Frankie Edgar joins Joe Rogan to dissect MMA’s evolution, from his 156-pound weight cut for a potential 135-lb fight to the UFC’s outdated 20-pound weight class gaps. They debate Diego Sanchez’s unbreakable willpower and unconventional kicks, George Lockhart’s controversial 85-lb cut, and Cowboy Cerrone’s injuries against Conor McGregor. Edgar’s structured training—grappling with Ricardo "Henzo" Prasciolli—contrasts with younger fighters’ early specialization, while Rogan praises stem cell therapy and Louie Simmons’ Westside Barbell methods. Ultimately, the conversation reveals how MMA’s technical depth and recovery science now define dominance, not just raw aggression. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, my buddy Chris LeGore, I got to shout him out because he got me listening to you years ago and he's been telling me to come on this podcast forever.
It's crazy that you have had a bunch of fights where you don't remember Most of the fight.
That's a thing that a lot of fighters don't necessarily talk about, but it's a reality of hard fights.
Yeah.
My second fight with Gray, where Eve Levine was the referee, I remember, I think, the fourth round, my coach Mark was telling me, we got one more round.
In my head, I'm like, one more round?
What happened to three and four?
I didn't remember at all.
And also, when he dropped me, I rolled my ankle really bad, probably a great tooth sprain.
And I remember in the fourth round coming to, and my ankle was hurting me.
I'm like, what happened?
I have no idea what happened to my ankle.
And even walking back, you know, I was kind of, you know, I don't know.
Sometimes you get rocked, you get depressed for some reason.
I noticed that even in the gym.
When I get rocked, I get a little bit of depression going on for some reason.
Like, what does it feel like when you say depression?
Like, my middle ball, you know, you're just down on yourself, you know?
I was emotional.
I think I was crying after the Gray fight in the locker room.
I think they have camera back there and there's a video of me like...
Even the second fight when you stopped him.
Not the second fight, but the...
Well, that was the second fight, not the third fight.
The third fight you stopped him.
That's right, the second fight you won.
The fucking fights that you had with Gray were so crazy...
He was so big.
Yeah, he was a big boy, man.
He was so big for 55, you know, and you were a guy who didn't cut any weight at all.
Nothing.
I literally would eat breakfast on weighing day.
Wow.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Did you ever think back then about dropping down?
Or were you just like, fuck it, I'm the champ.
Why should I go down?
I mean, I'm winning.
I'm beating these guys.
Even the Benson Henders fights, they were super close.
I could have won either way.
But I just felt, alright, I'll go down now.
I lost two in a row here.
What more can I gain from here?
Let me go down to 45. And that's when I fought Aldo for the 45-pound belt.
When you think about it, like if you had a chance to do it all over again, like if you had to engineer your career all over again, would you do it exactly the same way?
Would you fight at 55?
Well, you definitely would against BJ, right?
Yeah, I mean...
You can't go back and change those things.
It all worked out for me.
I got a world title.
I'm continuing to have a pretty good career.
There's always things you wish you could do differently.
I can't be that guy that's going to say, I wish I did this, wish I did that.
Things went the way they went.
Well, they went pretty fucking good.
I mean...
Yeah, I'm not complaining.
Especially the BJ Penn fight.
I remember the first one in Abu Dhabi.
I was there for that one.
I was like, holy shit.
That was a big victory, man.
And the second one, too.
The second one was probably even better just because I more definitively won.
I felt like too, like, you know, BJ had my back in that second fight.
And, you know, everybody thought, you know, BJ gets your back back then, you're in trouble.
And I was able to defend.
I think I reversed him.
So I kind of showed a little bit of all my complete skills in that fight.
Out of all the guys that I've ever seen fight, I've never seen anybody who controls people with the legs the way BJ does.
He's got the craziest dexterity in his legs.
He does.
I heard when he was younger he could stand up and put his leg over his head standing up.
And his physical talents were unusual, but he worked on it.
Like, this is the thing a lot of people don't realize.
There's some great videos of BJ stretching, and he would stretch with bands.
So he has all this crazy, like, he would grab his foot, like, put it on his chest.
He's got bands.
bands and he's stretching the shit out of himself so it wasn't just natural ability it was also like he realized well he realized that his legs were like other arms like because he when you're in his guard he would just those legs would come up and just pinch you down and and his mount he would cross his legs underneath dudes and his back mount was incredible yeah he was uh one of a kind i think you know on the ground and Just as a fighter, I mean, I looked up to him coming up.
He was the man, licking blood off his hands.
I was actually with him.
We did the UFC gym 10-year anniversary party up in Concord.
Dana was there and BJ was there, so I was hanging out with BJ. BJ's a good dude, man.
You know, that happened to a buddy of mine in Long Island, Kevin James, actually.
The comedian?
Yeah.
His buddy, they were working together as bouncers, and he was working with this guy, and this guy got in a fight with a patron, punched the guy, knocked him out.
The guy fell, banged his head off the ground, died.
Wow.
Dude wound up doing jail time.
Wow.
And that happens.
I heard a story of some wrestler, kind of the same thing, got into a fight, picked the guy up, slammed him on his head, and ended up in jail.
Oh, my God.
Can you imagine a wrestler, like a Yoel Romero, fucking suplexing you on the street?
Out of all the freaks, you got, like, Brock Lesnar, who's, like, got some freaky Viking genes.
Like, for sure.
Yeah, it has to be.
That dude don't make any sense.
You ever see photos of him when he was in high school?
Oh, dude.
Look at that freak in high school.
Wow.
Yeah, he was a senior when I was a freshman, and we were wrestling nationals together, and I remember just being next to him like, damn, how the fuck is this guy even real?
You know?
This looks like an action figure.
Yeah, he was...
He was the biggest physical freak I think I've ever seen.
But then you got Ngannou, who I think is more of a physical freak.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, Ngannou, 265 pounds.
Because I'm 100% positive Ngannou's on the natch.
That guy's all natural.
Yeah, just digging salt mines or whatever, dirt mines, sand mines.
He's got a photo on his Instagram today of him chopping wood.
Everything he does terrifies me.
He's so fucking powerful, man.
That guy, out of all the guys I've ever seen in the heavyweight division, he is for sure the most powerful.
That uppercut he landed on Alistair over him was incredible, man.
I thought he decapitated him.
Yeah, it's like the back of his head touched his back.
Oh, man, look at this dude.
He's breaking rocks, I guess.
What the fuck is he doing?
He's hitting a stake into the ground.
That motherfucker has power.
Yeah.
He has, like, the most ridiculous punching power.
It has to, right?
Oh, yeah, man.
Well, he's a natural 270-plus, and apparently he's been lifting, so he's even above 265 right now.
I don't know, I'm thinking a big baby Miller was supposed to fight...
That's right.
Joshua, right?
But he's tested positive.
Tyrone tested positive too.
Tyrone tested positive before he was supposed to fight Usyk.
But he said it's bullshit.
I think he was actually cleared of it.
But it was too late.
They'd already set up this other fight for Usyk.
He's a dangerous guy.
I think there's a lot of people that are going to avoid Tyrone Spong.
Yeah, he hits hard, man.
He hits fucking hard, and he's a savage.
He is.
Did you ever see his last kickboxing fight?
He broke his leg.
He broke his leg, yeah.
Against Turkish Tyson.
Right.
What's his name?
Turkish Tyson, right?
Oh, Jesus.
Why can't I remember his name?
He's in the UFC now, right?
Yeah, you made me forget his name.
What happened?
Gohan Saki.
Gohan.
Gohan Saki.
Jesus Christ.
It's early.
Saki, he's had a tough transition to MMA, but he's still a bad motherfucker.
And in fighting and kickboxing, man, he was one of my favorite guys ever to watch.
Saki had the nastiest left hand.
He would throw like left hook, left hook, left hook.
Left hook to the body, left hook to the head, left hook to the body.
Bang, bang, bang!
Fast as fuck.
And for a heavyweight, ridiculous hand speed.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like all these athletes are just getting better and better as it goes, right?
Oh yeah, for sure.
