March 16, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:59:44
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| How are you? | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| How are you, Joe? | ||
| Wonderful. | ||
| It's a pleasure to get to meet you and have you on here. | ||
| I'm a big fan. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| In a young life, you have accomplished incredible things. | ||
| For people that don't know, you won an Olympic gold medal at 17, and then you won it again four years later. | ||
| The only American boxer ever. | ||
| No boxer's ever done that, right? | ||
| No, not from America. | ||
| Just me. | ||
| You've gone multiple weight classes, and now you're considering fighting in MMA. You kind of cleared out boxing in a lot of ways. | ||
| It's always something more to be accomplished in boxing, but I'm venturing off into MMA because I really want to see, am I as great as I think I am? | ||
| And I think I am. | ||
| So I'm excited to be fighting with the PFL later on this year and just taking it from there and seeing what happens. | ||
| Well, I think when someone is as good as you are at boxing, you could basically do anything you want in life. | ||
| You just have to put the same amount of focus that you put on boxing to whatever it is that you apply yourself to. | ||
| It's rare human beings that can do what you've been able to do. | ||
| It's a rare person. | ||
| Five Ps. | ||
| Proper preparation prevents poor performance. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| So in MMA, I'm not coming over like, hey, I'm in boxing. | ||
| I'm boxing all you girls up. | ||
| It's like, I'm at Jackson Wing Gym. | ||
| You know, with Coach Jackson. | ||
| Coach Wing. | ||
| I've seen you kick the bag. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm training. | |
| I've seen you throw kicks. | ||
| I was very impressed. | ||
| I can't believe you're already that good. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| I was like, well, maybe she... | ||
| You were throwing high kicks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't know my leg can go up that high until they showed me the technique up and I was like, whoa, this shit's insane. | ||
| Do you stretch all the time? | ||
| When you were boxing, I know most athletes stretch, but having a full split is not really required to punch people. | ||
| But you obviously have very flexible legs. | ||
| I've been doing yoga for the past few months. | ||
| So I was able to kick high when I first went to Jackson Wing Gym in December. | ||
| I was able to kick high, but not for very long. | ||
| I probably would get two or three good high kicks and I'm like, yo, let's bring it down a level. | ||
| Now, from all the stretching... | ||
| When they got that pad up there and they like kick it, I just do the forearm and my leg can go up there over and over and over again just from the stretching and actually being a bit more flexible than what I was before. | ||
| So I stretch, but I stretch more serious now. | ||
| What brought you into yoga? | ||
| Really, it was the MMA fans, to be honest. | ||
| They're like, you're going to have to stretch. | ||
| And, you know, people are on there, you know, talking trash or whatever, trolls. | ||
| But they were saying, like, I read a lot of comments. | ||
| And I'm like, they're like, you know, she's going to have a problem with kicking. | ||
| She's not flexible. | ||
| Her legs are big, blah, blah. | ||
| So I would read some of that stuff and do my own research. | ||
| And I'm like, damn, they're right. | ||
| So my goal for one of my New Year's resolutions was to be able to do the splits by the end of the year. | ||
| So I have a yoga teacher, and me and her go up on Zoom twice a week, and she's having me do these stretches. | ||
| And I'm like, girl, you is something else. | ||
| Her name is Sakina. | ||
| Have you done hot yoga ever? | ||
| No, not yet. | ||
| I heard it's brutal though. | ||
| It's more of a mental thing. | ||
| It is brutal, for sure. | ||
| But one good thing about it is when you get that hot and sweaty, your muscles become really pliable and you can make really good gains that way, like in terms of flexibility. | ||
| Oh wow, maybe I should try it with Sakina. | ||
| Yeah, I always find that I'm way more flexible in hot yoga class than I am anywhere else. | ||
| You can do the splits? | ||
| Yeah, I can do the splits. | ||
| Damn, you're ahead of me. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ha! | |
| I'm old. | ||
| I started when I was 15. So you still do the splits. | ||
| Your body is like jacked up. | ||
| You should not be able to do the splits. | ||
| You should be more stiff. | ||
| There's a guy who fights for one FC that makes me look like a twig. | ||
| His name is Elaine N'Gali. | ||
| He's a Super jacked. | ||
| And he's one of the most flexible guys I've ever seen in my life. | ||
| Insanely flexible. | ||
| But flexible everywhere. | ||
| His spine is flexible. | ||
| He can bend over backwards standing and touch the back of his, like, touch his palms to the ground and then flip his feet over the top. | ||
| His Instagram's incredible. | ||
| Because he's built like a superhero. | ||
| Find his Instagram. | ||
| He's built like a freak of nature, but is incredibly flexible. | ||
| He just puts a lot of time and dedication to flexibility. | ||
| It can be done. | ||
| There he is. | ||
| Look at him. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| And when you see this guy move and you see him fight, I mean, do the video one so you can see him. | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| Go to that one right there with the dude with the blue shorts right in front where he head kicks his dude. | ||
| Watch this guy. | ||
| I mean, you see his flexibility is incredible. | ||
| But that's one thing about the kicks, though. | ||
| You really have to condition those shins for that. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Remember when I first started, I was probably like five kicks in. | ||
| I'm like, yeah. | ||
| Just the bag, right? | ||
| Yeah, just the bag itself. | ||
| Then when we went up to the pads, I'm like, coach, do you got softer pads? | ||
| Serious. | ||
| He's like, champ, these are my softest ones. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| It takes a while. | ||
|
unidentified
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It takes a minute. | |
| You see some people, they start whacking their shins with Coke bottles and stuff like that, just trying to toughen them up. | ||
| They do all kinds of things to their shoes. | ||
| I can kick really hard now. | ||
| Oh, there you are. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| Seriously. | ||
| Superman punches, everything. | ||
| Head kicks. | ||
| The thing is, some of this stuff I learned, I learned Superman punch that same day. | ||
| So when he showed me at one time, we just started doing it and he was like, you're doing good. | ||
| I can look at it now and tell you my mistakes right now, but I'm not going to say too much because I fixed them already. | ||
| But sometimes when I threw the head kicks, my hands would go down at the same time. | ||
| How did you get to Jackson Winklejohn? | ||
| Because first of all, you couldn't have picked a better gym to train at. | ||
| One of the best gyms in the world. | ||
| But what brought you there? | ||
| Actually, I've always had like... | ||
| I believe in technique and training. | ||
| People may look at me boxing and be like, oh, she's just naturally fast, she's naturally strong. | ||
| It's like, no. | ||
| I am strategically smart in boxing, and I have a lot of skill. | ||
| I may look like I'm a beast out there, but it takes a lot of skill to land those punches, body work, defense, which is... | ||
| I probably got hit three times in my last fight. | ||
| Well, you went one of your fights. | ||
| What was that woman from... | ||
| God, what was her name? | ||
| It was your first world title fight. | ||
| She was a blonde lady. | ||
| Nikki Adler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She went a whole round without landing a single punch on you. | ||
| Yeah, and I ended that fight in the fifth round. | ||
| Anybody that doesn't think that you have technique just doesn't understand boxing. | ||
| Yeah, they're just like, oh, she's a woman. | ||
| You can't respond to those people. | ||
| Yeah, they're weird. | ||
| No, you clearly have superior technique. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| No, so for MMA, I was just like, I already had signed a contract with the PFL. And now I'm like, okay, what do you have to do for the five Ps to play in effect? | ||
| And I was like, I need to get the best trainer. | ||
| And I just remember like in 2016, me and Johnny Bones, we were talking at the ESPYs and he was like, yo, you'd be the perfect boxer to come over to MMA. And I was like... | ||
| It's true. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Because you're really young. | ||
| You're 25 now? | ||
| Yeah, I turned 26 in two days. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| Yeah, super nice shit. | ||
| Well, an early happy birthday to you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So that's a perfect age because you still are capable of getting elite at all the arts. | ||
| You could get elite at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. | ||
| You can get elite at striking with kicking and Muay Thai. | ||
| You're young enough that you can do all that shit. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's just all about, like, one, having the right teachers, and also getting in there and doing it, but, I mean, having a body to do it, like, I'm glad that I didn't wait until I was, like, 35, you know, 36, because then I would just be starting. | ||
| It would set me back, and it would be like, I'm going in here starting new, and my body isn't even in its prime. | ||
| Like, right now, I don't think that my body has peaked yet. | ||
| Like, where I've been as strong as I can be, as fast as I can be, I still think, like, I'm like right there. | ||
| I just haven't touched where I'm like, okay, this is the best my body can be at. | ||
| I haven't touched that yet. | ||
| They think a pro athlete, your prime is somewhere between 28 and 32, I think they said. | ||
| Because that's when your body lines up with your brain. | ||
| I was hoping it was 26. Maybe it is 26. I was hoping. | ||
| Tyson won the world title at 20. Yeah, right. | ||
| It's like John Jones won the world title at 22. It's like, you can, or is it 23? | ||
| Is John Jones 22 or 23? | ||
| He's the youngest ever UFC champion. | ||
| I feel like he was 21. Am I true? | ||
| No, no, he wasn't 21. He was either 22 or 23. 23. 23, okay. | ||
| Because before that, I think it was Josh Barnett, and he won the heavyweight title, I think it was 24. Yeah. | ||
| It's different for everybody. | ||
| Some people peak young. | ||
| Some people, as they get older, they get smarter. | ||
| So they understand their body better. | ||
| So maybe their body doesn't quite work as well as it did when they were 24, but they're a better athlete at 30 or 32 just because they know what to do and how to do it better. | ||
| They have a better communication with their body. | ||
| But that's like what you're doing by doing yoga and even by expanding into martial arts. | ||
| That's the key. | ||
| It's like keeping your body doing different things and then you understand your body more the more different stuff you do with it. | ||
| So when did you start training in MMA? December. | ||
| Just December? | ||
| And how often are you doing it? | ||
| I was at Jackson Wing Gym three weeks at a time. | ||
| So I'd be there three weeks, go home a week, come back three weeks, go home a week, come back three weeks. | ||
| I was doing that because I really just... | ||
| I like to just have my time where I'm at home with my family, with my boyfriend. | ||
| I don't like just training, training, training, training. | ||
| Like, it should have drive you crazy. | ||
| So I'm like, I gotta leave. | ||
| So now, starting back after my birthday in April... | ||
| I'll be up in Jackson Wink for three weeks, but I'll only go home weekend. | ||
| So I'll be there three weeks, then go home for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. | ||
| Fight back Sunday, be there three weeks again until I have my actual fight. | ||
| So is the plan to continue boxing as well as fighting in MMA? Yeah, the overall goal for me is to be champion in boxing and be a champion in MMA at the same time. | ||
| Once that's done, then I don't know what else I could possibly do. | ||
| Like, that'd be like the end game for me. | ||
| Like, that's it. | ||
| So, I know I can be champion in boxing, which is very easy to do because I already accomplished so much in boxing, and the girls just can't fuck with me in boxing. | ||
| Let's keep it real. | ||
| MMA? But it's true, but it's true. | ||
| You know, I mean, you've had a couple interesting moments in fights, but you know, you've won. | ||
| I've had one interesting moment in the fight. | ||
| The one you got knocked down. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Other than that, I still whooped her ass 10 rounds. | ||
| You did whip her ass. | ||
| And then Christina Hammer was supposed to be the big, tall giant from Germany to come over here and slay the dragon. | ||
| And she got beat up pretty bad, too. | ||
| She got overwhelmed when she started clinching you. | ||
| You could tell. | ||
| When she got close to you, she just wanted to hold on. | ||
| I thought the ref should have stopped that fight. | ||
| Eighth round, she didn't respond to ten punches in a corner. | ||
| Ten. | ||
| It was like she was out of there. | ||
| And I think she jumped in, said that the round had ended. | ||
| But it was like, no, you need to be stopping this. | ||
| She's done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She was able to hold on and whatever for, you know, two more rounds. | ||
| But I thought eighth round, I thought it was over. | ||
| Like, I started celebrating. | ||
| I was jumping up and down. | ||
| Me and my coach jumped in the ring. | ||
| We were hugging. | ||
| And all of a sudden, they're like, no, no, no, the fight's the one. | ||
| I'm like, what the hell just happened? | ||
| So, yeah, it's confusing. | ||
| That was a weird moment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Was that a satisfying one for you because she was talking so much shit before, so... | ||
| It's not even about, like, the shit talking, really. | ||
| It was just about, like, how dare you guys compare her to me? | ||
| That's what it was for me. | ||
| It was like, I had watched film of her, and I had my eyes set on her since I was 17, before I even had turned pro. | ||
| And I knew then, when I was 17, I could have beat her. | ||
| So now that I'm, you know, I was like 22 or whatever, 23, it was like... | ||
| What the hell do she do that make you guys think she can beat me? | ||
| Like, either I'm just a terrible boxer, or you guys just, I don't know, think she's that good. | ||
| I think sometimes when someone's overwhelming like you are, people try to pump up challengers in a way that they don't even really believe. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I'm just going to be honest. | ||
| I've had to do that before. | ||
| Doing commentary. | ||
| Pretend. | ||
| There were certain dudes that I knew they were going to fight an accomplished champion and you knew they were fucked. | ||
| And so you have to kind of play their strong points, but if you caught me alone, and it was just you and me, and it was like, no recording equipment? | ||
| I'd be like, he's fucked! | ||
| But you can't necessarily say that because he's disrespectful to the opponent and because you want to kind of make it exciting. | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm a hype man. | ||
| That's what I'm trying to do. | ||
| If Jon Jones is fighting someone and I think Jon Jones is going to slaughter him, I'm going to point out the guy's strong points. | ||
| I'll point out Jon's strong points and I'll point out the guy's strong points and what he has to do and what he can do and where he excels. | ||
| But... | ||
| Sometimes they don't really believe that shit. | ||
| And with you, I think the problem is they're always trying to sell fights, right? | ||
| But it's hard to sell when you... | ||
| Here's everybody else, right? | ||
| Here's you. | ||
| You're so advanced in comparison, technique-wise, ability-wise, accomplishments-wise. | ||
| There's not a lot of competition for you in boxing where people are calling out for... | ||
| Other than... | ||
| Occasionally people start talking about Leila Ali, right? | ||
| Occasionally that comes up. | ||
| Well, she's, you know... | ||
| She's retired. | ||
| She's retired. | ||
| And she's retired for a long time. | ||
| 43. Yeah. | ||
| And this is the thing I don't respect about that, right? | ||
| I hate when somebody else tries to take somebody else's shine, somebody else's attention. | ||
| You know, it's like... | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| She's, you know, nobody was trying to take her attention when it was her time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's what I didn't like about Hammer either. | ||
| When I went in a world title fight, why are you jumping in the ring talking about some you beat us both? | ||
| You say congrats and get the fuck out the ring. | ||
| You know, but she's getting there being disrespectful. | ||
| And then Layla gets upset because I become an undisputed champion. | ||
| She's never been undisputed. | ||
| And people are comparing me to her. | ||
| And she gets offended. | ||
| And when it was like... | ||
| To me, I thought it was a good comparison because I feel like I boxed way better than her. | ||
| And for them to be saying that me and her are equal or whatever, she should have been happy because of that. | ||
| Because they're giving her more props on her skills, which I feel like she didn't really have that much. | ||
| But, you know, whatever. | ||
| It was like, I never really had a problem with it. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, it's like, she's talking about she'll knock me out and my record and this and that. | ||
| And I just was like... | ||
