Jan. 25, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:07:49
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! | ||
| Great to have you in, man. | ||
| Great to be here. | ||
| How are you feeling? | ||
| You must be feeling fantastic. | ||
| Many things were successful, so even if I was a little bit, had a flu, many things... | ||
| You had a flu before that fight? | ||
| Yeah, for one week, like five days, five days before five weeks, I was in, how to say that, heat, like body's warm. | ||
| Fever? | ||
| Fever, yeah, fever. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| That was, yeah, that was something, but every time. | ||
| Maybe I'm a little bit glad for that because... | ||
| I'm every time trying to push my preparation too much that I'm every time like hurt myself or I'm overtrained. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So that's why I'm maybe just a little bit glad for that. | ||
| That's interesting, right? | ||
| Like it's so hard because you want to prepare so hard. | ||
| You're so disciplined, so driven, but... | ||
| You can do yourself a disservice. | ||
| You can go too far, and then you don't recover enough, and then you go into the fight a little compromised. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| Yeah, we've seen that many times with fighters who just get so enthusiastic about their training. | ||
| Yeah, because I feel like self-confidence and still there is something what you can do better, yeah, every day. | ||
| And that's my idea of the training, life idea. | ||
| To go better every day, 1% better, 1% better. | ||
| Even if you don't, if you can't train, you can sit in a meditation and visualize how you train, how the body is working. | ||
| Sometimes is the most biggest, like, the biggest thing what you can do is just... | ||
| Rest. | ||
| Like you show me the floating. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, you need one of those, man. | ||
| All the people that I know, you need one. | ||
| Sensory deprivation tank. | ||
| You should get one of those. | ||
| Because I know you're into meditation. | ||
| I know you spend a lot of time in dark rooms. | ||
| That's meditation times 100. That's right. | ||
| Do you monitor your heart rate every day to see what your recovery is at? | ||
| Or do you just go by feel? | ||
| Feeling. | ||
| I did that in... | ||
| High attitude training in all the November in Mexico, Mexico City, where it's 2,300, 200 meters. | ||
| Yeah, 7,700 feet above sea level, I believe. | ||
| Yes, and there I monitor everything, like take up blood exams before, in, and after this camp, four weeks camp there. | ||
| Man, amazing. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Well, your endurance was incredible in that fight because that was such a high-paced fight. | ||
| And still, I felt like after that flu, I felt a little bit down. | ||
| Well, that's pretty amazing then. | ||
| You must have been in insane shape before the flu. | ||
| It's that fine line, that balance. | ||
| So you went to Mexico City. | ||
| Did you know a gym up there? | ||
| Did you bring your camp up there? | ||
| I was there in UFC Performance Institute there. | ||
| There's a new one. | ||
| You have everything here in the Performance Institute, like regeneration, training, coaches, coaches with the pads. | ||
| So I was there for... | ||
| Especially to work on the things that I took from the last fight with Pereira to work on the hands up a little bit. | ||
| Just a little bit. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| But we were talking about it in the broadcast. | ||
| Your hands down sometimes has a benefit. | ||
| There's a real advantage to it because no one sees where those punches are coming from. | ||
| So for the people that don't know what I'm talking about. | ||
| Not just punches. | ||
| Movement. | ||
| Movement. | ||
| Head movement. | ||
| Head movement was excellent. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Your head movement was excellent. | ||
| And the feeling. | ||
| Feeling with the hands up is another one with the hands down. | ||
| Because this is your natural posture. | ||
| So you spend most of the time in this. | ||
| And it's about just feeling the space. | ||
| I can explain to another person like this one. | ||
| Because when I am in, in the flow, like you want to be in the flow, in the fight. | ||
| Something between the flow and the uncomfortable. | ||
| Somewhere in the center. | ||
| So when I achieved this attitude, that's why I don't need to keep my hands up because this for me means, and for everybody, that means defending. | ||
| I don't need to defend myself when I see everything, when I feel everything. | ||
| But like I understand in this preparation, where I tried, where I did. | ||
| All the camp, hands up, like this gives you the calm in a close distance. | ||
| In a close distance, it's not so... | ||
| Sometimes it's not so smart to keep hands down. | ||
| But I'm crazy enough to go through, to be in the moment, to stress my body so much. | ||
| In this situation to see every movement, every start of the movement of my opponent that I can react before he starts. | ||
