Craig Jones and Alex Volkanovski reveal how UFC’s featherweight division (145 lbs) demands relentless adaptability—Volkanovski, after 12 The Ultimate Fighter episodes, credits John Danaher’s precision coaching for cutting guesswork, while Jones admits to shadow-banning struggles post-Nazi symbol controversy. Both highlight MMA’s brutal toll: Volkanovski’s leg kicks nearly caused Uriah Hall’s leg break, Jones’ EKC permanently damaged his vision, and spinal disc issues plague fighters like Braulio Estima (titanium replacements) and Fedor Emelianenko (artificial knees). The conversation underscores elite athletes’ high-risk conditioning—pushing limits to avoid fading, yet risking long-term damage like COVID-related immune suppression or Colby Covington’s low testosterone. MMA’s evolution hinges on balancing technical mastery with physical survival, as Volkanovski prepares for Ortega while Jones faces Panza. [Automatically generated summary]
I believe he's going to come to the grappling show this Friday night, and I'm going to persuade him to jump in the corner, so I'm going to have Alex Jones and John Danahoe.
If you look back at The Ultimate Fighter and you see over the years, it's amazing the level of talent just keeps getting better and better and better.
You know, in the beginning days, the guys were, you know, you had guys from, like, smaller circuits and, you know, guys who are maybe some were veterans, maybe some were beginners.
But now, like, if you watch Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series, it's like so many of those guys are really talented.
It's pretty amazing.
Like, you see guys that have UFC debuts and you watch them and you go, wow, these guys are good.
Like, really smooth, good flow, you know, great transitions, great overall, you know, octagon IQ. I'm noticing that as well.
Obviously, it was a little bit different, I guess, but obviously the knowledge is more out there now and everyone's sharing that knowledge in big gyms and all that type of stuff.
I feel like I've noticed that a lot, the level in this.
Even though they're all entertaining, they know exactly what they're doing in there as well.
I mean 10 years ago when I was sort of getting into Jiu Jitsu I would just put on the MMA gloves and me and my buddies would just beat the shit out of each other.
We'd go home with headaches and stuff but really I would say no formal training.
I wouldn't have put gloves on for 10 years but really I created an OnlyFans account for a bit of a laugh and I wanted to put Alex on but I figured it would only be fair so we do 10 minutes of grappling Ten minutes of wool work, because I guess wool work is sort of like the intermediary, but then five minutes of kickboxing.
I was only meant to do kickboxing, but he beat the shit out of me so bad, I had to shoot a takedown.
You've never had any itch at all to do MMA? A little bit, but I used to go to university and study psychology, and I remember all it took was one section on traumatic brain injury, and I was like, what do they get paid?
I mean, so obviously we were talking before the show about the Gabby Garcia thing, and I always say I would definitely take an MMA fight with Gabby Garcia because obviously we both can't fight either.
You know what I mean?
It'd be a fair fight there.
So if that happened in Japan, I would probably jump in and keep doing it if the money was right.
Probably come back and train with Alex for it.
unidentified
Dude, she's beat the shit out of some- I don't want to be a part of that one.
It's funny, because you say that, but I know, because I remember we looked into it, and someone said that, oh, you must be, because they explained it to me.
I didn't even know what shadow banning was.
And then I ended up going, what?
I told them to type in a couple of other names from UFC, and there was a lot of them that were.
They wouldn't come up.
And all our fan pages and all that would come up first before us, but hopefully it's changed.
The term swastika is often used to distinguish the left-facing from the right-facing swastika symbols, a meaning which developed in 19th century scholarship.
Both the right-facing and the left-facing variants are employed in Hinduism and Buddhism.
However, the left-facing is more commonly used in Buddhism than Hinduism and the right-facing is more commonly used in Hinduism than Buddhism.
Back in the day, I remember when I was a kid, there was a Shotokan school that had like a swastika as one of their patches.
I'm trying to remember this correctly.
Because I remember saying, what the fuck is that?
And they were like, no, it's the wrong way.
But it was basically a swastika.
And it was some emblem for this Okinawan karate school.
Is that true?
Yeah?
Let me see what that looks like.
Same thing?
Yeah, there it is.
And there's actually a Hindu temple near my house, my old house in California, that had all these swastikas with the dots like that all around the outside of it, and they had explained.
There were signs all over the place.
This does not have anything to do with Nazi Germany.
This building was made in the 1920s, and this is the whole reason why it's here, and la-la-la.
It's just nuts that a weird design that's been around for thousands of years has become connected so horribly to this one point in history with the Nazis that all these people that had it forever can't use it anymore.
Manji symbol.
Japan has decided to update the manji symbol as well as a number of others to be more tourist friendly with the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
ESPN. This is the first time they've aired on ESPN. So the return of the Ultimate Fighter will be on ESPN. I don't think they've ever had the Ultimate Fighter.
Now, you guys were supposed to, you were scheduled to fight, but then you got COVID. And when you got COVID, when you got tested, initially, when you got tested, you didn't feel sick, right?
So I'm guessing before we went into the bubble, I must have got it from someone or whatever.
And then, you know, a few days later, we got tested a couple of times.
It didn't pop up.
But then we got tested, yeah, one of the days.
And that was like right at the end of my camp because I went there a bit early for Brad Riddell to corner or be with him because he fought the week before me.
So I did my last week of training, hard training, in Vegas after traveling and doing all that.
And then I got COVID. I must have had it trained like hard.
You know, we get stuck into it.
So I did back-to-back because the schedule got tightened up because we arrived a bit later in the week.
So back-to-back really, really solid sessions while I probably had COVID. But I mean, I sort of had started getting headaches and that before.
I was like, man, I'm getting headaches.
It's Vegas, maybe, you know, just dehydrated and whatnot.
But yeah, then I tested positive and then I started getting the symptoms after that.
Again, it was just more the fact that we just need to do a couple.
I still don't think it was that, but I felt fine while I was doing that.
I didn't think nothing of it, but because I end up getting pretty rattled from the COVID, that's why I was like, man, maybe my immune system was down at the end of camp, obviously dieting and all that type of stuff.
I felt fine, but I'm pretty sure I started feeling some of the symptoms before I was getting into them hard sessions as well.
10 days or something maybe like seven or ten days did they do ivy vitamins or anything like that uh yeah once once i was in the hospital they were doing that you know but i mean as soon as i got on the medication um you know for dexamethasone like my largest improvements like straight away yeah yeah and you got it a while ago right you got covered a while back yeah so i had it probably august last year so we were training obviously during the lockdown in new york and uh I believe one of the Gracies,
And the logic behind it was my family's back in Australia, so I haven't seen my parents, my brother, for probably close to two years now.
