May 28, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:49:27
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Two, one. | ||
| Hello, Michelle. | ||
| How's it going? | ||
| I'm getting ready to crack my neck. | ||
| Go ahead, crack your neck. | ||
| Put the microphone to it so we can hear it. | ||
| Does it pop? | ||
| I think I just popped. | ||
| Ooh! | ||
| That was a good one. | ||
| That was a good one. | ||
| Do you do that all the time? | ||
| Just when I'm getting ready to... | ||
| Throw down? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Pull this microphone like a fist from your face. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Is that better? | ||
| Yeah, perfect. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| So what's happening? | ||
| No, we're just in town. | ||
| My brother-in-law just got stationed here in California, so we drove him down, and then we did the whole Disney thing. | ||
| San Diego? | ||
| No, I think it's actually an hour south of here, I think. | ||
| It's not close by, but... | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Air Force. | ||
| Is that Edwards? | ||
| Yes, I think it is. | ||
| Okay, I know where that is, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so we got stationed there. | ||
| That was the first time I ever saw a stealth bomber. | ||
| It was like, right after 9-1-1, we were filming Fear Factor out there, and I saw one fly overhead. | ||
| It's like a UFO. I was like, wow, that is crazy. | ||
| Does it look like a UFO? Yeah, it doesn't even look real. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| You ever seen one in real life? | ||
| I've never. | ||
| It looks like a Batmobile, like Batman's plane. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| When you see one flying, you're like, wow, the engineering involved in something like that. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| And that was a while back. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was a fear factor. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It was 2001, because it was right after 9-11. | ||
| So it was 2000. That's it right there. | ||
| That's what we saw. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's one of them. | |
| That's one of them? | ||
| There's a B2, and then this is like an F-116 or something like that. | ||
| I don't know which one we saw, but it was black and wicked-looking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nice. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| Looks like your Tesla. | ||
| Flying around in one of those things? | ||
| That's what we thought. | ||
| Well, imagine back then. | ||
| That's what it looked like back then. | ||
| So what is there now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You probably can't see them. | ||
| They probably look like the sky. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Are you from a military background? | ||
| My dad, yeah. | ||
| So that's what my parents met. | ||
| My dad was stationed in Germany. | ||
| My mom was fleeing Thailand. | ||
| Her first husband was physically abusive to her, so she was leaving Thailand. | ||
| And she came to Germany to find her a GI and found my dad. | ||
| She came to find a GI specifically? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, I think she was coming to get away, but she wanted a better life for her son at the time. | ||
| And my dad was in the hospital, and so my mom was taking care of him and cooking him food and made him fall in love. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| And my dad always jokes. | ||
| He tells us this story all the time. | ||
| He's like, yeah, your mom was taking care of me, and then she told me that you were pregnant, and then 12 months later you were born. | ||
| Oh, that's funny. | ||
| But no, they fell in love. | ||
| It was just a really long pregnancy. | ||
| Just weird. | ||
| Just kind of weird. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| Yeah, it's like 12 months. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But I was very small. | ||
| Then we moved to Colorado, and I was born. | ||
| Then we lived in Germany for a little bit when I was younger. | ||
| And then back to Colorado, and I grew up in Aurora, Colorado. | ||
| Oh, cool. | ||
| When did you start training? | ||
| Probably around 10. Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, around 10. I have an older brother. | ||
| He's four years older than me. | ||
| He's my half-brother. | ||
| And I really wanted to do gymnastics as a kid. | ||
| And my parents, we just couldn't afford it. | ||
| It was really expensive. | ||
| And so my brother found a little karate spot at the church just across the street. | ||
| And it was a community, like a community karate thing. | ||
| And so it was something that all three of us could do. | ||
| And so, yeah, we jumped into it and I fell in love with it. | ||
| It just took over my life and changed my life. | ||
| Did you start competing really quickly? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| And at first, it's funny because at first, so I would do like the karate tournaments and so there's point sparring and then there's the katas. | ||
| And I thought the katas were silly. | ||
| And I remember going in and doing point sparring. | ||
| Getting knocked on my butt. | ||
| And I was like, okay, I think I want to do some katas then. | ||
| I want to bring some trophies home. | ||
| So yeah, I competed karate from 10 all the way up until I was 18. So I did a lot of the flashy, extreme martial arts katas with the flips and stuff like that. | ||
| But I always came back to sparring because I wasn't good at it. | ||
| I was like, it bugged me. | ||
| It bugged me that I wasn't good at it. | ||
| And then I found my niche because it's point sparring. | ||
| So you get two points to the head for kicks to the head. | ||
| So I would just sit back and let them come in and just kick them in the head. | ||
| Kick them in the head a couple times and win the fight. | ||
| So how did you go from that? | ||
| Did you go from that to kickboxing or did you go right into MMA? When did you start training MMA? So I did karate and then I got my black belt in karate. | ||
| What kind? | ||
| American freestyle. | ||
| And then so I think around 18 or 19 I was kind of just exploring doing a couple different things. | ||
| So I did wushu for a couple of years and I competed in wushu. | ||
| And then I did a little bit of campo and then kind of dabbled a little bit into kickboxing. | ||
| And, uh, so, it all kind of just happened pretty strangely. | ||
| I was in college, I was working at Hooters, and I was doing all these, like, little side jobs, um, like, doing photo shoots for this and that, and, um, I was a ring girl for an MMA show. | ||
| I had never seen MMA. And I remember just walking around the cage and thinking, man, I want to be like on the inside. | ||
| That looks cool. | ||
| I think I could do it because it was mixed martial arts, you know. | ||
| And I remember talking to a promoter and he kind of laughed me off and was just like, whatever, you know, you're a ring girl. | ||
| And it was a smaller local show. | ||
| Donald Cerrone was actually fighting on that show and he overheard me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so he came to my work at Hooters and I wasn't there and he was just like, left me a note. | ||
| If you're serious about fighting, get your ass in the gym. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And where was this? | ||
| Is this in Colorado? | ||
| In Colorado. | ||
| So I went to go training with Donald. | ||
| We gym-hopped from place to place. | ||
| I trained with Dwayne. | ||
| I trained with Trevor. | ||
| I trained with all the guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And so I took a couple smokers. | ||
| We'd drive around the region and took a couple smokers. | ||
| And then it was like at that point when I was still in college and I just was not happy in college. | ||
| I was kind of wandering around aimlessly. | ||
| I was really successful in high school, and it just didn't transfer over to college. | ||
| I got good grades. | ||
| I was 3.8. | ||
| I was going to DU, but I wasn't happy. | ||
| There was something missing, and it was the martial arts. | ||
| It was a big part of my life. | ||
| You needed a real challenge. | ||
| You needed something physical, too, probably, right? | ||
| I would imagine that someone growing up Doing martial arts as long as you did, the thrill of using your body and moving around, it's so important. | ||
| Once you do that and you compete and it becomes a part of you, the idea of sitting in a classroom all day and then eventually sitting in a job all day was probably not that compelling. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I think that I just, yeah, I was losing myself. | ||
| What were you going to school for? | ||
| I was going to school, so I was double majoring in theater and sports science. | ||
| So I was majoring in theater because I got a scholarship for it, and I was doing sports science. | ||
| I wanted to be like a physical therapist for like a sports team or something like that, or even a martial arts team. | ||
| But yeah, so I decided to take a little bit, like a break from that. | ||
| And my mom, my grandma was sick in Thailand. | ||
| So then I was like, I told my mom I just got with her for the summer and I went to visit my grandma in Thailand. | ||
| And while I was out there, I went to Sit Yatong Muay Thai camp and I absolutely fell in love with it. | ||
| They made fun of me because of my karate kicks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's interesting how different karate kicks are than Thai kicks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they were looking at me like I was crazy. | ||
| But I was like, but no, I'm a black belt. | ||
| I know what I'm doing. | ||
| They're just laughing at me. | ||
| We're training on concrete outside. | ||
| These little five-year-old kids are doing 10-minute rounds. | ||
| And my feet are blistering up from kicking over and over and over on the concrete. | ||
| But I loved it. | ||
| I fell in love with it. | ||
| It kicked my butt and I fell in love with it. | ||
| And I came back and I dropped out of college and I decided to pursue fighting. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So where did you learn grappling? | ||
| So my first MMA fight was kind of just... | ||
| It was supposed to be an amateur fight. | ||
| And like I said, I was training with Donald. | ||
| And he was training at a school in Vail. | ||
| And so I would... | ||
| I would go to... | ||
| I would... | ||
| I would work on the weekends and then drive up to Vail and train my grappling and all of it, like all of the MMA. So you basically trained MMA together? | ||
| Like you didn't take specific grappling classes, but I would imagine that that was the thing that you needed to concentrate on the most, right? | ||
| Yeah, and I figured, okay, my pro did, or it was supposed to be amateur, but the girl that I was supposed to fight fell through. | ||
| And the only girl that they had available was already pro. | ||
| She was like 2-0 pro. | ||
| And of course, you know how Donald is. | ||
| He's like, whatever, fuck it. | ||
| Just do it. | ||
| That's a good Donald accent. | ||
| So I was like, alright, I mean... | ||
| We've been training, so I literally had four weeks. | ||
| Throughout my karate career, we would have grappling nights when we would do grappling, but it wasn't anything substantial. | ||
| So yeah, four weeks of grappling training, and I figured, okay, I'll just use my stand-up to win the fight. | ||
| And she was swinging from... | ||
| From way back here and trying to take my head off. | ||
| So I ended up taking her down. | ||
| I ended up taking her down like six or seven times. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And winning the fight by taking her down and ground and pounding. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, it was crazy. | ||
| Did you say while you were doing it, like, wow, this is so weird that I'm doing this. | ||
| It was, I wasn't thinking at all. | ||
| I was just in the moment, having the time of my life. | ||
| Were you thinking that this was what you were going to wind up doing, like, professionally? | ||
| Or were you just thinking, I can't believe I'm doing this? | ||
| Yeah, that's exactly what I was like. | ||
| This is so much fun! | ||
| It was at the Broomfield Event Center. | ||
| I don't know if that's still called the Broomfield Event Center in Colorado, but... | ||
| Yeah, I think a bank owns it now or something. | ||
| They always change names. | ||
| It was so much fun. | ||
| But never in my life I thought I would be... | ||
| A top UFC contender. | ||
| Never. | ||
| And on your way, your goal is to be the first mommy to ever win a title. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's possible. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| You're in the hunt right now. | ||
| What are you ranked? | ||
| I'm ranked 7th. | ||
| seventh but i don't think the rankings are anything they're weird they're weird yeah there's like sometimes someone will beat somebody and then that person's still ahead of in the ranking i'm like explain that i just i don't understand the rankings that i feel like i've won my last two fights and i've gone down in rankings um yoana hasn't fought and she's gone down in rankings um and some of the girls haven't fought and they've gone up in rankings i just think the rankings are crazy Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's a bunch of people get to submit their positions, right? | ||
| Like a bunch of journalists and accepted experts on MMA get to... | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| I guess when I look at the rankings, sometimes I feel like it shifts depending on who they're trying to push. | ||
| Sometimes I feel like just storyline kind of can dictate the rankings. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, obviously I'm a giant fan of the UFC. I love them to death. | ||
| I'm so happy. | ||
| I would do nothing for any other organization. | ||
| I never want to work for another organization. | ||
| But I don't like the way they do things. | ||
| There's a lot of things that I don't like. | ||
| They just cut Elias Theodoro. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One loss. | ||
| Derek Bronson. | ||
| That's scary. | ||
|
unidentified
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Cut. | |
| I'm like, what? | ||
| They cut Derek Bronson? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| He lost to Derek Bronson. | ||
| Okay, I was like, what? | ||
| He just won. | ||
| I'm like, explain that. | ||
| How do you explain that one? | ||
| That one doesn't make any sense. | ||
| There's like some matchups don't make any sense. | ||
| Interim title shots, those are preposterous. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I understand it's this machine and it has to work and they're trying, but it's just, especially for a fighter whose life depends on the fights and your livelihood depends on that and for you just to be out, it's stressful enough to only fight a couple times a year because you have to divvy up that purse money throughout those times. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I think people like you are very important for women's MMA because you seem so normal. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, there's some women, you talk to them, you're like, well, this girl's fucking crazy. | ||