It's kind of crazy.
These big guys are athletic as hell too.
When you stop back and think about your first fights in the UFC, when you first got started, what stands out as being real different about seeing the younger guys coming up today?
The younger guys are just more complete.
And they're more athletic.
I think back when I first started, we were just guys that wanted to fight.
We were tough guys.
The wrestlers always did well because we competed our whole lives.
But now these kids are polished right away.
You've seen like 20-year-old kids with crazy skills.
Yeah, they're polished.
They've been doing it for five years already.
You see that kid, Edmund Shabazian?
Yes.
Fucking incredible.
He's like, I think he's 21 now.
Right.
And he is just a fucking murderer, man.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
It's amazing that I'm 18 years older than some of these kids.
When do you think you're going to not do this anymore?
I don't know.
I always have three rules.
As long as I'm enjoying it and I want to do it, as long as I'm competitive, I don't want to lose fights to guys I think I should be able to beat, as long as my body holds up.
And how old are you now?
38. So for the lighter weight divisions, that's older.
That's older, yeah.
I feel good.
My body feels good.
Always little injuries here and there.
But I enjoy it.
It's still fun.
My last couple fights didn't go the way I wanted to.
Holloway, obviously.
I thought I gave him a pretty good run.
That was a very good fight.
He's a big dude.
It was tough to close that range.
I was in on some of his legs.
I just couldn't really move him.
He felt like he was part of the part of the guy could tree, you know, and then you know took that fight with crane zombie and obviously didn't go as I expected but Now I got to bounce back from this one When you think about your preparation like between when you first started to now like as you get older Is there anything that you do differently?
I don't spar as much, I think.
I would spar three days a week, always.
Five rounds, you know, for five-round fights, six rounds sometimes.
Now I kind of do two days a week.
That was a little push and pull for me and Mark.
Mark wants us always sparring a lot.
Oh, really?
He's big into sparring, and I kind of am too.
I feel like the best way to get in shape for a fight is by fighting, you know?
And we have good sparring partners.
We're not trying to kill each other.
Right.
You know, but...
Our team, when I first started, it was me and a couple guys that really weren't in the UFC. Now it's just a bunch of hammers non-stop.
That Mark Henry camp is insane.
Yeah, he's a special guy.
He has so many top-flight guys come to him from all around the world.
Like Zabit.
How do you get from Dagestan to Jersey?
Yeah, they all do this.
They say they're coming, they all fly to Moscow, they stay in Moscow for a couple days, and they go to Brooklyn, stay in Brooklyn for a couple days, and they come down.
So if they say they're coming the next day, it's usually three days later, because that's the rounds they make.
It's like rugby slash basketball slash MMA. That's probably my only way to score some buckets, though.
It's weird, though.
It seems like they might have invented it, right?
It has to be.
I wonder if it's prominent in Dagestan or if it's just that camp.
In wrestling, they play handball.
They call it handball, or we used to call it gatorball, where we have soccer nets or field hockey nets, and it's kind of the same thing.
You had three steps, you could pass the ball, no dribbling, and then it's a bunch of wrestlers playing, so we're all tackling each other and everything.
So we kind of always used to do that, but we never did it with basketball hoops, so I guess that's a little different.
Well, Will said that that's how they warm up.
They just get out there, and for one hour, they'll play this crazy basketball game, and then they go train.
Yeah, we used to do that with the handball or gator ball, we used to call it.
It kind of makes sense that that would be a good way to warm up, right?
Because it's competitive, you're running around a lot.
Yeah, it's fun.
Kind of fun instead of just doing the same old routine.
But it's interesting that even him, even Khabib, with that crazy camp and all those monsters that he trains with, makes his way down to AKA to train in America.
That is something I always wonder.
Even the guys that come to us, I'm like, these guys are all so good, why don't they just train with each other at home?
But I think they like the fact that they're locked in when they get here.
They have no distractions.
And I think they come here for the coaching.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I think just a different look, a different perspective is probably beneficial.
But just the fact that...
So many elite fighters from all over the world still want to do their camps either at ATT or with you guys or AKA. There's just so many different places that they travel to.
Have you ever gone somewhere for a camp where you just locked yourself down?
No, I've always did all my camps in Jersey.
Early in my career, though, before I had Mark, even before I started training with Ricardo and Henzo and those guys, I went out to AKA actually with Thompson.
I stayed with Josh Thompson.
Josh is the man.
I love that dude.
He was just here last week.
I was listening to him a little bit.
Yeah, he opened his house.
I stayed at his house for a little bit, man.
Oh, that's cool.
He's a super good dude.
He was kind of a veteran at the time when I came in, so he helped me out a little bit.
I stayed a couple weeks there hanging out at AKA, and I just wanted to be home.
I know I wanted to stay in Jersey.
Yeah, well, with your family and everything like that.
I get it.
But I think there is probably a benefit for a fight.
Like, a lot of great boxers used to go to the Catskills, right?
And they would do their training up there.
And then, like a lot of guys today, they go to Big Bear.
You know, like Triple G goes up there.
And a lot of other fighters have their camps up there.
De La Hoya always did his camps up in Big Bear.
It's like something about a camp that's very attractive, too.
Someone thinking about, oh, he's locked down in camp.
You like it.
Yeah, your tunnel vision and all that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I need my family around me.
I need my friends around me.
I feel good in Jersey.
I feel like I built it.
I built it up.
That's why people come to me now.
Not only me, obviously, for Mark and Ricardo, probably more so for those guys, but I showed them that it could be done here.
That's why we have the atmosphere that we do, I think.
That is true.
You definitely were one of the most successful pioneers of MMA coming out of there.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, it's cool to see all these young guys come and train with us, and we have a pretty good team now, plus Eddie Alvarez is there, and he's a pioneer as well.
When you see Eddie go over to 1FC, does any of that ever look attractive to you?
I mean, for sure.
You know, I actually only have one fight left on my contract now.
Oh, yeah?
You know, but I've been in the UFC. It'll be 13 years I've been in the UFC coming in February.
The emotional side of fighting, like the emotional side of losses, like when you see guys just weeping in their locker room.
Remember, the hardest one for me was Aldo after McGregor knocked him out.
And he was just in his locker room just weeping like, God damn, that dude.
That's a tough one, too, because you know that's going to stay in infamy.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, forever.
Always.
Connor's probably the worst guy because he's going to tell everybody about it and everybody's going to want to cover it.
That's just the way it goes.
It was such a picture-perfect punch, too.
Yeah, I mean...
And he slides back, boom, drops that left hand in there.
I was in the crowd, and I was told I was getting the winner of that fight.
And then when it went down like that, I just knew that wasn't going to happen.
Really?
Yeah, I just felt it.
I thought Aldo was going to win back then.
Did you really?
We didn't know much about Conor, I feel like, at that point.
So I thought Aldo was going to win, and I was going to get a rematch with him.
And then when Conor did that, and then you hear him talking about, I'm going to go up to 55.
I'm like, damn, there goes my chance.
Yeah, the Aldo fight was crazy because I think that was the first time that anybody ever really disrespected Aldo.
Because Aldo was the fucking man for so long.
The crazy thing about Aldo is he's still only 32 years old.
We were talking about that with the Marlon fight.
Is he really?
Yeah, I know.
What do you think?
Well, they've been following him since the WEC. I mean, he was like 20 then, so he kind of has to be 32. I mean, he was WEC champion a long fucking time ago, man.
You know, I mean, you go back and think about when he knocked out Cub Swanson with that flying knee.
That was a long time ago.
It was like a double knee, right?
Yes, boom, yeah.
Dude, he was so fucking athletic.
Explosive.
I don't know.
When did he stop throwing leg kicks?
I don't know, man.
I would like to ask him.
I wonder if he's got injuries or something like that.
I know.
When we fought the first time, he threw a leg kick, and then I took him down on it on the second one.
And then that's the last time he threw a leg kick in both our fights.
It's crazy because if you watch his early career, like, watch the Uriah Faber fight.
It is one of the most horrific displays of destroying someone's leg you've ever seen in a fight.
