Nov. 11, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:27:42
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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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. | ||
| Mr. Buckley, how are you, sir? | ||
| Man, I'm doing good, Joe. | ||
| Good to have you in here, man. | ||
| Hey, man, thanks for having me. | ||
| You are the owner of the most highlighted, the most viral video in the history of MMA, I think. | ||
| That fucking jump, spinning back, kicked in the face. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I think so, man. | ||
| You know, it took a minute for me to actually like... | ||
| Think that it is, you know what I mean? | ||
| Because there's so many other, like, awesome knockouts out there. | ||
| You know, like, my man, you know, Dan Hendo over, you know, Bisbee, you know, with the H-bomb. | ||
| And then with my man, S.M. Barboza with the, you know, spinning heel kick on Terry Adam, you know? | ||
| And, like, Francis Ngannou, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, just so many, like, different heavy hitters out there with great KOs, you know? | ||
| But once I really, like... | ||
| Sat back and looked at it and it took some time to actually take everything in. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, that's pretty dope. | ||
| Well, yours was crazy because he's holding one foot and you jump spinning back, kick him in the face with the other foot. | ||
| I mean, that is just wild. | ||
| I mean, have you ever done that in a fight before? | ||
| Nah, so that was my first time. | ||
| So, you know, if you want to really hear it, man, it's a long story with it because nobody taught me that kick, you know. | ||
| What? | ||
| I never had an instructor. | ||
| Really? | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| You know, I was just fascinated with martial arts, you know, since I was a little kid, you know, and... | ||
| Once I got started with MMA and stuff like that, the gym where I came from, it could only teach so much. | ||
| The instructors only knew so much. | ||
| It was just like a mom and pop gym type stuff where a lot of people would just get into shape. | ||
| But overall, though... | ||
| When I used to go on YouTube, I used to watch a lot of different videos, you know, on how to, you know, not just train as a mixed martial artist, but just to learn, like, different moves and techniques from different disciplines. | ||
| From not just taekwondo, but, you know, hapkido, you know, kushin, sanshao, you know, all these different disciplines that I used to take from. | ||
| And then once I looked at the disciplines, I looked at who the best people in it, right? | ||
| And then I looked at different people that's in those disciplines, whatever. | ||
| And guess who I ran into when I got into taekwondo? | ||
| I've seen one of your videos. | ||
| No, no, for real, for real. | ||
| You taught George St-Pierre how to correctly throw the spinning back kick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But you at first showed him how to throw the side kick. | ||
| And I used to watch those videos over and over again. | ||
| And then it evolved when I seen Raymond Daniels perform the two-touch. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Yeah, he did that two-touch. | ||
| That's probably one of the biggest highlight reels in kickboxing history. | ||
| Big facts, right? | ||
| But I seen that. | ||
| I was like, man, that's dope because it's a level up from what you're showing, right? | ||
| So I used to perform that on the bag, on the heavy bag, all the time. | ||
| And people are like, man, what are you doing? | ||
| Like, whatever. | ||
| But I used to generate so much power when I used to balance, you know, my right foot on her, not my right, but my left foot because I would come in like a roundhouse kick because I'm a softball. | ||
| I would balance on the bag and then I would propel myself off the bag and I would spin. | ||
| And we used to make this hard pop like a shotgun, right? | ||
| And would bend the entire bag. | ||
| So I'm like, bro, I feel like so powerful like throwing this kick, you know what I mean? | ||
| But regardless, though, just seeing these people do this stuff and just learning from them and just imitating these moves, you know, years later, then I end up performing that kick. | ||
| You know who's got some of the best instructionals of that, of traditional kicks like sidekicks and turning sidekicks? | ||
| Michael Jai White. | ||
| I'm already hip. | ||
| I'm already hip. | ||
| Watch the thousand. | ||
| Michael Jai White has some shit. | ||
| Sharp technique. | ||
| Yeah, big facts, big facts. | ||
| And on top of that, even before him, Bill Superfoot Wallace. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Well, he had the best hook kick ever. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| His hook kick was incredible. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Because, you know, he only had one knee. | ||
| His knee was fucked up. | ||
| Yeah, big facts. | ||
| And that's why. | ||
| Because he used to do, like, judo. | ||
| You know, he used to do throws and stuff. | ||
| He couldn't do it anymore. | ||
| So he ended up transitioning just to kickboxing. | ||
| But, like, he taught himself. | ||
| How to just fight on that one side, you know, make yourself, you know, just like a line, hard to hit, you know, but he made his leg like a jab. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He would stick, guys, but he would hit with a roundhouse, like you said, hill hook kick, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Or just like the spinning back kick as well, you know? | ||
| See if you can find a highlight of Bill's Superfoot Wallace. | ||
| I mean, it got plenty, man. | ||
| Because of the fact that he only used one leg, because he had one knee that was just really fucked up, so he couldn't kick with it. | ||
| So because he did everything off that one leg, His one leg had so much dexterity. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| It's like that old school quote from Bruce Lee. | ||
| Yeah, that's one of his little instructional videos. | ||
| That's why I used to watch. | ||
| I used to watch stuff like this all the time, you know? | ||
| And it's cool just coming back to it. | ||
| And he was so fast, too, with it. | ||
| Like, it was hard to see. | ||
| Yeah, this is old school. | ||
| And he would joke around about, like, you know, the camera not being fast enough to see his feet, you know? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But he had the very best kicks off the front leg. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. | ||
| He's still getting after it. | ||
| Yeah, he's still getting after it. | ||
| I don't want to try to be funny, but I think my man's still alive. | ||
| Yeah, I think he is too. | ||
| He did commentary in the first UFCs. | ||
| Yes, he did, yeah. | ||
| In the very early days. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So he's still out there. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So this is just a year ago. | ||
| Yep, yep. | ||
| Good for him. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Well, see if you can find some of his fights because he knocked a lot of people out with those little kicks. | ||
| Yeah, just try to put like verses and it'll pop up on its own. | ||
| So like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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It was just so hard for people to deal with. | |
| Oh, that was in A Force of One. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I think he fought this guy named Joe Lewis. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, Joe Lewis down there. | ||
| Yeah, watch that one right there. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good one. | ||
| So Joe Lewis, not the heavyweight boxer, but the heavyweight kickboxer was a legendary karate fighter. | ||
| Yeah, exactly, yeah. | ||
| This is a fun fight to watch. | ||
| And look at that, BOOM! That style with that front leg. | ||
| The thing about that style, though, I always wondered, like, how would those guys do against, like, a Muay Thai guy through leg kicks? | ||
| Because we saw that with, you know, with a lot of fighters that had that style once they encountered, like, Rick Rufus. | ||
| Once they encountered leg kicks, they got kind of fucked up until they realized how to deal with it and how to use the leg kicks. | ||
| Then Rick Rufus became an incredible leg kicker. | ||
| Well, I mean, perfect example. | ||
| So... | ||
| Peter Cunningham. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you know who Peter Cunningham is? | ||
| Oh, Superfoot. | ||
| Sugarfoot. | ||
| Sugarfoot. | ||
| Not Superfoot, Sugarfoot. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| But he fought Muay Thai guys than he used to whoop their head. | ||
| Yes, because he could throw leg kicks. | ||
| Yeah, he could throw leg kicks and he had hands. | ||
| Yes, he had everything. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, bro. | |
| But that's like the beautiful thing about MMA is we're seeing all those techniques being incorporated. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Like a guy like you who can do all the other things, now you're learning jump spinning back kicks and all this other stuff. | ||
| See, I always assumed watching you fight that you had... | ||
| Some sort of a traditional martial arts background. | ||
| Because you throw so many sidekicks and they're so clean. | ||
| They're so sharp. | ||
| I assume... | ||
| I guess I can attribute that all from martial arts movies. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| Literally all from martial arts. | ||
| People think it's a joke, but literally when I was a kid, you know... | ||
| Just growing up, you know what I mean? | ||
| My mom would raise me. | ||
| She was a single mother and stuff like that. | ||
| So she can only do so much, you know what I mean? | ||
| So I was on the TV all the time. | ||
| That's what raised me. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Just watching. | ||
| Just watching. | ||
| Big facts, you know? | ||
| Because I was around a lot of women, you know? | ||
| So when she needed help, I was with my godmother, Erica, and stuff like that. | ||
| And I was with my god sisters and stuff like that. | ||
| So there was a lot of women around. | ||
| So I was looking for male influences. | ||
| And the fastest way I could find it was just on TV. Wow. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So just looking at Bruce Lee, looking at Jackie Chan, looking like Michael Jai White, Donnie Yen, Tony Jai. | ||
| These are guys I'm like, oh man, I want to be like them. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's amazing how many people got influenced to fighting and to traditional martial arts from movies. | ||
| Big facts, yeah. | ||
| Some of the greatest kickboxes will tell you who, Bruce Lee. | ||
| Oh yeah, Bruce Lee. | ||
| Bruce Lee is the one that got him into it. | ||
| It's the best salesperson ever is those movies. | ||
| Yeah, big facts. | ||
| I mean, you look at like the emergence of karate academies in the country after Bruce Lee movies, like through the roof. | ||
| Everybody wanted to learn. | ||
| Including Chuck Norris, you know? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, including Chuck Norris. | ||
| So what was your first actual coaching in martial arts? | ||
| My first coaching, that was the gym at Finney's MMA. And how old were you then? | ||
| I was 18. I started as soon as I got out of high school, man, because school wasn't for me at the time, man. | ||
| I was not taking it seriously, but I just always wanted to be a part of martial arts when I was younger. | ||
| And I knew that wrestling was going to be a great foundation to start in. | ||
| So when I was in middle school, got into high school, whatever, I got into wrestling. | ||
| And then after that, after I graduated, went to Finney's MMA. Yeah. | ||
| So when you were wrestling in high school, were you thinking that you were doing this to prepare to fight? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, like low-key, but I knew that that's what I wanted to do, and it was the closest thing to a discipline, to a martial arts discipline, is wrestling. | ||
| That's the only thing. | ||
| And probably the most important thing. | ||
| I wasn't good at football, wasn't good at basketball, wasn't good at baseball, you know what I mean? | ||
| Couldn't catch water if I fell out of the boat, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| So my biggest thing was like, you know, I never really liked sports anyway. | ||
| It's just martial arts. | ||
| And the only thing that I could apply those skills to was wrestling, you know, because my mom didn't want to put me into like any karate. | ||
| All that stuff costs money, you know, at the end of the day, but wrestling was free. | ||
| And so when you first got into actual coaching, you already knew how to kick then, just from watching movies and shit. | ||
| Uh, somewhere. | ||
| I wouldn't say I actually knew how to kick, but, like, that's where, it's imitation, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Life imitates art, right? | ||
| So that's my biggest thing. | ||
| It's just, like, I used to watch these guys, and you gotta realize, like, these guys that's playing, or actors, are real martial artists. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So they're using real techniques at the end of the day. | ||
| So I just get to look at that and use it and just apply it. | ||
| You know, I love, like, one of my favorite movies to watch is Blood and Bone. | ||
| You know, with Michael John White, Kimbo Slice, you know? | ||
| And it's a lot of techniques that he uses that I'm like, oh, that'd be dope to, you know, pull off. | ||
| You know, so, yeah, I would say, like, that was my start into martial arts was the movies. | ||
| But my real, like, actual training started when I was 18. And so when you were 18, how long was it before you had your first fight? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It actually didn't take long. | ||
| I think it was, like, a little bit of, like, uh... | ||
| Nine months, ten months into training, and I had my first fight. | ||
| Was it an MMA fight? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it was an MMA fight. | ||
| Yeah, so in Missouri, in St. Louis, whatever. | ||
| So as amateurs, like, we didn't need the headgear. | ||
| We didn't need to wear, like, shin guards and nothing. | ||
| So you fought like a pro. | ||
| You know, the only thing that you couldn't do was, like, heel hooks and knee to the head. | ||
| No heel hooks? | ||
| No heel hooks, yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, no heel hooks. | ||
| But all the other submissions were okay? | ||
| Yeah, and no elbows. | ||
| Yeah, every other submission was cool. | ||
| No elbows, no knees, no cuts, you know, and then no heel hooks. | ||
| That was the only rule. | ||
| So just a few limitations. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So do they have a comprehensive amateur program there? | ||
| Or was it balanced? | ||
| Were you fighting someone that had experience? | ||
| Or were you just fighting another person? | ||
| No, I was just fighting another person, man. | ||
| Like, I don't think it was balanced yet. | ||
| You know, even in 2012, you know, everybody had the showdown. | ||
| You know, so like, you know, the promoter, you know, me putting fights together and everything. | ||
| But people were still trying to figure out actually like the gym wise or how to, you know, Develop a fighter, if that makes sense. | ||
| Because I feel like still to this day that a lot of MMA gyms are still not doing it right. | ||
| But that's a whole other conversation for a whole other day. | ||
| So a lot of these guys that was in amateur fighting just wanted to fight just to get the feel for it. | ||
| And that was the type of guys I was fighting almost at the amateur level. | ||
| Well, we had dinner that one night. | ||
| We were talking about the difference between going to a big gym and the way you're doing it at a smaller gym. | ||
| And there's some interesting conversation to be had about that because you made some really good points about when you're in a smaller gym, you get individualized attention and you're not getting lost in the crowd. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That there's so much information out there already with all the videos that are out there and all the fights so much So so sometimes it's good just to be So my coach is a perfect example, right? | ||
| He have us working on the same thing over and over and over again And we know it and we know it about like a heartbeat, but and we tell because I coach can we do something different? | ||
| He's like, yeah, but I want y'all do this. | ||
| You know me and And you need that type of discipline just to keep doing the same thing because that's how you actually work on your tools. | ||
| You work on the basics over and over again. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Then it becomes instinct. | ||
| So even though we have so much applied knowledge out there and so many things that we can do, sometimes it's like the basic knowledge that we have. | ||
| And if we work with a smaller gym, we're able to focus on that a little bit more. | ||
| You know as a team, you know instead of everybody just doing their own thing cuz I don't could nobody say like big gyms Everybody's just doing their own thing everybody working with who they working with, you know They not even working with the coach unless they got a name and they got a big fight coming up That's the thing right cuz that's what I hear. | ||
| It's like you get two arguments one of them is iron sharpens iron So if you're around like if you go to ATT if you're an American top team World-class facility giant place dormitories World-class guys coming from all over the world. | ||
| But when I've talked to fighters who train there, they say, look, man, you get in there with some Russian dude you never met before and he's trying to kill you. | ||
| Yeah, big fact. | ||
| And that there's no supervision. | ||
| Like, if you're not a world-class guy, if you're not a top-of-the-food-chain guy that has a lot of money riding on him, They'll put you in there with everybody who's in class. | ||
| And you're going to have to sing or swim. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You have to develop and become that individual in order for them to work with you. | ||
| But they're not going to develop you. | ||
| So a lot of guys get it twisted when they go to these big gyms and they think that they're going to be elevated because of the guys that they're around. | ||
| But at the same time, like you said, people just trying to beat you up, right? | ||
| You know I mean, it's not really learning anything. | ||
| So that's one thing I talk about structure, right? | ||
| So just because you're a big gym and you able to have all these, you know Housing for fighters, you know, I mean you got the big nice match You got the heavy bags and all this other stuff. | ||
| You got all the pretty stuff But you have no structure within the gym, you know a lot of guys should be working with certain people to develop their skills. | ||
| So like I Let's say, you know, certain pros, high-level pros, you know what I mean? | ||
| Not saying that a high-level pro can't work with an amateur, but certain amateurs shouldn't be working with certain pros. | ||
| Like, they should be developed to a certain point where they're showing that they know enough, and now they can move up and work with certain individuals. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I get fed to the wolves. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because all it's going to do is hurt the little young amateur. | ||
| And then sometimes amateurs be doing the wrong thing and be going too hard and could end up cutting, you know what I'm saying, a high-level pro. | ||
| And they might not be making a lot of money, but that's somebody that's a potential prospect. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But now they ain't got a fight coming up because they was going with this amateur because they ain't had nobody else to go with. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So it's a lot of things that play a part into having a big gym and a small gym. | ||
| But I just love having a small gym just because you get that actual attention that you need. | ||
| Well, it sounds like your coach is a fantastic coach. | ||
| Oh, he's one of the best in the world. | ||
| What's his name? | ||
| Joaquin Mercilago. | ||
| So we got the same first name. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| That's an odd name. | ||
| There's not a lot of those Joaquins out there. | ||
| So when you're... | ||
| What's the name of the gym? | ||
| Mercy. | ||
| And when you're working with him, it's specifically with him and a bunch of other people? | ||
| So he's the head coach for MMA-wise. | ||
| And then we have Nick Simmons. | ||
| So the gym itself is called Salt Academy. | ||
| It's a wrestling academy, so he has a lot of high-level prospects, high school wrestlers, middle school wrestlers, some of the best wrestlers in the nation that come to him to learn wrestling. | ||
| So his name is Nick Simmons. | ||
| But I work with his older brother, Andy. | ||
| No, actually, younger brother, Andy Simmons. | ||
| That's who I work with. | ||
| And he's more of my size and stuff like that, so I get a lot of high-level wrestling from him because both of them are Hall of Famers at Michigan State, which is pretty dope. | ||
| Nice revenue, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Not revenue, but a great career within wrestling. | ||
| Went undefeated, you know what I'm saying, for the longest time. | ||
| I think over 200, 300 bouts or something like that, undefeated. | ||
| And then I got a conditioning coach at the HBI Human Performance Institute, Justin Hartley. | ||
| He was an NFL player. | ||
| That's where we get all our conditioning work in. | ||
| So, like, we don't have many, many guys, you know, but at the end of the day, we have enough to work with. | ||
| We also got a guy that works with our jiu-jitsu who works at Magic named Brendan Berry, who does all our jiu-jitsu, but the crazy thing about him, he's not a black belt, he's not a high-level jiu-jitsu guy. | ||
| He's somebody that's just passionate about jiu-jitsu, who watches it every day, you know, and he shows us stuff that actually works, but he's somebody that's committed to it, you know, and who watches it every day, and that's who we learn jiu-jitsu from. | ||
| Well, that was the case a long time ago. | ||
| There was a lot of guys that were like blue belts and purple belts that were opening up schools because they didn't have a real good school around them, and they knew that they could teach at least a base of fundamentals, and if they were really excited and passionate about jiu-jitsu, they would grow with their students. | ||
| Exactly, exactly, and that's exactly what he's doing with us, you know, because I can see Brandon going very far, you know, and being an instructor, going far into jiu-jitsu, you know, but just somebody that, you know, Not looking for anything out of it, you know. | ||
| He never asked me for any money or nothing like that, but he shows me a lot of things that helped me win the fight against Albert Duraya, you know. | ||
| How to get the stand-up, you know, how to get my guard back, you know. | ||
| And, you know, it's just crazy because in that fight, a lot of people had me pick to lose, you know. | ||
| And thinking like, okay, I'll be dry as chains as this big gym, you know, at Extreme Couture and stuff like that. | ||
| He has all the tools. | ||
| He has all the resources. | ||
| And then I go back to Michigan. | ||
| I don't have much. | ||
| But I got the people that's able to work on the things that we need to work on. | ||
| And we do it repeatedly until I get it down. | ||
| And then we're able to show that in the fight, you know? | ||
| And I feel like that's why I'm saying, like, we're actually showing what works within this game, you know? | ||
| Because if you got the right group of people that you're working with that can help advance you in your career and stuff like that, then that's what you need to mesh up with. | ||
| But a lot of fighters feel like they need to move on from the gym that they come from, that they was developing well at, to go to a bigger gym, you know? | ||
| And that's not the way to go always. | ||
| Not always, right? | ||
| It really does depend upon the environment, who the coach is, what kind of relationship we have with them, but it seems like you've got a good one set up. | ||
| So how do you balance out how much grappling you do versus how much striking you do? | ||
| It seems like you prefer striking. | ||
| That seems like your level of expertise. | ||
| I don't want to say level of expertise, but that's where the money comes in. | ||
| That's where the money comes in? | ||
| That's where the money comes in. | ||
| I just want to always be excited. | ||
| But now we're trying to switch the gears into just becoming a winner. | ||
| Because now we got money in the bank. | ||
| My biggest thing is when I went out for my first UFC fight with Kevin Holland, I just chose to stand on the feet. | ||
| I could have took Kevin Holland down. | ||
| I could have put myself in a better position to win, but I decided just to strike. | ||
| I fell on that. | ||
| He beat me in the third round and he got the advantage on me. | ||
| At the end of the day, I was like, I want to make these fights exciting and fan appealing. | ||
| Which, even with the loss I had against Kevin Holland, people still wanted to watch me fight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And then coming into my second fight with Ampa, Kosaka and I, you know, still chose. | ||
