | ||
| God, he's so good. | ||
| There was one highlight that he has on that I've literally watched probably a million times before. | ||
| Why is he cheering? | ||
| Because he couldn't take the low kicks anymore, so it was his way of... | ||
| Hyping it up? | ||
| Yeah, you'll see the elbows soon. | ||
| This one right here. | ||
| See that elbow? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Watch what happens. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Gash. | ||
| Right away, huh? | ||
| It's those slicing elbows, right? | ||
| That's all he really threw. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| It was a downward elbow. | ||
| Wow, that is a fucking gash, man. | ||
| He basically only hit me with that shot, and that was in the fourth round. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Were you worried about the fight getting stopped here? | ||
| They probably should have stopped it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| But I mean, I was okay. | ||
| As a fighter, you're never going to say, stop the fight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But probably looking back, and then right away, I just come back and say, you know what, let me give you that leg. | ||
| Was the blood going into your eyes at this point? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| I remember. | ||
| And this was in 3D, apparently, that they filmed it. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Literally. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| So I would have loved to have seen it. | ||
| Man, that is a gash. | ||
| That's not even the big one. | ||
| The big one's in my head that you can't even see. | ||
| On top? | ||
| Yeah, it's just right through the hairline. | ||
| That is such a nasty combination, man. | ||
| Yeah, but he basically hit me with two elbows the whole fight. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Two gashes every time he did. | ||
| Well, you can't even see the scar, man. | ||
| You got a good plastic surgeon. | ||
| No, it was the backstage doctor. | ||
| His face, when he started to stitch me, was like, he was making all these faces. | ||
| I'm like, oh, man, I don't want to know that. | ||
| A doctor was making a face like that? | ||
| What kind of fucking doctor is he? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| That's crazy, man. | ||
| So, do you have any desire to compete again? | ||
| Have you figured your path out from here on out? | ||
| Glory's been too good, man. | ||
| I've been loving this commentary gig. | ||
| It's a new challenge. | ||
| It's new. | ||
| So, for me, I have a full... | ||
| This is the first time, even when I've won my world title, I'd work during the day as a teacher, eat my lunch as I drove to the gym, and then I would train at night. | ||
| I won a world title working a full-time job. | ||
|
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Wow. | |
| Because it's just at that point, there wasn't enough... | ||
| I'm used to a certain type of living and I don't want to have to fight to survive. | ||
| And my whole thing was I'm going to use fighting to build it as a platform. | ||
| So now, you know, because I have a university education, I'm able to have a commentary job. | ||
| I'm able to run my own gym. | ||
| I'm able to have other things going on. | ||
| So I was very lucky to build a good platform that I didn't have to rely on fighting for my income. | ||
| So right now things are too good. | ||
| There's more money on the sitting in a suit and, you know, trying to be Joe Rogan. | ||
| So, I mean, it's more money. | ||
| It's better on my health. | ||
| And you're happy and enjoying it. | ||
| I'm loving it. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| I'm genuinely loving it. | ||
| What was your education in? | ||
| Health and physical education. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So when you look at training methods, like some of the methods that are being employed today, some of the various strength and conditioning methods, is there anything that you think that really stands out? | ||
| Well the main thing for me is guys in combat sports who are using CrossFit as a form of weight training for fighting. | ||
| I don't necessarily agree with that, based on many things, because you're doing an unsafe exercise, like a deadlift or a clean, and you're doing it over time, where those movements are made to develop power, hip strength. | ||
| They're not meant for endurance. | ||
| So a lot of guys are hurting themselves. | ||
| I saw some CrossFit guys and they're doing these terrible rounded back deadlifts and they're just trying to get the bar up and weight and they're hurting themselves and they're doing too much. | ||
| But a sports-specific, properly tailored strength program is very important. | ||
| But CrossFitting is just killing guys. | ||
| Their body, the damage on the joints, it wasn't made to help you enhance. | ||
| There's different ways to do it in a safer way that helps protect your body. | ||
| Too many people are, you know, canceling fights with injuries. | ||
| I think they overtrain. | ||
| They're doing things that, you know, things like CrossFit where they're constantly killing their bodies. | ||
| That's interesting because some people think that, you know, fighters are overtraining and some people think, no, the problem is they just haven't built themselves up to the point where they can do this the way they need to. | ||
| Overtraining, man. | ||
| You think it's overtraining? | ||
| They're overtraining. | ||
| Now, when you were fighting, did you do any kind of strength and conditioning? | ||
| I was huge on it. | ||
| I was very big on it. | ||
| It's very complex. | ||
| It's very difficult to explain, but in a short term, it's like you have to... | ||
| It's a periodization. | ||
| So right after my fight, I would go into a hypertrophy phase where I tried to build myself because during your camp, you're losing weight. | ||
| You're trying to break down muscle because you're constantly training. | ||
| You're not eating as much. | ||
| So I would go through a hypertrophy phase, which is build and get big as strong as I possibly can. | ||
| Closer to fight time, I build that muscle into more explosive power. | ||
| So that's when I start doing, instead of high volume reps, I'm starting to kind of lower my rep count. | ||
| I'll do five sets of five on squat. | ||
| I'll do deadlifts to five. | ||
| And it's now translating that muscle and that size into power. | ||
| From there, you got to get the power phase turns into more of an explosive phase. | ||
| So I start turning that power into that explosive. | ||
| So I'll start doing like med ball throws, explosive jumping. | ||
| I'll box squat instead of a regular squat. | ||
| And even when you're in that hypertrophy phase and when you're building muscle, the whole point is to break your body down. | ||
| So you're sore. | ||
| Everyone knows how sore and how shitty they feel 24 to 48 hours after a workout. | ||
| And that's good because your body's breaking down and has to get stronger. | ||
| But when you have, when your goal is to fight and be good at your sport, you can't have that soreness because it's going to take away from your training. | ||
| So that's why we really have to periodize our training to make sure we can peak on fight night. | ||
| There's a lot of talk in MMA circles that strength and conditioning is the most important thing, that once you're in camp, that's what you should concentrate on is your cardio, your endurance, and that your fight skills actually come in secondary because you already know how to fight. | ||
| There's some people that believe that what you need to do is work on your fight skills all the other time, not that you abandon them, but that they take second place, and that the most important thing is having a phenomenal gas tank. | ||
| Eh, I don't know about that. | ||
| I think fighting, you have to constantly... | ||
| You're fighting, so you have to fight. | ||
| You have to practice what you're doing. | ||
| I think the most important is your mind. | ||
| The mind. | ||
| The mind is number one. | ||
| Did you involve yourself in any sort of mental training? | ||
| I was naturally gifted with it. | ||
| I naturally had the ability to be able to block things. | ||
| That could have been my years of sports background. | ||
| But, man, come fight time, I barely even thought of the fight. | ||
| People were like, oh, you're going to Japan next week to fight. | ||
| Two fights in one night. | ||
| I was like, yeah, okay. | ||
| I'll deal with it when I have to get there, kind of thing. | ||
| I put my work in. | ||
| The more you stress about it... | ||
| The more you release the cortisone, the more that your body breaks itself down, the more stressed you get, the less sleep you're going to have. | ||
| All terrible shit when you're fighting in a few days, right? | ||
| So my whole strategy was just to say, I do my work. | ||
| And the problem with you said about overtraining and guys fight. | ||
| Then they party. | ||
| They eat like shit. | ||
| They constantly don't focus on fighting. | ||
| They're like, hey, you're fighting in eight weeks. | ||
| Then they go, oh shit, I've got to do a crash course and get up to shape and then they overtrain. | ||
| A true martial artist doesn't look at the fight... | ||
| On a fight basis. | ||
| It looks at longevity. | ||
| I'm looking at, okay, for this fight, yeah, my boxing might improve a little bit, but I have to improve something else. | ||
| And there's constantly improvements in all areas. | ||
| So as soon as you're done your fight, yeah, it's healthy to take a week or two off. | ||
| Some guys three weeks, depending on the damage you had. | ||
| But you've got to get working again. | ||
| You've got to get back to sharpening your tools, your weapons, your mind. | ||
| You've got to get back into it and constantly training. | ||
| You've got to learn 24-7. | ||
| I don't agree with guys who think they can just train for camps. | ||
| A real fighter, a real athlete, a real martial artist is gonna train all year round. | ||
| Yeah, you have to look at it also in terms of You're involved in one of the most dangerous pursuits athletically than someone can engage in. | ||
| And any time that you're getting better is going to take away some damage that you could possibly sustain. | ||
| It's going to make you better administering damage. | ||
| It's going to make you better. | ||
| It's just a matter of staying the course and being disciplined. | ||
| You have to work it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I mean... | ||
| Intensity changes. | ||
| You're not going to be, right after your fight, you're not going to be training at that hard intensity that you were before the fight, but it's still important to constantly train and constantly improve. | ||
| Now, when you say that you were kind of naturally good at it mentally, no one coached you into how to relax about it? | ||
| You just kind of instinctively knew that's the way to do it? | ||
| It just worked. | ||