| Hate her. | ||
| That's all I kept thinking to myself. | ||
| Hate her. | ||
| And I would have loved to fight her, but at the end of the day, I'm an active fighter. | ||
| She's retired. | ||
| So when people bring her up, like, I don't want to have to keep saying that I beat her because I think it's evident. | ||
| But at the same time, it's like, look, it was she had her time. | ||
| This is my time. | ||
| They don't even correlate with each other. | ||
| Yeah, when was the last time she fought? | ||
| It was like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| 2016 or something? | ||
| See if you can find Layla Ali's last professional boxing fight. | ||
| You said 2016. You thinking real? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| She's been retired like 13, 12 years. | ||
| Has it been that long? | ||
| Yeah, like I think her last fight was 2001. Was it really? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| 2007. Wow, I was way off. | ||
| You said 2012, I might say what? | ||
| 2007. I started boxing in 2006. I was like 11 years old when I started boxing. | ||
| So that means I was 12. So basically she retired when she was like 30. Yeah, which I tell people all the time. | ||
| I think that that kind of eats at her, you know? | ||
| She retired at 29, 30 in boxing when she was on top, you know? | ||
| And it was a lot of girls who wanted to fight her. | ||
| She left without fighting Ann Wolfe, left without fighting a girl named LaTisha Robinson. | ||
| It was a few girls who she didn't fight. | ||
| Ann Wolfe was the scariest in her day. | ||
| Ann Wolfe is still scary to me now. | ||
|
unidentified
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She's so scary. | |
| Remember she was training James Kirkland, screaming at him in the corner? | ||
| She's a terrifying trainer. | ||
| She's an amazing trainer. | ||
| Terrifying trainer and terrifying boxer, too. | ||
| She has, in my opinion, the most spectacular one-punch knockout in the history of women's boxing. | ||
| I said history of boxing. | ||
| Like, that punch there was like, what the fuck? | ||
| I mean, I dreamed to get a knockout like that. | ||
| Like, I thought my last fight, I'm like, that's my dream. | ||
| I want to knock this girl out like Ant-Wolf knocked out Bonda Ward. | ||
| That was my whole thing, but it's like, I feel for that she retired kind of early. | ||
| So, everybody always compared whoever was next up to her. | ||
| But it was like, still, you're retired. | ||
| Yeah, I understand. | ||
| Nobody, nobody, it's nobody's fault because you're retired. | ||
| Have you ever worked with Ant-Wolf? | ||
| No, I would love to, though. | ||
| Yeah, I would love to see that. | ||
| Yeah, I think she needs to just show me, like, how to sleep a girl. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| Man, I'm talking about this girl. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| Time and the power, everything. | ||
| Ann Wolf was a monster. | ||
| And it's really interesting when she was training, because her work ethic, you could see it when she was training other fighters. | ||
| She demanded some serious work from them, and she had so much intensity. | ||
| It was only one thing she said one time, because I watched a few of her documentaries when she was training James Kirkland and training herself. | ||
| She said, you want to break a fighter down and then build them back up. | ||
| And that's something I've never been a real fan of. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Some fighters, you got to know which fighter you're training. | ||
| Some fighters can deal with being broken down. | ||
| But when you break a fighter down mentally, the next thing to go, well, break their body down, the next thing to go is their mind. | ||
| Some people don't have strong minds to where they can actually get built back up. | ||
| You know, for me, I'm afraid that I believe in hard work, but I also believe in like, okay, this is just too much. | ||
| I gotta take a break. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, and I've always listened to my body. | ||
| Like, I got fined at the Olympic Training Center for telling them, like, look, I'm not running another fucking sprint. | ||
| Like, my legs are tight. | ||
| I'm sore. | ||
| I'm not running. | ||
| And they fined me $500, but guess what? | ||
| They fined you for not training? | ||
| Like, not listening to your body? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, but they were saying like, oh, you need to go see a doctor. | ||
| You need to get a doctor's note. | ||
| And I'm like, well, but the doctor couldn't get me in until three days. | ||
| I'm like, well, in three days, I'm not doing anything. | ||
| And they fined me for that. | ||
| But when I went to see the doctor, he said, one more sprint. | ||
| You would have tore something. | ||
| He said, you would have tore your calf. | ||
| You would've popped your calf muscle and I'm like, well here go the note, get my fucking money back! | ||
| How do they, I don't understand, how can they fine you for listening to your body? | ||
| Like how do they know how you feel? | ||
| It's just more athletes, you don't really fine greats, you know what I mean? | ||
| It's more athletes who really complain to get out of training and fake injuries than you have those who don't fake injuries and actually take the sport serious. | ||
| But is that really prevalent to the point where they have to find people at the Olympics? | ||
| I was fine. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| But that's where I was just like, that was my Muhammad Ali moments where I'm like, I don't care what you guys do. | ||
| I'm not going to injure myself because you guys don't believe what I'm saying. | ||
| I know what I feel and I couldn't run. | ||
| Or sprint for almost like three weeks. | ||
| How does it get to a point where they find you? | ||
| What do they tell you? | ||
| Do they come up to you and they say, you have to do these training routines that we're asking you to do? | ||
| Because they're not your trainers, right? | ||
| You're at the Olympics. | ||
| No, we're at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado. | ||
| So I was staying there. | ||
| And we're in preparation for a tournament coming up. | ||
| And they had a schedule for us. | ||
| We get up in the morning at 6 o'clock, go run. | ||
| We all get on the bus to go to the track to run. | ||
| How much time are you there for? | ||
| I lived in Olympic Training Center for two years. | ||
| You lived there for two years? | ||
| Two years. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, from 2014 to 2016. Wow. | ||
| So I was there, and I would rarely go home. | ||
| But while I was there, so they had a schedule. | ||
| We work out at 6, we train again at 1, and sparring at 7. So they had our stuff set up. | ||
| And I just was like, look, I'll do the training, I'll do the sparring, but I cannot run. | ||
| And they just were not listening. | ||
| I'm like, look, after we get done running, I can barely walk. | ||
| Like, my legs are so tight. | ||
| They're so stiff. | ||
| And they're like, well, we got running them around in the morning. | ||
| I'm like, I won't be there. | ||
| And they were trying to get you to do sprints as well. | ||
| It's not just... | ||
| It's sprint workout. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I'm like, I'm telling you, I will not be there. | ||
| So they find you. | ||
| Yeah, once I didn't show up. | ||
| That seems crazy to me. | ||
| Especially someone who's as accomplished as you. | ||
| They must know that you know your body. | ||
| People like to pick on the greats. | ||
| I mean, once we... | ||
| I remember... | ||
| Do you remember that USA Boxing had switched over coaches? | ||
| They had went from having American coaches to having a coach from Ireland. | ||
| His name was Billy Walsh. | ||
| He came over... | ||
| Me and him have a great relationship now. | ||
| I love Billy. | ||
| But when I first met him... | ||
| He was super hard on me because he just thought, oh, she's Olympic gold medalist. | ||
| She's not going to listen. | ||
| She thinks, you know, she knows everything. | ||
| And that's just what he interpreted off of wherever he did his research at. | ||
| And he came to the U.S. with that kind of attitude toward me. | ||
| And he said something to me. | ||
| I think we were talking. | ||
| He was like, it's going to be harder for you to win a second Olympics than it was for you to win the first time. | ||
| And he said, you're going to need to listen to me in order to do it. | ||
| And I looked at him and I said, well, one. | ||
| Let's get something straight. | ||
| Don't ever fucking talk to me like that. | ||
| You don't know me like that. | ||
| Let's get that straight. | ||
| And secondly, it's not going to be hard to win a second Olympics because one, I'm taller now. | ||
| I'm faster. | ||
| I'm smarter. | ||
| And I've been undefeated since I was 17 years old. | ||
| So... | ||
| Just the way that I like to speak things into existence is, I told myself all the time, 2016 Olympics is going to be way easier than 2012. And that was my mindset. | ||
| So when he came to me and said that, it was like, whoa, wrong engine, man. | ||
| No. | ||
| And that's to let him know, like, you don't talk to me like that. | ||
| You only talk positive shit. | ||
| Because what I'm doing is already hard enough. | ||
| But I don't need no doubters in my corner. | ||
| And that's just how I told him. | ||
| And he just was like, we'll see. | ||
| And I said, we sure in the hell will see. | ||
| And we did. | ||
| Yes, he did. | ||
| So this is like what you mean when you're talking about Ann Wolfe's philosophy of breaking someone down physically. | ||
| You don't think it's wise to break someone down physically. | ||
| No, I think it's wise to work hard and, you know, push your limits. | ||
| But when somebody's breaking somebody down to where they, like, when they go home, they feel like they can't walk, their body is sore, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, to me, that's discouraging. | ||
| And, like, when I get too sore, I don't come back to the gym and train for two or three days. | ||
| It's like, I'm scared to get injured. | ||
| You know, I'm scared of having to... | ||
| Pop something, hurt something. | ||
| So I was like, I believe in recovering. | ||
| So I'm going to work hard, but I'm also going to be smart about it. | ||
| But when you break down somebody's body, it can be discouraging for some people. | ||
| For me, I learned myself. | ||
| And that's discouraging. | ||
| You know, if I had to go to the gym and punch the back, but my legs is sore as hell, my legs got to hold me up. | ||
| So it's like, I don't even want to be here. | ||
| And if I go to the gym and let's say my arms are so tired, but my legs is full of energy, it's still discouraging because it's like, okay, my legs are holding up, but my punches won't. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Won't go. | ||
| So I like to feel good during training. | ||
| I feel like that's when you get the best results. | ||
| Do you think there's a fine line between pushing yourself so that your body keeps getting stronger and so your endurance keeps increasing your capacity, but knowing when you're just working too hard and breaking things down and it's not beneficial at all and you actually lose progress? | ||
| And that's possible. | ||
| It's a thing that's called overtraining. | ||
| And I think that sometimes, us as athletes, we push ourselves so hard. | ||
| And I'm one of those people. | ||
| I didn't get a massage ever in my life until I was 17. And I was boxing since I was 11 years old. | ||
| And not boxing against girls or sparring against girls. | ||
| I sparred against guys. | ||
| Grown men. | ||
| Like, I was 15 in the ring sparring against guys who's 28, 29, who done knocked out other grown men. | ||
| I'm in the gym knocking them out. | ||
| So, it was like, now... | ||
| I went all those years without ever getting a massage, without really stretching. | ||
| Just hard work, dedication. | ||
| And like my boxing coach, Jason Crushfield at the time, I mean, he was brutal. | ||
| He treated me like I was a guy. | ||
| So if the boys sparred twice a day, I sparred with them twice a day. | ||
| If we ran four miles, I ran four. | ||
| It wasn't no three miles. | ||
| You can be on your period, whatever. | ||
| You do what they do. | ||
| You don't get no slack. | ||
| And also, he was the one that was like, you better come in first place. | ||
| When we're running, you better come in first place. | ||
| You better whip everybody ass in sparring. | ||
| You better be here at the gym on time. | ||
| I mean, he was just that hard on me. | ||
| So now when I'm at the gym sometime, I'm like, yo, I'm not ever going to train that hard again. | ||
| He's like, I'm going to train, but I have like, I just have like that I have that cutoff switch where it's like, look, I know that this is too much. | ||
| Like, I tell my coaches now, like, see, my coach has to really set up sparring for me because I'm like, I won't spar. | ||
| He's like, I don't care for sparring. | ||
| It's like, I get in there with guys, right? | ||
| And they look at me and they're like, oh, she's a girl, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And they don't respect that I have power and I got speed and I got skill. | ||
| So I get in there with a guy who thinks he gonna be all like this and I punch him and now he like, oh. | ||
| So now he really wanna fight. | ||
| So now this sparring match has turned into a fight and I'm dropping dudes with body shots. | ||
| I mean, I'm dropping them with big right hands. | ||
| They're throwing shots at me. | ||
| I gotta be on my P's and Q's. | ||
| And it's like after the sparring match, I'm like, damn, that was... | ||
| Probably tougher than my fights. | ||
| You know, so now it's like next day I come to training and coach like, oh, we got 10 rounds on a bag and 10 rounds on pads. | ||
| And I'm like, coach, yesterday I just sparred 12 rounds with my dude. | ||
| Like, you really won 20 rounds today? | ||
| Like, I'm sore. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And he's just like, yeah, that's what we got. | ||
| So I do it, but I also make sure that once I leave the gym, I can either go run or I can do recovery. | ||
| And I always choose recovery because I'm like... | ||
| I feel like that's just best for my men to know. | ||
| Like, alright, I took an ice bath. | ||
| My legs feel good. | ||
| I ice my shoulders and my back feel good. | ||
| I like to feel good training. | ||
| And that's just the main thing for me. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| Like, sparring, Coach John will tell you, I don't care for sparring. | ||
| It's not something that I need. | ||
| I feel like, like, do you know how to fight? | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| So why do I need to spar? | ||
| I think once I spar and I see that I'm in shape for 10 rounds for two minutes, then that's it. | ||
| If I spar 10 rounds and I get tired in the eighth round, I'm like, okay, I need to maybe spar a little bit more. | ||
| But sparring is like the last thing I care to do. | ||
| Do you think it's because you... | ||
| For some athletes, they need people to push them in order to reach their full potential. | ||
| But you obviously understand yourself. | ||
| You obviously know your body very, very well. | ||
| And you've shown that you rise to the occasion in fights and that you've been in great condition in fights and that you put in the work necessary to be great. | ||
| So do you think that sometimes coaches have this almost like... | ||
| They have a one-size-fits-all philosophy. | ||
| Maybe this dude doesn't work hard enough, so they're going to push him until he breaks, and then they try to apply that shit to you, and you're like, hey, hey, hey, I know what I'm doing. | ||
| Is that what you feel? | ||
| Yeah, it's like people got to realize that when you have fighters, you have to learn them like you learned your children. | ||
| I was one of the kids growing up. | ||
| You hit me with a belt, I never talk to you again. | ||
| I was one of those kids. | ||
| You're better off talking to me. | ||
| If you talk to me and tell them I did wrong, I won't do it again. | ||
| But to hit me with a belt, I won't do it again, but I'm not talking to you no more. | ||
| Right. | ||
| See, my sister was one of those kids, you hit her with a belt, she liked the attention. | ||
| So she'd do more bad shit. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| So that was my sister. | ||
| People tried to apply her to me. | ||
| And then we had my little brother who I really grew up protecting and... | ||
| He didn't get whoopings or nothing, which he probably needed a few more than what he got, to be honest. | ||
| But my mom noticed that. | ||
| My mom noticed that. | ||
| So my mom didn't whoop my sister. | ||
| My mom never whooped me. | ||
| And my little brother probably had, like, he was the youngest, so he probably had a few whoopings because he was the baby, right? | ||
|
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But she learned all of us. | |
| But my dad... | ||
| I thought that, you know, he wasn't my sister. | ||
| My dad won me one time. | ||
| And I had a whole fit. | ||
| I was 11 years old. | ||
| I told him I'd never talk to him again. | ||
| I don't like him. | ||
| I hate him. | ||
| And this was me, 11 years old. | ||
| And for the next few months, whenever I seen him, we went over his house. | ||
| It was holidays. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| He just seemed like it really messed up our relationship for a few months. | ||
| And I was 11 years old, so my dad never hit me with a belt again. | ||
| And this is because my sister broke a broom on me. | ||
| Me and my sister were fighting. | ||
| She grabbed a broom, hit me with a broom. | ||
| It broke. | ||
| And of course, I beat her up. | ||
| But my mom called my dad. | ||
| I'm like, they over here fighting, and it's their second broom, and they done broke it a week. | ||
| So my dad comes over there. | ||
| It's actually my 11th birthday. | ||
| Yeah, and he brings me a pencil. | ||
| Happy birthday, you got a pencil. | ||
| And my mom said they broke another broom. | ||