| I mean, I'm mixing a little bit of takedown. | ||
| But I let them back up. | ||
| I was like, man, I want to keep this on the feet. | ||
| I want to keep going. | ||
| And then, of course, we did what we did. | ||
| So my whole course is just going through my career. | ||
| I just wanted to strike with these guys and get good knockouts so I can get a third check. | ||
| So you are thinking that way. | ||
| You're thinking I want to make this very exciting. | ||
| That's how I was thinking. | ||
| And now you're thinking I want to be a champion. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yeah, that's the shift, right? | ||
| The pivot. | ||
| And sometimes guys get criticized for that. | ||
| And I'm opposed to that criticism. | ||
| People are saying, oh, they're fighting boring. | ||
| And I'm like, I don't know what you think is boring. | ||
| I think baseball is boring. | ||
| I don't think fighting is ever boring. | ||
| Because there's always a potential for something crazy to happen. | ||
| But the intelligent fighters know how to win. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, like Floyd Mayweather. | ||
| Like, for me, when I watch him, and obviously, you got some of the best defensive fighter is him. | ||
| But when you watch him fight, you can call it more than if you want to. | ||
| But when you really pay attention in the things that he's doing and how he's, you know, moving around fighters and how he's evading these punches and, you know, able to counter fighters, like, bro, that's very intriguing. | ||
| Masterful. | ||
| Masterful. | ||
| And then now we talk about, you know, Izzy. | ||
| You know, it's the same way. | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| Same exact thing. | ||
| That was my argument about the Jared Cannoneer fight. | ||
| They were like, oh, he should have engaged more. | ||
| I'm like, dude, he's fighting Jared Cannoneer. | ||
| You can't engage all the time recklessly with that dude. | ||
| That dude's a powerhouse. | ||
| And that's the thing. | ||
| I'm not mad at Izzy for what he's done because that's what he keeps doing, right? | ||
| In order to retain his title. | ||
| And I hope he keeps doing it. | ||
| I hope he does it against Alex Furrier. | ||
| I pray. | ||
| I pray. | ||
| I want to talk to you about that fight. | ||
| Big facts. | ||
| Because it's kind of your division, but maybe not in the future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-uh. | |
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Have you decided? | ||
| Yeah, I've already decided. | ||
| I'm going down to 170. Yes. | ||
| I'm about to get that. | ||
| But you're going to have this fight with Chris Curtis? | ||
| Yes, Chris Curtis. | ||
| And that's at 85. That's at 85. So they wanted me to have one more fight at 185. They was like, well, if you want to make this good little money, re-sign at 185, fight CC, and then we can talk about you moving down to 170. Are they opposed to you moving down to 170? | ||
| I don't think they opposed, but they only seen me at 185. Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So they like, well, first off, because there's so many different things because people haven't seen me fight at 170, even though the majority of my fights are welterweight fights, you know? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yeah, so the majority of my career since I was 18, since I've been an amateur, everything, and going into pro, I was a 175. But dude, you're pretty fucking swole. | ||
| Yeah, I am pretty swole. | ||
| But, you know, don't let these muscles... | ||
| Deceive, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| So, I mean, I think Michael John White talked about it before, too. | ||
| Like, when he's bulking, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, a lot of people think he's bigger then. | ||
| Well, he is bigger, but they think he's smaller when they see him. | ||
| But when he's cut up, you know what I'm saying, and he's clean, that's when they think he's his biggest because they see all the muscle and it's so defined and everything. | ||
| But he's actually lighter. | ||
| But he's actually lighter, you know? | ||
| And it's the same thing with me, you know? | ||
| So it's just that perception that people see, like, oh, they think I'm a lot bigger than what I really am. | ||
| Actually, in that Nasher Dean fight, I walked into that fight at 185. Did you really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| At 185. I actually cut too much damn weight. | ||
| No way. | ||
| I was walking around at 181. No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Even the PI guys, they can tell you. | ||
| So what do you weigh right now? | ||
| Yeah, I'm a little heavy right now. | ||
| I've been eating good. | ||
| Texas barbecue. | ||
| Yeah, big fact. | ||
| But I never get up to 200. So I'm probably like 195. I never get up to 200. Interesting. | ||
| That's very light for 85. Yeah. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Especially when you look at some of those giant dudes. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, all of them. | ||
| Shootin' Ash Dean, Alex Pereira, cuttin' from 240. You know what I'm sayin'? | ||
| Jared Canineer used to be a heavyweight. | ||
| Oh yeah, Jared Canineer's as big as it gets. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I'm sayin'? | |
| Like, come on now. | ||
| He's as big as it gets at 85. Well, that was what I was sayin' about Izzy. | ||
| Like, the way he fought him was the perfect way to fight him. | ||
| Oh, he was smart. | ||
| You gotta fight Jared Kennedy like that. | ||
| The only person that I give any slack to is Jared Kennedy himself. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because he had the best opportunity, right? | ||
| And I feel like even if he didn't win, he still could have brought the fight a little bit better. | ||
| Because Izzy doesn't mind fighting, you know what I mean? | ||
| But he wants you to bring the fight to him. | ||
| But you see Jared Kennedy trying to clinch up against him, trying to do tactics I ain't never seen him do before. | ||
| What happened to the killer gorilla? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| What happened to the rocks that you keep in your pocket? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, all these little different things that give you, you know, mental fortitude, but you fought scared that night. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Nobody say Jared Kennedy fought scared that night. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| They fought scared? | ||
| I never seen him fight. | ||
| I mean, when he fought Jack or Madison, he ran through him. | ||
| But that's a different fighter. | ||
| It's like, when you fight Izzy, I think you're fighting a supercomputer. | ||
| When that dude's standing in front of you and he's throwing all those feints and movements. | ||
| We can debate all day, but my thing is, if I was to fight Izzy, you gotta put that pressure on him, like Kevin Gaston did. | ||
| And now, of course, Izzy could have gotten better from that fight, which he more likely did. | ||
| He certainly did, but still, you've never seen him fight that type of fighter again. | ||
| You know, with Kevin Gaslam been in the southpaw, a shorter fighter, an inside fighter, you know, putting pressure on him, he never fought that type of individual again, you know? | ||
| And I feel like my striking and my stature fits like a Kevin Gaslam, you know? | ||
| And I feel like my footwork is a little better than Kevin Gaslam as well, so I wouldn't just be going straight in. | ||
| I would hit different angles on Izzy. | ||
| That's how you beat Izzy, I feel like. | ||
| It's taking it out of a kickboxing range, you know what I mean? | ||
| Putting it in a boxing range and fighting inside, you know? | ||
| And then guess what? | ||
| Mixing in the takedowns, you know? | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| It's kind of hard to take down Izzy. | ||
| But at the same time, like even with Robert Whittaker, a lot of people say he probably won that fight, but I feel like he didn't do enough though, you know? | ||
| There's so many little debates that you can put up behind it, but my thing is I feel like Izzy is able to be finished in certain positions that he put himself in because there's a lot of things that he do Because of his reach, he leans back a lot to try to counter away from punches, right? | ||
| But if you can find that angle and you can see the holes opening there because his body is there, his chin is available, you know, you can find that punch. | ||
| And I felt like Jared Kananir could have exposed a lot of that if he fought the way that he fights a lot of other guys, you know? | ||
| You just have to run the risk of getting knocked out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There it is. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| If you're scared to get knocked out, then you probably shouldn't be in this game. | ||
| Right or wrong? | ||
| Yeah, but I think he probably felt like he'll find that opportunity somewhere in the fight. | ||
| So it's like, don't get knocked out while you're trying to find that opportunity. | ||
| Yeah, but at the same time, like, it's scary though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know what you're saying. | |
| You know, it's scary. | ||
| So my biggest thing is just trying to figure out how... | ||
| Mike Tyson, one of my favorite fighters, like, he always put pressures on guys. | ||
| Like, you could knock out Mike if he came towards you, but he was evasive, you know? | ||
| He moving his head the whole We're good to go. | ||
| But if you could have just worked on just keeping your hands up and working inside and moving your angles and stuff, you probably could have did a little better on the second end, which he did, taking him down and trying to, but you trying to game plan on how to take the belt. | ||
| Like, bro, you got to beat that individual. | ||
| And I don't know how you feel about that, but my biggest thing is just like, you can't just like barely beat a champion and be like, all right, it's my belt now, you know? | ||
| That's just me and my opinion. | ||
| And that's how it's always been. | ||
| I kind of see that, but whoever wins the fight, wins the fight. | ||
| If someone wins a clear-cut, unanimous decision for a title, that's still winning. | ||
| Yeah, where have we seen that, man? | ||
| Like, you know, with Dominic Reyes and Jon Jones. | ||
| Valentina, I feel like Valentina lost that last fight. | ||
| Like, low-key, uh... | ||
| Very close fight. | ||
| Very close fight. | ||
| But debatable that she lost. | ||
| Yeah, debatable. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But at the same time... | ||
| Well, debatable Robert Whittaker and Izzy. | ||
| That's debatable, too. | ||
| But the thing is, though, forget debate. | ||
| Y'all gotta take that thing. | ||
| You gotta take it. | ||
| You gotta take it. | ||
| I feel that. | ||
| I completely appreciate that. | ||
| I think Robert Whittaker was a way better fighter in the second fight. | ||
| I think losing to Izzy just reignited that fire inside of him. | ||
| I think fighters, and you can speak to this better than me, but I think fighters, they go in sort of cycles. | ||
| Sometimes they're just not totally focused and motivated, or maybe they're overwhelmed by pressure. | ||
| There's so many different things, because you don't never know what's going on outside in their lives and stuff. | ||
| But for Robert Whitaker, he went into the fight as a winner. | ||
| I remember Michael Bisbee saying something like, Robert Whitaker didn't look as confident in the second round, but My thing is, though, like, Robert Whitaker, getting up to that title fight, he's been winning in decisions, right? | ||
| So he got used to just beating guys and taking them to a point where he's just outpointing them, for real. | ||
| You know, even with the Jerry Cannoneer, when he broke Jerry Cannoneer's forearm, It ain't like he was hunting for the finish. | ||
| He's just out pointing, just touching, just touching guys, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You think a man with one arm, you'd probably be able to get him out of there. | ||
| Did he know he had one arm, though? | ||
| He didn't know his arm was broken. | ||
| I ain't say he know it, but at the same time, if you apply that type of pressure and you put it on somebody, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, you can only do so much with a broken arm. | ||
| Shout out to Jerry Cannon for even fighting like that. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I was hoping that same dog would come out in the Izzy fight. | ||
| But regardless, we're skipping points. | ||
| I know what you're saying, but it's armchair quarterbacking, right? | ||
| In fact, so we... | ||
| With Robert Whitaker, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, I felt like, in my mind, he just got used to just coasting for a lot of his fights because it wasn't close. | ||
| Like, he would win every round. | ||
| When he fought, what, Kevin Gaslam? | ||
| When he fought Darren Till? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, he was just beating these guys by decision and fairly easy. | ||
| And Jerry Cananier, fairly easy. | ||
| And then when he got to Izzy, He thought he could win the same type of way, you know? | ||
| Well, I think he's also, I think the Izzy fight, it's just my opinion, but I think he was suffering from those fights with Yoel Romero, too. | ||
| When you fight Yoel Romero, that motherfucker takes something from you. | ||
| That's like fighting a brick wall. | ||
| I can see that. | ||
| He's different. | ||
| I can see that. | ||
| He's so different. | ||
| And those fights were horrendous. | ||
| Remember, he got knocked down and hurt. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, and got back up. | ||
| Like a G, you know. | ||
| He tried to do the same little tactic that Yoel did, you know what I'm saying, when he jacked his knee up. | ||
| Side kick to the knee. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, Yoel fucked his knee up in that first fight. | ||
| What do you think about that side kick to the knee? | ||
| That's controversial, right? | ||
| I mean, it's legal. | ||
| It's legal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, I haven't done it, you know what I'm saying, to anybody. | ||
| I haven't seen the opportunity to do it. | ||
| But if I see somebody with a straight leg, you know, I would never do it if somebody has a strong stance. | ||
| It wouldn't make any sense to do it then. | ||
| But if I see somebody has, like a Sean Strickland, it's a perfect example. | ||
| Right, stand straight up. | ||
| Yeah, I'm killing that knee. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, big facts. | ||
| Well, Jon Jones is the master at that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All that length. | ||
| Big facts. | ||
| He's the best at using distance. | ||
| No one's better at using distance. | ||
| Jon's the best. | ||
| Yeah, he is the best because of his attributes, you know what I mean? | ||
| Because like the 84, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Like, that's crazy. | ||
| And then on top of that, the legs. | ||
| I don't know, but your legs is longer, you know? | ||
| So with having all that reach, I feel like that's what... | ||
| But a lot of people are like, oh, he's like one of the best defensive or best footwork. | ||
| I'm like, nah, not at all. | ||
| But it's not a footwork thing. | ||
| It's using his attributes. | ||
| Yeah, but that's what some people say. | ||
| Mighty Mouse has the best footwork. | ||
| Footwork, big fan. | ||
| Hold on now, hold on now, hold on now. | ||
| You know, I got some good footwork too. | ||
| You got very good footwork, but come on, man. | ||
| Mighty Mouse is off the charts. | ||
| Oh no, that's my top one. | ||
| Mighty Mouse would come in like this and then all of a sudden he'd be over here. | ||
| No, big facts, big facts. | ||
| You know, I gotta put myself in the mix. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I understand. | |
| I love Mighty Mouse, man. | ||
| Shout out to him, man. | ||
| He definitely on my pound for pound. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Of all time. | ||
| Of all time. | ||
| And he's a guy who talked about having all the stuff in your personal life in order. | ||
| Last time he was here, he's like, you know, a big part of my success is having a stable family life, having a wife, not having any personal problems, no crazy people in your life, no bullshit that drags you down, which is a problem with Yeah, I mean, because it can apply, you know, negative energy into your life and into your training, you know what I mean? | ||
| You're not able to focus on the things that's really important, as in, you know, being able to provide for your family, because this is how we eat, you know? | ||
| And if you got to focus on other stuff and try to get your life in order, like a Jon Jones, and that's a crazy thing, Jon Jones be going through crazy stuff. | ||
| The craziest! | ||
| And still able to maintain on the highest level. | ||
| And still the goal. | ||
| And still the goal. | ||
| Crazy! | ||
| Remember when he said to Daniel Cormier, I fought you and beat you after I did coke. | ||
| Like, that's wild. | ||
| And I was like, oh no! | ||
| As you know, Daniel's in there training with Cain Velasquez and drinking only water. | ||
| Man, and that's wild to me that Jon Jones, but I feel like he probably been doing it for so long that it became natural for him. | ||
| Because obviously he was a champion at the age of 23 years old. | ||
| And he probably was always doing this little crazy stuff. | ||
| I mean, Kobe Covington was talking about it when he was roommates with him. | ||
| He was always a wild boy, always loved to party. | ||
| So it was just something that he came accustomed to and a part of. | ||
| But sometimes I'd be like, brother, you ain't getting tired of that? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| You ain't getting wore out? | ||
| You would think so. | ||
| I mean, my man, how old is John now? | ||
| John's in his 30s. | ||
| 32? | ||
| I think he's a little older than that. | ||
| How old is John? | ||
| Is he 34? | ||
|
unidentified
|
34. I mean, John won the title, the youngest ever. | |
| This is the time to come back, I feel like, for John. | ||
| If he waits any longer, I feel like he needs to stay away. | ||
| Well, according to John, the holdup is Stipe. | ||
| Stipe did not want to sign for the fight for December 10th. | ||
| And I don't know what that is, whether they didn't offer Stipe enough money. | ||
| I don't know what's going on, so I don't want to speak out of line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| But I think they're targeting when Francis' knee is recovered. | ||
| Francis and Ghanu, John Jones fight. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So they're getting rid of the Stipe. | ||
| Because I feel like before he fights, for instance, he needs to fight somebody like a Stipe or a Tua Vasa, you know what I mean? | ||
| Somebody like that just really shows that you belong at heavyweight before you just fight for it. | ||
| I would say that for anybody else. | ||
| For anybody else, I would say that. | ||
| But when you're talking about the greatest light heavyweight, maybe the greatest mixed martial artist of all time, let him fight at heavyweight for the title. | ||
| I would have said that probably two years ago. | ||
| But it's time, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| But he's training. | ||
| The thing about John is, John's wild, but he's also smart. | ||
| One of the things that John's doing is putting on so much weight. | ||
| He's fucking huge now. | ||
| I mean, John's like 255, jacked, all filled out. | ||
| Big fat. | ||
| If he can maintain that endurance and keep that kind of pace that he had at light heavyweight at 205, and if you look at the strength and conditioning work that he's doing, man, he's doing it the right way. | ||
| It's nasty. | ||
| He's building up slowly. | ||
| But this ain't lifting weights, though. | ||
| It's not lifting weights. | ||
| You already know. | ||
| It's not lifting weights. | ||
| To be honest with you, we don't see what goes on. | ||
| And I know he's training hard. | ||
| Well, first off, he did change the team, obviously, right? | ||
| He got kicked out of... | ||
| Jason, I don't know the story behind that. | ||
| I don't know the story either. | ||
| Yeah, so my biggest thing. | ||
| So like, alright, who you training with now? | ||
| Who you sparring with? | ||
| Like, who you working with? | ||
| Like, you know, those are the things that I want to see. | ||
| I don't want to just see you in the weight room. | ||
| Is he doing something with Henry Cejudo? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| I think he was working with him for a minute. | ||
| A lot of guys working with him. | ||
| I like what Henry's doing. | ||
| I like what Henry's doing. | ||
| That's a focused man. | ||
| Big facts, man. | ||
| He's a focused man. | ||
| And he's keeping himself involved, for sure. | ||
| Even though he's not fighting, he wants to come back, for sure. | ||
| Well, they're talking about him fighting Aljamain Sterling for the title, which I hope takes place. | ||
| Yeah, I hope it takes place as well. | ||
| That's a very good fight. | ||
| I like that fight a lot. | ||
| For him to come right back straight to the title, makes sense. | ||
| Two-division champion, Olympic gold medalist, one of the greats. | ||
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| And actually, that was the original weight class that Henry came from, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So it was 125 and 135. Yeah, well, he won at 25, but he also won at 35. I feel like him coming back at 35 to fight Aljo is a very legit fight. | ||
| I like that fight a lot. | ||
| To be honest with you, I think Al Jermaine would take that one. | ||
| Al Jermaine's a motherfucker, dude. | ||
| I think he'd take that one low-key, bro. | ||
| And right now, Al Jermaine's a champion, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like when a guy becomes a champion. | ||
| Yeah, like the way he fucked over TJ Dillashaw, he beat the shit out of that dude. | ||
| And I know TJ's shoulder was fucked up, but dude. | ||
| The way Aljamain fought Pyotr Jan in the second fight, he's a champion now. | ||
| There's a thing that happens to a guy when he comes into his own and you go, you know what, I can't wait to see him again because I think he's going to be even better. | ||
| That's how I feel about Aljo right now. | ||
| It's like you realize the confidence is there. | ||
| And when you talk about, for 135, the physique that Aljamain has, the type of shape that he's in, Oh, yeah. | ||
| I'm like, bro, he ain't looking like other 135. He's the perfect 135. It's like the perfect amount of weight cutting. | ||
| Like he's got his diet dialed in. | ||
| He comes out shredded as fuck. | ||
| But he also has great cardio. | ||
| Big fat. | ||
| And he's long, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For 35, he's big, dude. | ||
| Big fat. | ||
| I mean, he's walking around 176 when I saw him. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that's the thing. | ||
| That's why I know I'll be cool at getting down to 170 because I ain't got to cut a massive amount of weight. | ||
| And definitely when I clean up my diet, the only probably... | ||
| The biggest I'd probably cut is like 20. Well, if you were walking around at 181 before you fought at 85, that seems easy for you to make 170. You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But that's the thing. | ||
| I was walking around at 182, 185. You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like when I was like... | ||
| 21. How long have I been walking around? | ||
| Since I was 18, going up to 23 years old, I was walking around that way. | ||
| I didn't actually start to fill out until I didn't get any fights at 170. It makes sense that they want to see you Cut the weight, though. | ||
| Because, like, you see, there's so many problems. | ||
| Like, Hamzat's the biggest problem, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Trying to get down to 170 and the dude misses it by eight pounds, which is fucked up the whole card. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Now, hold on, okay. | ||
| That's a problem. | ||
| And I love to talk about this, too, because I don't think the UFC set this up like no crazy stuff. | ||
| I ain't trying to be on no British jobs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nah. | |
| I ain't trying to be on no British. | ||
| But low-key, it just worked out too well. | ||
| It did work out too well, but that's how things happen sometimes. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Yeah, it's my whole life. | ||
| It's your whole life? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Alright, but I get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, trust me. | |
| Things just work out sometimes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, big facts. | |
| Okay. | ||
| That was a situation where it was the best case scenario in terms of options. | ||
| Because Kevin Holland had fought at 185 before, and he was available, and he was willing, and then they got in a squabble backstage, and so they said, alright, let's just make this at 180, and Kevin's like, good. | ||
| Because Kevin was already supposed to fight Daniel Rodriguez at 180. All that made sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The guy who got fucked over is the leech. | ||
| But the thing is, though, in... | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| It really didn't make no sense because why are they fighting that one? | ||
| And then why did they just put it on the card last minute? | ||
| Well, they had no other options. | ||
| The only other option was cancel the card. | ||
| What is the option? | ||