And Australia's going to be definitely one of those places you're going to need the vaccine, I assume, to travel there.
So I went and got it.
And yeah, it was a rough time.
Obviously, I had the standard side effects of fever, cold sweats, a lot of exhaustion, headaches.
But then my lymph nodes started to swell up and I started to get some crazy pregnant looking stomach and actually had to pull out of a grappling match for it.
So I was on the ultimate fighter.
So I was going to bail out one of the weekends on the show, go compete.
But yeah, it was just for a week.
I think I was carrying this fluid for close to a week.
I mean, I was worried, to be honest, because, like, I remember the medic on Tough, he's like, man, that's just lymphatic fluid, it should drain, but it just, it would slowly, getting bigger and bigger, and when I would walk, it would be, I wouldn't say it was too painful, but it was quite uncomfortable.
So I'd walk around holding my stomach and stuff, and I was just like, at the point it started to drain, I was like, I'll give it one more day, and then we'll investigate.
But yeah, I was peeing out some crazy colors, so, like, very strong colors.
What was funny, actually, was when I brought those symptoms to him, he's like, well, man, it's a vaccine.
He's like, we're in sort of unknown territory here.
He himself even said, he's like, I had Johnson& Johnson and he said he was the sickest he's ever been in his life for 12 hours and then he snapped out of it.
So nothing he told me was reassuring at all, unfortunately.
I knew I'd be competing because I'd pulled out of that match and we were looking to reschedule that for mid-June and I was just like, man, I don't want to miss another week of training potentially.
Then obviously this comp, I hadn't known when I was going to compete.
It was real last minute, this one, this Friday.
But yeah, so I really just didn't get it again because I was worried about potentially missing more training.
But yeah, after talking to some people, probably for the best, I don't get it.
Obviously, I'm not a medical expert, but what I'm reading is that people that have already had COVID that get vaccinated are more likely to have issues than just regular people.
And it's still a low number.
You see, you hear a lot of people get issues.
You got to think of how many people have been vaccinated.
I think at this point in time...
Are they saying it's like 50% of all adults in America have been vaccinated?
I think that's the most recent number, which is what?
Like more than 100 million people, I think.
Which is pretty crazy.
So, it's just one of those things.
Is that what it is?
Yeah.
I wish they could tell you.
You know, I wish I could tell you, you're going to be fine.
I would say I probably missed a good seven days of training, I think.
I mean, they came to a point where the fluid was almost gone, but I was just like, man, I don't know if I should be grappling and squashing this around.
It's one of the craziest things I've ever heard of in my life.
A guy like that who literally used to teach philosophy at Columbia.
Fucking brilliant guy who also is like super high-level grappler himself.
And decides to dedicate his life to training the best grapplers on Earth.
And has had these insane results.
I mean, it's a really wild story.
If you looked at the John Donaher origin story, it's like a Marvel Comics, you know, like some sort of a mentor in Doctor Strange or something like that.
When I was training a lot, there was very little leg locks.
I remember Dean Lister in 2003 in Abu Dhabi.
He was leg locking a lot of guys.
And Dean was one of the few guys It was like a few other guys, but he was one of the real top-level guys who was winning by heel hook and even ankle locks and stuff, knee bars.
And then John and him have this one conversation, one time, where he says to John, why would you ignore 50% of the body?
And John's like, ding!
And then he just develops this entire system based on leg locks.
And then you guys start dominating.
Gary Tonin, Gordon, Nikki, you, all these guys start dominating.
Eddie start dominating with leg locks.
And then everybody else is trying to dissect your system and put it together.
It's really crazy because that's not that long.
Like, if you think about, like, how long...
Arm bars have been around, rear naked chokes, standard jujitsu techniques.
Then all of a sudden, somewhere around, like what year was it?
2015 or something like that?
Like what year did leg locks just start taking over?
I would say around 2015. I mean, indirectly, I guess Eddie Bravo is sort of responsible for this in a way because he gave the guys the platform to demonstrate this.
In jiu-jitsu at the time, apart from ADCC, you couldn't really do heel hooks in any tournaments.
So a lot of people didn't put any energy into it because they were like, why am I going to become a master in this skill set when there's no platform for me to use them on?
Pow Harris gets up, celebrates, walks, he does a circle, comes back to shake David Avalon's hand, and David doesn't shake it, and then Pow Harris is like, shocked.
One of the most boring matches in history, but we signed a contract for a 190-pound match, and he shows up the day before with a note from his doctor, and he's 220 pounds, and he says, I will die if I cut any weight.
And Gary actually, in that match, Gary actually popped in pretty bad.
Like, he injured his legs pretty bad.
So when we had the match, and I came out with John Danner, because I was like, well, we're going to do the camp against the scariest leg locker in the world.
I better have John in the corner.
And I don't know if that triggered Pal Harris to not commit to anything.
But what happened in the match was nothing was happening, and he was stalling.
So the referee started giving him penalties.
But in my head, I'm like, this guy knows he's going to lose.
Well, I've seen the clip of him with a knee bar where his knee is like bent the other way.
It's like some, whoever he's grappling with, full on like hips down, like the knee is like completely hyperextended, like many degrees the wrong direction.
A lot of Brazilians just don't believe in leg locks.
There's guys like Leandro Lowe, when I had a match with him, just completely let his leg snap because he always said, I'm never going to tap to a lower body submission.
You shouldn't do that because, I mean, eventually, even if you're flexible, like for him, his knee and ankles were flexible, but the weakest link was his fibula.
So his fibula snapped and disconnected from his ankle.
Surprisingly, I think the tib-fib breaks actually come back a little quicker than the knee, except for obviously the PTSD from looking at your broken leg.
But at the time, when I spoke to Vinny after the match, he seemed like he was most worried about what his wife was going to say.
And the attention to detail with everything, even, again, I didn't know that, but I could still tell that, you know, the way you would study fights and break things down, which is, it works.
You know, you get the right philosophies and, you know, the attention to detail can really capitalize on that.
There's a lot of, like, a lot of in training jiu-jitsu, there's a lot of, like, you know, just kind of rolling and learning things and figuring things out, and you get tapped with something, and then your teammate says, you left your leg here, and if you do this, you're okay, but if you do that, you're fucked.
And you go, oh, okay.
But with John, everything is, like...
The process of learning is shortened radically because he cuts out all the nonsense and just gets you to the points that you need to focus on.
When I watch you guys train under him and I watch him coach, I was like, this is very interesting because he's completely eliminated guesswork.
It doesn't always work.
Guys are going to lose matches because they're going to face talented grapplers.
In grappling right now, especially the no-gi game, the level of competition.
This Who's No.
1 event this weekend, I love these.
I love that they have them here in Austin because the level of competition is so high.