| So my dad, like y'all over here breaking brooms, and I'm explaining to him, like, no, she broke the broom on me. | ||
| I didn't break the broom. | ||
| My dad whoops both of us. | ||
| And I was just highly upset. | ||
| And I didn't, I mean, for the next couple months, I just was like, I don't fuck with you, bro. | ||
| He's lucky it only lasted a couple months. | ||
| No, so when I'm talking about fighters, right? | ||
| You have to learn the kind of fighters. | ||
| I'm not the fighter who you have to yell and scream at to get something done. | ||
| I'll get up by myself at 8 in the morning and go run. | ||
| I'll work out. | ||
| I'll show up at the gym all the time. | ||
| You don't have to scream and yell at me to get your point across. | ||
| Talk. | ||
| Let's have some communication. | ||
| I always hated being yelled at. | ||
| But my first boxing coach, Jason, sometime, it was so many of us at the gym. | ||
| He just applied the same thing to all of us. | ||
| But he never really yelled at me, though. | ||
| And then when I got older... | ||
| He wanted to apply that kind of communication toward me, and that's why we ended up not working together no more. | ||
| Because it was like, I'm grown. | ||
| I'm 18. You're not about to be yelling at me and trying to embarrass me in front of the gym and stuff like that. | ||
| He was like a father to me, so it was like, you got something to say to me, me and you can talk. | ||
| Don't air my business out in front of the whole gym. | ||
| But that's what he was used to doing to everybody over the years, and I just think that I don't know. | ||
| When I got older, he just was like, I'm just going to communicate with everybody on the same level. | ||
| And he thought that it would kind of be easier for him, I guess. | ||
| But it's like a different communication that we had between each other. | ||
| So I didn't like it. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, the one-size-fits-all philosophy. | ||
| And I like what you said, that it is like your children. | ||
| Every child is different. | ||
| When you set up a fight, like if a fight is set up for you and you have 8, 12 weeks, whatever you need, are you organizing your schedule? | ||
| Are you doing your strength and condition? | ||
| Are you organizing everything or do you have someone who does all that stuff for you? | ||
| I do all that myself. | ||
| You do all of it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've always done all of it. | ||
| I think now at the time of my career, I really need an entourage, for real. | ||
| I need an entourage. | ||
| What kind of entourage do you need? | ||
| I mean, I need a person, okay, a person to keep me entertained. | ||
| You need like a jester? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| I need somebody to, you know, wash my clothes from me, get my bag together. | ||
| I need somebody to make sure I got all my vitamins and water and stuff in the bag. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because... | |
| You need a Bondini Brown. | ||
| You need a hype person. | ||
| A hype person, too. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, just for when I'm like... | ||
| I need somebody to talk to people who are at the door. | ||
| Like, I hate going to clubs and having to say, Hey, bro, I'm the champ, Clarissa Shields, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| You should know who I am. | ||
| Like, I just get mad. | ||
| So I would rather have somebody right there who's like, hey man, it's the champ. | ||
| Look at her belts. | ||
| Just holding the belts and you know, so I don't have to say the shit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Just walk in with all the belts. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| Just carry them on both arms. | ||
| Just to get the respect, you know, but I think I need like maybe like a... | ||
| Five, six people. | ||
| The problem is... | ||
| It costs, huh? | ||
| It's not just that it costs. | ||
| Then you have psychological issues. | ||
| You have all these people around you. | ||
| And you have to manage the ecosystem of all these people. | ||
| So they don't get along with them. | ||
| And one person doesn't get along with another person. | ||
| Then they come to you. | ||
| Claressa, this girl's fucking up. | ||
| And this, that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And then you have to deal with that. | ||
| That's why I only had one person with me. | ||
| I just got an assistant in my last fight. | ||
| Her name's Leah. | ||
| And she was so helpful throughout my camp. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Perfect. | |
| Keep her. | ||
| Just one. | ||
| But then it was like, when she doesn't feel like dealing with me, then what? | ||
| Well, get a new Leah. | ||
| Get a new Leah. | ||
| No, I mean like dealing with me as far as I can be pretty shut down when I get closer to fight life. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, she should understand you. | ||
| A little, but it's like sometimes I want to talk, sometimes I don't. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's like she don't know which one. | ||
| Like my best friend Nene, if she was able to be in camp with me, everything would work out. | ||
| What does Nene do? | ||
| Nene has a, what are those things called that take care of older people? | ||
| Like a rest home? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She owns one of those. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So she does like a lot of like... | ||
| So she's busy. | ||
| Yeah, she's busy. | ||
| And she's pregnant right now. | ||
| Oh, she's double busy. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| So Nene can't come in with you on the road. | ||
| No, can't come in with you on the road. | ||
| I wish. | ||
| But it is a thing, right? | ||
| Like you need to manage to have the least amount of stress and problems in your camp as humanly possible, right? | ||
| Yeah, and that's what I've been doing for so many years. | ||
| But then sometimes it's like, is everybody just lonely at the top? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and it's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| Everybody says it, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, but do it gotta be true? | ||
| I think it does. | ||
| I mean, Floyd isn't lonely. | ||
| Floyd? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's got like an entourage everywhere he goes. | ||
| He's figured it out. | ||
| And that's why I need to talk to him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And ask him, like, what is the secret? | ||
| He's a unique dude, though. | ||
| He's figured out a lot of things in a different way. | ||
| We're all unique. | ||
| I don't know about all that. | ||
| I'm not a hater. | ||
| But I'm just thinking, what Floyd has done that's very... | ||
| First of all, Floyd figured out a way to fight defensively, but still be exciting because people want him to lose. | ||
| Like Floyd, if you go back to Pretty Boy Floyd when he was younger, he was very aggressive and knocked a lot of guys up. | ||
| Then had a lot of hand problems. | ||
| Then as he gets older, fights far more defensively, but talks way more shit and shows all his watches and shows all his money and shows all his jets and all that shit. | ||
| And people want him to lose because he's so flashy. | ||
| But people were paying money to see all these different people beat him. | ||
| So he made more money by fighting defensively responsibly and by fighting... | ||
| You go through the history of boxing. | ||
| There's never been a single human being that won as many titles as Floyd in men's boxing that has been hit as few times as he has. | ||
| That's probably true. | ||
| 50 and up. | ||
| 49 in Conor McGregor. | ||
| The 50th fight. | ||
| I mean, he went nine rounds to 50. It's real, but Conor had zero professional boxing fights. | ||
| It's almost unfair. | ||
| But it was a fight, and Conor can crack. | ||
| He's an MMA fighter. | ||
| He's a good fighter. | ||
| He's a very good fighter. | ||
| But Floyd went all those fights against... | ||
| I mean, the only times he ever got hit, Maidana hit him. | ||
| Sugar Shane Mosley hit him. | ||
| Demarcus Corley hit him. | ||
| He had a few fights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Demarcus Corley. | |
| Yeah, Chop Chop Crowley. | ||
| Remember him? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He caught him. | ||
| He caught Floyd. | ||
| He had him in trouble. | ||
| But Floyd was so clever. | ||
| He was so... | ||
| Even when he got hit, he just knew how to protect himself. | ||
| And then he slowly started putting all their moves and their distance and their timing into his computer. | ||
| And next thing you know, he's shutting them down. | ||
| And that's what he did with Sugar Shane. | ||
| He learned that as he got older, he seemed like, okay, I may not be as fast as I was here, but I can still do this. | ||
|
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|
I can still do that. | |
| I mean, I think his eyes is like... | ||
| His eyes is what set him apart from everybody. | ||
| When he fought against Canelo, I'm like, Canelo's a great fighter. | ||
| Even though he was younger, Canelo's a great fighter. | ||
| I thought it was too early for Canelo, but I was still excited to see the fight. | ||
| Just the way that he went out there and schooled him, defensively and offensively, I was like, man. | ||
| But to see Canelo now, people say, he could beat Floyd. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| You still can't. | ||
| Because Floyd, the way that his mind works, the way that mine works, if I get in there with you one time, I learn you, the next fight will be easier. | ||
| Don't you think Canelo's way different now, though? | ||
| He's way different, but still cannot underestimate the skill of Floyd. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| I agree with you. | ||
| But I think Floyd did a smart thing. | ||
| One, he made Canelo cut weight. | ||
| I think he got down to 152, right? | ||
| Wasn't that the weight they agreed to? | ||
| Yeah, but it was a fight at 54. Yeah. | ||
| Right, but didn't he make him fight to 52? | ||
| I think he made him drop two more pounds or some shit like that. | ||
| He was very clever. | ||
| Caught him when he was young, which is very clever. | ||
| He's done that with a lot of fighters. | ||
| He's done smart things like Manny Pacquiao. | ||
| Weights and weights and weights and weights. | ||
| Doesn't set the fight up. | ||
| He wouldn't be Manny Pacquiao like that anyway, though. | ||
| Maybe he would've. | ||
| Maybe he would've. | ||
| But the way he did... | ||
| Maybe or would he have? | ||
| Listen, he won. | ||
| They fought. | ||
| He won. | ||
| That's all we know. | ||
| Pacquiao got so many excuses after. | ||
| Like, look, you can't have an excuse of, oh, Pacquiao's old, but then Pacquiao comes back and beat Keith Thurman, and everybody's like, oh, Pacquiao's not old no more. | ||
| It's like, nah, he's old. | ||
| He's still a good fighter, and he beat a young fighter like Keith Thurman. | ||
| Floyd Mayweather is just that great. | ||
| Well, I agree. | ||
| Listen, I'm a gigantic Floyd Mayweather fan. | ||
| I'm just saying, he's clever in when he schedules these matchups. | ||
| Like, he didn't catch Manny Pacquiao when Manny Pacquiao was in his prime. | ||
| He caught him after Juan Manuel Marquez knocked him out. | ||
| He was smart. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did he? | |
| He fought him after that knockout? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes. | |
| Oh, yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Are you sure? | ||
| Yeah, I'm sure. | ||
| We can go look. | ||
| We'll pull it up. | ||
| Look that up. | ||
| So wait. | ||
| 99% positive. | ||
| So Floyd, so you're saying... | ||
| I'm just saying Floyd, he's the cleverest guy in boxing. | ||
| Yeah, he is. | ||
| In terms of how to do things and when to do things. | ||
| I mean, he's made the most. | ||
| He's made a billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, a lot of money. | |
| He's made a billion dollars in boxing. | ||
| Who the fuck's ever done that? | ||
| I think he's the only one. | ||
| Yeah, he's probably the only one. | ||
| Yeah, he's the only one. | ||
| Do you got his schedule? | ||
| For some reason, it doesn't have his fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| That's outrageous. | ||
| How is that possible? | ||
| That can't be true. | ||
| Wikipedia doesn't have his? | ||
| It's like they're not there. | ||
| What? | ||
| It has this election stuff. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Election stuff? | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| What election stuff? | ||
| Manny Pacquiao's the president, right? | ||
| Oh, oh, oh, oh. | ||
| We'll go to Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| But wait, I need to go to BoxRec. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you want me to see... | |
| It was the order of this. | ||
| It would just show Pacquiao. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| So it literally doesn't have his professional boxing record? | ||
| Not in the order. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| Give me a second. | ||
| Yeah, if you go to BoxRec, you should have it on there. | ||
| That's the strangest shit I've ever heard. | ||
| How could they only have his... | ||
| His election shit from the Philippines and not have his boxing record in his Wikipedia. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Oh, here we go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See, there it is. | ||
| Oh, so they fought twice and Jimmy fought Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wait, they fought three times, though. | ||
| Yeah, they fought three times. | ||
| So where's the third one at? | ||
| The third one is... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Wow, I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that was the big criticism for Floyd, was that he fought him after he was done, supposedly. | ||
| And Marquez knocked him out. | ||
| But there's also a lot of shit going on with that fight. | ||
| Because that was when Marquez started working out with Manny Pacquiao's old trainer, who many people accused of using magical supplements. | ||
| And they had said that he had used them on Manny, and then Manny stopped using them, and then Marquez started using them. | ||
| But that was another thing that they were saying, like, Floyd didn't want to fight Manny Pacquiao because he didn't know if he was clean. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, he won. | ||
| That's a legitimate statement. | ||
| It's legitimate. | ||
| Yeah, it's legitimate. | ||
| I mean, he won eight different world titles in eight different weight classes, which is kind of crazy. | ||
| To carry his power all throughout... | ||
| You know, all those different weight classes. | ||
| It's pretty nuts. | ||
| He just got better as time went on, though. | ||
| That's true, too. | ||
| I mean, even his technique, he worked with Freddie Roach. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I watched Benny Pacquiao. | ||
| And to me, he's just like a fighter who comes forward and throws a lot of punches. | ||
| But, I mean, the dude got some great footwork, though. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And a really good jab. | ||
| He's got calves that are that big. | ||
| I mean, he got calves like he played soccer or something. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| Well, I think that's a lot of his power, right? | ||
| It's his movement and also his ability to thrust off and drive off those calves and legs. | ||
| But he's a great fighter. | ||
| I mean, there's no doubt about it. | ||
| Bottom line is, they fought once, Floyd beat him. | ||
| They're talking about fighting again. | ||
| I mean, I think at this point in time, Floyd's just collecting checks, right? | ||
| He's willing to fight YouTube stars and anybody else. | ||
| He's just having fun. | ||
| Us as fighters, we like to have that attention and spotlight, right? | ||
| So after you see other fighters getting that attention that you used to get, you always feel like, you know what? | ||
| You really want those eyeballs and you want that attention. | ||
| It's kind of like how we feel about... | ||
| Instagram or Twitter, those endorphins. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Us as fighters get that from fans. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's probably what led me to do MMA. After not fighting for 14 months and having the opportunity to come with MMA, it's like, okay, now I get double opportunities to impress my fans now to do MMA and then also do boxing. | ||
| It's like double after not fighting for a long time. | ||
| So I'm kind of getting all the... | ||
| Getting all the stuff that I need back. | ||
| You know, all the attention and all the eyes. | ||
| But us as fighters, sometimes we need that. | ||
| That's why it's hard for us to retire. | ||
| That's probably also why Laila Ali started talking shit about you. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| She didn't talk to nobody else after all these 13 years. | ||
| Well, there's no one else that's going to get any attention. | ||
| The thing is, look, let's go over the history of famous women boxers, right? | ||
| You had Christy Martin was one of the most high-profile ones because she was out there. | ||
| But Lucia Riker was the one that she was always scared of. | ||
| Lucia Riker was the killer. | ||
| She was a woman from Holland who was... | ||
| Fucking a lot of girls up. | ||
| She's a beast. | ||
| She was a beast. | ||
| And she was also a Muay Thai champion. | ||
| Or maybe Dutch kickboxing. | ||
| But either way, when she went and tried to get that fight, they never made that fight. | ||
| So there's always like, women fighters have always, for unfortunate reasons, have had a limited number of rivals. | ||
| There's not a lot of high profile people like you out there. | ||
| I feel like that's not true though. | ||
| Well, who's a high profile like you in women's boxing? | ||
| I mean, we're talking about me. | ||
| Right, but that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Christy Martin in the day was very high profile. | ||