| Why would they have to cancel it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| I'm not talking about why even put Kevin Holland versus D-Rod. | ||
| Why even put that fight on the card and why is it catch weight? | ||
| Kevin Holler can make the weight. | ||
| D-Rod has always fought at 170, so why is he already making up the mind, oh, I want to fight at 180? | ||
| Well, they had made that arrangement far in advance. | ||
| It was a last-minute fight that they put on. | ||
| Yeah, but I mean, it wasn't like the day of. | ||
| Daniel Rodriguez and Kevin Holland. | ||
| All I'm saying is just, for it to be at 180 and them to make that decision to make it at 180, that's all I'm talking about. | ||
| Because then also, Tony Ferguson versus G. Liang, that fight didn't make no sense. | ||
| When they made the fight, that fight didn't make no sense to me. | ||
| Well, that fight made sense to me. | ||
| Alright, go ahead. | ||
| It made sense to me because Tony Ferguson's coming off a knockout loss to Chandler. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Moving up to 170? | ||
| Yeah, but... | ||
| The thing about it is, I think as you get older, I think it becomes more and more difficult for you to make the weight. | ||
| You feel weakened by the weight cut. | ||
| Daniel Rodriguez, the reason why that made sense, if you look how big he looked against Lee Jingleon, and when I mean big, I mean like carrying body fat. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, he chubby. | ||
| D-Rod ain't never come in shape. | ||
| He's in shape, but he's just not ripped. | ||
| You know, he's just got that Cain Velasquez style body, you know, where they never look shredded, but they're always in shape. | ||
| And I think that he was probably heavy. | ||
| And he said, look, I'll take the fight, but I'm heavy right now. | ||
| I'm not going to make 170. I'll kill myself. | ||
| So let's do it at 180 and Kevin's like fine. | ||
| I fight at 185 all the time. | ||
| We're good. | ||
| So it's got all the pieces of a conspiracy theory. | ||
| Yeah, man, it really do. | ||
| But there's logic behind it. | ||
| Yeah, big fact. | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| Because the Hamzat and Diaz make sense only because, like, UFC don't want Diaz to come on, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| And be able to shine. | ||
| But it sort of didn't make sense, though, right? | ||
| Because a lot of people are like, Jesus Christ, Hamzat's so big. | ||
| Diaz has fought at 155. Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Hamzat's coming in. | ||
| This motherfucker's like... | ||
| It's an easy kill for Hamzat! | ||
| Yeah, it's a big... | ||
| Easy money, you know? | ||
| And then also you help develop, even though Hamza still got a crazy following, but it's still not the American base, you know what I mean? | ||
| So it helps build his name. | ||
| So that fight did make sense for me right there. | ||
| But then it's like the whole switch up. | ||
| I'm like, bro, that's too perfect because then you have Kevin Holland and Hamza, they had their whole little dispute, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you already got Kevin Holland who didn't have to cut no weight. | ||
| And that's the thing about even Kevin. | ||
| Shout out to him. | ||
| He wasn't cutting weight for real at 185. You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, my man was just walking around, you know, smoking, doing this little thing, and like walking to the cage in a fight at 185. Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| So, to have that fight at 180, and then tell Hans, well, I wouldn't say tell Hans, but Hans said himself that the doctor told him to stop cutting weight. | ||
| Hans was like, oh, well, I can make it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So I don't even think it's on the fighters, but I feel like the UFC was able to mess this up a little too well. | ||
| Well, let me tell you because I know. | ||
| Yeah, you know. | ||
| I'm just guessing. | ||
| I talked to Dana when the shit went down. | ||
| He's like, this is a fucking mess. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| He goes, I don't know what we're going to do. | ||
| So they were in chaos. | ||
| And then they masterminded. | ||
| They got together and they brainstormed. | ||
| They said, okay, what if we do this and this and this thing? | ||
| And it turned out, like we were talking about it. | ||
| It's a better card. | ||
| It was way better. | ||
| Ferguson versus Diaz. | ||
| A competitive matchup. | ||
| That made sense. | ||
| You know, Hamzat versus Kevin Holland. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| I'm not arguing that. | ||
| It all made sense. | ||
| That's how it should have been in the first place. | ||
| The only thing that did make sense to me, I think lead Jean Leon got fucked. | ||
| Oh, he got played. | ||
| He even said it, too. | ||
| But D-Rod is still a 170 fighter, though. | ||
| But he do cut a lot of weight, though. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And my thing is, though, but G-Liang, he had to put in that extra work in order to get that weight down to 170. Because G-Liang is a ripped guy, you know what I mean? | ||
| So I know it's hard to even try to get to the 170 weight class for himself. | ||
| So, you know, he did have a little disadvantage. | ||
| I felt like Gigliang won that fight, too, bro. | ||
| I felt like he did enough to win. | ||
| He was most certainly a very close fight. | ||
| But then, you know, and shout out to Neil Magny, who just finished D-Rod, because Neil Magny is one of the most underappreciated guys in the UFC. Yeah, low-key. | ||
| That guy has cardio. | ||
| The pace that dude puts on people, he's such a workman. | ||
| He just comes in and just constant volume, long reach. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like Neil Mack, he does a good job of getting guys to fight his style. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| He takes his time with guys, and guys take that pace, but then don't realize, okay, oh, time is getting ate up right now. | ||
| And Neil Mackie does a good job of tying guys up. | ||
| Just using that long job. | ||
| It's boring. | ||
| I ain't gonna lie to you. | ||
| It's slow, but even though when you say, like, oh, it's not boring, it's masterful, but there's a lot of things I be seeing Neil Mackie do, and I be, I ain't gonna lie to you, I be falling asleep. | ||
| Because you like exciting shit. | ||
| You're a wild man. | ||
| I am a wild man. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| Well, speaking of Neil Magny, you know, and I'm glad he got a win because you never know, you know, with the UFC with, you know, losses and stuff like that. | ||
| But that Shabcock kid, though, the undefeated, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| He demolished Neil Magny, bro. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| And what, he got him out the first round? | ||
| Yeah, that guy's good. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| He's under the radar. | ||
| With mainstream people, they do not know how to shop. | ||
| That's the real Hamzai killer to me. | ||
| He's a bad motherfucker. | ||
| With 16 finishes, 17 finishes. | ||
| And he does everything. | ||
| He can do everything. | ||
| He's a striker, grappler, everything. | ||
| I think he got a fight coming up against Jeff Neal. | ||
| That's a banger. | ||
| That's a banger. | ||
| I like Jeff Neal now. | ||
| Jeff Neal's back. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, big facts, big facts. | ||
| You know, he went through a period of time where he was dealing with his own bullshit and, you know, wasn't really totally focused. | ||
| I mean, almost, if I'm not mistaken, almost died or something. | ||
| You know, he was in the hospital. | ||
| Yes, he had a really bad infection. | ||
| Bad infection? | ||
| Yeah, real bad. | ||
| So it took him out for a little minute, you know. | ||
| And then recovering from that was difficult, and then he had some personal life shit. | ||
| Big fact. | ||
| But now he's back. | ||
| He looks like the Jeff. | ||
| Like, when Jeff Neal fought Mike Perry, I was like, this motherfucker's a dark horse. | ||
| Almost done. | ||
| Because he's got timing, man. | ||
| His timing. | ||
| When Jeff Neal's on, he's one of the best guys in the division. | ||
| I can agree with that. | ||
| And definitely what he did to Vicente Luque was masterful. | ||
| And I was telling a lot of guys, watch out for that because just how Vicente Luque, he strikes. | ||
| And he's a powerful guy. | ||
| Don't get it twisted. | ||
| A lot of knockouts. | ||
| But he just keeps his head straight up. | ||
| Takes a lot of damage. | ||
| Takes a lot of punishment. | ||
| But if you got somebody got decent footwork, good combinations that they put together, which Jeff Neal does have, you know, you seem like, I mean, just pick them apart, just with boxing alone, you know? | ||
| And a lot of those guys with those Dutch styles, you know what I mean? | ||
| I feel like, man, they just be getting touched too much. | ||
| It's a hard style. | ||
| It's a hard style, you know what I mean? | ||
| I mean, you could deliver some bangers, but that's somebody standing right in front of you, and Jeff Neal wasn't doing that for him. | ||
| Yeah, he masterfully moved around and picked his shots. | ||
| That was big. | ||
| The division is wild. | ||
| All divisions are wild right now in the UFC, but I feel like 170 in particular. | ||
| And I feel like the only thing that's missing from 170 is the personality part. | ||
| You know, you got the Colby Covington, and now we got, you know, Kevin Holland as a 170 fighter. | ||
| But a lot of these guys, I don't feel like, promote themselves. | ||
| Even Vicente Luque, what is his nickname? | ||
| The silent, you know, assassin. | ||
| He don't talk much. | ||
| He doesn't do anything. | ||
| You know, Gilbert Burns is one of them, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, that don't really promote himself like that. | ||
| Jeff Neal don't really promote himself like that, you know. | ||
| But they all talented, but you don't have a lot of personality that goes within, you know, fighting. | ||
| That people want to actually attach themselves and want to watch you fight, you know. | ||
| And that's what I feel like the 170 division is missing for me. | ||
| Well, Masvidal. | ||
| Masvidal's overrunning. | ||
| Masvidal, number 11 in the world now. | ||
| Come on, bro. | ||
| He eating, but I feel like Masvidal, even though he a personality, he a journeyman, man. | ||
| I ain't trying to be... | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| Masvidal's still dangerous as fuck. | ||
| Boy, I'll take that fight. | ||
| If I can get that fight, I'll love that fight. | ||
| You might be able to get that fight. | ||
| I mean, you think so, Joe? | ||
| I might not. | ||
| I mean, I'm on your show. | ||
| You win with Chris Curtis? | ||
| That ain't no if. | ||
| I'm gonna knock that fool out. | ||
| Chris Curtis is a bad motherfucker. | ||
| He is, bro. | ||
| He is. | ||
| That's a really good fight for you, too. | ||
| Oh, it's a great fight for me. | ||
| But you can't stand right in front of that man. | ||
| So when he fought Phil Halls, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Phil Halls was beating his ass. | ||
| You know, putting the jab on him, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Hit across, like, level changing, you know, on him. | ||
| And that's the thing about Chris Curtis. | ||
| He's able to just, you know, shrug off a couple of those shots, you know what I mean? | ||
| And just be patient and just wait. | ||
| But when Phil Halls got comfortable and just, like, you know, feel like he's just flowing, that's when he got caught. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| And took that one shot, and then it was over with. | ||
| Chris Curtis is one of those never-say-die guys. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| He's always there. | ||
| He's always there. | ||
| But I love it stylistically with you, because if your style of fighting... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Tell you something, in your last fight, even though you lost, that third round, you showed why people love you. | ||
| You came out with guns! | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Well, I went into that fight with the wrong mentality. | ||
| The same way I came out in the third, I should have came out in the first and the second. | ||
| Because I was hoping and I was praying because I was, you know, nitpicking on a lot of stuff, you know what I mean? | ||
| I was just talking about where he's from, you know, being Russian, but not being a Frenchman. | ||
| So, like, you ain't got a real home at the end of the day and people love me more than you out here in Paris and I'm getting more love and they don't even know who you are. | ||
| Just little things. | ||
| I was talking about eating up Nassadine cuisine. | ||
| Just picking on him the whole time. | ||
| But regardless though, that first round I was hoping that he was going to engage a little bit more. | ||
| But because of that size and because of that length that these guys have, they will only fight me at bay. | ||
| Which is smart family. | ||
| Intelligent, right? | ||
| Why try to expose yourself and then pressure too hard where I can catch you? | ||
| But I was hoping that he would come in with a little bit more emotion. | ||
| But he didn't. | ||
| He kept poised. | ||
| So you were fucking with him, hoping that he would get out of character. | ||
| Yeah, exactly, man. | ||
| But he did his job. | ||
| But at the end of the day, when Coach said, you know what I'm saying, we're definitely losing. | ||
| We had to pick that shit up in the third round. | ||
| I said, say less. | ||
| So I was willing to get knocked out in order to go knock him out. | ||
| That's the only difference. | ||
| That third round, you emptied the gas tank. | ||
| I had to. | ||
| That was impressive as fuck. | ||
| I had to, yeah. | ||
| And I'm surprised he survived that knee. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| If you need a hit on him, man. | ||
| So that's why I'm thinking, like, bro, maybe fighting at my more appropriate weight class, you know? | ||
| It's like George St. Pierre, like, you know, moving up to 185, but he never stayed there because at the end of the day, he already knew that these guys would be big. | ||
| Even if he's better as a fighter, these athletes are just different now, you know what I mean? | ||
| And anything that you're giving up, whether it's size, length, strength, like, these all play a part, you know, when you're messing with some of the best people in the world. | ||
| Yeah, most certainly I think 170 is a much better weight class for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, in every way. | ||
| And especially if you're really walking around at 181 sometimes. | ||
| So that's what I was. | ||
| I accidentally cut down because I was just chilling. | ||
| And I was eating whatever I wanted in Paris. | ||
| I was enjoying my whole time there. | ||
| So I was eating before waiting. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Fighters can't say that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's nuts. | ||
| I was at the restaurant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just chilling. | ||
| My biggest thing is I'm not afraid to fight guys that's bigger. | ||
| I know that I'm giving up some type of advantage for them because of the attributes and stuff, but at the same time my mentality is that I'm willing to fight and brawl with anybody that stands in front of me. | ||
| You know, because when I started off with MMA, that's all I used to work with was bigger guys. | ||
| And sometimes I was like, oh man, I can actually take the advantage because I'm faster and my footwork is there. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Or I'm just better and skill set wise, you know, because you already know like the heavier the weight class, you know, the less skills. | ||
| Smaller weight class, the more skills. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Flyweight division got some of the best fighters in the world. | ||
| Do you think that's the case in the 170s and 185s? | ||
| Because I don't think that's the case. | ||
| I mean, structurally, when you see... | ||
| Maybe heavyweight. | ||
| But even at 185, you still got a lot of guys that's not that good, but they're just powerful. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But I would just put a great example. | ||
| You see a lot more strikers in the 185 division, but in 170, what do you see? | ||
| More grapplers. | ||
| And at the end of the day, in my humble opinion, MMA is still structured for grappling. | ||
| It's still structured for jiu-jitsu, wrestling, judo, all that other stuff because at the end of the day, you got to grab, you got to clench. | ||
| So I feel like the better grappler is always going to win in MMA. That's just my opinion. | ||
| It's most of the time. | ||
| Yeah, it's most of the time. | ||
| Not every time, but like... | ||
| Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman. | ||
| Yeah, that's barely. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| That was a minute later. | ||
| Barely. | ||
| Barely, yeah. | ||
| But still, it barely doesn't mean anything when you win the world title by head kick knockout. | ||
| It's like Ben Ashton versus Jorge Malsudal. | ||
| It's a great situation where a flying knee you pop them with, but if they fought again, that probably would never happen. | ||
| I think there's a bunch of factors there. | ||
| First of all, you're dealing with a Ben Askren that... | ||
| Ben Askren, this is all common knowledge now. | ||
| He had a fucked up hit by the time he got to the UFC. Big fact, big fact. | ||
| He was already blown out. | ||
| Came in too late. | ||
| Yeah, he came in too late. | ||
| But you've seen him with Douglas Lima, Andre, you know, like when he fought those guys, you know what I mean? | ||
| And those are great MMA fighters. | ||
| Like Andre, I forget his last name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kariskovs. | |
| But he destroyed them dudes. | ||
| We're just wrestling alone. | ||
| Habib is a great example to me again because shout out to Michael Johnson from St. Louis. | ||
| He actually went to the same high school too as well. | ||
| We got a little crazy story with that. | ||
| He was the only person who really hurt Habib and could have had the actual opportunity to beat Habib. | ||
| But Habib said what? | ||
| I'm going to take you down and keep you down. | ||
| So I feel like the majority of grapplers or the better grappler is always going to be the better striker. | ||
| I think it's the most important skill in MMA. Because the grappler has the ability to dictate whether the fight stays up or goes to the ground. | ||
| That's why when a guy like Bo Nickel gets into the MMA world, everybody's like, oh shit. | ||
| Big facts. | ||
| Because he's just such an accelerated wrestler. | ||
| But at the same time, it still levels to it, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Because Aaron Pico, I think, is a great example because they rushed him too fast. | ||
| Because he actually fought a dude named Zach Freeman, who's from Missouri as well. | ||
| And experienced dudes. | ||
| Zach Freeman was the most talented, but hard-working dude. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And he was a vet, so he had multiple fights in the game. | ||
| And Aaron Pico, even though he's a what? | ||
| Olympic wrestler or something like that and then, you know, golden gloves, boxing, all this stuff, which is cool. | ||
| He didn't have the experience in the MMA cage, which is a little bit different, you know? | ||
| And I feel like if you don't develop these guys' skills and experience first, they can get caught. | ||
| Even though they got all the skill sets in the world, they still just gonna get caught, you know, by somebody that's already been in that, you know, on that level. | ||
| Did you see Aaron's last fight where he blew out his shoulder? | ||
| Well, he blew out his shoulder? | ||
| No, I didn't say that. | ||
| Yeah, he had the same thing that happened with TJ. He dislocated his shoulder and then had to stop the fight. | ||
| He threw a left hook and it just popped out. | ||
| It just popped out. | ||
| And I'll be wondering where these little injuries be coming from like that, you know? | ||
| Well, some of these wrestlers, their shoulders are so fucked. | ||
| By the time they get into MMA, they have all these tears and shit and they're kind of barely holding on anyway. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| I mean, that's the thing, though, because it might be happening, like, in training. | ||
| So if it's happening in training, like, you got to do something about, like, to keep it or prevent it from happening, you know? | ||
| Because he was staying active then, right? | ||
| Aaron Pico? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So here it is. | ||
| They're trying to pull it out. | ||
| Oh, they in the corner doing it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Look, they were trying to pull it out. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's like a technique to pulling someone's shoulder. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Ain't no technique to that. | ||
| He's just pulling that thing. | ||
| I don't think that's how it goes. | ||
| He's trying to pull his arm off. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think that's how it goes. | ||
| I think there's a way to do it. | ||
| I don't necessarily think this guy is doing it correctly. | ||
| Maybe I'm wrong. | ||
| He's trying. | ||
| Isn't there a way? | ||
| Isn't there a way you're supposed to do it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know if it's a weapon and Mel Gibson slamming his shoulder in the wall. | |
| That's right, it's a weapon. | ||
| But it's a common thing where guys blow their shoulders out. | ||
| Have you had any surgeries or any major injuries? | ||
| Yeah, the only time I had surgery was when I got into the USC. Yeah, I had no injuries throughout the fight until I started fighting on the best promotion on the planet, which I'm fighting the best fighters. | ||
| What injury did you get? | ||
| ACL tear, meniscus tear, as well as the orbital fracture in the Antonio Arroyo fight. | ||
| Yeah, that was bad, because I was seeing two of him. | ||
| And I was coming off a loss of Alessio. | ||
| So that's who tore my meniscus when he had kicked me with that roundhouse kick because I was ducking. | ||
| I was trying to box too much, you know, kicking me outside my head. | ||
| But the way I fell, I ended up tearing, you know what I'm saying, my meniscus. | ||
| And then after that fight that I had with him, getting that surgery, I went into the fight with Antonio Arroyo. | ||
| I won that fight, but he left, you know, a good little mark right underneath my eye, but found out that he had broke my orbital. | ||
| So did you have to have surgery in your orbital? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| So they had to replace it, like, with a little rod. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| So, like, the base of my eye itself, like, it was gone, so, like, my eye was just floating there. | ||
| So I could have had a lazy eye, you know what I'm saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, Jesus. | |
| So they was like, yeah, we got to replace this, you know, so you can have that wall back underneath that foundation almost. | ||
| What does that feel? | ||
| Can you feel it when you touch your face? | ||
| No, no, I can't. | ||
| I mean, yeah, I can feel it a little bit, like, um... | ||
| Like, the soft part that you have here. | ||
| So I can feel, like, right here where it's a little harder. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| And they said if it was metal, then I couldn't be able to compete. | ||
| So they put, like, a plastic one. | ||
| And I was asking, like, is that going to affect it? | ||
| Is it easy to break? | ||
| They were like, nah. | ||
| It's hard to reach type shit. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Actually, it makes it a lot stronger because the bone is so, like, fragile. | ||
| So if it was metal, you wouldn't be able to fight because it would open up the cuts or something? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's what they said. | ||
| Like, anything that's metal in your body, you won't be able to compete. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I think that was coming from the UFC had hit them up and told them that. | ||
| Don't quote me, but that's what I heard the doctor tell him. | ||
| Maybe it's just in the face. | ||
| Did you see, who was that dude who fought Canelo? | ||
| Billy Joe Saunders. | ||
| He got his whole face caved in. | ||
| Cheekbone. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| It was like up here, here. | ||
| Which one you think is worse? | ||
| That one or the Sage Norcutt? | ||
| When he got his... | ||
| Sage was a bad one. | ||
| That was a bad one. | ||
| And then you got, who else got their face case? | ||
| And it's sad because it's multiples. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cyborg with MVP. That was probably the worst ever. | |
| Right, the skull. | ||
| Gave his forehead in. | ||
| That's scary because it's supposed to be the hardest part of your head. | ||
| The hardest part where everybody breaks their hands. | ||
| And they caved in like you got hit with a missile. | ||
| Man, that was nasty. | ||
| That was the wildest flying knee. | ||
| Michael Vennon Page is a bad motherfucker, dude. | ||
| He's so wild. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| I remember I wanted to fight him when I was in Bellator. | ||
| Just to get my name out there, for real, for real. | ||
| But I just wanted to challenge myself against somebody like that because he had that style of traditional martial arts. | ||