| And the next level is to try to read the thinking of the opponent, what he wants to do before he do that. | ||
| So there are many levels of that. | ||
| But sometimes I can't explain that. | ||
| Sometimes, like in the second fight with Pereira, I was a little bit punched in the end of the first round. | ||
| So I stepped to the second round and I said to myself, I was too courageous. | ||
| And keep the hands down. | ||
| So that's why it happened. | ||
| Well, you should have been more defensive maybe to recover. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| One thing you said after that fight, you said you have to evolve. | ||
| And one thing that I saw in this last fight with Jamal Hill was evolution. | ||
| I really saw it. | ||
| You really see it. | ||
| Like, the counters, the head movement, and the counters were brilliant. | ||
| There's one that I put on my Instagram stories. | ||
| It was so incredible. | ||
| He threw a punch, you slid slightly out of the way, landed a straight left, and then the right hook that dropped him. | ||
| But it was so dynamic. | ||
| It was so fast and precise. | ||
| I was like, that's a different Yuri Prochaska. | ||
| Like, your earlier fights were always excellent. | ||
| You always had amazing power and very unusual movement, very difficult to predict. | ||
| But the sharpness of your counters was on another level in this fight. | ||
| That's what I worked on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To not just connect to the opponent and react what's happened right now, but a little bit before what will happen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, you're definitely getting better, which is so fascinating. | ||
| You had a very brilliant approach. | ||
| You waited until you had reached a certain level before you entered the UFC. You could have been in the UFC years earlier. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
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| Seriously, get on this. | ||
| And I have to say thank you to my coaches for that because we worked on my style. | ||
| We are consulting like... | ||
| Communicate about that style, what to make it better, how to do that. | ||
| That's why I'm keeping my two coaches, what I began with, began with all the time with me. | ||
| Because I think that's the only thing you can go to be a master in something, to stay with some people, with some... | ||
| A tight circle. | ||
| Yeah, a tight circle and go deeper. | ||
| You can go really deep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's also, I value loyalty. | ||
| Loyalty is very important. | ||
| This is it, yeah. | ||
| It means a lot, you know, and when people worked really hard to get you to a certain level. | ||
| What I like is there's some coaches that they recognize that maybe there's other skill sets they can bring in, so they work with other people as well, you know, but always stay with the people that brought you. | ||
| As long as the relationship is good, always stay with the people that brought you to the game. | ||
| Sure, sure, because in the end, you can change whoever, but you have to... | ||
| Start again with the same people and go. | ||
| And again, you will go to the same level, to the same problems with these people because it's not about them. | ||
| It's always about you to recognize what's in you. | ||
| How much tape do you watch? | ||
| Do you watch a lot of film? | ||
| Do you watch videos of fights? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was five days sick before the fight, so I just watched... | ||
| Spartans 300. Ongback, I watch. | ||
| Ongback, man. | ||
| That's wild shit. | ||
| No wild shit, but I was really inspired. | ||
| I was really hungry to see something because a long time I didn't see some good, not good movie. | ||
| It doesn't matter if it's good or new, but these old classics. | ||
| Of the fighting, Jean-Claude Van Damme with kickboxer and all these things. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh yeah. | |
| That's what made a spark inside me to a true love for martial arts because they, in that movies, they live that. | ||
| Really live that. | ||
| And they have no other chance to solve their problems just by martial arts and something. | ||
| So that's... | ||
| That's why I'm... | ||
| So you got inspired by movies? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Do you watch a lot of films of fight footage, like your fights, your opponent's fights? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, but I don't need to... | ||
| I don't need many times to study that. | ||
| I just need to, like, see once... | ||
| Once I just see the attitude of the start of the fight, how he's fighting, his... | ||
| How to say? | ||
| His spirit, his mindset, how he's thinking, how he's... | ||
| The start of moving of his body. | ||
| How he's reacting for, not just for opponent, for the many situations, for slipping and movement, but everything, like personal and studying that guy. | ||
| His energy. | ||
| His energy, his vibe, how he's reacting, how he's reacting. | ||
