Feb. 18, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:21:11
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Two. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Hello, Angela. | ||
| What's going on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| What's up? | ||
| I was amazed you'd get those headphones on. | ||
| I was wondering. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You got the best afro in the game, for sure. | ||
| Who's even close? | ||
| It condenses. | ||
| I mean, Caceres got me beat, though. | ||
| Alex Caceres. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He gets crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's my goal. | ||
| Those are my hair goals, is to get a nice, big, fluffy fro like his. | ||
| When he fights, I always wonder. | ||
| That seems like it would be harder to pull out of things. | ||
| Don't you think? | ||
| No, it's actually, it's kind of like, you know, those connecting joints where it's like, it's kind of like a big ball that goes in, but like when you pull it out, it's like, I don't know. | ||
| It pulls out easier. | ||
| It pulls out easier. | ||
| Yeah, it's kind of like a, like a joint like that. | ||
| So like, you think you have a good grip, but then the hair just like, you know, like it convinces. | ||
| Especially like if you put grease in your hair or hair conditioning or anything that makes it extra slippery, right? | ||
| Yeah, I guess. | ||
| But it's just the fact that it can go small, even though it doesn't look like it. | ||
| I feel like people think they have a better grip than they do. | ||
| I think my title fight at Invicta, the girl locked on maybe three or four guillotines. | ||
| And every time I was just like... | ||
| You know, like it just like popped out. | ||
| And people kept going, it's deep, it's deep. | ||
| But like, I swear to God, my afro gets me out of tight situations. | ||
| It's interesting with women fighting, like there's options. | ||
| And one of the options is clothes. | ||
| Like the way you wear your upper, like your top can have a big impact if you're a grappler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always felt, well, I guess I don't feel like that anymore because I realized with all the costume malfunctions and stuff, it can be a big deal, especially if you're really packing. | ||
| I used to hate on girls who would fight in shirts. | ||
| I'm like, come on, man, you're a fighter. | ||
| Let your stomach out. | ||
| This is like a fight fight because things get tangled up and stuff, especially if the shirt isn't super tight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, even the girl that I'm fighting in, Auckland, she has something weird where, like, I think the other girl was, like, pulling on her shirt. | ||
| So, like, in between the first and second round, they took her shirt off. | ||
| So, like, fuck it. | ||
| This is, like, kind of messing up your groove. | ||
| Well, you get in options, right? | ||
| It's not like you have to have your midriff exposed, which is kind of interesting. | ||
| Because it should be uniform, right? | ||
| Shouldn't it? | ||
| I mean, women's MMA is the only place where you can make a choice to be stickier, right? | ||
| If you're a grappler in particular, if you have like a full shirt on, you can definitely hold on to someone better. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like just the boob thing, you know? | ||
| You can't have tits out. | ||
| Like, not as a fighter. | ||
| Like, it's okay for the ring card girls to like... | ||
| You know, walk around the cleavage out. | ||
| But the fighters, like, I don't know, they're trying to, I guess, make it more of an, like, okay, these girls are athletes, so don't stare at the cleavage while they're fighting. | ||
| Yeah, it's a fine line, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because you're, you know, basically in your underwear, almost. | ||
| Yeah, pretty much. | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| Baiting suits. | ||
| But, I don't know. | ||
| I always had this joke with, like, my teammates that I was going to get famous by being, like, the nip slipper. | ||
| Like, I would use, like, certain, like, Muay Thai clinch techniques to just, like, whoop, pop the girl's boob out. | ||
| So I'd always get to fight the popular girls because, like, they knew, oh, she's fighting Paige Van Zandt. | ||
| We're going to see some Paige Van Zandt titties, you know? | ||
| And I would just, like, you know, raise my stock. | ||
| So I haven't done it, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But you thought about it in training? | |
| I thought about it. | ||
| Only in training? | ||
| Only in training. | ||
| I tried on the guys in the gym. | ||
| Lift their shirt up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oops, sorry. | |
| Has anybody ever done that on purpose in a fight? | ||
| That you know of? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think the one person it backfired with was, I don't remember who she was fighting, but Leslie Smith's boob popped out once. | ||
| Did it really? | ||
| Yeah, in one of her Invicta fights, and she did not give a fuck. | ||
| Oh, she's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, she's crazy. | ||
| Her ear was hanging off her head in that Jessica I fight. | ||
| Oh my god, yeah. | ||
| You could see into her head. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| She was like, don't stop the fight, don't stop the fight. | ||
| I was like... | ||
| This girl's gangster. | ||
| She's insane. | ||
| I love her. | ||
| I love her. | ||
| And she's so nice and such a hippie outside of that. | ||
| So it's a really funny... | ||
| What is she doing now? | ||
| She's still trying to start some MMA union, right? | ||
| She's still going hard with the union. | ||
| She's in Bellator now. | ||
| But I think the union that she was working on was only for UFC fighters, I believe. | ||
| So I think she's still doing that. | ||
| I think she's still fighting for the UFC fighters, even though she's not in the UFC. I haven't looked into that. | ||
| I haven't looked at what do they want, what are they trying to accomplish, what's not correct that they want to fix. | ||
| I think just any grievances that the fighters have in general, so like healthcare, salary, just things that everyone kind of agrees on is like not good enough yet in the UFC. I think those are the things that they're working towards. | ||
| How does healthcare work? | ||
| Are you guys covered in training or are you only covered for fights? | ||
| As far as I know, if you book a fight and you get injured, I think they cover it. | ||
| But I think it's also a gray area where they could not cover it and they're not legally obligated to fix you. | ||
| But I think in the past they have. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I can't think of any examples where they haven't taken care of the medical expenses of someone who got hurt. | ||
| But I know a lot of times fighters don't claim it in time, like after fights, or it's a little nagging injury that becomes a big deal further down the line. | ||
| And it happened in a fight, but they waited too long? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Either that or just wear and tear from training in general. | ||
| I can't go in for a loose tooth or a shoulder that I tore in practice if I wasn't getting ready for a fight. | ||
| Well, that seems so crazy because you're obviously fighting in the UFC. You have a long-term contract. | ||
| You've been fighting in the UFC for years. | ||
| If you're training, you're training to fight in the UFC. Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And I think a lot of instances, they still take care of the fighter, but I know if you're on the lower end, if you haven't really made a name for yourself yet, sometimes, even if you just don't ask, you don't get taken care of. | ||
| It's not like... | ||
| It's not in your contract once you sign, like, oh, I'm going to fight this many fights. | ||
| But there's nothing in there that says if I get injured after signing this contract, I'm covered medically. | ||
| So, yeah, I think that was the main reason I was like, oh, this is a good idea. | ||
| Just because, like, I know so many fighters who book fights just to get their injuries taken care of. | ||
| Or they'll fight injured and claim an old injury. | ||
| And that's their way of fixing whatever they broke during training. | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| It's such a fucking crazy way to make a living, period. | ||
| It's like you're deciding you're going to throw your bones at someone and try to break their arms and try to rip their legs apart. | ||
| And then you're going to practice that all the time. | ||
| And then you're going to hope you don't get hurt in practice to the point where you can't actually just go do it inside the octagon. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| And most of my injuries happen outside of camp because I'm either training stupid, training with someone who I shouldn't be training with, like someone too big or too inexperienced, or I'm just like fucking around. | ||
| Like when I'm fighting someone who's my size, it's a lot less likely that I get injured. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But when I'm throwing my bones, like you said, at somebody who's way bigger, then it's easy. | ||
| I can hurt my hand punching them, you know, or break my toe, like, kicking them, you know? | ||
| Well, that's, for someone like you who fights at 115 pounds, it's even more difficult, right? | ||
| Because the lack of people that are your size to train with, and you also train a lot with men, and it's... | ||
| It's crazy because at a professional level, you're right there. | ||
| You just beat the shit out of Hannah Cyphers. | ||
| It was a crazy fight. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| But that was a big fight for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're in the heat right now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm excited. | |
| So for you, you're at the top of the heap in this championship realm, right? | ||
| And to train with people that are bigger than you or to take chances like that, there's no other sport that would have that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's like the lack of women as well, you know, because even if I'm training with like a Bantamweight, if it's a woman, like it's not as dangerous. | ||
| Dangerous is training with, like, some of the bigger guys. | ||
| Like, guys and girls are kind of, like, different sizes. | ||
| Like, if I'm training with a guy who fights at 115, he's going to be, like, four foot tall. | ||
| You know, so it's, like, the weight distribution is different. | ||
| But, like, I don't know. | ||
| Something about... | ||
| I guess training with women, like the strength, the force that's coming at you versus the force you're giving to them, I just feel like it's a lot safer to train with women. | ||
| Oh, for sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| But some people think that the opposite is that if you train with men, like say if you were training with a bunch of bantamweight men, yeah, they would be bigger than you, yeah, they'd be stronger than you, but you'd get used to that. | ||
| And then you'd be used to men, and then when you fight with women, they would seem smaller and weaker. | ||
| Yeah, that was my old theory. | ||
| So when I was at my little gym in New York, I was only training with guys. | ||
| The girls that would come in, they weren't at my level, and that's the same story that most girls in the UFC have. | ||
| They were at the top of their heap. | ||
| They were like the baddest girl in the gym, you know, beating up all the other girls and hanging with the guys. | ||
| And that was me. | ||
| So it wasn't until I got on tough that I realized like everyone has the same exact background. | ||
| So everyone's tough. | ||
| because they were training with guys and you start to underestimate like how tough a girl's going to be in there. | ||
| Like when you're fighting like tooth and nail, like, you know, to the death is basically like what you're doing in the cage until the ref pulls you off, you know, and then it's all hugs. | ||
| But like when you're given like 100% in the cage, it feels like just as strong as a guy. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So it's good to, like, still have those checks and balances. | ||
| Like, okay, like, yeah, maybe she's not as strong as the guys I train with, but she is going as hard as she can. | ||
| Or she's defending it as hard as she can. | ||
| Or, you know, she's taking my punches that I thought, like, oh, if I drop this guy with this punch, then this girl's gonna get dropped too. | ||
| And it's not the case. | ||
| Like, she's just as tough as tougher. | ||
| So it's, like, a weird thing where, like, you have, like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You have different stats stacked in some areas that guys don't. | ||
| And then they have stats stacked in areas that women don't. | ||
| So it's like if I was a Bantamweight guy who only trained with... | ||
| Light heavyweights. | ||
| You're going to be faster. | ||
| You're probably going to be more technical just because you have to train with people that big. | ||
| So if you fuck up a technique, it's not going to work. | ||
| But those guys are still going to be bigger and stronger and be able to muscle you, hold you down, that kind of thing. | ||
| So I feel like that's a similar difference. | ||
| Particularly with striking, right? | ||
| Like with grappling, there's some really little guys that are impossible to tap. | ||
| They just develop really crazy technique. | ||
| But with striking, there's only so much you could do. | ||
| You know, if you're a lightweight guy, you're not sparring with Francis Ngannou. | ||
| Or if you are, he better be really, really, really nice. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Or you better be nice to him so he doesn't go like, all right, little motherfucker, boom! | ||
| If you're not, he's not even going to notice it. | ||
| If you're not nice to him, it's not even going to work. | ||
| Well, no, I've actually, like, been told off for going hard with the heavyweights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| When I was, like, you know, just coming up, like, super green, and, like, I was just like, I'm gonna kill everyone in the gym! | ||
| And, like, there's this little thing, like, running at you, throwing overhands. | ||
| And, like, when it land, like, my coach would be like, hey, you gotta relax, because, like, you're landing overhands on this big guy. | ||
| If he does the same to you, he's gonna put you out. | ||
| And I was like, shit, I never thought about that, because I just assumed, like... | ||
| He wouldn't. | ||
| Yeah, well, not that. | ||
| I just assumed that me landing a hard punch on a heavyweight isn't going to hurt as much as me landing a hard punch on someone closer to my size. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| No, it won't. | ||
| Their neck is bigger. | ||
| Yeah, everything's bigger. | ||
| But it's still like if the guy is getting rocked. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If he gets mad at you and fires back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| If he's getting his head turned. | ||
| Your chin can only take so much. | ||
| It's a lot less than if I was throwing a body shot. | ||
| It's a little easier to be mean there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You've obviously gone through some improvements and some changes. | ||
| What's changed with you over the last four or five fights? | ||
| Because you keep getting steadily better, but particularly the last two. | ||
| I think you should be on a four-fight win streak. | ||
| Oh, stop. | ||
| Well, you had that one decision. | ||
| I forget how to pronounce her name. | ||
| Xiaonanian? | ||
| Yeah, is that how you say it? | ||
| How do you say it? | ||
| I don't know how to say it, but Xiaonanian, I think. | ||
| That's the lady who had in the triangle. | ||
| Yeah, and she's on this card too. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| The Auckland card. | ||
| Yeah, I thought that was a bad decision. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| But you had her locked up in the... | ||
| Sometimes when I do commentary, people get mad at me, like either the fighters or other people, but that was one where fans of her got mad at me. | ||
| Because you guys were right in front, and you had her in a triangle, and I was yelling, pulled ahead. | ||
| I was yelling, pull her head! | ||
| Pull her head! | ||
| Because you had it locked up! | ||
| It was locked up! | ||
| I'm like, she's got it! | ||
| She's got it! | ||
| She's got it! | ||
| I'm like, pull the head! | ||
| Pull the head! | ||
| And people are like, you fucking dick telling her to pull the head! | ||
| Well, I didn't hear, or if I heard you, I thought you were my corner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did hear someone say, you were literally right there. | |
| It's like, I can't help. | ||
| It's like you had it. | ||
| You really had it. | ||
| It was so locked in. | ||
| But I felt like that was a shit decision. | ||
| It wasn't the worst decision I've ever seen. | ||
| We've seen some really bad ones lately, but it was not good. | ||
| So that would have put you on a four-fight win streak. | ||
| But the Hannah Cyphers one, Hannah Cyphers is tough. | ||
| And she's like physically tough. | ||
| She's like a strong girl. | ||
| And when you got her down and smashed her with those elbows, I was like, something's going on. | ||
| Like you're on another level. | ||
| Do you feel it? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I had a lot of, I don't know, I guess, ups and downs in my career. | ||
| It's literally like up, down, up, down, win, loss, and win, loss. | ||
| And I think after the Randa fight, I fought Randa Marcos about this time last year. | ||
| And I was just so pissed at the way that went down because I was super nervous going into it. | ||
| I felt like that was going to be a fight that kind of set me above the heap because Randa's so tough and she kind of has that same up-down that I do. | ||
| So I'm like, okay, this is going to set me apart. | ||
| I'm going to get a streak going. | ||
| This is going to be the fight that puts me in the rankings. | ||
| And I... And I put a lot of weight on it. | ||
| And I had ESPN follow me that week too. | ||
| So I was just super nervous. | ||
| And the entire time during the fight, I wasn't in the fight. | ||
| I was overthinking every position. | ||
| There was a point where I had ran up against the game. | ||
| And the fight seems like... | ||
| It was 30 minutes long, even though it was two minutes. | ||
| But the moment that I had her up against the cage, I remember just thinking, oh, if I hold her here, she can't do anything to me. | ||
| And that's the exact opposite of what you should be thinking in a fight. | ||
| You should be thinking, I need to hurt her. | ||
| I need to hurt her. | ||
| I need to do whatever it takes to look like I'm trying to finish the fight. | ||
| So I hesitated. | ||
| My corner was yelling elbow. | ||
| I didn't throw the elbow, ran it through the elbow. | ||
| And then from there, I was just like, like two steps behind, I felt like. | ||
| And so that fog was a really weird thing for me, because I had never really thought about the mental side. | ||
| Of fighting. | ||
| Like, I thought I was doing everything right. | ||
| Like, I would visualize and, you know, tell myself all positive things and, you know, do everything that you think you have to do before a fight. | ||
| But that just kind of showed me, like, I'm not doing enough. | ||
| Because I knew I had the skills to beat her, or at least the skills to make it look more competitive, but I didn't show it. | ||
| Do you think it was the added element of the cameras following you around that just put this additional pressure? | ||
| Yeah, like the pressure was already there, and then I found out about the ESPN thing, and I feel like it was just me over... | ||
| Because I've always had this... | ||
| I guess this fear of losing too much, you know, and it started when I got into the UFC. I had like my tough fight didn't go well, but I was one fight, you know, in my MMA career, and I was in the UFC already. | ||
| So I went on to win a fight, but then I lost two in a row and got cut. | ||
| And from that moment on, I'm like, fuck, like, people are just gonna think of me as this person who loses all the time. | ||
| And then I went on a four fight, one streak in Invicta, but then when I came back to the UFC, I lost to Andrade. | ||
| And even though it was like, probably the fight that people still talk about to this day, even though I lost. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy fight. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Like, I always get complimented on that fight. | ||
| But it was still another loss on my record. | ||
| So I've always had this kind of, I don't know, this great cloud looming over my confidence because of my record. | ||