| Like a porn. | ||
| Point fighting. | ||
| Point fighting, you know? | ||
| But he was really knocking dudes out, though. | ||
| Oh my god, yeah. | ||
| Look at it. | ||
| That's the fracture. | ||
| This is the sideboard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Look at all the plates he has in his fucking head. | ||
| And that was it for him, man. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's over with. | ||
| He said he was going to keep fighting after that, and the doctor was like, no. | ||
| Unfortunately, you can't, big fella. | ||
| Play that again. | ||
| Watch this. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| And you can hear it, too, if you can play something that's nasty when you hear the pop. | ||
| Like you just heard it break. | ||
| Just heard it cave in. | ||
| And a dude is tough as Cyborg. | ||
| You see him writhing in pain like that. | ||
| You would have seen me kicking my legs, boy. | ||
| I would have been out there swimming. | ||
| And then look at MVP like Pokemon. | ||
| He even caught Pikachu or something. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| He's a showman for sure, but he got his ass whooped by Mike Perry though. | ||
| Yeah, that was wild. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was shocked. | |
| That's a whole different type of style of fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I'm sorry. | ||
| Like, you know, you thinking because you got gloves on or you take the gloves off and, like, it's still going to be a type of fight. | ||
| But, bro, like, that's bone on bone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And, like, that takes a different type of beast, like, to fight bare knuckle boxing. | ||
| Well, Mike Perry's... | ||
| I've always thought like it's kind of weird that the elbows aren't covered by a pad your shins aren't covered by a pad your foots not covered by your heels like they did it old-school like y'all gotta start right in front of each other yeah and just get the bank yeah I mean so I mean I like bare knuckle boxes very interesting but not for me no definitely not for me man yeah if you come with a big check Nah. | ||
| Hesitation. | ||
| A little bit of hesitation. | ||
| I mean, because I'm thinking about that check. | ||
| You know, but at the same time, though, it's just like, man, your health is everything. | ||
| And people come out looking different with bare knuckle boxing. | ||
| You know, Pauly Malignaggi, you know what I'm saying, versus Artem. | ||
| That shit was crazy. | ||
| Paige Van Gantt. | ||
| You get rid of your money. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| You're a pretty ass girl. | ||
| You don't need to be in bare knuckle boxing. | ||
| Chris Lieben, he fought in bare knuckle boxing and it looked like he got hit with a hatchet. | ||
| His whole face was busted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nasty, man. | |
| And then you just get cut up because of the knuckles. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So you just got all these little splits down in your eye. | ||
| Yeah, I'm sorry, bro. | ||
| It's just too much. | ||
| But do you think that it's... | ||
| Is there an argument for doing that at MMA for eliminating gloves? | ||
| Because if you don't have pads on your knees and your shins and your elbows and all the other weapons that you hit people with, why do you have pads on your knuckles? | ||
| Well, that's good, but it's the break of the hand, you know? | ||
| Right, but doesn't that make it unrealistic to be able to just wildly punch people? | ||
| I didn't know they were trying to make it realistic. | ||
| I thought they were trying to make it a sport. | ||
| It is a sport, but it's a sport of fighting. | ||
| And if you have no padding on all these other areas... | ||
| So let me show you King of the Streets. | ||
| This is real fighting right here. | ||
| So it's K-O-T-S, King of the Streets. | ||
| Who was fighting? | ||
| No, I don't know the name of these fighters. | ||
| I'm just about to show you this. | ||
| It's a promotion. | ||
| This is real fighting at its element. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because they fight outside. | ||
| They fight in a warehouse. | ||
| And as well, they don't have any bare knuckle, like, nothing. | ||
| This is real fighting. | ||
| UFC can't do this. | ||
| Underground Fight Club. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Everybody got a face mask, everything like that, because they don't want to get exposed out here in just case a murder happened. | ||
| Is that a mat? | ||
| Like, what are they fighting on? | ||
| They're not fighting on a mat. | ||
| That's concrete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| That's cement. | ||
| Really? | ||
| That is cement. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And they're actually pretty popular right now. | ||
| With sneakers on. | ||
| Well, yeah, that's a real fight. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Sneakers on concrete. | ||
| But, bro, you get KO'd and you fall back. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| And they got many. | ||
| They got many KOs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you get body slammed on concrete, that is fucking bad. | ||
| So one dude got rocked with a left hook, right? | ||
| Fell down. | ||
| And as he fell down, the dude kicked him right in his face. | ||
| And my man just sees it out. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Now this is brutal. | ||
| But this is the closest thing that you get to a real fight because this is a real fight. | ||
| It's a real fight and the only thing that's covered is they're wearing sneakers. | ||
| Why are they wearing sneakers though? | ||
| I feel like you shouldn't wear it. | ||
| First of all, you shouldn't be wearing running shoes. | ||
| Oh, this dude is just getting piled right. | ||
| So you take your shoes off, Joe, before a fight? | ||
| No, I wouldn't, but I wouldn't wear those. | ||
| I wouldn't wear those shoes. | ||
| I would wear wrestling shoes. | ||
| You wouldn't wear them Skechers down in Adidas? | ||
| I would wear wrestling shoes. | ||
| Wrestling shoes are lighter. | ||
| If you have cushioning under your sole, that cushioning is making you unstable. | ||
| It's making you move. | ||
| If you have running shoes on and you're going side to side, you're not fully planted on the ground like you are if you have wrestling shoes on. | ||
| Wrestling shoes would be the way to go. | ||
| Big fans. | ||
| But in a real scenario, you would never have wrestling shoes on. | ||
| And then you ain't gonna pause and somebody be like, hey, wait, wait, wait, let me put these wrestling shoes on. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Because I done been in street fights. | ||
| I done known the element. | ||
| I used to work security in St. Louis, and I worked security for like eight years, bro. | ||
| Too damn long. | ||
| But the only reason why I worked security, man, because it was so fun. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| There's so many different stories there. | ||
| There's so many different things that's going on. | ||
| And just being out there in that environment and just regular life ain't nothing going on for real. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Just having a regular-ass job. | ||
| And I'm fighting still and I'm just training. | ||
| But this is where the fun part of it is the nightlife. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Almost being, like I said, the Jon Jones. | ||
| So I'm glad I didn't get signed earlier in my career because I would have had a bunch of little crazy stories to tell. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| No, for real, for real. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But luckily, I was able to mature over time. | ||
| But regardless, though, I didn't see the street element where a lot of guys think because they train jujitsu, because they train boxing, they train MMA, that they're going to be good fighting in the streets. | ||
| But there ain't no rules, bro. | ||
| I didn't see dudes be calmly like, oh, man, I don't want to fight you because you do-do-do. | ||
| And I got a beard in their hand and smashed their head in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Immediately. | ||
| But they're not even seeing, like, just the body language, right? | ||
| You're not paying attention to certain stuff, you know? | ||
| And I feel like a lot of guys that train the discipline, which there's nothing wrong with training the discipline, but they use that alone to think that's going to save them. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You got to actually have the mentality that, like, you know, you are going to end a threat at any given moment by using anything that is necessary at that time, you know? | ||
| And a lot of guys don't do that because I've seen guys on the floor thinking, like, it's a jiu-jitsu match, but it gets stomped out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, it's like different things like that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So, I feel like people be having the wrong idea when it comes to, like, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, MMA. Like, that ain't the core element of fighting itself. | ||
| Well, if you're fighting like those guys are on concrete, that is a whole different ballgame. | ||
| Especially with takedowns. | ||
| That's a real fight, though. | ||
| And like I said, I never do nothing like that for no amount of money. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I bet they're not getting paid very well, either. | ||
| Nah, not at all. | ||
| They just going viral. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| They just going viral, you know? | ||
| But besides that though, but I do respect it because at the end of the day, that is real fight. | ||
| Oh, it's real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Period. | ||
| Especially on concrete. | ||
| If you're on concrete and you're fighting a wrestler, you're in deep shit. | ||
| You're in deep shit. | ||
| Well, hold on. | ||
| I didn't see any wrestlers getting knocked out the hook. | ||
| Oh, that happens too? | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| That happens too, but if he can get ahold of you? | ||
| They thinking just double leg yourself, but dude pulling your hair. | ||
| That's true, too. | ||
| Adding stuff to it, like, you know, head-butting, like... | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you're only a wrestler, yeah. | ||
| Big facts, you know, because you thinking, like, your actual form of wrestling trying to... | ||
| You get in a wrestling stance, like, come on, man. | ||
| Like, what did you do? | ||
| Like, but I didn't see it before. | ||
| Like, where people actually pick a stance, like, to get in, that's not real fight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You don't even show that threat. | ||
| You just make the move. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And like I said, you eliminate the threat as fast as possible. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Shout out to Detroit Dust. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Dale Brown, you know? | ||
| But he speaks about it as well because it's just like... | ||
| You want to be in the most calm position as possible if you're amongst somebody that's trying to fight you. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Now, if you know this is about to go there, you shouldn't show that you want to fight them. | ||
| You should actually be more calm and be more whatever, and then once they actually make that move, that's when you counter whatever and hit whatever part of the body that you can. | ||
| Just be aware. | ||
| Always be aware. | ||
| Always be aware. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Always be alert. | ||
| Do you find that now that you're known and you become a famous fighter, do people fuck with you now? | ||
| I ain't never been really fucked with, no. | ||
| Like, for real, I ain't never just had no type of problems like that. | ||
| But you're a nice guy, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That's also part of the way you carry yourself. | ||
| Yeah, I walk with respect everywhere I go, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| So I never, like, be out of pocket, never, you know, be out of line, you know what I mean? | ||
| So I never had any situation where anybody would want to fight me, you know? | ||
| But, you know, me working security, I guess I hadn't had opportunities where I could have jacked up a lot of guys. | ||
| You know, definitely when I was younger, I was definitely effing up a lot of guys, but that's not the security job to do. | ||
| You know, you're supposed to de-escalate a lot of situations, but you had a lot of guys that will, you know, try to press your patience, right? | ||
| And I could pop on, but just keep it cool, keep it calm, and try to get people out the smartest way possible. | ||
| Like, hey, bro, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Let me holler at you outside real quick, you know? | ||
| But then kick them out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, act like I'm trying to have a conversation with you. | ||
| And then, hey, hey, man, let me see. | ||
| You got something on your wristband? | ||
| Break it off. | ||
| And then they got to leave. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| But you do have scenarios for myself, like when I was working security, where guys will try to challenge you. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And try to buck up and stuff like that, where you do have to do something. | ||
| But at the end of the day, don't nobody really try nothing because, you know, they lose. | ||
| I'm undefeated in these streets. | ||
| Well, I'm glad you're out of that situation now. | ||
| That's a dangerous game to play. | ||
| I mean, and I've been playing it for a long time, you know? | ||
| And that's why I say, like, it ain't scary getting into that cage. | ||
| That does play a factor. | ||
| Guys have been in street fights, and a lot of them. | ||
| It's calmer in the cage. | ||
| Way more calmer, because, like, it's the actual structure. | ||
| It's competition. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, I got somebody right here on the side of me, which is called a referee, that if anything does happen, he gonna stop the fight. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You don't got that in the street element. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because once you get knocked out, I done seen dudes where they get KO'd and dudes keep pummeling. | ||
| Boom, boom, boom. | ||
| And not stopping. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, bro, you gonna do some life, bro. | ||
| Like, you kill this dude. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And that's how people die. | ||
| All the time, you know what I mean? | ||
| And regardless though, but those scenarios and dealing with that type of stuff, like I said, I feel like I'm at home when I'm in that octagon, you know? | ||
| Because this is where I feel like I'm free and then I can express myself freely without actually being judged for doing what I'm doing, you know? | ||
| So that's why I love, you know, fighting in the UFC right now. | ||
| Now, when you look at your career going forward, you've got this Chris Curtis fight, you plan on winning that fight, and then you want to drop down to 170. No, I am, point blank. | ||
| I was already planning on moving down to 170, but what my manager told me, I ain't trying to put his stuff out there like that, I'm signing with Sucker Punch, Brian Butler, but he was telling me I can get a better contract if I sign one more fight at 185. Okay. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So the UFC offered you this fight. | ||
| They want to make an exciting fight for this big card in Vegas. | ||
| That's a great card. | ||
| And they love it, right? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because it's not one fight that the UFC gave me that I did not. | ||
| I didn't took every fight. | ||
| I was even supposed to fight Alex Pereira, fam. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So I had to resign to our Hassan fight, right? | ||
| We were supposed to fight the first card of the year in January. | ||
| He's talking about his shoulder hurt. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| He did something to his shoulder, whatever. | ||
| Blase, blase. | ||
| You know, so I was like, man, forget that, bro. | ||
| I've been training hella hard. | ||
| Like, just give me anybody. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So if it ain't resolved, because I'm not finna push that fight back. | ||
| I want to fight in January, whatever. | ||
| So he was like, all right, all right. | ||
| Brian was telling me, all right, let me call him back, whatever, and let them know. | ||
| And they came back with a name. | ||
| And he was so hesitant to tell me, though. | ||
| This is the funny part, right? | ||
| So he's like, oh man, you know, I don't really like this fight for you, man. | ||
| You know, he's not really well known, but he's pretty good. | ||
| And I already said it for him before he said it. | ||
| I was like, Alex Pereira, he said, how do you know? | ||
| And I just already assumed just with my style and who he is. | ||
| Because I always make sure I pay attention to who's on the roster. | ||
| I gotta pay attention. | ||
| Even Bo Nickel, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, even though he's not nowhere yet, that's still a name that people pay attention to and people want to see him do well. | ||
| So I pay attention to fighters like that. | ||
| And knowing that Alex Pereira really only got signed because he beat Izzy, I was like, that's somebody to pay attention to. | ||
| So when I was able to guess that name, he was like, yeah, that's the fight they want you to fight. | ||
| Immediately, I said yes to it. | ||
| So he calls them back, and he calls me back. | ||
| He was like, hey, I got some good news and I got some bad news. | ||
| I was like, oh, what's up? | ||
| He said, good news, you look great to the UFC that you taking this fight, you know what I mean? | ||
| But bad news is they said they won't be ready in time. | ||
| And at first I was like, oh man, this dude being scary, but now it makes sense. | ||
| He ain't scary to cut the weight. | ||
| He got so much weight to cut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's big. | |
| He's bigger than him. | ||
| He's big as fuck. | ||
| So it wasn't that Alex Pereira wouldn't be able to take the fight because I think his coach or whoever his trainer is, the one that declined because of the time frame wasn't messed up. | ||
| He needs time to cut weight. | ||
| He needs time to cut weight. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But I would have took the fight though because I already know that he has to cut a lot of weight. | ||
| That dude's walking into the cage like 220. Easily. | ||
| Easily, bro. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because he walking around 240. He's got so much power. | |
| What are your thoughts on that fight this weekend? | ||
| Because that's a big fight. | ||
| My thoughts on it, bro, is way different from everybody else's. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because people call me crazy all the time. | ||
| But I think it's going to be like the same fight that we've seen Yoel and Izzy with. | ||
| Where you got two people just staring each other down, you know, not trying to make that move because, you know, they both had the capabilities of knocking each other out. | ||
| Or Francis Ngannou versus Derrick Lewis, you know what I mean? | ||
| So, and with everything, the hype being behind this fight, too, you know, Izzy is going, hopefully, like I said, if he don't apply his emotions into it like he hasn't done with every other fight... | ||
| I feel like he's going to do enough to win, but I feel like Alex Pereira is not going to be able to apply that pressure on Izzy just because he won't have the energy to sustain that for five rounds. | ||
| Remember, this is a five-rounder. | ||
| Right, because of the fact that he's cutting so much weight. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Plus, we don't see Alex Pereira move a lot anyway in his fights. | ||
| You only seen with Bruno Silva where you pushed him up against the cage a lot. | ||
| And that was a good fight to watch. | ||
| It was a very good fight to watch. | ||
| He got hit in that fight. | ||
| He got touched up real good. | ||
| Bruno Silva's a very good striker. | ||
| Man, big facts. | ||
| I don't know what to say. | ||
| But I get what you're saying. | ||
| He got good pops. | ||
| He's in your weight class. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| I'll be seeing guys and I'll be like, this is why they win in these fights. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I know that you're not a boxer. | ||
| I know that you're not a kickboxer. | ||
| You're not a heavy striker because he's more of a jiu-jitsu. | ||
| He's more of a grappler. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| But Bruno Silva got good power. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So he able to wane some of the punches because a lot of times, like, Bruno Silva be getting his ass work. | ||
| Even Jordan Wright was touching him. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Jordan Wright was touching Bruno Silva, but then, you know, Jordan Wright just got caught. | ||
| Stood in front of him. | ||
| Just stood, exactly, stood in front of him, got caught, and it was all, and it don't take that much in on the four-ounce gloves. | ||
| And that's why this Pereira fight is so interesting, though, because Pereira has that ridiculous power. | ||
| He just needed that one shot. | ||
| But the thing about Izzy, he is patient. | ||
| And he would, well, we're not going to call it boring, but he would strategically break you down all night long for 25 minutes. | ||
| If he gotta touch that leg all day, he gonna touch it. | ||
| You know, if you ain't gonna do nothing about it, if you're not gonna answer back, that's what he gonna do. | ||
| But I feel like in my heart, you know what I mean, that Alex Pereira unfortunately doesn't have the actual ability to fight Izzy the way he needs to win. | ||
| For five rounds. | ||
| For five rounds. | ||
| Because he's so big. | ||
| Yeah, that's one of the reasons. | ||
| But I just think between both of them, it's going to be a boring fight. | ||
| It's not going to be as exciting as people think it might be. | ||
| And that's the thing. | ||
| Izzy needs that type of exciting fight right now. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Because of the Jared Cannoneer fight. | ||
| You know? | ||
| We can say Paula Costa, but that was so... | ||
| How long? | ||
|
unidentified
|
2020? | |
| 2020? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So we've been expecting this from the champ because he's so pulverized outside the cage with, you know, the French tips, the pearl necklace, you know what I mean? | ||
| Doing all these little videos and dancing and all that, just showman stuff. | ||
| But we want to see that showcase in the cage as well, you know? | ||
| And that's my biggest thing. | ||
| I'm impressed by Izzy, and I'm a fan of Izzy, first off. | ||
| But I feel like if you don't bring a fight to him, he's not going to bring it to you. | ||
| That make sense? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I feel what you're saying. | ||
| So, like, he's willing to dance. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Big fan. | ||
| I mean, people forget that there was quite a few fights where Anderson Silva did the same thing. | ||
| He laid Talos Latis. | ||
| Remember that fight? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| You know, there was many fights where, you know, he laid back and waited for guys to come at Anderson. | ||
| Even better than Damian Maia. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Boy, Danny was mad about that one, you hear me? | ||
| But at the same time, that's the way he won. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because why would I engage with you knowing what you're trying to do? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So like I said, with that being said, I'm not mad at Izzy because he's going to do whatever it takes to keep that belt. | ||
| That's the money. | ||
| Alex Pereira wants that. | ||
| But the thing is, though, I don't think his ability is going to beat her in order to take it away from him. | ||
| And they're just going to be standing right in front of him. | ||
| And it's going to be a kickboxing bout. | ||
| And they were like, oh, well, the other ones were kickboxing. | ||
| But you already seen from Izzy. | ||
| Well, I was a little bit more emotional in those other fights. | ||
| And that's why I lost. | ||
| But then you see the strategic Izzy now, I don't see Alex Perea beating him. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Very interesting. | ||
| Yeah, take into account what you're saying about the five rounds and the weight cut, because that is a big factor. | ||
| That's a big factor. | ||
| That's the hugest factor, yeah. | ||
| Because Alex is so big, but without the wrestling threat, because Izzy's not really a guy who takes anybody down. | ||
| I'm about to say, yeah, who out there wrestling? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So everybody think like, oh, is he going to turn into a wrestler? | ||
| No, he ain't. | ||
| No. | ||
| You only fight the way you train, you know? | ||
| And not saying you don't work on that element of wrestling, but I don't see is he like shooting a jab, shooting across, shooting a hook, and double it. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's not going to happen. | ||
| I mean, if it does, I'll be stunned. | ||
