Jordan Burroughs, Olympic wrestling gold medalist (2012) and four-time world champ, credits mental discipline over natural talent, cutting 20 lbs in 24 hours via fasting and strict diets while warning of wrestling’s doping risks—like Russia’s alleged urine-swapping scandals. He dismisses MMA despite its crossover appeal, citing striking unfamiliarity, but praises wrestlers’ adaptability, like Ben Askren’s dual success. Post-career struggles loom, with Burroughs advocating holistic training centers to combat addiction and irrelevance, blending nutrition, spirituality, and discipline. His marriage thrived by aligning goals, avoiding resentment, and prioritizing respect over pressure—key lessons for athletes and parents alike. [Automatically generated summary]
When I graduated from college in 2011, University of Nebraska, wrestling was still on the brink of, it was in its infancy of marketing and branding and really making it a professional career.
So MMA was the new kid on the block and it was growing and expanding and we had a lot of our guys transitioning in.
Henry Cejudo, Ben Askren, Daniel Cormier.
And so I really thought about it.
I was like, okay, I'm going to wrestle in the Olympics in London 2012, win the gold, and then I'm going to make the transition to MMA. I'll be 25 years old.
I'll have plenty of time.
And then I met Lauren.
And she's like, listen, you're doing well in the sport.
Stay here.
You're comfortable.
It's just a different sport, MMA, in comparison to wrestling.
That's the beauty of it is it gives people an opportunity.
There it is right there.
Yeah.
It was a professional wrestling league that they established.
When people reference what we do, I call it Olympic wrestling.
Honestly, I don't even call it professional wrestling because that is kind of an ode to the WWE and old-time WWF. So it's a unique thing that we had at this time.
This is Tommy Rollins, Daniel Cormier, both...
Extremely competitive.
Both great wrestlers.
Oklahoma State, Ohio State.
This probably was around 2004, 2005-ish.
So I was still in high school.
Real pro wrestling, that's right.
So they had different cities across the country that had their own teams.
One of those rule changes that year in particular, which wasn't, it didn't translate well to the average fan.
So like the toughest thing about wrestling is that the rules change so often that a non-traditional wrestling fan can't really keep up.
You watch a football game, you know, listen, you put the ball into the end zone, it's six points, extra point, a point, field goal, three points, right?
safety too you watch basketball you know if you're behind this arc it's three points if you're within it it's two points and wrestling there's so many different subjective rule sets that you're like okay well if you unlock your hands here or if this guy gets pushed out of bounds it's a point but if you shove him out of bounds it's no points if he's grounded it's no points but if his knee's off the mat then it's a point
so there's so many different like little nuances in the sport that make it difficult to follow and even if you're within it like sometimes you have to address what the rule set is before you even compete in a tournament.
There are times where we're meeting with administration and referees before we compete at the Olympics World Championships just so we can stay current on the rule set for that year because it's always evolving.
I think in the heat of the moment, sometimes I imagine you've seen it a lot in MMA, whether it's a guy, you know, hitting someone in the back of the head or, you know, kicking them when they're down on a knee, like all these little things that when you're in the battle, and you're fired up, and you're trying to put this man out, like you don't even think about the ruleset, you just, you know, it has to be programmed.
I think experience, just a Multiple times within this position, there's a certain level of savviness and mental toughness that you have to have to get there.
To have your arm potentially broken is getting slapped in the face.
Like if I have my hands locked and I'm preventing the arm bar, like with a slap in the face really make me like, ooh, I gotta unlock, protect my face, bam, you're done.
This dude looks like an absolute monster, but the slapping just reminds me of my sister and I. Back in middle school when my mom and dad were at work and we had a snow day.
But the reason why they use slaps, it actually, there's a history that goes back to the original MMA, like when they were first starting to do MMA tournaments.
One of the really early ones was called Pancrase.
It was in Japan.
And Bas Rutten was the master at Pancrase.
And what Bas Rutten would do, he's got crazy flexible hands, and he's an elite striker.
And so that's what makes us excited for the postponed Olympic Games, right, this summer, Tokyo 2021, is wrestling is going to be one of the premier sports because of their love for combat sports there.
So whether it's MMA, kickboxing, boxing itself, wrestling, judo, sumo, they love the sport.
And so we're really excited about that opportunity.
So the Japanese Prime Minister made an announcement, public statement, saying, hey, listen, we're going to host the Olympics this summer no matter what.
One of the interesting things about it is although it's happening in 21, they're still calling it Tokyo 2020.
I think they were saving face for all the marketing material that they already made that cost them billions of dollars to change the zero to a one.
Is that really worth $5 billion or whatever it may have cost them?
But it's going to be interesting how they figure it out because the Olympic Village is like a town.
There's 10,000 coaches and athletes from every country on the face of the planet all put into a one-mile radius on this Olympic campus.
And there's just so much interaction, engagement.
I'm talking the cafeteria at the Olympic Games is five football fields long.
They've got a McDonald's.
Like a full-size McDonald's in the cafeteria in the Olympic Village.
They've got foods from all different parts of the country.
You've got an Italian station, a Japanese station, American station, and a Pan-African station.
It's insane.
You have literally thousands of people swirling in at all times.
It's 24 hours.
How many people are in line at the McDonald's station?
If you're coming from America, you can go down the street.
There's a McDonald's within a mile of anybody while you're here stateside.
But if you're coming from one of these smaller countries, you're coming from Guinea-Bissau, or you're coming from, I don't know, Qatar, you're like, damn, McDonald's sounds pretty good.
I don't get this at the crib.
Let me go ahead, grab me a little quick couple of McChickens, couple of double cheeseburgers, put them in the room.
Everyone going to the Olympics isn't expecting to win a medal.
I say 90%, very large percentage of the competitors at the Olympic Games, it's a long shot for them to get on the podium.
They're going with the expectation like, hey, listen, I'm representing my home country with pride.
I am going to a country that I've never been before.
Hopefully I can be on TV. My family will be watching me back home.
The opening ceremonies is the best experience for them because they get to be in a full-packed arena around all the athletes that they've seen on TV. But they know that realistically they're not going to win.
So when that McDonald's is open 24 hours, they're like, let's go, bro.
I had a double cheeseburger with a high C orange to drink and a large fry.
So crazy story.
I'll tell you the story.
So I win the Olympic gold.
Right after you win, they take you back to what they have, like a media house.
So it's got all of the publications from all over the world.
You've got AP, Sports Illustrated, NBC, you know, just pretty much everything.
And so you go back and you just bounce from room to room.
It's like, okay, we got Al Michaels here.
We got Bob Costas here.
We got, you know, Joe Rogan here.
And so you go, you show your medal, you tell them about your experience, where you're from, who you are, what you're going to do with all this money and fame that you've just won.
And then so as soon as you're ushered out of there, you competed at eight o'clock and you don't get out of there to close to midnight.
So by the time it's midnight in London, really the only thing open is McDonald's, right?
So I'm still in my podium outfit.
Like literally what I wore on the podium, I'm still in it at midnight.
And so we go down to like Piccadilly in London.
And only things open is at McDonald's.
And so we went to like a club for a little bit.
One of my sponsors at the time had like bottle service.
They wanted to celebrate me.
So we leave there.
We go to McDonald's.
I get inside and packed.
Clubs just let out.
Everyone's like hungry.
They're hungover.
They just got done for the night full of drinking.
They're all in line lines crazy.
I go into the McDonald's.
I'm like, damn, it's a long day.
I wrestled all day long.
I do not want to stand in line.
I just want to see if I can work my way to the front.
So I go and ask the guy.
I'm like, bro, listen, I just wrestled all day at the Excel Center.
It's a single day event, so you have to be your best on that single day.
You only get one event.
Cycle to prepare for.
So we think of our careers like cyclically, where if you're an MMA fighter, you're like, okay, I can get an opportunity to fight for the belt as long as I continue to compete at a high level, keep my brand awareness at a good place.