| They didn't put a lot of women on TV. So, the women that you see, Christy Martin came fighting on an undercard of Mike Tyson. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then Layla Ali came fighting on, you know, her, went from her dad name, Muhammad Ali. | ||
| And Wolf, who people still don't know. | ||
| But she was a killer. | ||
| And Lucia Riker, who people still don't know. | ||
| But I feel like if they would put the backing behind women's boxing to where it was a lot of good girls who were good but never got that TV exposure. | ||
| I mean, we're talking about Kalisha West. | ||
| You probably never heard of her, but she was a hell of a fighter. | ||
| Letitia Robinson. | ||
| Right now we got Amanda Serrano, but Amanda Serrano been around for a lot of years. | ||
| Just now I'm starting to get her, you know, starting to get her popularity up. | ||
| Heather Hardy, myself, Katie Taylor. | ||
| Cecilia been around for a long time, Cecilia Brockes, but people still don't know her in America. | ||
| But that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Right, but we weren't given an opportunity early on to where if we would have fought on TV on every man's car, have a woman undercard or something, women's boxing would be a lot bigger. | ||
| So even though people look at me like, oh, you're the biggest women's boxing star that they have, I had the Olympics, and now the professionals, I had Showtime, I fought on The Zone, I fought on HBO. I've had all these different opportunities to be in front of so many different eyeballs to where now... | ||
| And I also do other stuff outside of boxing that other women fighters are just not going to do. | ||
| I go to MMA fights. | ||
| And I sit ringside. | ||
| I watch. | ||
| I call out Amanda Nunes to a boxing match. | ||
| I mean, shit like that that women fighters just don't feel like they need to do or that they want to do because it's not looked at as ladylike. | ||
| You know, talking trash is not ladylike. | ||
| Being confident is not ladylike. | ||
| That's what they say. | ||
| I'm one of the most known female fighters because I do that and I'm confident not on accident but on purpose. | ||
| Like that's who I am. | ||
| But when other women did it, they were told to, oh, calm down. | ||
| Be nicer. | ||
| Even at the beginning of my career, I had an agent who told me, can we find a happy medium? | ||
| And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? | ||
| And it was like, my opponent was disrespectful to me. | ||
| The girl I knocked out in the fifth round, Nikki Adler. | ||
| She said she didn't even watch film of me before she came to America to fight me. | ||
| She said she's coming to defend her title and go back home. | ||
| So it was like, hold on. | ||
| Probably should have watched some film. | ||
| Yeah, you should have. | ||
| But she came out there and it was like, to me, I don't want an Olympics twice. | ||
| And now I'm 4-0 getting ready to fight against you for a world title, 3-0. | ||
| And you telling me that you didn't watch no film, I felt super disrespected. | ||
| So they wanted me to be all nice to her. | ||
| And I kept telling them, like, no, I'm fucking her up. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Like, she got to pay for disrespecting me. | ||
| I agree with everything you said. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| But what I'm saying though, you've actually kind of proved my point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Being the most highest? | ||
| There's not that many high-profile women fighters. | ||
| But maybe I was saying it's not that many high-profile fighters, but it was a lot of great women fighters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| No, I'm sure. | ||
| Who just people don't know about. | ||
| Well, there's a lot of great fighters, period, that people don't know about. | ||
| Even in boxing, in male boxing, and even in MMA. In male boxing? | ||
| Mailboxing, sure. | ||
| There's people running around out there who don't know Earl Spence. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who don't know Earl Spence? | ||
| Regular people. | ||
| If you think about how many people knew Sugar Ray Leonard when he was at the top and compare it to today, I think there's almost too much shit going on today. | ||
| It's too many networks and too many built organizations. | ||
| Yeah, there's so much going on out there. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| How many people know Javonta Davis? | ||
| I mean, people know him because of Floyd. | ||
| Boxing people know him. | ||
| Boxing fans know him. | ||
| But the average person, if he was around in the 1980s, when Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran and all these household names, everybody would know who he is. | ||
| It would be like Ray Boom Boom Mancini. | ||
| It would be like one of those guys that everybody – it would be like – you think of like boxers that were famous boxers back then. | ||
| They were household names because there was less entertainment. | ||
| There was less stuff going on and there was no internet. | ||
| So if they had someone like Alexis Arguello fight on ABC Wide World of Sports, like that guy was a superstar. | ||
| He was a household name. | ||
| Aaron Pryor was a household name. | ||
| I don't think even like big time boxers today, I don't think they have the same sort of appeal in terms of like the general public as they did in the past just because the public's overwhelmed by things to pay attention to. | ||
| There's so much music and there's so many athletes and so many sports. | ||
| There's MMA, there's soccer, there's basketball, there's baseball. | ||
| It's constant. | ||
| The internet is filled with entertainment. | ||
| You're just constantly getting overwhelmed with shit. | ||
| So for a girl, my point has been for a girl to rise. | ||
| They have to be someone like you. | ||
| They have to be someone who's just undeniable. | ||
| Two-time Olympic gold medalist, undefeated professional boxer, dominates in multiple weight classes, now is thinking about fighting MMA. All eyes are on you. | ||
| But in terms of boxing, no one's saying, hey... | ||
| You know, we got to get Claressa Shields to fight this girl. | ||
| It's not like the Christy Martin, Lucia Riker days, where there was one girl who was getting all the play because she was on the Mike Tyson undercards, which was Christy Martin. | ||
| But there was this one girl that was in the shadows that the boxing fans knew was a killer. | ||
| And they was like, boy, I really would love to see that fight. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Women's boxing just, for whatever reason, has not had the play. | ||
| And I think you made a really good point that if they had women fight on the undercard the way the UFC has done. | ||
| The UFC has done a brilliant job of it. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| and a lot of inmate cards and in main networks have yeah I mean like I like that the PFL that I get a chance to fight for a million dollars like it's equal yes you know once you be you be up in the tournament right but it's like with boxing they don't put you they don't give women that same kind of promotion promotion or give us that same kind of um chance like they'll build up these guys you know like they'll put other guys on the undercard of earl spence | ||
| deontay wilder um manny pacquiao but for a woman i mean i would love to fight on the undercard of canelo yeah undercard of anthony joshua Of course. | ||
| Even though, you know, I feel like I've accomplished more than those guys in boxing, you know, but it's still like... | ||
| Being able to share our fans to show them, like, look, this woman possesses some skills or the same amount of skills that Canelo has. | ||
| Oh, look at her compared to Anthony Joshua. | ||
| Like, they're on the same card, but look at how she boxes. | ||
| Look at how calm she is. | ||
| Look at her picker shots. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And, you know, look at how dominant she is. | ||
| But we don't get those kind of opportunities. | ||
| Like, even I feel like I'm at, like, a stuck point. | ||
| Like, I did my own pay-per-view, but it's like, I still... | ||
| Why can't I get on an undercard of one of those big names? | ||
| And I feel like I'm not an undercard fighter, to be honest. | ||
| I'm a man-to-man fighter. | ||
| But I would take the undercard fights to build my profile more because I know that's how the other guys are building their profiles. | ||
| But I don't get those kind of opportunities. | ||
| Yeah, that's a mistake, right? | ||
| It's a mistake by boxing and boxing promoters that they haven't figured out a way to do it in the same way that MMA fighters have because clearly there's a lot of attention paid to female MMA fighters. | ||
| Amanda Nunes is a huge star. | ||
| She is. | ||
| And, you know, you saw what happened when Holly Holm knocked out Ronda Rousey. | ||
| Ronda Rousey was a huge star. | ||
| Holly Holm became a star. | ||
| Misha Tate became a star. | ||
| There's been a series of women's professional fighters that are stars. | ||
| You could just go down the line. | ||
| Ioana Jacek, you know, there's so many of them. | ||
| You know, there's not that kind of appeal in women's boxing. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| I think it's purely because of the promotion. | ||
| The promotion also, too, that they look at us as less than. | ||
| Women's boxing, I mean, I'm just being honest. | ||
| I'm a women's advocate. | ||
| I don't believe that we should ask for equal pay and not fight the same amount of time. | ||
| It makes no sense. | ||
| Yeah, like me coming to your job, I'm like, hey, Joe, I'm going to do 20 minutes of work today. | ||
| You're going to do 36, but I want them to pay me the same as they're paying you. | ||
| And you're like, you only came here for 20 minutes, and I've been here 36. Right, but in your business, you get paid directly proportionate, if you have a good agent and a good manager, directly proportionate to how much people are willing to pay to see you. | ||
| And that's not true either. | ||
| It's not true? | ||
| In boxing. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| How so? | ||
| Because if you want to look up something right now, if you look up Clarissa Shields' ratings against Hannah Gabriels, it will show you 430,000 views, 410,000 views. | ||
| Adrian Broner's last fight on Showtime was 288k views, but he got paid $2 million. | ||
| Well, he said on TV it was $13 million, but I looked it up and it said $2 million. | ||
| But he got paid $2 million. | ||
| In my fight against Hannah Gabriels, I got paid $150,000. | ||
| Well, that's unfortunate, but I also think that the Adrian Broner fight was a big disappointment in terms of the amount of people that watched it. | ||
| When he just came back? | ||
| The most recent one that you're talking about. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because I think they expected it to get more eyeballs than that. | ||
| Because I remember reading an article about the disappointing ratings in that fight. | ||
| But it's also been more disappointing ratings. | ||
| That's not just one. | ||
| Look at me and Christina Hammer ratings, 375K. | ||
| Me and Ivana Habazine ratings, 325K. | ||
| You got other guys who Showtime is putting on and probably paying more than me, but I'm getting more eyeballs. | ||
| So why do you think that is? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| There's a thing. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| When you try to talk to Showtime about it, do you ever have conversations with executives about it or do you leave it all to the managers and the agents? | ||
| Managers and agents. | ||
| You know, I've had conversations with, I think I had maybe a few conversations with Steven Espinosa who works with Showtime and I've said like, you know, I'll do like some commentating and stuff like that to keep my face in the public as I'm not fighting. | ||
| So people can still know like, okay, this is Clarissa Shields. | ||
| I like Sean Porter. | ||
| But, um, other than that, I just said, like, could you, you know, I've said, like, you know, I noticed that you guys promoted my fight with Hannah Gabriels for four weeks, but you guys promote, you know, Danny Garcia and Earl Spence fights for eight. | ||
| But you guys talked to me about the numbers. | ||
| Like, okay, well, maybe if you guys gave me eight weeks of promotion like you do the men, maybe I get higher numbers. | ||
| And that's probably the only two conversations that I've had with him. | ||
| What'd they say to you about that? | ||
| They had changed it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They did. | |
| Yeah, they had put more time into, we had All Access for Hammer. | ||
| Was it All Access or was it called 24-7? | ||
| I think it was All Access for Showtime. | ||
| But like we had did that and they were, you know, putting some time and money behind it. | ||
| And that was cool, but I didn't look at them as they were sexist at the time. | ||
| Because I just felt like no other woman, women are always yelling equal pay, you know, pay us equal, equal opportunity and stuff. | ||
| But I wanted to look at the micro things. | ||
| And I just was like, okay, look at the promotion. | ||
| Let's look at, you know, the commercials. | ||
| Let's look at the micro things. | ||
| When the commercials air too, right? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| They air when something big is on. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I'm like, let's look at that stuff. | ||
| And I even talked to the WBC organization. | ||
| I'm like, hey, I was watching PBC boxing and I seen that you guys have a full commercial of all the WBC champions, but they're all men. | ||
| And I was like, I'm a WBC champion in like three different weight classes. | ||
| Like, where is our WBC champion commercial at? | ||
| And that's not me being a bitch. | ||
| That's me just saying like, hey, we're talking about being equal. | ||
| Like, let's equal it out because that'll put our face more out there and give us more recognition. | ||
| And I just saw that and I just reached out to them and said that. | ||
| Do you feel like you have a responsibility as the face of women's boxing to try to amplify the amount of promotion that women get? | ||
| Because you're the king, or the queen rather. | ||
| You're the top of the food chain. | ||
| If you're not getting attention, women's boxing's not getting attention. | ||
| Yeah, I feel like I have to do more than just fight. | ||
| Like, I can go out there and fight and look great, but they're still going to have something to say about that. | ||
| Oh, she's fighting, but she's not getting knockouts. | ||
| So now when you talk about, like, I'm the only woman who I feel like will actually speak about the micro thing. | ||
| Like, I'm not just yelling equal pay. | ||
| I'm yelling equal fight time, equal promotion, equal pay, right? | ||
| But I'm also, like, just letting them know, like, look. | ||
| Women's boxing is here to stay. | ||
| We're never gonna just go extinct. | ||
| So you guys might as well get behind us and pump up the whole thing. | ||
| And another thing is if they paid you more, people would know you're making a lot of money and they would watch more. | ||
| That's the reality. | ||
| One of the things is when you find out that Floyd's making $50 million for a fight or $100 million for a fight, people watch more because of that, because they recognize that it's very high stakes. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But in women's boxing, we've never had that. | ||
| I mean, I was super pumped in my pay-per-view fight. | ||
| No matter the amount of views that I got, it was just like, wow. | ||
| I'm in the ring. | ||
| I'm fighting. | ||
| I'm pay-per-view. | ||
| And people were able to bet on me. | ||
| It was like, yo, this is big shit. | ||
| Like, people can bet their hard-earned money on me to win a fight, to get a knockout. | ||
| They can pick a round. | ||
| It seemed like I became more of a superstar. | ||
| And I hate that I do this, but with numbers, Showtime, when I was fighting with Showtime, when it was fight week, I would gain about 25,000 followers on Instagram. | ||
| Instagram isn't everything, but that's just how I compare my numbers. | ||
| This fight, without Showtime, I gained 15,000 followers just off of me. | ||
| Fighting on a network that's not super known for women's boxing. | ||
| It was on FITETV. You can still go on there and buy the pay-per-view if you want to. | ||
| Go on there at $29.99. | ||
| But I looked at the numbers and I'm like, I was able to get 13,000 new people and eyes on me doing my own pay-per-view show compared to getting the 20,000, 25,000 that I would get from being on Showtime. | ||
| Does it frustrate you that you have to think about all this kind of promotion shit that you can't just concentrate on the fighting? | ||
| You know, sometimes. | ||
| But something that somebody really important told me, his name is Andre Darrell, he said, you are the person for the job. | ||
| You know, this is not the job for nobody else. | ||
| God put you here for you to fight this fight. | ||
| Like, not for you just to win the fights because you do that easy, but he's like, in order for women's boxing to ever be equal, you as the person to make you equal. | ||
| So, sometimes I look at it as if it's a burden, and he just said to me, There's no other person for the job than you. | ||
| So you kind of just got to accept your role and just make the best out of it. | ||
| But I would love to just focus on fighting though. | ||
| But that's just not the way that the world is set up for me. | ||
| Well, you've been successful focusing on everything. | ||
| Yeah, see, the fights are easy, but I still need me some money. | ||
| The fights are easy, but I still need me some money. | ||
| Yeah, I need me some money, for real. | ||
| Well, now you're going to the PFL. And in the PFL, you're enrolled in this tournament that if you win, you make a million dollars. | ||
| Next year. | ||
| Next year. | ||
| So, talk me through, when did you decide to make a transition and try to fight in MMA? And why did you decide to sign with the PFL? Well, I had been off the ring from last year, January. | ||