It's a good thing because when you're looking at things like that, there's a lot of people that do good things instinctively.
You know what I mean?
They don't even know they're doing it, but some people have just been in their positions.
They just do things.
So fight study and all that type of stuff, because we did a lot of it in the house, Honestly, you start watching and your thought process around things, I felt like it made me understand things even a little bit more.
I thought I already had a good understanding, but watching other people and then capitalize, oh, he does this, and then you start learning figures, oh, let's nullify that by doing this.
You can go real deep, and that's why I'm watching.
Again, a lot of people do things that they probably don't even know.
It's just more instinctively, oh, this happened, so he done this.
It was the right reaction, and we can capitalize on that just from watching.
They do their camp and then they stop at all on a break until next camp.
So where's your time for learning?
Where's your time for evolving?
Because when I'm in camp, that whole camp is structured for that fight.
You know what I mean?
So I'm doing every session, every drilling session is structured for that fight.
You know, obviously a lot of it's cardio and getting yourself ready for the fight.
But then when you're not fighting, say after the fight, like, alright, just doing a heap of drilling with Craig or like with the coaches, just doing a heap of striking and just working on other things.
And get a real understanding of things that, yeah, I don't need in the next fight, but I've got time to evolve and expand the brain.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, so that's where I feel like it's the best time.
Now when you say structured towards the fight, so do you guys have With City Kickboxing, do you have it mapped out like in advance where you have like here's your eight-week camp This is what we're gonna do on Monday.
So everything's and again like as I was saying earlier about having you know the high sessions and low sessions you need to have the you know the sessions in between and Like the chill sessions where you are going to drill certain things that you're going to need in that fight or a pad session or something like that, game planning.
So we have everything from eight weeks structured specifically for the fight.
So we even do sessions exactly the time we're going to fight.
Obviously in Australia it's Sunday.
So we don't really have any days off because Sunday's usually our day off, but that's when we fight in Australia.
So when I fought in Abu Dhabi, we did the exact same thing.
But because we were going to bed at like 7, so we could get up at 4 in the morning.
Because I was going to fight.
We wanted to be up a few hours before we fight.
So that's why we had a pattern like that.
I think a lot of people were doing that.
But that's why, you know, and then, you know, fight night, you know, I'm trying to sleep in and that's when like USADA come in and woke me up and like I had to do the piss test and I had to skull water.
Well, the fight dietician, Geordi, usually has us on melatonin.
But again, I won't do that fight night because I feel like sometimes in the morning it can make you that little bit.
Like, you know, like you're alright, you're there, but like just a little bit maybe drowsy, yeah.
So like you're still in that sleep sort of pattern.
But yeah, like we usually, I would, you know, especially when we come, we usually go overnight.
So I'll try and get as much sleep as I can, you know, on the plane as hard.
But I'll make sure I stay awake till the time I want to go to bed.
I don't care how tired I am, I just hold out and then usually I'll get to sleep and by the time I'm ready to wake up, I'm hitting my time zone anyway back home.
I've got it now every time I'm in Vegas to be honest.
My sleeping pattern is on point every time I get in.
It is amazing when you get experts behind your camp and get experts behind your training that a lot of the problems that you were having previously, they get fixed.
Like your back issue that you were having with your back would blow out every now and then.
And then since you've been working with the strength and conditioning guys, it never happened again, right?
Yeah, so Baymed performance we talked about last time.
They've been great.
Even when I do get a little bit of a spasm, Just like what I know now is like, mate, within a day or two, I'm like, you know, I'm back to grappling 100% like within a day or two.
You know, where before it'd be like two weeks.
I wouldn't be training and then I'll try and get back into it because I wasn't doing much.
Bang, it'll happen again.
This will go on.
Like, you know what I mean?
This would go on the whole time where I'm telling you before, in between camps, I want to evolve.
I wouldn't even be able to train because I was constantly getting back issues.
And then I'll get six weeks to prepare for a fight.
And that's how it was.
That was happening for years.
I was like, man, fucking, what do I got to do here?
Craig, when you compare the way someone has to prepare when they're a professional grappler like yourself versus someone who's doing all these different disciplines smashed in together in MMA, do you look at it and go, fuck that?
Even when you watch the folk style wrestling and that, and then you see the way their legs are positioned, and I'm like, mate, that fucking something's got to go there.
You know what I mean?
They're just reaping it there, the body weight's on it, the leg.
They're still hanging on while the guy's lifting, you know, shoving the leg.
And you're like, how the fuck is their leg not fucking weight?
He's crazy flexible, because these guys were all elite breakdancers.
And they could do, like, where they would stand, they would do handstands, and then they would put their legs into a lotus position in a handstand and hop around on the handstand with their legs crisscrossed above their head.
I remember watching the first Metamorris, and when they dropped the trailer to announce that, I still remember Eddie being like, everybody said it was a fluke.
I was like, no fucking way.
They got this rematch booked.
I was huge for professional grappling at the time.
It goes both ways in the gi because although there's so much friction and you can easily pop a guy's leg, they can also reach back and hold onto your sleeve.
So when you're trying to twist, they can hang onto the sleeve and take a bit of the mobility out of it.
But just based on the nature of how people pass in the gi, they can use more distance passing.
It might be easier to stay safe.
But again, like you said, once you're in there, the amount of friction, like even when I roll with 10th Planet guys and they're wearing gi pants, it's always a nightmare when they put me in half guard.
I want that sweat to slip out of there a little bit.
For sure, because I think if we go historically and we look at the ADCC champions, they were mostly gi guys.
But that's because there was no avenue for no gi competition.
So there were very few no gi only guys.
So all the champions in the Gi, every second year would just be like, we'll take the Gi off, we'll do ADCC. And because that population was so much bigger, the talent was so much bigger, they could easily translate to no Gi.
But as no Gi grew, again, thanks to things like Meta Morris and Eddie Bravo, and even like Submission Underground, obviously who's number one today, guys saw an avenue where they could do no Gi all the time.
And then now we see that really it's like the Gi's not really going to help you in no Gi at all.
Yeah, he was one of the first guys that went over to Abu Dhabi that was finishing everybody and just showing everybody that his jiu-jitsu directly applies.
Some guys would come over and they'd compete in the UFC and they would be these elite jiu-jitsu guys, but you take away their gi and they lost like 50-60% of their game because they couldn't grab collars and everybody was slippery and then their takedowns weren't that good.
I'm like, Moe, at the rules meeting, can you please just stand in front of everyone and be like, I would like to announce we are drug testing this year, just to see the crowd reactions.
I do strength and conditioning for injury prevention, but obviously if you've seen some of the guys on my team, like we've got Nicky Rod, even Nicky Ryan, Ethan, even Gordon.