But in wrestling...
The pinnacle is the Olympic Games.
So no matter how many world championships you win, you want that Olympic gold.
And the crazy thing is the worlds are harder than the Olympics.
So the Olympics are a little more condensed in terms of the qualification process.
So at Worlds, it's much easier to qualify.
So you have 42 guys in your weight class or in your bracket at Worlds.
You only have 16 at the Olympics.
So in the World Championships, I won in 2015. I wrestled six matches.
The Olympics, I won in 2012. I only had four matches.
And it's a random draw, too.
So you could wrestle Russia first round, which would suck.
Or you could wrestle Puerto Rico first round, which would suck less.
LAUGHTER And so it's a really interesting experience the way these brackets are drawn.
And I think that the Olympic Games has become so special because of everything surrounding it.
You get more money, more notoriety, more recognition moving forward.
It's catapulted me to where I am right now.
When I'm recognized or announced at an event, it's always affiliated with that Olympic gold.
Olympic gold medalist Jordan Burroughs.
They always tell you, whenever you step off the podium, you will forever be an Olympic gold medalist.
You can't lose that.
You can lose your belt.
You can never lose your gold.
It always comes home with me at the end of the day, no matter what I do moving forward.
So, I wrestle at 74 kilos or 163. And this morning, I weigh 183. So, that kind of gives you perspective as to where we are in terms of what my walking around weight is when I'm just chilling and getting ready for competition or if I'm actually wrestling at my competition weight.
World champion at the weight class above me, 86 kilos or 189 pounds in 2018. So I'm the world champ at 163. He's the world champ at 189. That's a big gap.
It's a big gap.
It's a big gap.
And so there are only six Olympic weights.
Wow.
At the Olympic Games.
Only six, right?
That's crazy.
So you've got 57 kilos or like 125, 143, 163, 189, 213, and then heavyweight.
And so only six weight classes.
And then, in a world championship year, you have 10 weights.
So they give you a little more flexibility.
But in the Olympic Games, they try to condense them.
They're adding so many sports.
Every single cycle, you've got golf and breakdancing.
They're adding breakdancing to the Olympic Games in Paris, 2024. That's pretty crazy.
And here's been my comparison to MMA for a long time.
I'm always weighing the pros and cons.
Okay, wrestling is here.
MMA is here.
MMA has so many amazing things.
I love the toughness aspect.
My favorite sport outside of wrestling is boxing.
I'm a big boxing fan.
I love just the warrior element.
I love how you come from the gutter, from the mud, and these dudes are just like gritty warriors, precision.
It's an art form.
I look at MMA as...
An alternative to wrestling, right?
And one of the things that I've seen, I've seen so many guys that I've trained alongside that have gone on to have immense success in MMA. So that's what always kind of pulls me.
I've trained with, I've trained, been alongside Daniel.
I've been alongside Marty or Kamaru Usman.
I've been alongside Henry Cejudo.
I've wrestled Justin Gaethy on numerous occasions.
Mike Chandler, Lance Palmer, like all these guys.
I've wrestled these guys and I've seen...
But it's different, right?
Just because you're a great wrestler doesn't mean you're going to be a great fighter.
And just because you're an average wrestler doesn't mean you're going to be an average fighter.
I've seen guys who I thought were average wrestlers become great fighters and guys who I thought were tremendous wrestlers can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
So he was a left-handed fighter, and they had him use his left hand forward, and that way his power hand was his most dominant hand, which was his front hand.
Well, it's the most important punch in boxing, and so there's a lot, like Bruce Lee believed in that as well.
There's a lot of people that think that maybe if a wrestler does fight that way with that right leg forward, or wrestle that way rather, they should fight that way as well.
Because if you're a specialist in one aspect of MMA, someone generally, the person that's going to figure out a way to beat you, is a person who's a specialist in the thing you're not good at.
Like say if you're a wrestler, and you're really good at wrestling, and then you'll come into a guy, you come into a fight with a guy who's a really good striker, who's got excellent takedown defense, and then you're kind of fucked.
Like that happened when Brock Lesnar fought Alistair Overeem.
Because Brock Lesnar couldn't get Alistair down, and Alistair is a K-1 Grand Prix champion.
What's interesting, because I think that's why wrestlers translate well, is because I started wrestling at six years old.
Most guys start the sport of wrestling...
from infancy.
If it's in your bloodline, you're on the mat three, four, five years old.
Where a lot of other sports, you're not doing that.
Whether it's judo, jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, boxing.
You don't do that for the entirety of your life.
Maybe eight, nine, ten, you start to dabble in it a little bit.
And I think wrestling, actually wrestling is, I'm sure wrestling is the only sanctioned sport collegiately of all combat sports.
So we have a very high level of pedigree in comparison to other places.
So, you know, I started wrestling at six years old, wrestled through middle school, high school, went to the University of Nebraska, earned my degree there, training twice a day for five years, took the medical red shirt, To get better and then got to this place where I started to continue to sharpen my chops at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
If I made that transition, I would be so regimented in what I had done for such a long period of time.
I don't think that any other sport can compare with that.
And I don't really follow a ton, so I don't really know the dynamics of what it's like on a scholastic level in, let's say, jujitsu.
But I have to imagine that wrestling has the strongest...
Pedigree in the highest level of preparation for MMA because of its ability to be popular within the contents of an actual school, university, that type of thing.
Some people eat like a little piece of fruit here and there, you know, if you really feel like you need it before a workout, but I'm telling you, man, it's crazy.
Rafael dos Andres, I think, went on this kind of a diet for his last fight when he fought Paul Felder, and I think that's how he wound up making 155 again.
But some guys have tried it in MMA. I know it's similar to like a ketogenic diet.
A lot of ketogenic diets, guys are mostly eating meats and fats and getting their fuel from fat or from glucogenesis, gluconeogenesis, which is like when your body, I think that's how you say it, when your body processes protein and turns that protein into glucose, your body can do that.
But the thing about it is there's no crashing after eating.
Now, yes, a little bit more so than I had in the past.
So at this age, I'm 32 years old.
I've been in it for a while.
I have a connection with my coaches that is more of a partnership as opposed to like a coach-athlete relationship.
So I'm like, okay, here's what I need.
Here's what I want to work on.
And then they give me kind of the autonomy to figure out what my schedule is going to look like.
Because I've got three kids at home, a wife.
My schedule is a little more busy than the average college guy that we're training with.
So I still train at the University of Nebraska.
We have an RTC there, which is a regional training center, in conjunction with the college program.
So I'm wrestling with those guys often in their room out in Lincoln.
Yeah, so I have my smoothie at usually like 7.30.
I'm in the wrestling room by 8.30 to train.
We're usually on the mat in the morning, so we'll get like a light drill in, just get our bodies moving, get feeling good, or we'll lift in the morning.
So I typically lift three times a week.
Then in the afternoon, I'll have, depending upon how close I am to my weight cut itself, like if I'm trying to stay light and I'm getting close, like week of, I'll skip lunch, period.
I won't even have lunch.
Or I'll do like a handful of cashews or something relatively small.
And then I'll go back to practice at 2 and we'll do either live wrestling or we'll do some sort of conditioning.
But you have to shrink your body a little bit because if you want to compete two hours, unlike boxing, MMA, where you have an entire day to rehydrate, replenish your body, and get ready for competition, two hours is a different beast, bro.
If you step on the scale and you just sat in the sauna for an hour and you've been in a hot tub with a sauna suit and a beanie, You're finished.
You're finished.
You can't recover.
It's impossible.
Because if you think about that two hours, that two hours encompasses multiple things.
One, it's you have to eat.
And two, you've got to get warmed up.
And then three, you've got to get your mind right and prepare to compete.
So you never know.
You could be an hour in or you could be the first match on Matt A. It really just depends on how the brackets shake out.