| I'll be shocked. | ||
| I'm sure he can do it. | ||
| I'll be shocked. | ||
| But thing is, though, now you got to engage with that boy a sniper. | ||
| Can we pull up that, if you don't mind? | ||
| Please. | ||
| Please. | ||
| With Alex Pereira, with him shooting, you know what I'm saying, sniping with the arrows. | ||
| Yeah, when he shot the soccer ball. | ||
| Bro, man, that's crazy because my biggest thing is, though, like, Alex Pereira is the same type of beast, too, right? | ||
| He's a trap. | ||
| He waits all day. | ||
| And once you expose yourself or you come close enough... | ||
| He hits you. | ||
| Like Sean Strickland. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sean Strickland stood right in front of him. | ||
| But it wasn't even just standing right in front of him. | ||
| He was marching him down with his hands down. | ||
| Well, yeah, he keeps his hands like... | ||
| He has a very strange style. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So here's him. | |
| I ain't gonna lie, this was cold. | ||
| It's pretty badass. | ||
| This was cold, man. | ||
| It's pretty badass. | ||
| And it ain't one of those special little arrows either, like bowing arrows. | ||
| It's one of them he just made in the house. | ||
| Well, that's a recurve bow. | ||
| He grabbed a stick and grabbed a string. | ||
| Yeah, that's a recurve bow. | ||
| That's a much harder bow to shoot than what I shoot. | ||
| I shoot a compound bow. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| That takes real skill. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Look at him. | ||
| That roar that he has is terrifying. | ||
| I'm very excited about this fight, man. | ||
| I don't know what kind of preparation he's done in terms of getting himself lighter for a five-round fight and making sure that the cut is not as bad. | ||
| I don't know, but he looks shredded. | ||
| He looks shredded, man. | ||
| And he looks like he's killing himself to make that weight. | ||
| That's all I'm going to say. | ||
| He certainly is losing a lot of weight to make that weight. | ||
| He killed himself to get to that weight. | ||
| But he's done it many, many times. | ||
| But you see Izzy doing all this press, doing all this stuff. | ||
| Now, to be honest with you, I'd be like, it's a positive thing. | ||
| But at the same time, I ain't never seen him do this much work before or preparation for a fight where it comes to selling it. | ||
| Yeah, press. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, but they make you do that. | ||
| I mean, this is Madison Square Garden. | ||
| But this is the most I've ever seen. | ||
| I pay attention to these fighters all the time because they're in the weight class, right? | ||
| I want to be these guys, right? | ||
| I want to take their belt, right? | ||
| So I pay close attention to what they do all the time. | ||
| And especially Izzy because he's a champ, you know? | ||
| So besides it just being ESPN +, you know he got his own YouTube channel and everything like that. | ||
| And I mean, like, I feel like he done amped it up even more. | ||
| And there's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| That's either showing me that you have a lot of confidence about yourself and you're able to take this fight. | ||
| I'm going to say not so serious, but not as serious because you're doing other stuff on top of this, right? | ||
| Alex Pereira is only focusing on training and fighting right now. | ||
| There ain't no press for him for real for real. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So he's taking it into initiative. | ||
| I'm talking about Izzy to promote this fight as best as he can. | ||
| So you also taking away from your training at the end of the day. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But I feel like he thinks he's good enough to do what he's going to do. | ||
| In order to take time away from his training. | ||
| But isn't that just what the UFC obligates him to do? | ||
| Because he's selling the fight and he has pay-per-view points. | ||
| Not with everything. | ||
| But he has pay-per-view points. | ||
| I feel you, but I feel like... | ||
| And he also is the only one that speaks English. | ||
| Alex doesn't speak English. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, true story. | ||
| So that makes it difficult. | ||
| But I feel like a lot of stuff he's been doing on his own as well. | ||
| Doing extra stuff, you know? | ||
| Which I don't mind it because you gotta promote the fight. | ||
| You gotta do whatever you gotta do in order to get people to buy in. | ||
| And to be honest with you, it's not that hard of a buy-in because... | ||
| Even with Alex Pereira not being able to speak English, he's the only person that beat him. | ||
| The only person that knocked him out. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So that's an easy sell on itself. | ||
| So my thing is, why is Alex Pereira trying so hard? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, this is the one that, if I wasn't an MMA head, and I was just like, whatever, just watching this stuff, I'm like, oh, okay, that'd be interesting to watch. | ||
| Dude that already knocked him out, this dude is undefeated in MMA, but still could be a close fight, I'd watch it. | ||
| You know? | ||
| But Izzy is going about his weight, and like I said, I don't know what's going on in his head, but I feel like he's not trying to think about the fight itself, even though it is... | ||
| The press conference and all this other stuff. | ||
| He's trying to get himself more calm, right? | ||
| He wanted to be around more people. | ||
| I forget who... | ||
| That's another fighter that talked about that and the reason why he always stayed in the press and in interviews because it took him away from the fight. | ||
| They always wanted to be in the light. | ||
| I forget what... | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| So the more you do other stuff, you can just have fun and it loosens you up and talk to people. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And you ain't got to actually focus on the actual mission itself. | ||
| You just go to the mission. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| It's two ways to go about it, you know? | ||
| And I feel like if Izzy goes out, like I said, emotional, he will get caught, you know? | ||
| So I feel like he needs to keep doing it. | ||
| Like, even when he play around, like, oh, I might just kick his leg and just jab him the whole fight. | ||
| Do that. | ||
| Even with him joking, do that. | ||
| Because at the same time, that's how you've been winning your fights this whole time. | ||
| A lot of them. | ||
| The thing about Pejera is he's there to get hit. | ||
| He can be hit. | ||
| He a tree. | ||
| You said it right. | ||
| A mahogany tree. | ||
| He is that. | ||
| He's made out of wood, dude. | ||
| You better not run into him, though. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| He's built different, man. | ||
| He's so dense. | ||
| Yeah, big fact. | ||
| I mean, just the way he hit guys with that left hook, right? | ||
| And it's the crazy part. | ||
| It's not just him knocking them out, but they all fall the same. | ||
| Yeah, they fall like they just shut off. | ||
| Like they got shot. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| I ain't never seen that before. | ||
| Even with Mike Tyson, when he knock out guys, at least they fall in different type of ways. | ||
| But like you said, it's like he almost killing these guys. | ||
| It's like a straight blank shot to there. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| And then their whole body just shuts down. | ||
| That LFA knockout that he did, I don't know who the dude he knocked out. | ||
| Find that fight. | ||
| I mean, he's a motherfucker with that left hook. | ||
| But he's a motherfucker with everything. | ||
| When he knocked out Jason Willis, hit him with a head kick and a flying knee. | ||
| He ain't had that many fights. | ||
| But hold on, did you see his loss though? | ||
| Which one? | ||
| He only had one. | ||
| In kickboxing? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Oh, my bad. | ||
| In MMA? In MMA. Yes, sir. | ||
| He got submitted, correct? | ||
| He got submitted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| So have you seen it, though? | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
| I saw it a while ago. | ||
| So it's hard to find. | ||
| I found it one time. | ||
| And that's why it gave me a lot of confidence to fight, buddy. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Just seeing the fight that he had against Duel, and trust me, Duel was taking a lot of punishment. | ||
| Don't get it twisted. | ||
| Duel was tough as hell. | ||
| But just seeing how that guy was able to persevere through that, right, and still clinch up against Alex Pereira and wear him out and make him tired and get him to the ground, and then eventually end up submitting him. | ||
| I was like, bro, I'm going to put that dog work on him. | ||
| That's the type of style that I bring. | ||
| I don't care who I'm fighting. | ||
| I'm still going to bring that style. | ||
| I don't care who you is. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So all I need to do is see that. | ||
| Like, oh, you ain't got that great of conditioning. | ||
| And it's not that you don't work out hard or you don't train hard. | ||
| You're cutting all this weight to get there. | ||
| Your body ain't never going to be 100%. | ||
| I also think that was very early in his approach to MMA. Yeah, low-key, but like six months later, he was in the UFC. Yeah. | ||
| But it was also before he was fighting Glover or training with Glover. | ||
| I think that made a big factor in both Glover and his career. | ||
| Might have, but he's still fighting the same way to me, right? | ||
| Like I said, I look at the last loss, like even with, not even the loss with Izzy, but like with the fight with Kevin Gadsden where he got touched the most, you know? | ||
| And that's the fight that you... | ||
| So here's, this is, this is, what is this? | ||
| This is his kickboxing loss? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, he lost a few times in kickboxing. | ||
| He got liver hooked. | ||
| Yeah, I ain't see this one. | ||
| That's a good kickboxing fight. | ||
| Yeah, he got caught with a left hook. | ||
| But I think Izzy beat Homeboy right there, though. | ||
| Left hook. | ||
| Left leg kicks. | ||
| He's lost before. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| But again, this is Alex early in his career. | ||
| But this is kickboxing though, man. | ||
| And this is what I'm trying to say. | ||
| If I fought Alex Pereira, I'm putting the singlet on. | ||
| I'm not going to play with you. | ||
| I'm going to take the fight where I feel like I have more advantages. | ||
| Yeah, he lost his last kickboxing fight in glory. | ||
| A very, very close decision to, I forget the gentleman's name, but this Russian cat who's a bad motherfucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| That knee. | ||
| Boy, that was mad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was insane. | |
| That was, ah! | ||
| That was nasty! | ||
| I give him that. | ||
| But like I said, yet again, dude standing right in front of him. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Dude standing right in front of him. | ||
| He's setting up that trap, you know? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, he set up the trap. | ||
| Look, look, look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boom! | |
| Not only that, Izzy called that. | ||
| He was actually in the dressing room and he called that fight. | ||
| And that's Bruno Silva. | ||
| Yeah, that's Bruno Silva. | ||
| And Bruno Silva was getting his ass whipped by Jordan Wright. | ||
| And I feel for Jordan Wright, man. | ||
| You know, he just got that little 50k though for a fighter tonight. | ||
| But he's just a one-round fighter though, I feel like. | ||
| Well, he fights wild. | ||
| Yeah, Jordan fights wild. | ||
| Jordan fights wild. | ||
| So, this is the Bruno Silva fight, which is the only fight that he went in the UFC to decision. | ||
| But you see, Bruno hit him with some shots. | ||
| Bruno clinched with him here. | ||
| Bruno got the takedown. | ||
| Put the dog fight on him. | ||
| But Alex Pereira showed he a dog, too, though. | ||
| You see him? | ||
| Still coming back. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| But he got him pressed up against the cage, though. | ||
| Look, he don't move his feet, though. | ||
| He's standing right in front of him. | ||
| And Bruno survived. | ||
| We have to put that out. | ||
| And guys have finished Bruno. | ||
| But he survived against Pereira. | ||
| But again... | ||
| I mean, the bell saved him a little bit. | ||
| Bell saved him a little bit. | ||
| But again, you fight a guy like him... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, look, look, look. | |
| And this fight, even though he walked out of it with a decision, that took something away from Bruno. | ||
| When you get a beating like this against a guy like Pajera, you know, that's also how I feel about Francis Ngannou's first fight with Stipe. | ||
| Stipe won that fight, but man, he took a lot of punishment. | ||
| Oh, we're talking about Stipe? | ||
| Yeah, a lot of punishment. | ||
| And I don't think you're the same after that. | ||
| There's certain fights where fighters, that was the Sean Strickland one. | ||
| Sean Strickland was almost like tailor-made for him. | ||
| Walking forward. | ||
| So this is what I want to say too, because the reason why they need Alex Pereira is because there's nobody... | ||
| That's going to be able to, well, not nobody because I could have done it. | ||
| But regardless, it's three walls that's saving Izzy, right? | ||
| You know what those three walls is? | ||
| Robert Whitaker, Marvin Vittori, and Jared Kennedy. | ||
| If you're a fighter, as a matter of fact, Nasher Dean, right? | ||
| I lost to him. | ||
| If he's trying to work his way up into fighting for a belt, you've got to fight one of those guys. | ||
| If you can't beat those guys, you're not going to fight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Alex Pereira, did he fight any one of those guys I mentioned? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| But I feel like Alex Pereira would get exposed if he fought any three of those guys. | ||
| Well, I think that's one of the reasons why they fast-tracked him to the title because of the fact that it's hyped up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, big fight. | |
| It's a big fight. | ||
| It's all about money. | ||
| I think Marvin Vittori is a very tough fight for him. | ||
| Marvittori, Robert Whittaker, and shoot Jerry Kenney. | ||
| Yes, all three. | ||
| But Vittori in particular, really good at takedowns. | ||
| Big fucking guy. | ||
| Big as well. | ||
| Big as fuck. | ||
| You see that guy, you're like, how the fuck is that 185 pounds? | ||
| I mean, shoot, Paula Costa. | ||
| Actually, that's one of the best fights I've seen in a minute between him, Marvittori, and Paula Costa. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because they both fought at their natural weight. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| They didn't cut anyway. | ||
| They didn't cut anyway. | ||
| Because at first, I gave that same prediction at first. | ||
| I was like, bro, if these guys fighting at 185, it's going to be the slowest dragged out fight because both of them are going to be depleted. | ||
| But instead, Paula Costa didn't come in. | ||
| Cut him weight. | ||
| He was like, I don't want to cut weight, man. | ||
| I want to be, what? | ||
| He said 205 or something like that. | ||
| He was like, no, forget that. | ||
| I don't want to fight at 205, man. | ||
| I don't want to be heavyweight. | ||
| My man came in down there like a heavyweight. | ||
| I don't care what nobody say. | ||
| So even though they made that 205 light heavyweight weight together, they were both just walking around. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| One of the craziest aspects of MMA, the day before a cage fight, you're supposed to dehydrate yourself to the point of death. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's wild, ain't it? | ||
| Wild! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Doesn't make any sense. | ||
| And I'm trying to go back to it with my crazy ass. | ||
| But my thing is, though, it's just understanding they just keep getting bigger. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They keep getting bigger because you can do it. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And my biggest thing is, like, I'm not scared, but I gotta be smart. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And, you know, being able to fight these guys, you know, I gotta realize, like, I gotta be safe in the first and second round. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You know, that's why I didn't mind, like, one of the main events, because I feel like I could definitely put that pressure, had a conditioning to go 25 minutes on the guys that's in middleweight, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we can fight a little bit smarter, but only having three rounds, I can only do so much. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's what happened in the National Dean fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I done ran out of time. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So I played myself. | ||
| But yeah, these guys, man, it's just crazy just to see the development of 185. So a lot of these guys that's going up into the rankings and stuff like that, if you're not fighting those three guys right there and you don't beat them, you're not going to fight the belt. | ||
| So now that Alex Pereira was able to skip over the head like he was a knight, like you're playing chess, was able to skip over those three pawns, and now he's getting the king. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So, hey, that's lucky him. | ||
| I ain't even mad at it because we want to see something that's different. | ||
| In my eyes, though, I just don't see it because I don't believe Alex Perret has the skill set necessary to fight the type of style that we need to see Izzy against. | ||
| And what type of style do you think that is? | ||
| Aggressive, grappler, forward pressure, good hands, Kevin Gaston, right? | ||
| Even though Kevin Gaston lost, right? | ||
| Another style like that, a softball. | ||
| I don't believe that's the only softball that he fought. | ||
| I believe Izzy. | ||
| Well, Yoel's a softball, too. | ||
| Oh, UL. But UL didn't do nothing. | ||
| UL wasn't perfect, but he just stood like this. | ||
| UL might be 60 years old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We don't even know how old he is. | |
| Didn't he win a lawsuit or something? | ||
| Didn't he get paid? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Somebody was talking about that. | ||
| A supplement. | ||
| It was a supplement. | ||
| He got a bag from it. | ||
| Yeah, something happened. | ||
| I don't know how much he got. | ||
| But he just won his last fight in Bellator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He did? | |
| Who you went against? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Um... | |
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| Actually, I think I probably might know. | ||
| Melvin Manoff? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I hate that because Melvin Manoff was one of the guys I looked up to, bro. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Melvin in his prime. | ||
| That boy was the pure... | ||
| Like, that was the Mike Tyson, the kickboxing. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Come on, now. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| But just seeing, like, guys... | ||
| Those gladiator shorts. | ||
| Come on with those gladiator shorts. | ||
| Shredded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Come on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're in the lease. | |
| To the death. | ||
| He come out to the death. | ||
| I mean, that dude fought like a fucking demon. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| He was so good as a kickboxer. | ||
| Guy knocked out Mark Hunt. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| How about Mark Hunt knocking out that undefeated fighter at 48 years old? | ||
| You see that shit? | ||
| Mark Hunt, first of all, Mark Hunt still fighting. | ||
| Mark Hunt still fighting. | ||
| Still fighting. | ||
| Won. | ||
| He won his last fight. | ||
| And he won too, huh? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hey, shout out. | ||
| He fought this undefeated boxer and knocked him out. | ||
| He was like a huge underdog and wound up knocking him out. | ||
| At 48 years old. | ||
| But my thing is, why do you think that is, though? | ||
| Like, not why he knocked him out, but why do you think these guys continue to fight like this, at this age? | ||
| Well, I think Mark Hunt is born for it, first of all. | ||
| He loves it. | ||
| He's been around forever. | ||
| I mean, Mark Hunt was the K-1 Grand Prix champion, fought improperly. | ||
| Pride and the glory days of pride. | ||
| Fought in UFC and the glory days of the heavyweight division and still slinging leather at 48 years old. | ||
| Massive respect. | ||
| I think with all that being said and done, you think you'd be done. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| You know, like what more do you have to prove and show and do? | ||
| Like Anderson Silva, man, that broke my heart when he lost to Jake Paul, bro. | ||
| And like, you got this little kid, bro, like, you know, and he's doing his thing, right? | ||
| You see that he's an athlete. | ||
| You see that he's working on his style of fighting, you know what I mean, when it comes to boxing. | ||
| But at the end of the day, it's still he picking at every MMA hit, right? | ||
| And he's fighting Tyron Wooley, Ben Asher, now Anderson Silva. | ||
| And then guess who you said is probably going to be next, right? | ||
| Jake Paul. | ||
| No, Andrew Tate. | ||
| Actually, they just posted it today. | ||
| They just faced off today. | ||
| But the name that he was talking about was Diaz, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| At first. | ||
| At first. | ||
| Well, the Diaz fight is a big name and a big money fight, but he's a lot bigger. | ||
| He's a lot bigger than Nate. | ||
| But that's the point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's doing it smart. | ||
| He is doing it smart, but at the same time, he's embarrassing all of us. | ||
| Like, for real. | ||
| And it's sad because he's saying all these different things and he's talking about having these real conversations that need to be had, but it's coming from him. | ||
| He means about money. | ||
| You already know, but it's not a conversation for him to have. | ||
| But it is. | ||
| It is because it helps him get attention. | ||
| And it helps fighters take his point. | ||
| I love what he's doing. | ||
| I hate it. | ||
| I hate it. | ||
| I want to be the devil. | ||
| I'm sure you do! | ||
| But you're a fighter! | ||
| And I'm going to get a check for it too. | ||
| But it's not because I'm just a fighter because he's telling us that we're not even brave enough to fight for ourselves. | ||
| So I'm going to fight for y'all while I'm knocking out y'all legends in the process of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I'm saying? | |
| Well, what he's doing is very intelligent. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's smart. | ||
| The promotion's off the chart. | ||
| He's hilarious. | ||
| He's brash. | ||
| And he's winning. | ||
| And he's winning. | ||
| But it's who he's winning against, though. | ||
| Yeah, but Anderson Silva, you gotta say, that's the most impressive fight that he won. | ||
| You gotta say, Anderson Silva's a legend. | ||
| Maybe he's 47 years old. | ||
| But that's the thing. | ||
| I had Jake Paul to win. | ||
| I knew Jake Paul was going to win just because of the age itself. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And then on top of that, I didn't see Jake Paul knocking out Anderson either, though. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| I just knew it would be competitive enough for Jake Paul to take it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Take the win. | ||
| But at the same time, it's just like, bro, like... | ||
| If you fought Anderson when he was, you know what I'm saying, in his prime... | ||
| Bro, you getting knocked out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, you talking about... | ||
| Most certainly in an MMA fight. | ||
| Most certainly. | ||
| Not even most certainly in an MMA fight. | ||
| Like, Anderson used to box boxers, bro. | ||
| And that's the thing, too. | ||
| I hate about MMA dudes, like, since we on here. | ||
| Like, a lot of these dudes be like, I'll box Canelo or I'll box, you know what I'm saying, Mayweather and all this stuff, but never get in the actual ring and just train and spar with actual real boxers from, like, whatever the neighborhood. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| I used to actually box with the guys from the neighborhood in Pagedale Boxing, like Josh Temple, Devon Alexander's brother. | ||
| I had to actually work with actual boxers to realize, oh, this is a different type of game. | ||
| But when you're just boxing with the guys that's in the MMA room and you're thinking because you're touching them that you're pretty decent, you're going to find out if you actually get in with a real boxer before you actually compete with them that you don't know what you're doing. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Because there's certain little combinations and there's certain like cadences that we do as MMA fighters that will get us knocked out in front of a boxer. | ||