These guys are doing some crazy bodybuilding workouts.
And I'm like, I'm not sure the sports science behind it, but I know they just want to look fucking jacked.
I believe he had some stem cells in the neck and stuff.
Like, what's funny is he's had those crazy armbar escapes.
And he told me that, like, you remember the Krone Gracie where he slipped out of the armbar?
I'm trying to think he had another match.
EBI overtime, even Vinny on the arm, he was able to slip out with ease.
But he was telling me that...
The time he injured his elbow the worst was when he was rolling gently with a girl that was visiting the blue basement and he gave her an armbar and she just ripped it on him.
All these crazy moments in comp where he just almost looks like he's going to let his arm break and he was telling me that was the one that got him.
Gary, I'm not sure what he does in terms of workouts.
I think he does a lot of bodyweight style stuff.
But yeah, the other guys, man, I've done some workouts and watched them do workouts, and I'm just like, man, jiu-jitsu's bad enough on the body, let alone we throw in bodybuilding-style workouts as well.
Like, I don't want the wheels to fall off after this career too soon, you know?
How do you know when you're being lazy versus how do you know when you're overtraining, when you're going too far and you're not giving your joints and your muscles and everything a chance to recover?
I'll be honest, and this shows you, like, when I'm overseas, you know, say I'm in a city kickboxing, and we're training there, so we're busting our ass doing that, but I don't have my team that I do, like, Baymeda Performance, where I go do my strength and conditioning and my physio and all that, and they look after me.
My body, like, recovery and all that's way worse in New Zealand.
Because I'm doing the maintenance and even the strength and conditioning and things like that, when I'm in Australia, where my body, my recovery, everything, I feel like my body doesn't lock up nowhere near as much as it would when I'm away, where I don't really have that treatment.
Where I will, I'll wait until I'm like...
I can't move or I'm going to go see someone.
Where I'm just constantly, you know, even the strength and conditioning we do, it's more about injury prevention and obviously getting your strong as well.
But I mean, at the same time, they can't give me a bodybuilding exercise, like, you know, sort of session when I've got to go bust my ass in the MMA training, like, you know, the next hour.
So it's all, you know, it's all got to work together.
So again, they, the guys at Baymed, they make sure that I'm getting what I need to keep me strong and keep my body moving right, but I can still do all my MMA, my striking, my wrestling.
Because if they bust my ass, and I'm doing the workouts we're doing, it's just too much.
A lot of people think that weightlifting, that that's how you should do it for strength.
It's interesting.
There's a lot of different schools of thought, but Pavel Tatsulin, you know, the guy from Russia, the godfather of kettlebells, He believes that you should never, when you train, you should never go to failure and that you should have long periods of rest in between sets.
And I was like, well, how long?
He's like, 10 minutes.
I said, 10 minutes?
Oh yeah, long ass fucking workouts.
Like you're eating in the middle of your workout because you're hungry.
If I'm doing like cleans with like a heavy kettlebell, like a 90-pound kettlebell or something like that, if I can do 10, I don't do 10, I do 5, and then I sit it down, and then I wait a long ass time, and then I do another 5, and then I wait a long ass time, and then I'll do another 5, and then a long ass time, And that way, I'm getting every rep, I'm not exhausted.
Whereas if I was doing a set of ten, and I could only do like two sets of ten, and then I'm fucking broken down, and the third set I could only get to like five or six, and then I'm like completely exhausted.
Well, then I would have done 26 reps, but I've done 26 reps where the last ones are kind of shitty and my muscles are all blown out.
The other way, I might do five sets of five.
I'm doing 25 reps, but every one of them is...
Like full, clean, clear, like great technique, not exhausted.
And your muscles don't, they don't feel as tired the next day.
Like you're not as beat up.
Like going to failure, and many people believe 100% in going to failure, and that that's the only way to do it.
And again, I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a weightlifting expert.
But Pavel's, his recommendation is never go to failure and do big breaks in between the sets and stretch out your weightlifting sessions and think of it as a skill.
Well, it's such a big part of your arsenal, too, is your ability to push a pace.
I mean, the Holloway fight's a great example of that, especially the first one.
I mean, you just...
Your pace is so ferocious, and you can keep that up for 25 minutes where you're never fading.
It's so giant, man.
The difference between a guy who fades and a guy who doesn't fade, it's so big.
Because so many guys, especially when you see guys that are coming up in the ranks, they're kind of contenders, they're doing really well.
You'll see them do real well in a fight for the first two rounds, and then you'll see a substantial drop-off in the third round.
And that seems to be the difference between the really elite guys.
And I know a lot of it is energy management for sure, but a lot of it is just that work that you do in the gym to make sure that you can push that crazy pace.
Well, like you said, you want to be able to hold that energy, but then you've got sessions like your sparring and all that type of stuff where you can do that.
You need to have sessions that's going to get you ready for a fucking war.
And that's what we do.
I don't want to experience an uncomfortable feeling in the fight.
I'm going to experience it in the fucking camp.
I'm going to go to literally...
I get nervous.
As I say, I get nervous for some of my sessions.
I get more nervous for my sessions than I do for my fight.
Because I know I'm going to...
I know I'm getting fucked up in this.
I'm going to be very, very uncomfortable, but I accept that.
We do sessions where you are going to breaking point, but I've learned to just accept that.
From being in those positions, I get tired, but I don't tell myself you're getting tired.
I've fucking done much worse in training.
Let's go.
So I'm just going to pick up the pace again.
So I literally, we do that in some of these sessions where, I'll be honest, a lot of people don't.
There's sessions that we were doing in our, sort of like during the tough series and that, and I don't know if they're probably like, fuck, you know what I mean?
I'm like, mate, like...
I'll do another two or three of these types of sessions.
I'll just bring one for you guys, you know what I mean?
And I'm like, man, a lot of people just won't go to that.
Obviously, some of them aren't full-time fighters and whatnot, but again, I want to be...
I'm expecting to go out there and the fight not be that hard, but I'm going to be prepared for however hard it gets.
When Conor fought Dustin Poirier the last time, one of my friends was watching one of the interviews where they were talking about how Conor can basically just train himself now, and my friend goes, the fuck he can.
That ain't good.
I don't know what caused it.
I'm of the belief that it's the low calf kick that was the big issue in that fight.
His leg gave out, and then when his leg gave out, he kind of knew he was fucked.
Yeah, this middle ground where I've got that cardio, but I've got the explosiveness.
You know, I don't know what it is.
And maybe, obviously, the training, you know, Mike, with Joe Lopez, the way, like, we've been training, he's always put me in, like, these sort of positions.
As I said, like, you know, being...
Uncomfortable and all that.
You're pushing the pace and all that.
So I've always had that anyway.