| I knew I had to do it. | ||
| I knew I had to do it. | ||
| Like, for me especially, I wasn't fighting guys with my level of experience. | ||
| Like, you're like, hey, my first fight with Glory, I fought a legend in the sport, Murat Direcci. | ||
| And when Glory signed me, right after that fight we watched with Mehdi Baghdad, I got an email from a random guy at this point. | ||
| I'm now friends with him. | ||
| But it's like, hey, I can get you fights. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, bullshit. | ||
| Everybody can get me fights. | ||
| And then I sent them, like, yeah, here's my manager. | ||
| Go off. | ||
| And then they're like, hey, yeah, we want to sign you to Glory. | ||
| Just like a I was like, oh, wicked, because this is what I wanted, right? | ||
| My dream's here. | ||
| So, like, oh, your first fight is against Murat Direcci in Turkey. | ||
| I was like, okay. | ||
| I never really had the same Murat Direcci that I think it is, so I looked it up. | ||
| I was like, yeah, it's the same guy. | ||
| He had, like, 90 fights. | ||
| It was my seventh. | ||
| In his hometown, you know, I'm going to press conferences with Goken Saki, Daniel Gita, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, I have six professional fights and all the Turkish cameras are all around us and I didn't know what was going on. | ||
| But I was confident in myself. | ||
| I believed in myself. | ||
| I knew I had the skill to do it. | ||
| I looked at my coach and I'm like, can I beat this guy? | ||
| And he's like, yeah, you'll kill him. | ||
| I'm like, all right, cool, let's do it. | ||
| And then at that point, I just had that much confidence and belief in myself that nothing mattered. | ||
| Now, when you go into a fight like that and you approach a fight like that and you're saying that these guys had so much more experience than you, so you had to almost approach the fight as a more experienced fighter? | ||
| Yeah, and I did. | ||
| My whole thing was I knew what I was really good at. | ||
| And I couldn't... | ||
| With someone with 100 fights, you're so comfortable in there. | ||
| And if I play that relaxed fighting game with them, it's not a good look. | ||
| They're better at picking their shots probably. | ||
| I'd still probably beat them. | ||
| I'm not going to say that. | ||
| But looking before the fight, I'm going to make them fight my fight. | ||
| If I fight their fight, there's a good chance they're going to beat me. | ||
| So I went in and... | ||
| Basically, you have to fight this fight in order to beat me. | ||
| And this was my strength. | ||
| I was stronger than most of the guys I fought because I had a good strength and conditioning program. | ||
| Actually, who's outside, Costa Cladianos, he was strength and conditioning coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs in Canada. | ||
| So he knew a lot. | ||
| He was amazing. | ||
| So I was the strongest guy that I've ever... | ||
| I haven't seen anyone who was really stronger than me in the ring. | ||
| So I went in there and I fought my fight. | ||
| Good coaching. | ||
| Paul Min has good coaching. | ||
| So everything was just on point for me. | ||
| Now, do you do any visualization? | ||
| Did you do any sort of meditation? | ||
|
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It just happened naturally. | |
| Nothing planned out? | ||
| I would just be driving my car and I'm thinking about how it feels to win and how I'm going to win. | ||
| It just happened naturally. | ||
| And then I kind of blocked it off where I didn't even think about it. | ||
| The last thing you want to do is go to your bed at night and think about a fight. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| Then you're like, oh shit, what if I get knocked out? | ||
| Oh man, everyone's watching me? | ||
| Who's watching this? | ||
| It gets scary. | ||
| So you gotta learn to be able to block it off. | ||
| And I think that's where my teaching job helped a little bit. | ||
| Because when I was in my teaching job, I really didn't think of the fight. | ||
| I was like, oh, I'll deal with it after. | ||
| Because fighting is a lot of stress. | ||
| A lot of guys can't handle it. | ||
| And there's a lot of guys you see on pads that are incredible. | ||
| These guys can whip pads, kicks, punches. | ||
| One of the most beautiful display of technique on pads. | ||
| You put them in the ring... | ||
| They just don't have it mentally. | ||
| Too much anxiety, too much stress. | ||
| They just can't handle that pressure. | ||
| So that's one of the biggest parts, is having that confidence in yourself and that mindset. | ||
| I wanted to go back to what we were talking about with strength and conditioning, where, like I said, there's a philosophy that many are taking in MMA, that the strength and conditioning is more important during fight camp than actual fight training itself. | ||
| This is about MMA, though. | ||
| Do you think that maybe the physical requirements of fighting five-minute rounds And, you know, a lot of the grappling and clinching, which is just unbelievably grueling on your body. | ||
| Do you think that there's different physical requirements in that sport, maybe, than kickboxing? | ||
| I think it's just different, right? | ||
| It's just different. | ||
| You need that different. | ||
| If I were to roll one minute in jiu-jitsu, I'd probably be gassed out. | ||
| Like, I wrestle around sometimes just as a joke and... | ||
| Actually, the father of my niece and nephew is one of the pioneers in Canada of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| I don't know, Richard Monkey Nanku. | ||
| And he's just been around him my whole life. | ||
| If I roll for one minute, I'm gassed. | ||
| You know, I can't do it. | ||
| But if they kickbox with me for one minute, they can't handle it either, right? | ||
| So it's just what you prepare for. | ||
| Or if you're that marathon runner and you try to swim five lanes in the pool, you're done. | ||
| Totally different energy systems. | ||
| But I have to say, MMA is... | ||
| Different demands on the body. | ||
| It's a totally different demand on the body. | ||
| You need to be able to wrestle and then stand up and be explosive, which is really difficult to do. | ||
| Do you foresee yourself getting involved any more deeply in MMA? I would love to. | ||
| I would love to. | ||
| I'm just waiting for a guy. | ||
| I'm not that guy that's going to really go out there. | ||
| Unless it's George St. Pierre, obviously. | ||
| But I'm hoping to one day, obviously, have a build a good group of guys who are fighting in the UFC. I would love to have that. | ||
| That's the ultimate goal. | ||
| To be able to impart your knowledge on some of the guys that are coming up. | ||
|
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I would love to. | |
| For sure. | ||
| And especially at the gym now, I've been loving it. | ||
| Been loving it. | ||
| And seeing a lot of those UFC guys now are hopefully seeing all these videos and these drills that I'm posting and what I can have to offer. | ||
| And it'd be good. | ||
| There's so many times I watch the UFC, I'm like, if this guy had a little bit of, you know, me coaching him, and I'm sure they have great coaches, but... | ||
| You know, they just need that little extra. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| And I think this is also such a cool time for fighters to be able to hear these words from guys like you and to be able to easily access those videos that you're putting up and all these striking breakdowns that guys like Lawrence Kenshin are putting up and all these other people. | ||
| I mean, it's an amazing time as far as the amount of information that you can get for fighters. | ||
| Yeah, and people have to use it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's a lot of pride too, right? | ||
| It's tough sometimes. | ||
| Like even with a lot of the fighters that I approach and I give tips to, when you're at a higher level, you think you know everything. | ||
| And that's kind of like you said, George was very humble that way where he can kind of like allow and accept knowledge. | ||
| I think that's important. | ||
| A lot of guys can't. | ||
| They think they're just they know and everything and that's terrible mindset I think you're totally right and I think that There's no way like you what you were saying about if you want to be a very good MMA fighter There's no way you're gonna be the best at everything. | ||
| It's impossible so When you got a guy like George, you know, one of the beautiful things about him was that he was aware of where his limitations lie. | ||
| He was aware of where his strengths were, and he knew how to put it all together. | ||
| I always talk about fighting as if, like, it's a language. | ||
| Right. | ||
| A lot of people know how to use words. | ||
| A lot of people know what the words are. | ||
| But can you string them together eloquently? | ||
| And that's one of the things that I see when I'm watching that fight with Mehdi Baghdad. | ||
| When you throw in that combination, left hook to the body, low kick. | ||
| It's a beautiful flowing sentence in a lot of ways. | ||
| You're expressing yourself in that. | ||
| That's a good way of putting it. | ||
| Because I was talking to someone, I think it was Matt Embry today. | ||
| I did fighter interviews before I came. | ||
| So a lot of their things they were saying are fresh in my mind. | ||
| But he was saying it's like... | ||
| It's human nature. | ||
| Everyone knows what fighting is. | ||
| You can really watch two guys, and now you can say, who's winning? | ||
| Who did more damage? | ||
| You can see it. | ||
| It's like looking at the words on the page. | ||
| But once you know how to read, it becomes a totally different game. | ||
| It's not just words on a page anymore. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a good way of putting it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a beautiful thing, man. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Fighting is like nothing else. | ||
| I mean, it's so heartbreaking when you see someone get devastated and smashed like BJ Penn did against Yair Rodriguez, but on the other hand, so beautiful when you see what Yair was able to do to a legend like BJ Penn. | ||
| I mean, it's such a... | ||
| Fighting in all forms, whether it's boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing, MMA. It's, to me, one of the most engaging things for someone to watch. | ||
| Would you want to fight in the UFC if you could? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No? | |
| No. | ||
| First of all, I'm old as fuck. | ||
| But in your prime? | ||
| If I was competing still when the UFC was around, I probably would have done something. | ||
| But also, when the UFC first came around, it was like one weight class. | ||
| You know, when I stopped fighting was in 1989. That was the last kickboxing fight that I had. | ||
| And that was, um, there was nothing. | ||
| And there was no money in it. | ||
| And I was getting headaches, too, just from sparring. | ||