| Did it help that she went on to do such great things? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It did. | |
| Did it pump you up? | ||
| It did. | ||
| It did. | ||
| But when it came to fighting someone like Randa, who kind of had a similar story where she is talented, but she's fought a lot of tough people and lost to them or gotten weird decisions against people. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just felt like this was my chance to prove that I'm not that. | ||
| I'm a better fighter than my record shows. | ||
| And so then when the ESPN thing was thrown on, it was just me bigging up a situation that wasn't that big. | ||
| It was no different from my fight with Ashley Yoder. | ||
| I felt more present in my Andrade fight. | ||
| It was no bigger than those fights, but I just bigged it up in my head. | ||
| And I felt like it was a result of me just pushing down all this anxiety that I have every time I fight and not really addressing it. | ||
| So did you address it since then? | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
| What have you done differently? | ||
| We started reading those mental, me and my husband, but he read them and then he started doing the mental coach thing for me. | ||
| Every resource that I looked at says pretty much the same thing. | ||
| It's that you have to focus on being present and being present each day and not dwelling on the past, not bringing the past into that present moment, just trusting in your reactions and trusting in your preparation. | ||
| That's what I've been doing. | ||
| I have been doing more actual visualization exercises. | ||
| Every time I'm in the gym, I just focus on being there at the gym. | ||
| I'm not thinking about what's going to happen. | ||
| If this happens, what's going to happen? | ||
| If that happens, I focus on the drill we're doing, on the exercises we're doing. | ||
| I go as hard as possible. | ||
| I think... | ||
| Just having that fight and having it go so badly forced me to go into the gym and just say, fuck it. | ||
| It's literally just like that fuck it mentality. | ||
| Like that was the worst that could happen where you didn't show up. | ||
| You didn't fight to the best of your abilities. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| When I hesitated, I didn't show up. | ||
| I didn't stay in the moment. | ||
| I was thinking about what's going to happen next. | ||
| What just happened? | ||
| What's going to happen if I lose? | ||
| I'm thinking that in the fight. | ||
| When I went to the gym the next Monday, I went to jail and I'm like, fuck it. | ||
| And I just went hard. | ||
| And the next sparring session, I said, fuck it. | ||
| And I went hard. | ||
| And those were the best sparring sessions I had up to that date. | ||
| Guys who... | ||
| You usually wouldn't really say much after I spiral, and they're like, yo, you're on something today. | ||
| Like, you're, like, just, like, combinations and volume and this and that. | ||
| Like, yeah, you're really getting after it. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, okay, I think I've, like, kind of unlocked something. | ||
| You know what's really powerful? | ||
| The way you're addressing it. | ||
| That you're so honest about what went wrong. | ||
| That's huge, because sometimes people make excuses, or they come up with something that didn't go their way, that should have gone their way, and they don't address the real issue. | ||
| You're addressing the actual issue that was going on in your brain, and you know that that's what it was. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| It's something I kind of had to learn from the get-go. | ||
| Have you ever thought about going to a sports psychologist? | ||
| I have. | ||
| I've tried a couple people in the past and I really just feel like everyone kind of says the same things. | ||
| So I feel like if you're getting it from any resource, that's good. | ||
| Like I started using that mindfulness app. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| Which one? | ||
| I forget what it's called. | ||
| Headspace? | ||
| Yeah, Headspace. | ||
| I was going to say it's the ones with the little cartoons. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that really helped just like kind of calm my nerves and keep the anxiety from being crippling. | ||
| Sometimes what happens when you go to a coach is the fact that you physically go to someone and you sit down with this – it's like a different level of commitment – You sit down with this person. | ||
| This person formulates a strategy for how you address some of the issues that are going on in your mind. | ||
| And then sometimes you can go to a hypnotist. | ||
| Like Vinny Shorman. | ||
| Do you know Vinny? | ||
| Vinny Shorman, he's fantastic. | ||
| And he's done a lot of... | ||
| He actually hypnotized me. | ||
| I asked him to hypnotize me because I want to know what it was like. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| It's like you're there, but you're not really there. | ||
| It's like you're in a room next to... | ||
| Did he make you like... | ||
| He didn't touch me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nothing. | |
| No, no, no. | ||
| Nothing weird. | ||
| Like a dog. | ||
| No, he... | ||
| I just wanted to experience what it was like. | ||
| Sometimes I procrastinate too much. | ||
| Sometimes I'm lazy. | ||
| Sometimes I feel like I get more work done than I do. | ||
| I want to know what that is. | ||
| He is really good at working with fighters. | ||
| He does a lot of stuff through FaceTime and shit, too. | ||
| He lives in England. | ||
| But he's worked with Joe Schilling. | ||
| He's worked with a lot of different fighters. | ||
| But he basically tries to get you to understand. | ||
| First of all, you're already on a really good path because you understand what you did wrong, right? | ||
| And then you understand to be more present. | ||
| Those two things are critical. | ||
| That's everything. | ||
| Understanding what went wrong, letting it go, you're already doing that, and then concentrating on what you're really good at and just saying fuck it and letting it go and expressing yourself, being the you that you know that you could be when you're on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| It's like how to capture that and hold that thought and then bring it inside the octagon and be able to recreate those feelings when you're actually under pressure of competition. | ||
| That sounds cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But like hypnotizing though? | ||
| Like does he like take out the watch? | ||
| No, he just talks to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You close your eyes, you lay back and he just sort of talks you through it. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| So it's not like therapy. | ||
| You definitely feel like a change in your brain. | ||
| Yeah, you feel like you're in a different state. | ||
| It's a weird state. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| That's strange. | ||
| Like, after it was over, I was like, huh, okay, that's real. | ||
| Because I had seen, like, comedy hypnotism before. | ||
| Have you ever seen a comedy hypnotism show? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, for sure. | ||
| Where they have a bunch of people come up and like, you're having sex with, you know, Rihanna and you think you are. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| There's a lot of weird stuff that people do in these comedy hypnotism shows where I was like, maybe I can't. | ||
| I don't think they could do that to me because I'm not going to believe that I'm really on a cruise ship right now and pirates are coming or whatever the fuck. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then you go, hi. | ||
| Yeah, I always see the ones where they make them turn into an animal or something. | ||
| Or every time you say this word, something happens. | ||
| And I'm going to wake up in 3, 2, 1. Huh? | ||
| What happened? | ||
| It wasn't like that. | ||
| But it is like you're listening to his voice, but you're in a different state of consciousness. | ||
| It's very strange. | ||
| But you're able to put away the outside world for a brief amount of time. | ||
| And he concentrates on flow, getting you to a state of flow. | ||
| That flow state when everything's going great. | ||
| You know that feeling when you see things and you're hitting someone with something before you even know that there's an opening there. | ||
| And that was in those athlete books too, just that flow state thing. | ||
| Flow state is everything, right? | ||
| It's like getting to the point where you're at that. | ||
| And for you, is a quick turnaround a better thing because you're more relaxed? | ||
| You just fought? | ||
| It's definitely a better thing because I feel familiar with the routine and familiar with being in the cage. | ||
| And one of the first things we started thinking about is what scares me so much or what gives me that heart ping. | ||
| And one thing is being in the cage and seeing the canvas and just how real it is. | ||
| Because when you see it on TV, the canvas is a different color. | ||
| You can see the texture, the thread in the canvas. | ||
| There's a certain smell. | ||
| The perspective is different. | ||
| I look way bigger on TV than I do in person. | ||
| And it's the same with my opponent. | ||
| They look like this little thing trying to fight me. | ||
| But it's this real thing in front of me. | ||
| It's scarier than when you're watching it, like watching the replay of your fight. | ||
| So it's just like that, I don't know, just that experience of being in there always scared me because it's, I don't know, it's just not familiar. | ||
| It doesn't feel the same as going to spa or going to train or wrestle or whatever because it's like this big thing that we build up, we have a date, we go in there, there's a lot of people watching. | ||
| Do you warm up inside the octagon? | ||
| I like to. | ||
| I think it helps, but I think just being in there a lot has helped more than that. | ||
| Just because that is the area that I'm used to fighting in now. | ||
| Like, now that I've fought so much in, like, a short period of time, like, it feels super familiar. | ||
| Like, now I don't feel the need to warm up in there. | ||
| Whereas before, I'm like, oh, I gotta get to the arena early. | ||
| I gotta feel the cage. | ||
| I gotta feel it on my feet. | ||
| Feel how slippery it is. | ||
| You know, that kind of thing. | ||
| But yeah, I definitely like being in there, being active. | ||
| I train all year round. | ||
| I don't really take big breaks unless I hurt something. | ||
| So in most of my fights, I come out injury-free. | ||
| If I do have injuries from a fight camp, not from the actual fights. | ||
| That's really fortunate. | ||
| Yeah, no, I'm lucky. | ||
| I want to take advantage of my health because I know it's not going to last forever. | ||
| How old are you now? | ||
| 26? | ||
| Yeah, that's the magic number. | ||
| No, I'm 34 this year. | ||
| Well, you look great. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| When did you start training? | ||
| I did my first Muay Thai class when I turned 24. Wow. | ||
| Maybe that's the thing, right? | ||
| You don't have the wear and tear of a lot of people start when they're 10 and by the time they get to 24, they already got MCL fucked up and back... | ||
| And it probably stunts your growth, too, a little bit. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like something happens. | ||
| If you cut weight, it certainly does. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, I didn't really do any sports after, I guess, middle school. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Through high school to college and then after college, I didn't do shit. | ||
| You didn't do anything? | ||
| Nah, I was skinny fat, so I didn't have to. | ||
| But you didn't work out or nothing? | ||
| Nah, I didn't work out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's crazy. | |
| Yeah, it's weird. | ||
| If you see a picture of me from like right after college, I look like this little skinny like... | ||
| Stick figure, like, just soft girl. | ||
| It's really weird. | ||
| So, like, when people see me now, they're like, holy shit! | ||
| People from back then. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, they must be freaking out now. | ||
| Like, she's a what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| She's in the fucking what? | ||
| She's a UFC contender. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| No, it's really funny. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And I was so different. | ||
| Well, not different, but I was super quiet all my life. | ||
| In high school, especially in college, I was always just really shy and really soft-spoken. | ||
| That's surprising, because you're very funny on Twitter. | ||
| Oh, thank you. | ||
| On Twitter, you're hilarious. | ||
| Well, I was always funny. | ||
| You're always funny, just quiet. | ||
| Nobody knew it. | ||
| I kept it to myself. | ||
| I cracked myself up all day. | ||
| But yeah, I'm just super shy. | ||
| Always awkward around new people and new settings. | ||
| I had my tight-knit group of friends, but I was never the popular kid by any means. | ||
| What brought you into Muay Thai class? | ||
| A workout. | ||
| You just needed something to do. | ||
| Yeah, I was just fat. | ||
| I just got married and I also had an office job. | ||
| I was working at an animation studio. | ||
| And before that I had been bartending. | ||
| So I was like moving around and doing stuff and I never really felt like inactive. | ||
| But once I quit the bar job and was just doing that full time, I just felt like fat and lazy and greasy and, you know, everything that happens from like sitting down all day. | ||
| So, I mean, you know, you like you do all sorts of shit outside of this just to like, you know, stay happy. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Yeah, it was really cool discovering it. | ||
| Like I was just asking around because I always wanted to learn how to fight. | ||
| But like boxing intimidated me. | ||
| I'm like, they're not going to want to deal with me. | ||
| Like, you know? | ||
| They'd deal with me if I came in when I was, like, 10, but not now as some old-ass fucking girl wanting to learn how to box. | ||
| But then people are telling me, like, oh, Muay Thai is, like, really cool, and I was afraid of getting bulky, you know? | ||
| And they're like, oh, no, if you do Muay Thai, like, you'll still look really natural. | ||
| You won't look like you're on steroids. | ||
| And I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| How many girls are afraid of that? | ||
| You're afraid of big shoulders and big arms? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, no, I don't care. | ||
| I'm like, bring it on, you know? | ||
| But back then I was like really worried about looking like a ninja turtle. | ||
| That's so funny because it's so hard for a girl to look like that without steroids. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But you see some girls who go hard, you know, like CrossFit girls. | ||
| Like half my opponents. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just all trapped up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's a few. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's a few that you definitely know something happened in the past. | ||
| Something happened. | ||
| They grew up on a farm. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's the line. | |
| A lot of throwing hay around. | ||
| So, you're 24 years old. | ||
| You walk into a Muay Thai class. | ||
| When do you get addicted to it? | ||
| First class, man. | ||
| Really? | ||
| First class. | ||
| First class, my coach, my first coach, Brandon Levi, does Evolution Muay Thai in New York. | ||
| So, that's where you were in New York at the time? | ||
| Yeah, in New York. | ||
| Yeah, that's where I went to school and everything. | ||
| And first class, I threw like an elbow and a knee on the Thai pads. | ||
| And I was like, oh... | ||
| I feel so hard. | ||
| I never knew that I could generate that much power with my little body. | ||
| Because I was probably 115 pounds soaking wet at the time. | ||
| So I was just like, oh my god, I feel so powerful. | ||
| And ever since then, I was just going every day. | ||
| I was going with my husband. | ||
| We were getting in shape, learning how to kick and stuff. | ||
| And it was just a lot of stuff I never thought I'd be able to do, I was doing it. | ||
| Even just throwing a head kick. | ||
| I didn't try out for cheerleading because I was inflexible. | ||
| I was like, I'm never going to be able to do this. | ||
| I can't do a high kick. | ||
| I can't do a split or anything like that. | ||
| So being able to get my leg up high enough to kick someone in the head, it was like a huge milestone for me athletically. | ||
| I love a story like that where you didn't do shit from middle school, high school. | ||
| You didn't do shit until you were 24. And then all of a sudden you get addicted to it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It was always in me, man. | ||
| But then 10 years later, you're a top contender in the UFC. Yeah. | ||
| That's bananas! | ||
| It's weird, but it makes sense to me because anytime I tried to do a sport when I was a kid, I would just lose interest. | ||
| And I think it was because they were all team sports. | ||
| I was on basketball teams, softball, baseball, whatever. | ||
| I ran a track for a few months and all of that stuff, I was just like, this is stupid. | ||
| What's the point? | ||
| Or that or... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I didn't like working with people. | ||
| But the one thing I was good at was stealing the ball in basketball. | ||
| So I never made any shots. | ||
| I was really bad at dribbling and everything. | ||
| But if someone got the ball and they were next to me, I'd run over and I'd grab it and just wriggle until they're just like... | ||
| Like, they would just get mad at me and let go of the ball so I'd steal it and then pass it to the girl that could shoot. | ||
| So yeah, that was the one thing I was good at. | ||
| That's conflict. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Maybe that was like a sign of things to come. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| You're good at conflict. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| And especially because I was so shy outside of that, then it was just kind of like my outlet. | ||
| So how long was it between your first class and your first fight? | ||
| It was about nine months. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So right away, you're like balls deep into this thing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| For lack of a better expression. | ||
| Yeah, I'm like, what else deep could I do? | ||
| Yeah, what can a girl do? | ||
| Yeah, I was really into it. | ||
| And I hadn't considered fighting yet, but my coach was like, I think it was around the time. | ||
| Have you ever heard of the WKAs? | ||
| So it was around the time of that, and he was taking a couple people down. | ||
| He was like, hey, you want to do WKAs? | ||
| You want to have a fight? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was like, oh, are you sure? | ||
| Like, you sure I'm ready? | ||
| And it was kind of halfway because, well, I don't know if this is why he asked, but once I said yes, there was a girl that used to train with us who was also doing it in my weight class, and he was like, oh... | ||
| This is going to be fun. | ||
| So yeah, I thought it was cool that he had that confidence in me because all the other girls who were in the tournament had been training a lot longer than me for years even. | ||
| So yeah, I was just like, okay, let's do it. | ||
| Let's see what happens. | ||
| Like I was scared, but I also wasn't like putting all my eggs in that basket. | ||
| Like I didn't think anything was going to come from doing Muay Thai. | ||
| It was just fun at the time. | ||
| So I went and I beat two girls, won the little, the champ regional championship or whatever. | ||
| And, uh, from then on I was just fighting. | ||
| They had this show, uh, in New York called Friday night fights. | ||
| And, um, and I got a few shows on that or a few fights on that. | ||
| I went 14-0 as an amateur Muay Thai fighter. | ||
| Before I went pro, I was trying to get an MMA fight just so I had one or two amateur MMA fights under my belt. | ||
| So if I do decide to do it, I'd have that experience. | ||
| But no one would fight me. | ||
| So I ended up going pro anyway. | ||
| Had two pro Muay Thai fights. | ||
| And then I had my first pro MMA fight two days before the Tough tryouts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That's so recent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What year were you on Tough? | ||
| Was that six years ago? | ||
| Tough 20. So I think it was 2014. Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's when the tryouts were. | ||