Yeah, my discs and the holes where the nerve run through is kind of...
So I got...
It's tightening.
Actually, it was kind of like a little bit before Holloway, more and more so after...
I got epidural on my neck and I was getting the tingles down my arm, weakness in my hand a little bit.
And the epidural really didn't even work, but I just did therapy and it got better.
But it still bugs me a little bit.
There's a place, I think they have an office in Dallas, they have one here in Santa Monica, and then there's a place in Germany, it's called Lifespan Medicine, and they do this procedure called Regenikine.
Regardless of how many people have positive effects from it and positive benefits from it, the way they look at it is like this stuff is in competition probably with like non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen and things along those lines.
Right.
But CBD is so much better than all those things.
Yeah.
I mean, it's natural too.
Yeah.
Do you do it?
Do you take it?
I have, yeah.
I take it.
How much do you take?
I mean, I need to be a little more consistent with it, you know?
I'm just like...
You know, my wife, I'll go get stuff done.
Stan's like, how do you feel?
I'm like, I feel pretty good.
I don't know.
I always feel pretty good.
So I'm like such a bad gauge on that stuff.
There's a problem with really mentally tough guys.
Because mentally tough guys don't even think about what things feel like.
They just go, fuck it, I'm good.
I'm just gonna go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Look at Kane.
Kane literally destroyed his body because he was so mentally tough.
Yeah, oh yeah.
Because he's such a fucking savage that he had everything blow out on him.
He did.
His knees, his shoulders, his back, his neck, everything's fucked up.
When I went to AKA, this was before he was in the UFC, and I went out there and I seen him sparring with...
I think Paul Buentello, some other UFC guys, and they were just rotating on us, and he was just putting these dudes away, and they were just rotating on us.
I'm like, who is this kid?
That guy's going to be good.
I'm like, no shit.
Before he came to the UFC, there was so much hype around him.
Everybody was like, this motherfucker doesn't get tired.
As a heavyweight, you don't see that.
Not like him.
His cardio was insane.
I remember when he fought Big Ben Rothwell.
He would put it on guys, and they would have that 100-yard stare where they were like, what the fuck?
Like, what is happening to me?
How is this guy not tired?
It didn't make sense.
He was like a lightweight.
Yeah, yeah.
But 240 pounds.
240 pounds, and great wrestling, great jiu-jitsu.
Great everything.
Boxing's second to none, man.
Yeah.
And just surprised you with his body, right?
Because he didn't look ripped and cut.
He looked like a guy who eats a lot of burritos.
Right, yeah.
Dude, to this day, I think, in his prime, I think he was...
I mean, the argument is him and Fedor.
Those are the two arguments.
And then Stipe for his accomplishments, right?
I mean, I would have loved to see Stipe versus Kane when Kane was in his prime.
Yeah, that would have been great.
That would have been amazing.
But, you know, it's like...
That model of the heavyweight, the Cain Velasquez model, I don't know if anybody else could do that.
I don't know.
I think his cardio was almost like supernatural.
People always ask because people say, I've got good cardio and I could push always.
And they're like, what is it from?
I think it's all mental more than anything.
I don't know.
Maybe some people are born that way.
I feel like even the summertime, when I wrestled in the summer, I wasn't in wrestling season shape.
I was going to be the guy that was in better shape.
Just your mind.
Just my mind, yeah.
I think most of it's my mind.
Everybody's like, do you get tired?
I'm like, fuck yeah, I get tired.
I just keep going.
I think everyone gets tired.
Because then you see some guys that are really, really good and they're just scared to get tired.
So they're scared to push themselves.
I've seen that in wrestling a lot.
You kind of see it in MMA. Some guys where they're just scared to get tired so they don't push it too hard.
It's one of the most underrated, difficult exercises.
Because you think of it as housewives or moms.
A bunch of gals.
A bunch of hot girls in yoga pants.
I'm the only dude in there sometimes.
Me too, sometimes.
There's more guys in my place now.
Sometimes it's actually half and half, which is kind of interesting.
I think it's great for you.
When I say I'm done fighting, I'm sure that's something I'll do more often.
For me, too, it's like a 90-minute meditation session, too.
Because all you're thinking about is those poses.
All I'm thinking about is concentrating on maintaining a steady breath and then holding the positions as long as possible.
It's like the instructor or yogi is giving you...
Positive affirmations.
I mean, some it's a little wonky, but you know, it's always like a good message.
Yeah, sometimes.
Some of them go a little bit crazy.
Some of them try to give you life lessons.
Yeah, well, yeah.
Settle down.
Well, and then also like, oh, this is your lower intestines is getting pinched.
I'm like, what do you mean?
I'm bending over.
Yeah, yeah.
It's massaging.
You're descending colon.
No, it's definitely not.
It's definitely not.
You're just stretching.
Stop.
Stop.
I sweat like a maniac in there.
It's great.
It's definitely good for you.
Oh my god, you can lose amazing amounts of weight in there.
But I just think for maintaining strength in your joints, it always feels to me, and maybe this is just my head, but it's helping all the connections.
Like, shoulders and hips and knees and, like, all the other stuff that doesn't necessarily get the same kind of workout when you're just doing regular stuff.
Like, weight training or kettlebells or kickboxing or whatever.
You're working out, like, holding your leg in one certain position and, like, leaning forward and just maintaining that post.
Static holds, yeah.
Yeah, I feel like it tightens all your connections up.
And it also increases your range of motion.
It does.
It opens you up.
I feel so much better when I'm doing yoga.
I would like to do it more often, to be honest with you.
I don't want to miss hitting pads or jiu-jitsu and all that stuff.
That's the thing, right?
For a mixed martial artist, there's so many skills to concentrate on.
There's so much.
If you're a boxer, what are you going to do?
You've got to run and you've got to box.
That's it.
Right.
When you're a mixed martial artist, god damn, you gotta think about everything.
And you don't want to overdo one and underdo another, you know?
How do you know what to do?
You know, I came up with a formula and it seems to work.
What's your formula?
Like, you know, just my schedule is I do jiu-jitsu Monday, Friday.
unidentified
I spar either, well, it used to be Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.
Why can't I? See, when someone says something wrong, sometimes you go, how do you say it right?
Mondrian.
Yeah, that is right across the street.
Yeah, I didn't realize until I woke up the next day.
I'm like, oh shit, I should have went there last night.
Yeah, anytime you want to go there, even if I'm not there, just let me know.
I'll set it up.
So when you are in Tom's River, what is a typical day for you?
When you leave your house on a Monday morning, what time do you get going?
What time do you eat?
Yeah, I get up like 8 o'clock, I guess.
I'm not an early guy.
I get up at 8, I'll eat something.
I'm out of the house by 8.30, 8.45.
Get the Ricardos for like 10 a.m.
practice, 9.30 practice.
Practice for two hours, drive back home, which is like about 45 to an hour.
And when you're practicing, are you practicing with the Gi?
No, no Gi.
Never?
Not in a long time.
Ricardo actually, believe it or not, told us not to.
Really?
Yeah.
I do believe it.
He said the Gi will always be there.
He said you always go back to the Gi when you're done.
He's like, right now it's just not applicable for MMA. I'm so glad he said that.
Yeah.
Man, that is...
I don't know.
Hopefully he doesn't get mad for saying that.
Well, that was a giant problem with, like, so many Brazilians were so connected to the Gi that they would be offended if you didn't train with the Gi.
They'd get really mad at you.
That's what I thought when I first went to him.
I'm like, oh, man, we're going to have to do a lot of Gi stuff now, you know?
We did a little bit, you know, mess with it.
It is good for you.
It's great for defense.
I think it's good for people like myself where I use a lot of wrestling and athleticism for my jiu-jitsu because it kind of takes that away and makes you, you know, pay attention to the technique.
Yeah, it makes you concentrate on defense because you can't just muscle out of things.
And with a lot of fighters, especially real explosive guys, they get used to just yanking out of things.
When someone's got collars and grips on your sleeves, you can't yank out of much.
You've got to systematically think about what you're doing.