| And I did not spar smart. | ||
| I sparred meathead style. | ||
| I know a lot more today than I ever did then as far as consequences and what's important and how to learn better. | ||
| I was good at being obsessed with things and really just focusing on them constantly all the time, but it was more frantic and frenetic. | ||
| It wasn't calculated and intelligent. | ||
| It's like crashing in and learning. | ||
| Just being obsessed. | ||
| Just constantly training all the day. | ||
| But I think that, you know, one of the things that we're learning now is the right way to learn. | ||
| Like you were saying, that so many fighters are over-trained, you know, and that so many fighters spar too hard. | ||
| Like you're saying, people think that hitting the pads and getting tired is good work. | ||
| It's tough, though, because when you have a fighter's mentality, you gotta think it's easy to be outside, and I could say it because I've been in it, but when someone on the outside says, oh, these guys, you know, they need to train harder, they need to keep doing more and more and more, and when you're fighting, you're like, shit, I gotta fight in three weeks. | ||
| You never think your conditioning's good enough. | ||
| You could train every day, all day, put your best effort in, you're never gonna think your conditioning's good enough. | ||
| You're going to be like the day before the fight. | ||
| You've done everything possible in your training. | ||
| You're going to go on and you're going to second guess your conditioning. | ||
| You're going to wonder if you did enough. | ||
| You're going to wonder, shit, I should have trained now. | ||
| Why didn't I, my Sunday rest day, I should have been training. | ||
| I should have been getting better. | ||
| But really, you have to get in that mindset that, you know, you don't need more all the time. | ||
| And that's why guys are getting injured. | ||
| They're putting their bodies, they're not letting themselves rest, and they're getting sick. | ||
| I bet you if you go on one of your UFC shows and you ask every fighter on that card who's sick, I bet you 50% would be sick with some sort of cold or infection or sinus infection. | ||
| Most of those guys are probably sick because their immune system is crashed from not eating, constantly training, stress, not sleeping. | ||
| I bet you more than half are sick with something. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| I was always sick before Taekwondo tournaments. | ||
| Sinuses for me. | ||
| Every fight I had a sinus infection. | ||
| And I was even smart about my training. | ||
| I still got sinus infections. | ||
| Did you monitor your heart rate? | ||
| Did you wake up in the morning? | ||
| No, I never really did that. | ||
| It's one of the things Steve Maxwell told me. | ||
| He said it was very important to find out where you're at. | ||
| He goes, when you're in shape, find out what your resting heart rate is, measure it in the morning, and if you wake up in the morning and it's 5 to 10 beats over what it normally is, take the day off. | ||
| It's like your body's fighting something off. | ||
| And you probably won't even think that, and you just got to push through. | ||
| But when you push through in those... | ||
| Makes it worse. | ||
| That's when you break yourself down. | ||
| It's that balance between being intelligent and being tough, being disciplined, but also being calculated. | ||
| That's where I think your team is very important. | ||
| You have to have someone like, I had it in my camp, but if you look at Feras and TriStar, we'll use that as an example. | ||
| He monitors everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he probably looks at George and says, you know, George, you're a little off today. | ||
| Like, from the way George comes in, he probably knows already. | ||
| How's his mood? | ||
| Is he angry right now? | ||
| Is he cranky? | ||
| Is he snappy with his words? | ||
| Like, what's he doing? | ||
| You know, because you've been around the fighters so long that they're like, my coach will say, okay, it's time. | ||
| Take the day off. | ||
| I was like, no, no, no, I'm going to train now. | ||
| He's like, take the day off. | ||
| And then I'll take a day off, I come back, and I'm beasting it in the gym the next day. | ||
| Where I would have just continually beat down my body and never really recovered and got better. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, like, you would come in, and you'd feel kind of flat, and you'd be like, fuck this, I gotta push through this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, sometimes it's important to push through it, but other times when you know you're at that level, it's like, hey, you gotta pull yourself back. | ||
| See, that's the crazy thing about fighting and training and learning. | ||
| But it fucks with your mind. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you might be able to do it and pull it off, and it might not be the right way, but it might be successful. | ||
| And so you do it that way every time. | ||
| I mean, I've had fighters tell me there's no such thing as overtraining. | ||
| And I'm like, well, that's crazy. | ||
| And you're not training hard enough. | ||
| Well, there's definitely such a thing as overtraining. | ||
| There is. | ||
| A lot of guys have done it. | ||
| If you're constantly steady with your training, you're not training right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You better be getting yourself to the point in your training. | ||
| Everyone was asking me. | ||
| I trained once a day. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| Usually, once a day. | ||
| And Saturdays, I would train twice, but the morning was a strength training, and then the night was kickboxing. | ||
| Now, when you say strength training, what did that involve? | ||
| Well, I would do my... | ||
| Depending on the day, I would do a push day, a pull day, and a lower body day. | ||
| So lifting weights? | ||
| Lifting weights, yeah. | ||
| Strength day was always lifting weights. | ||
| And I used weight training. | ||
| So, for example, I would kickbox, like, Monday and Tuesday, just once a day. | ||
| But that hour and a half session, I left everything. | ||
| When I hit the bag, I couldn't hit ten rounds of bag. | ||
| Because after round three, I'm gassed. | ||
| I'm putting all my force, all my energy. | ||
| I'm training for a nine-minute fight. | ||
| I'm not training for a marathon. | ||
| So you need to train the proper energy system in order to, you know, be the most successful. | ||
| And that's kind of that anaerobic system of constantly pushing yourself, letting yourself recover, pushing yourself, letting yourself recover. | ||
| If I'm constantly... | ||
| That's why I never ran a day in my career. | ||
| You never ran? | ||
| Never ran a day in my career. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| I did not hit the road a day in my career. | ||
| Wow, that's shocking to a lot of people, me included. | ||
| Everyone who hears it's like, you're nuts, you're crazy. | ||
| I said, why? | ||
| Give me one good reason why. | ||
| I can give you one, is if you need that time to reflect. | ||
| If you need that time to mentally prepare yourself. | ||
| But what does it do for you in the fight? | ||
| Are you ever going to run 10k in a fight? | ||
| No, it's a sprint. | ||
| Do you see sprinters like Usain Bolt doing take 10k runs every morning? | ||
| He might do it to loosen up and stay relaxed, but there's other ways of doing it. | ||
| You've mentioned it on your podcast, shadowboxing. | ||
| Instead of going for a 10k run, shadowbox for 20 minutes. | ||
| Go into the ring and shadowbox. | ||
| Envision your opponent. | ||
| I'm fighting Raymond Daniels. | ||
| I'm going to pressure fight Raymond Daniels. | ||
| So I'm going to shadowbox for 20 minutes in the ring like I'm pressure fighting Raymond Daniels. | ||
| I'm mentally focusing myself. | ||
| I am using the right energy system because I can pick up my intensity as much as I want. | ||
| If I just want to stay loose, I just won't punch. | ||
| I might not even punch. | ||
| I might just use my footwork. | ||
| Within the ring to kind of just set my mind, set my feet, but there's so many different ways. | ||
| You can skip. | ||
| You can, you know, sometimes I do light training on the bag. | ||
| I'll do some light rounds on different bags just to warm up my hands and my body and that kind of thing, but I never ran. | ||
| Too much damage. | ||
| You're running, shin splints, the damage on your joints. | ||
| And it didn't hit the energy system you hit in fighting, so why do it? | ||
| That's really interesting because you always had a very high work output in your fights and you had very good endurance in your fights. | ||
| Everyone thought there was a secret. | ||
| I said, I trained hard. | ||
| In an hour and a half, I trained hard. | ||
| When I hit the bag, I hit the bag. | ||
| I wasn't looking around at the time, looking at how much time's left on the clock. | ||
| I hit the bag. | ||
| If I knew what I was doing, if I was working something technical or drilling, it's different. | ||
| But when it's time to work, you gotta put the work in. | ||
| You gotta be able to cut out all those distractions that you have. | ||
| It doesn't matter what you have to do after. | ||
| It doesn't matter what's going on in your day. | ||
| If your girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you or whatever the frick it is, you gotta be focused. | ||
| And you have an hour and a half to do it. | ||
| Now, when you see MMA fighters that are putting in two-a-days on a regular, sometimes three, what do you think of that? | ||
| I think it's okay if you're doing it right. | ||
| I mean, MMA, there's more things happening, right? | ||
| So, if you're doing a roll in the morning, It's okay, but you're not going to go the hardest rolling you have and then hit the hardest strength and conditioning you have and then at night do your hardest kickboxing session. | ||
| There's no way the next day you're actually putting 100% of your energy in those sessions. | ||
| So maybe sometimes if they're doing three sessions, they might put 60% in each session. | ||
| You're never really hitting that last 40%, which is probably the place you want to be. | ||
| You want to be in that place where you're not comfortable. | ||
| You want to be in that place where you're tired, because that's what fighting is, getting yourselves to that point. | ||
| You want to throw up if you have to, you know? | ||
| They say it's your mind gives up before the body does. | ||
| So when you're tired and you're starting to feel all that lactic acid and you shut down, they say it's your brain shutting down first and you have some time to keep going. | ||
| So you gotta prepare your mind to be able to withstand that. | ||
| If you're hitting bag for 10 rounds and you're looking around and you're fucking around, like... | ||
| What are you accomplishing that? | ||
| Unless you're working on technique or warm-up. | ||