| And I think it aired. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think our finale was like that December. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that makes sense now as to why you've gotten so much better over the last few fights. | ||
| You're still fucking learning. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's so crazy. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I shouldn't have been in there. | ||
| It was stupid to show up. | ||
| But it's not because it's interesting. | ||
| What was it like your first fight? | ||
| Because here you are. | ||
| You're nine months into training. | ||
| You did it for fun. | ||
| And now you're really into it. | ||
| And then all of a sudden you're inside the ring. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It was... | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| Well, it wasn't fun. | ||
| Fighting is never really fun. | ||
| I feel like it's just this sprint. | ||
| If you ever sprinted against someone and you really want to beat them, that's kind of what fighting feels like a lot of times. | ||
| You're just pushing yourself to total exhaustion, just trying to beat this person who's neck and neck with you, and your lungs just get tired thinking about it. | ||
| But yeah, it's a blur. | ||
| I don't really remember it, but I see video and it's super slow and sloppy. | ||
| But I beat the girl up. | ||
| I tossed her around or whatever. | ||
| And yeah, it was really cool. | ||
| I think before they say go, I was just like, what the fuck am I doing? | ||
| Like, how did this happen? | ||
| You had to feel so weird the day of, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm like, I have a BFA. Like, what? | |
| My mom must be like, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Why am I doing this? | ||
| Oh, that's so funny. | ||
| What's wrong with me? | ||
| But like, then I beat her and I was like, oh, this is cool. | ||
| Okay, I get it. | ||
| I I get it. | ||
| And it was cool because I did a couple things that were technical. | ||
| I grabbed her by the head and threw her over. | ||
| So that was something we practiced. | ||
| And yeah, I beat another girl maybe 12 hours later in the same tournament. | ||
| Those tournaments, they make you sit around forever. | ||
| But then I was just like, oh man, maybe I'm pretty good at this. | ||
| Maybe I'll do it again. | ||
| And then so you do it a few times, you get 14-0 as an amateur. | ||
| At what point in time are you thinking, I think I'm going to be a professional fighter? | ||
| Still not then. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I went pro just to go pro because if you're 14-0 as an amateur, you're not getting fights anymore. | ||
| You're not booking opponents or whatever. | ||
| They don't want to fuck with you. | ||
| Yeah, they don't want to fuck with you. | ||
| And it's about that time anyway. | ||
| When I see guys with 30 amateur fights, boxing is a little different. | ||
| But in Muay Thai like if you have like 30 amateur fights, it's like come on guy go pro already like no one else is gonna Have that much experience and if they do they're like about to go pro or you fought them like five times, right? | ||
| You know with boxing of the Olympics and you know games and all these like prestigious Right, right. | ||
| With Muay Thai, there's some amateur championships, but there's nothing that's going to put you in a better position as a professional. | ||
| Exactly, exactly. | ||
| With boxing, guys like Lomachenko, who's got 200-plus amateur fights, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Same with Gennady Golovkin. | ||
| Triple G, I think he had around 200-plus amateur fights as well. | ||
| But those guys are winning world championships and fighting at the top of the heap in amateur boxing and then developing that skill. | ||
| I think Lomachenko won his first world title four fights into his pro career. | ||
| Something crazy like that. | ||
| Yeah, I don't follow boxing too much, but I just know that for sure is that everyone who's made a name for themselves, they started off with like fucking 200, 300 fights. | ||
| So yeah, Muay Thai, at least in the States, isn't the same. | ||
| So it was just time to make that step. | ||
| So I still wasn't considering that being my career of choice, especially because Muay Thai, you don't make shit. | ||
| What's the most money you made as a Muay Thai fighter? | ||
| I think I made... | ||
| 700 bucks on Lion Fight. | ||
| So that was pretty cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's crazy. | |
| I was like stoked too. | ||
| I was like, man, I'm about to make 700 bucks! | ||
| I wish Lion Fight was bigger. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Lion Fight, it's like, I would watch Lion Fight on AXS TV and I'd be like, why the fuck isn't this huge? | ||
| It was an awesome show. | ||
| It's an awesome show. | ||
| The commentary was great. | ||
| They had Pat Miletic doing commentary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| And if you watched the fights, they'd bring in all these ties, these world-class fighters, a lot of the European guys. | ||
| You're like, God damn, there's some fucking talent. | ||
| Yeah, I was stoked. | ||
| And it's so wild to watch. | ||
| I love Muay Thai. | ||
| I love watching it. | ||
| I'm not sure if it was my first. | ||
| I did two fights on Lion Fight. | ||
| So I'm not sure if it was my amateur fight or my pro fight. | ||
| But one of them, I fought on the same card as Cyborg. | ||
| And I was like, yo, this is so cool. | ||
| I'm fighting on the same card as Cyborg. | ||
| In Lion Fight? | ||
| In Lion Fight, yeah. | ||
| I think she only fought once. | ||
| It was Jorena Barge. | ||
| She fought twice. | ||
| She fought twice? | ||
| Yeah, the first girl she destroyed. | ||
| I think it was maybe a French girl or something. | ||
| But the first girl she destroyed. | ||
| I think my coach, Brandon, he was holding pads for me. | ||
| And her coach was like, oh, do you remember people made a big deal about this? | ||
| The girl who got slapped in the corner. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| In Lion Fight. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| She was fighting Cyborg. | ||
| Her coach slapped her, right? | ||
| He slapped the shit out of her. | ||
| And it was like, ooh, because the girl was obviously, she had taken some blows. | ||
| Like, it's Cyborg. | ||
| And Cyborg went full Cyborg on her. | ||
| So she had already taken some blows. | ||
| And then she gets to the corner. | ||
| And the first thing the coach does is, pop! | ||
| You know, and it's like, come on! | ||
| You're gonna knock her out! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, not only that, like, do you do that a lot? | |
| Right. | ||
| Like, are you doing that when no one's around? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's, you know. | ||
| Yeah, so it was odd. | ||
| It was odd. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| That's right, I forgot about that. | ||
| But I get slapping your fighter to wake him up. | ||
| I get a little bit, but I don't get, like, physically slapping them. | ||
| Yo, especially after they were probably concussed from the round. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, for sure. | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| So, that was the card that I was on. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| So that was a really big deal for me. | ||
| So here you are, you're fighting pro as a Muay Thai fighter, and then what makes you say, you know what, I think I'm going to make a leap into MMA? Tough. | ||
| Tough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the opportunity. | ||
| Yeah, the opportunity. | ||
| Because at that time, there was no strawweight weight class. | ||
| I was planning on being an atomweight fighter because in Muay Thai, I fought between 110 and 106. So I was like, oh, I didn't cut weight for it. | ||
| I just kind of dieted down to it. | ||
| Does Invicta have atomweight? | ||
| They do. | ||
| They do. | ||
| What is the weight limit? | ||
| 105. 105. Yeah. | ||
| So Invicta has Adam weight and that was kind of my plan. | ||
| But I had sent like Invicta highlight reels and I didn't really get a response yet because I didn't have any MMA fights yet. | ||
| So that was kind of the scramble to get an MMA fight and then somehow like, you know, Build up a record and get called by Invicta. | ||
| How long had you been training in grappling or takedown defense or MMA in general? | ||
| I hadn't been doing much MMA training just because in New York there wasn't a lot of it. | ||
| So you have those underground MMA fights. | ||
| I had a friend who had done a couple of them. | ||
| It was literally like you show up, you go to a school in the Bronx and you're in their assembly room and there's a ring there. | ||
| No ambulance. | ||
| You still have to pay $30 to get in. | ||
| And it's just so hood and ratchet. | ||
| We literally saw a kid get matched up against a little person. | ||
| Like a midget? | ||
| Yes, a midget. | ||
| I'm like, can we say midget? | ||
| My friend Brad Williams, he's a little person. | ||
| He says you can say it. | ||
| He says midget? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cool. | |
| Thanks, Brad. | ||
| Go his way. | ||
| Yeah, it was a midget. | ||
| Literally tried to match him up, and the guy was going to knock this kid out. | ||
| It was a man. | ||
| A man with man muscles. | ||
| But it didn't happen. | ||
| How old was the kid? | ||
| The kid, they were the same height. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| So, he wasn't old. | ||
| That kid was a full-grown kid. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| But it didn't happen. | ||
| But that was the matchup. | ||
| So, that was the kind of thing they were working on. | ||
| There were fights with headgear, no headgear. | ||
| Some people had MMA gloves. | ||
| Some people had boxing gloves. | ||
| It was all over the place. | ||
| I've seen a lot of those online. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those weird... | ||
| Like sort of fucking half-assed MMA fights. | ||
| Yeah, and it happened a lot in New York because that was the only MMA you could do back then. | ||
| Like even in a pro Muay Thai fight, you couldn't throw elbows. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, because I don't know why, but it was connected to that MMA rule. | ||
| Could you knee? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You could throw knees. | ||
| To the head. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah, it doesn't make sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you clench? | |
| You can plumb and you can still throw knees? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| But you can throw elbows. | ||
| You can't throw elbows. | ||
| No elbows. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's so silly. | |
| So it was weird. | ||
| God, it's fucking people with their rules. | ||
| It was illegal to throw elbows. | ||
| That's so silly. | ||
| You had to go to jail. | ||
| That's so silly. | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| But yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| So when I was in New York getting ready to fight MMA, I actually got a call from a coach out in North Carolina. | ||
| And he's like, hey, if you come out here to train with me, then I'll send you to Vegas to do this tryout. | ||
| And, you know, get you on the show. | ||
| And I was like, oh, okay, cool. | ||
| But I didn't think I was going to get on the show. | ||
| I was just like, oh, this would be a cool opportunity to learn some MMA, you know? | ||
| So I go down to North Carolina for a few months. | ||
| I end up getting that fight that was, like, two days before. | ||
| It was, like, super, like, you know, North Carolina show. | ||
| It's called, like, USFFC or something, or USSFZ, one of those. | ||
| So I did that, and I fought a girl that I was actually going to fight in Atomweight, but she pulled out. | ||
| So we fought at Strawweight. | ||
| I knocked her out in the second round, I think, and then flew to Vegas the next day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So yeah, it was pretty crazy. | ||
| But yeah, even on the flight to Vegas, I'm like, I'm not going to get on this show. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| They got girls coming from all over the place. | ||
| They got all those girls in Invicta that I watch. | ||
| There's going to be hundreds of girls here at the tryouts. | ||
| I think there was only like 30. Were you there? | ||
| No, I wasn't. | ||
| Did you have to spar at the tryouts? | ||
| Yeah, just grappling. | ||
| Just grappling. | ||
| Yeah, so you go to tryouts, you introduce yourself, there's MMA media there, and you tell them your little story, try to get people behind you or whatever. | ||
| And then they had handpicked already eight girls to be on the show. | ||
| And those are all girls that I've seen fight before, so I'm like, I was like, whoa, they're going to be on the show? | ||
| They should just put them in. | ||
| They already know what they're doing. | ||
| But I was like, ah, that's cool. | ||
| I'll just go and try out and show face. | ||
| And maybe Dana White will like what he sees. | ||
| Keep me in mind after I have a few fights. | ||
| And I went there. | ||
| I tried out. | ||
| I did a grappling session where I did well against the person they put me up against. | ||
| I just stayed on top of her the whole time. | ||
| How much grappling had you done by then? | ||
| Well, I had been doing grappling on and off in between my fights, but every time I got a fight, I'd stop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| For how long have you been doing grappling? | ||
| How many years? | ||
| I'd say about maybe two years, two and a half maybe. | ||
| It's fairly green. | ||
| Yeah, like I was still a white belt. | ||
| Yeah, to be fighting in a professional organization. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was pretty nuts. | ||
| And so you stay on top of this girl most of the round. | ||
| Yeah, and the coach, the North Carolina coach, he was a wrestling, like straight-up wrestling guy. | ||
| So that was kind of what I needed at the time anyway, so it kind of worked out. | ||
| And I just stayed on top of her and her guard and smothered her or whatever. | ||
| And then the part that I shined was the striking part. | ||
| And my coach, Brandon, came down with me and we did our little routine and I did like, you know, you see the ties do like the 20 kicks left, 20 kicks. | ||
| We did that. | ||
| And then I started doing like a really hard comma and I was like, making noise. | ||
| And they're like, Angela, stop, stop, stop. | ||
| Like I couldn't hear them over my yelling. | ||
| They're like, hey, hey, hey, stop. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| And I was like, oh. | ||
| And that was before everyone else was told to stop. | ||
| And then I got a pretty cool compliment from Dana after that. | ||
| He was like, I've seen a lot of tryouts, and that was the best strike, and I've seen any tryouts so far. | ||
| And I was like, whoa! | ||
| I mean, I'm sure he wasn't being super serious, but I took that shit to her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, yo, Dana White said that, oh my god. | |
| So, at that point, you're thinking, I might be on this fucking show. | ||
| I might be on The Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| But I think I overestimated what the rest of the girls were bringing to the competition. | ||
| Like, I thought... | ||
| Like, everyone was showing up with, like, crazy records, like, winning records. | ||
| But, like, at that point, like, especially for strawweight weight class, like, there were a lot of people just fighting whoever, whenever, just to make a paycheck, just to, like, you know, get an injury fixed or whatever. | ||
| So, like, yeah, you had a lot of girls who were strawweights, but they fought at bannerweight before. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Or they fought in bars before for a small paycheck. | ||
| So you didn't really have that much hardcore experience outside of the official eight that were picked. | ||
| So yeah, my chances were a lot better than I had realized. | ||
| And even though I only had one fight, I obviously had a higher striking level than most of the girls that showed up that day. | ||
| So then, all of a sudden, you're on the Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All told, you had been training for what? | ||
| At that time, four years? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| That is fucking bananas. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| Going from 24, not done shit for all those years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Now, four years later, you have a bunch of Muay Thai fights, one MMA fight, you're on The Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| Like, holy shit, you're on TV. That is a four-year whirlwind. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It was nuts. | ||
| Four years. | ||
| That is nuts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I guess it was like going to college. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Only I got a job afterwards. | |
| Only it was worth it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So then when you were on the show, how bonkers was that? | ||
| It was pretty nuts. | ||
| I mean, I feel like I had a lot more fun than the other girls who lost. | ||
| Because you just enjoyed it? | ||
| Because I was just, yeah, I was just there for the experience. | ||
| Like, I think coming in there, and this is kind of how I view my marriage, too, is like, going in there with low expectations made it actually a lot of fun. | ||
| And now I'm still married, you know? | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| That's a funny way to approach it, right? | ||
| Because if people go crazy high with the expectations, no one's going to meet those expectations. | ||
| You're going to be disappointed. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I got married in City Hall. | ||
| I tried out for tough after one fight, and now I'm living large. | ||
| How are you ranked right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where do they have you? | |
| I don't know. | ||
| I doubt I'm ranked. | ||
| You must be. | ||
| I've never been ranked. | ||
| How many girls are in the 115-pound division? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think I've fought most of them. | ||
| I think I've fought about half of the top 15. And the problem is I haven't beaten anyone that's ranked now. | ||
| So that justifies them for not putting me in the rankings. | ||
| I would have thought after the Cyphers fight you would get ranked. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I haven't looked, and I've stopped looking. | ||
| I think, well, I was ranked once. | ||
| I beat, how do you say her name? | ||
| Moros? | ||
| Marina Moros? | ||
| Do you remember her? | ||
| Tall, skinny girl? | ||
| Yeah, I'm trying to remember. | ||
| I have to see her name spelled out. | ||
| M-O-R-O-Z. Yeah. | ||
| But she just moved up to flyweight. | ||
| But she was ranked number 14. And I beat her. | ||
| And I was like, ooh, waiting until my ranking to pop up. | ||
| I gotta get at least 15. And the only thing that changed was they took her off the list. | ||
| So I was like, fuck you guys! | ||
| Fucking assholes! | ||
| Come on! | ||
| And I think after that, they put... | ||
| Or no, I think I finally made the list. | ||
| I was like 15 months later. | ||
| But then Mackenzie Dern misweighted by a gazillion pounds and knocked out fucking ABC. And they were like, pluck! | ||
| It took me off the rankings. | ||
| So I was like, fuck those guys! | ||
| So after that, I stopped looking. | ||
| And I think that was another part of that mental stress that I kept putting on myself. | ||
| I'm like, man, I keep losing. | ||
| I'm never going to make this ranking. | ||
| I'm never going to be valued as a fighter. | ||
| And really, the only thing that the ranking does is maybe gets you a few more dollars when you re-sign your contract. | ||
| The rankings don't really... | ||
| on a five fight win streak streak and i'm not ranked it doesn't matter i'm still like a contender you know people are still gonna be like when is angela gonna fight the champ she's been killing everyone so i shouldn't put too much value into it and eventually the rank will come but like at the time i was just like man this is this is stupid like they keep doing this to me like i've had like it's not like i'm getting smashed by the top girls like i'm having competitive fights like the only fights that i got finished | ||
| were uh the rose fight where i was super green the That was my third fight. | ||
| She had almost won the Ultimate Fighter. | ||
| And then the Randa fight, where I was totally fucking myself in my own brain. | ||
| Aside from those two fights, I had always been competitive. | ||
| And I feel like even some of those I could have won if it was like different judges, but like the rankings never reflected that. | ||
| So since then I stopped, like once I realized that I tried to stop paying attention to it just because I felt like it was affecting my own self-worth, you know? | ||