Yeah, you've got to apply pressure.
You've got to have good position.
You've got to be patient, too.
You can't expose yourself because you're impatient and you just want to get out of a spot.
That's the positive aspect of the gi.
The negative aspect of the gi is when guys go from the gi to MMA and they're looking for those handles and the handles aren't there.
But Eddie always told us, just do the gi, but don't use collars.
Don't use collars and sleeves.
So my gi game was really just no gi in a gi.
Honestly, probably when I did the gi, I probably didn't grab as much because I wasn't used to it.
In desperado times, I'll grab the gi.
Yeah, right, right.
But for the most point, I think you're better off just using overhooks and underhooks and gable grips and just working your same positions that you do in no gi.
So then you're doing the same game always.
Yeah.
But I'm glad Ricardo said that because to have such an accomplished Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu artist like him, who's got this gigantic school and who was an accomplished fighter himself and now is a judge, to have him say that, like, yes.
For a long time, people got so connected to this idea that you need to do the gi in order to be good in MMA, which is no gi.
It's slippery.
Yeah, I mean, you know, even like Gary, Tonin, and Gordon Ryan, I don't think those guys are in the Gi very often.
Very rarely.
Yeah.
I don't think that Gordon Ryan has done some matches recently in the Gi.
Maybe Gary Tona, too.
I mean, they know how to use it.
Yeah, oh yeah.
Yeah, but it's, you know, it just makes everything more, you know, just there's so much more friction.
There's so many things you can do in the gi you cannot do in an MMA fight or in a no-gi contest.
Yeah, it's really just not applicable at all, so...
That's good.
I figure when I'm old, I'll put the gi on, you know?
Yeah, well, there's guys in my jiu-jitsu class that are in their 60s.
Yeah, that's what's great.
Nice and slow.
It's something I'll definitely do in the future.
So you go there, you do that class, and like how far, you're driving a lot to all these different spots?
Man, it's amazing that these gyms are, they're so good now.
It's like, it was so hard in the beginning to find one facility that had This kind of place.
Even in the country, there's only a couple gyms, whether it was an AKA or a Jackson's.
When I first started, I graduated college, and it was like in May, I graduated college, I wanted to, you know, Ultimate Fighter, the first season Ultimate Fighter was on, I think was, they had the finale in May.
I watched it with my teammates, I'm like, dude, I'm giving this a try, you know?
Koscheck was on the season, he wrestled for Edinburgh, I wrestled for Clarion, we're in the same conference.
So I see him, I'm like, oh man, look, he's doing pretty well, I'm gonna give this a shot.
So I found a place to train and Kurt Pellegrino actually had a gym near my town.
So I called him up.
I knew him through wrestling.
He's like, I'm actually moving to Florida.
He's like, but you can come train here for a couple days before I go.
I'm like, alright.
So I came there and a new guy was taking his gym over and so that's where I ended up staying.
And this gym was no bigger than this room here.
Wow.
You know, and you see all these young kids have this 30,000 square facility.
I'm like, dude, you guys are fucking spoiled, man.
You know?
Yeah, it's a different world now.
I mean, there's no other sport like MMA where if you go back to the 90s and then you look at it today, it's unrecognizable.
Oh, yeah.
It is.
Just martial arts has changed.
Like you say it all the time, you know, how quickly UFC or MMA changed martial arts.
Forever.
Yeah.
We'll never look at it the same way again.
Martial arts have evolved more over the last 20 years than they have over the last 20,000 years.
Yeah, and that's just...
I don't think anything has done that?
No.
Go back and watch UFC 1 and then go watch UFC 246. It's like, what the fuck, man?
Everyone is so evolved now.
And even across weight classes, it's just such an interesting thing that we figured out how to do it right.
Yeah.
I mean, shit, even when I started 2005 to now, it's changed a whole bunch.
Yeah, no, for sure.
Yeah, I mean, 2005 was when The Ultimate Fighter was on, right?
Dude, how crazy is it that Diego Sanchez is still out there throwing?
Yeah, that's amazing.
He's the last of the Mohicans.
He really is, right?
He's the last one on that show?
Yes.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, Stefan Bonner's long gone.
Forrest Griffin's long gone.
He's working for the UFC now.
And fucking Diego Sanchez.
Still screaming yes and doing cartwheels.
He's a special dude, man.
He's crazy.
He's a wild motherfucker, man.
He is.
He's a...
Just his outlook.
I mean, he was kind of strange on the show.
I don't know if you call him strange, but just like a different personality.
He's weird.
Definitely weird.
But he's also got a mind like a fucking bank vault.
He's intense.
He is.
I mean, his will's unbreakable.
That guy does not quit.
He's lost before.
He's been stopped before, but you ain't getting him to quit.
I remember when he fought BJ. He just kept coming.
I mean, he got his head split open with that head kick.
I was like, damn, this guy's nuts.
Yeah, no, I mean, in all of his fights, I mean, he's an animal.
And he's such an entertaining guy.
I mean, you think about some of his fights that he fought, even at 170, against guys like Jake Allenberger, Martin Campman.
Campman had his face hanging off.
I mean, he had giant cuts all over Diego's face.
And in the third round, Diego's chasing him.
Just chasing him down.
Like, God damn, he's tough.
His willpower is second to none, I think.
It's insane.
It's insane.
And he's still out there.
He is.
He's still out there throwing.
He is, yeah.
It's impressive.
I mean, these guys are setting the bar high, you know?
Yeah, real high.
Yeah.
And it's interesting, like, Diego, I've always thought, was like a guy who could have benefited from a 165-pound class.
I feel like the UFC, I've been saying this forever, I'm a broken record, but I think they should reorganize the weight classes and put weight classes every 10 pounds.
Yeah.
There's too many big gaps, like the 85 to 205 pound gap.
That's crazy.
That's so big.
I mean, if they have time...
Look, they have...
Plenty of fighters, right?
They just should move some of these weight classes around.
I think they should do it.
Even Dos Anjos, too.
Him and Chiesa, you know?
I think Dos Anjos is probably a 65-pounder.
Probably.
He looks so much smaller than Chiesa.
Dude, Chiesa, how the fuck did he ever make 55?
I don't get it, man.
I've seen him after he made it.
I'm like, dude, you were always a 70-pounder.
Yeah, always.
I just was really impressed with how he was able to control Rafael Dos Anjos.
I didn't get to see the fight.
I was actually flying down here.
But yeah, I've seen the highlights.
I think he took them down five or six times.
Yeah, man.
His arms are so long.
They were in positions where a lot of guys would have to hold on, but he could reach all the way the fuck around and clamp his hands together.
As soon as he walked in, that's what everyone said.
Well, everybody says, too, that you haven't even seen what he can do.
Like, in the gym, you see what he can do.
And, like, I was talking to Mark about him, and he's like, dude, this was, like, back before Zabib had really made a name for himself.
And he's like, that fucking guy.
He goes, that guy's super, super talented.
I was really impressed with Calvin Cater, though, in their last fight.
Yeah, you know, that third round seemed like Zabit kind of lost some steam.
Yeah.
And Calvin started coming on a little bit.
Calvin was digging to the body a lot, too.
He's got great hands, Calvin.
As good as anybody.
That jab might be one of the best jabs in the UFC. His fucking right hand, too.
The right hand that he knocked out Lamas with.
Dude, Calvin, he's on another level with his striking, particularly with his hands.
He does a lot of training with boxers.
He's a Boston guy, right?
And only getting better.
He's just beginning to get into the top tier of guys.
I mean, he beats Shane Burgos with that beautiful knockout, and the Ricardo Lamas knockout was just spectacular.
So Lamas had fought for the title.
Lamas was the top guy.
And then the Zabit fight, when Zabit is right there at the very top of the heap at 145, and who knows what the fuck would happen if that was a five-rounder.
Yeah, I know.
Because Calvin was putting it on him.
He was at that point.
And when Zabit took him down to 30, he basically just hung on in the end.
Yeah, he found the way just to make it through.
Yeah.
Calvin's dangerous.
He's dangerous and getting better.