| Everything has to have a purpose. | ||
| I don't believe in doing something that doesn't have a purpose. | ||
| Well, that's one of the things that I really like about the way you drill and one of the things I like about the way you shadow box is that you do everything like you're in a fight. | ||
| Everything, guard is high, stance is perfect, footwork is perfect. | ||
| When you say that you lift weights, what kind of weightlifting were you doing once a week? | ||
| It's the basics, but the most effective. | ||
| So I would do, I always squatting. | ||
| Squatting is very important. | ||
| Why do you think squatting is so important? | ||
| Lower body. | ||
| When everything in athletic movements comes from the lower body. | ||
| You have to have strong hips. | ||
| You know, your glutes got to be firing at a level. | ||
| And, you know, when you punch, when you kick, everything comes from your lower body. | ||
| And that's what people don't understand. | ||
| So were you squatting heavy? | ||
| Were you squatting lightweights, high reps? | ||
| Depends what phase I'm in. | ||
| If I was in hypertrophy phase, I was probably doing 10 sets of 10 on a lower weight. | ||
| As I was in power strength phase, I was doing 5 sets of 5. As I was more of the explosive phase, I would do more of like 5 sets of 3. And then I'd maybe superset it with an explosive jump or a standing long jump or a... | ||
| You know, a skater-style movement, but I'd always use it. | ||
| I'd add sprints. | ||
| There's one times where I would do, you know, five heavy explosive squats, and then I would line up on the track right after my set, and I would do, like, ten-yard sprints just to work that explosiveness. | ||
| So that whole point of getting strength into explosiveness. | ||
| So that kind of running you believed in? | ||
| Well, just that little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But not too much. | ||
| That would be like once or twice in a camp. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Otherwise, I know my central nervous system was going to shut down. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Once or twice in a camp, huh? | ||
| I wouldn't do it very often. | ||
| Even that sled running, you know how all the guys are doing the prowler, poles and sleds? | ||
| If I did that, I'd be out of commission for a week. | ||
| Because my body would just take a beating and then I wouldn't be able to function and do what I really had to do, which was kickbox the next day. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So it had to have a purpose. | ||
| I would do it as a mental test for myself. | ||
| I would do it as, you know, my weight's not coming off right now. | ||
| I'm holding a lot of water. | ||
| Let's run the sleds. | ||
| I used it as that more than just constantly. | ||
| If you're running the prowler every day, your nervous system's taking a freaking beating. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Now, what about nutrition? | ||
| What did you eat? | ||
| How did you monitor your diet? | ||
| I wasn't super calculated as people are today with counting their macros and micros. | ||
| That's too complicated. | ||
| And I don't believe in overcomplicating things. | ||
| I love the basics. | ||
| I believe in the basics. | ||
| So I never overcomplicated things. | ||
| I knew what good carbs and bad carbs were. | ||
| I knew good timing when to eat. | ||
| I knew what things I should be eating when. | ||
| But I never really counted how many calories I was eating in my day. | ||
| I just knew through experience. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, it just came through experience and practicing and playing around with my body. | ||
| There's no cookie-cutter, you know, approach to it. | ||
| So, like, what would a typical meal be like for dinner? | ||
| It would always be a balanced meal. | ||
| Have a little bit of protein, a little bit of carbs, and some vegetable. | ||
| There's always has the three. | ||
| At first, what I was doing when I first started finding, I was like, ah, carbs make you fat. | ||
| Carbs make you fat. | ||
| Like, everyone thinks. | ||
| Everyone wants to diet. | ||
| The first thing they think they have to do is cut their carbs out. | ||
| But now there's all this new research about fats and how important is intermittent fasting and how important it is to keep high fats in your diet. | ||
| So guys are doing the avocados and coconut oils to kind of get that fat. | ||
| But I just like the balanced meal. | ||
| I'd rather lower my protein and have a good carbohydrate, which is my first line of energy. | ||
| So I would eat a lot of sweet potatoes, quinoas, baked potatoes sometimes. | ||
| Did you supplement with vitamins? | ||
| Not much. | ||
| Omega-3s, usually. | ||
| That's about it. | ||
| I take an electrolyte after training. | ||
| That's about it. | ||
| Nothing crazy. | ||
| Now, what about... | ||
| Did you do anything for... | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I was going to say, but I wasn't the guy that... | ||
| If I knew how to fight, I cut weight from eight weeks out. | ||
| It wasn't like, hey, I'm going to just eat like shit and then I'll deal with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Eight weeks out, my diet started with my can't. | ||
| Right, so you try to lower your body fat first. | ||
| I only want to lose two pounds a week. | ||
| Anything more than two pounds a week becomes unhealthy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I'd get to about 10 to 12 pounds the week before my fight, and that was it. | ||
| Once I was there, that last week was all water. | ||
| And did you do any, like, deep tissue massage or any ice baths or anything like that for recovery? | ||
| I did a little bit of that. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, I did, but it wasn't a big focus. | ||
| I did a lot of rolling out, stretching, that kind of thing, but... | ||
| I like Epsom salt baths. | ||
| Those are one of my things. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| Yeah, that's great. | ||
| Some people are obsessed with deep tissue, though. | ||
| I know guys that get deep tissue massage every day after training. | ||
| And you've done that, was it the chiro, how do you say it? | ||
| Cryotherapy? | ||
| Cryotherapy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's intense. | ||
| You like it? | ||
| Love it. | ||
| You've never done it? | ||
| No, I haven't done it yet. | ||
| You want to do it? | ||
| I'll do it. | ||
| Let's do it today. | ||
| I'll take you. | ||
| Done. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I've never done it. | ||
| Oh, you'll love it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it'll freak you out. | ||
| It's cold as fuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's just, you can't believe how cold it is. | ||
| You're like, how the fuck is this? | ||
| I was like, I gotta try it. | ||
| I gotta try it, but. | ||
| Yeah, never really... | ||
| 250 degrees below zero. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And how long are you in there? | ||
| For like 10 seconds? | ||
| Three minutes. | ||
| Three minutes? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you'll do a minute and a half. | ||
| They won't let you go more than a minute and a half for the first time. | ||
| What, because they're trying to say I'm soft? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| For anyone. | ||
| It's just the rule. | ||
| The second time you'll do it, they'll let you do three minutes. | ||
| How long are you going for? | ||
| Three minutes. | ||
| I've done 340. That's the longest I've ever done. | ||
| Those last 40 minutes. | ||
| Is it three minutes of hell, or is it three minutes of... | ||
| It's not fun. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Jamie, you've done it? | ||
| What's it like, Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Describe it. | |
| Not really claustrophobic isn't the word, because there's kinds you can get in that your head's above. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can still breathe in, you can still talk to people. | |
| But this kind is not like that. | ||
| Your head's in there? | ||
| Yeah, you're in a meat locker, essentially, where the liquid nitrogen cools the oxygen. | ||
| That woman that died in Vegas, do you know that story? | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, she said it herself, and apparently she was kind of short, and her mouth was below the outer lip, and so she was breathing in the liquid nitrogen. | ||
| And you can't, that's like getting choked out. | ||
| You have no oxygen. | ||
| So she just fell asleep. | ||
| And she froze to death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| And they found her the next day frozen solid. | ||
| See, this is the kind that they have. | ||
| I always see the heads out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the kind that most people do, where your head is out and your body's freezing. | ||
| But look how much fun she's having there. | ||
| She's having a great time. | ||
| She's having a blast in there. | ||
| She's doing an ad. | ||
| The kind I do, if you go to cryo-healthcare, Jamie... | ||
| The kind we do, you have to wear a mask, you wear like a surgeon's mask over your face, you wear earmuffs, you wear gloves, and you wear... | ||
| Like slippers. | ||
| Yeah, you wear socks, and then you wear like rubber Crocs. | ||
| And you step in there, and you're inside a chamber. | ||
| Let's see if they have some images. | ||
| So you can see what it looks like. | ||
| Have you done that sensory deprivation stuff? | ||
| I have one in my basement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah? | |
| Yeah, I love it. | ||
| I do that all the time. | ||
| That's giant. | ||
| Now, if you're claustrophobic, good or bad, someone says you don't even think about it. | ||
| It's not the best thing for people who are claustrophobic, but claustrophobia is psychological. | ||
| See, that's where it is. | ||
| See how these guys are... | ||
| That's how they're dressed. | ||
| And the earmuffs and the face masks. | ||
| And so you go in that one chamber that's on the right. | ||
| That's where you take off the robe. | ||
| And then you step into the one on the left. | ||
| And that one is the one where you freeze your dick off. | ||
| So you'll do, in a little bit, we're going to take you over there. | ||
| You'll do about a minute and a half in there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's awesome. | |
| I'd love to, man. | ||
| I just want to know about it because people keep asking me. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| Well, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who's actually on tomorrow, who's a huge proponent of both sauna and cold shock therapy, and she believes that heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins that you get from sauna and you get from cryotherapy, they provide your body with some incredible anti-inflammatory responses. | ||