| Like I was doubting myself as if this thing judged like how good of a fighter I was. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| You're in a learning stage still. | ||
| That's what's so crazy about you. | ||
| You've only really been doing martial arts for 10 years. | ||
| That is fucking crazy. | ||
| 10 years is when it all starts coming together as a martial artist. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I think somebody told me that. | ||
| I think I have a friend who's an actor. | ||
| And he was actually on the same Muay Thai team that I went down to my first fight with. | ||
| And he's acting in LA now. | ||
| And when I was talking to him, I'm like, man, he started getting some bigger gigs. | ||
| And I was like, man, that's really awesome that it's all coming together for you. | ||
| And he's like, yeah, they say it only takes 10 years. | ||
| Like 10 years once you start getting your groove in any profession. | ||
| Yeah, comedy the same way. | ||
| That's what they say about a comedian. | ||
| Ten years in, you're a real headliner. | ||
| Nice, nice. | ||
| So, like, I just rounded ten years, and things just fucking fell together, you know? | ||
| Like, things have fallen in place. | ||
| The Hannah Cyphers fight, I mean, I told you this online, but when I saw it, I was like, she turned a corner. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| You see that sometimes. | ||
| In fighters, you see, like, there's a moment where they break through, where it all comes together, and they're putting things together in a different way, and you feel it. | ||
| You know, like, you feel it when you watch them, when you know that they've turned a corner. | ||
| And that's what I thought in the Cyphers fight. | ||
| When you were on top of her, hitting her with those elbows, I was like, Jesus Christ! | ||
| I was like, you were so ferocious. | ||
| I was like, that's someone who's turning the corner. | ||
| You turned the corner. | ||
| You became a finisher. | ||
| And you finished two people in a row, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think I was a little angry with the reception of my last finish, too. | ||
| I would have been okay if the fight went on. | ||
| Because I was surprised that they stopped it as well. | ||
| But you didn't think you got the props you deserved? | ||
| No, I didn't get the props. | ||
| And I was like, alright, I gotta show them. | ||
| And it wasn't just that. | ||
| It was also... | ||
| I took a peek at the scorecards after the fight. | ||
| And they had her winning the second round. | ||
| And I was like, get the fuck out of here. | ||
| I think two out of three judges scored the second round for her. | ||
| So going into the third, it was one and one. | ||
| And I thought I was tooling her. | ||
| But I was still like, okay, I got... | ||
| I'm still gonna be aggressive. | ||
| I'm still gonna land these elbows, you know, this and that. | ||
| But it kind of showed me like, dude, you gotta finish these fights. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even though I feel like I'm winning, and the punches that hit me aren't marking me, they aren't hurting me, cutting me, and I can hit them and see the black eye as I bring my fist back to my face. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You feel the difference in power. | ||
| They don't see that. | ||
| The judges don't see that. | ||
| I feel like I have to finish fights in order to get the result that I want. | ||
| That's got to be so frustrating when you're fighting as a professional and the judges... | ||
| I mean, I say this so many times. | ||
| The Houston fight was fucking bananas. | ||
| Dude, and I was so happy you guys went on that rant because I've been saying it. | ||
| Dominic was going crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Dominic was so angry. | ||
| He was so angry. | ||
| And afterwards, he was still angry. | ||
| He was so fucking mad. | ||
| And he should be. | ||
| He should be. | ||
| It was... | ||
| You know, whoever the fuck scored... | ||
| John Jones, four rounds to one over Dominic Reyes, should never score a fight again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| Because it's like the criteria that you use to say that he was dominant one round, you can't possibly use that for the next round. | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
| John won for sure the last two rounds. | ||
| And he might have won the third. | ||
| Might have won the third. | ||
| I watched that fight three times since then. | ||
| I'm like, whew, that third round is fucking close. | ||
| Dominic landed some real good shots, but so did John. | ||
| So did John. | ||
| John kept pressing. | ||
| That was like right when he started slowing down, right? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Dominic started slowing down, and John started turning it on. | ||
| It was somewhere around the third. | ||
| It just seemed like... | ||
| The third is the five. | ||
| That's the round. | ||
| But one and two are clear Dominic Reyes, and that judge did not score the second round. | ||
| I think the first round he gave it to Dominic, and the second round he gave it to Jon Jones. | ||
| No! | ||
| You can't do that, man. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| You don't know what you're watching. | ||
| There was another judge that gave the third round to Jones. | ||
| One gave the second round, and I thought the second round was closer than the third. | ||
| The biggest robbery of the night was earlier. | ||
| It was Andre Yule versus Jonathan Martinez. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was a fucking robbery. | |
| Ski masks, guns, duct tape. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| That was a goddamn robbery. | ||
| That kid won. | ||
| Martinez won that fight. | ||
| You watch that. | ||
| When they announced the decision, we were like, what the fuck is happening? | ||
| That was the first bad one of the night. | ||
| But that was the worst one. | ||
| That was the worst one of the night. | ||
| I thought KGB won, too. | ||
| I did, too. | ||
| That was another one, right? | ||
| Everybody was booing like crazy. | ||
| I said it to her after the fight. | ||
| I thought you won that fight. | ||
| She threw way more shots. | ||
| It was a close fight. | ||
| It was a good fight. | ||
| But I thought she won that fight too. | ||
| It was just fucking terrible. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| How do you fix that? | ||
| You've got to fix those commissions. | ||
| Vegas does a real good job. | ||
| They do a better job than ever. | ||
| They're getting better at it. | ||
| But they still have judges that have no martial arts experience in Vegas. | ||
| They still have that. | ||
| That just shouldn't take place. | ||
| And there's my other fight that I'm like, fuck that. | ||
| Fuck that I want it is the Courtney Casey fight. | ||
| I don't know if you saw that one. | ||
| Yes, split decision. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Went against you. | ||
| I thought you won that fight too. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I did too. | ||
| That was a close fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was a good fight. | |
| But I thought you won that fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it was like, I think... | ||
| Well, I don't have this conspiracy, but my husband, he like went and googled who, or not googled, but figured out who the judges were. | ||
| And one judge scored it 3027 for Casey somehow. | ||
| And it's like, how the fuck? | ||
| You know, like how the fuck? | ||
| So whenever he sees this guy's name now, he's like, oh shit, here we go again. | ||
| We need open scoring. | ||
| We need open scoring. | ||
| It should be announced at the end of the round. | ||
| It should be announced to the audience so the audience boos the fuck out of the judges. | ||
| With the judge's name and a picture of their face. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Yes! | ||
| 100%. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Because I went online after the fight to try to find pictures of some of those judges from Houston. | ||
| And you couldn't even find their pictures. | ||
| I didn't look that hard. | ||
| But I looked a couple of pages into Google. | ||
| I bet Adam could figure it out. | ||
| My husband could figure it out. | ||
| He's Google-fu, man. | ||
| He's good at it. | ||
| Him and Jamie should have a Google off. | ||
| Jamie's the Google master. | ||
| Hey, ready, set, go! | ||
| Find a judge that screwed me over. | ||
| There's some people that shouldn't be doing it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think there should be more judges. | ||
| I think three is crazy. | ||
| I think we should have, like, Glory has five for kickboxing. | ||
| And, I mean, I think five is a good number. | ||
| It's a better number. | ||
| Six is probably even better. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's an octagon. | ||
| You have one for each panel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not... | |
| That's not a bad idea. | ||
| Yeah, there you go. | ||
| That is not a bad idea. | ||
| There you go, yeah. | ||
| One for each panel is actually a very good idea. | ||
| Because I definitely see a different fight from being there live and then watching it on camera. | ||
| Like, I see a totally different fight. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, sometimes even watching when I'm at the cage, you know, I want to see it in person, but sometimes I've got to look at the monitor. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then I look at the monitor, it looks clearer. | ||
| I see things that I'm not seeing just looking through the cage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And for a long time, judges didn't even have monitors. | ||
| Oh shit! | ||
| Now at least they have monitors. | ||
| But I think you're right. | ||
| I think eight is the magic number. | ||
| It's not like they pay those people a fuckload of money either. | ||
| Yeah, right? | ||
| Just fucking do it. | ||
| You definitely need more voices. | ||
| Because when you have something like a decision, like the Jon Jones fight with Dominic Reyes, I'm not against the decision. | ||
| It's not a robbery. | ||
| I mean, I could see an argument that Dominic Reyes won the fight. | ||
| I like John getting the decision because I like the guy who wins the last rounds more. | ||
| I think it means more because, look, if they're fighting to the death... | ||
| I have all my money on Jon Jones. | ||
| Because Jon Jones is dominating the fourth, dominating the fifth. | ||
| That's a ten round fight. | ||
| I don't think Dominic Reyes is going to make it. | ||
| I don't think he's going to make it. | ||
| And that means something. | ||
| That means something. | ||
| Because a fight, it is a game, right? | ||
| It is a sport. | ||
| You're scoring. | ||
| And the score should count. | ||
| But I think the last round should count more. | ||
| And that's how Pride used to do it. | ||
| They used to judge the fight overall. | ||
| They do that in Muay Thai too, like traditional Thai rules. | ||
| It's like they dance, or no, not dance, they fill out the first round and they fight the second and third round and then like the fourth round I guess decides who wins and then the fifth round is just a dance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a lot of it because gambling and then they fight every weekend too, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| So they're like, hey, I lost, so let's just dance it out, you know? | ||
| And if they really want it, they'll still try to get a knockout the fifth round, but usually it's just dance. | ||
| We have to do something. | ||
| We have to do something. | ||
| When you get to a place like Houston, and look, I love Texas. | ||
| I love going there. | ||
| I love the people. | ||
| I really love Texas. | ||
| But that was an embarrassment. | ||
| And there's no way that that should be a place where you have world title fights. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| Unless they fix something. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| I mean, can you imagine? | ||
| I was surprised it wasn't in Vegas. | ||
| Well, you know, they needed a good card for Houston. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it was packed. | ||
| The crowd was amazing. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| Yeah, it was fun. | ||
| I got to go to that one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was just marred by bad judges. | |
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| But yeah, definitely a weird night, judging. | ||
| So are you leaving from here straight to the airport and going to New Zealand? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What is that flight? | ||
| Does it take three years? | ||
| How long does it take to get there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| It's going to feel like it. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| I think it's 15 hours. | ||
| 15 fucking hours. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| Now you worried about coronavirus and shit when you fly? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Kind of have to be, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I'm less worried about it than Adam. | ||
| He's like the worrywart of the two of us. | ||
| So I'm kind of like, I'll be fine, you know, whatever. | ||
| But it's definitely like a thing that I should be worried about. | ||
| Like, I think it just showed up in San Diego, like last week or something, like two people had it in San Diego. | ||
| And now that they're testing for, they're using a different test to detect it, they're getting even more cases. | ||
| So scary. | ||
| You know where it came from? | ||
| I was just listening to a podcast. | ||
| My friend Ryan Callahan's podcast today. | ||
| They were talking about it. | ||
| It came from people eating weird animals from a marketplace like bats and snakes and shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Bro, in China they eat whatever the fuck they can get a hold of sometimes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, there was this one lady who got arrested, and she got arrested for serving or selling all these different animals. | ||
| She was selling eagles. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, we get weird about eagles, but we don't give a fuck about a chicken. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Isn't that strange? | ||
| They're so noble. | ||
| They're big. | ||
| They're big as shit. | ||
| They're big as shit. | ||
| I feel bad when it's bigger than normal. | ||
| Like a really big... | ||
| Like an elephant. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, like a really big elephant I feel like really bad about eating just because I feel like its brain is bigger so it's probably more likely to be like sentient. | ||
| Oh, I'd have to be starving to death to eat an elephant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It'd have to be like I'm trapped in the bush and I got a rifle. | ||
| Oh, I would never eat an elephant. | ||
| Like an elephant, like just an elephant, like they're like so amazing. | ||
| Incredible memories, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's this crazy video of an elephant being reunited with, I think it's a sibling or a daughter or a mother or something like that, and they hadn't seen each other in 12 years, and they see each other, and they run to each other and wrap their trunks around each other. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That is not like a deer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Deer don't even know what the fuck's going on. | ||
| It's just like... | ||
| Is that a car? | ||
| Let me run in front of it. | ||
| They can teach elephants to paint themselves. | ||
| Have you ever seen that? | ||
| No. | ||
| Dude, you gotta see this. | ||
| Elephants can paint themselves. | ||
| They can paint an elephant. | ||
| Just with them holding onto the brush with their trunk, they make a trunk, they make the body, they make the tail. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's crazy. | |
| That's so cool. | ||
| They trained an elephant to paint himself. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| It's so weird to watch. | ||
| So they could be smarter than apes then, right? | ||
| Or is it just different? | ||
| The thing is, the thing where it's hard to tell is like apes have fingers, right? | ||
| They can move stuff around. | ||
| Like chimps have incredible memories. | ||
| They have incredible short-term memories. | ||
| Like chimps have better memories than us when it comes to like, they'll flash a bunch of things on a screen and chimps can point out exactly what they saw if they get a reward. | ||
| Like if they get candy. | ||
| They'll give them candy if they can lay out some numbers and some things in the correct order. | ||
| Where you or I would be like, what the fuck did I see? | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| We're burdened by too much information and data and all sorts of different things. | ||
| Chimps can just do it. | ||
| They have that one motivator. | ||
| Yeah, they want that candy. | ||
| But their memory's incredible. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Chimps have bananas memories. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| For lack of a better term. | ||
| Did you find that video of the elephant with the brush? | ||
| It's so weird to watch. | ||
| I want to see it. | ||
| I mean, apparently this is like they train this elephant specifically to learn how to do this, but it's still crazy impressive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Because he does a really good job. | ||
| Better than a four-year-old would. | ||
| Like a four-year-old person. | ||
| One of my kids when they're four, they wouldn't do as good a job of making a fucking elephant. | ||
| Did it look in the mirror? | ||
| I don't remember what it did. | ||
| How does it know? | ||
| You got it, Jamie? | ||
| I'm trying to find the exact one you're talking about. | ||
| This has been a controversial story, I believe. | ||
| Right, it is. | ||
| Well, I think it's controversial because they taught the elephant how to paint himself. | ||
| So the training methods are probably controversial? | ||
| I don't think they abused him. | ||
| Is that what they're thinking? | ||
| I'm looking hard for the video and that's what's coming up is abuse or not abuse. | ||
| Yeah, but that's animal rights dipshits. | ||
| Those people get fucking crazy. | ||
| I do feel really guilty about when I went to Thailand just to train out there and I did one of those elephant ride things. | ||
| I did too. | ||
| And I do feel guilty about it. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| I'm glad you did. | ||
| My whole family was like, that was so fun. | ||
| I was like, I'm not doing that again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm like, I felt bad. | ||
| I mean, you feed the elephant. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| So here it is. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| Look at this elephant. | ||
| So he's painting himself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a baby. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But I mean, he's, I don't know how you could say he's being abused. | ||
| I mean, he's just doing that. | ||
| It doesn't seem like there's any weird motivators other than, you know, they taught him how to do it. | ||
| They probably gave him some treats. | ||
| No, he's dry out of trunk. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I mean, they're all drawing themselves. | ||
| There's more than one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, he's drawing a duck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's crazy. | |
| But just the fact that they can do that, that they can create something, and it reasonably resembles what they are, is nuts. | ||
| What they're making. | ||
| Yeah, I thought he had maybe a mirror in front of him. | ||
| Yeah, no, he didn't have a mirror. | ||
| He's done a Van Gogh or something. | ||
| It's pretty close to what an elephant looks like. | ||
| It says the truth about elephant paintings. | ||
| What is the truth? | ||
| Well, it must be like a stencil that they had. | ||
| They're just like tracing it or whatever. | ||
| Not tracing that, but like they must have trained them to make a certain shape. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe. | |
| So I doubt that the elephant knows that that's him. | ||
| I wonder. | ||
| But who knows? | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| They could be smarter than all of us. | ||
| Don't they say like fucking... | ||
| What is it? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Squid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Squid? | |
| Octopus and squid. | ||
| Yeah, they're really stupid smart. | ||
| Really smart. | ||
| But they only live for like... | ||
| A couple weeks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So I was like, how the fuck does that work? | ||