Boy, what a fucking division, man.
Your division that you're leaving.
The division that you're leaving.
Yeah, good.
35 is no fucking sweeter, let's be real.
There's a lot of killers there too, but you'll be a bigger guy.
Yeah, I mean, I still don't think I'll be the biggest guy either at 35, but I'll definitely be, you know, much more comparable to the rest of them.
Well, it was interesting because even when you were fighting at 55, a lot of people were saying that you should be 35. Yeah.
I was like, you might be right.
Like, if he weighs 55, a lot of the guys that weigh 55 compete at 35. At 35, yeah.
Shit, what's this?
Oh, my God.
Lockhart.
George Lockhart was on.
Oh, yeah.
And he's on here.
And he said, I can make 25. Slow down, George.
I don't know about 25. I don't know about 25. Yeah, you look like T.J. Dillshaw.
That was a mistake.
Oh, yeah.
That was...
Out of all the...
There's only two...
Well, his was real bad all the way up and to the weigh-in.
TJ, the way he looked, you know, he looked like he was starving to death.
Mark was giving him some real good pointers on some of the things that he does or exposes himself and how to make sure he's more protected and make sure he's more elusive, more difficult to read, do some different kind of things.
But yeah, he's been with us for a little bit now.
He went back to Alpha Mel, but he's coming back and finished the camp with us.
He's got sick hands.
He's got some of the sick hands.
I see Marlon, see all these guys, but Cody's hands are so fast, man.
Yeah, he's fast as fuck.
He is.
There it is.
He can come back, man.
He can come back.
He had that fight with TJ, lost, lost in the rematch, and then lost again to Pedro Munoz.
So you're like, God damn, he's just so gameful.
But all three of those fights, he was in them.
He had those guys rocked.
He did.
That Pedro Munoz guy has a chin made out of fucking steel.
I'm so glad he's healthy now because that guy struggled for so long with Lyme disease.
Yeah, my wife has it actually.
Does she really?
She's been dealing with it since 2007. Dude, everybody gets it on the East Coast.
It's crazy how many people have it.
Yep.
They say that we looked at this map online of all the areas in the East Coast where Lyme disease is prevalent and what percentage of the ticks have it.
It's bananas.
My wife's neurotic with it too because she's had to go through a bunch of treatments and whatnot.
Is it still with her right now?
It is.
It's not as much, but she's got a bunch of issues, like autoimmune stuff, I think.
She does the IV treatments, the sunlight therapy.
It's like where they take the blood out, run it through UV, then put it back in you.
Yeah, she's done a lot of that stuff.
And she's starting to feel better.
With Jim, I think he changed his diet.
I think that was a big one.
Just really started eating clean.
Yeah, my wife eats pretty clean.
She's kind of a holistic-ish type person.
Yeah, the Lyme disease thing is fucking terrifying because for a long time they were diagnosing it incorrectly.
Like people didn't know whether it was Lyme disease.
And people would come in with all sorts of aches and pains and if they didn't have that big bullseye mark on them where the tick bit them, the doctor really had no idea what was going on and some doctors didn't have a lot of experience with it.
Right.
I got it when I was young.
Did you?
Yeah.
But I'd seen the tick, so I got on medicine right away, and I was fine.
But they say if you don't see the tick, then you just don't know you have it.
And then if you don't get on medicine right away, then you're fucked.
It's in you for probably ever.
Yeah.
It's not even the Lyme disease.
It's the other diseases that get attached to it.
Yes.
Well, there's a thing called Morgellons.
Have you ever heard of Morgellons?
Yeah.
Morgellons is a disease that a lot of people think is like a psychological disease.
They think that you're imagining things because they would imagine that fibers were growing out of their scabs and they'd scratch themselves like crazy.
Right.
But I had some good insight.
We did a television show called Joe Rogan Questions Everything.
And we had some...
One of the conversations I had was with a doctor who has Lyme disease.
And that's when things got interesting because he was aware of it not just as a person who has the disease but also as a doctor.
And he said one thing that all these people that have Morgellons have in common is that they all have Lyme disease.
And he thinks that Lyme disease is not just one thing.
That it's a host of other things that are attached to Lyme disease like non-identified pathogens.
And that some of them have...
Some sort of neurotoxic effect that changes the way you see things.
So he was seeing things that weren't there.
He was seeing worms crawling around in his eye that weren't there.
That weren't there.
And he realized, okay, this is probably what Morgellons is.
These people are thinking that things are growing in their skin, but there's nothing there.
But it's really because the Lyme disease and all the other toxins and pathogens that come with it are fucking with your neurology.
They're fucking with your brain.
Yeah, my wife said brain fog is probably the biggest thing that bothers her.
And she went through a period where she was always tired.
And it's crazy because my wife, you would never guess it because she's super high energy.
She works out every day.
Just pushes through it.
Yeah, pushes through it.
But it's definitely something she has to constantly treat.
You remember when people had chronic fatigue syndrome?
Yeah.
Where'd that go?
I don't know.
Isn't that like a thing that everybody always had?
And, you know, they had a vaccine for a little while, but the problem with the vaccine was people were, and this is including my manager's dad, took the vaccine and got...
Lyme disease from the vaccine.
I keep hearing this with vaccines or even flu shot.
People get the flu shot and they get the flu.
I've heard that people get sick when they get the flu shot.
But then I've talked to people that are vaccine people and they're like, no, you probably were already getting the flu and the flu shot that you got was the wrong one for whatever flu was in the area.
Well, I also heard, too, they give you the strain from last year and then there's the new strain this year, so it's not even really helping you.
Well, I think there's multiple strains each year, and I think they're basically just hedging their bets.
I don't take flu shots.
No, hell no.
Yeah, but I think they do work if you get lucky and get the right one.
I mean, I believe in vaccines for sure, but I don't think that it always works in the flu shot case.
I'm not sure.
Because, like, sometimes they just get it wrong.
Like, they have the wrong strain.
Right, right.
What do we know?
No, I know.
It's a fucking touchy subject anyway.
Two morons talking about flu shots.
Exactly.
But with the Lyme disease, there's a conspiracy theory that that's the government put that out in the wild.
Well, there was a conspiracy theory that there was actually – look this up, Jamie, because there was actually something about this they were talking about recently where they were looking in – they were investigating the idea – That Lyme disease was a biological warfare weapon that accidentally got released.
But this was through legitimate channels they were investigating this.
It wasn't like some fucking tinfoil hat job.
They released it on the East Coast, I guess.
Not where they wanted to release it.
Well, I think it got out.
I think the idea is that somehow or another this disease had accidentally escaped their labs or while they were in the middle of treating people.
Is a tick the only way you can get lion's disease?
I believe so, yeah.
And it's the ticks.
I think it's deer ticks.
I think it's places that have a high population of deer also have a high population of these ticks.
And then when people get it, most of them don't realize they have it until it's too late.
So you don't realize you have it, and then you miss the early rounds of antibiotics, which can knock it out.
And then you get this chronic state like Jim Miller has and your wife has.
Yeah, my buddy Steve Rinella that had it, he was fucked up.
I mean, bad for...
At least six months.
When I saw him, he looked like he had lost, and he's a slim guy, but he looked like he had lost 20 or 30 pounds.
And he just said he'd been dealing with the Lyme disease, and it just killed him.
I mean, not killed him, but just really diminished his body.
Yeah, it's a weird disease, man, because you can't find anybody who doesn't know anybody who has it when you're on the East Coast.
Right, yeah.
Everybody knows.
A brother or a cousin or a wife.
Someone has it.
I love running the woods and trails, but in the summertime, it's like, man, I'm so nervous to get ticks.
I don't want my kids going out in it.
I think it takes 24 hours for it to set in, so once you do come back, if you have a tick on, you just have to remove it immediately.
Yeah, that's what we do.
Every time we go in the woods, tick checks.
How do you get them off you, though?
What if it's in the middle of your back and you're by yourself?
Yeah, I guess like one of those back scratchers or something.