| No wonder why she's a fighter. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, there's some girls that are real aggressive or just bad. | ||
| Like, you talk to Amanda Nunes, you're like, I get it. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah, she should be a fighter. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| She's cool. | ||
| She's so cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She's so cool. | ||
| But... | ||
| That's a badass bitch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| She'll fuck people up. | ||
| You could tell. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Just looking at her, you know, like the way she's built, she's wide. | ||
| You could tell she's got power. | ||
| And she looks like a girl you would not want to fuck with. | ||
| Josh called it. | ||
| Josh called it. | ||
| He said that she'd knock out Cyborg. | ||
| That was crazy. | ||
| That was crazy. | ||
| That was... | ||
| I didn't think that she couldn't knock her out. | ||
| I think she could knock out anyone. | ||
| I mean, I think Amanda Nunes could knock out a lot of guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| She hits so hard. | ||
| But I thought that there would be a big weight disadvantage. | ||
| Cyborg has a tremendous experience advantage. | ||
| And she's never shown herself to be someone that gets hurt. | ||
| Even when she fought Jorena Barge. | ||
| Did you ever see that fight? | ||
| In Lion Fight? | ||
| I remember seeing highlights of it because she's just stuck on the ropes. | ||
| And Jorina is an elite kickboxer. | ||
| And Cyborg got dropped and kept coming. | ||
| I mean, she was pursuing her in the final rounds. | ||
| I mean, she was chasing after. | ||
| She lost the decision, but she gained a lot of fans because she didn't have any pro Muay Thai fights. | ||
| And she fought a woman who, like, she couldn't get a fight for almost three years because girls were ducking her because they didn't want to fight her. | ||
| Muay Thai is brutal. | ||
| My husband and I talk about this all the time because in MMA you have options. | ||
| If you're having trouble in the stand-up, you can take them down. | ||
| You can work your grappling this or that. | ||
| In boxing, you don't really have much options. | ||
| Either you get knocked out or you give up in the corner. | ||
| I feel it's the same way in Muay Thai except for now you're introducing knees and shins and elbows and those cut and you have no way out. | ||
| That's brutal. | ||
| Yeah, it's a rough sport and an incredibly exciting sport to watch. | ||
| And one that I've never understood. | ||
| I mean, boxing is so gigantic in this country. | ||
| Muay Thai has almost no presence. | ||
| It baffles me to no end. | ||
| They have the product. | ||
| They have great American fighters like Joe Schilling, Kevin Ross, and there's a ton of them. | ||
| There's guys like John Wayne Parr from Australia. | ||
| All these guys that are exciting to watch and fun. | ||
| There's so many elite kids that are coming up, but there's no mainstream appeal. | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| I don't know why either. | ||
| That is crazy to think. | ||
| They need a thing like the UFC, where something comes along and they dump a ton of money into it. | ||
| But the thing is, people only have so much time to watch things. | ||
| So it's like, oh, Deontay Wilder's fighting. | ||
| I'll watch that. | ||
| Oh, Tyron Woodley's fighting. | ||
| I'll watch him. | ||
| Oh, Jon Jones is fighting. | ||
| I'll watch that. | ||
| What's this Muay Thai? | ||
| Ah, this fight's not. | ||
| I'm going to watch Bellator instead. | ||
| I'm going to watch that instead. | ||
| It's almost too saturated. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| But it's a shame. | ||
| It'd be cool if they had a card with all different types of fighting on there. | ||
| Well, that's what one does. | ||
| All in the same night? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| One FC does that. | ||
| They'll have kickboxing, Muay Thai, and MMA in one night. | ||
| Is it confusing? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, they let everybody know. | ||
| You know, this is what they're doing. | ||
| I think one is doing fantastic. | ||
| They're putting on amazing fights. | ||
| I mean, and we've seen that these are legitimately world-class fighters. | ||
| They're beating guys like, you know, Timothy Natsukin just beat Eddie Alvarez. | ||
| Yeah, that was crazy. | ||
| Yeah, and they're also, they cut out all the weight cutting. | ||
| There's no weight cutting over there. | ||
| So like when Sage Northcutt fought Cosmo Alexandre, he fought him at 185 pounds. | ||
| Because that's really what he walks around with. | ||
| So there's no weight cutting over there. | ||
| That was a brutal hit that he got caught with. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| I'm glad that he's okay. | ||
| Yeah, he's okay. | ||
| But yeah, his face had eight fractures. | ||
| Do you think it's better for him to cut down? | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| It's a very good question. | ||
| Because, I mean, if he's getting knocked out by that, I'm wondering if maybe he should be walking around lighter or if, I don't know, because he's pretty lean already. | ||
| He's lean, but that fight played out realistically. | ||
| Not that it's better for him or worse for him, but Sage is a young guy. | ||
| He's 21 or 22 years old. | ||
| He's got a limited amount of world-class Muay Thai experience. | ||
| He fought Cosmo, who was a multiple-time world champion. | ||
| And it's just a bad fight. | ||
| Why would they set that up if they're trying to build them? | ||
| I've said that too, and people are like, oh, it's easy to say after the fact. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| But if I was in Sage's corner, I'd go, hey, bro, there's a lot of fights we should take. | ||
| And that was a Muay Thai fight? | ||
| No, it was an MMA fight. | ||
| It was an MMA fight. | ||
| But Sage is not a wrestler. | ||
| I mean, he has taken guys down before, but I would absolutely say that's the game plan. | ||
| The game plan is tie this guy up and drag him to the ground. | ||
| Don't be standing with this dude. | ||
| I just feel like if you have a background in something, in stressful situations, you always revert back to what you know. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And so even if he did work his wrestling, he's going to revert back to his really hoppy movie stance. | ||
| And that's what it looked like what happened. | ||
| He was kind of pulling out, hopping back, and got caught. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he was trying that sideways karate-style stance. | ||
| Cosmo's just super elite. | ||
| And if you saw the fight, he fainted a couple times with the left. | ||
| He set him up with the switch a couple times. | ||
| And then as Sage circled off, he went to his right and cracked him. | ||
| That guy's just a super elite fighter. | ||
| I mean, when it comes to striking, I feel like that is where being elite is the most dangerous for an opponent. | ||
| I feel like if you fight an elite jiu-jitsu guy and he catches you and he submits you, you live another day. | ||
| You know, like Neil Magny and Damian Maia. | ||
| We found out. | ||
| Damian gets him to the ground and just strangles him, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But he'll be all right. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| If you get KO'd by an elite striker, who knows what kind of damage happens to you. | ||
| When his face got broken, he had eight fractures in his face, his cheek, his orbital. | ||
| They had to piece him back together again. | ||
| Did his orbital detach, do you know? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know the extent of the injuries. | ||
| He posted up some images, though. | ||
| Did you see the images of the x-rays? | ||
| It's like, whoa. | ||
| This is horrible. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, so that's how I feel against jujitsu people. | ||
| When they submit me, I'm like, okay, let's do it again. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Well, what about Andrade and Rose? | ||
| I was scared. | ||
| That was crazy, yeah. | ||
| I was scared for Rose. | ||
| It was a really bad landing. | ||
| Landing on her neck like that was terrifying. | ||
| That's what scared me, just because we were in Brazil, too, and that crowd was crazy. | ||
| And everybody shot up and started screaming, and Rose was just laid out on the canvas, and I kind of was just wanting her corner to be in there with her, because she was just all alone about herself. | ||
| And I was worried that she wasn't going to get up. | ||
| I was like, hey, you guys wait to cheer until we see she's okay, because that can... | ||
| Parallel somewhere. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| If you look at the impact, if you've seen the photograph of the landing itself, it's one of the worst ways you could ever land. | ||
| She's essentially head first with the neck sideways. | ||
| Flattened. | ||
| There was no space. | ||
| It's like someone was cranking on her neck. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| That was a bad landing. | ||
| I mean, the whole thing was bad. | ||
| She's going for the Kimura. | ||
| Jessica picks her up. | ||
| She doesn't lace a leg, and she holds on to the Kimura, which you just can't do. | ||
| You just can't do it. | ||
| You've got to let it go. | ||
| But she's held on to things before and caught arm bars and triangles. | ||
| It's one of those things. | ||
| You make a mistake. | ||
| Because I know people were talking about it being illegal to slam somebody like that. | ||
| She didn't do it on purpose. | ||
| She just tried to slam her. | ||
| I mean, she's just trying to lift her up and dump her down. | ||
| I mean, the illegal slamming is like when Minotauro fought Bob Sapp. | ||
| Do you remember that? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Minotauro fought Bob Sapp and Bob Sapp literally got him in a pile driver. | ||
| And Bob Sapp was 370 pounds with abs and on everything that Mexico has to offer. | ||
| Every steroid that was available, Bob Sapp was on. | ||
| They said that he used to travel with like a briefcase filled with roids. | ||
| I mean, he was a goddamn science project at one point. | ||
| It was fascinating to watch, right? | ||
| Because I think, to this day, that was probably one of the greatest victories in all of MMA. Minotauro, who was... | ||
| He was outweighed by a good, solid 130, 140 pounds. | ||
| Like, legitimately. | ||
| And still got an armbar off of Bob Sapp. | ||
| Jamie, you got it? | ||
| Yeah, watch this. | ||
| So, look at the size difference. | ||
| First of all, just see the beginning of the fight. | ||
| So, he shoots. | ||
| He shoots. | ||
| But look at the size difference when you see them come out. | ||
| It is so crazy. | ||
| Bob Sapp was so big. | ||
| But look at this. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Now, Minotauro's neck was fucked up from that forever. | ||
| Like, that haunted him his entire career. | ||
| Watch this. | ||
| Oh no! | ||
| See, he tucks his head a little bit at the last second so he doesn't catch it on the top of the head, but all of his weight, all of Bob Sapp's weight, look at that. | ||
| I don't even think he tucked it. | ||
| I think it just gave in. | ||
| And he's still going? | ||
| He kept going and he fucking submitted him! | ||
| Minotauro was one of the toughest guys that's ever walked the face of the planet. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| He scoots out. | ||
| He escapes and gets on top of him. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, look at the size difference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's like three different, four, five different weight classes. | |
| I mean, Bob was so big. | ||
| And he's probably on EPO and fucking everything. | ||
| And look at that. | ||
| Just windmilling with his legs. | ||
| And he was trained by Maurice Smith. | ||
| You know, Maurice was training him. | ||
| So he was a legitimately trained athlete. | ||
| And he was so big. | ||
| So this is back in the day when there was like 10 minute rounds? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| 10 minute first round. | ||
| So Minotaur, I believe it went into the second round though. | ||
| I want to say. | ||
| Oh my gosh. | ||
| I don't remember entirely whether it went into the second round, but I want to say it did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, look, he beat Ernesto Hus twice in kickboxing matches. | ||
| But it also goes to show you how hard Cro Cop punches, because Cro Cop flattened him with one punch. | ||
| Cro Cop broke his orbital bone with a straight left. | ||
| So Minotauro eventually gets him on his back, and then once he gets him on his back, because Bob Sapp, you can only keep 375 pounds going for so long. | ||
| I mean, he's just completely exhausted. | ||
| No matter how many steroids you do. | ||
| Yeah, so this is the end. | ||
| He ties up his arm and catches him in an arm bar and Bob Sapp taps. | ||
| And I was at my friend... | ||
| Fuck, whose house was I at? | ||
| But I was with Eddie Bravo when we saw this and we were screaming. | ||
| We couldn't believe it. | ||
| We couldn't believe it. | ||
| Because it was like a victory for... | ||
| That is amazing. | ||
| It was a victory for technique. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| It was a victory for jiu-jitsu. | ||
| It was a victory for technique over brawn. | ||
| It was a perfect example of technique over brawn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not that Minotaro doesn't have brawn and not that Bob Sapp doesn't have technique. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But if they were the same size, Minotaro would have fucked him up. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| It would have been an easy fight for him. | ||
| And just whether the Stormman wasn't scared to be in there with them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fedor wouldn't fight him. | ||
| Fedor said, fuck that. | ||
| They offered Fedor a fight with Bob Sapp. | ||
| He's like, nah, I'm good. | ||
| And he fought Hongman Choi when Hongman Choi was like seven feet tall. | ||
| You remember that fight? | ||
| Caught him in... | ||
| It was one of the most ridiculous arm bars ever. | ||
| He caught him in an arm bar and the arm is as long as this fucking table. | ||
| It was so crazy. | ||
| He had to stretch his arms like this. | ||
| That was a ridiculous arm bar. | ||
| A ridiculous arm bar. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| You'll never see any fights like that happen nowadays. | ||
| Not anymore. | ||
| Well, I still think someone might do it. | ||
| Yeah, Ryzen could do it. | ||
| They still do fucked up things with Gabby Garcia. | ||
| Yeah, that's crazy. | ||
| Gabby Garcia is a science project and a half. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| What's going on there? | ||
| Has she been beaten? | ||
| Not that I'm aware of. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How are they going to find a woman who's 240 pounds? | ||
| They're not. | ||
| She's 240 pounds, jacked. | ||
| And she's a legit black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And she's, you know, she's legitimately tough. | ||