| in some situation like these eye pokes and all these things like some breaks in the fight every time because it shows you how he has under control himself all the time all the time and this is something what Alex Pereira I don't know what is his story behind but He handled that. | ||
| He handled that, and that's how he is. | ||
| Now he's starting to be more relaxed, and I wish him to stay sharp. | ||
| Well, I think he's more relaxed outside the fight, but in the fight, he's always very calm. | ||
| Very calm and very focused. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Did you watch your first fight with him before you watched the second, before you have fought him the second time? | ||
| Yes, sure, sure. | ||
| Yeah, I studied him a lot, but the second fight I... I little push it too much. | ||
| Too aggressive? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I mean, like... | ||
| Training? | ||
| After the fight, I was like, I want Alex Pereira, after I'm ready for him. | ||
| Right now, I'm ready too, but I'm open for... | ||
| For whoever, UFC will give me like a next opponent to prove that I am. | ||
| But I want a true challenge. | ||
| Like, I want a true challenge from the, I think, top five guys. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The interesting thing about the light heavyweight division is there's only about five really exciting contenders. | ||
| Four or five really exciting. | ||
| There's not a deep pool. | ||
| Of fighters that would be, you know, very interesting to see you fight. | ||
| That's right, because there is a, like I said today, there's a few guys who really have the taste, have the drive to go to the top. | ||
| I want to go to the top. | ||
| I want to take it. | ||
| I feel the energy of the crown and I can take it. | ||
| That's why I'm doing that. | ||
| That's why I'm still talking about that, to be there. | ||
| Because I really feel that I can be the top. | ||
| And one thing what I needed is that I had to be stable. | ||
| Stable to not just get to the top and back and out, but to go to the top. | ||
| Know how it is to be there. | ||
| Know to keep all these weights on the top, what there is. | ||
| Yeah, defending the title is more difficult even than getting the title. | ||
| And then it's improving while you're champion. | ||
| Daniel Cormier always says that every champion improves significantly once they become champion because you have the confidence of being champion. | ||
| And it's just how long can you maintain the kind of energy that's required to constantly get better? | ||
| Because it's not just about maintaining, right? | ||
| It's about constantly improving, constant analysis of all your movements and what you're doing right, mistakes that were made, what the thought process was before the mistake and how to eliminate that. | ||
| Yeah, this is something what is... | ||
| Like I said, the style of Japanese, they call that kaizen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Kaizen, like daily improvements, small improvements, daily recognizing what's bad, what's good. | ||
| And sometimes I feel like it's sick, like to be too much obsessed in that. | ||
| Man, you need a little break. | ||
| That's why I think the life gave me this. | ||
| Little break before this. | ||
| The little flu. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Was that why you came in so light? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Was that why? | ||
| That was why. | ||
| Because I was watching a video where Luke Thomas was going over your performance. | ||
| Everybody was very impressed, and he was as well. | ||
| But one of the things that he was talking about was that you only weighed 208 pounds when you walked into the cage. | ||
| I thought I will do my best when I would go to the sauna night before the waiting. | ||
| And spend there. | ||
| And again, I switched myself in the sauna and I was there like for two hours. | ||
| Oh no! | ||
|
unidentified
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Like 15 minutes, 15, 15, like many rounds. | |
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Two hours there. | ||
| Do you do sauna cold or just sauna relax? | ||
| Relax, relax. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Sauna cold. | ||
| Okay, so then you go back in the sauna. | ||
| Yes, sure. | ||
| And cold normally like... | ||
| The cold, cold plunge. | ||
| I'm doing that daily because I have at home the cold plunge. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I'm using that. | ||
| Yeah, they're fantastic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the fun is, the second day after that, and I didn't drink anything after the sauna. | ||
| And next day morning, I went to the control weight. | ||
| And then I have, I don't know, 91 kilograms. | ||
| I'm fighting in 93 and a half. | ||
| And I was two and a half kilograms under my weight. | ||
| Sounds like 200 pounds. | ||
| I was the only one guy who was in row to the weights. | ||