| And I was supposed to fight May. | ||
| May got pushed back all the way until August. | ||
| Then August to October. | ||
| And then after that, we didn't hear nothing else from Showtime. | ||
| MMA organization had already reached out to me prior. | ||
| Like, you know, Dana, he wanted me to do something with Amanda. | ||
| Which I was like... | ||
| Not that I wouldn't, but it was like, I need to give myself a fair chance. | ||
| Like, this girl has been doing MMA for I don't know how long. | ||
| And, you know, six weeks, I mean, six months to a year is just not enough time. | ||
| Like, I'll go on there and, you know, I'm gonna fight with my heart. | ||
| But it's still, like, technique and everything is needed. | ||
| So, I didn't look at that. | ||
| We left that. | ||
| Bellator... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We were actually close with them, but they said something about, after watching me box, that I was too clean of a boxer for them. | ||
| Which I was like, I don't know what the fuck that means. | ||
| Too clean? | ||
| Yeah, like I don't want to go in there and just take risks and get punched in my face or something. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I never even asked about it. | ||
| Once my manager told me that, I said, cool. | ||
| Like, alright. | ||
| Like, nothing I can do about that. | ||
| Too clean of a boxer might be one of the dumbest things a person's ever said. | ||
| It was the dumbest thing I've ever heard. | ||
| So I just was like... | ||
| Too skillful, too sharp. | ||
| Yeah, stuff like that. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, alright, cool. | ||
| You need to leave with your face. | ||
| You want to make some money? | ||
| Take shots. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| But we were just in a talk with them. | ||
| So after we got that word, I was like, okay, whatever. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| But it seemed like when I talked with the PFL, it was more of a serious offer. | ||
| It wasn't like, hey, come over here, fight our best girl, Kelly Harrison, and then just go back to boxing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It was a really lucrative deal. | ||
| It was a three-year deal. | ||
| And I just had a chance to talk with the CEOs and the owners. | ||
| And, I mean, it was really a great conversation. | ||
| And I'm personally, like, when it comes to business, I just get on the phone and I listen. | ||
| I don't say much. | ||
| I'm like, hey, Clarice, I'm here. | ||
| You guys go ahead. | ||
| Take over the floor. | ||
| And I just listened. | ||
| And to hear what they were saying, you know, just about, like, me coming to the PFL, you know, me having an option. | ||
| If I wanted to fight in the tournament next year or if I didn't, you know, helping me find trainers, making a three-year contract, what I would get paid this year versus next year is a big jump. | ||
| And, you know, just somebody who's also putting money behind me, you know, um... | ||
| Every month, like, looking out for me. | ||
| Like, if rather I'm doing MMA this month or next month, I still get paid every month. | ||
| You know, so that was very helpful. | ||
| Oh, so they pay you, like, a salary? | ||
| Is that how it works? | ||
| Like a stipend. | ||
| A stipend. | ||
| Yeah, so, to me, that was like, alright, because I had been without boxing for a year, so I hadn't made any money in over a year. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it was like, all I've been doing is spending, spending, spending. | ||
| They've made some big moves this year. | ||
| They signed Anthony Showtime Pettis, who's a former UFC champion. | ||
| They have Rory McDonald, who's a Former champion as well. | ||
| So they're doing a lot of very smart things in terms of acquiring big talent. | ||
| But having you on, I think, is huge. | ||
| Because they have Kayla Harrison, but there's not a lot of competition for her, especially in that 145-pound weight class. | ||
| That's a tricky weight class in MMA. Is she 155, I think? | ||
| Is she? | ||
| Yeah, I think her last fight was at 145, but she fought the tournament at 155 last year. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| The UFC has, like, no one at 45. I mean, Amanda Nunes just dominated Megan Anderson, and they don't even have ratings. | ||
| Like, if you look at the UFC's ratings at 145, there's no rankings. | ||
| It's not listed. | ||
| You just have Amanda. | ||
| I mean, there's no one there. | ||
| It's such a shallow weight class, unfortunately. | ||
| But... | ||
| Kayla Harrison, coming from that judo background, I mean, she's a beast of a judoka. | ||
| She's really, really talented with that. | ||
| And with you, with this incredible record in boxing and such accolades in boxing, the two of you together, that's a legitimate super fight down the road. | ||
| It didn't be the first time that two-time Olympic gold medalists ever fought against each other. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| If the fight was to happen, but I mean, I look at it as... | ||
| You know, she was two-time Olympic gold medalist at the same time we went to the Olympics together. | ||
| So I already knew Kayla before I had joined the PFL. We both went to the Olympics at the same weight class, both years. | ||
| 75 kilo, 165 pounds. | ||
| And we were cool. | ||
| And we still are cool, technically. | ||
| But we both understand, like, the big picture is us fighting against each other. | ||
| Yeah, that's the big money fight in women's MMA right now, in terms of something that people get hyped up about. | ||
| I mean, the credentials. | ||
| Two Olympic gold medals on each side, and the two of you guys, a striker versus a grappler, competing in MMA. That's a big fight. | ||
| If BFL can promote it correctly, if they can get the eyeballs on it, it would be a big moment for women's MMA. I think that they will. | ||
| I just have to do my job. | ||
| Like, I like when people compare the fight and say, oh, like, people think right now that if me and her got, like, if we was to fight, that I would win. | ||
| And people think that some people think that she would win. | ||
| But it's like, for me, being super honest with myself, it's like, would I go in there and just try to wrestle with her? | ||
| No. | ||
| And would she come in there trying to just fight me with our hands and do only striking? | ||
| No. | ||
| So me being smart is like I need to learn all of that stuff so that no matter what happens in the fight, I can make sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do to get the win. | ||
| And that's how I feel about all the opponents. | ||
| There's girls who are on a lower scale right now who are looking at me to be their big opportunity. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, MMA. | ||
| They don't have a chance to be me in boxing. | ||
| Let's just put that out there. | ||
| That's not it. | ||
| But MMA is their chance to use a whole bunch of different stuff like jujitsu and wrestling and kicking to try to get the victory. | ||
| So for me right now, it's just learning and training and getting ready, preparing for whoever I get in there with in the world. | ||
| And then just learning and getting as much experience as I can. | ||
| Because once 2022 come, that's when me and my team will decide if we're ready for the PFL League tournament or not. | ||
| And I'm going to be honest, you know, with myself. | ||
| If I feel like, all right... | ||
| I'm ready. | ||
| I feel like I've learned enough. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| But if my team feel the same way that I feel or if they feel opposite, we're just going to have a conversation. | ||
| If they feel like, look, you're ready. | ||
| And I've already looked up all the girls who are in the PFL League this year. | ||
| And I was happy to say at least five of them I would beat up. | ||
| And it's only eight. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I was like, all right, that's a good number. | |
| A good number out of eight. | ||
| But it's still, this was like, for me, I would like it to be all eight. | ||
| And that's the kind of person I am. | ||
| So I'm going to train as hard as I can this year and get my feet wet and train and get the experience. | ||
| And then we'll see what our decision is next year. | ||
| So you're going to continue boxing while this is all happening. | ||
| How are you going to divide up your training? | ||
| Are you just going to, like, when you have a boxing match, set aside whatever amount of time you need, six, eight weeks, whatever you decide for training, just only box, and then as soon as that's over, then you get back to your MMA training? | ||
| I did that for this fight. | ||
| I took just five weeks to just focus on Marie Eve to care. | ||
| But before then, I was at Jackson Week gym for like a month, two months leading up to that. | ||
| Now how my schedule looks is after I celebrate my birthday, which is March 17th in two days, cash at me. | ||
| But once April get here, I am going to be in full camp mode. | ||
| So I'll only do MMA until I have my first MMA fight, middle of June. | ||
| So middle of June this year? | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Is this going to be on the PFL? Yes. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So it's not the tournament. | ||
| You're just going to do this just to have a fight. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta hear the news, Joe. | ||
| I can't tell you everything. | ||
| I can't tell you the date and everything. | ||
| Is it a secret? | ||
| Are we releasing secrets right now? | ||
| Is that what's happening? | ||
| No, I've already been saying that. | ||
| I tell them the middle of June, but I don't give everybody the date or nothing. | ||
| But that's when I'm supposed to be fighting. | ||
| Do you have an opponent scheduled? | ||
| No. | ||
| Not yet. | ||
| So around, when would they tell you? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's why it's just like for me, it's like it don't matter who the opponent is. | ||
| My job is to get ready. | ||
| So I'm not taking anybody lightly, you know, any other girls. | ||
| So I start back training in April. | ||
| I'll be there three weeks and go home a weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. | ||
| Come back three weeks again. | ||
| Go home Friday, Saturday, Sunday. | ||
| Three weeks again because I have a dorm at the Jackson Wink Academy. | ||
| Train, drill, learn. | ||
| And then once I get inside... | ||
| The cage. | ||
| Just go on there and perform. | ||
| And do what I always do. | ||
| Dominate. | ||
| And that's just what it is. | ||
| So tell me what the training's been like. | ||
| What was the first day you started MMA training? | ||
| I would tell you, like, I was having anxiety for about a week. | ||
| I couldn't sleep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I couldn't really eat. | ||
| Because I had signed a contract with the PFL, but I didn't have a plan, and it was bothering me. | ||
| It was like, what the fuck? | ||
| You know, so I'm like, okay, where am I going to train at? | ||
| Who am I going to train with? | ||
| When do I start getting ready? | ||
| Was it a conversation with Jon Jones that brought you to Jackson-Winklejohn? | ||
| I was actually going to reach out to them, but thank God they reached out to me. | ||
| Oh, perfect. | ||
| And I was like, oh, thank you, Jesus. | ||
| Because it was like, I already had hit up John up on Instagram. | ||
| And he was being all busy and stuff. | ||
| And he didn't get back with me until I landed in Albuquerque. | ||
| He was like, yo, you're coming to Albuquerque? | ||
| He's like, yeah, I'm going to push up in a hotel. | ||
| I'm going to let you drive my car. | ||
| And I'm like, dude, thanks. | ||
| But it would have been great to hear from you, like, last week. | ||
| You know, but he ended up helping me out with that. | ||
| And I trained him for about, like, a good two or three weeks. | ||
| And Johnny Bones was there the first week, like, watching, kind of scoping a little bit. | ||
| And it was like, we just figured out that we were twins. | ||
| And that was the best thing ever because he's a hard worker. | ||
| He's smart. | ||
| He's strategic. | ||
| And we believe in hard work. | ||
| And he started drilling me, like, Like, the coaches would just sit on the side and just watch us for three, four hours, and they would see, like, I'm full of energy. | ||
| I'm like, let's go. | ||
| What else you got? | ||
| And, you know, he was teaching me stuff, and Coach Wink would come in a little bit. | ||
| Sometimes Coach Jackson would come in, but sometimes it was just me and Johnny, and they would be just kind of... | ||
| Just looking at greatness from the outside, and they would never give me any, you know, crap after. | ||
| But like my first day, going to Jackson Wing Gym, I looked at the cages and stuff, and I was walking to the gym, to the cage, and I thought to myself, I was like, what the fuck am I doing here? | ||
| When was the first day you grappled? | ||
| First day. | ||
| And that's the thing. | ||
| I thought I said that in my head. | ||
| I'm like, Jesus, what am I doing here? | ||
| And I said it out loud. | ||
| And then Misha, who works with Jackson Lee Gym, he looked at me and he's like, Clarissa, it's going to be okay. | ||
| And I was like, what? | ||
| He was like, you just said, Jesus, what are you doing here? | ||
| I'm like, oh, I'm so out of my mind. | ||
| I thought I said it in my head. | ||
| I said it out loud. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not even sane right now. | |
| That's hilarious. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm just so like, you know, just nervous. | ||
| And they're like, I think Coach Jackson asked me, he said, what are you most worried about? | ||
| And I'm like, I'm not worried about the striking, the punching, or the kicking. | ||
| I'm not worried about that. | ||
| I'm like, I'm just worried about being on the ground and not knowing how to get up. | ||
| Like, I've been having nightmares about this shit. | ||
| And all of a sudden, he just was like, all right, get on your back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, what? | |
| That sounds like Greg... | ||
| He's like, that's what we're going to start with. | ||
| And he's like, we're going to strengthen your weaknesses and also make it to where you can put everything together to where it's you. | ||
| And ever since that day, I've just been super comfortable. | ||
| I think I had one training in Jiu-Jitsu where I was like, man, this is so hard today. | ||
| But we did the same thing the next day, and I was way better and comfortable at it. | ||
| It's just like being on my back and having to fight off my back is just... | ||
| It's just not what boxers do. | ||
| It was uncomfortable. | ||
| We had been doing different stuff on our back, but then just this one drill was like, oh man, this is stressful. | ||
| What was it like defending against ground strikes when you're on your back and someone's hitting you? | ||
| Well, that's the thing. | ||
| Was that weird? | ||
| He taught me what the defense was. | ||
| And he said you're worried about somebody hitting you in the face, but you got to realize that they got to make it past your feet to then get you to the face. | ||
| So it's like a lot of leg action. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| And a lot of shrimps. | ||
| A lot of just keeping your feet there, keeping your hands up, being defensive, and knowing what to do when they do get past your feet or what to do. | ||
| So that's my thing of like... | ||
| I'm not worried about it happening. | ||
| I just want to know what to do when it does happen. | ||
| I want to have a game plan for everything. | ||
| And when they understood that, they were like, you know, you're a very smart fighter. | ||
| And they started teaching me. | ||
| And I learned stuff really, really fast. | ||
| I don't know if it's because I'm younger or because I'm smart. | ||
| But... | ||
| Well, you're an elite athlete. | ||
| You understand your body at a very, very high level. | ||
| I think, like I said earlier about whatever you want to do in life, if you become an elite boxer like you have, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, I think you could do anything. | ||
| It's just a matter of if you put the same drive and focus and dedication that you've done to boxing. | ||
| You could apply that to anything, whether it's you want to become a dedicated grappler. | ||
| I think you could be a world-class grappler, 100%. | ||
| You just have to dedicate yourself. | ||
| Just takes the time. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And that's what I'm going to do. | ||
| I think I'm supposed to fight in boxing again, like September, maybe December. | ||
| So this time I have here from April to September, December, it's really going to be focused on MMA. So I'm putting in a time for it, but then it's still just like... | ||
| Just got to see how much I can consume. | ||
| Because some days they teach me so much. | ||
| And when I'm like, oh my god. | ||
| Like my brain is tired from thinking about all this. | ||
| But I learn it. | ||
| And once I learn it, I get it. | ||
| And I take so many notes in my phone. | ||
| And I got videos of stuff that I have on my phone. | ||
| So when I'm at home, I can do some of the training and do some of the techniques. | ||
| Just so I can just keep it in my mind and keep it refreshed. | ||
| Because I understand how important repetitiveness is. | ||
| Like it's super important. | ||
| Yeah, it's everything. | ||
| And when you're training for ground fighting, do you ever think of yourself as maybe competing in a wrestling tournament or jiu-jitsu tournament or something like that someday? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| I don't look at that because Coach Tusa, who's my MMA coach, MMA jiu-jitsu coach, and Coach Jackson and Coach Wink, they said the best MMA fighters are the ones who know how to mix everything up together. | ||
| So sometimes you go into just wrestling, then you start getting into wrestling mode, and then you do jiu-jitsu and you start doing jiu-jitsu. | ||