| And your body, essentially, when you go to a sauna, your body's freaking out. | ||
| Your body's like, what in the fuck? | ||
| It's so hot. | ||
| But if you do it in a controlled environment for a certain amount of time, your body produces these heat shock proteins that are really beneficial for you. | ||
| And so she believes in the sauna. | ||
| There was a study that she was talking about where the sauna showed... | ||
| A 50% drop in mortality across the board from all things, whether it's from cancer, disease, all these different things. | ||
| Like the people who regularly did sauna had such a healthy response to that sauna and having those inflammatory markers reduced in the blood. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Using the sauna four to seven times per week associated with... | ||
| Oh, it's 40%. | ||
| 40% lower all-cause mortality. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was reading something. | ||
| Tim Ferriss, he has a book now called Tools of the Titans. | ||
| And he, someone, he, I guess he, he has his own podcast. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Someone just got the book for me. | ||
| And he basically talks to all the top people in their field. | ||
| And so he wrote a list of like all the tips that these people suggested. | ||
| And a lot of them was on sauna and baths and never really got into too much of the science behind it. | ||
| But these, you know, people in this field are saying sauna three times a week is probably one of the best things you can do for yourself. | ||
| Yeah, what she was writing there, HSP, that's what she's talking about, heat shock proteins. | ||
| And I bet you could probably reproduce that with a hot bath. | ||
| That's what HSP. Cytokines, too. | ||
| That's also what you're getting from cryotherapy. | ||
| You're getting these anti-inflammatory responses. | ||
| And I think you probably could get it from hot yoga, too. | ||
| Because hot yoga, you get so fucking hot in there. | ||
| Do you do hot yoga? | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I did it. | ||
| I took a little break, but I'm starting again. | ||
| Oh, it's amazing. | ||
| It's amazing for flexibility, too. | ||
| The class I was in was an hour and a half. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that shit was long. | ||
| It's long. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| The last 15 minutes are bullshit. | ||
| And the last one, you literally sit up, lay down or something. | ||
| I sit up and I'm like, oh, shit, I'm dying, man. | ||
| Yeah, it's brutal. | ||
| You definitely get used to it, though. | ||
| But, you know, I see, like... | ||
| Girls that go to my place. | ||
| It'll take two classes in a row, so I feel like such a pussy. | ||
| Yeah, seriously. | ||
| They're in there for three hours. | ||
| I'm sitting there struggling, following this old lady besides me, killing it. | ||
| I have to use the little foam blocks to even sit down, and everyone's just laughing. | ||
| You can see all the mirrors, too. | ||
| The mirrors make it worse, man. | ||
| Everyone's feel the whole place is staring at me. | ||
| Especially if they're looking at you, this fucking muscular stud. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And you're next to a 60-year-old lady who's got her foot above her head. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| When I was going, I was with my ex-girlfriend. | ||
| So a lot of the old ladies would go, is that your boyfriend? | ||
| He's so cute for trying. | ||
| Because I was trying my ass up. | ||
| Because I'm an athlete, man. | ||
| I'm not letting this old lady be able to do this shit and I'm standing here struggling. | ||
| Are you crazy? | ||
| But it's like you were talking about before. | ||
| If you took a marathon runner and then put him in a pool, they would be dying. | ||
| But still, you're an athlete, man. | ||
| You're going to try, man. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Competitive guy like you. | ||
| Sweating extra from trying so hard. | ||
| It was tough, but I love it, man. | ||
| You know what I feel from yoga, especially from the last year where I've been really consistent with it, is that I feel like all the... | ||
| Like, there's a lot of things that are really good for your body. | ||
| I think lifting weights is good for your body if you do it correctly. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Martial arts, all sorts of training is good for your body. | ||
| But I feel like what yoga does for your balance and for all the things that connect, like for your joints and your spine... | ||
| I've never done anything where I can feel my back pop loose, like pop, pop. | ||
| Like, there's things you do in yoga where you... | ||
| You bend down and you reach behind your heels and you tuck your hands under your heels and then you straighten your legs out with your body flat and so you're pulling your body apart with your legs. | ||
| Like you're literally pulling your spine apart. | ||
| You hear it go thunk thunk thunk thunk. | ||
| It's so good for you and you leave like Like, my back is always, like, from all the years of jiu-jitsu, there's always, like, a pain. | ||
| There's always, like, a something. | ||
| Something nagging. | ||
| Yeah, there's always something. | ||
| But yoga eliminates almost all that shit. | ||
| Because even when I was doing it, like, I realized how much scar tissue and shit have developed in my joints. | ||
| Like, even if my arm, like, I can't fully straighten my left arm. | ||
| And there's the one where you have to kind of put your pinkies together and lay on your arms. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| And that really helps stretch it out. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, this stuff's not good. | ||
| And then I'm sitting on the couch at home and I'm sitting in positions where I was like, my legs are crossed off. | ||
| I'm like, I can't even cross my legs. | ||
| And here I am like in like a Mahatma Gandhi here with my legs super folded in half. | ||
| I was like, this is crazy. | ||
| And I loved it. | ||
| Since then, I wasn't consistent with it, but I said I'm going to be a yoga practitioner for life. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Yeah, it's great for mobility. | ||
| And for people that just want to be healthier, it's just the ability to use and move your body. | ||
| I think it's amazing. | ||
| The problem with guys is that negative stereotype. | ||
| Oh, it's so gay to do yoga. | ||
| Do it, man. | ||
| Try it. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| It's weird that it has that stereotype. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| It's so stupid, but it's incredible. | ||
| I'm loving it. | ||
| It's one of the more underestimated things in terms of its difficulty factor. | ||
| You know, it's just very underestimated. | ||
| Do you think MMA fighters should be doing it? | ||
| I think what you were saying about you could only do so many things is very important, which I think one of the reasons why your philosophy about only working out one time a day, no running, I think, well obviously it worked out great. | ||
| You had amazing success as a fighter. | ||
| And obviously your endurance was spectacular, your output was spectacular. | ||
| I mean, you were an aggressive pressure fighter. | ||
| So when you say that you had this sort of measured approach to training, I think it's very interesting. | ||
| Some of the times I've gotten my ass kicked the most in jiu-jitsu was after I took yoga. | ||
| I took yoga in the morning and then I went to train at 9 and just got fucking choked. | ||
| They say you have to give some time off from training or something because your body is so loose. | ||
| The other thing is they say you don't want to overstretch your muscle because then you take it out of that optimal range to fire. | ||
| So I don't know if you really overstretch things. | ||
| I don't know if that's true. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| I know they say that in terms of stretching before. | ||
| If your hamstrings are too flexible or... | ||
| I don't think that necessarily makes sense. | ||
| I think where it makes sense is you shouldn't stretch out before you do explosive things. | ||
| They used to think you should. | ||
| Now they think you should warm up and get your body sweaty and loose, but that in actually stretching, while you really stretch something out, you actually lessen the amount of power that you can generate with those muscles. | ||
| But I always feel like full mobility. | ||
| I mean, outside of that, I think that's where the argument is. | ||
| And I think it's obviously correct because there's been research to back it up. | ||
| But I don't think there's any research that shows that being able to do a full split in any way will take away your kicking power. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I mean, think about the amount of power that a lot of these guys can generate that are really flexible. | ||
| If there's any, there might be a trade-off, like maybe it makes you a little less powerful, but a little more mobile, and then you can generate more power and build more power up and still keep that mobility, that would be optimum. | ||
| But I think there's probably a middle ground there that you need to reach. | ||
| What do you think of, I know George St. Pierre came and made gymnastics popular. | ||
| And then Conor McGregor with that movement. | ||
| What's your take on that movement? | ||
| I think footwork is critical in MMA. I think it's really important to be able to get out of the way and move in as fast as possible. | ||
| And it's one of the things that Conor is spectacular at. | ||
| Conor is so good at sliding back, sliding back, BAP! And there's also a totally different philosophy that's a part of striking with those little tiny gloves. | ||
| It's much more difficult to put yourself up in a shell. | ||
| I mean, the way you would fight was so fucking classic. | ||
| I really, you know, I'm not kissing your ass anymore. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| This is the last time. | ||
| But I really loved how you were so solid, rock solid with your defense and your fundamentals. | ||
| Chin tucked, gloves up high, and it was very hard to get through that. | ||
| That doesn't necessarily work the same way in MMA because guys can sneak punches through. | ||
| It's a little harder. | ||
| And they can sneak punches around. | ||
| But I still think you have to have that as a base. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| No matter what, you're going to get in fight exchanges. | ||
| And there's a lot of guys who are good at closing distance. | ||
| So it's better to at least, hey, I'm going to leave and exit with my hands up rather than even exiting with my hands up. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I couldn't agree more. | ||
| And again, the way I throw it... | ||
| I can still make it work in MMA because one of the tricks that I teach my MMA guys is instead of keeping that front arm pinned, you keep it up here. | ||