Ticks as weapons issue made headlines back in July 2019, thanks to the U.S. House of Representatives, Chris Smith, R. New Jersey, Republican New Jersey, who introduced legislation directing the Department of Defense to review claims that the Pentagon researched tick-based bioweapons in the mid-20th century.
The amendment passed.
Smith said he was inspired by a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done in the U.S. government.
Facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.
Imagine if those cunts created a fucking disease and now everyone on the East Coast has it.
I talked to this Soviet Union guy when I was doing that television show, and he was saying that they had all sorts of bioweapons that they were developing over there.
I mean, I think whatever news is out there, there's always some conspiracy theory that goes with it, right?
That's true.
Even if it's like Locke...
Look, I saw conspiracy theories that Connor threw the fight, or Cowboy threw the fight with Connor.
Oh, people are so stupid, man.
I had my cousins like, oh, I can't believe Cowboy would do that.
I'm like, do what?
He got fucking cracked, man.
Yeah, do what?
People are crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was upset at Stephen A. Smith, and he made a video responding to me.
Come on.
Listen, Stephen A. Smith, I guess I should respond, right?
You're a very entertaining guy.
I like you a lot.
And I appreciate the props you gave me in that video, but you're wrong.
Yeah.
Cowboy got fucked up with those shoulders in the clinch.
He had Conor's arms tied up, and they're in tight spaces.
Conor dips low and slams this bone of his shoulder into the nose.
And he's, at the beginning of the round...
Conor's a fucking super explosive guy.
Super explosive.
All muscles.
Just fucking pulled tight at the beginning of the fight.
And just bang!
Bang!
He got off good shots and Cowboy was confused.
I think he was flustered.
Flustered.
I don't think that those shots maybe rocked him.
They broke his nose.
Broke his nose.
That could rock you, I guess, in a sense.
Well, he's got blood pouring out of his nose, so he's not breathing out of his nose now, and then all of a sudden he's like, fuck, my nose is already fucked up, and he hasn't even punched me yet.
Like, I could see if someone has a peripheral understanding of the sport, and you see that happening, like, come on, man.
Or even guys like Mike Bisping.
Like, Mike Bisping was like, fucking shoulder strikes, come on, shoulder strikes.
But...
That said, Mike Bisping is, without a doubt, one of the toughest human beings that's ever walked the face of the planet.
If he lost an ear, he'd be like, ah, you got another ear!
He fights with one eye.
He doesn't give a fuck.
He fought a giant chunk of his career against the best fighters in the world, including winning the title with one eye.
Michael Bisping is a fucking dyed-in-the-wool savage.
So if he's like, ah, it's just shoulder strikes.
That said...
The shoulder strikes didn't end the fight.
The shoulder strikes definitely got him off on the wrong foot.
Then, Cowboy threw a kick to Conor's arms, and then Conor countered with a head kick.
Rocked Cowboy back.
Rocked him.
You see his legs go, and then Conor hits him with pistons.
He hits so hard.
I don't get how people could say it was a work.
He broke his fucking orbital bone.
Yeah.
But Stephen A. Smith said that he felt like...
Cowboy quit.
He did not quit.
He got smashed.
You can't say someone quit after getting their nose broke and rocked and a broken orbital.
You can't say he quit.
It's also who you're talking about.
You're talking about a guy who has the most fights in the UFC, the most finishes in the UFC, the most head kick knockouts in the UFC, the most bonuses in the UFC. Cowboy is a fucking legend.
He is as tough as they come.
He's lost before.
Every human can lose.
Especially you're fighting guys like Darren Till and Jorge Masvidal and these fucking animals that he's fighting.
He's fighting the cream of the crop or Conor.
And Conor literally broke his face.
He broke his nose and he broke his orbital bone.
So Stephen A. Smith responded and then Conor responded.
Yeah, I've seen that.
Conor told him to apologize.
And Conor's right.
Yeah, he is right.
I mean...
Give Conor the credit a little bit.
I think the problem is Stephen A. Smith, who's a very entertaining guy and is very knowledgeable about other sports, this is not his wheelhouse.
And also that style of dismissing athletes and putting people down.
That's...
That's how he kind of made his name.
That's how he made his name.
And it's fun to listen to.
He's a fun guy to listen to.
He talks great shit.
I wonder, I mean, I'm sure basketball players are kind of saying the same stuff we're saying when he's criticizing basketball players, though.
I just think that this sport demands more appreciation, more respect, and it demands a higher level of reverence to the athletes who literally put their lives on the line.
It's different.
I don't think you have to say the guy quit to describe what happened.
No, you could just talk about what Conor did that was so special.
Look, the guy finds tricky ways to do things in those shoulder strikes.
Look, we've seen guys do shoulder shrugs before, but we never saw anybody do it successfully.
But you've got to think about the UFC is...
A lot of what happens in the UFC is someone, out of all these fights, finally does something, and then other people start doing that thing.
Like, you remember when no one was throwing front kicks to the face?
No one.
For all those fucking years.
Yep.
All of a sudden, Anderson knocks out Vitor, who's like one of the elite of the elite strikers, knocks him out with a front kick to the face, and you're like, what the fuck?
And then you see everyone trying it.
Nobody ever did it.
I don't remember anybody ever, even in kickboxing, people very rarely threw a front kick to the face.
It just wasn't, you know, they would teep to the face.
Right, to the body, yeah.
But even teeps to the face, it was more like...
The range thing.
Yeah, all you would, like, push in his face.
Right.
Like, you very rarely, unless someone caught it perfect, saw a guy get knocked out with, like, a snap front kick with the ball of the foot.
It's almost like an uppercut the way it comes off from underneath.
Dude, it's a fucking devastating technique when done correctly.
I mean, Justin Buchholz got a KO with it outside of the UFC that's devastating.
Lyoto Machida did that jumping front kick to Randy Couture.
You knock out Randy Couture with a fucking front kick to the face.
That's a legit technique.
But then you see everybody doing that, like low calf kicks, right?
First guy I ever saw do it was Benson.
Benson Henderson really got into those low calf kicks.
You did it to me.
Yeah, right.
Those are rough, man.
But now everybody throws those kicks.
You've got to think of how many years went by before people were not throwing low calf kicks.
I guarantee you, now, when people get tied up in the clinch, and someone's holding someone with double overhooks or whatever, I don't remember how Connor had a hold of, or Cowboy had a hold of Connor.
Over-under, right?
Over-under, I think, yeah.
When someone's tied up in the clinch and you can't strike, you're gonna see guys do that.
The feud between him and Tupac, the fact that both of those guys got murdered.
Yeah, that's crazy, right?
What the fuck, man?
Yeah.
Like, oh, God.
How good would they have been as they got older, too?
I know.
And Biggie, Apocalypse, he had...
Thousands of CDs, at least, or mixtapes, you know, come out after his death, but then he only had two albums, really, you know, so he didn't have much material.
Isn't that crazy that Pac put so much shit down?
Yeah.
Pac, man, he was like an activist, too, you know, so everything was kind of politically charged and everything.
Well, he was unbelievably prolific.
Yeah.
Like, he wrote so much.
After he was dead, they released like five albums.
Chester Bennington from Lincoln Park, his first band he was in when he was like 18, they had recordings of him that they just put new music to and re-released the music.
I think it's called Gray Days or No Gray or something like that.
I didn't listen to it myself, but I heard it's not bad.
It's always good when these guys do this stuff, brings light to our sport.
Yeah, Snoop trains too.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's some videos of Snoop training and sparring online.
It's awesome.
I love it.
I love it.
I mean, it's just great for you, too, even if you don't ever plan on fighting.
To me, I mean, you know, I'd rather hit pads and kick a bag than run on a fucking treadmill, man.
Oh, for sure.
It's so much more entertaining.
If these people realize that, they would like it a lot more, too.
Do you run at all?
I do run.
I like to run.
But I don't run for my camps or anything.
I just enjoy running.
Well, you're known for your endurance, you know, and when you would train, how much of you, did you do any cardio-specific workouts or was most of your cardio done through fight training?
I mean, my strength and conditioning stuff would be a little cardio-based, you know, just like circuit training and stuff.