| He's like, you want to know how to punch and throw your kicks and punch and be defensive and everything together and do jiu-jitsu stuff all with the MMA style, which I feel like was super smart. | ||
| And I only can say this stuff because I asked them the same thing. | ||
| I think I'm so competitive that when I found out about the color of the belts in jiu-jitsu, I'm like, oh, I got to be a black belt. | ||
| And they're like, not so fast. | ||
| Like, we want to teach you jujitsu and you to learn it, but you're not going to learn like the regular person will learn it. | ||
| You're learning strictly for MMA. And so, just learning that, it's like, once you get more profound in MMA and you learn how to mix stuff up and you have enough jujitsu to get you... | ||
| When you're against high-level fighters who know this, then we can start getting you more experience in jiu-jitsu. | ||
| But right now, we want you just to do it. | ||
| Just to learn it with MMA style. | ||
| Do you remember the first time you tapped somebody out? | ||
| Me? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I haven't. | ||
| You've never tapped anybody out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-uh. | |
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| So do you do just plain jiu-jitsu sparring? | ||
| Do you roll? | ||
| Yeah, I do rolling with Coach Tusa, which some days is fun and some days it is not. | ||
| Because he's, you know, he's a black belt, I think, with like couple stripes and stuff. | ||
| And, I mean, he doesn't take it easy, you know. | ||
| He's super like... | ||
| I hate being grabbed. | ||
| So my main thing was like, oh, you grabbed me. | ||
| Get off me. | ||
|
unidentified
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Get off me. | |
| Right? | ||
| And it's like, no, you want to do stuff that can advance your movement. | ||
| How could you get in a position to where you're winning? | ||
| At first, my mind was completely defensive, which I'm super, super relaxed at getting people off me. | ||
| Like, you grabbed me? | ||
| Okay, he touched me here. | ||
| Oh, he touched me here. | ||
| Okay, let me get back here. | ||
| I'm on the ground. | ||
| He showed me this. | ||
| Let's work on that. | ||
| Oh, I see an arm bar. | ||
| Let me try to grab it. | ||
| You know, just being like that. | ||
| But at first I was super defensive. | ||
| Now I'm kind of offensive with it. | ||
| And when we're trying to do the whole jujitsu thing, I'm like, man, it's still hard. | ||
| It's a whole different level of breathing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's five minutes compared to the two minutes that I do in boxing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Even though I spar three minutes, but still, three minutes compared to five. | ||
| It's way different. | ||
| But just getting that cardio up there and just having to do the wrestling stuff. | ||
| It's not... | ||
| It's not easy by far, but it's fun. | ||
| Some days it's fun and some days I'm like, man, I can't wait to this hour and two hours and I'm going to get the hell out of here. | ||
| So are you doing any live jujitsu roles with other people other than the coach or are you just doing it only with the coach right now? | ||
| I've done some kickboxing and sparring with other fighters. | ||
| I haven't done anything in jiu-jitsu yet, but that's because of the timing too. | ||
| Once we were really starting to get into it, I had my boxing match get scheduled. | ||
| To me, I had to make that be more important than MMA at the time. | ||
| I saw you throwing some kicks and I saw you moving around. | ||
| Does it feel weird to you to be sparring at a distance with kicks? | ||
| The difference of distance between boxing and kicks is a couple of feet. | ||
| Does it feel weird to you to know that you could hit someone much further away or they could hit you much further away than normally you would have to think of in a boxing situation? | ||
| No, it's not difficult. | ||
| You got accustomed to it quickly. | ||
| Yeah, I gotta come to it quickly and just learn, like, the distance. | ||
| And my main thing was defense. | ||
| Okay, I understand I can do all the kicking, I can do all the wrestling, I can punch people, but what about when they do it to me? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, and that was my main thing. | ||
| Like, what is the defense to a head kick? | ||
| What's the defense to a body kick? | ||
| You know, what's the defense to somebody doing a spinning back kick trying to hit me in my stomach? | ||
| Like, what's the defense to this shit? | ||
| I saw you throw that, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I was impressed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You got a good sidekick too. | ||
| They taught me and I just did it. | ||
| Well, it seems like you're picking it up very quickly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So your timeline is June. | ||
| June will be your first fight and that will be your introduction. | ||
| Do you think that you're going to, are you going to do some live situations before then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Like make it seem like it's a fight? | ||
| Yeah, we've been doing simulations to where I'm in there, I'm shadowboxing, in an MMA stance and throwing kicks and stuff, and then coaches say sprawl, or coaches say, you know, go to the cage and work your way up from the cage, or he'll tackle me and I gotta figure out how to get him off me and get up. | ||
| So it's been... | ||
| We've been gradually, you know, getting better and gradually doing more live stuff. | ||
| I think that he wanted me to get, all of them wanted me to be comfortable. | ||
| So I think when I get back, I have like a week of just refreshing my mind of everything. | ||
| And then I believe that the next week will be going into... | ||
| Into the live stuff. | ||
| But I'm going to let the coaches figure that stuff out on what they want me to do, how they want me to do it, and let them game plan because I don't know MMA better than them. | ||
| I just know boxing. | ||
| If boxing had the same amount of attention for women fighters as MMA, do you think you would do this? | ||
| No, I wouldn't. | ||
| So if you had your options, if you had a magic wand and you could wave it, you would just rather have female boxing get the attention that it deserves? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You know, boxing is my first love. | ||
| Before I had a boyfriend, before I even knew what anything in life really was, boxing is the first thing that I ever really truly loved that loved me back. | ||
| You know, so boxing was my first love. | ||
| You know, MMA, it's kind of adding to my greatest woman of all time statement, the quote. | ||
| But at the same time, it's like... | ||
| That's a weird word, right? | ||
| I mean, it's like, oh, with quote. | ||
| You gotta know how to sound like your letters. | ||
| Quote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Quote. | ||
| Greatest woman of all time. | ||
| But I just... | ||
| If boxing... | ||
| Gave me the recognition that I'll get doing MMA. I would just do boxing. | ||
| You know, it really wouldn't matter what they say about MMA fighters, but it kind of irks me a little bit that, you know, girls... | ||
| Like, Amanda Nunes has great, you know, she's a great fighter and everything, but she couldn't come over to boxing and do nothing with me. | ||
| Zero. | ||
| Even if we fought at her weight class, 145, 155. She would never be able to beat me in a boxing match. | ||
| Well, her real weight class is 135. She fights at 145 just because she could. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Good. | ||
| But that's what I'm saying though. | ||
| Like one, no girl like that 135 in boxing can do anything with me. | ||
| 140, 147. What do you think you could make if you had a cut? | ||
| 47 is lowest I'm going. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And that's for, you gotta pay me some money too. | ||
| Because my legs gonna get a little smaller, my booty gonna go away. | ||
| You gotta pay me for that. | ||
| I don't play that. | ||
| Like, I'm a woman first. | ||
| Boxer second. | ||
| You know, so, I always say that. | ||
| Like, I'm a woman, so I don't want to lose all my shape. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, they already said that women's boxers are ugly. | ||
| Now you can tell them I got no shape either. | ||
| Like, fuck that. | ||
| I'm keeping my shape. | ||
| I got a nice face. | ||
| No, so, but that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Like, When she goes in there and she knocks out a girl, like the whole world just started like, they all started tweeting me for no certain reason. | ||
| Oh, Amanda Nunez will beat you in a boxing match. | ||
| And it's like, look, I got two Olympic gold medals in boxing. | ||
| Please stop. | ||
| Don't even mention her and me in the boxing ring. | ||
| To me, to me. | ||
| It's like, it's a little embarrassing. | ||
| It's like, look, she's knocking on girls who don't even have no kind of boxing experience that I have. | ||
| And even though she's doing it with her hands, she has some kicks, some chokes, and all that other stuff. | ||
| It's like, I have just my left and my right hand, and I gotta go in here and do it for one minute less than a minute. | ||
| I do it two rounds shorter, and then I get paid way less money. | ||
| So we got kind of aggravating to be hearing that another woman can box better than me, and she's in a whole nother sport. | ||
| Do you look forward to the day where you can crack someone with those little gloves too? | ||
| Yeah, I look forward to that in June. | ||
| I mean, it's a big difference. | ||
| No, it's a big difference. | ||
| I mean, I just fought in 10 ounces last week. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Now I'm fighting in 2 ounces. | ||
| Is it 2 or 4? | ||
| Well, 4 ounces. | ||
| I mean, I feel like my hands are already pretty quick. | ||
| Oh, they're gonna be, like, lightning. | ||
| Lightning, and I'm stronger. | ||
| You know, like, the Vans was popping out when I was punching this last fight. | ||
| I bench 185 now. | ||
| 185? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Holy shit. | ||
| I know, that's what I said. | ||
| That's impressive. | ||
| Yeah, it's impressive for a woman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, but... | ||
| Don't fuck your shoulders up. | ||
| Benching's rough. | ||
| No, I just wanted to see what was my max. | ||
| I wanted to test my strength. | ||
| I'm not like a person that bench weight every day. | ||
| Like my boyfriend can do like 365 and all that shit. | ||
| I'm not doing that. | ||
| Do you, when you do conditioning, do you do lifting weights? | ||
| Do you lift weights at all? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What kind of stuff do you do? | ||
| I do the benching. | ||
| I do, like, building my triceps. | ||
| But I don't do, like, really, really heavy weight. | ||
| Like, when I do, like, the light stuff, I build, like, I told you, like, on a micro scale, I build the small muscles so they can make the bigger muscles do more. | ||
| Do you have a strength and conditioning coach? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| Like, my boyfriend's a fitness trainer up at the gym up in, like, Beecher, Flint area up at fitness gym. | ||
| And that's where I first started doing, like, my strength training. | ||
| And at first it was like, I just was like, you know, to punch harder, you got to have stronger triceps. | ||
| Because I was... | ||
| After not boxing for a year, it was like once I come out of this whole weighting thing, I want to come back out with some steam. | ||
| You know, I want to come back out with some power. | ||
| And so he started building up, like you said, my shoulders, my triceps, my biceps, even just my forearm, you know, just building up that stuff. | ||
| But I would also do like a lot of HIIT cardio too. | ||
| But when it came to strength, some days I'm like, today we're going to do... | ||
| I do everything even. | ||
| So, the calves, the squats, foot of thighs, and all that stuff. | ||
| Butt exercises. | ||
| Core. | ||
| Core is something that I've really gotten super strong at over this past... | ||
| And then the benching. | ||
| But I do benching maybe... | ||
| Every two weeks or something. | ||
| Because at first I was struggling with 135 in June. | ||
| I was really struggling just to get 135 up. | ||
| And then all of a sudden when I started getting 135 up, it went to 155, 165. And I'm like, you know what? | ||
| How about 185 be my goal for next year? | ||
| But I was able to bench that up in like December. | ||
| Do you notice any difference in your punching power from all this weightlifting? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of difference. | ||
| I noticed that I load up more, which I don't like. | ||
| That's why I'm cutting back from it. | ||
| But also, too, in my last fight, the punch we focused on all throughout camp was the overhand right. | ||
| So it was supposed to land. | ||
| And it landed a couple times. | ||
| But, I mean, this girl was a professional survivor. | ||
| So I would hit her with it, and she would grab me. | ||
| So I would just say I did notice how much stronger I was and how much weaker my opponent felt. | ||
| It was some time in the fight where she would throw a jab, She wanted to do something. | ||
| All I had to do was just swat it away. | ||
| And she can put some force on like a power jab. | ||
| I just boom. | ||
| And you think that's because of the weightlifting? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's because of the weightlifting. | ||
| When I hit her with the first right hand up in the first round, after that she was on her wheels. | ||
| She was running. | ||
| She wouldn't stand there and fight me. | ||
| And usually some girls would. | ||
| But for her, I thought she was physically stronger and she was bigger than me. | ||
| But when I hit her with that first right hand, first round, she was gone from every fight. | ||
| And I wobbled her at least five, six times in the fight. | ||
| Almost finished her. | ||
| But once again, Ref was from Canada. | ||
| She's from Canada. | ||
| She was holding. | ||
| He didn't really call her for it. | ||
| And he kept allowing her to hold throughout the whole fight. | ||
| So every time I rocked her, there she was holding me. | ||
| And I was trying to figure out how not to get held and how to land more shots. | ||
| But I mean, really, she was just a professional survivor. | ||
| So that's what I have to deal with for the fight. | ||
| Do you think you're going to have to do anything different in terms of strength and conditioning for MMA when you consider all the grappling, the five minute rounds? | ||
| Are you going to have to adjust? | ||
| What do you think you're going to do differently? | ||
| I've already been doing some stuff differently. | ||
| Like I said, tightening up my core was one of the main things for me. | ||
| You know when people do like those burpees? | ||
| It's more of like full body cardio. | ||
| Instead of like focusing on like the glutes or the squats or the calves. | ||
| Like focusing on everything up at one time. | ||
| Because one minute you can be standing up fighting. | ||
| And the next minute you got to be getting yourself off the ground. | ||
| So I do like a lot of burpees. | ||
| A lot of get ups. | ||
| Do you do any kettlebell work? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| A lot of kettlebell work. | ||
| Just... | ||
| Just super core, really, and I always run. | ||
| I feel like running is great for conditioning. | ||
| So I just run and still jump rope. | ||
| And just also, I think simulation is super important. | ||
| Like, when I said sparring, I won't be able to get out of MMA sparring. | ||
| Like, I definitely need that, and I'm going to do that. | ||
| So when it comes to five minutes of... | ||
| MMA, sparring, or whatever. | ||
| I'm going to get in the cage. | ||
| I'm going to do it. | ||
| I'm going to get frustrated. | ||
| I'm going to have some success, but I have to get that experience before I get in the cage in June. | ||
| Now, you'll go through your camp at Jackson Winklejohn. | ||
| Did they set up strength and conditioning for you when you were there? | ||
| Or are you going to do it with their coaches? | ||
| They haven't yet. | ||
| But also, like... | ||
| I also haven't asked either. | ||
| Like I have like my own, like I said, I know my body better than anybody else. | ||
| So when it comes to like strength and conditioning stuff, I always trust my own judgment for the past however many years that I've been boxing. | ||
| So I will hear their advice on it and hear what they have to say. | ||
| Holly invited me to come work out with her doing some of her strength training, but I haven't went with her yet. | ||
| So maybe I can go with her when I get back, but we will see what happens. | ||
| And do you set up your diet as well? | ||
| Do you set up everything? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you prep your meals or do you cook for yourself? | ||
| How do you decide what to eat? | ||
| I'm an athlete who signed with Perfecting Athletes. | ||
| There's also Amanda Nunes, nutritionist. | ||
| They're the same people that works with her. | ||
| They've been with me for the past... | ||
| Two, three years. | ||
| So that's how I make weight for my fights with perfecting athletes. | ||
| And sometimes I have them send me food throughout the whole camp. | ||
| And sometimes I do my own food, but they come with me fight week. | ||
| So it really depends on how much I weigh. | ||
| If I feel like I'm disciplined enough to do the food myself and actually do it right to where I can actually lose the weight. | ||
| But a lot of times, me just working out, I lose weight and eating healthy. | ||
| I kind of just reach out to them like, hey, I got a headache today. | ||
| You guys know anything I can eat to make my headache go away or stuff like that. | ||
| But I've always controlled all that stuff myself until, like I said, a few years ago. | ||
| And so, do you supplement? | ||
| Do you take vitamins? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you do all that yourself as well? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You never consult with a nutritionist or anything? | ||
| No, not really. | ||