| Have you thought about competing as a boxer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hell yeah! | |
| That's where the money is! | ||
| But the thing is, though, it's so diluted because the whole perception of MMA guys want to box is because of money. | ||
| Because I would never just get into it for money. | ||
| My biggest thing is I would actually commit myself to the sport of boxing. | ||
| I would get me a boxing coach. | ||
| Even George St. Pierre, I feel like he could have been pretty decent. | ||
| Had a great jab in MMA, but you see he was working with who? | ||
| Freddie Roach. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Anderson Silva also found a boxing coach, I forget who he was working with as well, but you could see him that he was training that art of boxing and he could actually compete in the actual ring back in the day. | ||
| So you would need a timeline. | ||
| Yeah, definitely need a timeline. | ||
| How much time do you think you would need? | ||
| Well, since I've already been working with boxers for a minute and I got a great boxing coach at STL Boxing, Reggie Thomas, shout out to him, I'll probably only need like two, three years to actually find me a profile. | ||
| You know, and actually work up. | ||
| But that's a realistic assessment. | ||
| I'm glad you said that. | ||
| Two, three years is correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes, sir. | |
| You can't just hop into it. | ||
| Your time ain't just going to work for you. | ||
| And then I'm not just going to call out the best in the world, you know, pound for pound. | ||
| I'm going to work my way up. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm going to get some knockouts. | ||
| I'm going to get some good little names. | ||
| I'm going to get some prospects. | ||
| And then once y'all see I got a resume now, now let's see what them names are talking about. | ||
| Now when you're talking about your future, how many more fights do you have on your UFC contract? | ||
| Oh man, I'm going to keep that on. | ||
| How many do I have on my contract right now? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I just signed. | ||
| I just signed. | ||
| So I still got four, I guess. | ||
| So the CC is the new fight on the contract. | ||
| So I got a four-fight contract. | ||
| When you get over those four fights, have you seriously considered possibly fighting? | ||
| I know exactly what my plan is. | ||
| What is your plan? | ||
| I can't give out the plan now. | ||
| You be a fool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'll tell you later. | |
| I won't tell you, buddy. | ||
| Yeah, all right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I can't tell you the plan now. | ||
| But you do have a master plan. | ||
| I got a master plan, baby. | ||
| It's beautiful, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So we working on it. | ||
| So, ideally, when you move to 170, do you have a name in mind? | ||
| Oh, man! | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So, first off, you already shouted out one of... | ||
| Masvidal. | ||
| I didn't even think about him. | ||
| Masvidal. | ||
| I didn't even think about him, right? | ||
| But for Masvidal, he's looking for the top. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So he'd be a waste of time. | ||
| He'd be a waste of time. | ||
| So a real fight, right? | ||
| So we just talked about it. | ||
| And even though he a killer, and I love him, right? | ||
| And just as a fan of MMA, Shavkot, right? | ||
| And he already got a fight booked with Jeff Neal. | ||
| I feel like if somebody falls out in that fight, I would love either one of those guys. | ||
| If somebody falls out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because both matchups between me and Jeff Neal, we kind of fight similarly, right? | ||
| So it'd be a test of skills right there. | ||
| And ShotKot, we just don't know about him yet. | ||
| Like, we're going to find out how good ShotKot is when he fights Jeff Neal, if he does or if he fights me. | ||
| We would really see how good he is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| When is that fight supposed to be taking place? | ||
| I have no clue. | ||
| I just know they looked at it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
January 23rd, I think. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Is that a fight night fight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Ooh, I might go to the Apex for that. | ||
| Is that the Apex? | ||
| Dude, I love going to the Apex. | ||
| Yeah, big fat. | ||
| I went to the Apex recently. | ||
| I watched Song Yudong and Corey Anderson. | ||
| No, uh... | ||
| No, you might have said it. | ||
| Corey Sanhagen. | ||
| Corey Sanhagen. | ||
| Sorry, Corey Anderson. | ||
| Shout out to Corey Anderson. | ||
| He's killing it in Bellator. | ||
| But Sanhagen and Song Yudan was a wild fight. | ||
| And to be there live with very few people in the crowd, that apex is something special, man. | ||
| I hated the fact that fighters had to fight there during the pandemic, but I loved being there. | ||
| I think for me right now, like, even shout out to my man Charles Johnson. | ||
| He got a fight coming up. | ||
| You remember Charles? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Energy! | |
| He finally in the UFC. You know what I mean? | ||
| Dangerous flyway. | ||
| Big facts, man. | ||
| Big flyway. | ||
| So we got another fight November 19th in Vegas. | ||
| But I feel like it's just a good start for a lot of guys in the UFC. You know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Get their feet wet in the apex. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because the lights ain't so bright. | ||
| It's not like a whole arena and stuff. | ||
| You still get an audience. | ||
| You still get a little feel for it. | ||
| But I feel like that's where guys need to start off at. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| At the Apex and then work their way up to a bigger venue type stuff. | ||
| No, I would agree with that. | ||
| I think the Apex is a good start off for a lot of guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No location for this one, yeah. | |
| Okay, does not have a location. | ||
| It might not be the Apex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And see, look. | |
| Kevin Gaslam and Nassadin. | ||
| Kelvin versus Nassadin is a very good fight. | ||
| That's a very good fight. | ||
| But I think Kelvin Gaslam could have been a world champion at 170. I really do. | ||
| He just likes eating. | ||
| He likes eating too much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that. | |
| Shavkot versus Jeff Neal is good. | ||
| That's a good fight. | ||
| And that's the thing, though. | ||
| I know how talented Jeff Neal is, so we're going to really see how good Shavkot is. | ||
| And Carlos Hernandez and Nacimento is a great fight, too. | ||
| I ain't gonna lie to you. | ||
| I don't know who those is. | ||
| Hernandez is the guy that submitted... | ||
| What the fuck is his name? | ||
| That fucking gigantic jiu-jitsu guy. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Is that Fluffy? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Fluffy Hernandez? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, okay. | |
| I didn't know his real name. | ||
| Okay, yeah, that's good. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But who is he fighting then? | ||
| So who is Fluffy fighting? | ||
| What was it again? | ||
| Nacimento. | ||
| He's a very good fighter, too. | ||
| That's a good fight. | ||
| It's one of them underrated fights. | ||
| Yeah, there it is. | ||
| Who is that? | ||
| Oh, no, stop playing. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| How dare you? | ||
| How dare I what? | ||
| He's a good fighter. | ||
| All right, 13. Okay, 19, 19, 16. Oh, 13. Oh, so he's a submission artist. | ||
| Yeah, he's a Brazilian cat. | ||
| He's very good, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| He's very good. | ||
| That's a good fight. | ||
| I'm excited about that fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no, no. | |
| Okay, so this is 125. So Fluffy ain't the right dude I'm talking about then. | ||
| That's 125? | ||
| That's 125. Oh, so that's a different Carlos Hernandez? | ||
| Oh, it is. | ||
| I pay attention to my weight class. | ||
| Fluffy Hernandez is not Carlos Hernandez. | ||
| What is his name? | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| Google Fluffy Hernandez. | ||
| But you're right about it because he submitted the dude that... | ||
| Anthony is his first name. | ||
| Yeah, Anthony. | ||
| Sorry, Anthony. | ||
| Who did he... | ||
| He just won recently as well. | ||
| And you know what's funny about this, though? | ||
| They called it the Kevin Holland effect, right? | ||
| Because... | ||
| Anthony Hernandez and myself lost to Kevin Holland, right? | ||
| Rodolfo Vieira, that's who he beat. | ||
| That was the big fight. | ||
| That was huge. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, not a lot of people. | ||
| And he beat Barrio in his last fight, too. | ||
| Whoever bet on him to win by submission got some good money. | ||
| Crazy money. | ||
| Yeah, big money. | ||
| Because that is unheard of. | ||
| The fact that he did that, he was able to submit one of the greatest jiu-jitsu guys to ever compete in MMA. And that's another guy that's enormous for that weight class. | ||
| Oh, big fan. | ||
| If you're standing next to Vieira, you're like, how the fuck are you making 85? | ||
| He's so big. | ||
| So on top of just talking about that, right? | ||
| So a lot of people on the internet, man, they be going crazy, man. | ||
| But they was like, it's the Kevin Holland effect because Anthony Hernandez also lost to Kevin Holland. | ||
| And then I lost, right? | ||
| So when I came back, I did my crazy kick after losing to him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| After he came back, he did his crazy submission on, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Didn't nobody expect it. | ||
| So he was like, man, hey, it might be a good thing to lose to Kevin Holland, man. | ||
| You might have your crazy little next fight. | ||
| Because my name blew up after that. | ||
| And then his name blew up. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So it's just crazy how the internet just be going wild like that. | ||
| It is interesting how one big moment can just catapult your career. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I feel like it's only in MMA, bro, that it worked like that. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Because, like, you see a Marswood, you see a Diaz, you know what I mean? | ||
| Of course they didn't took losses, but all they needed was a couple wins, a couple good finishes, bro, and their name was, you know what I'm saying, massive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At the end of the day, you know? | ||
| Well, that's also why you fight the way you fight, to get those big moments. | ||
| Yeah, true story. | ||
| Because you're like one of the most fan-friendly styles that's in the sport. | ||
| Well, it's just the people I used to watch and who I used to love watching, so I just imitated them, man. | ||
| Like I said, so Melvin Manoff was one of my favorite fighters, bro, to watch. | ||
| Rampage Jackson, man, with his personality outside the UFC and stuff. | ||
| And a lot of these guys that I used to be a fan of, those are the people that I emulated my style after. | ||
| And I just meshed my own type of style into it. | ||
| Melvin, man, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Melvin in his prime. | ||
| He was so fun to watch. | ||
| Without a doubt, one of the most all-time scariest fighters. | ||
| Pure savage, man. | ||
| And my man was only, what, five, what, eight, five, seven? | ||
| Yeah, he wasn't big. | ||
| And he was fighting like Tyrone Spawn. | ||
| Who else did he fight? | ||
| The Gohan Goku dude. | ||
| What's his name? | ||
| Yeah, Gokansaki. | ||
| Yeah, you know what I mean? | ||
| He fought fucking Mark Hunt. | ||
| He fought Mark Hunt in MMA. And knocked Mark Hunt out. | ||
| In the first round, quick. | ||
| Mark Hunt tried to come after him real quick. | ||
| He's like, nah, forget that, sat down. | ||
| He was so fast. | ||
| Melvin in his prime was so fast. | ||
| And so savage. | ||
| Those kicks were just insane. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| A whole different level, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he was one of those guys out of Mike's gym, those do-or-die guys, you know? | ||
| Big fan. | ||
| Just like Badr Hari. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Whatever they're doing in that gym, man, they are creating monsters. | ||
| I don't even know if it's the gym, but the people that they bring in. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like this type of... | ||
| The lifestyle that you live and your upbringing is the biggest thing, and that's what makes for a great fighter. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I don't know much of Melvin Manoff's past or anything like that, but they were just talking about how you just come from humble beginnings and everything like that and how life was hard. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I believe we were talking about Francis Ngannou in the back or whatever, but we were just talking about how great of a fighter he is because of all the things that he had went through. | ||
| And when you see him walk around and the way he carries himself, you can just tell, like, can't nothing faze him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Can't nothing hurt him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Just a fearless fighter, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| But it was all because of what he experienced in his life that led to, like I said, so making fighting real easy now. | ||
| Did you hear the story that he told on this podcast? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| On some movie-type stuff, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, come on, bro, you know? | ||
| And just to believe, like, to keep going through that, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, he... | ||
| And that's the thing, too. | ||
| He could have risked dying to go through that journey. | ||
| He did risk dying. | ||
| I know, but multiple times. | ||
| Eight times he got arrested. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Sent back to the desert. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And he was like, I'm going to keep going until I get there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, come on now. | ||
| That's perseverance right there. | ||
| That's real perseverance. | ||
| Yeah, bro. | ||
| So that right there alone, like I said, you can use those as examples that people actually go through to not stop doing what you're doing. | ||
| Because I almost gave up on Dream on some bullshit. | ||
| Back in the past, when I used to have a gym, I finished MMA. That's where I started. | ||
| That's where I developed my skills a little bit. | ||
| But the promoter himself, me and him, we was real close. | ||
| It was almost like on a father and son relationship type thing. | ||
| And at the end of the day, you know, I was never looking at it as business, you know. | ||
| He was always booking me up for fights and always, you know, putting me out there on like a main event or a main card and stuff like that and people would come and watch me fight and I would be cool to do it because I just wanted to fight, you know. | ||
| That's all I wanted to do. | ||
| I had no other intentions, not even making money. | ||
| I just wanted to compete and that was it. | ||
| And, you know, not saying he used me, but he used me. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Because he making money. | ||
| He making good money. | ||
| So he wasn't thinking about your overall career? | ||
| Hell no. | ||
| He wanted to keep me stuck in St. Louis. | ||
| But I didn't know no better anyway. | ||
| So my thing is, I didn't want to reach out and find different other places to fight because I'm like, shit, I'm getting fights hit. | ||
| Because he's a promoter. | ||
| So, uh, at the end of the day, you know, um, once I started to grow as a fighter and stuff like that, I ended up getting a Bellator fight. | ||
| I only got, like, a one-fight contract deal when Bellator came to St. Louis. | ||
| So they'll do stuff like this, right? | ||
| Bellator comes to St. Louis and they assign, like, the local fighters on the prelim, right? | ||
| You get a one-fight contract deal, but you would just fight the dudes that you would have fought on the local promotion, you know, anyway, but now you just fight them on the Bellator show. | ||
| But I end up showing out for Bellator, end up going crazy. | ||
| I fought, uh, I know his name. | ||
| I know his name. | ||
| Damn, bro. | ||
| That's sad, bro. | ||
| You know, I be forgetting my man's name sometimes, man, but I think his name's like Chris something. | ||
| Anyways, I end up beating him. | ||
| Beating him in the second round. | ||
| This is when I first met Big John McCarthy, right? | ||
| So this is the first time, like, a big promotion, a big-name referee actually, like, refereeing my fight. | ||
| So I end up beating dude, you know, end up getting signed to Bellator later on. | ||
| But before I had signed to Bellator, I looked for Jesse for advice. | ||
| I was like, hey man, should I read over this contract? | ||
| He was like, just sign it. | ||
| Like, don't even worry about it. | ||
| Like, this is the best contract you will ever see in your life. | ||
| Just sign the contract, right? | ||
| So I ended up signing the contract, doing whatever, you know what I mean? | ||
| Ended up taking my first loss in Israel, whatever. | ||
| Once I took my first loss, they kind of held me back for a minute. | ||
| You know, I got a KO loss against Jackie Goss, but like, it took like seven months. | ||
| Eight months before I could even get back into actually competing. | ||
| But I was already ready. | ||
| I was like, bro, I can fight again. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| Because sometimes they'll put that restriction on you for you not to fight for a certain amount of time. | ||
| After KO. But I was already cleared. | ||
| I'm like, hey, I'm ready to fight again. | ||
| So I ended up getting another fight. | ||
| And this was with Justin Patterson. | ||
| I believe his name is. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So once I fought him, whatever, I had to... | ||
| String another fight. | ||
| String layoff. | ||
| It was another like eight, seven months again. | ||
| So with me, I'm getting paid, but I'm not really making no real money. | ||
| And all I'm doing is training. | ||
| All I'm doing is fighting. | ||
| I'm not doing nothing else. | ||
| All I'm doing is just focusing on that. | ||
| So I'm really kind of just living off of these checks. | ||
| And I'm not being smart about it because all I'm doing is just fighting. | ||
| This is what's going to work out. | ||
| So, they end up giving me pretty much four fights. | ||
| So, I end up fighting Vinicius DeJesus and they end up fighting Logan Storley. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| So, I only had four fights within like a two-year period. | ||
| So, I went two one year and two the other. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Not enough. | ||
| Not enough. | ||
| I wouldn't even close. | ||
| No. | ||
| Not to eat. | ||
| No. | ||
| And also to stay active. | ||
| Exactly, right? | ||
| So, but my thing on top of that, just going into the story, I almost, you know what I'm saying, just gave up on it. | ||
| But, you know, I was like, damn, man, I kind of just, like, lost out on a lot of experience, you know what I mean? | ||
| Because, like, I was 22 when I got signed. | ||
| You know, I was 24 then. | ||
| You know, so I'm just like, damn, I could have had a bunch more fights than what I had. | ||
| So, Bellator ended up cutting me, though, right? | ||
| Ended up letting me go. | ||
| So with all this being said, me and the promoter, whatever, we was bumping heads on a lot of things because I was like, bro, I want to learn more. | ||
| I want to do more. | ||
| Like, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, but I feel like I'm being held back. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So he would never really communicate with me what was really going on, you know? | ||
| And the thing is, the only thing, like, my man was just using me for, like, the potential to get more clients in the gym. | ||
| Because they would use my name like, hey, we got a Bellator fighter here, he's a trainer here, and all this other stuff. | ||
| And they would use that to sell more people just to sign up for the gym. | ||
| And it is what it is, but I just didn't like that. | ||
| So how'd you get out of that? | ||
| I just left. | ||
| I was like, man, forget this gym. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I literally was just like, man, forget everything. | ||
| Because once I got cut from Bellator, you know what I mean? | ||
| I was just like, man, that's some bullshit because this is the highest level of promotion. | ||
| Now I got to go right back into fighting on Shamrock. | ||
| That's some bullshit, right? | ||
| So I left the gym and I did my own thing. | ||
| But the thing is, I ain't had no connections. | ||
| I have no network, as in people to reach out to. | ||
| So when I was dealing with Jesse, he provided all them things for me. | ||
| The gym, the information for instructions, and also the promotion for the fight. | ||
| So those are the main things that I need, and I didn't have it at that point, you know? | ||
| So I had to hop from gym to gym and try to find me another spot. | ||
| But every gym that I found, man, was kind of whack, you know what I mean? | ||
| I was like, bro, these ain't the ones I want to be at, you know? | ||
| Because just, like, the instruction wasn't there, or they weren't able to find me fights. | ||
| It'd be, like, multiple little reasons. | ||
| So I was like, man, why don't I just start doing this on my own? | ||
| So I started hitting YouTube like crazy, you know? | ||
| And I started just watching and just being a student of the actual craft and the actual sport itself. | ||
| Like, what were you watching on YouTube? | ||
| Thousands of things, man. | ||
| I mean, it got to the point where it was so crazy. | ||
| I was watching Wing Chun, bro. | ||
| Like, so Master Wu. | ||
| I don't know if you know him. | ||
| Master Wong, I think his name is. | ||
| He does like a lot of self-defense moves, you know what I mean, online. | ||
| But he does funny instructional videos. | ||
| But I used to watch him all the time. | ||
| I watched Shane Fassin. | ||
| I don't know if you know who that is. | ||
| No. | ||
| You know, but actually, if you can look him up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So he does fight tips, whatever. | ||
| And he shows like all different things. | ||
| But these are the things that was like the foundation of me learning. | ||
| What's Shane Fassin? | ||
| Fasen? | ||
| Yeah, Fasen. | ||
| I don't know how to really spell his last name. | ||
| F-A-A-Z-E-N or something. | ||
| And you got it? | ||
| Jamie's got it. | ||
| So his YouTube channel is just all instructional stuff? | ||
| Yeah, all instructional stuff like this. | ||
| So this is who I started off with. | ||
| So that's just his Instagram. | ||
| But his YouTube got like millions of followers on it though. | ||
| Let's check it out. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And so his whole thing is just, just instructionals? | ||
| Big facts, right? | ||
| Oh, Muay Thai, rock, paper, scissors theory. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So he's one of those dudes who's just breaking shit down constantly. | ||
| Man, he got countless stuff on there. | ||
| And I'm not saying he's the best instructor at all, but when you're talking about you just need more knowledge, you need more information. | ||
| These are the type of videos that I was watching. | ||
| It's amazing how many of those there are out there now. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| For a young fighter, it's such a good time to learn. | ||
| There's so much knowledge out there. | ||
| There's so much data. | ||
| And there's so many people like him that are obsessed with communicating. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And then he was, you know, he used to work with, not work with, but, like, he had Farage as a hobby on there, you know what I mean? | ||
| Breaking stuff down with him and stuff like that. | ||
| And I got to see different, like, real coaches and how to, yeah, so this other guy, yeah, Master Wong, right here. | ||
| So, like, this was, like, the street fighting element and all this other stuff and different techniques, but... | ||
| Because I didn't know, some of these guys be sometimes low-key, like, full of it, right? | ||
| What is he telling you to do there? | ||
| I'm curious. | ||
| What's he telling you to do there? | ||
| Guys grabbing them? | ||
| What's the move? | ||
| You're about to turn it up a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not going to go very much. | |
| My head is down. | ||
| Headbutt me. | ||
| It's not going to go very far either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Second thing you learn to understand is that on the floor. | |
| Hey, he fast as hell though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He be... | |
| Okay, this is the problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Somebody come along and try to get your hand both into hand of that and try to smack you in the face. | |
| You might be beating him up. | ||
| You might be doing something naughty. | ||
| I got no idea. | ||
| This is the question somebody asking me. | ||
| Somebody grab you in the collar and pick you up. | ||