But I mean, I feel like there's a lot of things for me that made it work.
A lot of different things.
Obviously, there's a lot that comes into training and all that.
But even maybe my build or maybe just through life, the way I did things and maybe I built that type of...
Cardio or, you know, fast twitch, I don't know, but there's a lot of things that come into play that make me be able to do what I do.
Now, when you see a guy who does get tired early, like a guy who's real fast-twitched and explosive and get tired early, do you ever think, is it just a cardio issue, like they haven't pushed themselves hard enough?
Again, if you're always trying to be in a position where you're comfortable and all that type of stuff, as soon as it gets uncomfortable, you're not thinking right, you're struggling, you're like, oh no, you're starting to doubt yourself.
Again, that's why we put ourselves in that sort of position.
I notice it, especially when you're fighting or even sparring.
Everyone's fucking good for the first minute.
They're on point.
They're eager.
You can't slip up for a second because they're ready to pull the trigger.
One minute goes by.
Next minute, they're looking for a, you know, give me a second to reset it.
I'm like, I ain't giving you fucking shit.
I'm in your face.
You know what I mean?
And that's it.
And you just seem crumbled.
But early, I can't do that.
I have to...
Yeah, wear them out and then be on them and then you just start to see like their reactions from the first minute to even the second, completely different.
And the opportunity, like, you know, again, I'm in his face because he's the type of fighter he gets in your face, makes you panic punch and just capitalizes every time.
So he wants to be there in the heat of, you know, he wants to be in the fire because he knows people are going to make bad decisions and he capitalizes on it.
But I mean, again, that's putting himself in a position where he needs to go a lot harder, especially when he's trying to go for the kill at the same time.
Maybe there's a balance that he needs to, I don't know what it is, but Again, but going back to when we're talking about adversities in the gym and all that type of stuff, that's why I love this sport so much.
I feel like there's a lot of gyms, obviously.
That's just how they are.
It goes discipline and all that.
All these great life skills that we take out of it.
You know what I mean?
And the adversities are...
That you do in our gym and what I've always done with freestyle and even city kickboxing, I feel like that just helps when you're under the pressure outside of MMA or whatever.
You just deal with things a lot better just because, again, you've been in uncomfortable positions and you've had to adapt.
And be able to move forward and look forward.
And, you know, again, you see that with a lot of people that, you know, they're good under pressure and all that type of stuff.
That's really one of the best things about martial arts as it applies to life, is that it makes regular life easy.
You know, even just jujitsu, you know, without the kickboxing and the striking and all that stuff, just the struggle of jujitsu, for the most part, is so much more difficult than the struggle of everyday life.
It makes everyday life seem kind of relaxing.
Like, problems seem minuscule in comparison to, I'm sure, like having Gordon Ryan on your back.
Yeah, that seems to be one of the most important things about jujitsu is your defense.
And it's one of the things that people neglect.
And one of the things that Hickson always emphasized, like Hickson, who's always considered one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest, when you would talk to him, he would always say, it's all about defense.
Like he goes, in any position, I remember talking to him about this, he goes, I am safe.
And then it's always, he's like, we start from a neutral position, and then, I'll never forget this, it was kind of spooky, because you know how good Hickson is.
I can listen to a guy who is just dominant over everyone that he competed against, and all the people he trained with.
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He goes, I move from zero to number one, and when I go from number one, I'm going to two, and I'm not going back to one.
It was literally like he had an armpit on the side of his body where you could look in and see all the muscles, you could see all the tissue, everything.
When a guy trains seven days a week, he's literally one of the top three best grapplers on planet Earth, and you say how lazy you are, it's kind of hilarious.
Yeah, there's a place called Fuddruckers, a cheeseburger place, and me and Eddie Bravo, we used to lift weights at 24 Hour Fitness, and we'd go get Fuddrucker ostrich burgers.
There's one that you go on, like, I think it's a window, like, comes up to a house, and they're on the other side of the window, so the kangaroo can't see him, but he's seeing himself in the window, and he starts shaping up, just like, shoulder charging it like this, like, what, you want to fucking go like that?
It's got to be a trip to train with a guy like that who's, you know, Gordon's only 25 years old, and he's already known as the greatest ground fighter of all time.
Like, if you ask people, who's the greatest jiu-jitsu practitioner ever, Most people today that are in the know will say Gordon Ryan, which is crazy because he's 25 years old.
But if you look at his accomplishments, the guy hasn't lost in 39 fights.
I mean, he just took it to another level of dominance.
There's been guys that have been dominant, like obviously Hodgie Gracie and stuff, but for the most part, a lot of the dominant grapplers didn't finish everyone.
And he just goes out and just finishes people.
But it's good for my confidence because even if I have a bad day in the gym with him, I'm like, well, it can't get any worse.
But I mean, we just knew he was over here as well.
So we hit him up.
We just thought it'd be good to have him on the show because again, we get along and the type of crowd, the crew we have has good banter and we're like shit-stirring each other and all that.
We knew he would fit well and he did.
So it was great.
It really was.
But I mean, training in that was good as well.
And I'm glad I did that because...
Just through the start, like, man, I'll tell you right now, I was averaging, he was submitting me, you know, once a minute.
That would have been my average.
You know what I mean?
If I did 10 minute round, I was doing, I was getting fucking submitted 10 times once a minute.
Honestly.
And like, I'll be like, fuck, and now we're getting them numbers, we're getting them numbers lower.
But one of the things that you showed in the Holloway fight is you can mix it up and grapple too.
Like a lot of people...
When you're approaching a fight and you have this real wide array of skills, How do you decide, like, do you do based on strategy and game plan before the fight, how to approach a specific fighter, or do you flow?
Obviously, the game plan goes a long way, but, I mean, you need to play what's in front of you as well.
Like, with that last fight, you had Max, who changed his whole...
Fucking, you know, he's been successful for a long time in this certain style.
And then he went to, we call him Muay Thai Max.
He went Muay Thai Max in the last fight, which we just did not expect him to change his whole game.
More upright, legs are closer together, and, you know, didn't care too much about getting out, you know, like making you miss and then countering.
It was more just, I'm going to let you run it.
Like, we did not expect that at all.
So you've got to make adjustments mid-fight as well.
But I mean, it's funny because you talk about people being well-rounded and all that, and that goes so far.
People can wrestle, grapple, the way you put it all together, using the right tool at the right time, the right tool for the right job.
And then again, just being able to use certain tools, even knowing that that tool ain't going to work, but I'm going to get him thinking about that tool and I'm going to use this tool and just constantly mixing it up.
So if I don't get them takedowns, I'm not too fussed because that's still a piece of the puzzle he's trying to figure out or he's committing to stopping that takedown.