| You just know what to do and what's worked for you in the past? | ||
| I think I've tested things on me, you know, to see like, okay, like something that's big for me is just sleep. | ||
| I have like big insomnia, so I take a lot of, I take melatonin at night, majority every night, because I'll stay up to 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, just kind of On my phone, wrestling is stinking. | ||
| So, melatonin is something I take. | ||
| Why can't I think of the other stuff? | ||
| I got Expedite, which is with the snack. | ||
| S-N-A-C. And that's sometimes like a pre-workout, before workout. | ||
| But I don't take it every day. | ||
| Not even every other day. | ||
| Some days when I just don't feel like working out, I'm like, I gotta go to the gym. | ||
| So, I'll take it to get me going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| They also have some melatonin stuff that they have. | ||
| And then, what is that one thing? | ||
| Glutamine? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Glutamine. | ||
| And there's one more. | ||
| Damn, I can't think of it. | ||
| No worries. | ||
| Yeah, but I definitely, like, take stuff to where, like, I can have good recovery. | ||
| Like I said, I really focus on that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I take supplements, but I can't say I take them all the time. | ||
| I take B12 when I get up in the morning, like a little B12 tablet. | ||
| And I also have a sleep ring. | ||
| It's in my purse. | ||
| The one that's Auras? | ||
| Yeah, or a sleep ring. | ||
| It lets me know, hey, today's the day you can break records or today's the day you need to get more sleep or whatever. | ||
| Do you ever try to leave your phone alone at night? | ||
| Because they say that's one of the things that keeps people awake, is staring at screens. | ||
| They say that when it gets to a certain point in the night, like if you know you're going to go to bed in two hours or so, you really shouldn't look at any screens. | ||
| Yeah, that's why people wear like blue light blocking lenses and it's the kind of light that comes from screens It fucks with you because your body thinks it's night. | ||
| It's daytime. | ||
| Your body thinks it's the Sun. | ||
| It's real weird because your brain produces melatonin Matt Frazier was here the other day who is five-time world CrossFit champion and one of the things that he said he has is He has an artificial sun by his bed. | ||
| It's like a sunset machine. | ||
| And this ball gets dimmer and dimmer and dimmer as the night goes on. | ||
| And then when he's lying in bed reading a book, it starts getting dimmer and dimmer. | ||
| And it stimulates your brain's own production of melatonin. | ||
| And you can supplement with melatonin. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| But... | ||
| The thing about looking at screens, we're all addicted to looking at phones like, what's that? | ||
| That screen, that brightly lit thing, actually stimulates the part of your brain that keeps you awake. | ||
| Sometimes my mind just has too much on it. | ||
| I'm just thinking about everything. | ||
| You got relationships, you got family, you got boxing, you got MMA, you got this training, that training, the next day. | ||
| If you can drink today, you can have a drink today, but you need to do all water. | ||
| It's like, how much do you weigh? | ||
| How much do you have to lose for this fight? | ||
| Like, my mind is always ongoing. | ||
| Then I have just certain life goals. | ||
| My mind is always thinking. | ||
| So even though I do put the phone down, I'm still up just thinking. | ||
| So melatonin, I'm like, you know what, just forget it. | ||
| Just take some melatonin and get sleepy. | ||
| Look, I don't doubt that you have a lot of things in your mind. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you have an incredibly intense life. | |
| What's that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it's been scientifically proven. | ||
| There's something about staring at screens that keeps people awake. | ||
| It's just not good for you. | ||
| It's not good for your brain's own natural production of melatonin. | ||
| Do you do anything else for recovery? | ||
| Like do you do ice baths or sauna or anything like that? | ||
| Ice baths. | ||
| I do not do saunas. | ||
| They're just too hot. | ||
| It's not my thing. | ||
| So ice baths, I'll do a hot tub. | ||
| The whole thing about saunas is that it's too hot. | ||
| When you say it's not your thing, that's the whole purpose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-uh. | |
| It's, like, dry. | ||
| And also, too, it has a door that shuts. | ||
| And I think I'm, like, super claustrophobic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I can't. | ||
| Like, the whole little, what's the Epsom salt thing? | ||
| Where you get in there with the water? | ||
| Oh, sensory deprivation tank. | ||
| Can't get in there. | ||
| Can't do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can't do it. | |
| And I've seen it. | ||
| I'm like, can I leave the door open? | ||
| And they're like, no. | ||
| To get the full effect, you got to shut the door. | ||
| And I'm like... | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| I do cryotherapy. | ||
| I'm okay with that door shutting because you can see through it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You can see through the sauna door. | ||
| But it's still just too hot and dry. | ||
| It's too small in there. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| So I do like the sauna room. | ||
| No, not the sauna, but I do a steam room before I do a sauna. | ||
| So steam room, hot tub, cryo, ice baths, and massages. | ||
| When I'm in camp, it's like heaven for me. | ||
| I get three, four massages a week. | ||
| Oh, that's nice. | ||
| Yeah, because I got it set up like that, okay? | ||
| But... | ||
| After a hard sporing session, I go home for a couple hours and I hit up my masseuse Brenda like, hey Brenda, can you come over here and massage me for an hour? | ||
| Like, this is hurting, that's hurting. | ||
| And she comes over and get the knots out of my traps, knots out my legs and everything and just, I can go to sleep and have a good night. | ||
| But I hate going to bed feeling like I'm sore, I'm hurting. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it sounds like you have a great understanding of your body. | ||
| Like, you're in tune with everything. | ||
| Like, you know, you're working hard enough. | ||
| I'm not in tune with my heart, but I hear you. | ||
| You're not in tune with your heart? | ||
| No. | ||
| In what way? | ||
| Because there's just too many emotions. | ||
| Like, I think that, you know, God blesses us women that care about stuff. | ||
| And it's like, why do I care? | ||
| Like, fuck that shit. | ||
| For real. | ||
| You're a human being. | ||
| I mean, that's why... | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Guys don't care about shit majority. | ||
| Oh, that's not true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Different guys. | ||
| Different guys care about different things. | ||
| No. | ||
| I think that a lot of people, to me, I feel like I care... | ||
| I'm not going to say guys, but just... | ||
| People period. | ||
| I feel like I've always seemed to care more about things than other people. | ||
| I'm like big on loyalty and trust and respect. | ||
| And then you got people who pretend to be about that stuff and they're not. | ||
| And I actually care. | ||
| And I'm more emotional than what people see. | ||
| Like, I'm super sensitive. | ||
| And I've always had things with words. | ||
| People can hit me all day. | ||
| Like, I don't even feel that. | ||
| Like, that's nothing. | ||
| I'd rather somebody hit me than say something terrible to me. | ||
| Because... | ||
| You say something to me, like, that would piss me off more than you hitting me. | ||
| Like, you say the wrong thing to me, and it hits me the wrong way. | ||
| Like, I rate it, like, to really hurt somebody. | ||
| So it's like, I wish that, you know, God just blessed me with a sense of just don't care. | ||
| Like, I'm getting better at it. | ||
| I don't think you want that, I'm telling you. | ||
| I don't think you want that. | ||
| I think you're better off handling it, but keeping these emotions. | ||
| No, fuck emotions. | ||
| This is hilarious. | ||
| No, not it. | ||
| I think this is my take. | ||
| I might be wrong. | ||
| Hear me out though. | ||
| There's a statement. | ||
| The way you do anything is the way you do everything. | ||
| And I think the problem is when there's a person like you who's a champion The way you dedicate yourself to fighting, you expect this kind of dedication in life. | ||
| That's why you're so big on loyalty. | ||
| That's why you're so big on trust. | ||
| And I think this loyalty and trust, you extend to other people and you have these feelings. | ||
| And they're powerful feelings. | ||
| But it's the same thing that leads you to be a great fighter. | ||
| These emotions, it's intensity. | ||
| I think you don't want to be numb. | ||
| I know what you're saying because it's easier sometimes. | ||
| I want to feel passionate about boxing and MMA, but all the other stuff... | ||
| Relationship stuff. | ||
| Not even... | ||
| Just gets in the way? | ||
| Friendships. | ||
| Friendships? | ||
| Because my relationship is great. | ||
| Friendship stuff. | ||
| Friendships, family ships, all that. | ||
| But if you were friends with people like you, then you wouldn't have to fuck with that. | ||
| You wouldn't have to worry about it. | ||
| Do you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, the issue is, oftentimes, is that the issues that you're having are with people that aren't of the same caliber as you. | ||
| You think? | ||
| Well, that's the thing. | ||
| When you are great like I am, I don't really meet a lot of people who are on my same caliber. | ||
| Like, honestly... | ||
| Me and Holly Holm vibe on a different level. | ||
| Like, that's my girl. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Johnny Bones, same thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| He's a great person. | ||
| What do they have in common? | ||
| They're greats. | ||
| They're champions. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what I'm saying. | |
| So it's like everybody... | ||
| Yeah, it's lonely at the top. | ||
| It's not champions. | ||
| Claressa, it's lonely at the top. | ||
| I wish I would stop saying that. | ||
| I'm getting the entourage. | ||
| I'm getting entourized. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| It's lonely at the top. | ||
| You're going to have to deal with that. | ||
| Some people, they half-ass things. | ||
| Yeah, that's a problem for me. | ||
| Yes, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| How you do anything is how you do everything. | ||
| How you have your friendships is how you're going to run your training camps. | ||
| It's how you're going to be a friend. | ||
| It's how you're going to be a mother. | ||
| It's how you're going to be a lover. | ||
| It's how you're going to be anything. | ||
| No matter what you do. | ||
| You're a champion. | ||
| You're a rare person. | ||
| Rare people need to find other rare people. | ||
| Because if you're around other people, they're going to get mad at your rarity. | ||
| They're going to get mad at your strengths. | ||
| They're going to get petty. | ||
| They get weird. | ||
| They get jealous. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I deal with that all the time. | ||
| I'm just like, what the heck? | ||
| I'm sure you do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| I'm like, why aren't you normal? | ||
| Like, what is wrong with you? | ||
| It bothers them that you're so strong. | ||
| Well, I can't deal with that shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what I'm saying. | |
| I wish I didn't care. | ||
| But you don't have to be numb, right? | ||
| Because you don't have to be numb around Holly Holm. | ||
| You don't have to be numb around Jon Jones. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Because they're champions. | ||
| You just need to find a lot of champions to be friends with. | ||
| Or people in that category. | ||
| But they all have their own thing that they're doing. | ||
| They can't be with me all the time. | ||
| They can be with you sometimes. | ||
| Yeah, sometime, but still. | ||
| I need my family and my friends start being damn champions. | ||
| Figure it out. | ||
| Well, for sure, having a friendship or a family relationship with someone new raises people's expectations of themselves. | ||
| And that's one of the things that people don't like. | ||
| People love to think they're a badass, right? | ||
| Everybody wants to think, oh, I got my shit together. | ||
| I'm different. | ||
| I get things done. | ||
| I'm this, I'm that. | ||
| And then they're around somebody. | ||
| That's what they want to think. | ||
| They're around someone who actually does. | ||
| Like you, and they're like, fuck. | ||
| That's sick. | ||
| Because when I'm around somebody who got more than me, I'm like, I'm a student of the game. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like, how'd you get that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like, shit, you made 15 million? | ||
| How you do that? | ||
| That's why you're a champion. | ||
| Or like, you got a nice car? | ||
| How you get a nice car without having to pay full on? | ||
| Like, I'm like a student of the game. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I've never been envious of anybody in my life. | ||
| That's a champion's mentality, though. | ||
| Well. | ||
| That's all positive, right? | ||
| It's great. | ||
| When you see someone who's doing well, that's beneficial because it's inspiration. | ||
| That's a winner's way of looking at things. | ||
| But some people, they don't want to do that work. | ||
| And so they see someone like you who works so hard but is also so successful, they try to find holes. | ||
| They try to pick at you. | ||
| They try to talk shit. | ||
| They try to find something that you're doing wrong. | ||
| Because if they can find something that you're doing wrong or something that you're failing at or something that makes them feel better. | ||
| Oh, poor things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Crabs in a bucket. | ||
| You know that expression? | ||
| Yeah, I have heard of that. | ||
| Yeah, that's what it is. | ||
| Well, maybe since you said that, maybe I'll be less listening to it, but I'll be reading everything. | ||
| But I've actually stopped. | ||
| I read everything, but it'd be like, you know what? | ||
| Let me skip about eight comments and then we'll catch some more. | ||
| Because some stuff, like, all right, this is good stuff here. | ||
| But it's, again, you're just dealing with the opinions of losers. | ||
| Yeah, true acting. | ||
| I always used to say, you think Michael Jordan's leaving YouTube comments? | ||
| No, he's busy. | ||
| He's busy. | ||
| He's busy being Michael Jordan, right? | ||
| LeBron James doesn't leave YouTube comments, right? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, that's not what champions do. | ||
| I overlook so much stuff, though. | ||
| I just be like, some people you gotta put in their place. | ||
| It's like, this is sick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You don't, though. | |
| Just let them be petty on their own. | ||
| Just disconnect yourself from the communication line. | ||
| I'm working on it. | ||
| Maybe I'll stop at 26. Maybe. | ||
| A couple days from now, just... | ||
| Be like, you know what? | ||
| Turn a new leaf. | ||
| Not in response to none of you losers on social media. | ||
| The problem is it does affect the way people think. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| It affects people's minds. | ||
| And people are addicted to their phone. | ||
| Like, look at you. | ||
| What I got to text my luck is urgent. | ||
| I'm sure it's urgent. | ||
| People get addicted to those things and you get addicted to like reading responses. | ||
| You get addicted to like you say something to them and then they say something back to you and you think about what the fuck they say and then you have to check it. | ||
| No, I just feel like sometimes I need the doubters. | ||
| You know, I need to hear what they're saying so I can prove them wrong. | ||
| I'm sure you're gonna hear them no matter what. | ||
| Yeah, but it's still like some of them, especially like, let's say Eddie Hearn. | ||
| He just said that some... | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| He said some girl who beat me in the amateurs. | ||
| Only one girl that beat me, but he said that... | ||
| You were 80-1, right? | ||
| 77-1. | ||
| 77-1? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| People keep putting 80 and 1 on my Wikipedia. | ||
| Why do they do that? | ||
| I don't know, but I kept great count of my fights. | ||
| So why they had three fights? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm just doing stuff, I think. | ||
| How weird. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But seven is always my number. | ||
| Eddie Hearn is a promoter, though. | ||
| Yeah, but he said... | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have to understand. | |
| He's just trying to make some money. | ||
| Not that the girl would just beat me. | ||
| He said she would stop me or KO me. | ||
| Do you know why he said that? | ||
| That shit pissed me off so bad. | ||
| Do you know why he said that? | ||
| So that you would talk about it right now. | ||
| So you would talk about it when you get an opportunity. | ||
| And that's how he's going to make money. | ||
| Well, I want him to know. | ||
| Just pay me the money and I'll come over there and whip her ass. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And that's what he wants. | ||
| That's what he wants. | ||
| He wants you to do it. | ||
| He don't want to pay me. | ||
| He wants me to come fight her. | ||
| Oh, he wants you to fight her for like a hundred grand. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| Like, I told him how much it was. | ||
| What if you were on the Anthony Joshua Tyson Fury undercard? | ||
| Like, that's going to be a very high-profile undercard. | ||
| Still got to pay me, though. | ||