Then I try to re-energize with all the carbs and the sugars that I've kind of pulled back from.
Because you get time.
The tournament is going to last throughout an entire day.
So let's say you wrestle two hours later, but then your next match isn't going to be for another hour, hour and a half.
And then the same thing for your next match and then the semifinals.
So between each match, you're going to have about an hour.
So you know that the longer the day goes, the more you win, the more recovery time you get.
So where you might start the day, I weigh in at 163, and then by the time I compete my first match, let's say I'm 169-ish, 170. Drank maybe a gallon of water, had a smoothie, ate some fruit, maybe some honey and some peanut butter.
And then I'm wrestling about 6-7 pounds over.
And so then as the day progresses, you're eating a little bit between each match.
But then you also have to remember, you've got to make scratch weight again for day two.
So when you step off the mat after the semifinals, you wrestled four matches that day.
And then you go step on the scale.
So like, for example, this year, World Championships made weight Saturday morning, wrestled four matches.
After the semifinals, you're like, okay, I gotta make weight tomorrow since I'm a medalist.
You go step on the scale, I'm seven pounds over.
So now, I gotta get ready for tomorrow.
I can't eat dinner after wrestling four matches.
I've gotta go straight to the gym, get on the bike, get in the sauna, get on the treadmill, get the seven pounds off, and then go to sleep hungry and then weigh in again the next morning.
So if you do that, say, and then you don't have to wrestle into the evening, you wane in the morning, you don't have to wrestle into the evening, then what do you do?
Well, I feel like there's guys that are getting away from that now, and a lot of guys are trying to just do what you were just saying, get to about 6 pounds and cut that, and then it's the day before, and they perform better that way.
The real concern is against elite grapplers, like someone who's really bigger than you and stronger than you and to take you down.
But I'm just thinking, I can't believe that you have to wrestle all those matches in a day and then train afterwards to cut weight that night.
If you tell someone, hey, listen, I know this is a struggle for you, Joe.
I know you really want to fight at 170. Your BMI says that you can, but you cannot get hydrated and fight at 170. You've got to go up to 185. And you weigh 185. And you're like, I can't compete here.
You would get a guy, measure his body mass, measure his body fat composition, do a hydration test on him, say, look, at 170, you're sitting here, you have 10% body fat.
For us, we have an unhealthy relationship with food where we kill ourselves to get down to weight so we can compete at a high level and then we trash our bodies with all the things that we've been missing out on for such a long period of time.
So if you look at the average fighter...
Where they are in the off-season is much higher than where they typically are when they're training.
If you look at a guy with his shirt off when he's getting prepared for a fight, like, damn, that dude looks good.
You look at him on a beach with his family in the summertime, you're like, damn, that dude looks fat.
And so...
We have to have a better relationship with food where it's more of a lifestyle because at this point, this is why you see most guys after their careers are done, they've gained an excessive amount of weight, they look unhealthy.
There are days where I'm like, I'm not even hungry.
But I haven't eaten what I want in two months.
I'm having this French toast.
You know what I mean?
And so it's a very, very different aspect of life that we have never really tapped into because we've been able to make it.
But just because you're making it doesn't mean it's healthy.
So, you know, it's almost like one of those things that until we start to register it and track it over a long period of time, we'll never really know the effects mentally, psychologically and physically.
It's a bummer that he made it to the UFC when he did.
Because he had really taken a long time off the sport and decided to come back and fight in the UFC. And I just don't think he was the same Ben Askren that was the Bellator champion or when he went over to 1FC. He was...
He was manhandling motherfuckers.
And the best part about it is you got to see a guy who is elite at wrestling and really not elite at anything else.
He had dwelled here for so long that when he finally got to the UFC, they gave him such a competition that he never really had a chance to even get his feet wet in the UFC. It was like, alright, Lawler.
Ben has made a lot of money and he's done very well for himself and he's still well respected in both spaces.
So, I mean, I really guess that's all you can ask for from his perspective.
He's done extremely well.
He has multiple wrestling clubs back up in Wisconsin and He works for Flow Wrestling down here in Austin, who he dabbles in commentary and is an analyst for our sport.
He's well respected in the MMA community.
He's been a champion in 1FC and Bellator and fought in the UFC. He's done well.
They're like, well, what are you doing between the Olympics?
I'm like, well, there's still wrestling.
There's world championships.
Everyone's like...
Do you still wrestle?
I'm like, bro, I just...
I have one of the biggest matches of the year coming up.
I just wrestled in one of the biggest matches of the year.
You're like, yes.
I still compete, but people don't really follow.
Wrestlers follow.
Yeah, that's it.
Just wrestlers.
We're such a niche sport where the UFC's brand has exploded because you guys were in this kind of limbo era for a period of time.
And now you guys are, you know, one of the biggest sports in the world.
And so it's been cool to kind of see the transition.
And we've tried to take cues from you guys from, you know, broadcasting weigh-ins to making, you know, these matchups in these cards.
One of the hardest things about wrestling is their tournaments.
And so within a tournament, it can be hard to market the best matchups because there's upsets and a lot of things happen.
Injuries.
Things just might not happen, right?
So if you've got all the best 170-pounders in the entire world, how do you know that GSP and Kamaru Usman are going to meet up?
Because they're one and two seed?
You never know.
Anything could happen.
And so I think that you guys have done a really good job with marketing the sport.
You've brought in brand sponsors and It has gone from this red-headed stepchild to boxing where it's brutal and barbarian to this sport that it's seen as more of an art form.
And there are a lot of guys that are responsible for that.
And it's been cool to see.
We're trying to replicate it, but it's much harder because...
fantastic to be able to watch elite wrestling they love it it's very enticing but to people that have never wrestled before it's kind of confusing what's happening and that's what I was saying about jiu-jitsu that's one of the reasons why combat jiu-jitsu is it's literally the most popular thing that Eddie's come up with because he's come up with these EBI tournaments or a sort of a different jiu-jitsu format but But combat jujitsu, people understand people getting hit.
And that's the thing about the UFC. When people understand the striking, it's simple.
A guy punches a guy, you get it.
A guy kicks a guy, you get it.
But when fights go to the ground and people start going for submissions, to people that have never grappled, they have no idea what's happening.
If you watch, let's say, Bud Crawford versus Earl Spence, you're like, these dudes are the very best in the entire world at their craft.
If there's not a knockout and there's a draw unanimous decision after 12 rounds, you're going to be like, that sucked.
I want to see someone get knocked out.
But the chances are when you have two high-level guys like that, they're not going to knock each other out.
They're just gonna be, they feel each other out, right?
Throw a couple jabs, maybe hit each other with a couple power punches, but they're just too tough and too precise with their movements that they'll never knock each other out.
So I think in wrestling, it's the same thing.
You have to be a wrestler to truly appreciate the craft.
You know what it takes to be the best, but you can't really respect it unless you're within it.
Plus, it's not just a recreational sport.
Wrestling is taboo, right?
It's kind of weird a little bit.
You wear singlets and you just roll around with each other.
Jiu-jitsu, I feel like you can go to a gym as a 40-year-old man that hasn't competed in 20 years, put on your gi, and roll around with your co-worker, and it can be completely normal.
I want to have, when I finish up my career, I'm going to make a high-performance training center, and I'm going to invite all the best UFC fighters, all fighters, but I like the UFC's brand, to come train with me and help them sharpen up their skills and preparation for their big fights.
You know, wrestling takes up so much of my time, and I've got little ones at home, so it's really hard to do, but...
When I transition out of the sport, which I'm kind of in that phase now, I've got one more Olympic cycle in me.
And then moving on to, I'd really like to help fighters because I feel like, although I don't strike, and I don't really, I'm not familiar with my striking, it's something I'll pick up later just so I can know kind of how to incorporate your striking into your wrestling offense and defense.
