Joseph Valtellini, Glory kickboxing commentator and former fighter, contrasts the precision of leg kicks in kickboxing—like his victory over Raymond Daniels’ spinning hooks—with MMA’s underutilized low kicks due to takedown fears. He critiques Ontario’s outdated rules blocking professional kickboxing despite UFC events, highlights the mental and physical toll of fighting (e.g., concussions from Mark DeBont’s bout), and advocates for year-round, purposeful training over gym-war extremes or excessive conditioning. Valtellini’s fight-specific approach—periodized strength work, minimal supplements, and gradual weight cuts—prioritizes longevity over short-term gains, while his teaching experience with autistic students reveals hyper-focus as a potential evolutionary advantage. The discussion underscores kickboxing’s growing relevance, with Glory events like Adesanya vs. Wilmess poised to elevate its profile. [Automatically generated summary]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.