| Yeah, I think octopus live like two years or something stupid. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| But I'm glad you said that about the elephants in Thailand. | ||
| I felt bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't like the riding them thing, but you fed them. | ||
| We get to feed them sugar cane. | ||
| Yeah, that was the best part. | ||
| Were you near Chiang Mai? | ||
| No, I didn't get to go to any sanctuary, like the elephant sanctuary, where you get to bathe them. | ||
| Yeah, that's what we did. | ||
| Just run around with them. | ||
| Yeah, you clean them, and then you feed them sugarcane, and then you ride them. | ||
| And the riding part, I was like, I don't want to do that. | ||
| Well, did they have that big hook? | ||
| The hook? | ||
| When we went to the one that we went to, they have this big pole with a little hook on the end. | ||
| And it never hits them or anything, but it's just resting on their shoulder. | ||
| No, they didn't have that. | ||
| They just had a rope. | ||
| That was their training tool, I figured. | ||
| That was what they used to get them to behave. | ||
| It's like someone sitting next to you with a whip. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| You know what it could do. | ||
| It didn't do anything, but you just know it's there. | ||
| No, this place, one thing that I will definitely say is that they treated those elephants like pets. | ||
| They treated them really well. | ||
| They pet them, and you could tell they had a sweet relationship with them. | ||
| The elephant would wrap their trunk around the people, and the people would rub their head. | ||
| They wanted to be around those people, and then they would feed them a lot of sugar cane. | ||
| Like, we had these big stalks of sugarcane, and they would make you form... | ||
| See, the whole idea was a rehabilitation thing for elephants, and a lot of the elephants had been in circuses and zoos and things like that. | ||
| And then they actually had reintroduced a lot of them to the wild. | ||
| And when we were there, these elephants were not in cages. | ||
| They were free-roaming. | ||
| Oh, that's awesome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they were... | |
| It was crazy. | ||
| Their power. | ||
| They just wrapped their trunk around shit, just pull it out of the roots, and then just start eating it. | ||
| Like, But then they're also really gentle. | ||
| Really gentle with people. | ||
| Like when they grab stuff out of your hand, it's just like, they fill your hand, and then they grab the treat around it. | ||
| And it's just like, what? | ||
| How are they so precise? | ||
| I know. | ||
| They're fucking smart. | ||
| Yeah, they're smart as shit. | ||
| They can bring those elephants back to a place where they can exist in the wild. | ||
| Because they basically eat everything that's in the jungle. | ||
| They just grab it and eat it. | ||
| They know what to do. | ||
| So while we're hanging out with them, they're just pulling trees out of the roots and just eating them right there. | ||
| But their disposition is so interesting. | ||
| It's just so interesting to be around them. | ||
| Just big and gentle. | ||
| Big and gentle. | ||
| I mean, they're so fucking big. | ||
| And they help you get up on them. | ||
| They lift their leg up and you stand on their leg. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you pull yourself up onto their back and then you hang onto this rope that's around them. | ||
| They didn't seem to mind that you were on their back. | ||
| But still, it felt like I would rather just feed them and pet them. | ||
| Yeah, like, they're not going to do that in a while. | ||
| They're not going to be like, hey, buddy. | ||
| Yeah, and then they go down to this pond, and then you wash them in the pond and everything. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| That one was really cool. | ||
| I wanted to go up to Chiang Mai, but we were at this place called... | ||
| There it is right there. | ||
| That's exactly where we were. | ||
| Ah, that's so pretty. | ||
| Yeah, that's exactly where we were. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's awesome. | |
| And so you go out there and you pet them. | ||
| They love it. | ||
| They're like, oh, you're giving us a bath. | ||
| They're like, oh, you're giving us a bath. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| They love the baths too. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| But that water is filled with shit. | ||
| They just shit in the water while you're out there. | ||
| Would you really mind though? | ||
| It's elephant shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not that bad. | |
| It's just leaves. | ||
| It's probably lucky in some cultures. | ||
| I'm sure it is. | ||
| I went to a wolf sanctuary this past weekend. | ||
| Not this past weekend. | ||
| What's today? | ||
| I went Friday. | ||
| Yeah, Friday. | ||
| Is that nearby? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's depressing. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| It's depressing. | ||
| Well, they all are abused by being rehabilitated or something? | ||
| No, no, they're not abused, but they're contained, and that's what's depressing. | ||
| It's like, most of them came from people wanting a wolf for a pet. | ||
| They're like, oh, I'm gonna have a wolf, I'll be a badass, and then it just rips your house apart and doesn't listen to you at all, and you realize, oh my god, this isn't a dog. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| They're fucking wolves. | ||
| Like, it started off so well when you were a puppy. | ||
| Some of them are so big. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But to me, what was depressing was, first of all, they neuter them when they get in there. | ||
| They kind of have to because they don't want them to breed because then they'll create more of the same situation. | ||
| But then the other thing is that they're in this pen and then they don't get to be free. | ||
| So it's not like a big area? | ||
| No, it's not that big. | ||
| The pen they were in is not as big as the studio. | ||
| It's not that big. | ||
| For a fucking wolf. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, wolves want to run and hunt. | ||
| That's what they want to do. | ||
| They want to hunt. | ||
| So they never re-release them into the wild or anything? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I mean, listen to this, though. | ||
| listen to them howl that was when we were leaving We were leaving, they were howling. | ||
| They wanted you to come back. | ||
| Well, we went into the pens. | ||
| See how little the pens are, though? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We went into the pens and pet them. | ||
| Like, these people, they are amazing, and they're doing an amazing job, don't get me wrong. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, they're keeping these animals alive, and they're feeding them, and they do love them, and they go in there and take care of them and pet them, but to me, it's like... | ||
| That's a fucking wolf. | ||
| That wolf should be on a mountain somewhere. | ||
| It should be chasing down a deer. | ||
| It shouldn't be living like that. | ||
| They're beautiful. | ||
| It just bummed me out. | ||
| It made me feel like I went to a prison. | ||
| These are incredible animals. | ||
| The only way they can keep them is to... | ||
| That's Forrest Glant, who's a wildlife biologist who's been on the podcast for... | ||
| I'm getting kissed right there by a wolf. | ||
| They're very sweet. | ||
| Some of them you can pet and hug them and hang on to them. | ||
| They like you. | ||
| They like people. | ||
| But they're fucking wolves. | ||
| You're not telling them shit. | ||
| There's no sit, lie down, fuck you. | ||
| They're wolves. | ||
| Well, that's good that they have somewhere to rescue them from people who would have just put them down themselves. | ||
| They would have put them down. | ||
| And that is a lot of what they did. | ||
| They did keep a lot of them from being put down, but I left there feeling really depressed. | ||
| Isn't that how that... | ||
| I forget what his name is, but he has a huge Instagram, and he has all the big cats. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Fuck, what is his name? | ||
| What is it called? | ||
| yeah i can't think of it but it's like something cat something big cat something i don't know it probably doesn't even say that but that's what i'm like oh big cat videos but yeah the guy goes and he like cuddles with them and and it's always like someone who had a pet tiger who was like this is gonna be cool and then it wasn't it's mostly people in texas Yeah, I bet. | ||
| You know, there's more tigers in captivity in Texas in people's backyards than there are in all the wilds of the world. | ||
| Are there, what? | ||
| Are there, like, no laws or something with, like, animal stuff? | ||
| Texas doesn't give a fuck. | ||
| You want a giraffe? | ||
| Go get yourself a giraffe. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| You can just have a tiger. | ||
| That might be fun. | ||
| Get a giraffe. | ||
| I feel like a giraffe would be more chill with like staying in like a... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, they're so chill. | |
| Yeah, they're just like... | ||
| Well, they're so chill. | ||
| I used to have a bit about them like they're the only animals that I don't feel bad for at the zoo because they're walking around the zoo like another day with no lions. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And they're just wandering around. | ||
| Oh, lions majestic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that a random account? | |
| Yeah, no, that's not it. | ||
| Oh, no, it's called black jaguar something. | ||
| Yeah, black jaguar something. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. | ||
| But yeah, it's a lot like that. | ||
| Black Jaguar something. | ||
| It's not... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Black Jaguar, White Tiger. | |
| That's it. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| I'm not sure where it is, but yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Black Jaguar, White Tiger. | ||
| Yeah, he's just cuddling tigers and shit. | ||
| What? | ||
| Oh, he's in Mexico? | ||
| When we were out there. | ||
| The most depressing shit I ever saw for sure was at Tiger Sanctuary in Thailand. | ||
| It was so depressing, because they were all drugged. | ||
| Because you could take a picture with a tiger, and the tiger's landing like this. | ||
| Like a drugged prostitute in a room. | ||
| And people were smiling and taking pictures. | ||
| And I said, I am not going in that fucking cage. | ||
| I'm not taking part of it. | ||
| We thought it was just a tiger sanctuary. | ||
| They rescue tigers. | ||
| You go look at tigers. | ||
| I'm like, it'd be cool for my kids to see some tigers. | ||
| But then when we got there, I'm like, oh no. | ||
| These people are getting... | ||
| And there's a difference because they have little cubs. | ||
| And so you go in a room and there's a pen. | ||
| And these are little cubs. | ||
| They're tiny. | ||
| They're only a couple of weeks old. | ||
| Or four or five weeks old. | ||
| Whatever it is, they can be around people. | ||
| Six weeks old. | ||
| And you can play with them. | ||
| But they're super energetic. | ||
| They're jumping on you. | ||
| And they're swatting things. | ||
| They're playing with each other and rolling around. | ||
| And then as they get older, it gets to a year or two, and then they stop being natural, and then they're all drugged. | ||
| So you could be around the littler tigers, and there's a bunch of handlers around, and everybody's real nervous. | ||
| They keep the tigers away from you, and the tigers, they're looking at you, but they're there. | ||
| But they're only like a year old. | ||
| Then you get to the full-grown tigers, and they're just fucked up. | ||
| They're all drugged. | ||
| They're all drugged. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| And I guess that's like... | ||
| Like, my brain never thought of, like, oh, yeah, they must be drugged in order to be sitting in a room with strangers and not freaking out. | ||
| Like, I never thought about it. | ||
| When you go there, you could tell. | ||
| But, yeah, that makes so much sense. | ||
| Have you ever had one of these? | ||
| A CBD, uh, Kill Cliff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Is it, uh, you sound approved? | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's just CBD. I'm addicted to these, though. | ||
| These are Kill Cliffs? | ||
| Mmm. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mmm. | |
| Like Overkill. | ||
| Pretty goddamn good, right? | ||
| Yeah, that's pretty good. | ||
| 25 milligrams. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| But if you go into that room in the cage, rather, and see the tigers, you know right away they're drunk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because they're just laying there like that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And that's a nice thing with that black jaguar tiger guy. | ||
| Like, you always see the tigers are like playing with them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're swatting him around like the kittens you were talking about. | ||
| You can see their claws are retracted. | ||
| They actually like the guy. | ||
| They're just having fun. | ||
| Yeah, they could tear him apart at any point, but they're still nibbling on him and stuff. | ||
| Fuck that. | ||
| Dude, that guy is crazy. | ||
| He's like the big cat Steve Irwin, I guess. | ||
| Yeah, he's nuts. | ||
| There's a few of those guys. | ||
| There's a guy in Texas that does that. | ||
| No kidding. | ||
| Another one in Texas. | ||
| But he's got a tiger rehabilitation place. | ||
| It's the same kind of deal. | ||
| Like wrestles with these tigers and plays with them and shit. | ||
| And you're like, ooh, this is not going to end well, bro. | ||
| Did you watch Siegfried and Roy? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| A lot of times they just decide to go tiger on you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| And that's a wrap. | ||
| Yeah, and then it's like, bye, tiger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, put things. | ||
| The wolf thing was a real bummer. | ||
| I didn't think it was going to bum me out as much, but it bummed me out. | ||
| I mean, I'm happy that those people are doing it, and I think what they're doing is amazing. | ||
| Don't get me wrong, but for me, just the feeling of being around that thing, like, oh, that thing wants to run. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That thing wants to, you just open that gate. | ||
| That's like your animal, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wolves. | ||
| I love them. | ||
| You're big on wolves. | ||
| Did you see, what was that movie at the very end, he goes once more into the fray? | ||
| Oh, was that Liam Neeson? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The gray? | ||
| Yeah, the gray. | ||
| The gray. | ||
| That was a good one. | ||
| I have a friend of mine who shot an elk in Alberta, and the elk, he didn't know it, but the elk, when, you know, they shot it with a bow and arrow, the elk ran and died, and they were trying to pack the elk out, and these wolves started circling them. | ||
| They didn't realize they were in a wolf's den. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| They shot the elk, and the elk literally died right outside the wolf's den, and the wolves decided to claim the elk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| So they're circling them. | ||
| So these guys had their back to a tree. | ||
| They shot three of them as they ran at them. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Wild big wolves. | ||
| And they were big, right? | ||
| Big wolves. | ||
| Like real 125 pound wolves. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's like what I walk at. | ||
| Yeah, you can find the video. | ||
| John Dudley, who's a good friend of mine, was on the podcast talking about it. | ||
| But he only had three arrows left. | ||
| And his friend only had three bullets. | ||
| So they're standing there with their back to a tree and they got like fucking 20 wolves around them. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That's so cool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, to live and tell that story is fucking awesome. | ||
| He's got the skulls of the wolves. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| I have one of them on my desk at home. | ||
| So did they just back off after they took out a few? | ||
| Yeah, once they realized that they killed three of them, the wolves were like, okay, this is not good. | ||
| But they wanted that elk. | ||
| They were hungry. | ||
| Did they leave the elk at least? | ||
| No, they didn't leave the elk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They took it. | |
| They were like, fuck you, wolves. | ||
| Fuck you, wolves. | ||
| Superior fucking species. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, the wolves didn't know that my friend John was down to one arrow because he killed two with his bow and the other guy was down to like two bullets. | ||
| Damn, that's crazy. | ||
| Fuck, yeah, that's crazy. | ||
| So lucky, man. | ||
| Well, those animals used to kill everybody. | ||
| That's what Little Red Widing Hood was all about. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you know there was a ceasefire in World War I? Because they were fighting in Russia. | ||
| The Germans and the Russians were fighting. | ||
| And so many people were getting killed by wolves that they decided to have a ceasefire. | ||
| Because the wolves in Russia are just fucking ruthless. | ||
| Is that like when it was snowing and stuff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And the wolves were eating the soldiers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn. | |
| They were killing soldiers that were on patrol and they were also, like when everyone, somebody got wounded and they were on the battlefield, they would just get torn apart by wolves in front of everybody. | ||
| That would make a great movie. | ||
| Yeah, it would make a great movie. | ||
| So they had to share communication back and forth between, I'm pretty sure it was the Germans and the Russians, and they said, let's just kill some wolves for a while. | ||
| And so they had a ceasefire, they killed wolves, and they went back to killing each other. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Fucking history's no joke. | ||
| That's nuts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, back to fighting. | ||
| Speaking of caged wolves. | ||
| How much do you walk around at? | ||
| How much do you walk around at? | ||
| I don't walk that heavy. | ||
| I try to stay above 30, 130, but usually it doesn't happen. | ||
| So, I'll be between 130, 125. So, you only have to cut 10. Yeah, I only have to cut 10. I've never been a big strawweight. | ||
| What do you weigh right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably like 125. And so you're fighting this weekend? | |
| Yeah, I'm fighting this weekend. | ||
| So do you taper off or do you just cut the water? | ||
| I taper off this week. | ||
| So I was eating pasta for dinner all the way up until this morning. | ||
| So that's how I keep my weight on because otherwise my metabolism, just from training and running, I'll be at 120 without even trying. | ||
| So if Adam Weight was a weight class, you would go there? | ||
| Well, that's the thing. | ||
| It's such a big jump. | ||
| So it's a weird one for me because 110 is probably my healthiest weight class. | ||
| 105, I start to look crazy. | ||
| Skeletor-like. | ||
| Yeah, skeletor. | ||
| I posted a video recently and it was from somebody who was following me before one of my Muay Thai fights. | ||
| And dude, I look so crazy. | ||
| I look straight up like... | ||
| Is it on your Instagram? | ||
| Yeah, it's on my Instagram. | ||
| But I think you can see just like my cheekbones. | ||
| It's just like a still of me throwing a kick. | ||
| But like my cheekbones are so sunken in. | ||
| There it is right there. | ||
| Yeah, like you can see it. | ||
| Like I look like my weigh-ins. | ||
| I was probably about one... | ||
| 13 right there. | ||
| So you're really dieting hard. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'm on my calorie counter. | ||
| I'm making sure I'm not eating carbs after 6. Carbs after sundown, that was the rule. | ||
| No carbs after sundown. | ||
| It's got to be harder for women, right? | ||
| Because your body wants to hold more body fat than a man's. | ||
| I've never had a problem cutting weight. | ||
| I've always been okay. | ||
| I think I just never tried to cut too much. | ||
| I think if I was bigger, then it would be an issue. | ||
| A lot of girls, they see who's cutting weight and how big they get, and then they get scared, so they try to go down a weight class below them. | ||
| If you look at Amanda Nunes, she isn't really the biggest Bantamweight. | ||