| I thought I saw a video of her grappling with Mackenzie Duran and Mackenzie like almost... | ||
| Mackenzie beat her. | ||
| Oh, did she? | ||
| I think Mackenzie beat her in a Jiu-Jitsu match. | ||
| In a Jiu-Jitsu match. | ||
| But in MMA, I don't think anybody's beating her. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think Mackenzie either beat her or had a draw, won an advantage, something like that. | ||
| But... | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| That's science. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| You're doing some stuff. | ||
| You're doing some stuff to people that's not... | ||
| Your body's not supposed to have that in there, lady. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's interesting, because like the Bob Sapp thing, you get to see what happens. | ||
| Like, wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| This is when someone just goes for it. | ||
| And when Pride, Ensign Inouye, was on the podcast, and Ensign's hilarious. | ||
| He was detailing the contract. | ||
| He was like, it's said in all capital letters, we will not test you for steroids. | ||
| They were like... | ||
| That's what Joey would tell me all the time. | ||
| Joey Villasenor. | ||
| He's been in my corner for the last couple of fights. | ||
| Joey's an excellent fighter. | ||
| And he would say that he said they almost encouraged it. | ||
| Not almost. | ||
| They basically did encourage it because they just wanted to see crazy things that came out of comic books. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| They wanted you to be jacked. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They wanted you to be gigantic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, as long as everybody's doing it, I guess. | ||
| I don't think... | ||
| I wouldn't want to do that, even if I had the choice to do it. | ||
| You wouldn't want to. | ||
| I wouldn't want to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Well, that makes sense. | ||
| And that's why I think people like you are important for MMA. Because you are... | ||
| You're a woman. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You seem like a woman. | ||
| You behave like a woman. | ||
| You look like a woman. | ||
| If someone says, that girl's a top 10 UFC fighter, you'd be like, what? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| No way. | ||
| Really? | ||
| She's so normal. | ||
| But if you saw Gabby Garcia, that girl's smashing people in Japan, you're like, I fucking believe it. | ||
| I gotta get the fuck out of this room. | ||
| Pushy hulks out and starts to flatten me. | ||
| I feel like it would take the joy out of a victory. | ||
| If you did steroids. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you would become something different. | ||
| The reality is a woman becomes something different when she starts taking male hormones. | ||
| You just do. | ||
| You become something different. | ||
| Your tendons strengthen. | ||
| Your bone structure changes. | ||
| Your voice deepens. | ||
| You become much more like a man. | ||
| When you see transgender women, when a woman is a transgender man, she decides she wants to be a man. | ||
| They start taking testosterone. | ||
| They get beards. | ||
| They have all sorts of strange things happen down below and they start having a deeper voice and they sound like a man. | ||
| And that's exactly what happens to a woman when a woman takes steroids if she's not trying to transition. | ||
| It's the same thing. | ||
| You're just taking male hormones that make your muscles grow far larger than they're supposed to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember watching a movie that they did in Thailand. | ||
| It's called Beautiful Boxer. | ||
| Have you seen that one? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But it's the opposite. | ||
| He wanted to be a woman. | ||
| But I think he did it the right way, right? | ||
| If there's a right way to do it. | ||
| Well, he started as a man and then became a woman and kept fighting men. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I think that someone should have told her at the time, like, let's just stop fighting. | ||
| Let's stop fighting. | ||
| This is my take on it. | ||
| But she needed to keep fighting so that she could pay for her transition, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Catch-22, if there ever was one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But was an elite fighter until the transition, and then you see the skills start to diminish because there's no more testosterone. | ||
| When she's fighting men... | ||
| But if she was fighting women, she would have a giant advantage still over women, and I don't think that's right either. | ||
| No, I don't think that's fair either. | ||
| No one does. | ||
| No one does except transgender people. | ||
| Transgender people and super progressive activists who have no idea how sports work. | ||
| Those are the people, the people that just want inclusiveness, and they just want everyone to be okay, and maybe this is the world I'm looking for. | ||
| I'm looking towards a world where everyone's included. | ||
| Yeah, good. | ||
| Have a transgender league. | ||
| Have a transgender division. | ||
| I'm cool with that. | ||
| I'll happily support them. | ||
| But you're pretending that that's a woman. | ||
| And it's not. | ||
| It's a male who's transitioning to a woman. | ||
| You have an XY chromosome. | ||
| It's a different thing. | ||
| I'm 100%. | ||
| If a woman says I want to fight a transgender woman, okay. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| But for leagues to recognize that this is the same thing, how would you feel if all of the UFC's weight classes in the women's division were dominated by transgender women? | ||
| I would feel like there were some... | ||
| I feel like I should not say something. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| I feel like I'm going to get caught up saying something that I shouldn't say. | ||
| Yeah, let me talk for you. | ||
| It's fucking bullshit. | ||
| It's fucking bullshit, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You don't have to say anything. | ||
| And that's how girls feel right now when there's sports being dominated in track and field. | ||
| Yeah, that's not fair. | ||
| It's not fair. | ||
| I mean, I guess for me, I've always been, especially like being a female in a male dominant sport, I've always, I guess if I can like to consider myself a feminist, not so much a feminist, but like when I go into the gym, my teammates look at me as a fighter. | ||
| Like they don't look at me as a female fighter or anything like that. | ||
| They look at me as their teammate, you know what I mean? | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| I appreciate that they treat me as an athlete and all of that good stuff. | ||
| But I feel like at the end of the day, girls need to fight girls and guys need to fight guys. | ||
| We have different strengths than the guys do and the guys have different strengths than the girls do. | ||
| And it's nice for us to have a place so that we can showcase our skills. | ||
| Yes, I agree. | ||
| I think the only problem that I have with that... | ||
| Transitioning thing is physical competition. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Physical competition against the gender that you supposedly align with. | ||
| You can't do it. | ||
| But here's what you don't see. | ||
| Here's what you don't see. | ||
| You don't see a lot of transgender men who want to fight men. | ||
| You don't see a lot of women who are taking hormones to become a man who want to fight men. | ||
| Yeah, good fucking luck with that, ladies. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| Stop. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| Like, this idea that you just magically become a woman or you just magically become a man, it's just not true. | ||
| And athletes recognize it and rational people recognize it, but there's so much pushback from progressive people who, it's like, what percentage of the population are we even talking about here? | ||
| I mean, it's not even 1%. | ||
| It's a very strange thing that it's taking over the conversation with bathrooms and competition and sports and so many different things. | ||
| I'm all for inclusiveness and I'm all for being open-minded and letting people do you. | ||
| Let them be themselves. | ||
| Be yourself. | ||
| Whatever yourself is. | ||
| I don't know what yourself is. | ||
| I don't know what you feel. | ||
| But you can't compete against women. | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| It's really that simple. | ||
| It has to be something deeper where they, you know, and to me I think it goes back to like that mental, like a mental block where you need some, like a false sense of confidence. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I feel like. | ||
| Well, it's like sandbagging. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It is the ultimate sandbagging. | ||
| It's like, oh, I'm a woman. | ||
| Like, wait a minute. | ||
| Where the fuck did you get those hands? | ||
| It's really like the ultimate form of sandbagging. | ||
| I mean, for folks who don't know what sandbagging is, oh, I was going to bring up smokers, too, for folks who don't know what smokers is, if you listen to this podcast. | ||
| A smoker is small amateur fights that they have in gyms or little arenas or high school gyms and stuff like that. | ||
| But, um, uh, sandbagging is like, say if Michelle had a black belt in jujitsu and then entered into a judo tournament as a white belt and then just fucking flying armbar to everybody. | ||
| They'll be like, what the hell is this? | ||
| Where'd you get your white belt? | ||
| Like, how do you have a white belt? | ||
| But we've all seen things like that before. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Everyone has seen things like that before. | ||
| There's people that pretend they're younger than they really are. | ||
| They pretend they're lighter than they really are. | ||
| Because they want to win. | ||
| This is no different. | ||
| It's no different. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| And the people who don't understand it, they have never competed in high-level athletics. | ||
| It's really that simple. | ||
| If you've competed in high-level athletics, you know that there's a differentiation. | ||
| There's a difference between men and women. | ||
| There's a reason why we have a man's division and a women's division. | ||
| It's not that anybody's better or worse. | ||
| It's just like there's unfair advantages. | ||
| Like the Bob Sapp Minotaro thing, that was an unfair advantage. | ||
| It's just overcome by someone who has superior skill and an iron will. | ||
| And that's what Minotaro was when he beat Bob Sapp. | ||
| There's no denying that one guy was way bigger and way stronger. | ||
| But it was overcome. | ||
| You shouldn't force people to overcome. | ||
| It should be even. | ||
| If they were even... | ||
| If Minotauro and Bob Sapp were even, here's the fight. | ||
| Shoot. | ||
| Takedown. | ||
| Dang. | ||
| On his back. | ||
| Armbar. | ||
| Bang. | ||
| Fight's over. | ||
| It'd be like a couple minutes maximum and Minotauro would have armbarred him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you think it's because people like to see the mismatch and maybe like that underdog story where the person that is, you know, the underdog comes and becomes victorious? | ||
| Like Minotauro. | ||
| But like, again, Minotauro's neck is still fucked up to this day. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| You know, his neck bothered him his entire career from that one piledriver. | ||
| 375 pounds, plus his weight, all on his neck. | ||
| It just shows you how fucking tough that guy is. | ||
| You know the Minotauro story? | ||
| He was run over by a truck when he was a kid. | ||
| That's why he has this giant scar on his back. | ||
| He was in the hospital for like a year. | ||
| The guy's an animal. | ||
| I mean, he's as tough as they come. | ||
| Yeah, he's like, I got hit by a truck, you're not going to do nothing to me. | ||
| You can't force everyone to be that tough. | ||
| I think it's important to have fairness. | ||
| This is why I'm so pro-USADA. I love what they're doing. | ||
| I love the fact that they're testing the shit out of people. | ||
| They're just showing up at people's houses at 6 o'clock in the morning. | ||
| Hey, wake up. | ||
| Time for a test. | ||
| But is it the same in every country? | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| It's a very good question. | ||
| If someone's training in Russia or Germany or wherever, yeah, that's a very good question. | ||
| I do not know the answer to that. | ||
| Because I know that's kind of one of the concerns for some of the athletes that, yeah, it might be really strict here in the States, but in other states, is it as strict? | ||
| Right, because it is U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. | ||
| That's USADA. Yeah. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm just saying. | ||
| So what do you think? | ||
| You don't think it is? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'll talk for you. | ||
| If there's something fucked up you need to say, just go like this. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I guess I just... | ||
| I can only be concerned with what's under my control. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So then I'm just going to train and I'm going to get as good as I can get and hopefully USADA can take care of the rest. | ||
| But for me to stress about it is just time wasted, I think, for myself. | ||
| Well, I do know of a case where there was a fighter who told me that there was a guy who was openly dirty, as far as what everybody knew. | ||
| And he knew that he was going to piss hot, so he went and did some seminars in another country. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| And just stayed over in another country and just moved around. | ||
| So you see this world-class fighter in these weird little gyms, and everyone's like, what is going on over there? | ||
| And the gentleman who told me, he said, listen, man, he's docking drug tests. | ||
| That's what he's doing over there. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For sure, when TJ Dillashaw gets popped and you're like, wow, TJ, for a world title, he's getting popped? | ||
| How many people are getting away with this? | ||
| How many people got away with this? | ||
| It's just not worth it. | ||
| He lost a lot doing that, what he did. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It's not worth it. | ||
| It's not worth it. | ||
| Ultimately, it's definitely not worth it. | ||
| Because this legacy's tainted. | ||
| But if you got away with it, is it worth it? | ||
| I mean, how many people got away with it? | ||
| Here's the question. | ||
| How many people retired and we never got to see their drug test from 2006, 2008? | ||
| Like, what were you taking? | ||
| What were you on? | ||
| Like, back when they used to have those silly drug tests where they would test you at the weigh-ins, which is basically like an intelligence test. | ||
| Like, hey, you still taking steroids? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or did you stop a couple of weeks ago? | ||
| And the testing today is so much more sophisticated. | ||