But I think I can be a really good asset for a lot of fighters is to try to help them make that transition.
Because what you see that's personified in the media and what you experience when your boots are on the ground in a particular country like Iran is much different than the perception.
And so the Iranian people, man, they're the best wrestling fans in the world outside of Iran, right?
I'm partial because I'm an American, but...
Best wrestling fans in the world.
Super knowledgeable.
Love the sport.
They want the heroes to win.
In America, we build up our heroes just so we can see if they can get knocked off.
In Iran, they always want the hero to win.
Everybody.
They wait for us at the airport, Joe.
So when we land on the tarmac, we walk out to the airport, they've got media there, they've got wrestling fans, they're giving us flowers, and they are coming to our hotel room.
We've got armed guards on the floor of our hotel just to make sure nobody gets to our floor because they are waiting for us in the lobby just to take photos.
had a passport before their first birthday so it's wild like you are who you are based on who your parents are yeah what they do um or a lot of it is is is nature and so i didn't get my passport until i was 20 years old left the country for the first time went to istanbul turkey my kids have all had passports before their first birthday is My son, we counted before he was one, he was on 42 flights.
I mean, I remember when Marvis Frazier fought Mike Tyson and Joe Frazier was in the corner and I'm like, imagine growing up with Joe Frazier as your dad and you gotta become a boxer too.
Imagine you being the best in the world at something and you letting your kids escape your home at 18 without you ever telling them or teaching them about what you were the best in the world at.
That would be a travesty.
You let your kids escape your home without teaching them something that you were the absolute best in the world at.
So you don't have to push them or pressure them to do something.
You allow the love to grow on their own.
But if there's something that you are particularly great at, you have to give that knowledge and that information to the world.
And so you become a man of the people, a man of your family.
You're the best in the world at the sport of wrestling.
Give that to them.
Then let the decision be their own to decide if they want to take it further and, you know, I don't know, wrestle the Olympics.
It's so hard, man.
Everyone's like, oh, your son, next Olympic champ.
I'm like, yo, bro, chill.
Because then I feel the pressure.
Because I'm like, not only is my boy, everywhere he goes is like, damn, you're wrestling now?
You better be good.
And he's feeling the pressure.
And then I'm feeling pressure.
It's like, oh, your son's wrestling now?
Damn, I can't wait to see how great he's going to be.
Because now I'm like, well, there's an expectation.
Like, let's go.
Six years old, push-ups.
No dinner until you do five rope climbs.
You know what I mean?
So it's like you have to always manage expectations, particularly with kids, because you want them to be so much, but also you have to prepare for normalcy.
The hardest thing, you have resources, Joe.
Like, you've done so much.
You've been successful at your craft.
You've got so much exposure, so many more resources than I imagine you had growing up.
How do you not allow that to trickle down to your kids to give them more opportunity but also accompany that with expectations?
I'm thinking about this from my perspective as a kid.
The hardest moments that I had were associated with sport.
It was very rare that I had a difficult time in my life from 1 to 18 that wasn't because I had to train hard or had to wrestle hard or I cried because I got beat or choked out or slammed on my head.
It wasn't hard.
I didn't grow up on a farm.
I grew up in a middle class family in South Jersey in a suburban town.
So my lifestyle was different and my parents both Yeah.
Yeah.
So they wanted to kind of shelter me from that.
They've done a tremendous job.
I mean, I've achieved a level of success that they dreamed of for me.
But also, you know, there was a certain amount of grit that I had to develop just because of the contents of where we were.
Like, it was suburban, but it was still kind of edgy.
But now I want to, I kind of want to chill a little bit too, right?
Because one of the things that your kids will undeniably understand is how hard you work to get to where you are.
And that rubs off on your children.
There's one thing where you teach them things, you know, you show them, you tell them, and you give them advice and talk to them.
But another thing is they learn just from seeing what you do.
When you have a dad who does what you do, which, to be an elite wrestler, maybe people don't understand this, it is one of the most physically demanding pursuits in the world.
Period.
It's a fact.
In terms of athletics, there's very few things that are as difficult and as grueling as wrestling.
And to be elite at it, I mean, it's not like it's an insurmountable sport.
It's not like something that takes a ton of equipment.
It's not like Formula One race car driving when you need a million dollars to get a car.
No, it's something that just requires a mindset.
And also, what you were saying before, there's no real money in it.
So it's not like it's something like basketball where there's this gigantic pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow.
No, it's just toughness and grit.
And your kids are going to understand that.
There's no way they're not going to.
They will understand that there's a level of discipline and focus that you have that maybe they're going to see their friends' parents don't have.
And one of my daughters is really into gymnastics and the other one is really into basketball.
But...
When they were young, they also were into martial arts.
And, you know, I would take them to, when they were younger, they're so young, but I would take them to martial arts gym, and I would even demonstrate some things with the teacher and do some stuff.
And, you know, they got into jiu-jitsu, they got into a little bit of kickboxing.
So they got to see that I'm very, I do a lot of shit, you know, and so, and I've reached a high level of proficiency at those things that I do.
Here's the bulk of a wrestler's income or Olympian's income.
One for us is we built what we call RTCs, Regional Training Centers, that are in conjunction with collegiate programs.
We get paid pretty much to train there because they use our name and likeness to kind of elevate their programs to help with recruiting, but also we're in the room with their guys daily, so we kind of teach the college guys.
We're sharpening them, helping them develop.
So that's number one.
Number two, sponsors.
So primary sponsors.
I'm sponsored by Asics, Ralph Lauren, Bridgestone, Comcast, and Xfinity.
So you have corporate sponsors that align with you during Olympic years, non-Olympic years to provide you with product.
They'll pay you to create digital marketing campaigns and really just align with what it is that you're doing.
If your brand kind of fits their spectrum of what they're trying to create.
And then lastly, that is if you win.
They have what they call the Living the Dream Fund.
So you get money for World Championship medals, Olympic medals, going to like all these tournaments.
And then what we're doing Saturday night.
So if you go to these cards for like Flow Wrestling, it's pretty much like the UFC. Like you have deals where it's like, okay, this guy is this level of opponent.
It's going to be watched by these many viewers.
You're going to get this number of subscribers.
Here's what we feel like we can pay you.
So yeah, I mean there are numerous ways that you can get paid, but it's definitely changed.
I was talking to Daniel the other day.
He said that when he was with Adidas, when he was an Olympian back in 2004 and 2008, he was getting $12,000 a year.
$12,000 a year.
$1,000 a month he was getting to wrestle.
And he was like, I just had to retire from the UFC because my back was just killing me.
Had to have back surgery.
He was like, you know why my back hurts?
From wrestling for 25 years shooting at all guys legs and being stuck underneath of them.
And I was like, damn.
And he's like, man, there's so much money in UFC. He's had two lives.
Literally two lives.
Two careers.
And he's become amazing at this and he always had this character and personality but You just were unable to utilize it financially.
You could monetize that in wrestling.
It just didn't work.
So we're in the precipice of doing something extremely cool.
Wrestlers are now actually earning a living by doing this.
You don't have to transition to MMA. And that's why I think that a lot of guys have stayed in the wrestling sport.
We have some really great athletes.
Myself, Kyle Snyder, Kyle Dake, David Taylor, Jaden Cox, James Green.
All these amazing athletes.
I think we'll be great fighters, but wrestling now, you can earn a living.
Daniel's such an unusual human being, because not only does he have two careers, like he had the wrestling career, then an MMA career, but he also has a commentator career, because he's so fun.
Especially if you're aspiring to be a great wrestler as well.
And you have these guys all in your head, and you watch matches on YouTube, and you idolize these certain wrestlers, and then all of a sudden you're in front of one of them, and you didn't expect it.
I mean, you might just babble out something stupid.
That's a blessing, though, that you have that perspective, because there are a lot of people who don't, and by the time that they realize it, it's too late, and they've already burned so many bridges and had so many bad encounters with the people, that it's just not good for...