| She's kind of a natural Bantamweight. | ||
| She looks about the same size as Nina Ansaroff. | ||
| Do you think so? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| When I see her in fight camp, or when I see them both outside of fight camp, they look about the same size. | ||
| I disagree. | ||
| Oh yeah? | ||
| Yeah, I think Amanda looks thick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Her shoulders. | |
| Yeah, but she's all shoulders. | ||
| Like, her waist is small. | ||
| Like, she's not, like, I don't know. | ||
| She's not, like, built up. | ||
| Right. | ||
| She's not, like, muscular. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| She's just a little broad. | ||
| But, like, she's... | ||
| She's not like Cyborg. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| She's not, like, cutting, like, to the point where she looks like she's about to die. | ||
| But she's still a world beater. | ||
| So it's kind of cool to see that. | ||
| And I think a lot of people perform better when they're not cutting a ton of weight. | ||
| Just because you're in there more natural. | ||
| You're moving the same way you move in training. | ||
| Whereas if you cut a shit ton of weight, you're kind of half-cocked. | ||
| You're already depleted. | ||
| Your brain's not as healthy. | ||
| You don't have as much water in there. | ||
| You're just weaker. | ||
| Yeah, you're just weaker all around. | ||
| There's a point of diminishing returns, right, where you just cut too much. | ||
| If you cut a little bit, you're probably pretty good, but a lot of people became who they really should have been once they moved up in weight, like Masvidal or Dustin Poirier. | ||
| Dustin Poirier just couldn't make 45 anymore, and now he's having a hard time making 55. He's so big, he might have to move up to 70. Yeah, and your body just, like, kind of fights against you. | ||
| Like, once you had all those, like, really tough weight cuts, and that's why I'm not, like, super on that, like, oh, I'm going to go to 105 train. | ||
| Like, I might try it once. | ||
| I feel like everyone gets, like, one missed. | ||
| Yeah, if it existed. | ||
| Like, I might try once, and if I miss it, I'd be like, all right, not going to do that again, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's got to be hard, too, to go through the camp, like, diminishing yourself in camp. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, T.J. Dillashaw's the worst example, right? | ||
| When he went down to 125, he looked horrific. | ||
| And that's what I would look like. | ||
| He looked like a dead man. | ||
| Like, I'd look like all skin and bones and, like, muscles, you know? | ||
| And, like, it's, like, scary. | ||
| But at the same time, when I did do it, which, granted, was about eight years ago, When I did do it, I only dieted. | ||
| I didn't know anything about water cuts or I didn't do hot baths or anything like that. | ||
| I would just diet down to about 112 and then not eat anything the next day. | ||
| And that was me making weight. | ||
| I really wish there was more weight classes in MMA. Yeah. | ||
| Women's MMA and men's MMA. At least with women's, it's now 10 pound increments. | ||
| Yeah, it was insane when it was just 135 and 115. Crazy. | ||
| You had people killing themselves trying to make 115. That's such a giant gap with women. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| 20 pound gap is huge. | ||
| Yeah, and then the girls are so much bigger at 135, like crazy big. | ||
| Kat Zagano was at Alliance for a little bit, and when she wasn't at weight, I was just like, dude, there's no reason I should be training with you right now. | ||
| She's a strong girl. | ||
| She's just fucking bullying me around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| She's just tossing me like a little rag doll. | ||
| She's in the 60s, right? | ||
| When she's not training. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| She's got to get close to 160. I'm not sure. | ||
| She's a large lady. | ||
| And I mean that in a good way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Large and in charge. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She's fucking strong as shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| She's an athlete, man. | ||
| She's an athlete. | ||
| Big athlete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just tough. | ||
| I remember her fight with Amanda Nunes when Amanda had her really rocked in that first round and then she came back to stop her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, that was amazing. | ||
| To this day, when she won that fight and screamed, poof, it just gives you chills. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was like one of the most primal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, because that was just like from her bones. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| She won and she went through hell in that first round. | ||
| That fight fucked her up for a long time. | ||
| She was talking about it on the podcast. | ||
| She got brain damage from that fight. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| She's still recovering from it. | ||
| That is crazy. | ||
| Yeah, it's just... | ||
| Amanda Nunes is a freak. | ||
| She's a monster. | ||
| She's a freak. | ||
| She should be put in jail for what she's doing. | ||
| Well, when she clipped Cyborg, you could see Cyborg going, what the fuck? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because, like I said, it doesn't look like she hits that hard. | ||
| Oh my gosh, she hits so hard. | ||
| And then she hits, and then it lands, and it's just like, whoa, like, yeah, she's got something going on. | ||
| It's crazy how some people just have this weird power edge. | ||
| They got that touch, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, like Deontay Wilder. | ||
| Like, he's the best example of it. | ||
| It's like, what the fuck? | ||
| Yeah, a little... | ||
| Alex Pereira, you know Alex Pereira in Glory? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| He's the only guy that's knocked out Israel Adesanya. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Knocked him out in a kickboxing fight. | ||
| He's a fucking freak. | ||
| It's the same thing. | ||
| With a punch? | ||
| He knocked him out with a left hook. | ||
| One punch, boom, flatlined him. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| He hits so fucking hard, he knocks out everybody. | ||
| But it's one of those weird guys where sometimes people just have this power. | ||
| This weird, freaky power. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And I'm still hopeful that, like, that's going to be me eventually because, like, you know, Amanda Nunes didn't really do that for a long time. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then after that cat fight, I think after the Shevchenko, the first Shevchenko fight, she just started finding her groove and finding that money mark. | ||
| Yeah, her timing got money. | ||
| She also just really took her training far more seriously and invested much more time in her strength and conditioning. | ||
| That's a big factor because Amanda would get tired and that's what happened in the Katzingano fight. | ||
| She had Katzingano really badly hurt in the first round but then Kat just so tough she came back in the second and wound up stopping her. | ||
| Same with the first Shevchenko fight, too. | ||
| I think that's why the rematch happened, because Valentina just had a really strong last round against her, so she nipped that in the butt. | ||
| But it's interesting how you need weight glasses. | ||
| You need those increments, because Valentina 125 is just a fucking monster. | ||
| She's a monster. | ||
| She's so good. | ||
| It's such a huge gap, too. | ||
| It's such a huge gap between, I don't know, a number one contender and champ. | ||
| It doesn't even make sense. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That fight, I did my best to pump up Caitlyn Chukagian and to make it seem like it's going to be a good fight. | ||
| But all I could think of is, how is this girl going to beat her? | ||
| How are you going to beat her? | ||
| She does everything perfect. | ||
| Yeah, I thought numbers, if you're going just volume, I thought that Caitlyn could close the gap a bit. | ||
| I didn't think so. | ||
| This is why. | ||
| Because Caitlyn, she uses points, she scores well, but she very rarely knocks people out. | ||
| She knocked down Liz Karmouche with a head kick, but Liz survived and wound up winning the decision. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Valentina makes you pay. | ||
| She makes you pay. | ||
| So all those shots that she would throw, the volume, it's different. | ||
| Because you put the shots out there and then bop! | ||
| And it comes back and you're just like, whoa! | ||
| Those kicks come back at you and you're like, fuck! | ||
| That elbow comes back and you're like, whoa! | ||
| So now you're like, now everything's more at a distance. | ||
| And you lose your ability to engage. | ||
| You get nervous because every time you engage, she's looking to take your fucking head off. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, she answers. | ||
| Especially after that Jessica-I fight. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That was crazy. | ||
| I think that's the one that made me a fan because I was hating for a while. | ||
| I was like, she ain't that good. | ||
| She just hasn't fought anyone yet. | ||
| She beat up that poor girl. | ||
| Oh, the Brazilian girl? | ||
| I think she's fighting. | ||
| No, she's not fighting in Auckland, right? | ||
| I do not know. | ||
| I don't know if she's on that card. | ||
| But I don't remember her name. | ||
| They should have stopped that fight way, way, way before that. | ||
| They shouldn't have made that fight. | ||
| I was just like, come on, guys. | ||
| That's just mean. | ||
| But after that, I was just like, man, y'all are giving her all these props for destroying this poor girl. | ||
| She shouldn't have been in there against anyone. | ||
| But then after the Jessica Ai fight, I was like, yo, she's got something. | ||
| That lady's scary. | ||
| She's a dominant. | ||
| Yeah, she's going to be a dominant champ. | ||
| She's just a scary person. | ||
| She went down to the range in Texas and the guys who run the range were like, the way that lady shoots, she shoots like a fucking special ops soldier. | ||
| We haven't seen someone come in here and shoot that good unless they're a SEAL or a competitive shooter. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| She's a fucking straight up killer all around. | ||
| Someone stopped talking shit about her dancing. | ||
| You gotta see her groups. | ||
| She was like pistol groups. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Top, top, top. | |
| Everything's in the heart. | ||
| She's a special hard lady. | ||
| You should take her hunting with you. | ||
| Oh, she probably would fucking jump on something's back and strangle it. | ||
| Kick a wolf in the head. | ||
| Yeah, she's a hard lady. | ||
| But it's... | ||
| People like that that make the rest of the division rise up, right? | ||
| Like, remember when Anderson Silva was just dominating everybody at 185? | ||
| And it was like, who the fuck could beat that guy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It took someone like that to be that unstoppable force at the top of the mountain that made all the rest of the division rise up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And then as Anderson got a little older, and those guys got better, and Chris Wyman wound up beating them, and then the division comes alive. | ||
| Just got mixed up, and yeah, it's exciting again. | ||
| Now it's just chaos, and Robert Whittaker, and now Adesanya, and Yoel Romero's gonna fight Adesanya in a couple of weeks. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| They're like, let me hurry up and get my fight out the way so I can be a fan again, you know? | ||
| That fight's crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, the dance-off was so sick. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Right in front of Dana, he does a backflip and almost kicks Dana in the head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'm like, I don't even think Dana saw what happened right there. | ||
| You can see it on his face. | ||
| Like, they did it in slow motion. | ||
| You can see his face. | ||
| Like, Yoel had already flipped, and Dana's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He just probably saw a foot out of his peripheral. | ||
| Like, what is happening? | ||
| Yoel is such a freak. | ||
| He's insane. | ||
| He's such a freak. | ||
| That's another thing that gives me hope. | ||
| Because I've always been self-conscious about my age, too. | ||
| Because you started later? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, because I started at 24. I used to call it my quarter life crisis thing. | ||
| The fact that I just started fighting out of nowhere. | ||
| But yeah, I've always been a little self-conscious. | ||
| Especially because a lot of times the UFC will hype up a young fighter. | ||
| Like, she's only 18! | ||
| She's the youngest fighter on the card! | ||
| And then I'll see someone like Alex Chamber fight and they go, the oldest fighter on the card! | ||
| And it's just like, why you gotta put her out there like that? | ||
| So I'm always like... | ||
| I've always been a little self-conscious, like, man, I feel like I have an expiration date. | ||
| But then the more I pay attention, the more I realize that a lot of the fighters I do look up to are my age or older. | ||
| So, yeah, I stopped looking at it that way. | ||
| I started looking at it more like my body age is still very young. | ||
| Yeah, you didn't take any abuse up until the time you were 24. You didn't do any training at all. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So I was all mushy and ready to be molded into a fighter. | ||
| Like, all my ligaments were intact and stuff. | ||
| I think it's really a matter of how much time are you doing it for. | ||
| Because I think Randy Couture didn't even have his first pro fight until I think he was 34 or 35. Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, he went, go on to win the light heavyweight title, the heavyweight title. | ||
| And all that stuff goes into his 40s. | ||
| Yeah, and then Dan Henderson is still knocking people out of UFC. What was it, 199? | ||
| You know, he's going to have a... | ||
| Check to see if this is still happening. | ||
| Dan Henderson was supposed to have a bare-knuckle boxing fight against Chuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| Against Chuck Liddell. | ||
| I'm like, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| Why? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I guess money. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| That's the only reason why. | ||
| I mean, money, but also there is part of me that's like... | ||
| I wonder how I'd do in a bare knuckle fight. | ||
| I always wanted to do that Lethway. | ||
| Have you ever seen a Lethway kickboxing? | ||
| I always thought that would be really cool. | ||
| Because punching without gloves on, for me, I'm like, that's stupid. | ||
| I'm going to break my hand. | ||
| But kicking, oh, that's fun. | ||
| You're already fighting barefoot. | ||
| I mean, I'm already doing that. | ||
| You know, like, just kicking, being able to kick, like, through their hand into their head, like, I feel like that would be a lot of fun. | ||
| And then there's headbutts, too. | ||
| Yeah, that's why they can do everything. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, I already get headbutted when I fight. | ||
| Might as well make it legal, you know, use it. | ||
| I mean, it is an effective technique, particularly if you're in someone's guard. | ||
| If you're on top and you're holding onto their biceps, you could smash them in the face. | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| I mean, that's what Mark Coleman used to do in the old days. | ||
| Would he just be like, oh, I sneezed? | ||
| How do you get away with that? | ||
| No, it was legal in the day. | ||
| It was legal. | ||
| That was one of Mark Coleman's big weapons. | ||
| Mark Coleman, back in the bare knuckle days, he would take guys down, he would hold, it didn't matter if you were in the guard or not, he'd smash his fucking forehead right into your nose, and then start punching you and beat the shit out of you. | ||
| Ah, man. | ||
| And, you know, he was a great guy. | ||
| Rilla back then. | ||
| Mark Coleman, when he was the heavyweight champ, was like 265 on all the Mexican supplements. | ||
| And he was just holding people down. | ||
| The whole, like, cortical thing. | ||
| And he was an elite wrestler. | ||
| I mean, he had both things going on. | ||
| Like, serious wrestling skill, huge power, and no drug testing. | ||
| And headbutts, and bare knuckles. | ||
| Oh my god, that's everything. | ||
| Headbutt the fuck out of you. | ||
| Oh my god, I'm surprised he didn't kill anyone. | ||
| Well, it's one of the things that made Maurice Smith's victory over him even more impressive. | ||
| Because that was during the headbutt days. | ||
| And Maurice figured out... | ||
| Maurice was one of the first guys that figured out how important cardio is. | ||
| Maurice had crazy cardio. | ||
| So he would be able to survive the early onslaught. | ||
| He had good defense on the ground. | ||
| Would protect himself. | ||
| And then once the fight got into the later rounds, he started leg-kicking the fuck out of Mark Coleman. | ||
| I'll never forget that. | ||
| Because that was the early days of fighting when Everybody thought that Maurice was going to get smashed. | ||
| Everybody thought that. | ||
| Damn, I don't know Maurice Smith. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's great. | |
| Great guy. | ||
| He was an elite kickboxer. | ||
| The thing about Maurice, he was a world champion kickboxer. | ||
| His kickboxing was at a way higher level than anybody had ever seen. | ||
| He was the first guy to knock out Conan Silvera. | ||
| Do you remember those days? | ||
| I wasn't watching back then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I see. | |
| I was watching. | ||
| I didn't come in until I was about to do it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe after a couple Muay Thai fights, I was like, oh, let me start watching this MMA thing. | ||
| But yeah, everything that I've seen is YouTube from back in the day. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, the good news is you got a lot of fights you could watch. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I started going back to UFC 1, and I'd watch the full fight card, and I'm just like, holy shit, this is insane. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| I feel like I remember watching it with my brothers at some point, and somebody goes, man, this shit's gay. | ||
| I never sat and watched it until once I started doing martial arts. | ||
| What's crazy is how much things have changed since 1993. Yeah. | ||
| When people first saw Hoist Gracie choking people off his back, and they're like, what is happening? | ||
| No one knew anything. | ||
| Now, any little kid knows what a triangle choke is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, it's nuts. | |
| Kids in school, they know what arm bars are, they know what rear naked chokes are. | ||
| Everybody knows it. | ||
| They know who fucking McGregor is. | ||
| Yeah, they know who everybody is. | ||
| They know who Max Holliday is. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| People are famous now. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I remember I went on... | ||
| Did you remember there was a show called The Best Damn Sports Show, period? | ||
| It was like an old-school sports show? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nah. | |
| This is like 2000-something, like early 2000s. | ||
| I went on the show. | ||
| It was like Tom Arnold and... | ||
| I forget all the people that were on it. | ||
| But anyway, I was telling them, like, I go, this sport's going to be huge. | ||
| I go, it's the most exciting sport in the world, and I think it's going to be as big as any other professional sport. | ||
| They were just laughing in my face. | ||
| They were like, wah! | ||
| They're like, what are you talking about? | ||
| Cage fighting? | ||
| There's no fucking way that's ever going to be popular. | ||
| What's up, Jamie? | ||
| The account that announced this back in September, the Henderson-Liddell fight, is a parody account that people didn't catch on to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh! | |
| Meanwhile, that still could happen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Don't kid yourself. | ||
| Hector Lombard fought last night. | ||
| Or Saturday night. | ||
| Yeah, that's the most recent event they had. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, he won. | ||
| I thought about watching that. | ||
| It was weird. | ||
| I only watched the ones that Beck's on. | ||
| Beck Rollins. | ||