I actually started working with a new strength and conditioning guy.
He's a young kid, man.
He's 24, but super passionate, really, into, you know.
How do you find someone like that?
You know, I just...
Actually, Todd Frazier, who's actually on my podcast, we just released the episode today.
Champ of the Tramp?
Champ of the Tramp.
He's a professional pistol player from my town, and I asked him where he was doing his off-season training, and he hooked me up with this guy.
This guy does RPR, Reflexive Performance Recovery or something?
No.
No, Reset Performance Recovery?
What is that?
He does these certain things that just reset your nervous system, I guess.
Like, he'll bang on your back.
Bangs on your back, bangs on your back, and then you do a test, and you're stronger in a weird way.
Really?
It's RPR. Is that real?
Is there a voodoo?
I'm not a voodoo guy.
I'm not a voodoo guy.
He has one where I chopped my inner thighs.
I'll go up and down like four times, and then he'll do some more tests.
He'll make me go like a sit-up position, and he'll try to push me down flat.
Before I did the test, I pretty much couldn't stop.
Then I did the test, he almost put his body on me, and I could hold him up.
And everyone he fights looks like they got mauled by a leopard.
Everyone's face is hanging off.
Look at this shit that he does.
Headstands and stuff.
He's into breakdancing, right?
Yeah.
But he's always doing this kind of shit, like weird kind of exercise.
Look at this.
Just standing only on his head.
That's a good way to blow your discs out.
Yeah, yeah.
Want stenosis?
There you go.
That's how you get stenosis.
Oh, man.
Look at it.
Look at this shit he does.
But that's every kind of training.
No one's telling him what to do either.
No, he does on his own.
Guys who've gone to camp with him say, it's like, okay, today we're going to run hills.
He just decides what we're going to do.
He's a different dude.
Eddie told me that his cardio is fucking ridiculous.
They'll be doing these hill sprints, and he'll do these hill sprints with his other training partners, and he's lapping them.
He runs all the way up and all the way down, and then passes them as they're still up the first time.
He's a freak.
Yeah, that's an interesting fight.
It's a fucking great fight!
That's why I don't understand why Dana is not considering the fact that Tony Ferguson would win that fight.
You think he's implying that Khabib's already got this one?
They're talking about Khabib versus Conor.
Because look, that's the money.
From what I hear, Khabib won't fight him.
He said he'd fight him for $100 million.
That's what he said?
Then he's going to fight him.
I think his dad said that.
His dad said that he'll fight Conor for the same amount of money that Conor made fighting Floyd.
Wow.
But I don't know if you could get $100 million in the UFC. Do you think that fight Conor-Khabib will be big?
A big fight?
The problem is...
Because Dana's saying it's going to be as big as Khabib or Conor Floyd.
I don't know.
That was a pretty big fight.
Yeah.
Floyd brings a different thing to the table, right?
Floyd brings all the hardcore boxing fans.
And he's so polarizing.
Yeah.
And he's the best boxer of all time.
I mean, you stop and think about the amount of times that guy's been hit over a period of 50 fights.
It's insane.
His defensive skills and his ability to size up an opponent and figure out what the guy's doing and then start to break him down systematically.
Best there is.
He's the best.
He's the best.
He's, like, there's been guys that have been incredible, and they're, like, up in his level, you know, like, all-time great fighters, but in terms of not getting hit, I don't think anybody's been as good as Floyd.
Yeah, no, I agree.
So, to have Conor...
Go in there and fight him, a guy who's never had a professional boxing match, but is fucking up everybody in MMA, and all these people think he has a chance, and there's all this hype behind it, all this craziness, and the fact that it was this sort of crossover fight, it had a lot of...
He looks over at me and just winks and gives me a big smile.
I'm like, this guy all relaxed and shit, just saying hi to people.
He loved it.
Loved competing.
Loved being in there, man.
And didn't even start fighting until he was in his mid-30s.
Yeah.
And he was just wrestling.
Maybe that's why he was able to fight so long, too.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, it's...
It's kind of crazy when you think about his career, too.
Light heavyweight champ, heavyweight champ.
Came back and won it and beat Sylvia.
That was crazy.
When he dropped Sylvia with that right hand, I was like, what the fuck?
I was worried about him in that fight.
I was like, you think about guys like Chuck Liddell knocking him out.
What is Tim Sylvia going to do?
He's a big dude, man.
He's enormous.
And Tim Sylvia, back when there was no testing, when Tim Sylvia fought Rico Rodriguez, people forget.
Tim Sylvia was not like this doughy guy back then.
Do you remember that fight when he fought Rico?
Yeah.
That's scary, Tim Sylvia.
He had a back like a fucking brick wall.
He was huge, and he had to cut weight to make 265. I remember he had to come back to the scale.
He missed it the first time.
That was back in the old days.
Yeah.
A funny story, Rico.
When I was wrestling in my junior, senior year of high school, so it was like 98, 99, our manager on the team said her brother fought in UFC. I'm like, this is when, you know, UFC wasn't as popular.
I'm like, get out of here.
You probably never fought in UFC. And it was Rico Rodriguez.
I was really worried that it wasn't working because I talked to her afterwards and I talked to her up to like six months.
She wasn't feeling anything different.
And then she started to feel better.
And then like eight months later, the pain went away.
It was gone.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
And then I sent her back again.
And then the second round, she's doing...
But here's what's weird.
When I saw her for Christmas, she looked younger.
Really?
Yeah, I was like, you look great.
Did they just inject the stem cells in the knee?
They put them in both knees and they also did IV. And they do it for three days.
So you just get barraged down there.
They just fill you up.
And then you walk out of there like...
I wonder if that stuff helps Lyme disease.
I bet it would, yeah.
They say it has to go through the brain barrier or something, right?
I don't know.
The blood-brain barrier?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, they inject these stem cells intravenously.
You'd have to talk to Dr. Reardon.
He'd probably be able to explain it.
But I mean, I think anything that boosts your immune system and helps your overall body, and the idea of doing it intravenously is that your body knows where to utilize it.
Your body knows areas that are troubled.
It's weird that your body has some strange innate intelligence that knows where the injuries are.
Like, how is that working?
It knows what's wrong with your brain.
Like, how's that working?
Yeah, that's wild.
Like, yeah, what is it doing?
It attracts, like I said, it attracts it, right?
It attracts to where it needs to be.
Yeah.
I'm really excited about the future of that shit because I think, you know, I talked to Dr. Jeff Davidson from the UFC and he just got back from, you know Dr. Jeff.
Yeah, yeah.
He's an awesome guy.
He's great.
He's the one who got me into stem cells in the first place.
Yeah, he's the one who hooked me up with the one on my shoulder.
Me too.
Did you do Dr. Roddy McGee?
No, I actually did do Roddy McGee way back.
The first time I had stem cells was in my groin.
Hey!
Did you have a torn muscle?
I had a sports hernia.
Oh, wow.
I had the same surgery Usman had.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Damn.
We went to the same guy too.
This guy, Dr. Myers.
He actually invented the surgery.
If you call it a sports hernia, he gets mad at you.
Because it's not a sports hernia.
It's a core muscle injury.
Well, what is it?
How does it work?
I think they cut the tendons in my thighs and also in my abs.
Persistent groin pain during exercise when there's no evidence of clinically detectable hernia.
Athletic pubalgia is not a true hernia, but it's considered an overuse injury in which the external oblique muscles and surrounding tendons and or traverse abdominis or internal oblique muscles are worn down or partially torn.
So this is – okay.
Conservative treatment consists of rest medications or physical therapy.
If conservative treatment fails, surgical treatment may be suggested as an alternative.
The procedure may be performed using a laparoscopic or open anterior approach.
Polypropylene or polyester mesh is suggested to correct the identified abnormality.
However, there's no data from randomized studies to confirm effectiveness of this surgery.
Well, why don't you talk to Frankie motherfucking Edgar, Wikipedia, or whoever that is that you're getting that thing off of.
It's funny that some doctors just figure something out.
Yeah, he's killing it too.