Now I've transitioned to follow sustainable success.
Like guys who have been able to do it for a really long time.
Tom Brady, LeBron James, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, you know, I don't know, Sue Bird.
Like so many athletes that...
It's easy to do it early on in your career, hard to do it over a long period of time, especially with all of the distractions.
You get bread, you get fame, you get this recognition, you start winning championships, easy to become complacent.
How do you maintain a certain level of success for a long period of time?
That's something like people ask me that daily.
Particularly because I'm in this fatherhood element, too.
So this adds an extra layer of depth.
Because in wrestling, I'm considered the old guy.
I'm the oldest guy on the team now.
No one else has three kids.
So it's a very different avenue and lane that I'm within.
So I'm trying to balance these things all together.
But I really have now transitioned from this young, upstart, Trying to be this hotshot guy, get my name out, to now I'm like this old wise yogi where I'm like, hey, listen, you can be successful at multiple things, my friend.
And so it's been a really cool transition for me is going from this place where, you know, you're young, you're just trying to get your name out to now you're balancing multiple principles and parts of your life where it's like, okay, can I be a great husband, great father and be driven?
Blessings, beautiful, bring joy to us every day we see them, except when it's bedtime.
No one's thirstier or hungrier than a toddler at bedtime.
I'm hungry.
I'm thirsty.
I gotta go to the bathroom.
I want to give you a hug.
But we're in that realm now where we're like, do we have another?
Can we balance this?
Can we maintain it?
And can I still do what I do at a high level?
There's a certain responsibility I feel to my family where They need me.
And I want to have a really special relationship with all of them.
And I want to be integral in each of their development.
But can I do that with an additional slice of the pie, a fourth child, and also still being ambitious?
And that's a tough balance.
And so we're trying to figure that out.
It's like, is the joy weighed against kind of the lifestyle that we have now?
Can we maintain this certain level that we've become comfortable with?
And it's good.
So, you know, I'm always trying to figure those things out on the fly.
And so kind of watching you and hearing that you have three kids and you're still moving and shaking and from LA to Austin to, you know, doing the UFC and flying all over the world.
It's a really interesting perspective.
How do you manage the things that you have on your plate in regards to being successful in so many different realms and still also having healthy relationships?
Even podcasting, it requires focus and thought and preparation.
Not everybody can do it.
A lot of people could do it if they put the effort into it, but it's just a matter of is it something that you enjoy doing and is it something you look forward to even after all?
I've been doing this podcast for 11 years now.
I still love doing it.
It's still fun.
It's fun.
I enjoy it.
So it makes it easy.
It makes it easier.
So in that regard, It's not something that's a labor to me.
All these things are not something that's a labor.
So I'm very fortunate in that regard.
But I think that's one of the keys to success is finding the thing that excites you always.
Finding a thing that's challenging always.
A thing that you really enjoy doing.
A thing that works for your personality.
Clearly you've got that with wrestling and I feel like with a guy like you what you have is like this this Incredible vehicle meaning your mind your focus your discipline and all what you've done with wrestling You could do with anything you just have to find a track.
That's good The thing is like some people don't find a track some people they get really good at fighting or whatever it is and they They become this bad motherfucker, but they that's their identity and And they can't figure out a way to focus that.
Like Miyamoto Musashi, he's a famous samurai, wrote this book, The Book of Five Rings.
It's a great book on strategy.
And he has this great quote that I remember.
I read this when I was a little kid, when I first got into martial arts.
It said, once you know the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
And I think that once you find excellence in something like you have in wrestling, you can be excellent in anything, especially wrestling, because it's so fucking hard to do.
Or there's a level of excellence that you have to have to kind of weed yourself out, right?
There's a certain level where you can be successful with just talent and hard work, whatever, but Then there gets to a place where you have to maintain a multifaceted balanced lifestyle.
So the athletic experience is much different than the average Joe experience.
And so I've seen so many athletes post-career spend all their money, get depressed, go into addicting substances.
And it's a very difficult place that you arrive in when you don't know who you are.
For so long, our identities have been tied to our success.
Everywhere I go, people call me champ.
Like, I'm not Jordan.
I'm not Burroughs.
I'm not JB. I'm champ.
And so...
When I go out of this phase and I'm no longer looked upon as this iconic wrestling guy who is going to beat the hell out of you every time I deem I need to and I'm just a normal human being, how do I make that transition and find what else it is that I am passionate about?
And so I think now, for a long time, I've been afraid to think of other things because people are like, no, no, no.
You'll have time.
Keep the main thing the main thing.
Just focus on winning.
The more you win, the more opportunities you'll have.
But then that's how you have the guy that won't retire, overstays his welcome, diminishes and tarnishes the legacy that he's built for himself because they just won't leave.
And you can't look too hard right now because right now you have to focus on wrestling and your family and all the other obligations that you have already.
You have to dabble simultaneously because you can't just wait until it's over.
Right.
And even if you have been successfully enough financially where you can buy yourself times.
Like, listen, I'm good.
I made a couple million bucks.
My house is paid for.
My cars are good.
Kids are in good schools.
I'm fine for five years.
And you'll find alternative ways to make money and still do what you love.
The one thing I don't want to do is do stuff for money or do things that I don't believe in.
I want to do things that are truly honorable and that I really find are noble pursuits.
This is what I want to do because I want to do it.
And so trying to find that thing, I've had to kind of dabble in these other...
Kind of perspectives because as wrestlers, like, you have this generalized idea of what a wrestler is, right?
It's like, okay, it's kind of like a meathead guy from the Midwest that grew up on a farm, right?
And freaking eats T-bone steaks, even he eats the bones too.
And so it's a...
Trying to kind of step outside of wrestling.
One of the things that I've always tried to do is transcend sport, or at least transcend wrestling.
It's how can I broaden our audience and bring it all back to wrestling so everyone wins?
We all elevate our profiles simultaneously.
It's a difficult thing to do, but it's almost been a responsibility that was early on just placed upon me because I was just winning.
And now, like, I've taken on the responsibility because I want to do it.
But now I'm like, okay, well, I have to also be the first guy to move on and have success outside of the wrestling forum that's not a coach.
If you look at the college landscape and college wrestling, the head coaches, most of them are Olympic champions.
Tom Brands, Cale Sanderson, John Smith, you know, you've got all these guys that wrestled at Iowa, wrestled at, you know, some of the best universities in the country and world.
Most head coaches were either Division I national champions or Olympic and world medalists.
It's just a natural progression.
You were a good wrestler, you go on and coach and take over university and build this program up.
But very few people want to kind of explore outside of the realm of just coaching itself.
And so I'm trying to get to a place where I feel comfortable with being countercultural and doing something different that's almost opposed to where I am as a wrestler because most Olympic champions just coach.
In capturing all areas of human identity from, you know, nutrition to spirituality to self-developing.
All these things because I want...
You have to create good men and women in order for them to be good athletes.
I think...
And we're still at the highest level.
You can find it sometimes.
But I feel like they're weeding themselves out.
The best athletes that have sustained success are...
Men and women of integrity, at least to some degree.
You might see some individuals that have a bad rap or are engaged in controversy regularly, but they eventually start to lose whatever zest it was that they had for their sport and they can't win for a long period of time.
But the best, they're not embroiled on controversy.
Look at LeBron and Tom Brady.
When have you ever seen them in the news for something crazy they did at home?
And so I think that for me, it starts with a certain level of discipline that you have to give to the youth.
Like, hey, listen, I'm going to teach you how to have mental toughness.
I'm going to teach you how to be accountable.
I'm going to teach you how to be disciplined.
And then we're going to learn athletics, how to be great wrestlers afterward.
Because if I can create men and women of character and integrity, then essentially they'll become champions naturally because the people I respect most weren't the best athletes.