| So it covers the center. | ||
| So you're lifting your front elbow a little higher? | ||
| And kind of tucking it in. | ||
| So this way, your elbow now covers the center line. | ||
| Right, I see what you're saying. | ||
| So now it's harder for straight punches. | ||
| And you gotta think, you gave me a straight punch and I put my elbow in front to block the center line, if you punch your two knuckles on an MMA glove on my elbow, good luck. | ||
| Yeah, break your hand. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you can really manipulate that front elbow to be able to kind of use that defense and kind of make it work. | ||
| But again, I still believe in movement. | ||
| There's another issue in MMA, too, is breaking hands. | ||
| A lot of guys break hands with those little gloves. | ||
| But when you did old-school martial arts, how did you train your hands? | ||
| Well, you know what, man? | ||
| There's a lot of guys. | ||
| My friend John was a nut about this. | ||
| My friend John Lee, who was a U.S. National Taekwondo champion, he used to punch bricks, and he had one knuckle. | ||
| His two knuckles had forged into this one giant callous knuckle. | ||
| Have you seen those old Masoyama guys? | ||
| I don't even see a knuckle anymore. | ||
| But then I heard that shit's super bad as you get older. | ||
| You get massive arthritis and you can't write your own name anymore. | ||
| I played around with doing some bag work with no gloves on. | ||
| I keep my wraps on sometimes, mostly just to avoid the scraping and the cutting, but I'll hit the bags with no gloves on and I'll literally hit my hand on different angles. | ||
| For example, I'll sit there and I'll hit the side, I'll back fist it. | ||
| You need that Like I said earlier in the podcast, you need to strengthen everything. | ||
| You need to strengthen all those little parts. | ||
| And that's why one of my last Instagram videos I said, add weighted just a one pound or two pound dumbbell to your shadowboxing. | ||
| Because again, you're working those little joints you might not necessarily work. | ||
| Like if you have those dumbbells and you rotate your hands in a circle, you're going to feel your elbow work at different movements and different ways that help strengthen the joints. | ||
| So those little minor things add up at the end. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| Did you ever squeeze like hand grippers or anything like that? | ||
| Not really with that. | ||
| A lot of guys are into that, too. | ||
| I've gotten more into that lately. | ||
| That was old school. | ||
| Yeah, there's a company called Captains of Crush. | ||
| They make ones that are like 197 pounds to squeeze. | ||
| They make them up to... | ||
| I think they go even heavier than that, but I have ones at home that are 140, 160. I keep them in my car and just fucking... | ||
| Especially for your jiu-jitsu though, that develops naturally. | ||
| Yes, it does develop naturally, but that accentuates it. | ||
| Definitely accentuates it. | ||
| And hanging from your hands, like from a chin-up bar. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| My jiu-jitsu guy at my gym loves it. | ||
| He's like, man, he's like, you've got to hang. | ||
| And we're like, buddy, get out of here. | ||
| He's literally hanging. | ||
| And it was like, he says what it's done for his joints has been incredible. | ||
| Yeah, that was another shoulder issue. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| That's another Steve Maxwell thing he brought up on this podcast about being able to loosen the shoulders up and alleviate a lot of the impingements through hanging. | ||
| And people who are interested in this, they're listening, if you have a shoulder injury, there's a bunch of videos of it online while they explain it. | ||
| Another thing that I got into recently was bottoms-up kettlebells. | ||
| You know, like this is a kettlebell here and when you most of the time you hold a kettlebell you'd hold it like this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, when you hold it the other way, you hold it like this. | ||
| You really have to shrink. | ||
| Yeah, you're developing like real stability in your shoulders that you don't ordinarily. | ||
| It's more like a stability. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, because it's not like it's hard to hold it up. | ||
| You know, like it's not the weight itself not that hard to lift because like this Ironman kettlebell is only 40 pounds. | ||
| I was actually talking about those today. | ||
| They're dope, right? | ||
| Whitney Miller. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She's with Glory now, right? | ||
| Yes, yeah, yeah. | ||
| She's the backstage. | ||
| She was telling us about it. | ||
| Yeah, she was telling me you guys are friends. | ||
| Yeah, I love these things. | ||
| But bottoms up, kettlebells, doesn't have to be an Ironman, any kind. | ||
| It's very weird how hard it is to balance it in place. | ||
| It's probably like the yoga, right? | ||
| It's excellent for stability. | ||
| Some of those poses when you're on your ball of your foot balancing on one leg, the strongest bodybuilder in the world, not a chance. | ||
| What I was shocked with was how my feet would hurt. | ||
| When I first started getting into yoga, I'm like, God, my feet are fucking killing me. | ||
| Like when you would do the standing bow pose, my feet would be shaking. | ||
| I was like, it's so weird. | ||
| It's such a weird, weird little muscles that you don't think, you got to think, well, God, I've been kicking things forever. | ||
| My feet have to be strong. | ||
| So back to that movement. | ||
| Do you like that movement stuff? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I do and I don't. | ||
| But it's like what I was saying about yoga. | ||
| I think you made a really good point. | ||
| You can't do everything. | ||
| And you probably wind up doing too much. | ||
| And you want to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I think that there's something to the ability to move your body. | ||
| And it's one of the things that Eddie Bravo's brought up many times with... | ||
| We have seen over the last few years is break dancers who have gotten into MMA or gotten into Jiu Jitsu rather and they're fucking phenomenal. | ||
| I mean two of Eddie's best students, Richie Martinez and Gio Martinez are fucking break dancers. | ||
| So these guys are ridiculously... | ||
| their dexterity is ridiculous. | ||
| So they can like stand on one hand and have the other hand up in the air and their feet are up and they spin. | ||
| They can spin on their head. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Unbelievable ability to move their bodies. | ||
| And that translates directly into grappling. | ||
| And they learn so quick... | ||
| I had heard about these guys when they were just starting. | ||
| He's like, dude, these guys, they've been doing jujitsu for three months. | ||
| They're fucking choking everybody. | ||
| I'm like, that's crazy. | ||
| He's like, I'm telling you, it just makes sense. | ||
| They can move their body in a way that you can't move your body. | ||
| And I think there's mobility and the ability to effectively... | ||
| Manipulate your body in a way that's alien to other people, I think has significant advantages. | ||
| And I think that comes from what that Ido Portal guy is doing. | ||
| And I think that comes from yoga. | ||
| I think that comes from a lot of these break dancers. | ||
| But it's a matter of, like, how much time do you spend doing that? | ||
| And is it something that you start doing when you're 28 when you're a professional fighter as a world champion? | ||
| Or is it something you need to do when you're 15 and you're a crazy kid fucking around in high school and you get really good at it and then you translate that ability to move your body directly into martial arts? | ||
| See I look now and as a 31 year old, I look back now and I say what would I have done if I knew I was gonna end up as a professional fighter? | ||
| What would I have done from a young age in order for me to improve to where I was? | ||
| I want to hear your take on it. | ||
| So what would you do as a kid? | ||
| I'll give you an example. | ||
| One of my things I would have done, gymnastics from a young age. | ||
| Great thing to say. | ||
| And my other one, dancing. | ||
| It's a great thing too, yeah. | ||
| That's a great thing. | ||
| That's why I think Chris Brown's going to fuck up Soulja Boy. | ||
| Told you. | ||
| Yeah, I think the ability to move your body, you know, the ability to move it really well. | ||
| I mean, I noticed that going from Taekwondo to Jiu Jitsu that I had great balance. | ||
| Transferable skills. | ||
| Yeah, you're used to standing on one leg all the time, so your ability to maintain that position is much better than someone who's not. | ||
| And I noticed that even translating directly into yoga. | ||
| But I think it depends on what kind of fighting you're trying to do. | ||
| Like, if I wanted to get into MMA, one of the things that I tell people is that wrestling is probably the most important skill The ability to dictate where the fight takes place. | ||
| That was a gigantic key to the success of Georges St-Pierre and the success of many, many fighters. | ||
| And also the success of many strikers is their defensive wrestling, their ability to keep the fight standing. | ||
| So if you have the ability to take a guy down and you have the ability to make sure he doesn't take you down, then you can better dictate where the fight takes place. | ||
| So I think and I think it's also a skill that's really that's that translates so incredibly well when you learn it early in life, but Striking Is the scariest shit. | ||
| And striking is also something that I think there's a diminished effectiveness in learning as you get older. | ||
| There's something about, like, I've seen people that didn't start doing jiu-jitsu until they're 30 and they developed elite black belt skills. | ||
| How's Russell Peters, by the way? | ||
| Russell's great! | ||
| Is he good? | ||
| Is he good at jiu-jitsu? | ||
| Is he just starting? | ||
| He eats too much. | ||
| He drinks too much. | ||
| He's beautiful. | ||
| I love Russell. | ||
|
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I saw that picture. | |
| It's awesome. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| He's training. | ||
| We train, you know? | ||
| He gets after him, man. | ||
| He gets tired. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I love him. | ||
| I love that guy to death. | ||
| But back to the question about training. | ||
| It depends on what you would want to do. | ||
| So with striking, then, you were saying? | ||
| Striking, I think footwork and movement. | ||
| I think the ability to get in and out. | ||
| When you look at guys who are really good at not being there when their opponent attacks, when you look at guys who have fantastic footwork and I think maybe if you want to be a striker, I think really just working... | ||