| Oh, right, right, right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| But I think... | ||
| She's a champ, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Bare-knuckle champ. | ||
| Yeah, she was killing in there. | ||
| She came to train with us again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She... | |
| I was one of the first people who were at Alliance, one of the first girls. | ||
| So that was one of the reasons I went out there. | ||
| How'd you wind up getting into Alliance? | ||
| Were you in New York? | ||
| I was in New York, then I was in North Carolina, and then that stopped working out. | ||
| A bunch of weird stuff happened, so I had to find a gym that was good for me, but also had girls. | ||
| The thing that I was saying about training with women, after the Tisha Torres fight, I was underestimating how strong this girl could be. | ||
| Was that the one in Mexico? | ||
| It was in Mexico City. | ||
| I was there for that fight. | ||
| I remember these girls, like, that is crazy altitude. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like 7,000 feet above sea level. | ||
| I was not prepared. | ||
| I get tired of just walking up the stairs to go take a leak. | ||
| I'm like, this is fucking high altitude. | ||
| And I did the exact opposite of what you were supposed to do. | ||
| So it's like, you either show up a month early or two days before you fight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I showed up 10 days before I fought. | ||
| I was like, oh, I acclimate in 10 days. | ||
| And it was like, that was like right at the peak of like, when you really start feeling that altitude sickness. | ||
| So I was messed up from the altitude. | ||
| I was sick from the, I forget what they call it, the montage. | ||
| Montezuma's Revenge. | ||
| Montezuma's Revenge. | ||
| Yeah, I was sick from that. | ||
| I was sick from the altitude. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| I was at weight the entire fucking 10 days. | ||
| Literally walking at 115. And you can see it in my fight pictures too. | ||
| I look sunken out like my old Muay Thai photos. | ||
| Well, you guys both were like you were stuck in the mud because the altitude was so high. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's crazy to have fights up there. | ||
| I was so pissed because like right before we fought or when we weighed in and did our little face off, Tisha's like, hey, let's make some money tomorrow. | ||
| And I was like, oh yeah, all right, let's go, let's go. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, we're going to fucking stand and bang. | ||
| Everyone's going to be excited. | ||
| We're in Mexico. | ||
| They love boxing. | ||
| We're just going to hit each other. | ||
| And then she fucking takes me down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, fuck you! | |
| I'm like on the ground in fucking, what do you call it, half guard. | ||
| And I'm just pissed. | ||
| I'm like, come on, man. | ||
| Just fucking do something at least, you know? | ||
| But yeah, she hustled me, man. | ||
| That's what Rumble Johnson did to Dan Hardy back when Rumble used to fight at 170. Ah! | ||
| Which is still hard to believe. | ||
| I still have no idea how the fuck he made 170. Did he only make it like once? | ||
| He made it a few times. | ||
| Oh man, that's so crazy. | ||
| He made it a few times. | ||
| I mean, he won tough at 170. Wow. | ||
| So if he can make 170, I could probably make 105. Well, he can't make it anymore. | ||
| He got big. | ||
| He's a heavyweight now. | ||
| Dude, I saw... | ||
| He's gonna come back and fight heavyweight in the UFC. I saw him once in person and his hand was about two or three of my hands taped together. | ||
| He's just huge. | ||
| He's massive. | ||
| I felt like I could crawl into it. | ||
| I forget where we were, but he was in between fights and he was 230 pounds. | ||
| And I saw him. | ||
| I go, what the fuck do you weigh? | ||
| And he started laughing. | ||
| He goes, I'm about 230. I go, no! | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you going to make 170? | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| And then he had a hard time making 185. Remember, he fought Vitor at 185. And he barely made... | ||
| I don't think he made 185. Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then the UFC cut him. | ||
| And he went to the PFL, back when it was the PFL, and he went, what was it, World Series of Fighting back then? | ||
| Oh, okay, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it was World Series of Fighting. | ||
| And then he fought Andrzej Arlovski at heavyweight and fucked Arlovski up at heavyweight. | ||
| I was like, this is crazy. | ||
| This guy was a 170-pound tough champion. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's so nuts. | ||
| And I think he's going to probably come back at heavyweight, apparently. | ||
| Is he going to come back? | ||
| He says he's coming back. | ||
| He got bored. | ||
| I know he was thinking of doing bare knuckle as well. | ||
| Well, if they offer him a lot of money. | ||
| And I was just like, fuck, I feel bad for whoever's on the other end of that fucking huge fist. | ||
| Lunchboxes. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| He's got some lunchbox fists. | ||
| He hits so hard. | ||
| I'm sure no one signed that contract. | ||
| That's probably the reason it never happened. | ||
| People are like, what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I still remember the sound that it made when he fought Cormier. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| When he head kicked him? | ||
| It was a punch. | ||
| Well, he hit him with a punch too, but he head kicked him. | ||
| Smacked him in the face with a head kick. | ||
| Oh, well, I just remember the punch. | ||
| It was like... | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| The first right hand. | ||
| Yeah, and he lost the fight. | ||
| I think he smothered him. | ||
| Yeah, Cormier beat him both times. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But it was that first punch. | ||
| I was just like, holy shit. | ||
| And we're all amazed. | ||
| You just heard that crack. | ||
| And we're all amazed that Cormier was able to just fucking walk through it. | ||
| Shook it off. | ||
| But yeah, that... | ||
| Well, when he knocked out Glover with one punch, I was like, holy shit. | ||
| That uppercut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's got freak power. | |
| Oh, the big one. | ||
| Yeah, the pitchers were crazy. | ||
| The Minotauro fight, too. | ||
| Knocked him out with one punch. | ||
| He was a freak, man. | ||
| He's a real freak. | ||
| I'm interested to see if he does do... | ||
| I mean, he was burnt out, he said. | ||
| He's like, I don't want to do this anymore. | ||
| And then he took some time off, and then he started feeling it again. | ||
| And now he's training with Henry Hooft. | ||
| He's hitting paths. | ||
| He said he's going to give himself like six months to really get in shape and really train hard and get back to it. | ||
| But he said he might fight at 205, too. | ||
| I mean, look, at 205... | ||
| There's, you know, look, there's Jon Jones, and now there's Dominic Reyes, and then, you know, Jan Blachowicz, who just knocked out Corey. | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And that guy fits right in there. | ||
| I mean, anybody who stands in front of him might go night-night. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anybody. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'd like to see that. | ||
| I like him. | ||
| I'd like to see him. | ||
| I like Anthony as a person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He's just exciting as a fighter, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His style is so crazy. | ||
| Like, you know someone's going to sleep, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But he could take it, too. | ||
| I mean, he's got a giant fucking jaw. | ||
| Everything about him is huge. | ||
| Yeah, that's the other thing. | ||
| Big ass head, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, physical freaks. | ||
| It's a great time in the sport, though. | ||
| There's so many exciting possible matchups. | ||
| What are you pumped for when you look at the UFC? Like the strawweights? | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Or just everyone? | ||
| Well, strawweights, you have to be paying attention to the title fight next week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Next month, rather. | ||
| Yeah, no, I'm definitely paying attention to that. | ||
| Were you surprised when you watched Whaley and Jessica Andrade? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| The thing is, I was catching Andrade when she would run in. | ||
| And it wasn't until the third round that I decided to use elbows. | ||
| And I'm pretty sure I dropped her in the third round. | ||
| And she popped right back up. | ||
| But ever since then, I noticed that... | ||
| She would get hit. | ||
| She would get hit and rocked in the Torres fight. | ||
| Tisha isn't known for having knockout power or crazy hands, but she dropped her a good two or three times in the Torres fight. | ||
| So I could see that that chin was getting touched. | ||
| Well, you remember the Ioana and Jacek fight? | ||
| She ate a fuckload of shots in that fight. | ||
| But it didn't look like she was getting wobbled as much. | ||
| No. | ||
| But maybe she did because when she came back and fought Tisha, she was going wobbly-legged every now and then. | ||
| Then eventually she closed the distance and took her down. | ||
| But it's like she sacrifices her chin to get that distance. | ||
| And same thing with the Rose fight. | ||
| She was getting picked apart the entire time, sacrificing her head to get in and get the throw or whatever. | ||
| And then finally it gave out on her. | ||
| In the Wei Li fight. | ||
| So I wasn't super surprised. | ||
| I mean, everyone was surprised, so I won't say that. | ||
| But I did see that coming eventually. | ||
| I'm like, eventually someone's going to put her out. | ||
| Just because it's not just the person's power that she's fighting, but it's her pressure is so aggressive. | ||
| And she's coming in so hard. | ||
| So it's like her force versus the other person's punch. | ||
| When they connect, she's knocking herself out, essentially. | ||
| So yeah, I wasn't super surprised. | ||
| That was what I thought would happen when I fought her. | ||
| I didn't go into that fight thinking, oh man, this is going to suck. | ||
| I was like, dude, I can catch her. | ||
| She drops her hands when she comes forward. | ||
| I can strike going backwards. | ||
| I know I'm going to catch her and I can put her out because of the way she strikes. | ||
| So I've always seen that her hands were a bit sloppy, even though she's super aggressive. | ||
| And the fact that she's so aggressive gives her that much success. | ||
| Like you can't ignore the fact that she's punching you as much as she is. | ||
| But it's still like very offensive and like with zero defense in mind. | ||
| So yeah, I wasn't like super surprised when someone finally did drop her. | ||
| But, you know, I hadn't really seen that much of Weili Zhang. | ||
| So I was surprised that she was able to get the title that fast. | ||
| Have you ever seen her strength and conditioning routine that she does? | ||
| No, I haven't. | ||
| Fucking ferocious. | ||
| That lady goes hard. | ||
| Yeah, she goes hard. | ||
| It's pretty wild. | ||
| It's pretty wild to watch. | ||
| It's very inspiring. | ||
| How do you feel if she matches up with Ioana? | ||
| Because that fight is real soon. | ||
| I think it's going to be an even match. | ||
| I think she has a lot of output. | ||
| I think she isn't afraid to go to the ground. | ||
| I saw that when she fought Tisha. | ||
| They had a lot of crazy scrambles. | ||
| She had good reverses for Tisha's takedown attempts and stuff. | ||
| And yeah, I just think it's going to be... | ||
| She's going to force Joanna to move and to react more than most people, I think. | ||
| I haven't really paid attention to how much head movement she has, but I do know that she just throws a lot of volume, and wherever the fight goes, she seems comfortable. | ||
| I've never seen her in a spot where she looks like, oh, what do I do here? | ||
| You see people freaking out against the cage or freaking out when they get taken down. | ||
| She has that athletic flow through everything. | ||
| That's the one thing I think she has going for. | ||
| But I do think Joanna's reach is what's made her so dominant. | ||
| She's a big old girl. | ||
| Watching her fight Andrade, there was a moment where she's pushing Andrade up against the cage, and she looks like a big old praying mantis, just biting someone's head off. | ||
| Andrade looks like this little thing. | ||
| So she's a big girl with a really long reach, really long... | ||
| I'm kind of surprised to see her back at 115 because she really struggled. | ||
| Dude, I was too. | ||
| Well, I was going to try to fill in that last minute. | ||
| I don't know if you heard, but it kind of upped my props or whatever. | ||
| When she was about to fight Michelle, there were rumors that she wasn't going to make weight. | ||
| And so people were scrambling and then my manager... | ||
| Yeah, I think I can talk about that. | ||
| My manager, hopefully, fingers crossed, my manager got the call like, hey, man, I'm just worried about this Ioana fight. | ||
| And my manager was like, whoa, I bet Angela would take it if you guys wanted her to fight. | ||
| And he's like, seriously? | ||
| And he's like, yeah, she's crazy. | ||
| And I was there cornering my teammate Lauren Mueller at the time. | ||
| So I was there chilling, where were we, Atlanta, I think? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I forget where it was. | ||
| It might have been Atlanta. | ||
| But I was there chilling, cornering my friend, and then my manager calls, and he's like, hey. | ||
| And it was like that time of the night that you know it's a fight offer. | ||
| So he was like, hey. | ||
| What time is that? | ||
| It was like maybe 11-ish or something. | ||
| Oh, so something weird's going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| It was like 11 p.m. | ||
| And I was like, who? | ||
| And he's like, would you fight Ilana at 125? | ||
| And I was like, fuck yeah. | ||
| And I was like, I was probably walking about 125 at the moment. | ||
| Like, and if they, I think we were talking back or he was talking back and forth and he was like, well, what about Michelle at 115? | ||
| He just wanted to know just so he can relate a message. | ||
| I was like, yeah, just let me know so I can like cut weight or not cut weight. | ||
| You know, so I was sitting waiting for the call and then the rumors got like blasted and then people knew my name was in it for some reason. | ||
| I was just like, who is talking, you know? | ||
| But like it went viral and I just leaned into it. | ||
| I was like, hey, anytime, anyplace, let's go. | ||
| And I waited, waited, and then, yeah, nothing happened. | ||
| Yana made wait. | ||
| I was like, damn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I heard that she wasn't making weight either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Everyone was talking about it. | ||
| And then somehow somebody knew that my name was in the mix. | ||
| Like, Angela Hill might fill in for Michelle instead of fill in for Ioana. | ||
| Because she was, like, the name that they were promoting for the fight. | ||
| So they wanted the former champ to get her fight. | ||
| So they were like, alright, if it comes down to it, Angela will fight her at 125. 125, yeah. | ||
| So I was pretty stoked. | ||
| I mean, I feel like Ioana does a lot of things. | ||
| And it's similar with my matchup that I have now, only she's a lot bigger. | ||
| Ioana does a lot of things that I've seen a lot of, you know, in training, just like in my first years of Muay Thai. | ||
| Like, she has a very conventional style when it comes to Muay Thai. | ||
| She's just very good at it. | ||
| So a fight with Ioana is always something that I've wanted to have. | ||
| Just because I felt like it would be something that I've seen before. | ||
| I'm not going to be afraid of the clinch, which she's really good at. | ||
| I'm not going to be afraid of the clinch. | ||
| I'm not going to be afraid of when an elbow is going to come. | ||
| Because an elbow sparred my entire fight career. | ||
| So it's like things that I see with her are less scary than a fight with someone that she's beat before. | ||
| Like Andrade or Gedalia or someone like that. | ||
| We're going to learn about her a lot this coming fight, like what she's got left. | ||
| Because the transition to 25 didn't really work out. | ||
| Shevchenko was just a little too much for her. | ||
| Shevchenko had already beat her outside the UFC and then beat her again. | ||
| And then it just didn't look like she had the firepower to keep her off her at 125. And then so she goes down to 15 again, but we know how hard it was for her to make 15. And that's one of the things that they had said, her camp had said about her chin when she fought Rose. | ||
| Like, she just couldn't take a shot. | ||
| It was because she was so depleted. | ||
| So we'll find out because Wei Li hits fucking hard. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And she's like, I don't know. | ||
| Ioana's so determined. | ||
| I feel like she'd kill herself to make weight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She just has a long career, though. | |
| Long combat sports career. | ||
| And at a certain point in time... | ||
| You gotta wonder, like, when that catches up to you. | ||
| Or, you know, one of the things that she was saying, that she was in a real bad relationship, and there was a giant distraction, and now she's done with that, and that was a contributing factor to a lot of her losses. | ||
| So we're gonna find out, because, you know, when you go back to, like, when she fought Jessica Panay, she was the scariest woman alive. | ||
| Like, she was fucking ferocious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When she was the champ and she was lighting everybody on fire, she was terrifying. | ||
| She was so aggressive and so technical. | ||
| She got that long jab. | ||
| She also had a lot of fighters who weren't that technically sound and striking, or at least not confident with their striking. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, so when she did fight someone who was good, who was actually a better striker than her and Rose, like the fact that just the fact that Rose could move laterally, you know, like Joanna was always like a back and forth fighter because that's like her style of very Muay Thai. | ||
| And Rose just moving to the side every now and then or having head movement. | ||
| I think that really fucked her up. | ||
| And it's hard when you fight someone like that for the first time or even spar someone like that for the first time. | ||
| You can't find them. | ||
| All your punches miss. | ||
| You gas out. | ||
| You're freaking out because you're missing your punches. | ||
| Then you're getting countered. | ||
| And it's a lot to deal with for a straightforward Muay Thai fighter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is a weird thing about Muay Thai, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| How few of them move their head. | ||
| Because we don't have footwork. | ||
| We just stand and bang. | ||
| Only a bitch would run away from a fight. | ||
| But some people do have footwork, like Sanchai. | ||
| Sanchai's got crazy footwork. | ||
| Sanchai's like the only one. | ||
| He can do fucking cartwheel kicks and shit. | ||
| Sanchai can do everything. | ||
| But he's so good, you would think that someone else would mimic that style. | ||
| It's one of those styles that are just so hard to mimic. | ||
| And the sport, traditionally, is not his style. | ||
| He's very unorthodox. | ||
| So look at any unorthodox fighter. | ||
| You're not going to see a million Dominic Cruz copycats coming out. | ||
| You can see one or two. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They try. | |
| Yeah, they try, but they're never going to be dumb. | ||
| So yeah, Senchai is that kind of fighter, whereas he was brought in doing this very... | ||
| Kind of, I wouldn't say stale, but just very predictable style. | ||
| And he just made it weird and made it his own. | ||
| That's why he's so cool. | ||
| He's always on his toes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Always. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Just boing, boing, boing. | ||
| Does the alley shuffle. | ||
| He's never flat-footed. | ||
| Nah, nah. | ||
| He always knows how to pull. | ||
| He can pull the counters out. | ||
| He knows exactly how to twitch in order to make you go, oh, and then boom. | ||
| It could be a foot. | ||
| It could be a hand. | ||
| It could be anything because he just comes from all angles. | ||
| He'll throw a head kick when he's two inches away from you. | ||
| He'll do wild shit. | ||
| He basically throws a head kick straight up in the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| He does a lot of wild stuff. | ||