| Still got to pay you. | ||
| But still, there'll be a lot of eyeballs on that. | ||
| It'll be worth it. | ||
| It'll be worth it if they can put that together. | ||
| It'll be worth it, but not still not worth $100,000. | ||
| I fought for more than $200,000, $304,000. | ||
| Well, has he made an offer? | ||
| It was trash. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I'm not even going to say it. | ||
| It was so trash. | ||
| That's unfortunate. | ||
| But that's what he's doing. | ||
| I mean, he's trying to make money. | ||
| He's trying to make money or trying to use people to make money? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Trying to use people to make money. | ||
| Well, that's just sad. | ||
| That's what promoters do. | ||
| I mean, what has the worst reputation in sports worse than a boxing promoter? | ||
| I mean, they're like the sleaziest. | ||
| Oh, I don't think it's none. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think Don King was like the king of that. | |
| He is. | ||
| Like, it's scary reading about what he did to Mike Tyson. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Like that was 300 million or something? | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Some insane amount of money. | ||
| And look, that's scary. | ||
| Like, whenever somebody give me a contract, from hearing that story, I flip it over and backwards. | ||
| Like, hold on, make sure nothing's on the back of here. | ||
| Make sure it's one page. | ||
| Because it was like, the story that you heard about that was kind of scary. | ||
| Well, that's Don King's whole world. | ||
| You know, his whole world has been ripping off fighters and promoting big events and making shitloads of money. | ||
| You know, it's like the boxing promoter reputation is one of the worst reputations in all sports. | ||
| Who are you going back and forth with over there? | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's worse? | ||
| What in sports has a worse reputation than boxing promoters? | ||
| In terms of like, you know, look, it goes all the way back to On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando. | ||
| I mean, that was about a boxing promoter that did him dirty. | ||
| I don't think there's nothing worse than it. | ||
| I'm trying to think like... | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| I mean, people can talk all the shit they want about MMA promoters, but MMA promoters, there's no way they have a worse reputation than boxing promoters. | ||
| It's not even close. | ||
| No, I don't think Dana has a worse reputation than Don King. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| No chance. | ||
| So, have you thought about fighting the UFC? Do you think that's a possibility? | ||
| I'm going to see how this three years ago with the PFL. Right. | ||
| Yeah, like, I like to look at the bigger picture of things because that's what keeps me motivated. | ||
| Like, I can't think of, like, oh, I'm going to fight the worst girl in MMA and it gets me going. | ||
| It's like, I got to look at, like, what's the big picture? | ||
| Like, what are we leading toward? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And we're leading toward a big... | ||
| Super fight. | ||
| Me and Kayla Harrison. | ||
| Me winning a million dollars. | ||
| Me fighting against the other girls who she's competing against. | ||
| I'm looking at that. | ||
| So it's like I can't even think about UFC. What I love, I think in three years I would have a better chance at beating Amanda Nunes than beating her than I do right now. | ||
| Definitely with what I know and what she knows. | ||
| But like I said, the more experience I get, the more comfortable I get, the more I learn all the different disciplines, it'll be a stronger argument within the next couple of years. | ||
| I think you could be a huge superstar in the sport, and I think if you get into the UFC, that's the best chance for becoming a huge superstar. | ||
| I think the PFL is making some good moves, and I think Bellator is making some good moves too, but at the end of the day, the UFC is the biggest organization in the world. | ||
| I like that you are with the PFL for now. | ||
| I think it's a great move. | ||
| They do have good fighters over there. | ||
| It's a very good organization. | ||
| I like the idea of you getting some fights in there, but I would really love to see you in the UFC someday. | ||
| I think it'd be pretty amazing. | ||
| Have to see what these three years hold. | ||
| And then after that... | ||
| But you know, I actually respect Amanda Nunes a whole lot. | ||
| And I tell people that all the time. | ||
| I respect what she does in MMA. And that's why I wouldn't just go over there and just fight her. | ||
| You're not going to give me six months to a year to get ready for a fight like that. | ||
| That's like a super fighter... | ||
| Did that what they offered you? | ||
| Six months? | ||
| That's kind of crazy, right? | ||
| You should have another UFC fight before you fight the champion. | ||
| Yeah, but it was kind of like the Conor McGregor thing, where he went in, he fought against the best in boxing, so they really wanted to get that win back for MMA. That's what I think, because I was like, what? | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| The only other high-profile boxer was James Toney. | ||
| But James Toney went in pretty far. | ||
| Yeah, he was way past his prime. | ||
| I don't think he even prepared, to be honest. | ||
| Right, and that's how many people, when I first started, Training family, they're like, oh, she's another James Toney. | ||
| I'm like, you guys, wait a minute. | ||
| I'm 20 years younger, and I'm still boxing. | ||
| And like, dude... | ||
| Big difference. | ||
| It's a big difference. | ||
| Like, he was 45, and he didn't, like, I'm actually respecting the sport. | ||
| And that's something that I give myself props about. | ||
| Because I could be egotistical, you know, and be cocky. | ||
| Like, oh, forget that jujitsu. | ||
| Forget all that wrestling shit. | ||
| Forget those kicks, too. | ||
| Like, I'm going to go over there with my strength in boxing and just whoop these girls' ass. | ||
| Like, that's cocky. | ||
| That's dumb. | ||
| That's arrogant. | ||
| And I get called those words often in boxing when it was like, I've never been arrogant. | ||
| You're just confident. | ||
| I'm confident. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's it. | |
| You're confident in your ability. | ||
| But you should be confident in your ability as a boxer. | ||
| Got to. | ||
| The cocky and arrogant thing would be if you just threw yourself into the UFC without understanding all those other aspects of fighting. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah, but you're smart. | ||
| You're doing it the right way. | ||
| Right, and that's what I commend myself on. | ||
| But I was going to do that anyway. | ||
| Like, I believe in always setting myself up to win. | ||
| I hate losing. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I hate losing. | ||
| It's not... | ||
| How you do anything is how you do everything. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| Right. | ||
| I'm sure you're going to compete as a UFC fighter or as an MMA fighter rather the same way you competed as a boxer. | ||
| I have the same attitude about it. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| I'm not fearful. | ||
| Now, I know you did some sparring with Cyborg. | ||
| What did you think about her and when she wound up and fought Amanda Nunes? | ||
| Well, that's the thing people get confused too. | ||
| Me and Chris Cyborg did our sparring a year prior to that fight. | ||
| We sparred one time. | ||
| It was off of like, we had been kind of messaging back and forth a little bit, but I think it was kind of like a wonder of hers if she could, you know. | ||
| If she can hang. | ||
| Yeah, if she can beat the best woman in boxing in like a sparring match. | ||
| So, I went to Vegas for some fights. | ||
| I went to Vegas for some fights, and she was in LA, and she was like, hey, I see you're in Vegas. | ||
| I see you just fought. | ||
| Like, would you mind coming down to LA to, you know, to spar with me? | ||
| And I was by myself. | ||
| And I'm like, well, I ain't got my boxing gear. | ||
| I ain't got my head gear. | ||
| I ain't got my mouthpiece. | ||
| I ain't got nothing. | ||
| She was like, just come to LA. So she flew me to LA, her and Ray, and we went to the gym. | ||
| And at first, they were kind of like... | ||
| On the edge about sparring. | ||
| They didn't know they should ask. | ||
| And I just threw it out there. | ||
| Because they were like, oh, you know, we can do some boxing drills and we can do that. | ||
| And I was just like, alright, whatever. | ||
| And I was like, we sparring? | ||
| And they were like, oh, well, did you want a Spartan? | ||
| I'm like, shit, why not? | ||
| You know, I'm here. | ||
| So, uh, had like a little chatty mouthpiece in, uh, had gear, some gloves from her. | ||
| And, uh, the coach asked, like, how many rounds? | ||
| Yeah, this is edited. | ||
| Great. | ||
| It's edited? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This isn't the full rounds. | ||
| Or is it? | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Jamie just found something online. | ||
| I'm looking at this. | ||
| Is that the first time you sparred with an MMA fighter? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I sparred with guy MMA fighters who were from the Michigan area, but not up on the profile of Chris Cyborg. | ||
| Did you feel like there was a lot of tension in the room when that was happening because she was trying to test herself against the best female boxer? | ||
| I don't feel tension or feel pressure. | ||
| But did you feel like it from them that this was a big moment? | ||
| No. | ||
| You're so relaxed. | ||
|
unidentified
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Look at you. | |
| Nah, I was like, we're sparring. | ||
| You're a champ. | ||
| That's championship mentality right there. | ||
| Yeah, when we sparred, I think after sparring, Ray was like, yo, I've never seen that before. | ||
| And I was like, what? | ||
| And he was like, I've never seen anybody get their respect from Chris Cyborg in the sparring match and boxing. | ||
| I've never seen it. | ||
| And I was like, oh. | ||
| Like, it wasn't a big deal to me. | ||
| I just was like, I was happy to spar against her. | ||
| I've never questioned my boxing abilities. | ||
| And I knew that, you know, she was... | ||
| I heard a little bit that she kind of wanted to get into boxing. | ||
| She wanted to fight against Cecilia Brockes. | ||
| And from our sparring, I would say that Chris Cyborg definitely could do great in boxing. | ||
| All she needs is a few months to actually focus on just boxing. | ||
| And she'll go out there and kick some ass because she was just... | ||
| her arms was just strong. | ||
| I don't know how to put it. | ||
| Like, I don't feel like she really punched her, but I mean, okay, maybe she's physically strong. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like when you get in, you get in the clinch with her, you, you, you, you, you can't move Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| It was like, oh, you either get out the clinch or she gonna try to throw you this way and She's a legit grappler. | ||
| She's strong as fuck. | ||
| You know, she actually had a Muay Thai fight against this woman. | ||
| There's a woman named Jorina Barge. | ||
| And she's probably the most ducked female fighter that's currently active. | ||
| Like, women don't want to fight her. | ||
| She's a beast. | ||
| And Cyborg fought her. | ||
| And they, I think it was five rounds? | ||
| It was either 3 or 5, but in Muay Thai, Cyborg does not have a lot of experience in this, and this woman is undefeated. | ||
| Cyborg came after her, and she got dropped a couple times in the fight, but would get up and still charge forward. | ||
| It was impressive, just on sheer toughness and her willingness to take this fight. | ||
| I don't know if Cyborg has any pro Muay Thai fights, or if she does, it's a relatively small number. | ||
| And Jorina Barge, like I said, she went for almost two years where she couldn't get a fight. | ||
| Nobody wanted to fight her. | ||
| She's a big, long, tall girl, and she's super technical. | ||
| I've actually seen that if I don't want to. | ||
| She's super technical. | ||
| So I was impressed with Cyborg just because of that. | ||
| That she was willing to do that. | ||
| You know, and now she's over in Bellator. | ||
| She became the Bellator champion. | ||
| So when they were talking with you about trying to set something up with her... | ||
| No. | ||
| A boxing match? | ||
| No. | ||
| An MMA fight. | ||
| When Bellator was talking to you about fighting. | ||
| Is that what they were considering? | ||
| I don't know what they were considering, honestly. | ||
| But I know 145 is not a weight class that I would want to go to. | ||
| 155 has been my low for 154 in boxing. | ||
| So 155 was it for me. | ||
| But I think that they kind of wanted me to get the 145. So the PFL is really the only option right now in terms of that weight class, right? | ||
| No, because I could have got to 45, but I don't want to. | ||
| I feel like I have a bigger body. | ||
| I walk around at 70, 75. That's not something that I personally want, and I haven't been at 140 anything since I was 16 years old, so it's not something that I want to do. | ||
| Yeah, you feel like you'll be weakened? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| I just... | ||
| Doesn't sound like fun. | ||
| I hate going to 154. Really? | ||
| You know, so it's like going to 45 is like, shit. | ||
| So you would prefer 68 if they gave that as an option? | ||
|
unidentified
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Nah, I would prefer 55. 55 is good. | |
| 55 is good. | ||
| But I think that's the only place, I think PFL is the only place that has a 55 right now. | ||
| I don't think any other organization is putting on... | ||
| Probably, but Dana was talking about creating 0155 if I wanted to do US. Really? | ||
| Just for you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was like, alright. | ||
| That must be nice. | ||
| But also, too, it was like... | ||
| Still, now we're going to have the smaller girls coming up 145, coming up to 155, 135 coming up. | ||
| And I mean, let's be honest, a lot of girls kill themselves to make those weights. | ||
| A lot of girls are not 45 or 35. They're actually bigger, but they kill themselves to make that weight. | ||
| So there is a weight class for 155 and other organizations, but for right now, 35 in a smaller weight class is just getting more weight. | ||
| Notoriety for some reason. | ||
| It's even like that in boxing. | ||
| I feel like 60 has some of the most skilled girls in boxing, but the weight class 135 and 140, 147, they kind of say that the girls have better skills. | ||
| I feel like they're just looking at smaller women and they feel like it's more attractive or something. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| For me, what was I saying? | ||
| Yeah, 45 just not it. | ||
| Well, listen, Claressa, you're a champion in life and you're just, in my opinion, one of the most exciting entrants into MMA. I'm excited that you're doing it because I've always liked to see elite athletes that are at the top of the food chain in their sports come over and, you know, we really haven't had anybody like you that was that good at boxing and that dominant as a professional enter into MMA. So it's exciting. | ||
| I had thought Floyd was going to come over and fight against Conor. | ||
| I really did. | ||
| I never thought he was going to do that. | ||
| What? | ||
| I thought it would be like, you know, kind of like some written rule. | ||
| Like, hey, he can't kick me or he can't elbow me or something. | ||
| Well, that wouldn't be MMA then. | ||
| What you're doing is real MMA. If Floyd came over, they would destroy his legs. | ||
| They would just kick his legs out from under him. | ||
| It would be terrible. | ||
| I thought it would be rules, though. | ||
| That's why I thought he would come over here. | ||
| Just like a boxing match out of the cage, I thought. | ||
| You can't help. | ||
| Well, unless you allow clinching and striking from the clinch, but even then he'd get fucked up. | ||
| Elbows and shit from the clinch. | ||
| It'd be terrible. | ||
| Agreed. | ||
| Yeah, you don't want that. | ||
| He's a brilliant boxer. | ||
| He's brilliant. | ||
| No, but that's what I'm saying. | ||
| I thought he would have been over. | ||
| He's too smart for that. | ||
| He made them fight his game. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Too smart? | |
| No, that's not what you say. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Nah, he's too smart. | ||
| It's just that he's not that driven to do it. | ||
| Like, I'm driven to do it. | ||
| It takes a lot of heart to come with something that you don't know and do it. | ||
| Oh, I know. | ||
| Yeah, listen, nothing but respect. | ||
| I'm excited that you're doing it. | ||
| There's a lot of boxers who would not, like Canelo, he's not coming in. | ||
| No! | ||
| Well, he doesn't have to, though. | ||
| It's all the money he's making. | ||
| Well, I hope you make that money. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| And if anybody has a chance, you are, in my opinion, you're the frontrunner for a woman that can enter into boxing or enter into MMA from boxing and really elevate the sport. | ||
| You know what 50 Cent said? | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| If I can't do it, it can't be done. | ||
| Well, there you go. | ||
| That's his song. | ||
| Well, good luck to you and thank you very much for being here. | ||
|
unidentified
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I appreciate you. | |
| Of course. | ||
| Thanks, Joe. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And good luck in June. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I'll be watching for sure. | ||
| I might literally kick ass. | ||
| Yes, literally kick ass. | ||
| That's going to be fun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. |
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