| I think what you're saying about your training regimen, that you would essentially... | ||
| You're not running. | ||
| You're not doing all these different things. | ||
| You're focusing entirely on what you will do in an actual fight. | ||
| So maybe you didn't do anything wrong. | ||
| Maybe you did it perfect. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It works, man. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just think, like you said, people are doing way too much, and that's the problem. | ||
| And they're not... | ||
| Things have to have a purpose, like my strength training. | ||
| There's all these new tools and these new fun things like, hey, let's do this crazy exercise where I'm doing a deadlift into a squat into some shoulder press. | ||
| Why don't you deadlift? | ||
| Do it well. | ||
| And then why don't you squat? | ||
| Do it well. | ||
| And then why don't you shoulder press? | ||
| And do it well in a safe, proper manner. | ||
| It doesn't have to be overcomplicated. | ||
| I think people are trying to overcomplicate and that's what kind of takes away from their success is overcomplicating things. | ||
| And wouldn't you also agree that it depends entirely upon the kind of body that a person was born with? | ||
|
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Absolutely. | |
| Genetics is huge. | ||
| Yeah, it's giant. | ||
| And it's sort of like the inescapable factor. | ||
| If someone has genetic advantages, they just win. | ||
| They even say power hitting. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You can teach someone to hit harder, but there's just those naturally... | ||
| Guys who can just knock you out from day one. | ||
| Just a natural hitting ability. | ||
| You can't teach someone to hit like George Foreman. | ||
| No. | ||
| No way. | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| No matter how much you turn your shoulder and you put your hip into it, you're not hitting them. | ||
| Isn't it crazy too that you can't tell by looking at someone? | ||
| Like there's some people you would look at them and they don't look like a big puncher, but they were murderous. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You know what it is? | ||
| A lot of those tall guys, they have that stiffness in that, it's like a stiff power that's really tough sometimes. | ||
| It's like a stiff power, but it hurts. | ||
| Well, it's a mechanical advantage, you know, that leverage, which also translates to jiu-jitsu. | ||
| It's a giant advantage in jiu-jitsu to have long limbs. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| Back to the long point from before, but I became my best as a martial artist with color commentary. | ||
| You have to know everything. | ||
| You have to watch a fight, and you have to be able to assess instantly what's going on, how they're doing it. | ||
| You've got to do it on the fly. | ||
| You don't have time, right? | ||
| So you have to be able to pick things up quickly. | ||
| And now I'm at the point where I can look at someone, as soon as they get into their stance, I'll be like, okay, you've got to do this, this, this, and this. | ||
| Well, it's funny, too, when you can tell when a guy's going to kick. | ||
| Like, oh, here comes a right kick. | ||
| You just see it. | ||
| You see that back heel come up. | ||
| You see him leaning a little bit. | ||
| Or especially when the guy's going to spin. | ||
| That's the big giveaway. | ||
| You see that left hip turn a little. | ||
| The insteps that you step out. | ||
| Yeah, you can see it. | ||
| You can see it. | ||
| How do you think? | ||
| Would you be a good coach? | ||
| If I was invested in it, I would be the best coach that I could be, for sure. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons why I stopped teaching. | ||
| I stopped teaching when I started doing stand-up comedy because I wasn't being a very good teacher anymore. | ||
| Just because you didn't put the time and the effort into it? | ||
| It wasn't where my head was at. | ||
| My head was now, I was, you know, there was no, like I said, there was no money in fighting when I was fighting. | ||
| There was nothing. | ||
| And so, unless I was, you were a boxer, you weren't going to make any money. | ||
| So that was before Fear Factor? | ||
| Yeah, way before. | ||
| So there was essentially no way to have a career other than teaching. | ||
| And so when I started getting into stand-up comedy, I realized, like... | ||
| I got talked into it by guys I used to train with. | ||
| And when I started doing it, I realized, like, oh, wow, like, I could make a living doing this. | ||
| Like, this is actually, there's a real path. | ||
| Like, there's guys that I know that make a living doing this. | ||
| Where everybody I know that's fighting is broke, or they're slurring their words. | ||
| And, like, guys from the gym that would be in gym wars all the time, and now they're all fucked up. | ||
| They don't want to know where they parked their car. | ||
| There was a lot of that shit that was scaring the fuck out of me. | ||
| So when I started getting into comedy, I quit teaching. | ||
| And I suffered financially because of it, but I would rather do that at the time, my mind was, I would rather suffer financially than give anybody a half-assed coaching job. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, coaching MMA, I think, is one of the most difficult things in all sports. | ||
| I'm sure coaching kickboxing is probably very similar in that regard in that you're so invested in your students. | ||
| There's so much on the line. | ||
| You have to be. | ||
| Yeah, and there's nothing you can do. | ||
| You can train them as much as you can, but you've got to let them go when they get into that ring or get into that cage and hope that it all plays. | ||
| But the other problem I find with MMA is a lot of coaches, there's too many coaches I find. | ||
| You have, a lot of these guys have a boxing coach that's telling them to box a certain way. | ||
| Then all of a sudden they're going, hey, I got to do Muay Thai now. | ||
| So they have a Muay Thai coach is now telling them to do Muay Thai this way. | ||
| Then all of a sudden, hey, we got to do spinning shit, so let's do what it was here. | ||
| So now all of a sudden you have three different coaches all telling you to do different things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So now this poor fighter is going to go to the ring. | ||
| Yeah, you might know everything from all of them, but what are you going to do? | ||
| You're going to get confused. | ||
| That's where, again, basics are important. | ||
| That's why I don't think you should overcomplicate shit. | ||
| So I know if you're going to jab, I know how I'm going to do it. | ||
| I don't have time to sit there and be like, okay, I know I can parry. | ||
| I know I can slip. | ||
| I know I can time with the low kick. | ||
| You have to know. | ||
| And I think with too many... | ||
| Because coaches are complicating shit for these guys. | ||
| Where they think they have to hit all of these things, so they're going to all these different coaches and it's way over complicated. | ||
| So who do you listen to? | ||
| How do you listen to? | ||
| Which way is the right way? | ||
| Which one is the wrong way? | ||
| My boxing coach is telling me to turn my heel out. | ||
| My kickboxing coach is telling me to keep my front foot pointing forward. | ||
| Which is the right way? | ||
| It's a good point, and I think that's where guys like Matt Hume, guys like Farras Ahavi, that's why they're so important. | ||
|
unidentified
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Absolutely. | |
| Because they're overall MMA coaches. | ||
| And also I think what's really important about guys like Matt and Farras is that both of those guys are highly accomplished martial artists in all disciplines. | ||
| So they really know how to put it all together. | ||
|
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That's the key. | |
| Like Farras is a black belt in jiu-jitsu, he's an outstanding striker, so he knows how to combine all those things together. | ||
| I think that's so critical. | ||
| Greg Jackson was probably the same way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, there's maybe a dozen of them on the planet, and that's a problem. | ||
| If you're not near any of those, and you start out with someone, and then that coach becomes like a mentor figure to you, and then you realize, oh, my coach is kind of limited in a lot of ways. | ||
| It's very difficult to separate yourself from someone. | ||
| It's hard to see that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you can't be a fighter who you put all your trust into this man to help you out, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, he's lacking things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember with Mitch Gagnon, he came to me and he was like, he had a guy working with him all the time. | ||
| And I was just kind of like, I go to his friend who asked me to help him with his strike. | ||
| I was like, man, I don't know if I can help this guy. | ||
| He's just so bad technically at this point. | ||
| Where I'm like, it's a lot of work I have to do to kind of fix and clean things up. | ||
| And that's my way. | ||
| But he was so good at just being a beast and not caring that he was successful. | ||
| My way of putting things is like, I wish I learned this earlier. | ||
| I wish I had this. | ||
| And then there was kind of, sometimes you can kind of get angry about it, man. | ||
| Why did I waste so many years with this guy if this is the way it should have been done from the beginning? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, obviously people are limited geographically as far as having a good coach near them. | ||
| But I urge anybody listening to this to put the research in before you join a gym. | ||
| It's so much harder to unlearn something than it is to learn it. | ||
| One of the things that I would deal with in teaching Taekwondo is guys who came from other martial arts that didn't know how to do certain things correctly. | ||
| Their knees would be down. | ||
| They didn't lift the knee above the hip. | ||
| They didn't get real power into anything. | ||
| They'd never worked with a kicking bag. | ||
| They'd never worked with a heavy bag. | ||
| They'd just done stuff in the air. | ||
| And so they didn't have any power. | ||
| And so you'd have to try to re-teach them. | ||
| And when they would get tired, it'd be the same thing. | ||
| Foot up, knee down, everything would be all screwed. | ||
| Even when you're tired, you've got to stick to the proper technique. | ||
| You would fall into what you learned first. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It's tough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| And you always want to trust that person. | ||
| Because you can't. | ||
| You have to. | ||
| And that's a lot of the fighters' confidence comes from their coach. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you have to. | ||
| But it's kind of hard. | ||