| I tried to hide myself before other guys, and I drank one liter of the water, second liter of the water. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Just because you didn't want to weigh in light. | ||
| Yeah, because I spent too much time in the sauna, man. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Because you only weighed 208. Yeah. | ||
| I felt really like... | ||
| You look great. | ||
| You look very lean and fat. | ||
| Fast, man. | ||
| Fast. | ||
| You've always been very fast, but you looked even faster. | ||
| It's just all about this, man. | ||
| If you have the reason why and you can not just you want it like your ego just want it, but you feel it like it's your destiny, these moments, and it's yours. | ||
| So then... | ||
| Then it will happen. | ||
| So do you feel like maybe even the fights with Pereira are a blessing and that it showed you what you need to work on? | ||
| Every time. | ||
| This is the only way how I want to see that. | ||
| Especially the guy like him who's a really top guy. | ||
| His style, his mindset, what he showed till now was something what I needed to work on. | ||
| Still, I'm on the way. | ||
| Well, his style is extraordinary. | ||
| It's very unusual, as is yours. | ||
| But the thing that's shocking the most about him is that he only needs to hit you once. | ||
| Is it much different, the power that you feel from him than anybody else? | ||
| There is a difference from other guys. | ||
| Yeah, there is a difference. | ||
| But... | ||
| Only one thing I can say, like... | ||
| I know the recipe. | ||
| You know the recipe? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| What's the recipe? | ||
| What's the recipe? | ||
| How to... | ||
| Because you have to know how to give the punch and how to act like to... | ||
| How to accept the punches. | ||
| How to move with it. | ||
| How to overcome the bad moments and all these things. | ||
| But it's better, much better to defend the punch with the hand or defend the punch with the movement. | ||
| Did you ever watch any of his glory kickboxing fights? | ||
| This is a good one to watch, the Artem Vahitov fight. | ||
| Because Vahitov's very technical. | ||
| I think he won. | ||
| He won a very close decision. | ||
| It was very close. | ||
| It was one of those fights where you could call it either way. | ||
| But he won. | ||
| But he's... | ||
| Very technical. | ||
| Very interesting to watch him deal with the style of Pereira. | ||
| Because Pereira is such an unusual way of moving. | ||
| Even the way he holds his hands up, he looks different. | ||
| So do you. | ||
| You look different. | ||
| There's only a few fighters that if you saw their silhouette, I could go, oh, that's Yuri Prochaska. | ||
| I could see it right away. | ||
| I know how you move. | ||
| And Alex is that way as well. | ||
| It's a very unique way of moving. | ||
| But his... | ||
| The way Vahitav handled it is a good blueprint for a lot of people to avoid the power and keep the volume on him. | ||
| What was your original style? | ||
| What was the first martial art that you learned? | ||
| Muay Thai. | ||
| Muay Thai. | ||
| Yeah, I started in my high school. | ||
| I started with karate because it was in a daily schedule. | ||
| What kind of karate? | ||
| Shotokan. | ||
| Shotokan and judo. | ||
| There was two. | ||
| And I felt like I need something more contact, more aggressive. | ||
| Not aggressive, but more potent. | ||
| So I started with Muay Thai. | ||
| The most potent. | ||
| Muay Thai is fascinating to me. | ||
| This one island figured out how to fight better than anybody on the feet. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And a lot of it, they did it through gambling. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That's a lot of it. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right. | |
| Because they're so into gambling that they had so many fights and then people just fought a lot and then they're like, what works best? | ||
| And then they figured it out. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And right now, after watching Ong Bak, I'm just still realizing what is the best style, what is the best movements, best deadly techniques, what to do. | ||
| And right now, after I watch the long back, I see the Muay Boran, like my next chapter to what I want to see real, like in Thailand, to see really how to use that and how to... | ||
| Because I'm the man who's like taking the piece here, taking the piece here and making... | ||
| Combining it all together. | ||
| So, have you trained in Thailand? | ||
| Thailand, yeah. | ||
| In Thailand? | ||
| Yeah, just a little bit for like three weeks there before the title fight with Teixeira. | ||
| Then I was there for a camp. | ||
| Yeah, Phuket, yeah. | ||
| One of the greatest knockouts that you had was that Dominic Reyes spinning elbow, which is beautiful Muay Thai. | ||
| Flow. | ||
| Oh, beautiful flow. | ||
| It's like you just timed that out. | ||
| That was a real coming out party for you, that fight. | ||
| Because that was when people were like, my God, like this guy. | ||
| Yeah, always find a way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you first started fighting in MMA, was this something... | ||