I don't know, a bunch of athletes, but there's a bunch of famous athletes that went through that guy.
It's crazy that I didn't know that that was a persistent injury and then all these guys have it.
I've never even heard of that before.
Yeah, I didn't know what it was until it happened.
Again, that's probably one of those things of being too tough for your own good, right?
Yeah, for sure.
I just kept pushing through.
Before I thought that, I got an epidural in there.
That was crazy.
Literally, they go through, probably by my pubes, and they go that way.
Well, the idea is it's like your neck is constantly resisting this.
So, like, when dudes are trying to snap you down or pull your neck down or you're trying to posture out of triangles and shit.
Right.
Like, when do you ever work out your neck in that way?
Yeah.
And most people, when they work out their neck, they put one of them harnesses on, which is...
You know, it does something.
But a lot of doctors will tell you that that's not a normal action for your neck to be lifting weights with.
And you could do some damage to your...
I don't know if they're right or right.
I don't know.
But I know the iron neck, you don't have to do any of that shit.
So it's basically just the muscles in your neck.
And you're not making your neck hold weight at a weird angle.
Like this way or that way.
It's just straight.
Your neck is always straight and it's turning.
It's just the muscles are getting exercised and everything gets stronger.
I know Cory's into it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cory Anderson, he loves that thing.
I was just wondering if it's good if you're, you know, if your neck is bad.
Well, according to them, they've had people that had neck injuries, they rehabilitated it with that because it strengthens all the areas.
So, like, say if this is just me talking.
But if you have an area where you have an injury and it keeps getting hurt, if you strengthen all that area around that, it's not going to be as mobile.
You're going to have more control and it's probably going to protect it more.
That just makes sense to me.
But I'm a big fan of that product.
That was a football player that figured that out.
What was the gentleman's name?
The guy who came and he gave me a bunch of demonstrations and shit.
But it's great for football players as well.
And his idea was that it was also going to help prolong people's careers because it'll prevent more concussions because you're not going to get your head snapped as easy.
You're going to be able to withstand much more impact.
It's so interesting that all these people that are involved in athletic equipment, they figure these things out.
He told me that he got his shoulder replaced, and then the day he got back to the gym, they made him max out bench press.
I was like, what the fuck, man?
They told me to do it.
I had to do it.
I think he's crazy.
He's talking.
Steroids ain't bad for you.
I've been on steroids since the 60s.
Holy shit.
Yeah, they never get off.
That's the thing.
Yeah, you can't, right?
You can't, yeah.
No.
But, I mean, everything's on him.
Who was telling us this?
Was it Rob Kearney was telling us this?
That he had his bicep replaced, his bicep tendon, because his bicep tendon blew out, and so he had his arm in a sling, and he lasted like a week, and he got tired of it and just straightened his arm out and popped it off so he could lift again.
I got the inverted table, which is great where you hang by your ankles, but then I got another one.
What's the other one called?
The Dex?
The Dex, that's my favorite, where you hang by your waist.
It's just from your waist.
I feel like when you hang by your ankles, it's great, but it's like the weight is going from your ankles and your knees and your hips.
By the time you get to your back, how much compression you're getting.
It definitely does something, but I think the Dex really targets the lower back.
Amazing.
I see the people that have the ones that lay down, and then they attach that on and it pulls them apart.
Yeah, I haven't done that one.
That's the Dex.
The Dex decompression one.
I fucking love that thing.
So you grab ahold of those handles, and then you let go, and then you just drop down, and it's all the weight is decompressing in your lower back.
And then you could do the...
Yeah, you could do back extensions on it.
Yeah, I think that's what they're called.
Yeah, you could do those on it too.
I mean, you could definitely get a workout on it if you wanted to, but for me, I use that after I'm done working out.
I feel like if I'm real consistent with that, with that and the inversion deck and the reverse hyper, I keep my back healthy.
Yeah, I go to a therapist, get stretched out like once or twice a week, and I do ART, active release therapy.
Oh yeah, that's great.
Now, when you, like, when you see, like, there's different schools of thought when it comes to strength and conditioning.
And the more radical school of thought was the Marv Berinovich sort of school of thought, which you see Nick Curzon does with, who's doing with Rafael dos Anjos and a lot of guys, where you concentrate almost entirely on strength and conditioning.
And the idea is, like, you already know how to fight.
Like, you know how to fight, and the real thing that fucks with guys when they're fighting is their conditioning.
And so they're putting these guys through these radical plyometric and explosive exercises, and then just, like, push, and that comes first.
That is more important than anything.
And that's when BJ was at his best.
If you go back to, like, BJ when he fought Sean Shirk, BJ when he fought Diego Sanchez, he was training with Marv.
Yeah, I think I'm on the opposite side of that.
I mean, condition's never been an issue for me.
Maybe that's why I have this take.
I feel like I want to feel good on sparring days.
Those are the most important days I need to feel good.
So I feel like sometimes you wear yourself out of strength and condition and you come to spar the next day, you're not going to have a good performance that day.
Yeah, I could see both ways of thinking about it.
I could see both.
I think there are probably some guys that maybe...
That are afraid to get themselves tired that you gotta make them get...
They're not gonna push themselves that much when they're sparring if they're scared to get tired.
But you could push them hard as hell when they're not worried about getting punched or worried about winning anything.
That's the good thing about strength and condition.
You can really push yourself without hopefully getting hurt as well.
I think a lot of strength and condition people, they just wanna put the cool videos up and put the chains on and do this and flip the tire.
It's like, I just wanna keep it simple, man.
I wanna...
I heard someone say, you want to leave a strength and conditioning working out feeling better, not worse.
Yeah, yeah.
That's like the Pavel Tatsulin idea, you know, that you don't ever go to failure and those kind of things.
You're just trying to strengthen things up.
Yeah.
It's interesting because the sport is so new, fairly new, that there's all these different schools of thought about the right way to do it.
And you really don't know.
And so while you're going through your camp, you got to go, wow, I hope this guy's right.
Yeah.
There's definitely a right way and a wrong way.
But there's also your way and my way.
And they could both be right.
Right.
Yeah.
But I mean, some guys like...
Long, slow running sessions.
Some guys like hill sprints.
Some guys like mostly plyometrics and organized Tabata drills and things like that for strength and conditioning.
And then there's guys like Nick Diaz who just likes doing triathlons and shit like that.
Yeah, but this new guy I'm with, it's like much more detailed.
My last training conditioning guy was great.
You know, I'm never not in shape, so...
But he would just kind of just go and we'd just work out.
Just because of making sure that you have better technique?
Better technique.
He always says, if you want to feel your abs and your hamstrings, if you feel your abs and your hamstrings in all your workouts, your back's probably safe.
He's always touching me, making sure he's firing, making sure he's firing.
Yeah.
So, like, making sure that your abs are tightened.
Like, say I'm doing a bench or something, he'll put, like, a towel underneath my back and, like, I'm trying to pull it out.
Make sure you keep it pressed on the floor so I can't pull it out.
That's protecting your back.
So he's just, like, really cautious and just knows a lot about exercise physiology.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so you go to him, you say a couple days a week?
Two days a week, yeah.
Do you do any cryotherapy or ice baths or anything like that?
No.
I've done cryotherapy a couple times.
I just don't have somewhere super close to me.
I feel like if you want to do it, you've got to do it at least three times a week.
Yeah.
I think even once a week's not enough.
Really?
To get the benefits of it.
Yeah, it's fucking awesome.
I'll tell you that.
I love doing it.
I would suggest to anybody that if you can get into one of those things, do it.
Do it whenever you can.
Yeah.
Apparently, ice bath's really good, too.
Yeah, I've done an ice bath probably 10 years ago, and my dick hurt for like a half hour after that.
My wife's into the red light one as opposed to the heat one.
Right.
To me, I think you've got to suffer for you to really get the benefits.
I think so, too.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know about infrared sauna because I've never really done that, but Laird Hamilton was saying that he had some skin issues that he got from infrared But he does some wacky shit, man.
That guy puts an aerosol bike inside of a sauna and then puts oven mitts on.