Once he's committing, I capitalise somewhere else.
But that's somewhere where I feel like I could always take it.
Before, if you look at five fights ago, five, six fights ago, everyone just thought I was a wrestler grappler.
Now, people just think I'm just a striker.
From the last few fights, they just look at me as a striker.
But it just shows you where, obviously, we did a lot more training with City Kickboxing and that.
So I've always had that wrestling background and that gritty, hard-working sort of mentality.
We knew a lot about going to City and the fine details.
We had details on the wall and all that type of stuff.
But going over there and they have just some attention to detail with striking.
And you've seen it in my last fights where people don't even know I've got wrestling or grappling.
I want to see him and Ortega after the fire actually have a grappling match because people obviously ride very, very high on Ortega's grappling, but I think, yeah, very underrated.
You don't want to be cocky, but I'm definitely confident.
But a lot of these opponents that I see, even with this next fight, there's a lot of different challenges that I need to be aware of, but I still feel like it's just more about him landing a certain shot or him maybe in a submission.
So it's just about nullifying that.
But I just feel like...
Without any disrespect to him, I just feel like that's his go-to.
But again, we're in MMA where that could definitely happen.
But I'm pretty defensively sound and working with him.
Now I feel like my jiu-jitsu is at a whole other level, especially defensively.
When you've had matches with a guy like Holloway, you've had these two epic fights with Max Holloway, and you have two victories over him, but real close fights.
How important is that for a guy like you to have a foil like that, to have...
A guy that is your rival.
Like Muhammad Ali had Joe Frazier.
You know, there's these epic rivalries where you have more than one fight together and they're just these crazy close fights.
But I think, obviously, it's like someone I was talking to when they talk about having teams.
You can go and then You've got two teams, and then just because of the jersey you're wearing, you're going to have millions of people hate you and pick on absolutely everything you do.
You know what I mean?
So that's always going to be happening.
So a lot of the attention is just purely they're either a Max Holloway fan or an Alex fan.
But I mean, what a lot of people are missing is what happened in that cage, man.
There was some very, very high-level...
It was a high-level chess match.
Even in the first fight and the second fight, the adjustments he made in between, the adjustments I made mid-fight, even in the first fight, if I go into detail, there's times where he wanted to just catch me.
Every time I feel a kick or something, he just wanted to get me and just come forward.
He's a volume fighter.
So once he did that, I was just making him run into things because I knew he was going to come in.
Then he realized, oh, he's trying to catch me coming in.
So I'm going to pretend to go in and then catch him after he tries to catch me coming in.
And then I caught on to that, then I end up, you know what I mean?
So it was like, it was this, little tiny adjustments.
This was happening, like, I can show you sequences, oh, this is where this happened, and little chess matches the people are going to miss, you know what I mean?
And obviously I can't give away too much of what was going on in there, but there were so many things that we had to just, a lot of it was the fact that I just kept changing things up as well to make it harder for him to get a read on me.
But, you know, but again, there was a chess match where he would make, you know, great little adjustments, and it would work, and then I'll catch on to that, then I'll change it up, and he would do that, and you know what I mean?
But people are going to miss that, because they're just going to be like, you know, going to carry on how they do, which I get, you know, and I respect people, yeah, for obviously being that emotional about it, you know, because that's what we write off.
We want that, but...
Mate, there was 10 rounds, and again, you talk about it, and obviously, you're going to get people to say whatever they want, that's fine, but I think they're just missing the point of how competitive, yeah, it was very competitive, even though I've got the two wins, but the chess match we're having in there, I just think is missed by too many people.
The people that don't appreciate it just think it's a great fight.
But the people that appreciate it and have seen a lot of fights and understand the high-level aspects of it, were like, wow, this is pretty special.
I felt like it was pretty special.
And I think it's just so impressive that you have these two victories over Max when you look at how Max has performed with everybody else in the division.
Like the last fight with Calvin Cater, who is a fucking beast.
And Max just lit him on fire.
That was, in my opinion, one of the most impressive performances I've ever seen.
But then obviously afterwards, I go, yeah, you're hitting them numbers on these guys, but you ain't hitting them numbers when I'm in front of you.
But again, you're obviously going to say that, and people aren't going to be happy with that.
But at the same time, again, you know what I mean?
He's a smart dude.
He's got a high fighter IQ. You have certain habits.
Their team's going to pick up on it, and Max is going to pick up on it.
You exit a certain way and that's the only exit.
He's going to fucking piece you up if you keep doing that.
And again, like, you know, there was, and I know no disrespect to Takeda, but there were certain things that, you know, Max caught on and just fucking made him pay.
He was being first and then fucking stayed on him.
He was the first to get going.
As soon as he got him where he knew he was going to direct him.
Just kept going.
But the way he even mixed that up, I don't think I've ever seen him mix kicks, knees, so much.
After our fights, I feel like, especially from the first to the second, his tool was always his jab, his hands, and the volume fight.
The second one, obviously, he used so many different tools.
In this fight, you've seen him just...
The volume was there, the way he just mixed up all the tools.
So again, I'm going to give him a lot of credit because...
Well, I mean, I did have some ideas for some COVID pranks, because obviously we're trying to get them, but they did tell me because they spent so much money on COVID testing, they were like, that's a line we can't cross.
And the more conflict there is, the better the ratings are, the better the show does, the better it is for everybody when you guys have a big fight.
I mean, financially, it's hard because a lot of people think of martial arts, they think of honor and respect and commitment and discipline and all that, which is all real.
But this is a business, and it's an entertainment business.
And one of the reasons why Conor McGregor's worth a half a billion dollars is because that motherfucker knows how to stir some shit.
The fight with Jose Aldo, where they went on this world tour for months at a time, by the end of that tour, he had a whole apartment complex under Jose Aldo's skin.
I mean, he wasn't just under his skin.
He had fucking camped out, led sewer lines, electrical.
I mean, he lived there.
He was in Jose's health, in his head, and it factored in the fight.
Because Aldo was uncharacteristically reckless.
He just charged forward, looking to land that left hook, and got clipped with that straight left on the way.
Look, I can see myself going to lightweight, but again, I want to just stay in the division and win the next couple of fights and cement myself as the man of the goat of the featherweight division and all that type of stuff.
I mean, there's going to be a time where I'm going to be waiting to find the next number one contender and things like that, and I want to move up.
But right now is not the time.
Again, I'll wait.
I've still got a fair bit to work on.
Obviously, you've got fights that you've got to do anyway.
And obviously, build your brand and all that type of stuff.
Talking about Nagano, I was meant to be on the same card as him.
And we got COVID. But we didn't know.
So we're still going to the PI and things like that because we're getting tested and the latest test was all good.