| What sort of thing do you do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me show you a few basic things you should do. | |
| He's getting that interesting combination of like an Asian accent with an English accent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think he'd be capping though, you know? | |
| Well, he's being entertaining. | ||
| Exactly, and that's what it is at the end of the day. | ||
| So this is mostly like street fighting stuff? | ||
| Yeah, self-defense stuff. | ||
| Like just quick ways to like end a fight, you know? | ||
| Instead of like hitting combinations. | ||
| I want one strike, you know what I mean? | ||
| End a fight type thing. | ||
| So you go from that. | ||
| To just watching YouTube videos, training yourself. | ||
| Did you have people that you were training with and sparring? | ||
| So I was just working with the guys that I was working with at Finney's. | ||
| So my close friend, the one that you just met, he's like a brother to me. | ||
| So we used to wrestle together in Marquette. | ||
| And I actually got him into MMA. And the thing is, he's been watching the UFC for the longest time. | ||
| But the actual training of it, he ended up coming to Finney's MMA only because of me. | ||
| So we end up training with each other, and like I said, once I split ways with them, I was working with him the whole time. | ||
| So things that I would watch, things that I would see on YouTube, I was like, hey, bro, let's practice this. | ||
| Let's do this, you know? | ||
| And I actually got good at holding mitts, you know what I mean? | ||
| Just because I wanted to see a lot of things and just work a lot of things that he couldn't actually hold for me, so I had to hold it for him, you know, to actually get it down just a little bit. | ||
| And to be honest with you, like I said, That got to show me a lot of different, just creative ways to throw your hands, creative ways to throw combinations. | ||
| Like, you don't have to throw it like a box. | ||
| You don't have to throw it like a kickbox. | ||
| Like, you can add those fun, traditional moves in there with the fundamental basics, you know? | ||
| And that's what we was doing. | ||
| We was just having fun and just doing that. | ||
| But the thing is, though... | ||
| I wasn't able to find any fights while I was doing this type of stuff. | ||
| How much time was going on here between you leaving that gym? | ||
| So I got cut in 2018. That's when I left the gym, in 2018. And then I was able to get a fight in 2019. It was only a year's time, but I felt like I got played with the two years that... | ||
| In 2016 to 2018, I felt like I got played, you know what I mean? | ||
| And not having that many fights, and I was still struggling as a fighter. | ||
| And I was with Bellator, and I was still struggling low-key. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So I felt like I wasted a good amount of time within that game, but I didn't know when I was going to be able to fight again. | ||
| That was the problem. | ||
| So even though it was only like, well, it was kind of close to two years, but it was still just a year and some change that I was able to find another fight, it still felt like it was so stretched out because I didn't see when I was going to be able to find another fight. | ||
| So you were really considering quitting? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, well, actually, I wouldn't consider it. | ||
| I actually did it. | ||
| So I went about the part of just training, but I just gave up on actually, like, hunting the dream down. | ||
| I just got a regular job, you know what I mean? | ||
| I was taking care of my grandmother at the time, like, which that was a big deal as well. | ||
| I had moved in with her because I didn't have no house. | ||
| I didn't have anything to my name. | ||
| Unfortunately, my grandmother was stricken with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, you know what I mean? | ||
| And that's a rough one. | ||
| I have a friend going through that right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I'm sorry to hear that. | ||
| But it's a neuron disease where it shuts down all your motor functions. | ||
| And it kills the muscles where it puts you in paralysis almost. | ||
| And that's what I was dealing with the whole time as well, too. | ||
| So a lot on my mind outside of that. | ||
| So I was like, man, I can't be focused on trying to chase a dream when I got to help my grandmother wash up. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And eat and all this other type of stuff, you know? | ||
| So yeah, I had to go through that first, right? | ||
| And once I went through that, it's funny how once I kept training and kept motivated with just my friends around me, even Mariah Beck, that's one of the kids that trained with me at Phineas MMA, but anytime I called him up, he'll work with me. | ||
| R.I.P. to my man Ryan Sutton. | ||
| He was one of the guys that came out with me in my first UFC fight, but he passed away. | ||
| But that's another person that I looked to and called in order to get some training in. | ||
| But it was just a small group of guys that I would call up to just ask to get some work in. | ||
| And these guys are the people that I depended on in order to get my mental... | ||
| Just to hit pass outside in Forest Park in St. Louis, you know? | ||
| And this whole time I've been doing that, and I just stopped chasing after the whole goal of getting a fight. | ||
| And then one day, a guy named Mike Rogers hit me up because I was, you know, coming in at his gym, not in and out, but just coming there just to get some sparring work in, you know what I mean? | ||
| But not actually, like, learn anything, but just some sparring work. | ||
| And he told me, like, hey, man, LFA hit me up. | ||
| I was like, oh, for real? | ||
| He was like, yeah, man. | ||
| Like, if you want to, I can give you their number or whatever and then you can contact the matchmaker yourself because he didn't want to do the in-between talk for me. | ||
| Like, he didn't want to be like a management because I didn't have no manager. | ||
| I didn't have nothing at the time. | ||
| So he told me about LFA and I ended up getting a fight with LFA against Chris Harris. | ||
| But the funny thing about that, that little setup was that I only took the fight because I needed some money, some extra money. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| But the only reason why I took the fight as well, because I couldn't find any other fight at welterweight. | ||
| So I had to fight at middleweight at 185. And they tried to tell me it was a catchweight. | ||
| I was like, what's the weight? | ||
| I was like, is it 175 or 180? | ||
| They was like, no, it's 185. I was like, man, that's a whole weight class. | ||
| So when they told me that, whatever, I watched the dude, I did my own film study on Chris Harrison. | ||
| I was like, alright, I'll take it. | ||
| It's easy money. | ||
| I need the bread anyway. | ||
| And funny enough, that's why I stayed at 185. That was the only reason why I moved up. | ||
| Because didn't nobody want to fight me at 170 at what's the way that whole time, you know? | ||
| So I took that fight, got that fight, but I didn't worry about it. | ||
| Once I won that fight and got that little check that I got from LFA, I was back to work doing what I was doing, just chilling. | ||
| And then a year later, I still get another call. | ||
| This is 2020 now. | ||
| From LFA to fight Gregory Rodriguez. | ||
| I don't know if you know who that is. | ||
| Robocop? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's the one that got his head split. | ||
| He's a bad motherfucker. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, but I needed that bread at the time too. | ||
| So I took that fight with him. | ||
| It was going to be for an LFA title. | ||
| And unfortunately, he had pulled out the fight. | ||
| So they had to find me another fighter. | ||
| And like I said, funny enough, me not even chasing anything, but people just coming to me now, I was able to get these fights. | ||
| When did you wind up at the new gym? | ||
| That wasn't until the kick. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I didn't have no team. | ||
| I just had the people I told you I was working with. | ||
| So even the Kevin Holland fight, no team? | ||
| The guy that passed away, R.I.P. Ryan Sutton, he the one that helped corner me in that fight, but he was just a teammate. | ||
| He was going through stuff in his own life as well. | ||
| So you were just kind of on your own training yourself? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Fighting at a world-class level, on your own, training yourself in the UFC against top guys. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So just to even be able to get there the way we got there is crazy in itself. | ||
| Because like I said, I only took those LFA fights because I needed a little bit of money. | ||
| But I wasn't like, all right, I'm going to be in the UFC one day or I'm working towards to be a UFC champion. | ||
| I just was like, I need money or just for my mental health, I kept training. | ||
| But I want you to speak to the difference in the structure. | ||
| Once you got to this new gym and all this structure that you're praising and the way that your new trainer trains you and the new environment, how much different is that and how much of an impact has that had on your career? | ||
| I think the biggest part of it was just the commitment that they had to me that I never got from that other gym. | ||
| So all the information that I had to find on my own, they had information for me. | ||
| So I was actually learning. | ||
| So instead of trying to figure out the information on my own, I already had people that was already great at what they did, and they were showing me stuff. | ||
| And now I'm able to learn a little faster and more efficiently, if that makes sense. | ||
| That is so incredible that you were fighting on a world-class level with no coaching. | ||
| Nah. | ||
| I mean, I did have world-class coaches because you got to just imagine like the people that I've been watching for like influences as instructors on YouTube. | ||
| Like I said, even from yourself, bro, like even if you don't call yourself a coach, like that sidekick, I only knew how to throw a sidekick because I watched your video. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's hilarious. | |
| It's hilarious, but it's the truth. | ||
| I wish I was around to show you in real life. | ||
| Big facts, you know what I mean? | ||
| But even though you showed the internet and everything and YouTube, you showed a thousand if not a million people that kick. | ||
| But it's about people actually taking that information and applying it to their own life if they want to. | ||
| And that's why I like Bruce Lee so much because Like, that's why, you know, Jeet Kune Do is such an awesome style because it was his own style. | ||
| It was his own form of fighting that he took and he mastered, but he took it from other places. | ||
| And he did it back when that was taboo. | ||
| Big facts, you know what I mean? | ||
| That was very taboo. | ||
| Even when I was doing Taekwondo, you weren't supposed to do other things. | ||
| You were supposed to only concentrate on the art that you did. | ||
| Big facts. | ||
| And Bruce Lee was like, that's not smart. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| Because your style of fighting should be like a fingerprint. | ||
| You should have your own style. | ||
| It shouldn't be like a person, when you look at them, you're like, oh, they doing kickboxing. | ||
| Oh, they doing kickboxing. | ||
| Oh, that's a wrestler. | ||
| It's a mixed martial arts. | ||
| You should be trying to pick the pieces in the puzzle, like what they actually doing. | ||
| Well, you mostly see that now. | ||
| You see very few real specialists now that are only doing one thing. | ||
| You still do though, low key. | ||
| I mean, we getting there, but I still haven't seen that actual, like, for real, on some boy good. | ||
| Like I said, man, I'm from, like, you know what I mean, watching a lot of movies and stuff, but, like, you know, one of those complete fighters, you know, except for, like, Demetrius, you know what I mean, or GSP, you know? | ||
| There ain't a lot of those out there, though, in my opinion. | ||
| Well, I think you're seeing more of them now than ever before, but we have to also take into consideration that MMA, in terms of real sports, is relatively recent. | ||
| There's no sport like MMA where if you go and watch the fighters from 1993 and watch them from 2022, they're completely different. | ||
| Yeah, because the athlete changes, though. | ||
| So that's why I would say that, but I feel like, yet again, so Habib, perfect example, he retired. | ||
| He was only winning in one type of way. | ||
| He's a real specialist. | ||
| Yeah, he's a real specialist. | ||
| But man, good at that fucking special. | ||
| Jesus Christ, he was so good. | ||
| A lot of people can't stop it. | ||
| But I'm just trying to think, good people that... | ||
| They fight a certain type of style, which is great for them, and it fits their way, but a Hamza, I wouldn't call him a complete fighter. | ||
| I feel like he's just great at what he does, and if he's able to fight another grappler, he's able to switch it up to a striking prowess, but even then, Gilbert Burns was touching him. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because I would say the Murchard fight, but he only got one punch out of that. | ||
| But you can't call him no great striker because he was able to land that one punch. | ||
| But when I seen that he fought Gilbert and he started to stand with him, I'm like, oh, you're not a great striker. | ||
| Because Gilbert Burns is not a great striker, but he was able to land I don't know how many punches on Hamza in that fight. | ||
| Gilbert's a wild man. | ||
| Gilbert's a wild man. | ||
| You can be a wild man all you want to, but at the end of the day, it still takes technique in the striking room. | ||
| Oh, he's got technique too, but it's just one of those things where I think Hamza tried to walk him down. | ||
| You want to engage like that with Gilbert, you're going to get caught. | ||
| I'm not disrespecting these guys, but they're good at what they're good at. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's all I'm trying to say. | ||
| Like, Gilbert Burns is a monster, but you see when Hamza had took him down and Gilbert Burns threw up them legs a couple times. | ||
| Hamza didn't like that. | ||
| He's like, let's stay on the feet for a minute. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And then I realized, oh, Hamza ain't good at striking because he just stands right there. | ||
| And also, as a matter of fact, I shouldn't even say it because I could potentially fight this man one day. | ||
| But one thing that he does that is terrible, he only hits on one side. | ||
| He favors one side too much as a striker. | ||
| And we watch it all the time. | ||
| Now, you can take it back and watch Hansa fight, but when you watch it, you be like, oh, that's what he's talking about. | ||
| Right hands. | ||
| All day. | ||
| Right hands, right feet. | ||
| Uppercut all day. | ||
| And he favors it. | ||
| No setup. | ||
| Everything just with power and intention to knock you out, which is great and all, but you're still putting yourself in a position to get hurt. | ||
| Were you stunned by that Kevin Holland fight with him? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I wasn't stunned because I knew Hans Out was going to immediately try to shoot, you know? | ||
| And Kevin is not like no real, real wrestler. | ||
| You know, he worked with DC and he said he worked with Johnny Hendricks and all this stuff. | ||
| Like, it takes years. | ||
| Like, I come from a wrestling background. | ||
| Like, bro, I was a trash-ass wrestler in high school, you know? | ||
| It took me years to kind of understand what wrestling is, and I'm still trying to figure it out. | ||
| But I know I'm a better wrestler than the majority of guys that's at the 185 division, some of them, you know? | ||
| But now I'm going to have to focus on grappling even more because I'm going to a grapple Heavy division, which is at 170, you know? | ||
| You have Hamza, Kobe Covington, Kamar Uzman, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| These guys are grappling heavy, so if I'm able to get up to that level and be able to compete with them, it just stuffed the shot. | ||
| I know that they couldn't compete with me on the feet. | ||
| When you think about your transition from being self-coached to now being on your own team, It's like you have so much potential right now. | ||
| There's so much potential to get even so much better. | ||
| This is all I get to focus on now. | ||
| Even with my grandmother, her daughter, my auntie, came back to live with her, to take care of her because I wouldn't be able to be in the UFC if I had to keep taking care of my grandma. | ||
| Lowkey, people don't even understand. | ||
| That's a 24-hour thing. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| And it was sad because I had to leave my grandmother in the bed, you know, in order to go to work, to Walgreens, but I had to have a close job. | ||
| And I had to keep a monitor to watch her to make sure that she was fine. | ||
| You know, and everything that she needed, I had to leave the job. | ||
| You know, and I had to work overnights at Walgreens in order to make sure I check up on her throughout the day. | ||
| So I had to work the night shift, you know what I mean? | ||
| So when she slept, I was working. | ||
| And then, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| So just little things like that, you know, that it was hard to actually maintain an actual career as a fighter. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| When I was a kid, when I was 24, I lived with my grandmother for a while. | ||
| My grandmother and my grandfather. | ||
| My grandmother had a stroke and they gave her 72 hours to live and she wound up living for 12 years. | ||
| And I was there with my grandfather when my grandfather was taking care of her 24-7. | ||
| One thing that imparted upon me is that life is short, and that you gotta appreciate your health and your ability to do things now. | ||
| And appreciate it in a way where, knowing my grandmother when I was young, when she was this wild lady, and then seeing her, my grandmother went to jail for running numbers for the mob. | ||
| Okay, wow. | ||
| My grandmother was wild. | ||
| They tried to get her to give up names, and she's like, fuck that, I'm going to jail. | ||
| So we were always like, where's grandma? | ||
| Like, oh, she's visiting her auntie. | ||
| They lied to us. | ||
| And meanwhile, Grandma was in jail for running numbers. | ||
| It was kind of crazy. | ||
| So to see her when I was older, when I was 20, in my 20s, that sick and inability to move and pain all the time. | ||
| It was like, damn, you gotta do something with your life. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| That's 100%. | ||
| A short window. | ||
| So, and even with my grandmother going through that, you know, she still had great spirit, you know. | ||
| What's sad about ALS, you know, the first thing that went was her voice, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, her voice became faint, you know what I mean? | ||
| She wasn't able to speak, you know, and all these other things. | ||
| But she's still able to smile. | ||
| And it's sad that about this disease, that can take that away as well. | ||
| But she's still able to smile and still able to laugh about certain things. | ||
| That's one thing about my grandma. | ||
| Her spirit is so... | ||
| It has such an impact that it can affect you. | ||
| Because she don't look down on herself because she was stricken with this terrible disease. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| It stands for amitrophic lateral sclerosis. | ||
| It's the actual name. | ||
| She even changed the acronym where ALS stands for abundance of love and support. | ||
| Because that's what you need in order to defeat something like this. | ||
| And Yeah. | ||
| life so she was the one that was taking care of me the whole time so when it came to my turn right couldn't hesitate you know so i was willing to give up everything in order to take care of my That's beautiful. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I mean, it just had to be that way. | ||
| That speaks to your character. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But regardless, though, I wouldn't even be around, you know what I'm saying, if she was never around in the first place. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I understand what you're saying. | ||
| Like, that really shows me, like, anything I really even go through ain't really that hard. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Ain't that hard. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, we good. | ||
| We can get through it. | ||
| You know, so having her go through this type of experience and being able to see what she goes through, but how she's still able to hold her head high is beautiful. | ||
| That is beautiful. | ||
| And now, you know, and I feel like every fighter is not just their skills, but an accumulation of their life experiences that give them character. | ||
| And that most certainly gave you character. | ||
| I guess, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like I said, man, my granny took the responsibility up when nobody else wanted it, you know? | ||
| Like I said, I was, you know, with my mom and stuff, being a single mom, she raised me, so I was with her all the time. | ||
| Every single day I was with my mom, you know what I mean? | ||
| And if I wasn't with her, I was with my godmother, you know? | ||
| So I was around a lot of women at the time, and like I told you before, like, the male influences, the only thing I got was from TV and watching, you know, movies all the time. | ||
| You know, so having that, you know, and doing what I was doing, you know, it's just crazy that, you know, once my mother had passed away, unfortunately, some of the people that was in my life before left, too. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So, like, the people I used to always see or hang out around that was around my mom a lot when she passed away, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| It's like they passed away with her, you know, type stuff. | ||
| So my granny was the only person that really took the responsibility of raising me and taking forth that because I went through like a depressing stage like you know I mean I was never like um what's the word like never seen a therapist or nothing but like I felt like I went through a depressing stage after I lost my mom and it took me a while to even like speak to people you know. | ||
| It ain't like I turned mute or nothing, but it took me a while to even just be around other people because I was just so upset that the person that I was around all the time was just completely gone. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Just out of nowhere in my eyes. | ||
| And it took a minute for me to just accept the fact that she was gone. | ||
| I won't even say get over it, but I just forgot about my mom ever existing to get over the whole fact that she was gone in the first place. | ||
| I didn't even go to her burial, nothing. | ||
| I couldn't take it, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| So I was just like, man, maybe if I just forget about it, it'd be cool, whatever. | ||
| But on top of that, just understanding that life is short, like you were saying before, it's good just to go for your dreams and stuff like that. | ||
| Because I ain't trying to bounce into too much stuff, but Before, my granny even had ALS and stuff, and I was still in high school. | ||
| She was raising me the whole time. | ||
| I was kind of a bad kid, you know, in and out the house, doing what I wanted to do. | ||
| And I wasn't bad at robbing people or trying to gangbang or nothing like that, but I wanted to do what I wanted to do. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And being raised by so many women, like, you feel like you're the man the whole time, you know? | ||
| So eventually my grandmother ended up asking for my father's help in order to come back into my life and stuff like that and try to raise me, you know what I mean, or help raise me. | ||
| And I'm like 16 at the time, you know what I'm saying, 15 at the time. | ||
| And this is my first time really even meeting this man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| You know? | ||
| So once I, you know, have an interaction with him, like, I was trying to tell my grandmother, like, bro, I don't need to stay with him. | ||
| I'll just leave. | ||
| I'll just, like, you know, live on my own. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I'll run away type shit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But, you know, my dad was like, yeah, you being disrespectful, you, you know, acting out of pocket and stuff like that. | ||
| I was like, yeah, even if I is, what you gonna do about it? | ||
| You know? | ||
| And that's where we had a whole situation, a whole scenario. | ||
| So the only reason why this is crazy, right, is that, you know, I find out where my fighting power comes from. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| It's from my pops, because my pops used to wrestle as well back in the day. | ||
| So when I used to wrestle in high school, I thought I was somebody special. | ||
| So when I got into it with my dad, whatever, and we was in the kitchen and stuff like that, you know, I thought I had the upper hand because, you know what I'm saying, I'm wrestling and whatnot. | ||
| And I remember I threw a punch, he blocked, he hit me dead in my chest, right? | ||
| I'm like, ooh, caved me in. | ||
| I ended up wrestling him. | ||
| I was like, alright, I wrestle, I'm gonna go ahead and take a shot on him. | ||