| That's why people are getting popped for EPO and a bunch of things that were hard to find. | ||
| The thresholds. | ||
| This is the John Jones thing with the picograms. | ||
| The insignificant amount in terms of the performance-enhancing aspect of it that is in his system. | ||
| How can they detect that? | ||
| Well, they can detect that because the machines are way more sophisticated. | ||
| The drug testing is way – if he had tested, if John Jones had tested two years ago, he would have tested clean. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But now, they're just way better. | ||
| Even if you're taking creatine, and that creatine is tainted, which is a lot of what these guys, Tim Means, that was his deal, he was taking a supplement that was tainted. | ||
| Quite a few guys have legitimately just taken over-the-counter supplements that they thought were clean, and they got something, just some tiny, that doesn't have any effect on their performance. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| But it shows up. | ||
| And it'll show up for months and weeks. | ||
| In John's case, like years. | ||
| It's been showing up for like a year and a half. | ||
| It comes on and off. | ||
| And when you're cutting weight, that's when it seems to come back. | ||
| That's when it seems to show. | ||
| All the water's gone? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| You're losing fat. | ||
| You're losing body weight. | ||
| Some of it's stored in fat, they think. | ||
| It's very confusing for them. | ||
| They're trying to figure it all out. | ||
| And then all these fucking people online are ranting and raving about picograms and this and the science experts and they think it's all bullshit that John's allowed to fight. | ||
| He should be banned for life. | ||
| You're not listening. | ||
| He tested negative and then he tested positive a week later. | ||
| And then he tested negative a week after that. | ||
| What's happening here? | ||
| Something weird's happening. | ||
| They're still figuring it out for themselves. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I'm glad they're figuring it out. | ||
| Because now people get to see, like, hey, look, Jon Jones is out for all that time for other problems and then for the drug problems. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, this is a lot of money that guy lost. | ||
| Jon probably lost tens of millions of dollars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But he's still young. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's still young and he still, you know, hasn't hit his prime yet, I don't think. | ||
| No. | ||
| I think also, all that knowing that it can all be taken away from you probably tempered him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, put him in a better place. | ||
| We realize, like, I still have this gift of incredible talent. | ||
| I mean, he's just a natural-born fighter. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| He just knows how to fight. | ||
| Some guys, they have all the technique, all the talent, but they don't know how to put it together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah, that's his jam. | ||
| He just goes out there and he just does things on the fly that nobody would ever think of and it works. | ||
| Yeah, he tries things out. | ||
| It's crazy to watch him train because he's just super lasered in and focused and there's nothing. | ||
| The building could be getting bombed and it wouldn't matter. | ||
| He'd just be on the bag working on his technique. | ||
| Yeah, I believe it. | ||
| It's really cool to watch. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he's the outlier, right? | ||
| I mean, there's special fighters. | ||
| There are outliers in the sport. | ||
| And from our era, it was like Anderson Silva, Mighty Mouse, Jon Jones. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those are the real outliers. | ||
| When you just watch me, you just go, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Like Anderson, when he was in his prime, you would watch him. | ||
| And you would watch him set guys up. | ||
| And it's almost like he had cheat codes. | ||
| Like he could just see what they were doing. | ||
| He was just like, oh, I do this. | ||
| And you do that. | ||
| I do this. | ||
| And you do that. | ||
| Okay, well, I'm going to do this. | ||
| And I know you're going to do that. | ||
| And pop! | ||
| There it goes. | ||
| And he would just figure guys out. | ||
| It was wonderful to watch, though. | ||
| I feel like he opened up a door for all of the rest of us fighting. | ||
| I feel like with any good fighter, when you watch them fight, it opens up a door in your own mind like, oh, that's possible. | ||
| I can do that. | ||
| I feel like with Anderson Silva, he did that a lot with his movement, with his head movement, with his variety of punches and kicks and the angles at which they came in from. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like Anderson Silva did that. | ||
| I feel like Ronda did that with her judo. | ||
| I feel like Machida did that with his karate. | ||
| I can go down the list of everybody, but I feel like it kind of goes in cycles. | ||
| It's great for me because I can watch them and I can implement new things. | ||
| I feel like that's why I've been able to be in the game for so long and still continue to grow and evolve because I get to watch other people. | ||
| And the things that they do and add that to my tool list. | ||
| Yeah, it changes the expectation of what's possible, right? | ||
| I think with Mighty Mouse, that was one of the best examples of that. | ||
| Because when I would watch Mighty Mouse fight, I would be like, show me someone who's better. | ||
| Show me someone who's ever been better than this guy. | ||
| Like, I've never seen anybody move better than this guy. | ||
| Like, he doesn't get hit. | ||
| Or if he gets hit, it's rare. | ||
| Like, every three or four fights, someone catches him. | ||
| Like, John Moraga caught him with a good straight punch. | ||
| Like, that was the last I remembered. | ||
| I'd like to see him run it back with Cejudo. | ||
| I would too. | ||
| That was such a close fight. | ||
| Very close fight. | ||
| And he kind of blew my mind how nonchalant he was about it all. | ||
| At the end, he's like, whatever. | ||
| But that's him. | ||
| DJ's just a special guy. | ||
| And he's another one who's like... | ||
| Couldn't be a nicer guy. | ||
| If you didn't know that he was one of the best fighters that's ever walked the face of the planet, he would go, oh, this friendly guy. | ||
| He's so nice and normal. | ||
| He talks like he's articulate. | ||
| He doesn't talk like a mean person. | ||
| It's a great example of something that's contrary to the stereotypes that people think of when they think of cage fighters. | ||
| Someone who's fighting, which is a weird word, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are you doing cage fighting? | ||
| You do that stuff? | ||
| Yeah, like, you're a cage fighter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You do UFC? Yeah, you do UFC. Yeah. | |
| That's if you're fighting for Bellator. | ||
| People are like, what's that? | ||
| Is that like UFC? What is that? | ||
| What's Bellator? | ||
| Times are changing, though. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| I love the competition. | ||
| I think that's great that there's more options out there for the fighters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, for sure, yeah. | ||
| I think it's very important. | ||
| I think it's very important. | ||
| What's interesting, too, about this sport is that it's one of the only sports where you can go back from 1993 to 2019 and you could see massive evolution. | ||
| There's no other sport like that. | ||
| If you go back and watch boxing from 93, you're watching great boxing, world-class boxing. | ||
| You could take someone from 93 and put them into 2018. They would fit perfect. | ||
| Yeah, you think so? | ||
| Roy Jones Jr.? | ||
| Shit. | ||
| Roy Jones Jr., when he's in his prime, today everybody would be fucked. | ||
| Today. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| They'd be fucked. | ||
| He was just something special. | ||
| It's just like the boxing mentality is so old school and you got to stick to the traditions. | ||
| It's kind of like taboo to see fighters switching stance, which some of them, the good ones are. | ||
| How's it taboo? | ||
| Josh, my husband, he boxed. | ||
| He had a lot of old boxing coaches that were like, you don't switch stance. | ||
| You stick to your stance and you perfect that stance. | ||
| Those people are out of their fucking mind. | ||
| You've watched Terrence Crawford, that's one of the things he does so brilliantly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He is as good as a southpaw as he is orthodox, and it's one of the reasons why he's so difficult to solve. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because if you think you've got to read on his timing, and then all of a sudden you're looking at a right jab instead of a left jab now, like, Maybe it's just that I watch MMA and are more focused on MMA than I am in boxing. | ||
| But from having my husband help me out and all this stuff, that's what he's saying is going to be the biggest evolution or what has started to evolve in boxing is that they are realizing, okay, you can use both sides now and that's going to trick them even more. | ||
| Well, Marvin Hagler was amazing at that. | ||
| It was one of Marvin Hagler's best skills, that he could fight southpaw as well as he could fight orthodox. | ||
| Hagler was one of the greatest fighters of all time, and he was a champion in the 80s. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| You don't know Marvin Hagler? | ||
| No. | ||
| How dare you, Michelle? | ||
| The karate hottie? | ||
| You don't know the marvelous one? | ||
| I never even really watched boxing until I met my husband. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Well, he introduced you to something awesome. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a good time right now to watch boxing. | ||
| You know, there's so many good boxers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that's one of the things that he wants me to really work on in order to get my game to the next level is my boxing, you know. | ||
| Because my kicks are good. | ||
| My wrestling's, you know, getting better. | ||
| My jiu-jitsu's good. | ||
| And if I can put together my punches, we'll be okay, ready to get that belt. | ||
| Karate is an interesting martial art too that you are really good at because you have an excellent ability to use that front leg that most people don't have. | ||
| You have an awesome front leg side kick, a great front leg roundhouse kick. | ||
| And when you do that, I see that in your fight sometimes. | ||
| People are like, oh, I've got to adjust to this. | ||
| It's like a jab, but a jab that can fuck you up, like a jab that can knock you out. | ||
| Yeah, I think, I mean, I guess I owe that to my point firing days when everybody was bigger than me. | ||
| It didn't matter because it was by belts. | ||
| And so I was always a smaller one. | ||
| And trying to get the point off first, I would just use my front leg and kick it out there as fast as I could. | ||
| But I do, I feel like my kicks have lended to being, I've adopted them as jabs, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I love it. | ||
| I think it helps because then it kind of neutralizes the height difference. | ||
| Do you train a lot with Winklejohn? | ||
| I do. | ||
| Winklejohn, he was an excellent fighter, a really good kickboxer, and really good at both styles too, like leg kick style, but also good at like he had karate techniques as well. | ||
| He was very good at those transitions between those straight kicks and punches. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As well. | ||
| You know, that's the thing where a lot of people get confused. | ||
| It's like a no man's land between kicking and punching with people who are kicking specialists. | ||
| And you see it like even with elite fighters like Raymond Daniels as he's coming up in his kickboxing career. | ||
| It took a while before he could make that smooth transition between kicking and punching because Raymond would be on the outside and he was... | ||
| A world class, top of the food chain karate point fighter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then got into kickboxing. | ||
| And as long as he was at a distance, he was fucking people up. | ||
| But in the transition, the no man's land between the kicking and the punching, he looked awkward. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It took a while before he sort of... | ||
| So some guys like Joseph Valtellini and Nikki Holtzkin, they sort of exposed that gap, the no man's land gap. | ||
| That's a problem a lot of kickers have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They have that problem with the gap from the kicking to the punching. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I think that's one of the things that I had to, that was one of the things that I had to really work on. | ||
| And I think because I enjoy grappling and jujitsu that I went straight from kicking to clench up grappling. | ||
| And I kind of skipped the boxing part of it. | ||
| How much boxing are you doing now? | ||
| Quite a bit, actually. | ||
| Is that your main focus? | ||
| Yeah, especially off camp. | ||
| We don't have any game plans to work on. | ||
| We're working boxing and wrestling. | ||
| Now, when you say you're working boxing, are you just sparring boxing and hitting pads boxing, or are you trying to implement that into MMA training? | ||
| I would say both. | ||
| We're not sparring. | ||
| We're not sparring right now, boxing. | ||
| Just working on your hands? | ||
| Working on the hands, working on the footwork. | ||
| So we'll just do strictly boxing, but then we'll do, like you were saying, the transitions. | ||
| So kicks to boxing, and boxing to kicks, and then boxing to takedowns. | ||
| Having things to do when you don't have to think. | ||
| Knowing exactly what to do. | ||
| Oh, I'm in this position, there goes the knee. | ||
| I'm in this position, now I'm throwing a punch. | ||
| When you see someone going, I've got to do this, I've got to think. | ||
| Those transitions, when you're in higher pressure situations, that's when those transitions are the most awkward. | ||
| When you don't have a conditioned response. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that's the biggest thing that I've really been able to work on is the blending of all of it. | ||
| I feel like so much of us, so many of us, we train specific boxing, specific kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, whatever, but we never really blend it together. | ||
| And I think that's the most important part. | ||
| Well, that's why George was so great. | ||
| George St. Pierre was so amazing at transitions. | ||
| Like, you never knew what he was going to do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was so unpredictable. | ||
| He was going to punch you or he was going to take you down. | ||
| So everyone's worried about everything. | ||
| You didn't know what was coming. | ||
| Yeah, that's why I always encourage fighters, like, even if you're a really good striker, man, you've got to attempt takedowns. | ||