And then the morning I fired – sorry, the day that we found out we had COVID because there was a few of us – We were sitting in the sauna, shaking hands with Nagano, and he was fighting the next day, and we're like...
No, no, because I like getting a good sweater, even hot baths and all that.
I love flushing that body out.
I just think it's...
Makes me feel good, too.
Everyone does the ice-cold baths.
I don't fucking like cold water, I'll be honest.
I fucking hate it.
I did better through this trip being at the UFC PI. We got into the recovery room, and I got into the ice bath a fair bit, so I was happy with that, but I fucking hate it.
But I mean, I love the hot baths, and I feel like whenever I do that, I feel like my body feels unreal.
I feel like it really does help with my...
With my recovery.
I don't know if there's science behind it, but I'm fucking claiming it.
The guy broke his ankle and never did anything about it, just kept walking around on it, so his ankles fused, and it's like the size of this fucking coffee pot.
My fingers used to kinda be like that when I would train ki every day, like they were heading to that point, and I remember the relief in my hands when I switched full-time to nogi.
It was just like, I noticed it basically overnight.
I mean that's got to have like some long-term Consequences and the grip breaks like all the time my finger would just swell up I'd be like like it gets stuck off a grip breaks I'm gonna kick out of a grip and it would just be like fuck But you have to train again the next day Did you do anything to try to mitigate that, like ice?
I would just try to keep it moving.
I felt like the first few times I'd be like, I better rest this, and then it would take forever to heal.
But no matter how painful it was, I would just keep trying to kill that finger back.
There was a period where I couldn't get any of my fingers back to the hands, but then just keep crushing it.
You know, like, if we were any other animal in the woods, you would see, like, this is one, you know, like, gorillas are basically the same size, right?
They're all, they all get pretty big, you know, but he's this fucking enormous super athlete dude.
I remember asking him about that, too, because with his match with Yuri, I was like, the fucking hip mobility that he has is crazy.
Like, his ability to move, his flexibility, like, you usually see a big, giant guy like that, and they're all weighed down from squats and deadlifts and everything stiff.
I remember one time he had staff and it exploded on an airplane, but then by the time he landed the flight back to America, it had somehow started to heal up, and he was like, it's just mindset, bro.
I feel like some people, yeah, like me, I was taking antibiotics every month for staph, so I was like, I just don't think there's any good bacteria left to kill, so I just didn't notice the...
Obviously, we've got the meat, it's around the meat, but that gets under the second layer of skin and gets near the bone, and you get infections through there.
Like, you go there and then like, you go, I'm like, every time I've seen someone, I'm like putting fucking, what do you call it, like the alcohol wipes in my eyes and shit like that, just trying to make sure I didn't get it and I'll just see it just go through that many people.
When we moved to Puerto Rico, I just stopped getting staffed.
I don't know if it just happened to be the Blue Basement, the particular strain that was going around there, maybe I was very vulnerable to, but the second we moved to Puerto Rico, started getting more sun, started getting in the ocean, felt like it actually helped.
I was worried though, because Puerto Rico's humidity, like Thailand's staff's wild.
I was thinking, fuck, maybe it's going to be worse in Puerto Rico.
Like me, I'll just go, I'm just going to train until one day I wake up and I'm like, no, I can't do it today.
I'll take a day off.
But some of the guys will just...
They're there every day.
And that's typically the guys that I would say train the hardest, probably the juniors, like the up and coming guys, because I feel like they've got ground to catch up.
So those are the guys that really never miss any sessions.
Gary was probably the most infamous for training, like just a crazy person.
So it's like, it's easier for me, even me, like obviously I'm not as big as Gordon or Nicky Rod, but it is easier for me to be like, oh, just pick, I'll pick a smaller guy, I have an easier round.
Whereas a guy like Gary, you know what I mean?
Most of the training partners are either the same size or bigger.
So it's a bit tough.
It's probably like you at City Kickboxing, you know what I mean?
Like, if you're trying to have a light round, you're like, fuck, these guys are all bigger than me.
Because even last camp, again, I had to get a cortisone shot in my neck for the last camp because that, I don't know what happened, I think it was a punch or something, then my whole arm just like went dead and my whole shoulder and everything just started burning.
One of the worlds before the surgery and then they got the surgery.
Now he's trying to avoid getting surgery on the ones above it and below it because they all start deteriorating.
So I've got like three or four of them that have shrunken down and become a real pain in the ass.
And one of them is my lower back and I've been doing some shit.
For that, you can kind of stretch out.
But you've got to always be aware.
And if you're training, if you're doing jujitsu, every day it's just a little bit of squish and everything's getting compressed and all that stuff is...
That's what's funny, I told you last time, the guy, when I first went to Bayman, telling him about my back and that, and he's like, oh look, I wanted to show him my discs, and he goes, look at that.
Once you can't control your bowels, and you've got the foot drop, then we'll look at it, you'll be right.
So they just went, let's see how we go with a bit of maintenance and all that, and then sure enough, I was moving.
What you've done is interesting because what you've figured out is whatever issues you were having with your discs and your back Strengthening all the muscles around and preventing it is the best way to go about it.
By getting on a program where you really put a lot of rigidity into your back and made it all strong and supported, you've prevented all the problems.
Yeah, because I've had things before and they just go away.
This would end up staying on fire for a while.
Did you get an MRI? Nah.
Oh yeah, we did.
And then they end up saying it's just all ugly in there.
They look at it and they go, yeah, they're just like, you could tell you played fucking rugby league and you're an MMA fighter, put it that way.
But I mean, sometimes they don't like looking at them because they know it's going to look fucked up, especially guys that have been in sport their whole life.
But he goes, and they could see where the problem was, so that's why they put the cortisone.
Because it happened a couple of times, and they would have to have a few days off.
But in saying that, hanging with him and that, maybe didn't do them types of things, but he's constantly on YouTube and studying things, looking up wrestling and all that, and goes and watches and get breakdowns of certain things.
So, like, obviously you can see, again, you can still see what separates some people from the rest of them.
Like, yeah, maybe he doesn't pay as much detail or attention to maybe the mobility side of things, but you see a lot of energy towards film studies and all that type of stuff and obviously train it.
Yeah, and you, well, your history of learning, like, watching a lot of the submissions that the Donaher crew was doing before you joined them and learning them from YouTube videos than just applying it to your own game.
When I started training jiu-jitsu, my original coach was my cousin, Matt Jones, and he was a four-stripe white belt at the time because the city we were from wasn't much jiu-jitsu going on.
So even from day one, I never really had a really, I guess, experienced coach.
So I would just be trying to figure things out.
I'd watch the UFCs and see a submission and be like, fuck, I'm going to try that, try that in the next class.
I didn't even train with a black belt until I was well into my purple belt.