I've wrestled with hundreds of wrestlers in my lifetime, and the ones that had the best leadership qualities weren't the ones that were the best wrestlers.
It was the ones that were low maintenance, that did the right things, came to practice on time, they were good teammates, they did well in school, they were good leaders, they were guys that you just trusted.
All these things you're saying to me, I feel like what I was saying earlier about you doing corporate speaking engagements, I think you would be really good at that.
And again, I don't want to belabor this, but to become a world champion wrestler, to win four world championships, to win an Olympic gold medal, you have a mindset that very few people will ever be able to understand without hearing it come out of your voice.
They don't, they're probably not going to understand what it takes to be a person like yourself, but you can articulate it.
And the way you articulate it, it's very inspiring.
And you also have a very, like you have, you have an ethical and a moral vision for the kind of children you want to raise, the kind of athletes you want to train, the kind of people that you admire.
All that stuff translates into any other business, any other pursuit.
Those are like...
These are key components for success.
It's not just wrestling, right?
What you've achieved in wrestling is because of all these other things.
Because of the hard work, because of the discipline, because of the focus and the intelligence and all these other aspects of what makes you you.
But those things you could teach to people.
And you teach clearly by example because of your achievements, but also because of the way you're able to express yourself.
And for you to be able to do something like that, to have a training center, like you envisioned, it would be dope.
But also, I really think you could be very valuable speaking to corporations.
I appreciate that.
And all these things that we're talking about today, you could structure this in some sort of a plan where you get in front of these people and give them real tools that they can apply to their life that can improve them.
For one summer, two months, I worked at a beer distribution factory back in South Jersey.
We'd go around on big trucks every day.
And we'd go to all the liquor stores and bars in the town.
And we would drop off kegs and spike them off the truck and bring them and set up displays inside liquor stores.
That was what I did for one summer.
And I made $13 an hour.
And so each week I'd make about $550.
And I remember at the time, I thought I was a rich man, bro.
I was like, let's go!
I would go to...
I'd take my girlfriend to the mall.
We'd go to Aeropostale.
At the time, that's what we were wearing, Abercrombie& Fitch.
And we would buy a bunch of clothes and we'd go to the movies and we'd hang out and I would spend all $500 in a single week living life.
And so I have to see myself as this person that can implement Different levels of advice and ideas to people that aren't necessarily peers.
It's easy to talk to a peer.
It's easy to talk to someone who's younger than you that admires you, but it's hard for you.
I have like this inferiority complex where it's like, okay, if this person is successful, then they already have the tools.
They don't need me.
Like they know what they're doing.
So I think that for me, finding that niche into where I'm like, okay, listen, you've done well, you know things, you've experienced them, you've lived them firsthand.
How can you use all of the knowledge that you've gained on your journey to actually help other people?
Where I'm like, I'm the guy that I have a hard time with telling people what they need to do or what they should do, what I think will help improve their lives.
Because that would insinuate that I have a better life and I know more.
Well, it's also a tricky thing because when you're doing that, the type of person that needs that information, that's really going to use it, they're going to ask you.
They're going to say, hey, man, I really respect you.
What you've done is amazing.
How do you do this?
What are you doing?
What is your day like?
How do you start?
Because they want to know, because they want to do it.
If someone doesn't have the desire, if they don't want to seek out the information, you don't want to give it to them.
Because they're not going to do anything with it anyway.
You're not going to get into someone's head unless they want to let you in.
And the people that want to let you in, they're the people that are going to want to ask.
They're the people who are going to want to listen to you talk on this podcast.
If you did have some sort of a seminar that you did for corporations or for anybody that wants to be motivated and you can explain what you've done in your life and what led you through discipline, what gave you the focus, how you kept that fire alive.
So I'm like, hey, listen, I have to teach you, son.
If you decide to do this, you will choose discipline.
I got that from our pastor, Love Church in West Omaha, Todd Doxon.
So he says, be disciplined or be disciplined.
Because I have to teach my son, hey, bro, this world is hard.
It's hard, Dad.
That fig bar that you just ate for a snack before bed, I had to work hard to get that.
You know how many double legs I had to shoot to get this house?
But no, honestly, I always want to give him perspective because as kids, they don't really understand.
I read a book by Dr. Meg Meeker called Raising...
Ungrateful kids in an entitled world.
Or raising grateful kids in an entitled world.
So basically the premise behind the book was how can we provide for our kids a life in which we're creating character but also give them more than we had.
There's just so much expectation.
My kids sometimes they're like just because I exist this should be afforded to me.
I'm like bro, no that's not how things work here.
Like First of all, if you treated any one of your friends the way you treat mom and dad and your sister sometime at home, they would beat you up.
They wouldn't want to spend time with you.
It's just the bottom line.
And so I'm always under this mindset and this premise, and I try to do a greater job every day at being a better father.
I don't think people are born good.
I think people are born bad, and then they are constructed to be people of integrity.
You see the videos and the cute little anecdotes of kids hugging and smiling with each other.
It's like, oh, see, kids love each other from jump.
It's like, if you think people are inherently good, you've never had One Rice Krispie treat left in your cabinet with two hungry kids.
Because when there's one treat that comes out, they're scrapping.
They're scrapping, bro.
It's a fight.
It's a straight up fight.
And so I have to continuously always try to sharpen and refine them because in our human profile, we're just innate.
We're within the flesh.
We're always going to want to please ourselves.
And so there are so many times where I'm like, bro, listen, if you just give her the bigger piece now, I promise you that you'll be rewarded for it later.
If you can just treat your mom with character and respect now, I promise you that I will reward you later.
But it's so hard because in their flesh, they're like, I don't want that.
She doesn't have the bigger piece.
You know, I don't want to go to bed.
Why does she get two Christmas presents and I got one?
So I'm just always trying to figure out ways in which that I can implement the things that I've learned.
But it's hard because no one gives you an instruction manual for parenting.
I had my son at I think I was 25, 26 and I was fresh out of college and I left home at 18 and everything that I learned After 18 was learned in an environment where I was just trying to figure things out on the fly.
Well, parenthood is more complicated because you're taking a person who is a tiny little baby and you're teaching them about life and you're talking to them and you're explaining things and you're experiencing all the little troubles that they go through and try to talk them through it and try to discipline them and keep them from doing things.
Becoming successful at a job that's not interesting to you, but everybody's telling you, hey, it's a good job, you should do it, and you wind up doing it, and then you're stuck, and you don't know how to get out of it, and now your life is out of your hands.
Yeah, but you've got a great wife, and that was a blessing for you because you see firsthand your buddies that are going through struggles and difficulties at home...
Because I've lost to Russians in some of the biggest matches of my career.
And I know if I saw that, I would be so pissed off because they have changed my life in terms of being an Olympic champion, winning more world titles, more golds.
They've taken money out of my pocket, notoriety and fame away from me, and it'll really upset me.
And Gregory told him exactly what he should take and when he should take it and do this and do that.
And then he was going to do the same race again the following year but juiced up and see what the difference in performance was.
Along the way the Sochi Olympics gets exposed that the Russians had cheated and what they had done was it was a super sophisticated Scandal where they cut a hole in the wall and they were like transferring the dirty piss through one hole and and giving them the the clean sample to replace So they had found that there was microscopic scratches in these supposedly impossible to open bottles So the Russians had figured out a way to open these bottles Which, have you seen the real ones?
The most failed test by Russia in all Olympic sports.
First was track and field.
Second was weightlifting.
Third was wrestling.
Wrestling was number three out of all Olympic sports.
However many programs there are, I'm sure there are a ton of sports.
You've talked about it.
Wrestling was third.
They pro-date all these samples.
They're popping guys from 2008, 2012.
They're saying, you know what?
This guy was on a substance.
He was on some sort of performance-enhancing drug, so we're going to strip him of his medal, and we're going to give the guy that took fifth place the bronze medal instead.