| You've got to keep people honest. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Because otherwise people are just going to settle in and never worry about your takedowns, and then they have an extra degree of comfort with their striking, and you can get caught with stuff you wouldn't get caught with otherwise. | ||
| Yeah, and there's just... | ||
| I just feel like in MMA, you have so many opportunities. | ||
| Like, why would you limit yourself from those opportunities? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember one of my fights... | ||
| I was fighting this girl who was like a 10-time boxer in MMA. And so I'm like, oh, this girl's coming into my world. | ||
| I'm going to show her what's up. | ||
| But then, and I was beating her the whole first round, kicking her out, keeping her out with kicks, keeping her out with punches. | ||
| I remember going back to my corner and saying, man, this is too easy. | ||
| Like, I'm, you know, I'm piecing this girl up. | ||
| And just me saying that to myself, I think something in my head switched. | ||
| But I went back out and ended up I think what happened was I told myself, okay, you're piecing her up with what you know. | ||
| Go out there and beat her at her own game. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Did you talk to your corner about that? | ||
| No, I think it was just like a mental, like, this is too easy. | ||
| I'm going to make it more challenging on myself. | ||
| I didn't tell my corner that. | ||
| It was just like, you know how sometimes when you're in a fight, you have like a million thoughts that go through your mind in a split second. | ||
| And that was one of them. | ||
| I'll show this bitch what's up. | ||
| Yeah, and at her own game, which is stupid because it's MMA. So I stood in front of her and then she cracked me and I saw stars and I stood in front of her and I didn't take her down and I was trying to exchange with her and she cracked me again. | ||
| And I was waiting for her to stop so it could be my turn. | ||
| And she never stopped. | ||
| And I got TKO'd. | ||
| Lesson learned, but I was just so stubborn in my thoughts that I was like, I'm going to beat her at her own game. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| You're fighting MMA. I was so mad at myself after the fact because I beat myself. | ||
| I just beat myself when I went back out there. | ||
| Well, that's that old adage, you win or you learn. | ||
| And you obviously, this is something that stills in your mind to this day, you learned. | ||
| But that's part of what makes a champion. | ||
| Like that desire to show, I can beat you anywhere. | ||
| That crazy belief in yourself, like, oh, fuck this bitch up standing. | ||
| Those thought processes are so crazy. | ||
| The reason why you get so good in the first place is because you love challenges and you want to do this difficult thing. | ||
| So you literally made it more difficult. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I don't know why I would do that, but that is exactly why I continue to fight now. | ||
| I think I was nervous coming into the UFC because I was coming up from 105. I was talking to my husband and saying, what are we doing? | ||
| Do you think I can make the jump up and still hang with these girls? | ||
| Would you be fighting at 105 if the UFC had a 105? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It would depend. | ||
| I think it would have to be worth it. | ||
| Just to make the cut? | ||
| Yeah, I feel like my last couple of cuts at 105 were pretty brutal. | ||
| You're not supposed to ask a woman. | ||
| Your eyelashes were falling out? | ||
| Yeah, I was so dehydrated. | ||
| You know how your eyes sink in. | ||
| I remember wiping my eye and just looking down and a whole row of eyelashes were on my arm. | ||
| That's like when people get syphilis. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Teeth start falling out. | ||
| I was sickly for sure. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| They had to check your vitals after weigh-ins and the doctor wouldn't release me because he couldn't find my heartbeat for like an hour. | ||
| He couldn't find your heartbeat because you were so dehydrated? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| So, I just think that also that last cut was, it was like, I did it too quickly, I think. | ||
| What do you walk around at? | ||
| Like 132, 134. And when you make the cut down to 115, how slowly do you do it? | ||
| I usually have that eight-week fight camp. | ||
| And so I do like pound, pound and a half, two pounds a week. | ||
| Yeah, so for you to get to 105, yeah, don't do that. | ||
| That sounds crazy. | ||
| Well, the last time I fought at 105, when I was fighting at 105, I was probably walking around at like 25. Still. | ||
| That's 20 pounds of weight. | ||
| For a 100-pound person, that is 20% of your body weight. | ||
| That's a significant amount to drain yourself. | ||
| I mean, if you think about a welterweight losing 20 pounds, it's a good cut. | ||
|
unidentified
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But an atomweight person, that's so much weight. | |
| I know. | ||
| I feel so much healthier now. | ||
| I feel like when I'm in camp, I can focus on training and having good energy. | ||
| You know, going 100% rather than going 70% and then going to do more cardio. | ||
| So I absolutely feel like more healthier. | ||
| I feel like I've been able to put muscle on. | ||
| I feel like I'm stronger and just happier, happier training. | ||
| Yeah, well, you're seeing that from so many fighters. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons why, to go back to this 1FC thing, I love what they're doing, that they've eliminated weight cutting. | ||
| They do hydration tests on people. | ||
| They make sure you're not cutting any weight. | ||
| And I think the UFC is missing the boat. | ||
| They want to test for steroids, which is fantastic. | ||
| 100% support that. | ||
| They should test hydration, too. | ||
| Weight cutting is nothing but it's just sanctioned cheating. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| You're not 115 pounds. | ||
| But everybody is going to cut down to 115, and then you're probably going to go back up to when you fight, when you get into the cage, what do you think you weigh? | ||
| This last time I got back up to 128. Yeah, see, that's what you really weigh. | ||
| Why is everybody saying she's fighting at 115? | ||
| She's not fighting at 115. When you say Tyron Woodley fights at 170, no he doesn't. | ||
| No, he weighs 170. Kamaru Usman, he's not 170. He weighs 170 for a very small time. | ||
| Maybe it's just kind of like the old school mentality or just the idea of that being the last challenge that you go through before you step into the octagon that I enjoy. | ||
| And not that I enjoy it, but again, we're going back to challenges and it's like one of those things like, alright, take yourself to this point and if you can get through that without breaking, then me and you can go to battle. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| There's just something to that for me. | ||
| I see what you're saying. | ||
| So it's another challenge. | ||
| There's a series of challenges. | ||
| There's training, there's the mental preparation, and there's the weight cut. | ||
| All these things are together. | ||
| And I feel like that's the last step. | ||
| It's a battle within yourself. | ||
| Is that the Death Star on your forearm? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| It looks like the Death Star from a distance. | ||
| I was trying to figure it out. | ||
| It's an actual silhouette of my husband and I. Oh, that's so cool. | ||
| So it's a circular silhouette with the mountains and the trees. | ||
| Oh, that's awesome. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's really cool. | ||
| That's very unique. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It does kind of look like the Death Star, though. | ||
| It does. | ||
| From a distance, I was like, should I have a fucking Star Wars game? | ||
| Actually, I don't remember the last time I've seen Star Wars, but... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the weight cut, though, the only problem with it is it's bad for you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, I understand that. | ||
| I don't cut much. | ||
| I probably cut four pounds of water weight. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| When I show up fight week, I'm probably like four or five pounds off. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But if you just ate normal, wouldn't you be healthier? | ||
| If instead of getting down within four pounds of the weight, because you're going to go up to 128 the day you fight, right? | ||
| So that's an additional 13 pounds. | ||
| Where's that coming from? | ||
| It's coming from somewhere. | ||
| So you're doing something. | ||
| I understand the thought process. | ||
| I was talking to one of the doctors about it in my last fight because he was like, so strange that you go through all of this just to be the same weight the next day. | ||
|
unidentified
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I know, doctors are so smart. | |
| And I just looked at him like, that is strange. | ||
| It's fucking stupid is what it is. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| For the sport. | ||
| Not you personally, but it's what you have to do if you want to compete in the sport. | ||
| I guess just because I've been doing it for so long. | ||
| And in my head, it's like, you know, there are only a couple things you have to do as a fighter. | ||
| Cutting weight is one of them. | ||
| If you can't do that, then, you know. | ||
| It is hard, I feel. | ||
| It's a process that you have to go through and you have to be mentally prepared to go through it. | ||
| And if you do it right, it should only be water that you're cutting, even though that's silly to do. | ||
| I don't know how to... | ||
| It's silly to do. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| It's never good to just cut that water. | ||
| It's just not. | ||
| It's not good for you. | ||
| But... | ||
| If you do it intelligently where you're not cutting too much weight, it's not that bad. | ||
| But so many people are doing these brutal 30-pound weight cuts. | ||
| I feel like at that point, it's not a benefit for you. | ||
| For some people, they are the bigger person coming into the yacht to go on the next day. | ||
| But you're going to reach a certain point where cutting weight is not a benefit for you. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| If you can do it and you pull it off, especially if you're young and you figure out how to do it correctly and replenish your electrolytes, it is an advantage. | ||
| It should be bigger. | ||
| But the reality is whatever weight class that is, that's not what you weigh. | ||
| You don't really weigh that much. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It should be about skill versus skill. | ||
| It shouldn't be about who's got the best scientists. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| So, I mean, so what do you think? | ||
| You think Andrade would still be a 115-er? | ||
| No chance. | ||
| No chance? | ||
| Not a fucking chance in hell. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| She's bigger too. | ||
| She fucking struggles. | ||
| She struggles for 115. But then you've got Valentina. | ||
| It's like, I think that weight class, it's really interesting, right? | ||
| When you're talking about weight classes, if you're talking about the difference between 105 pounds and 115 pounds, it might only be 10 pounds, but it's a giant percentage of your body weight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you look at MMA in the men's division and you have, you know, 155 and you have 170. You have that 15-pound gap. | ||
| That's a big gap. | ||
| It's a giant gap. | ||
| I think this should be every 10 pounds. | ||
| Every 10 pounds for men. | ||
| And for women, I think there's a real good argument that it should be every 5 pounds. | ||
| But if Dana heard this, he would find whatever hairs he's got left and start plucking them out of his head. | ||
| Tell Rogan to shut the fuck up! | ||
| Plucking his eyebrow hairs. | ||
| He doesn't even like the idea of a 165. I'm like, god damn, that's a no-brainer. | ||
| Yeah, there's plenty of fighters out there that are willing to fight and just give them a place to do so. | ||
| And guys who would be champions because that's their real natural weight class. | ||
| The in-betweens. | ||
| I think that what one FC is doing in terms of weight cutting is the way to do it. | ||
| But the other side is they're not doing the same thing that USADA is doing in terms of steroids. | ||
| So they are able to take steroids. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Talk to guys who compete over there and it's like, yeah, I mean, there's some... | ||
| Testing. | ||
| So would you rather fight somebody that's heavier than you or somebody that's taking steroids? | ||
| Very good question. | ||
| Because if they were not just taking steroids but also taking EPO, there's a lot of different shit that people can take. | ||
| They can give you more endurance. | ||
| EPO is a scary one because the person has more gas in their tank to beat you. | ||
| They can hit you, they can take shots better, they can recover better, and then they can come after you and then they'll have more gas in the tank than maybe they can put you away. | ||
| I'd rather fight somebody that was heavier than me and depleted from cutting water weight than somebody that was taking steroids or EPOs. | ||
| For a woman, I think for sure. | ||
| For women, there's a real argument that once someone has ever taken steroids, that you've altered your chemistry enough and your physiology enough that you're forever going to have some sort of an advantage. | ||
| So then there's nothing you can do about that. | ||
| Maybe deduct a point before you even get in the octagon? | ||
| That's not even good enough. | ||
| So many KOs people, right? | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| How often do you spar? | ||
| I would say heavy sparring once a week. | ||
| Once a week. | ||
| So we do... | ||
| Like MMA grappling on Mondays. | ||
| Tuesdays is a heavy sparring. | ||
| It's a 16-ounce let's throw down sparring. | ||
| Wednesdays is wrestling. | ||
| Thursdays is MMA glove sparring. | ||
| So it's kind of more just accuracy, like light on the striking, heavy on the grappling. | ||
| And then Fridays, technical work, technique, stuff like that. | ||
| Now, you're at a gym. | ||
| You're at Jackson, Winkle John, which is one of the best gyms on the planet Earth, but also a gym that's filled with savages. | ||
| I mean, there must be a lot of chest bumping and a lot of people that are trying to test people. | ||
| And there's got to be girls who are there who look at a girl like you and say, hey, this girl's where I want to be. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, I mean, I've talked to males who train there and say, man, let me tell you something. | ||
| There's some Russian cats that just show up out of nowhere and try to take your head off. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And they go outside and smoke some cigarettes and drink some vodka and all that. | ||
| Are they smoking cigarettes? | ||
| Some of them. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| Fighters are crazy. | ||