| He's nuts seeing you do the weird karate, like, pop, pop, pop, you know? | ||
| When they just jump back and forth, and then he'll fake one, and then he'll do the cartwheel kick. | ||
| And he's close to 40 now. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's the crazy thing. | ||
| Which is amazing for a lighter weight Muay Thai fighter. | ||
| Yeah, for a Thai fighter, yeah. | ||
| You start at like six out there, you know? | ||
| Well, I think that style has preserved him in a lot of ways. | ||
| That footwork and movement style. | ||
| Because he's not just catching and returning and standing in front like a lot of those guys do. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He's always very elusive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| There's not a lot of those. | ||
| Lerd Zill is pretty elusive. | ||
| But there's not a lot of really elusive guys in Muay Thai. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Even Bull Call is just kind of a march him down and hit him type of fighter. | ||
| Just left kick the fuck out of you. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But yeah, I think that's one thing I really credit going to Alliance with is just my movement has gotten way more fluid. | ||
| Well, Eric Del Fiero is one of the most unheralded guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| People don't sing his praises, but he's excellent. | ||
| It's kind of like the theme of the gym. | ||
| Everyone who comes out of there, no one gives Jeremy the credit that he deserves. | ||
| No one gives Dom the credit they deserve. | ||
| I mean, I guess I'm a little more sensitive because I know them now and I'm like, man, those guys are great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But yeah, Eric definitely, like, no one ever talks about him, but he's so good at what he does. | ||
| His corner work is so excellent, too. | ||
| Like, he gives you, like, real technical information in the corner, and he knows how to break it down quickly. | ||
| Like, this is what you're doing wrong, this is what you have to do right, this is what you're doing great, keep doing more of this, look out for that, when you do this, do that. | ||
| And he gives you all that show, and you see people go, okay, okay, okay. | ||
| Some people are like, you need to take him out, you need to take him out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I go, oh. | |
| Never saw that. | ||
| It's kind of like, you know, Eric's kind of a psychopath with that shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Like, he's like, no emotion. | ||
| You know, it really takes a lot to draw emotion out of him. | ||
| And then you feel proud of yourself. | ||
| You're like, oh, I got on your skin, you little softy. | ||
| But yeah, he's very stoic when it comes to that stuff, which makes the instruction more clear. | ||
| There's no anxiety in his voice. | ||
| There's no freaking out. | ||
| He's just like, do this, do this, do this. | ||
| That was a good round. | ||
| You might have lost that round. | ||
| He'll just give it to you straight up and say it quickly enough so that you can be like, okay, what next? | ||
| And yeah, it's always been like... | ||
| Really chill when he's cornering me. | ||
| It's interesting because he doesn't try to get any attention. | ||
| No, he hates it. | ||
| He runs from the camera. | ||
| He's so weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good for him. | |
| It's pretty cool though. | ||
| I mean, that's what attracted me to the gym because you see a lot of people trying to big themselves up or name drop or do this and that. | ||
| And even if the person, even if it's merited, they've proven themselves, the fact that they have to, I don't know, convince you always makes you feel like they're trying to hustle you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know? | ||
| They need too much. | ||
| They're too needy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So when I came to Alliance, I was like, yeah, would it be okay if I train here? | ||
| Because there were already, like, a few strawweights there, and I didn't want to, like, you know, come stomping in on territory and be like, I train here now. | ||
| And he's like, yeah, you know, if you want to train here, train here. | ||
| 10%. | ||
| After your fight, you know, no contracts or anything. | ||
| Just, like, if you end up not liking it here, you know, you can go somewhere else. | ||
| Like, there's no obligations. | ||
| And I was just like, oh. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| Because I had just like come from a place where I had to sign a contract saying I trained there for this many years or however many fights I have. | ||
| I hate those. | ||
| It's just such a strange thing to do. | ||
| It is strange because if it goes sideways and then you're locked up in a contract and it's hard to get out of it and they want money if you even have another trainer. | ||
| Or they think they can like... | ||
| It has, even though there's like zero that zero things that like actually hold you to that contract because like it was badly worded or something. | ||
| But like they'll still try and it'll be an annoying thing. | ||
| And luckily I was able to like part ways in a good way. | ||
| You know, I just I just paid my coach and it was like I need to go somewhere where I have more training partners and this and that. | ||
| And he was like, yeah, that's fine. | ||
| So luckily, it was chill, but I've heard horror stories. | ||
| I've heard horror stories, too. | ||
| I've heard a lot of horror stories. | ||
| So when he said that, I was immediately like, ah, that's cool. | ||
| And that's how my first coach in New York was, too. | ||
| He's like, hey, if you need to go somewhere to learn how to do MMA, that's cool. | ||
| I'm not... | ||
| No hard feelings. | ||
| Is Brandon Vera still at Alliance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He is not training there, but he's still part owner. | ||
| He still comes through when he is in San Diego. | ||
| Where's he training now? | ||
| He's in the Philippines now. | ||
| Oh, so he trains in the Philippines, too. | ||
| He lives there and trains there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah, what a crazy career shift he's had, huh? | ||
| I know. | ||
| I'm saying he's one heavyweight champion. | ||
| I know. | ||
| He's out there doing it. | ||
| One is nuts. | ||
| He's out there doing it. | ||
| I'm like, damn, can I say I'm like Blesian or something? | ||
| Can y'all get me in there? | ||
| It's interesting, right? | ||
| If you're a Filipino and you fight for one, like, woo! | ||
| Yeah, they love you. | ||
| Especially as a heavyweight. | ||
| A big giant Filipino. | ||
| Dude, he's making it. | ||
| He's doing it. | ||
| He's in movies out there and stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I don't know which ones. | ||
| I think I watched part of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| But yeah, he's living it up. | ||
| Well, he's so fucking big, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's like 240-something now. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's huge. | |
| It's nuts to see him. | ||
| He's huge. | ||
| I like watching him do pads. | ||
| They have to bring out the big pad holder or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| For sure. | ||
| Kick a bag and he kicks the bag down. | ||
| It's like a big-ass heavy bag, but it still folds in half when he kicks it. | ||
| Yeah, he's sick. | ||
| But yeah, he showed us some cool clench stuff and cool techniques when he comes through. | ||
| And he likes to motivate the up-and-comers when he comes through, too. | ||
| So it's always nice to see him. | ||
| Well, he was a small, light heavyweight earlier in the day. | ||
| Well, actually, he was a small heavyweight. | ||
| Remember when he knocked out Frank Mir? | ||
| That was back when he was training with Rob Kamen. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he was fucking people up at heavyweight, and he was like 210, 215. Yeah, he was just really fucking tall. | ||
| Yeah, he wasn't like, well, you'd look at him, he didn't look like a heavyweight. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's interesting to see a company like One explode and get bigger, and then see guys like Mighty Mouse and Eddie Alvarez, and see world-class fighters go over there. | ||
| Yeah, I was sad to see Mighty Mouse go, though. | ||
| He was another one of my motivators. | ||
| Like, man, I want to be like that guy, you know? | ||
| I was sad to see him go in a way, but happy because I knew he was getting paid. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, they wanted him over there, and it was a big get because, look, for my money, he's still the best example of a mixed martial arts fighter I've ever seen. | ||
| The full package. | ||
| Yeah, you could say John eclipsed him as the GOAT, and I think he did. | ||
| Because Jon has beaten better fighters. | ||
| He's beaten the best of the best. | ||
| I mean, Mighty Mouse knocked out Benavidez. | ||
| He's beaten good fighters. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| He definitely fucked up Sahudo in the first round of their first fight. | ||
| But he didn't have the same pool of talent that Jon Jones had to go through. | ||
| Guys like Liotta Machida, Rashad Evans, Rampage Jackson. | ||
| Go down the line. | ||
| Everyone he fought is a fucking killer. | ||
| Since the time he knocks out Shogun Hua at 23 years old to win the title. | ||
| And since then, for the last nine years, he's stormed through everyone they put in front of him. | ||
| That's the GOAT. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to argue with that. | ||
| Just the level of talent. | ||
| But when you look at what Mighty Mouse was able to do to people... | ||
| What he's able to do to Wilson Hayes, what he's able to do to a lot of guys who are good fighters, he makes them look like you have no business being in there with him. | ||
| He's doing a whole different thing than you're doing. | ||
| You think he's there, and he's here, and you think he's here, and he's there, and then you're getting hit, and you're getting punched, and you're getting taken down, and you think you're going to get hit. | ||
| He just could do everything. | ||
| Yeah, that's the thing that makes him so crazy is that he can do everything in the book. | ||
| Yeah, he's not a striker. | ||
| You don't have to just worry about one thing. | ||
| How about Ray Borg? | ||
| How about when he suplexes him and then catches him with an armbar on the way down? | ||
| Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of. | ||
| Crazy! | ||
| I wasn't sure who it was, but it was like, what the fuck? | ||
| Catches him on the way down. | ||
| Like a fucking movie. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| In a world title fight, defending his title. | ||
| No, that was nuts. | ||
| Mighty Mouse was something real special. | ||
| And I felt like that put him on such a crazy level of expertise when he did that one. | ||
| Wasn't that the one before he got released? | ||
| I feel like that was his last fight. | ||
| The Cejudo fight was the last fight. | ||
| Well, no, I mean the one before he lost. | ||
| That was the one before he lost against Cejudo. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| So it's almost like they were like, well, there's nothing else we can do with you. | ||
| Obviously, you're going to do that to everyone else. | ||
| The future of that division was uncertain. | ||
| They weren't even sure what they were going to do with the division once Cejudo won. | ||
| And then now that Cejudo went up and he beat Marlon Marais for the Bantamweight title, and then they have this situation where they're going to have... | ||
| Figueredo and Benavidez fight for the flyweight title, so Cejudo abandons that title. | ||
| Mighty Mouse did the right thing. | ||
| He got big money over there. | ||
| They paid him a lot of money to fight in one of us, and they give him hard fights too, because they don't have hydration over there either, or dehydration. | ||
| So you fight at what you weigh, which I think really is what we should be doing. | ||
| Yeah, and I don't think Mighty Mouse was ever cutting weight. | ||
|
unidentified
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Not much. | |
| He was always just walking around that way, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he may be like 135, but he's not cutting anything substantial. | ||
| And when he was fighting at 35, when there was no 125, everybody was just so much bigger than him. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| We still have that picture in the gym of Dom Suplex in him. | ||
| He was so much smaller than Dom. | ||
| I'm glad you went to the flyweight. | ||
| Well, I mean, he's spectacular over there. | ||
| He's doing really well. | ||
| And they've got fucking killers over there, too. | ||
| Like that guy that knocked out Eddie Alvarez, Timothy Natsukin. | ||
| That guy's a fucking savage. | ||
| He's scary. | ||
| Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they haven't been training for 10, 15 years and have all these fights over there. | ||
| Waiting for this opportunity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel like there's going to come a point in time where there's going to have to be some sort of a unification fight. | ||
| Whether it's a Bellator unification fight, because I still think that Diego Lima, he's the one that I look at, and I go, that guy, I think, he's elite at 170. He might be as good as anybody alive at 170. I'd like to see him. | ||
| And there was a funny face-off with him and Kamaru Usman. | ||
| Oh, yeah, I saw that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Houston, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if that's something the UFC would ever do, but fuck, if I ran the UFC, that would be what I'd want to do. | ||
| It really should happen. | ||
| Yeah, it really should happen. | ||
| I mean, they have, like, female flyweights, too. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Like, that could be a thing, you know? | ||
| Like, put in two title fights there, and there you go. | ||
| That would be fun. | ||
| Do it in Hawaii. | ||
| It would have to be a... | ||
| Why, you want a vacation? | ||
| Yeah, no, I think... | ||
| You know how Max has been campaigning, Max. | ||
| I like campaigning like UFC Hawaii and then Bellator did it. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Just like as a fuck you. | ||
|
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I know. | |
| Well, if Max has a rematch against Alexander Volkanovski, that would be a good place to do it. | ||
| Hell yeah. | ||
| I think in Hawaii, the big place is outdoor, and you never know in Hawaii if it's going to rain. | ||
| Yeah, especially like a destination like that. | ||
| It's probably going to rain for like 20 minutes, like right before you start the tidal fight, and then stop raining. | ||
| Well, if they could just put some kind of a cover over just the octagon, maybe they could actually do it. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just feel like these other organizations, whether it's One or Bellator, they're getting to this point where you might see it. | ||
| And then Rory McDonald just went to the PFL. Oh. | ||
| He went, yeah. | ||
| That is what they're calling it, right? | ||
| It used to be the World Series of Fighting, then it's the PFL, right? | ||
| Yeah, the million dollar tournament? | ||
| Yeah, that thing. | ||
| Yeah, Rory just went over to that. | ||
|
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Cool. | |
| Which I was pretty shocked, because he went to Bellator, I was shocked at that, and then he won the title at Bellator, and then he went over to the PFL. I wonder why he did that. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| I'm sure they just offered him a big check. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| We had a guy win the million dollar tournament this year. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Emiliano Sorted. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He won. | ||
| They gave away like six different million dollar tournaments, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| I'm like, where is this money coming from? | ||
|
unidentified
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I know. | |
| How are they going to do that? | ||
| Like, you cashed them checks. | ||
| Yeah, but that's the thing that something like 1FC or PFL, they kind of have to do that. | ||
| If they want to bring over a guy like Eddie Alvarez or Mighty Mouse, you've got to come with the big money. | ||
| And they have it. | ||
| They sell out giant places over there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are they doing that... | ||
| What is the name of the big one in Japan? | ||
| Saitama Arena? | ||
| Oh, Saitama Super Arena? | ||
| Are they doing that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| Are they doing it in places like that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They do it in Singapore. | ||
| I know they're doing this in pretty big places. | ||
| Oh, they haven't been to Japan yet, have they? | ||
| Have they? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't think so, yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm fascinated though. | ||
| I really like when there's competition. | ||
| I like when something rises. | ||
| One of my saddest moments in MMA is that Fedor in his prime never fought in the UFC. When Kane was in his prime and Fedor was in his prime. | ||
| God damn, that would have been glorious. | ||
| To see those two go at it, that would have been amazing. | ||
| That's the thing about MMA is that these organizations are, you know, it's the UFC really and then there's everybody else. | ||
| The UFC is the top of the food chain and everybody else is trying real hard and every now and then someone will, like a Douglas Lima or a Fedor, they'll get to a point where you're like, huh, I want to see that guy fight against the best in the UFC. I want to see what's up. | ||
| Well, they kind of do it with Bellator and Ryzen. | ||
| Like, they've started mixing. | ||
| Like, they had Darian Caldwell fight Horiguchi. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And that was, like, I don't know. | ||
| That was just, like, a really big deal. | ||
| I feel like any time, like, you have the two... | ||
| It's kind of like team fights, you know? | ||
| Any time you have that happening, it's just... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It just makes things more interesting. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I totally agree. | ||
| I'd be down for that. | ||
| It's just someone has to rise. | ||
| Someone has to become this undeniable force where everybody's clamoring for the fight. | ||
| And then the UFC will go, listen, there's a lot of money in this. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| But right now, that hasn't happened. | ||
| Bellator has never really gained the sort of notoriety that the UFC has. | ||
| If you were fighting in Bellator, some people would know who you are, but it'd probably be less than half the people. | ||
| It's just a... | ||
| It's like the NFL or Q-Tips versus cotton swabs. | ||
| Everybody wants Q-Tips. | ||
| It's the brand name. | ||
| If you look at the sheer number of fighters that are elite in the UFC, it's undoubtedly the best fighters in the world. | ||
| But then there's a few. | ||
| There's a few of those Bellator fighters that really fucking stand out. | ||
| There's a few of those one fighters that really stand out. | ||
| And you go, hmm, I don't know. | ||
| They might be able to hang with anybody in the world. | ||
| Yeah, it's just going to take time. | ||
| The more they pay people, the more they start paying out as well as the UFC, the more you're going to get those talented people to go there instead of holding out for a spot in the Contender Series. | ||
| And then once that changing of the guard happens a couple times, then you'll definitely see it. | ||
| And then it'll probably be undeniable at that point. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| I don't know if it's going to happen anytime soon. | ||
| Well, listen, Angela, I'm happy we got you in here. | ||
| I'm very excited for your fight this weekend. | ||
| Tell me your opponent's name again. | ||
| Do you not remember a name? | ||
| I'm like that Thai girl. | ||
| Loma Lukbunmi. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a beautiful name. | ||
| Very Thai. | ||
| So I'm excited for your fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| And I'm just happy to have you in here. | ||
| Yeah, thanks man. | ||
| I'm a fan. | ||
| And so just good luck this weekend and let's make it happen. | ||
|
unidentified
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Cool. | |
| I love it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you very much. | |
| Thanks for being here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And good luck on your flight too. | ||
| Thanks a lot. |
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