At that point, it's such a different experience.
You never got to stand on the podium.
You never got to travel the world and tell everyone about your medal.
You never got to get that check that was associated with whatever success that you had, that sponsor that you missed out on.
So they've been banned from the Olympic Games, their governing body, Russia itself.
So all Russian athletes will have to go through a testing process, and then they will be able to compete as independent athletes under a different flag, but not the Russian flag.
And that's how far we've come, bro.
I've seen so many athletes in track and field and weightlifting and wrestling that have seen other athletes get stripped and then have been given their medals years later, and all they get is an Instagram post.
The wrestlers in these provinces and caucuses are insane.
Insane at the sport.
From birth, they are competing and training at the highest level.
It's unlike...
Here, you got youth sports, and you play games, and you play freeze tag with your buddies at practice, and you do a couple of rope climbs, you're done.
These guys are training like Olympians at eight years old.
They're doing backbridge kickovers, and they're learning five-point throws, and they're just technically savvy at a much earlier age because they're bred for this.
We think we have it hard here.
Poverty here is nothing like poverty in other countries, especially in Ossetia or Chechnya and all these places.
I mean, if you pop from a few years ago, then maybe, I don't know, maybe they pro-date your suspension and say, okay, let's say if you got suspended on that day for two years post that day, all your results in that period of time will probably be eliminated.
That medal count every year at every Olympic Games is something that us in the village as athletes and the presidents of each particular respective country, they're following that.
Above all else, some people are willing to take some crazy chances to be successful because they know the incentives that will follow them getting their hand raised.
But some people operate with character and they're like, you know what?
But even if he didn't test positive then, the odds of him using steroids up before then or using some sort of performance, whether it's EPO, for training, to get to where he got to physically.
Or you can go be a construction worker for the rest of your life, making minimum wage.
You're like, I'll take that podcast.
Give me that.
So I think it's a very different vibe there.
They don't have opportunity outside.
They can't go to university.
They don't go to school.
Russian wrestlers don't go to college.
They don't go to universities and get four-year degrees and get masters and go on to the corporate world.
They don't do that.
It's either you are Olympic champion or they will choose a job for you.
for you and it's probably not one that's super enticing or you will work in some sort of organized you know syndicate yeah it's just different it's different yeah but you know it's that's that's that's the way they operate there and It's got to be infuriating for you, though, to see the results, like the Sochi Olympics.
So, you know, for me to claim that this guy is on steroids just because he's vascular and muscular is a difficult thing for me to do.
But I've heard so many grumblings for such a long period of time that I'm like, bro, like, come on.
Like, at this point...
After all of the conversations that happened after Icarus and after them being suspended and WADA and USADA covering up all these tests and all this crazy, crazy happening in all sorts of sports, I'm like, bro, this state-sponsored doping is a real thing.
They're killing people that are blowing the whistle in Russia.
It's funny because I know this is going to cause a stir within the Russian wrestling community, so I'm anticipating the backlash that's going to happen immediately after this goes on.
Listen, they're tremendous wrestlers, but I stand by what I said.
That's how I feel, and it is what it is.
Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many people that have been accused of it.
If enough people say bad things about you, chances are it might be happening.
It's like, you're always the common denominator.
Like, how is that possible?
So, I'm a guy that...
I'm a purist.
I always want to operate with integrity because it's just what I do.
Number one, I love my body, so I'm not going to just put nonsense in it.
Number two, I want to protect the integrity of the sport, right?
Like, it's the spirit of the sport.
We compete to see who really has trained the hardest, who's done the most, sacrificed the most, and been disciplined.
That's why we do what we do.
Like, if you're bringing...
PEDs within the sports world, it is very difficult to really judge who the best competitor is.
And that's what we're trying to do.
So it's like playing a video game.
If I'm playing Madden and I got a cheat code and all my guys' stats and attributes are up to 99s, and I'm trying to play you with an average roster, how can you win?
How can you win?
You can't win.
You can't win, bro.
So it's really hard to experience because...
I've sacrificed all my life to be great at this.
And so when someone does it the improper way, and I don't know what they're doing.
I don't know how hard they're training, but I know what I do personally.
Honestly, I invite someone from the Russian delegation to have this conversation with me.
But an understandable one, not one of denial.
Not one of denial.
One like, hey, listen, we have had some guys, they have dabbled in it.
I'm not going to be like, see, told you, go get them.
You know what I mean?
I want a conversation where we're like, damn, okay, I understand.
But why?
But how?
Okay, now...
Is it possible that you guys have guys that are not doing this?
Are they just amazing wrestlers?
Do they just have the technical superiority and that's why they've been so successful for a long period of time?
Is that what you have or is this a large part of what you do?
And are they forced into it?
And, you know, their backs are against the wall and, you know, their hands are tied.
There's nothing they can do about it.
So I'm willing to have an open conversation to understand it.
I'm not just out here accusing them for the sake of making them look bad because I've seen them train.
They work hard.
I've seen them learn technique and I've seen the structure and the system and systematic approach they have to their sport.
They're great at their craft.
But I also have seen guys that have been jacked up, and then I've seen them post-career, and they look puny.
And I'm like, man, how's that possible?
So I'm trying to navigate the different dynamics of this whole experience without being this jerk that's like, hey, you guys are no good, because they're good wrestlers.
Particularly when you pay attention to what happened at the Sochi Olympics and pay attention to the fact, what you just said, that in 2020 and 2024 they can't fly the Russian flag.
Well, I've talked to fighters that when they had to choose between UFC and Bellator, there was two decisions, two things that led them towards Bellator.
One, sponsors.
They could have their own sponsors, whatever sponsors they like.
They don't have to be tied to Reebok.
And two, no USADA. So they don't have anybody banging on their door.
So when you have all this nationalism, all this national pride from Russia and China and all these different countries, you don't think they're going to do some gene editing?
You don't think they're going to take...
Look, let me tell you a story about Yoel Romero.
You know Yoel Romero, right?
Yoel Romero is tested by USADA all the time, right?
He's clean.
And no one believes he's clean because he is one legitimate freak of nature.
If you look at him, Yoel Romero went to a doctor once because the UFC, he had fractured his orbital in a fight.
Yoel Romero, they brought him to his doctor.
The doctor examines him and then calls the UFC and goes, where did you get this guy?
And they go, what do you mean?
And he goes, he is a specimen.
And they go, yeah, he's amazing, right?
He goes, no, no, no, you don't understand.
I've never seen a human like him.
The guy's like, I've been working on people for decades.
He goes, the tendons in his eye are three times larger than a normal person's.
And even though the United States is obviously very competitive in the Olympics and does amazing and wins a shitload of gold medals and has amazing athletes, you gotta think that these countries that are using these new tools, if they get ahead of us with this kind of shit, I mean, it could be real weird.
What we have is we are always in great shape and we're tough.
Tough as nails.
We're going to fight to the death every single time.
So no matter how savvy you are, technically skilled, how much access to resources you have, it's always going to be a fight whenever you wrestle an American.
And if he was, in your head when you lay in bed and you think you lost that guy, and you look at how he looked, and you look at how muscular and vascular he was, maybe he's a Yoel Romero.
That I can't ever imagine a country being better than us at anything just because we have so much structure, we have such great coaching, and we just have such a melting pot of individuals that are making freakish babies all the time.
So it's like if you go to Russia, you go to any of these countries, they're not melting pots like we have.
So there's...
The athleticism and the genetics have not been broadened so much so because there's just a small pool of small gene pools that have kind of interbreeded with each other for thousands of years.
But here in America, we have people from everywhere that have interbred and created such amazing athletes.
I love the fact that it's a country filled with immigrants.
I like it.
That literally everyone came here.
I mean, obviously the origins suck, but what it is now is the best idea of people coming from all other parts of the world, trying to seek opportunity and trying to do better for their life and their families.