| You get the funniest, coolest stories from meeting fighters all around the world. | ||
| Jackson's is a shark tank. | ||
| You're not going there to find Nemo. | ||
| You're fun at Jaws. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| So you have to have a good set of skills before you get there in order to kind of hold your own. | ||
| We do actually have an amateur team right now that... | ||
| It's run by Joey Vissenior and he's done an amazing job with the amateur team. | ||
| We've kind of been able to separate the classes in that sense where Joey is kind of overseeing all of the amateur fighters and he's building these amateur fighters. | ||
| And when he feels like they're ready to come and train with the pros, he'll give them the go or do a trial run where they train with us for one week and see if they're ready for a higher level of competition. | ||
| And then if they are, then they stay. | ||
| And if they're not, then they come back to the amateur team. | ||
| And it's actually worked out quite well. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| So do they start people from fresh, like no skills at all? | ||
| Some. | ||
| So there's classes there for total beginners? | ||
| Uh, yeah. | ||
| It's crazy if you ever, like, go into the gym and see, like, um, when you see, like, amateurs or people that have, like, zero training spar versus, like, professional fighter spar. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It almost looks more dangerous. | ||
| Yeah, it is more dangerous. | ||
| I would not want to be in that, in, like, the cage with some of those people that, like, because you just don't know where the punches or kicks are coming from. | ||
| And they're all coming full blast. | ||
| Exactly, 100%. | ||
| Yeah, they don't have any control. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I always say that about jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Jiu-jitsu is the same thing. | ||
| The last thing you want to do is grapple with a really strong guy who's about to get his blue belt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, geez. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He just spazz out on you. | ||
| Everybody's eagles gets in the way. | ||
| I think that's why they match up high level with low level, don't you think? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So someone can control you and calm you down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I love jujitsu. | ||
| I can't wait to, you know, to get my black belt in jujitsu. | ||
| And I think it's kind of brought me back to my more traditional background where, you know, there's a little bit more structure when it comes to that. | ||
| The belts and things. | ||
| Are you training with the gi? | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, how much of that do you use a lot of grips? | ||
| Like, do you grab collars and sleeves and things like that? | ||
| I try. | ||
| You do? | ||
| I try to force myself outside of my comfort zone because I am so used to grabbing wrists, grabbing shoulders, and, you know, right at the crick of the elbows and stuff like that. | ||
| And I find myself going for those grips because that's just what I've done for the last decade. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Because I am stepping into their world, I want to learn the grips, and I want to learn all of that stuff. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's great if you want to compete in jiu-jitsu with a gi. | ||
| But I think for MMA, I think the best... | ||
| The benefit of jujitsu with a gi for MMA is defensive for submissions because you get caught in things you can't power out of them because it's not slippery. | ||
| And I'm slippery. | ||
| I love no gi because I can slip out of things and I'll just wait until I have a little bit of space and then I'm out. | ||
| Yeah, I'm just... | ||
| And I'm just out, but I can't do that in gi. | ||
| So what I'll do a lot of times is I'll go train gi, and I'll do the technique class, and then when it's time to go do live rolling, I just take my gi off, and then I go, no gi. | ||
| That's smart. | ||
| So that way everything you're doing is applicable in MMA, because one of the things we used to see in the early days of MMA, you see these gi world champions, like elite level world champions, and they'd fight in MMA, and they lost all of their technique. | ||
| Because everything was collars and sleeves and pants and everything was grabbing things. | ||
| Whereas instead of, now they try to go to cable grips or overhooks and underhooks and they're all confused. | ||
| Like their technique is off. | ||
| And they would be like a blue belt or a purple belt. | ||
| World champions! | ||
| Yeah, I think it's great. | ||
| Like my professor now, he, so I'll be rolling with his wife or some of his students and Like, it's weird because they're getting me ready for my fights, but I'm also getting them ready for Worlds and stuff like that. | ||
| So depending on who's getting who ready is what he'll call out if we're going. | ||
| And I'm, you know, I'm sitting in their guard. | ||
| He'll tell them that they have to get active. | ||
| They're like, he'll straight up say, if she was fighting, you should just be punching the face. | ||
| You got to move. | ||
| You got to do something, you know? | ||
| So I think it's good just to give them a different perspective as well. | ||
| Have you ever watched combat jiu-jitsu? | ||
| Uh, I've seen a couple where you get to slap them in the face and stuff like that. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen some of it. | ||
| That's interesting because it shows you where there are these gaps where like, hey, this is an MMA, but if it was, you'd be getting pounded on right here. | ||
| Like, you can't just hang out. | ||
| Like, there's moments in Jiu-Jitsu that are unrealistic in self-defense situations or in a fight situation. | ||
| Yeah, and that's where I get frustrated, but it's good. | ||
| I need that frustration because I'll be in a position and in my head I'm like, I could just punch you right now in the face! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| But I can't because we're grappling. | ||
| So your schedule that you're laying out, is this a schedule of Jax and Winklejohn? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Is this just their schedule? | ||
| Yeah, that's what I do in the mornings at the gym. | ||
| So who sets up, like, when you're in camp, when you have to do, you know, you've got a fight, it's 12 weeks from now, who sets up your schedule? | ||
| I think what we do is we get a fight scheduled and then we get all the coaches in together. | ||
| And so my jiu-jitsu coach, I go to Gracie Baja for jiu-jitsu. | ||
| So jiu-jitsu, wrestling, you know, Coach Jackson, Coach Wingo John, Joey Villasenor, and my husband. | ||
| And my husband's with me all the time, so he kind of oversees everything. | ||
| And we just sit down and we talk about all the things we need to get together. | ||
| I do one private with Coach Jackson a week. | ||
| I do two privates with Coach Wink a week. | ||
| I do a private with Coach Villasenor, and then I do all those in the morning. | ||
| And then I work out at my house as well, and then I do jujitsu. | ||
| What do you do at your house? | ||
| It depends on the day. | ||
| Sometimes we do simulations. | ||
| We'll do like round simulations. | ||
| Sometimes it's just hardcore cardio. | ||
| Sometimes it's just technical. | ||
| Do you have something set up in your garage or something? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's nice. | ||
| We got a home gym. | ||
| We got a clear light sauna. | ||
| We got a feral health. | ||
| What's a clear light sauna? | ||
| It's an infrared sauna. | ||
| And then we have a cold plunge. | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| So you can get something in at home. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| If we needed to, we could do our whole camp at home. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| But I really enjoy being at the gym around my teammates and around my coaches and just pulling energy from them. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| What about strength and conditioning? | ||
| How often are you doing that? | ||
| I do more strength and conditioning when I'm out of camp. | ||
| So like right now I'm doing strength and conditioning like Three or four times a week. | ||
| When I'm in camp, it depends on my body and it depends on what I'm needing at the time. | ||
| But I usually once or twice a week. | ||
| And then I run just for maintenance, just for meditative running, nothing hard. | ||
| So longer distance but slower? | ||
| Yeah, but not even too long, like three miles. | ||
| Nothing crazy. | ||
| That hill that Jackson loves to throw people up, what is that all about? | ||
| That looks crazy. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| Coach Jackson always says, if the mountain can't beat you, nobody can beat you. | ||
| It's like Mother Nature. | ||
| Mother Nature's a mother. | ||
| There's something about that steep-ass hill, too. | ||
| You watch everybody, the whole team running up it. | ||
| It's crazy because, well, there's that one, but then Coach Wink has another one, and that one's just insane. | ||
| You can't sprint up it. | ||
| You, like, crawl up it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, it's ridiculous. | ||
| How steep is it? | ||
| It's so steep, you can't run. | ||
| You have to, like, basically, the first three sprints, there's ten sprints to the top, and then you... | ||
| Slowly jog back down because it's really steep. | ||
| But the first three, you really can't sprint up, but you kind of have to bear crawl up the mountain. | ||
| As fast as you can. | ||
| As fast as you can. | ||
| But the one, the Hill of Tears is crazy because... | ||
| That's what they call it? | ||
| The Hill of Tears. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's like it goes up, it goes up, and then it goes up. | ||
| So like when you think you're almost there, it like cranks up even harder and then you have to get to the top and it'll test you for sure. | ||
| It can break you. | ||
| Well, that camp is known for its endurance. | ||
| Like, fighters that come out of that camp are known for having great cardio. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And how often does Jackson or Winklejohn make everybody do those hills? | ||
| I think it just depends. | ||
| We used to do them as a team quite a bit on the weekends. | ||
| But, you know, Coach Jackson, Coach Winkle... | ||
| Is this it right here? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Oh, that's me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's my sister. | |
| That's you and your sister. | ||
| That's my dog, my Dobie. | ||
| It doesn't look like anything, really. | ||
| Oh, it looks like it to me. | ||
| I'm used to running hills. | ||
| I know what it's like. | ||
| That looks terrible. | ||
| Looks like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's what it feels like. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's amazing how gravity is one of the best things to work with. | ||
| Like, get a good pitch, good steep angle, and try to run up that. | ||
| It's one of the best things for strength and conditioning, for just conditioning your lungs and your ability to recover. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I love it. | ||
| I think that, again, it's another one of those things that... | ||
| Can really break you. | ||
| And I think it's just like a theme, like a consistent theme in fighting is will you break? | ||
| If you break, then you're not meant for it, you know? | ||
| Or maybe you are and you just need to heal up and go back at it and try it again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In terms of your mental endurance, that's what we're talking about, right? | ||
| We're talking about fortitude and your spirit, your indomitable spirit. | ||
| If you go back to when you first started fighting versus now, your tolerance must be through the roof. | ||
| What you can tolerate, what you can endure, and your belief in yourself. | ||
| All that stuff, I feel, evolves just like your skills do. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| But it's crazy too because we all have our own separate journeys and I feel like when you first start fighting, just like when you're a kid and you jump off of things and you're fearless because you don't know what it feels like to get hurt and then you break your leg and then you're like, well, I'm never doing that again. | ||
| I feel like it's the same in fighting. | ||
| When you see a lot of amateur fighters or new fighters, they go out there and they just do whatever because they're fearless. | ||
| They've never been knocked out. | ||
| They've never been hit. | ||
| They've never broken anything. | ||
| And so they're just going to go out there and be fearless. | ||
| And then they get knocked out or submitted. | ||
| And then the next time they go out, they're not as free. | ||
| And I think the true test is to see if you can deal with those challenges and allow it to make you grow versus... | ||
| You know, petrify you and make you go backwards. | ||
| Do you do any psychological training? | ||
| Do you have a mental coach or a hypnotist or anything along those lines? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| I have a sports psychologist, Dr. Shannon. | ||
| And he's been working with me for my last three fights and I've won all three fights. | ||
| And I think that's a big reason why, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, I think that is a giant overlooked factor. | ||
| And some people get along great without it. | ||
| But could they be even better with it? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, I think so as well. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| There's so much that goes into fighting that I think people don't see. | ||
| I think it's just like with anything in life. | ||
| How long it takes to make a movie versus the actual movie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What goes into that 15 minutes of a fight that nobody even knows? | ||
| Not just 8 weeks, but your entire training before that. | ||
| For me, I've been doing martial arts since I was 10 and fighting professionally for over 10 years. | ||
| So it's an accumulation of all of those things, but each fight presents its own problem, and if you're not mentally prepared for it, if you're not prepared physically, if you're not prepared spiritually, emotionally, hormonally, if that's even a word. | ||
| It is, it is. | ||
| Everything has to line up that one night, those 15 minutes or 25 minutes in order for you to win and you can definitely beat yourself before you step into the octagon. | ||
| So what kind of stuff do you work on with your psychologist without giving too much away? | ||
| I talked to him about this all the time because it's like my secret sauce, right? | ||
| But how he explains this is everybody knows what you're supposed to do, but you have to put in the work. | ||
| Just like physically you have to put in the work. | ||
| Like I can sit up here and I can tell you what I do, but it's not going to make a difference unless you actually put in the work to strengthen your mind mentally. | ||
| But we do a lot of... | ||
| So your opponent, it's not like you can practice sparring them because you've never fought them before. | ||