I just had no high level exposure.
So I was just forced to try and reverse engineer everything I saw.
I really had the assumption that I'm behind the eight ball, so I've got to try and find little tricks to get ahead.
And that's where the heel hook stuff really took off.
Well, once you started competing though and started traveling and doing that, it's really interesting that you did have this very limited exposure to top-level talent, but you just decided to throw yourself into the fire and go out there and literally travel the world and compete.
Even when I was in the hospital in Rio, it ended up being in Chile by the time we got there.
Just even me, because I had to have my leg up so the blood could go down and all that because of all the swelling and all that.
Finally, we want to go home.
We haven't been home for a while.
We're there for a week and then they end up doing MRIs and then found out from me having my legs up and being in that position so much, my lungs were like right up in my chest so I couldn't get on the plane so that we had to like do certain things to bring my lungs back down so I could get back onto an airplane.
So I had to do these blowing things.
As hard as you can to get my lungs back down to the normal spot because if I flew the way it was, not because of the staff, but just from the position I was in.
But the thing that I do do is, first of all, sauna every day, mass amounts of vitamins, testosterone replacement.
That has a big impact, apparently.
There was an article...
That just came out yesterday about testosterone, high levels of testosterone and COVID symptoms.
And they used to think the opposite.
They used to think people with testosterone, like they thought that men had bad COVID responses.
They thought it might have been connected to testosterone.
But now they found that people with higher levels of testosterone, they have lower COVID symptoms, less severe COVID symptoms.
And they think it's like, like naturally, like if your body's natural production of testosterone, it depends on your sleeping habits, how you're eating, taking care of yourself.
But if you're on testosterone replacement, it's the same level, no matter what.
Like, so it's actually like a better level of testosterone than you would have Normally, just due to your endocrine system.
Apparently, that helps with people that have COVID. So that was one time that I was around it and everybody got it and I didn't get it.
Well, because of that, because they found out, and then he got out of the fight dietitian, the majority, to just build a plan to try and get the testosterone back up.
So he's had to eat a heap, and then training couldn't be too crazy, and all this stuff just to try and get the testosterone back up.
But that's why, because maybe he's been doing that, that's why he didn't get as bad symptoms Maybe I'm just a little bitch with lower testosterone.
For you, for sure, it has to do with the training.
I mean, the thing is, like, people would think that someone who's training for a fight would be in excellent shape and you would ward off all sort of sicknesses and injuries.
But what they don't realize is you're far past working out and you're in this area of This fine line between breaking your body down too much and breaking it down just enough so that your body is forced to reach, like, hyperhuman levels of conditioning.
And you can't do it forever.
This is the thing that people don't understand about strength and conditioning training in regards to a fight camp, is that when a fighter's peaking for a fight, you cannot just stay there.
It's not like you can just keep pushing that level up.
Your body, like, there's super physiological levels that your body can achieve During a small window, whether that is like 8 weeks, 10 weeks, whatever it is, where you ramp up and you get to this fucking BAM! Where you're just ready to go.
And I see you guys.
When you run into that cage on fight night and you're fucking slapping your hands together, that is a rare state of performance.
And it can only be achieved by balancing that edge.
And when you talk to top-level strength and conditioning coaches that work with fighters, It's an art to sort of balance that out.
But during that time, your immune system gets fucking crushed.
35. And I started freaking out because I started doing the old Google search and Google doctor.
And I'm looking and I'm like, yeah, it can be if it gets into your heart, the infection gets into your heart, your heart rate will go lower or hurt more.
And I'm like, what the fuck?
I'm watching this go down.
I was like, yeah, I'll be 38. The next day I was like 35 and I was under 40 the whole night.
They said, obviously, in the past we've picked some crazy people to try to stir up the reality aspect, but they said this time they really wanted to pick proper fighters, serious fighters.
There's some real amazing thing about being a part of that show because that show is what launched the sport.
You know, in 2005, when they had the very first season of The Ultimate Fighter, The Fertittas had already dumped, they were like $40 million in the hole.
And they were like, Jesus Christ, we're losing money.
We can't burn out all of our money on this thing that we're trying to make happen.
And they fortunately were very wealthy.
What it was is like, when Eddie Bravo and I would go to the fights way back in the day, we used to always joke around, like, you know what the sport needs?
Some fucking crazy billionaire who loves the sport that's just going to dump a bunch of money in it and let everybody else know how great it is.
And that's what they did.
Like, really, that's what it took.
The Fertittas bankrolled that show.
It was their money that put that show together.
I don't think they got a penny to do that show.
I think they bankrolled the whole thing, and they were $40 million in the hole and thinking about selling.
They were thinking about selling the UFC before they did that.
And then the ultimate fighter becomes a hit, and then Stefan Bonner versus Forrest Griffin in the finals is It was such a wild fight.
I'll be honest with you, when we do sparring and that, I'll get a couple of guys, they'll probably do two and a half minutes each sometimes.
And these guys are probably fit, but when I'm fit, in the two and a half minutes, They start.
Again, everyone's on point at the start, but the next minute, they've slowed down, and by the end of the two and a half minutes, I'm going with them.
They're like, ugh, and the next one in, and you do the same thing.
But to have ten minutes with someone, one whole round, because again, I just get better and better as the rounds go, especially as later the round goes.
What they're doing is they're recognizing that there's some real elite talent that's in these negotiating situations with the UFC. Guys like Gegard Mousasi.
Guys like Rory McDonald.
Elite guys.
And then they have these conversations.
Corey Anderson.
They have these conversations and they go, look, we'll fucking pay you more.
Like, come on over.
Corey said he made more money.
I had dinner with him down in Houston when we were out there for the fights.
And Corey said he made more for two fights in Bellator than his entire UFC career.
Yeah, well, but obviously you've got to recognize that he's a good fighter, and that's why you want to fight him.
You're not dismissing him.
You're like, oh, I'd like to fuck that guy up, because you realize that he's elite.
Douglas Lima, one of the best 170-pounders in the world.
Man, that guy's a fucking beast.
Mousasi.
Gegard Mousasi's a fucking animal, man.
I mean, he's so good.
So there's real good talent over there.
And I think that's good for everybody.
I think it's good for the UFC. I think it's good for...
I mean, the bigger the PFL grows, the bigger one grows, it's better for everybody.
It's better for the sport.
You know, the sport...
But at the end of the day...
The UFC is the UFC, and that's, you know, it's the NFL of the sport.
It's like if you think about MMA, you think about who's the UFC champ, and then you think, well, there's some great fighters in other organizations too, but the UFC is without a doubt the number one.
But I think that's good for everybody.
I don't think there's anything wrong with recognizing all these other elite fighters in the rest of the sport.