| As soon as I took a shot on him, because that was the only thing I was good at was a double leg, right? | ||
| That man power-driving, he grabbed my hips like this, picks me up, boom, slams me. | ||
| He's like, you ready to get back in the car? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| You ready to get in the car? | ||
| I was like, oh yeah, I'm good, bro. | ||
| I ain't trying to fight you no more. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But the reason why I bring that up is because I realize I'm almost just like this dude. | ||
| You know, I never met him. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Just that fighter mentality, that fighter will. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's where I get that from. | ||
| And it's crazy that even then, at that time, I never gave him a chance, unfortunately. | ||
| And without me giving them a chance and not getting to actually know him, I end up losing him as well. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So I end up losing my mom and my dad. | ||
| But the thing is, I never even got a chance to even try to talk to him and get to know him because I never, like, actually went about the opportunity to talk to him and speak to him. | ||
| Because he was almost like a big brother to me because we were both living with my grandpa, which is his dad. | ||
| So I feel like it was more like a big brother relationship between me and him. | ||
| And when I lost him and I didn't get the opportunity to actually experience him like I should have, by the time I wanted that, he was already gone. | ||
| But I mean, going as a teenager and just meeting him for the first time, you can't put that on you. | ||
| Nah, not at all. | ||
| Because I ain't gonna call this man daddy or nothing. | ||
| That's hard. | ||
| That's so hard. | ||
| No, big fact, man. | ||
| Did you call him by his first name? | ||
| Yeah, so I called him Marcus. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's weird enough as it is, right? | ||
| I mean, not at all because it's how I knew him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, yeah. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Marcus. | ||
| Everybody used to call him Jug, too. | ||
| That was his nickname and stuff like that. | ||
| But that's the crazy part then. | ||
| Once, just growing up around him. | ||
| And it was only like a year time, too. | ||
| It was only about, like, a year where we was able to, like, actually be in the same household and actually speak to one another. | ||
| But everything that he used to do, I'd be like, there's certain things that I did as well that I was always wondering where I get it from, you know? | ||
| And I got exactly from him. | ||
| Like, we moved the same, we talked the same, we walked the same, and I was like, this is my first time really, like, meeting this, man. | ||
| That ought to be weird. | ||
| Yeah, it was a little weird, though. | ||
| I ain't gonna lie. | ||
| I ain't gonna lie. | ||
| But it made sense, though, where it came from. | ||
| Yeah, completely. | ||
| Well, all those things, that's a part of character. | ||
| That's a part of what makes you who you are. | ||
| I mean, I think people that come from an easy life have a very difficult time making it in the world of fighting. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's not the same. | ||
| I mean, people have done it. | ||
| You know, the people that come from good households and good families. | ||
| B.J. Penn? | ||
| Yeah, B.J. Penn. | ||
| Well, George St. Pierre. | ||
| I mean, George St. Pierre was bullied when he was young, and that's what got him into martial arts, but he had a very good relationship with his parents. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But having a rough childhood is almost like a prerequisite to being a great fighter. | ||
| So many fighters come from, like, dark times. | ||
| Yeah, big fights. | ||
| I mean, like I said, your experiences alone can prepare you for fights. | ||
| And that's what makes some of the best fighters in the world. | ||
| But I feel like with everything that I went through, I guess you could say it prepared me for fighting, but it really showed me, and this is what I'm trying to get to, and I ain't trying to put all this shit together, but losing my mom and losing my dad just showed me, bro, just go for it. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Just like go for your dreams, man. | ||
| Go and do what you want to do. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because at the end of the day, we only got one life. | ||
| Like my mom died at a pretty young age, like 35, 36. You know what I mean? | ||
| Dad died pretty young. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Almost getting to the age of 40. How did your dad die? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Overdose. | |
| Yeah, overdose. | ||
| Whew. | ||
| Heroin overdose, unfortunately. | ||
| But I feel like he was trying to use that to block the pain or the stuff that he was dealing with. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| So many people are dealing with so much. | ||
| I mean, that's this fucking crazy dance of life. | ||
| And your dance is very crazy. | ||
| And that makes sense now, knowing your childhood, why you're so ferocious inside the octagon. | ||
| I didn't even think about it like that. | ||
| I didn't even think about it like that. | ||
| Think about the life experiences that you've had. | ||
| I mean, it is a major factor in what forms a man's personality. | ||
| And what you've gone through, those trials and tribulations, you can't substitute that. | ||
| Somebody either has that or they don't. | ||
| There's a fire that some dudes have, and you have it. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| A lot of that comes from just bad times. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And also, man, it's just like, when I see that, right? | ||
| When my mom passing, when my dad passing, it's like, you know, the only people that know that are the people that's closest to us. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And my thing was, like, I just always wanted to leave my name here and print it somehow, some way, in some type of fashion, you know? | ||
| Because it's a fun little quote, you know what I mean, that I like. | ||
| I don't know who said it, but it was like, you know, you die twice, you know what I mean? | ||
| The first time you die is when you take your last breath, and the second time you die is when they say your name for the last time. | ||
| And that always spoke volumes to me because I was like, man, I want my name to be remembered some way, you know? | ||
| And that was my real pursuit, for real, for real, doing MMA and chasing my dream. | ||
| Leave your mark. | ||
| Leave my mark some way. | ||
| Well, you definitely have that opportunity. | ||
| I mean, you've already left your mark, but you have an opportunity. | ||
| You're only 28, right? | ||
| Yeah, only 28. You have a giant future ahead of you. | ||
| Especially knowing your background now, knowing how little real formal training you've had, and the fact that you've reached this level of proficiency and skill and accomplishment. | ||
| Yeah, it's game time now. | ||
| It's pretty crazy. | ||
| You're in a really great spot right now, especially now dropping down to 170 pounds, which is your natural weight class, where you're not going to be at a disadvantage physically, like in the Nordean fight. | ||
| I think everything plays a part, and everything happens for a reason, so I'm glad I fought at 185. I'm glad I was able to develop my name in the middleweight division and stuff like that. | ||
| Because it's not gonna make it harder to go down to 170 and fight a couple of other, you know, ranked good names instead of starting all the way back over. | ||
| Well, you know, you fight guys like Imamov, who's like, what is his natural weight? | ||
| I mean, what is he walking around? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He's probably 215. Yeah. | ||
| Much, much bigger. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And Nasuddin is, I mean, he's like, he's an elite level fighter at that weight, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So you have... | ||
| I mean, to be honest with you, when I look at my resume at 185, I ain't fighting no bums. | ||
| No? | ||
| I fought a lot of high-level guys at middleweight, and I did a successful job. | ||
| I took a couple L's here and there, but I was able to accomplish, get five wins, up to four knockouts within the middleweight division. | ||
| I think that should speak volumes for me to go to a weight class that's more fitted for me. | ||
| Much better. | ||
| Much better for you. | ||
| And also with this structured training and the fact that you really do have relatively little in comparison to the amount of time you've been fighting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| I mean, well, I've been fighting for a long time, you know, for 10 years, but I just didn't know nothing. | ||
| Right, but that's what's so crazy. | ||
| It's like you accomplished a lot with that. | ||
| And now having very structured training and being in your physical prime and going down to a natural weight class, I mean, once you get past Chris Curtis, if you get past Chris Curtis... | ||
| No, no, but it's just that when I'm Italian, this is all the preparation that I've been putting in and doing and just taking the time and opportunity to actually promote the fight for myself. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Coming out here with you and speaking to you to sell this fight. | ||
| Even that, I just developed too much time and effort into this fight to lose. | ||
| I can't, you know, because everything that I want on the other side is riding up to this fight. | ||
| It ain't even like the National Dean fight. | ||
| Like, this is the fight right here. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So the last fight that I got, not on my contract, but of the year, because this will be my fourth fight that I had, you know what I'm saying, within one year, you know, and that's a big deal to me. | ||
| And I feel like I really need to show out for this one, you know, because I've never been a fighter either to lose back-to-back. | ||
| Because if I'm not learning in the gym, I'm learning from those fights. | ||
| Trust me. | ||
| I think you did learn from that fight. | ||
| And what you're talking about with that third round that you should have fought that way in the first round, isn't that a big part of the whole experience of having high-level competition? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Is these little lessons that you learn in each individual encounter. | ||
| And they're majoring. | ||
| Even though they're small, they make for major adjustments or major improvements. | ||
| That's what I mean to say. | ||
| So, having that fight with Nasher Dean is showing that I need to put the gas on a lot of these dudes early, period, you know? | ||
| And make them work, you know? | ||
| So, I didn't make Nasher Dean work as hard as I should have in that first and that second round, you know? | ||
| Now, what kind of strength and conditioning routine do they have you on? | ||
| Because you have such a wild style of fighting. | ||
| I mean, you have to have a deep, deep gas tank to fight the way you fight. | ||
| Man, I got a psychopath, man, as a conditioning coach, man. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Yeah, big facts. | ||
| Shout out to Justin Hardick, man. | ||
| So he been sending me actually workouts, right? | ||
| So this is what I just did here. | ||
| I can actually show you because he hasn't been out here with me to help me train. | ||
| So like this is one of the workouts that he had me do right here. | ||
| Matter of fact, I'll let you look at it. | ||
| So look, this is also cool, right? | ||
| So he sends this out. | ||
| Oh, he breaks it all out. | ||
| A little history lesson, right? | ||
| Talking about Akinawa and that war, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Think D-Day, you know? | ||
| And just talking about, like, you know, what the soldiers had went through and how they had to, you know, keep fighting and keep going up that hill doing so many obstacles and dodging bullets and all this other stuff. | ||
| That's all about kamikaze shit. | ||
| Right, tell me about it, right? | ||
| And then he gets to the workout. | ||
| Wow, all this history lesson and then the workout. | ||
| Yes, sir, and it gets me pumped, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, because it's just a reminder, like, bro, like, like, it's a mentality thing, you know, what you go through and then how you take the fight or how you take your training. | ||
| Seriously, you know, you got to make that switch. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| You can't just go through a workout and be like, all right, man, I'm going to just get this done, like, you know, like, live or die, like, I'm training for, like, war. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Point blank period, you know, and that's what I love about them. | ||
| So we do a lot of, you know, Cool, unique things, man, with him, but he makes sure to push me to my limits, you know. | ||
| Now, how do you balance out strength and conditioning workout with skill workout? | ||
| Like, what is your, like, a week's work with you structured? | ||
| So, Monday through Friday, man, so I'm in the gym, point blank period, and I even work out Saturday and Sunday, but I be doing my own thing, you know. | ||
| But Monday, we do HPI work, so that's strength and conditioning. | ||
| On that same Monday, we do striking MMA work with my head coach, whatever. | ||
| So just two days, you know? | ||
| Tuesdays, same thing, working with conditioning coach. | ||
| Then I'm working grappling. | ||
| Tuesdays is grappling day, so wrestling, MMA. And then Wednesday, same thing, conditioning. | ||
| So we might work, let's say, like functional work, you know what I mean? | ||
| Just working the weights, like kettlebells, or like what's the one they have? | ||
| Mace, steel mace. | ||
| Work with that. | ||
| And Wednesday, we got sparring. | ||
| And then Thursday, we had the same thing, just outside conditioning. | ||
| Now we running. | ||
| We outside with it. | ||
| And after that, with Thursday, we got jiu-jitsu training. | ||
| And then Friday, we have just open mat. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That we work with coach. | ||
| But then also Friday, we hit a heavy lift. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so, do you have days where you, like, are you specifically doing jujitsu some days or wrestling some days? | ||
| Yeah, so Tuesdays and Thursdays grappling. | ||
| Tuesdays is wrestling, primarily, and then Thursday is jujitsu. | ||
| Is it hard to get everything in? | ||
| Because that's one of the things about MMA is there's so many skill sets you have to work on. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. | ||
| I mean, but... | ||
| The core things, you already know what the core things is for real. | ||
| It's jujitsu, boxing, kickboxing slash Muay Thai, judo, and what else can we put on that? | ||
| I guess that's it for real. | ||
| Four things, you know. | ||
| Those are core things. | ||
| So we get to work all those fundamental things, you know. | ||
| But it's actually like trying to actually form our own type of martial arts. | ||
| And then coach is just always trying to have us work on our, you know, abilities, right? | ||
| And try to form us into the best fighter that we are, you know? | ||
| And he just tries to work those attributes that we have, you know? | ||
| And when you do by yourself on the weekends, what do you do? | ||
| Just concentrate on what you think you need to work on? | ||
| Like, how do you do that? | ||
| So with Saturday and Sunday, I usually work with Andy Simmons with wrestling on Sundays. | ||
| And Saturday, I pretty much just do my own thing. | ||
| So like a little workout, watch some little videos. | ||
| I still do the same thing that I've been doing for the longest time. | ||
| Always trying to find different videos, but do a little fun little workout. | ||
| But it's nothing too stressful. | ||
| It's just having fun and just keeping my tools tight. | ||
| You know, so that might just be hitting the bag and just working on like certain little basic techniques. | ||
| But Sundays, though, I work out with Andy Simmons almost every Sunday. | ||
| And Andy Simmons is a dog. | ||
| You can bring him up if you want to, but like I said, from Michigan State, undefeated. | ||
| Was undefeated in his high school and then went into being a collegiate wrestler at D1 Michigan State and going crazy there too. | ||
| So do you have anybody that works with you on your nutrition? | ||
| I mean, we don't work on it necessarily, but like we eat clean though, you know, so Justin cooks up all our meals. | ||
| So that's my coach again, conditioning coach. | ||
| Oh, that's great. | ||
| Yep, yep, yep. | ||
| So he cooks up the bison. | ||
| Everything is like, I feel like It's like dog food, man. | ||
| We eat the same stuff every day, man. | ||
| But we eat bison meat and chicken and just white rice and broccoli. | ||
| Real plain, real simple, real boring. | ||
| You know, nothing too crazy. | ||
| But I told you, like, with meat, it is perfect, though. | ||
| It's perfect. | ||
| But at the same time, I don't have to really focus on, like, literally what I'm putting in my body until going to 170. Right. | ||
| You know, so I still play around. | ||
| I still eat whatever I want to, you know, being at 185. So was he doing, like, meal prep, or he It gives you pre-portioned meals and then you just save them for the week? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We eat that same thing. | ||
| But it's the perfect nutrition, what you're saying. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| That's the right. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| What about recovery stuff? | ||
| Do you do sauna, cold plunge? | ||
| We do all that. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| All of it, man. | ||
| It's nothing too crazy. | ||
| It's all the things that... | ||
| Fighters been doing it for the longest, so boxers been doing it for the longest. | ||
| So we do ice plunge, we hit the sauna. | ||
| I like cryo a lot more for myself. | ||
| I hate being cold and wet, you know? | ||
| But the thing about just the regular ice plunge that you have to do, I feel like it's more mental because you can stay in there a little bit longer, you know what I mean? | ||
| I feel like just for the attitude and getting to the ice plunge and stuff like that, that's what I think it's great for. | ||
| But I feel like cryo, I like cryo a little bit more. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| For inflammation in my arms or if my body aches, if I have anything going on, I feel like cryo will get me right real quick because I only get to be in there for like three minutes. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| When you do the ice plunge, how long are you staying there for? | ||
| We try to do 10, 15 minutes, you know, and then two sessions. | ||
| So you're doing buckets of water with buckets of ice and not doing like a real cold plunge where it keeps it to 34 degrees. | ||
| I mean, well, I mean, well, we keep it there, you know, so we check the temperature and that thing begin to 32. And we in Michigan, too. | ||
| So that helps. | ||
| The winters in Michigan, you just get a lake. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, big facts, you know. | ||
| And you try to do that at the evening? | ||
| When do you do that, the recovery stuff? | ||
| We try to hit it. | ||
| Usually we've been doing it Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays. | ||
| Right after a workout with him, and then we go straight into it. | ||
| But don't do the bucket of ice and stuff like that. | ||
| Don't do it every day. | ||
| We don't do it every day. | ||
| Do you get massages or anything like that? | ||
| No, I don't really get no massages, man. | ||
| If I do get a massage, man, it'll probably be at the mall or something. | ||
| But I like the compressions. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Normatex. | ||
| Normatex is cool, you know, so that works, you know. | ||
| But, yeah, I don't really get, like, massages. | ||
| Nothing too crazy. | ||
| Like, you know, everything real basic, man. | ||
| Like, my thing is, like, it's just every day now. | ||
| I get to train every day. | ||
| So it might not be, like, the craziest things that I'm doing, but I'm doing the same thing consistently. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Having no job has to be a big factor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Going from, you know, having a job and training when you can to having training being your whole job. | ||
| Big fact. | ||
| Like I said, I'm not doing nothing crazy or special. | ||
| Just able to do it every day. | ||
| There's so many fighters that fight at a world-class level that still have a job. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That's just a sport that we're in. | ||
| It is unfortunate, but I've been blessed and I've been fortunate enough to be able to fight the way I'm fighting and I've been rewarded for it. | ||
| I feel like a lot of fighters, if they put more on the line and they go out and actually try to take a little bit more risk, They could potentially, you know, be on the other side, but at the same time, it's all about winning, you know what I mean? | ||
| But unfortunately, you see some guys that win some fights, whatever, but they're not exciting, they're not fun, and you don't see where their career takes them, and they don't make a lot of money, which you see, like you said, they got another job, they still training, they still, you know, trying to find sponsors, whatever, just to pay some certain bills and stuff like that, you know, so it's that risk and reward factor, you know? | ||
| So if you're willing just to win but not be exciting, you know what I mean? | ||
| Just realize you're not going to get the money that you're really looking for. | ||
| I guess that's the harder route, I feel like, unfortunately. | ||
| It's interesting, those calculations. | ||
| Are you just trying to win or are you trying to win and be someone who's very entertaining? | ||
| Yeah, big facts. | ||
| And I feel like a lot of guys don't train that way. | ||
| And I've been training like that for a long time. | ||
| And I wouldn't even say I'm a hard guy to spar or nothing like that, but I'm trying to touch you, though. | ||
| You know, I mean, we see it in kickboxing, we see it in boxing, how those guys spar, now those guys spar, for real. | ||
| They be trying to knock dudes out, you know? | ||
| And I feel like some guys in the MMA culture, whatever, they just want to touch, like, man, I don't really want to hurt, you know, so we just going to touch like this and just tag each other. | ||
| But I feel like that plays a part in your fights too, you know? | ||
| And a lot of guys get touched up even more because of that in a fight instead of actually taking it serious and sparring. | ||
| Because they're not used to sparring hard. | ||
| Exactly, right? | ||
| So now they're getting touched up for real in an actual fight. | ||
| How do you balance that out, though? | ||
| Because if you spar too much, you leave too much in the gym. | ||
| Well, how many times did I tell you I spar in a week? | ||
| One time. | ||
| One time? | ||
| One time. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| What I need to spar more for. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, big fact. | ||
| But it's a hard day. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, man. | ||
| What day is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you spar? | |
| Wednesday. | ||
| Wednesday. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so Thursday and Friday, thinking about... | ||
| The work and drilling. | ||
| Yeah, work and drilling. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Well, it sounds like you got a great plan, man. | ||
| And I'm very, very much looking forward to this fight in December. | ||
| It's a big fight for you. | ||
| And I love the fact that you're dropping down to 170. No, big facts, man. | ||
| And before that, though, too, like, before we even end off on that, you know, because I said I wanted to fight at 170, you asked me, like, who's some names? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So if it's not Shao Kahn and it's not Jeff Neal, you know, I'd love to fight Sean Brady, you know what I'm saying, or Vicente Luque. | ||
| You know, those are two great names, two good matchups for me, you know, and they both coming off an L, you know. | ||
| Those are great fights. | ||
| I'd like to see all of them. | ||
| Big fights. | ||
| But listen, man, I'm a big fan. | ||
| I'm real excited about your future. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| Hearing your story has been fantastic. | ||
| I appreciate you for having me. | ||
| I appreciate you very much, man. | ||
| And again, I'm really looking forward to December and your whole career. | ||
| I'm a fan. | ||
| I appreciate it, G. Thank you very much. | ||
| Tell everybody your social media so they can find you. | ||
| Yeah, you already know, man. | ||
| So my social media is NewMansa94. | ||
| That's my Instagram. | ||
| I got a YouTube channel now. | ||
| That's Joaquin Buckley Official on YouTube. | ||
| And then as well, I got my own little business, Solid Foundation. | ||
| So make sure y'all go follow that page as well on Instagram. | ||
| What is that business? | ||
| Solid Foundation. | ||
| It's just apparel. | ||
| Just merch. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah, you're on clothing line. | ||
| Yeah, yes, sir. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Spread it out. | ||
| Thank you very much. |
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