| And so how he explains it to me is, it's just a repetition, you know, of the mind. | ||
| And... | ||
| So you just have to really, I think, explore your imagination. | ||
| And for us, we practice the fight in our head. | ||
| And some days are harder than others. | ||
| Sometimes I win the fight in the first 10 seconds of the round. | ||
| It's all five rounds and it's a war and I win that way. | ||
| But you have to see yourself going through every different scenario. | ||
| And there are millions in MMA. And you just practice them over and over and over. | ||
| So it's essentially just going through that? | ||
| Or do you prepare your mindset? | ||
| What we do is... | ||
| For me, I have a set of power words is what he calls them. | ||
| Power words. | ||
| Want to tell us what they are? | ||
| And so... | ||
| Yeah, I can. | ||
| Confidence. | ||
| Flow. | ||
| Vicious. | ||
| I think I'm trying to see. | ||
| Mom champ. | ||
| Mom champ? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you want to be the first mom champ. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Healthy. | ||
| There are a couple of others as well. | ||
| But the one word is not just a word. | ||
| It's like a whole thought process. | ||
| So when I say one word, it feeds into an entire feeling, if that makes any sense. | ||
| And so instead of having to have a conversation in my mind, which takes way too long, I just say confidence, and it takes me where I need to be. | ||
| And eventually, you shouldn't even have to do that. | ||
| You should just be in the moment and just allow your mind to connect with your body. | ||
| Do you do any meditating at all? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I would say it's kind of a meditative... | ||
| I would say it's more of a practice than it is meditation because I'm not trying to clear my mind. | ||
| I'm really trying to focus on something specific. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But outside of that, you don't meditate. | ||
| I wouldn't say so. | ||
| Maybe in my runs. | ||
| Sometimes when I run, that's when I clear my mind. | ||
| How about you? | ||
| Yeah, I've been doing it a little bit, but most of what I do, I do when I get in the tank, float tank. | ||
| I like float tanks. | ||
| Do you use one? | ||
| I have before. | ||
| It feels like you're floating in space. | ||
| Yeah, it's amazing. | ||
| Does Jackson's have one? | ||
| No. | ||
| They should have one. | ||
| We should, huh? | ||
| Except you wouldn't want to go in there after God. | ||
| It's kind of disgusting. | ||
| We have a hot sauna at the gym, and there's tons of people. | ||
| There's tons of people, so it gets good use. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I'm sure. | ||
| The hot sauna though is different than a float tank because a float tank is so personal. | ||
| It's just one little in there and you're naked. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| They showed me yours and it felt hotter than the ones that I've ever done. | ||
| It's the right temperature. | ||
| Is it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Okay. | ||
| 94 degrees. | ||
| That's what it should be. | ||
| Yeah, it should be the same as the surface of your skin. | ||
| As your body temperature, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Because it was crazy. | ||
| I remember doing it one time and... | ||
| I kind of drifted off and I remember almost waking up and feeling like I was like floating in space. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| Almost like kind of panicked because I didn't have a sense of where my body was. | ||
| Yeah, that's what triggers these weird psychedelic states. | ||
| But if you can find one and use it on a regular basis, it works great with visualization and a lot of athletes. | ||
| UFC and other sports as well, they use it for visualization. | ||
| They'll think about passes, like throwing a pass and then watching someone catch it. | ||
| They'll visualize things and go through the technique in their head. | ||
| And I've done that with jiu-jitsu as well. | ||
| I've done that with certain techniques that I was really trying to learn. | ||
| You could do it as if you're rolling. | ||
| You're just picturing your body going through the different positions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's basically what we do with the mental training. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It'd probably just take it up a notch in the float tank. | ||
| Yeah, I'm sure. | ||
| But a lot of times, like, when I meet up with Dr. Shandon, we meet up at noisy places like Starbucks or, you know, or at a coffee shop or something like that. | ||
| And it's because that life is always going to have distractions. | ||
| Oh, that's interesting. | ||
| And you need to be able to focus with distractions, especially me. | ||
| There's so many things going on in my life with being a mother and a wife that sometimes I can use the distractions as an excuse to justify why I'm not getting things done or this or that. | ||
| And so that's something that I've really been working hard at is to not use those as excuses, but more so to allow the distractions to happen and choose to stay focused anyways. | ||
| There's quite a few women's MMA fighters now, but it's still small in comparison to men. | ||
| When you meet young girls that look up to you, do you recognize that you have a very critical and it's a very small role in terms of a small amount of people providing that role as role models? | ||
| To young kids that are thinking about fighting when a young girl meets you, like, oh my god, it's the karate hottie. | ||
| Is it weird to you? | ||
| What is that feeling like to you when you meet a young girl and you say, oh my god, this is me when I was 16? | ||
| Yeah, it's amazing. | ||
| It really is to know that just through my story that I've touched people's lives. | ||
| I get approached a lot by parents that are happy that I'm pursuing what I'm pursuing, even being a mom. | ||
| So, I think that's really cool just because I feel like when I was pregnant, How old's your daughter now? | ||
| She's eight. | ||
| I thought she was much younger for some reason. | ||
| I know, she's a shrimp, that's why. | ||
| I saw the pictures when she was younger too. | ||
| Yeah, she's itty bitty. | ||
| This might be too much information, but after I had my daughter, she spent every single one of my fights. | ||
| And I had my first fight back when I was 10 months old and I was still breastfeeding. | ||
| I like breastfed her. | ||
| When she was 10 months old, not when you were 10 months old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sorry. | |
| When she was 10 months old. | ||
| Wow, you had a fight while you were breastfeeding? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was your first fight? | ||
| My first fight back. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| How many fights did you have before your daughter? | ||
| I had a good amount, I'd say. | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| Has you been fighting for 10 years professionally? | ||
| 12 years. | ||
| 12 years? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Yeah, a good amount. | ||
| I was 25 when I was pregnant. | ||
| But yeah, I just remember being pregnant and being... | ||
| Everybody talks about postpartum depression, but I was really depressed during my pregnancy. | ||
| I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved being pregnant and there was a lot of memories that I had with her being in my belly and me feeling her and all of this. | ||
| Those moments I treasure forever, but... | ||
| I was depressed. | ||
| I couldn't do what I wanted to do. | ||
| It's not like I could go out. | ||
| If I was feeling bad, I couldn't just throw the gloves on and go out and spar and hit somebody in the face. | ||
| You know, normal things. | ||
| That's what you do to relieve stress. | ||
| And I just, I watched everybody get better. | ||
| And I watched everybody progress and fight. | ||
| And it, you know, it ate me alive. | ||
| And I just, there was just so much uncertainty and so much unknown. | ||
| Was my body going to be the same? | ||
| You know, was I going to even want it? | ||
| Was I going to have time to do it? | ||
| There was just so much that I didn't know. | ||
| And so I was really down then and I get a lot of moms that approach me and they tell me that because I went back and continued to pursue my dream that they did too. | ||
| And I think that that's cool. | ||
| That is cool. | ||
| Now, when you say you had your first fight back 10 months, that's a really, for people that don't recognize, that's a very short amount of time to rebound from giving birth and then get yourself back in shape and then get yourself into fighting shape where you're like, I'm ready to take a fight and then train for the fight. | ||
| I mean, that is an incredible process to go through in 10 months. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| It really was. | ||
| My body was... | ||
| When you have a baby, your bones kind of like drift apart from each other and you gain weight. | ||
| After I had my daughter, I found out... | ||
| Well, during my pregnancy, I got gestational diabetes and I gained like 50 pounds. | ||
| I gained a lot. | ||
| I looked like the blueberry on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But, yeah. | ||
| How long did it take you to bounce back? | ||
| Were you in the gym again? | ||
| I probably stayed with my daughter for the first three months that I had her, and I just wanted to be a mom. | ||
| I just wanted to be with her, and I wanted to nurture her and, you know, enjoy my time with her. | ||
| And I think it was after three months where I was like, I want to... | ||
| Kick somebody in the head. | ||
| Kick some butt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I want to relieve some stress. | ||
| And Coach Wink and Coach Jackson and all my teammates were so supportive. | ||
| And so I would come into the gym and I'd have my diaper bag in one hand and my gym bag in the other and my car seat. | ||
| And I'd come into the gym and I'd set it all down and I'd get wrapped up and she'd be in the car seat and she'd chill out. | ||
| And if she would start to cry, Coach Wink or Coach Jackson would pick her up. | ||
| And then they'd let me spar and she needed to eat. | ||
| I would go to the room and feed her and then come back and – And we made it work. | ||
| So I started training for that and I really couldn't run to lose the weight because my joints and my bones were all spread apart. | ||
| So when you say spread apart, what actually does happen? | ||
| I don't know all the science behind it, but they just say that in order to have the baby, everything kind of separates from each other. | ||
| Your bones loosen and you're more agile and loose and stuff like that. | ||
| You felt it? | ||
| I felt it. | ||
| You felt a big difference in the way your body performed? | ||
| Yeah, for sure I felt it. | ||
| So instead of running, I would swim for my cardio. | ||
| And that helped me. | ||
| Because it wasn't hard on my joints or anything like that. | ||
| It kind of helped me get back into shape. | ||
| You kind of just go with the flow and figure it out as you go. | ||
| It was really hard. | ||
| I was worried that because I got back into sparring and this and that, that I would go dry. | ||
| Like my milk would go dry. | ||
| But I didn't. | ||
| My body just figured, okay, this is what you do. | ||
| And I still produce milk and everything. | ||
| And it was really sensitive at first to get hit. | ||
| And then I just got used to the pain. | ||
| Ow! | ||
| I don't even have one of those. | ||
| I'm like, yikes. | ||
| Yeah, I would imagine. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if you're... | ||
| Memories, you know, they pump up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The body is just so amazing, though. | ||
| Like, it'll adapt to what it needs to adapt to. | ||
| And when I trained, I got used to the pain, and then it didn't hurt anymore. | ||
| And then, you know, I would only produce as much as she needed. | ||
| It was really cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, when you fought 10 months, it's pretty incredible for your daughter to have only seen you fighting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's gotta be crazy too, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You can't remember when you weren't fighting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My mom kicks ass. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She has a really cool upbringing, I think. | ||
| She's surrounded by really cool people. | ||
| She gets to meet the coolest people in the world, and they're normal to her. | ||
| She sees John and Holly, and that's Auntie Holly to her. | ||
| Her expectations for what she can be in life, I think, are way higher. | ||
| And I think because she's surrounded by people like that, and that's why I like to keep her around because, you know, my dad used to always tell me that... | ||
| We learn through our actions, our parents' actions. | ||
| You walk the walk, you don't talk the talk. | ||
| So I think the best teacher can be my actions. | ||
| And for her to see it through her own eyes, I can tell her this, this, and this all day. | ||
| But it's a different story when she comes to a fight with me and I'm the champion, the 105 champion, and I'm defending my belt. | ||
| And I bust my eye open to the point where you can't see it anymore and I lose my belt. | ||
| And for her to see that... | ||
| And for her to see that mommy's okay and that failure is a part of life and that I still love what I do and I'm going to still go after my set of dreams because failure is a part of your journey. | ||
| That's an amazing lesson for a kid to learn. | ||
| And to see that at a high level growing up with her mother on this giant stage in front of all these people in the crowd and television, that's amazing for her. | ||
| Yeah, and because people ask me all the time, like, aren't you afraid that she's going to see you get hurt and this and that? | ||
| But why would you want to shield them from that stuff? | ||
| I know it's hard. | ||
| It's a hard pill to swallow. | ||
| You don't want your children to see you hurt and this and that. | ||
| But I'd rather her see it and be prepared for it, you know, because life isn't fair. | ||
| Life isn't sunshine and rainbows all the time. | ||
| Yeah, it's challenging for her and challenging things for kids. | ||
| That's how they grow. | ||
| Do you have, when you think about your career, do you have a timeline where you don't want to fight anymore? | ||
| How old are you now? | ||
| I'd like to fight for the belt this year. | ||
| This year? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're 33. So you're in your prime. | ||
| Right now, an athlete's prime is like 30 to 35, 36. Yeah. | ||
| You're in that zone... | ||
| I'm in the zone. | ||
| I'm confident. | ||
| I feel ready. | ||
| I feel like I've gone through my ups and downs. | ||
| I've gone through all the steps that are necessary for me to be confident, to be a contender. | ||
| Do you have a timeline when you want to stop? | ||
| I would give myself... | ||
| It just really depends on how my career goes, but I would say three to four more years. | ||
| So you're just in the zone. | ||
| Right now you're just concentrating on getting things done, fighting for a title. | ||
| You're not thinking about planning the future up. | ||