| It's very hard. | ||
| It's hard to find that balance. | ||
| And it's also you have to have a relationship with that coach where you like them. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That's hard too. | ||
| So if you were to have an MMA fight, where would you go? | ||
| Man. | ||
| Is that putting you on the spot? | ||
| No, but I think those guys that you talked about right there, Farasa Habi, Matt Hume, those two guys are, in my opinion, like cream of the croc. | ||
| Duke Rufus. | ||
| You know, I think you would have to have someone also that sees what you do well and says, well, this is obviously your primary base. | ||
| You're really good at this. | ||
| So let's work on all these other aspects, too. | ||
| But we're not going to try to take this away from you and turn you into a wrestler. | ||
| And then you're going to fight a real wrestler and get fucked up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's, I mean, and it's such a creative approach because you're creating a fighter. | ||
| I mean, you take someone and you're putting all the tools together and you're helping them, helping mold them. | ||
| But then it's also up to them, too. | ||
| It's up to them to be improvisational inside the ring or the octagon and to figure out how to put those things together. | ||
| And everyone's got their own little style. | ||
| Their own, yeah. | ||
| Their own approach, you know? | ||
| And again, a lot of the difference is, like, I mean... | ||
| Just because I do something differently than someone else doesn't necessarily mean their way is the wrong way. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Of course, I'm going to believe my system is the best system and the way, but it's not to say it's the only way. | ||
| No, there's no only way. | ||
| And that's what I love. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have to be open to know that there's other ways. | ||
| And that's where I've been touching around on that. | ||
| Have you read The Book of Five Rings? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And he talks about you have to know your weaknesses. | ||
| You have to know other arts in order to make your art and style the best. | ||
| That's Musashi. | ||
|
unidentified
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Nice. | |
| That's the tattoo. | ||
| I've been reading it. | ||
| I can only read one page at a time. | ||
| Because I'm like, shit, I gotta sit there, I gotta reflect on it. | ||
| It's deep, man. | ||
| He was a deep dude. | ||
| I mean, he killed 60 people with swords. | ||
| One-on-one combat. | ||
| Miyamoto Musashi, one of the greatest samurais ever. | ||
| And during a weird phase in history, he was a ronin, traveling around, just getting in sword fights. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| And doing calligraphy and art. | ||
| He opened my mind to this idea that you have to be balanced in order to be effective in combat. | ||
| You can't have any holes in your mental game. | ||
| And one of the ways to not have holes in the mental game was that he would approach everything as like art. | ||
| Everything you did, whether you were writing your name, whether you were, you know, filling out a form, driving your car. | ||
| No cars back then, obviously. | ||
| But everything that you did, you would do with excellence. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who's a bad motherfucker? | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| I'm loving it, man. | ||
| Like, it's deep. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| And you talk about it and you look at it. | ||
| You can look at yourself sometimes and be like, yeah, man, I'm the modern day of some of the stories he does. | ||
| Like, I did that in a different way. | ||
| You know, and I think that's really cool for me to see and read. | ||
| Yeah, because it translates. | ||
| You know, this guy lived that life. | ||
| It was just a different time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then sat down and tried to relay the information that he had accumulated over this life of fucking people up with swords. | ||
| I have a random question. | ||
| I'd ask you about fighting. | ||
| True or false? | ||
| Was it a real story that you wanted to fight Wesley Snipes? | ||
| It wasn't my idea. | ||
| Because I always wanted to know about that. | ||
| Yeah, that was a real story. | ||
| One of the original producers of the UFC, Campbell McLaren, who's a buddy of mine, Yeah, I did a reality show with him. | ||
| What was it? | ||
| I did Combates Americas. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I was a guest coach on it. | ||
| Well, they're still doing that show. | ||
| They're still having fights. | ||
| He's still putting on fights. | ||
| It was cool because one of the guys that I was like a guest kickboxing coach on the show now fights with Glory, Daniel Morales. | ||
| Yeah, wow. | ||
| That's awesome, man. | ||
| It was a cool experience. | ||
| So he came to me with the idea because Wesley Snipes had tax problems. | ||
| That's what it was about. | ||
| So yeah, we're going to do it. | ||
| So you would have? | ||
| I was gonna, yeah. | ||
| Would it have been a UFC sanction, bro? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That would have been interesting. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| That's why I asked earlier. | ||
| I was like, should I ask him or not? | ||
| I'm like, I gotta ask. | ||
| Well, he had a martial arts background. | ||
| I know he did a lot of karate, and I know he was a good kicker. | ||
| You could tell when he'd throw punches and kicks that he knew how to execute techniques. | ||
| But he'd never fought. | ||
| And he had no jujitsu at all. | ||
| Zero. | ||
| And I was like, well, good luck. | ||
| Was he thinking about taking it? | ||
| He took it. | ||
| We had lawyers. | ||
| We had signed contracts. | ||
| Or we had negotiated contracts. | ||
| Aren't you an unlockable character on the UFC game? | ||
| Lockable. | ||
| Yeah, unlockable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Unlockable. | ||
| You can unlock me. | ||
| Yeah, it's a character. | ||
| It's weird that you have to do some weird fucking thing to do it. | ||
| You have to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
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What is it called? | |
| It's the old Konami code. | ||
| It's like a well-known code. | ||
| In order to get you on the game? | ||
| Yeah, you can do that and you can unlock me. | ||
| Do you fight as you? | ||
| No, I don't play video games. | ||
| I have a problem with my brain. | ||
| I can't get involved in games. | ||
| I get too obsessed. | ||
| I have an addictive personality. | ||
| I try to avoid all things that are negative or waste time that can be addictive. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| You have to know that. | ||
| You know what's crazy, too? | ||
| I've worked with kids with special needs, and I work a lot with autism. | ||
| And I realized, and I was like, man, these kids are just so obsessed with certain things and routine. | ||
| And then I started looking at other people in my life, and I'm like, maybe we all have that little bit of that autistic traits in us. | ||
| You have to be obsessed. | ||
| For me to be a world champion, I had to be obsessed with training. | ||
| You can't just do it and be okay. | ||
| Because these people living with autism, they're just so obsessed with that one thing. | ||
| I have students who are so obsessed with the train system. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, they can't think of anything else but the train system. | ||
| And they'll tell you anywhere how to get in Toronto. | ||
| They'll tell you which bus, which way, the most intelligent people you've ever met. | ||
| But if you ask them a simple question, They won't know it because they just don't care. | ||
| Their mind is so focused on one thing and autism is just beautiful and crazy at the same time. | ||
| I think it's beautiful to see someone so obsessed and not caring about other things than what they're focused on. | ||
| It doesn't work well in society, obviously, but they're so absorbed in it. | ||
| And I think back and I was like, man, a lot of us have these personalities. | ||
| To be able to be so obsessed and so routine, like these guys, these individuals with autism have to do everything in a particular way, certain time, a little bit of OCD in there. | ||
| I think to be successful in things, you kind of have to have that little bit of personality. | ||
| Yeah, and they can make incredible progress. | ||
| And that's one of the things that a lot of those people are recruited by Silicon Valley companies. | ||
| Like, specifically recruited because they know that they can achieve, you know, some incredible, great, you know, feats of success. | ||
| I have a student at my school that probably knows UFC more than you. | ||
| Like, he's literally, it's crazy. | ||
| He knows everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Every fighter, every name, where they're from, what they do, what they're, you name it, he knows it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Any fighter, any fighter. | ||
| You can ask him from one. | ||
| I had a guy talk to me about this once and he argued that it's potentially an evolutionary trait. | ||
| And what we're watching is the next level of human intelligence. | ||
| We're seeing it in little blips and leaps. | ||
| And a non-reliance on emotion. | ||
| And also, he believes that this is... | ||
| That, you know, human beings are interacting more with computers than ever before, and they're interacting less with people in a lot of circumstances. | ||
| And he thinks that what you're seeing is like this eventual transition between humans now and humans of the future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Things have changed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's trippy. | ||
| Listen, Joe. | ||
| This is a fucking awesome podcast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| We got to get out of here because I got to go take you freezing. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| And I got to wrap this bitch up and go home. | ||
| But thank you, brother. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Awesome, man. | |
| I'm glad we did it. | ||
| Appreciate it, man. | ||
| I'm so happy to be here finally, man. | ||
| I'm happy we finally did it, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did it. | |
| And Glory in Los Angeles this Friday. | ||
| You can watch it on UFC Fight Pass. | ||
| Two world title fights. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| We've got Israel Adesanya, Jason Wilmess, Matt Embry, Robin Van Roosmalen, and you'll be there. | ||
| I'll be there. | ||
| And if you haven't seen kickboxing, this is your chance. | ||
| Check it out. | ||
| I guarantee you, you'll become a fan. | ||
| Or, I don't want to talk to you. | ||
| Alright, see you tomorrow. |
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