That's the best part of what America is.
But I'm just saying when it comes to competitive international sports, I'm really worried about gene doping.
Now everyone has a little phone and it's way more powerful.
Technology always improves and then eventually trickles down to everybody else.
The problem is the advantages the people who are the initial early adopters will have will allow them to accumulate so much wealth and so much success that by the time it trickles down, the game will already be rigged.
That's a real worry.
It's a real concern when it comes to the haves and the have-nots, when it's implementing technology that changes your biology.
I came from a nontraditional household, kind of like a fragmented family.
My dad had two.
My mom had one.
They were married.
They had me.
And so I have no full-blooded relatives, only halves, only half siblings.
But all of us vary in athletic degree.
My sister and I, who were raised in the same household, she dabbled in basketball a little bit, was decent.
My brother, he was always the better athlete of the two of us.
He was solid, he played football, ran track.
And then my oldest sister never really played sports at all.
She grew up in the city.
But anyway, for me, growing up, I was the runt.
I was always small.
I never was really strong.
Never was a physical specimen.
I'm still not a physical specimen, but in relation to wrestling, I am.
So if you saw me play basketball, you'd be like, this dude is terrible.
He's not an athlete.
But if you see me wrestle, you're like, damn!
You know what I mean?
So it's like, in relation to what you do, You would consider yourself an athlete.
I always wonder, what pulls help someone gravitate to a particular sport?
Am I great at wrestling because I just had the frame for it?
Or did wrestling for so long help me to establish these certain dynamics of my athleticism that were unleashed and unfolded once I actually committed to the sport of wrestling?
Well, this guy's a fucking gamer too, but he's been working and you've been slacking.
You know, you've been doing things you shouldn't have done, you've been partying, you've been doing whatever, and you thought you can get by because you think you're the fucking man.
Well, he thinks he's a fucking man too, but he's been sleeping, he's been eating right.
So let's say you have a guy that is those things, all of those things.
Tremendous success.
You have a guy who's just a gamer, super talented, doesn't really want to work hard, has moderate success, can become a champion, loses his belt the very next defense.
And then you have a guy who works significantly hard, but he's not a specimen.
He just doesn't have the athleticism.
So I've seen some of the hardest working guys ever do everything that I do.
If you want him to be a leader someday, he can't have this subservient attitude and bow to authority because you've always been at his head for so long.
You have to allow him to grow up and for him to operate as a man.
And you have to treat him with respect.
You can't humiliate him in front of people.
You can't belittle him.
You have to treat him like a man.
I know it's hard.
I know he's frustrating and hard to raise, but he's six.
Sometimes it's hard when you're in the middle, like, you know, I have children, I know what it's like when you're in the middle of raising kids, like there's chaos, and this one wants attention while you're upset with this one, and then there's another one behind you breaking glasses.
That's the hardest part about this is not only how do I want to present myself to the world, how do I want to present my kids to the world?
I put some pressure on my boy.
I'm like, hey, listen, when you leave this house, you represent the bro's name.
And that's big shoes to fill.
But bro, listen, people do either one of two things.
They either fold because of pressure or they rise to expectations.
You have the ability to be great.
I'm gonna put you in position to be great.
I promise you, if you listen to your mom and dad, you will have a great life.
Because I'm going to do my due diligence with my faith, with my reading, with the things that I learned to make sure that I put you in position to be successful.
All I ask is that you work hard and that you treat people with respect and that you listen to mom and dad.
You listen to us, your life will be great.
And so I'm trying to teach him that, but he's still, you know, he's sick.
So he's combative a little bit and he's trying to figure things out.
And a lot of people, you know, they're going through it with varying degrees of stress in their life and bad relationships and You and I are both very lucky that we have good relationships.
You need a wife that understands your ambition, understands that you're driven.
And that's why my wife's been such a blessing because I was an Olympic champion before we were married.
And so initially when I was courting her, we're like, okay, where are we going to live?
What are we going to do?
Am I going to be able to continue to pursue my career?
And for a while it was a battle because, you know, she extremely smart, master's degree from Columbia in journalism, wrote for the Buffalo newspaper.
And she had to make this transition where she had built this reputation for herself to now all of a sudden she leaves her home of Buffalo, New York, comes to live with me in Lincoln, Nebraska, and no one knows her.
And so there was times where we would conflict and battle because people would be like, man, you're so lucky, like you married JB. And she'd be like, well, I had a life of my own.
I was an individual that was driven and I had people that recognized me and I've won awards and done tremendous things.
And it took a while for us to really kind of settle into this space where I encouraged her to come alongside with me and where she could kind of be that helped me and make the necessary sacrifices for our relationship.
And man, women lose so much in marriage, bro.
Like I love what we're able to do and provide as the breadwinners and make sure our families are taken care of.
But women lose so much, bro, of their identity.
They lose their name.
They lose their families.
And whatever dreams it was that they possessed before they married us, a lot of times they lose that because now they're at home with the kids, taking care of them while we're out pursuing our aspirations.
And so for me, it was important to bring my wife alongside me.
It was like, this isn't just my thing.
This is our thing.
When I wrestle, we all wrestle.
When I win, we all win.
As opposed to, hey, I got to go to practice.
See you later.
That's why wherever I go, my family comes with me.
All competitions, most training camps, because it's easy to have that conflict where When I'm in the wrestling room, I feel like I need to be with my fam.
When I'm with my fam, I feel like I need to be in the wrestling room training.
So I think the great thing about having a great wife is she understands that this is what I love to do.
This is what makes me feel purposeful and passionate.
And so she allows me to do that because she knows that when I return home, I'm going to give my best effort because I'm whole.
Because I've been able to do what I love.
And there's no resentment built up.
But if she's taking me away from that, she's going to be...
I'll be half of myself and it'd be really hard for me to co-exist.
If you're getting hit in the head, you're getting traumatic brain injuries.
There's no doubt about it.
I mean, you watch some of these fights that are so exciting.
Look, for the majority, they're going to be fine and they'll know when to get out.
And there's modalities, there's different recovery methods, there's different things you could do to try to help yourself and to achieve a healthy life.
And it can be done.
But there's guys who don't do that, and there's guys who stay in too long, and there's guys who take those extra shots to the head when they shouldn't, and there's guys who they have bad training methods where they slug it out in training.
That's real common as well.
So they're going into fights already concussed.
They're going into fights with already taking too many shots.
Some guys lose their career in the training room because in the training room they're going to war.
They're beating the shit out of each other.
They're going full blast.
And then there's other guys that are training and fighting intelligently, and they have much longer careers.
And I just follow him on social, so I don't really know personally, but it seems like he's very strategic about what he does now.
Because he's got a lot of money, right?
When you get money, you start to think about things differently.
You don't have to grind like you used to.
But you also can bring a certain level of professionalism around what it is that you do.
You know, wrestling is kind of a primitive sport where you just get in the room, bang it out for a couple hours, do a bunch of sprints on the bike, and you go home.
Where I feel like guys like Conor now, they're starting to have a nutritionist or a dietitian.
They've got wrestling coach, boxing coach, jiu-jitsu coach.
And then the camp is surrounded around him.
He's not in a room with 12, 15 other guys that are just rolling around with a single coach.
He's like, I need one training partner for each discipline and that's it.
And I think that's how it goes and that's how it should go.
You shouldn't have to take reps.
You shouldn't have to have people punching you.
You shouldn't have to have people double-legging you into the wall and putting you down.
I mean, Conor has fought at 170. He fought Cowboy at 170, but Cowboy's not really a 170. He fought Nate Diaz at 170, and Nate Diaz is not really a 170 either.
These guys are capable of making 155. I mean, obviously they weighed 170 when they fought, but But you got a guy like Kamaru Usman.
Well, the Gaethje fight really showed what he was made of because Gaethje has been able to chop everyone's legs apart and he was landing shots on Khabib.