| I would like more children. | ||
| I know my husband doesn't care for me. | ||
| My daughter doesn't even care for me to have more children. | ||
| She'd rather just be the three of us, you know. | ||
| But I would like more children. | ||
| And I have taken steps to figure out what I'm going to do when I retire as a fighter. | ||
| But... | ||
| I feel like this story needs to... | ||
| I need to finish out this story for my own sake and for, you know, millions of other parents out there that, you know, have a dream and don't give up on their dream just because they have children. | ||
| It's a longer road, but it's worth it. | ||
| Yeah, I hear you. | ||
| Now, when you look at the division, it's an incredible division now. | ||
| It's so talent stacked. | ||
| We don't know what's going to happen with Rose. | ||
| She's even said she might retire. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And she's a very eccentric person. | ||
| I mean, she's not motivated by money. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| Very, very unusual. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I love how honest she is about her emotions. | ||
| Yeah, I do as well. | ||
| She's very vulnerable. | ||
| She's very strong. | ||
| I mean, in terms of her ability to broadcast that and tell everybody and project it. | ||
| So I felt like she was winning that fight. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She got caught with one of the craziest slam KOs we've ever seen. | ||
| I mean, you've got to go back to Carlos Newton, Matt Hughes, to have a slam KO like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm trying to remember. | ||
| It's one of the best slam KOs of all time. | ||
| Maybe Tito Ortiz, Evan Tanner. | ||
| That was another one. | ||
| I mean, slam KOs are rare. | ||
| And I love that it came from the smallest division in the UFC. Right. | ||
| I think that is just amazing. | ||
| I'm just so proud of the starweight division, if I can say so. | ||
| But I do. | ||
| I think it's stacked. | ||
| I feel like for my... | ||
| Any fight that I have from here on out is championship caliber fight, in my opinion. | ||
| And that's why I want to fight for the belt. | ||
| I want to go for the belt so that it's legit. | ||
| We're fighting for the belt. | ||
| And after that, it's a championship fight. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you're looking at that division, you have those two, Jessica Andrade, and we don't, again, we do not know where Rose's head is at, what she wants to do, but if she wanted to have a rematch, they probably would set that up. | ||
| Then you have Ioana, you have Tatiana Suarez, who's a beast. | ||
| You have you, you have, who else in the division stands out to you? | ||
| Well, Nina. | ||
|
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Sure. | |
| Tatiana has to get through Nina first. | ||
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Sure. | |
| And she's kind of just riding under the radar. | ||
| Nina Ansaroff, she's badass. | ||
| And maybe it's because, and that's a problem that I've had too, is that I'm not as vocal. | ||
| She just goes in there and does her thing. | ||
| And I think that a lot of people are overlooking her as well. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And that's why I'm speaking out now. | ||
| This is what I want. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Josh always jokes, he says, you get 100% of what you don't ask for. | ||
| So I'm asking for it. | ||
| It's what I want. | ||
| But yeah, there's Wade Lee. | ||
| I know that they're trying to pump her, and she's really good coming out of China. | ||
| And then, obviously, Tisha, Claudia... | ||
| And even the girls outside of the top ten are dangerous. | ||
| It's a stacked division, and it can go... | ||
| It's probably the most talented division in the women's MMA. I would say so, for sure. | ||
| Technically, and heart-driven, I would say. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Now, what have they said in terms of what your future holds? | ||
| Do they have anything lined up for you? | ||
| When do they say... | ||
| If they're going to come to you and say, Hey... | ||
| Michelle we'd like you to fight in July or August or September like when would they come to you? | ||
| I just feel like With the way that the rankings are working, if I just take a fight outside of who is the current champ, I'm going to be in the same spot. | ||
| I've won my last two fights and I've gone down in rankings. | ||
| I really would like to hold off to fight the champion. | ||
| Because I feel like any other fight is going to either take me down or keep me in the same spot. | ||
| So, I don't know what they're planning on doing with Tatiana and Nina, but if they're trying to give them a shot before me, I feel like I want the winner of that and let me and them hash it out to fight for the belt. | ||
| So that would be what you would do as a second choice. | ||
| First choice is you want to fight for the belt. | ||
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Absolutely. | |
| Second choice is whoever's going to fight for the belt, let me fight her. | ||
| Let me fight them first because Tatiana's only had seven fights, nothing against her. | ||
| She's played her case. | ||
| I have three times as many fights as she does. | ||
| I've fought for a belt before. | ||
| I've been a champion before. | ||
| I've gone five rounds before. | ||
| I've fought main event before. | ||
| I've worked my way back up. | ||
| Give me a shot. | ||
| Let me be mom champ. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta get there before somebody else does, right? | ||
| That's what I'm saying! | ||
| Because the only other person in that... | ||
| Well, Kat Zingano. | ||
| I don't know how her eyeball's doing right now. | ||
| I know. | ||
| That was a crazy situation. | ||
| To have all those fights in UFC and never have someone get toed in the eye like that before. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And obviously you know that's how Winklejohn lost his vision. | ||
| Yeah, it's scary. | ||
| It is really scary to think that this is what we do and that there are so many dangers. | ||
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, you're in a wild business, lady. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, I mean, I wouldn't train it for the world. | ||
| This is what I love doing. | ||
| Well, that's awesome. | ||
| Then you're in the right spot. | ||
| Well, obviously, you're ranked number seven in the world. | ||
| It's got to be frustrating, though, that you have gone down in rankings, even though you haven't lost. | ||
| Absolutely, 100%. | ||
| And I don't know why they would argue for me not to get the belt to go for it. | ||
| Everything's there. | ||
| The storyline is there. | ||
| It would be technique versus strength, speed versus power. | ||
| This is you and Jessica. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And like I said, there were millions of people rallying behind me because they want to see me get that belt and I do too. | ||
| I'd love for my daughter to see that dream of mine come true and for her to come in the octagon with me and be holding that belt. | ||
| I think it would be an amazing moment. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy watching kids see their parents win titles and how amazing it is to them. | ||
| It's a very strange thing to see, like that, oh my god, you know, my mom is the champ of the world or my dad's the champ. | ||
| We've never seen it, obviously, from a woman, but that my dad's the champ of the world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a very powerful thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you're in a holding pattern right now, essentially. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's what we're doing right now. | ||
| When was your last fight? | ||
| Was it April? | ||
| March or April? | ||
| March or April. | ||
| Yeah, we're just working. | ||
| We're getting better. | ||
| That's almost a year. | ||
| No, this April. | ||
| This April. | ||
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April. | |
| What am I talking about? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I fought Karolina Kovalkevich. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it was a great fight. | ||
| I wanted the finish, but you can't force those things. | ||
| So I'm just going to continue to do what I'm doing and continue to get better. | ||
| What did you think of her loss to Andrade? | ||
| That was crazy. | ||
| I feel like styles make fights and it was the perfect fight for Andraj to showcase her knockout power because KK is a pressure fighter and she instinctively will go forward and throw when she is in danger. | ||
| And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, you know? | ||
| And she throws hard, obviously. | ||
| She buckled Ioana a couple times. | ||
| She's dangerous. | ||
| She's very, very tough. | ||
| She won against Rose. | ||
| But yeah, I think styles make fights. | ||
| And that's what happened with her in that situation. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Andrade is unusually strong. | ||
| Freakish. | ||
| You see when she grabs ahold of people and then dumps them on their ass. | ||
| She's freakishly powerful. | ||
| To be able to hit that single and elevate Rose that way and drop her on her head, you think about how strong you have to be to do that. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| It's beautiful to watch. | ||
| She's a beast. | ||
| Great technique as well, no doubt about it, but man, a lot of power. | ||
| That's her bread and butter, for sure. | ||
| A lot of horsepower. | ||
| That's her bread and butter, and I honestly gave it to Rose to win the fight. | ||
| It only takes a split second, though, to lose your focus and to get picked up and slammed down like that, and then the fight's over. | ||
| For the division, it's actually probably good, because it's exciting, because it mixes things up a bit. | ||
| You have Ioana, who was the dominant champion for so long. | ||
| Rose comes along and beats her, and then Jessica dumps Rose in her head and beats her in a fight that she was losing. | ||
| I mean, it's a hotbed of talent. | ||
| That 115-pound women's division is amazing right now. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's what I'm wanting. | ||
| That's exactly what I want. | ||
| In the meantime, we just get better. | ||
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Beautiful. | |
| We train and we get better. | ||
| I feel like what's going to beat Andrade is, I mean, Rose was doing exactly what she was doing. | ||
| I think that Rose actually kind of got a bit, just a little bit complacent. | ||
| She's even said it herself. | ||
| It was a moment of laziness. | ||
| A lapse, yeah. | ||
| Well, it's so hard after the fact to try to figure out what went wrong and why it went wrong, what was going on in her head, but clearly it was not lacing up the legs when she was attacking the Kimura. | ||
| She was elevated and dumped. | ||
| And I'm sure for a lot of her camp, she was able to do that with her teammates and probably pop off good submissions. | ||
| But in the moment of a fight for a championship belt in your hometown against a person that's bread and butter is a pile drive. | ||
| It just stacks up against you. | ||
| Well, good luck trying to find someone as strong as her, outside of maybe Valentina, who she does train with. | ||
| I mean, but Jessica Andrade is probably one of the strongest women in the 150-pound division. | ||
| She's so damn strong. | ||
| So good luck trying to find someone to replicate that in training. | ||
| Yeah, and you don't train that. | ||
| You don't train the pile driver. | ||
| Like, that's dangerous. | ||
| That's one of those things that you just... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| She does train Valentina, though, who's one of the strongest women at 125. Valentina's a tank. | ||
| That's a very strong woman. | ||
| But her style is different, too. | ||
| She's a counterfighter, and she picks and chooses when she wants to go, and if she holds you down... | ||
| Super technical striker. | ||
| Yeah, like, her takedowns are not Andrade's takedowns. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| It is one of the things that's so exciting about the sport is that there are so many different ways to approach it. | ||
| There's so many different ways. | ||
| There's your way, karate style. | ||
| There's Ioana's way, Muay Thai. | ||
| There's Jessica's way, bulldog, get a hold of you, take her down. | ||
| And in a lot of ways, Ioana also showed how to beat Jessica Andrade. | ||
| She showed how to beat her. | ||
| I feel the difference with Ioana and Rose is that Rose, because... | ||
| This is just my opinion, because Rose has shown to have more variety in her... | ||
| In her toolbox. | ||
| She's really good grappling and this and that. | ||
| I don't think she's as... | ||
| She's not as hesitant to go to the ground. | ||
| I feel like if the situation allowed it, she would go to the ground and even get a submission on Andrade. | ||
| Whereas with Ioana, she knows what she has to do to win and she'll be stubborn in that sense and do that for five minutes, for five rounds consistently. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I feel like with Rose, she'll take risks. | ||
| And a lot of times it does work for her. | ||
| And sometimes it just doesn't. | ||
| Yeah, and that was just one of those times. | ||
| It's interesting to see her talk about fighting, period, that she doesn't know if she has that in her anymore. | ||
| Just to be mean to a person, to hurt a person. | ||
| I thought that was really interesting. | ||
| Yeah, I love how honest she is. | ||
| But I also feel like A big part of her getting the belt was to know that she could take down Ioana, the invincible. | ||
| And then she did that and it was like, alright, well, now I know that I can. | ||
| And it's kind of like, well, I've already accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. | ||
| I don't know, maybe that's just me thinking out loud of what maybe she might be going through, what might be going on in her mind. | ||
| Let's say if you fought Andrade and you beat her and you become the champion, would that take a significant amount of motivation away from you or would you have more motivation to defend it? | ||
| So we talk about this too because that's been such a huge goal of mine is to be the champ. | ||
| And I want to say two fights ago we started implementing... | ||
| Visualizations of me being the champ and defending the belt and how that would look like. | ||
| This is with your psychologist? | ||
| With my sports psychologist. | ||
| Yeah, so that makes the mountain higher. | ||
| It's not the end game once you get the belt. | ||
| Coach Jackson would say that all the time. | ||
| It's easy to become the champ. | ||
| It's harder to stay the champ. | ||
| It certainly is. | ||
| Well, listen, Michelle, you're very entertaining. | ||
| I love watching you fight. | ||
| I hope if you do get the chance to fight for the title, I'll be there to call it. | ||
| And thanks for doing this. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me. | ||
| It's great for everybody to get a chance to get to know you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Michelle Waterson, ladies and gentlemen. |
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