| First of all, how old were you when you had your first fight? | ||
| Oh, when I was... | ||
| First fight in my 18, 19. And were you looking at it as a career? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, right from the beginning. | ||
| Were you looking at it to do, that was what you wanted to do professionally? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, right away? | ||
| Right away, yeah, from my 20, 20, around my 20, yeah. | ||
| You knew you wanted to be a championship fighter. | ||
| Yes, yes, because that was something what I was too inspired by, because I was a young guy who tried to... | ||
| To challenge everything around himself, everything, every man, every situation, everywhere. | ||
| I am better than this. | ||
| I am better than this. | ||
| Not the school. | ||
| Just not in the school. | ||
| But I like the fighting. | ||
| I fall in love with the fighting, with looking for, finding my biggest strength. | ||
| And that's why I'm going every time to the nature, to sleeping in the mountains. | ||
| That's why I'm living in the cottage, to be in contact with the nature, to feel the present moment and the rare natural power of the water, fire, of all these things, of the sun. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. | ||
| Like, when did you start this training in nature? | ||
| Because when you look at your setup that you have at your place and everything's outside, you know, you put pads over trees and you punch and kick trees. | ||
| Sometimes it looks weird, but, you know, wow, I don't like to... | ||
| I don't like... | ||
| Right now I realize I need to. | ||
| Right now I want to overcome the people, the men, the sparring partners in the training. | ||
| But in my personal way, I was inspired by... | ||
| Once I was inspired by Masutatsu Oyama. | ||
| He was the founder of Kyokushin Kai Karate. | ||
| And I saw his movie and how he spent... | ||
| More than one year one and a half year in the mountains and he trained just in the mountains under the waterfall in the winter in the winter and He made from himself a really Really something like unshakable mind Self-confidence so deep because he he found a way how to overcome How | ||
| to rule his body, how to... | ||
| He's describing that in his book like the mind without the thinking, like without the thoughts, pure mind, pure focus, pure consciousness right here, right now. | ||
| And I took that like my own way. | ||
| And I think it was year 2014, 2015. And I took everything in myself. | ||
| I took a tent. | ||
| And I went to the mountains. | ||
| And I slept there for just for like one week, two weeks. | ||
| One and a half week, yeah. | ||
| And I... I was inspired too much, so I did the same thing. | ||
| I ran there and I punched to the rock. | ||
| And I just want to fight with the environment, with the nature around me. | ||
| And in the end, you can realize there is no fighting. | ||
| There is nothing. | ||
| This is the pure life. | ||
| This is the pure life because the life has the one reason to overcome everything around and... | ||
| Survive. | ||
| Survive, survive, survive. | ||
| And this is the nature of what is in us. | ||
| So this is... | ||
| And as deeper you can go in this uncomfortable environment and all these things, that deep you can understand the life Be a philosopher about that. | ||
| Understand more deeply. | ||
| I don't know what to say. | ||
| No, you're saying it right. | ||
| I understand what you're saying. | ||
| So that's why. | ||
| So I was inspired by Masutatsu Oyama. | ||
| And that's why I decided after the second fight with Alex, I need to go to Japan. | ||
| To Japan, to the places, to make a black belt from Kyokushinkai Karate. | ||
| And really feel all these things like a realist. | ||
| Not just think about how it can be, how this style can be, but to live that. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Because I like to take an inspiration and take it and go there. | ||
| Fight that. | ||
| Fight that guy. | ||
| Live that experience. | ||
| Yeah, this is it. | ||
| Playoffs. | ||
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| The crown is yours. | ||
|
unidentified
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The crown is yours. | |
| Well, you're obviously very physically talented, but I think one of the things that does separate you from other fighters is this mindset that you've cultivated and that you embrace. | ||
| And I think... | ||
| It's the only way. | ||
| It's also something fascinating about the fact that you do do it outside. | ||
| I think that scares people. | ||
| I think there's something about the fact that you like to be fighting in nature and punching trees. | ||
| Because I'm coming from a... | ||
| From one village, where there were a lot of good guys. | ||
| But everybody, we are still really crazy. | ||
| When we are celebrating, it's all the time about... | ||
| Right now, we are trying to slow down to show others that we are adults. | ||
| We know we are the man. | ||
| But still, it's about showing the strength. | ||
| What to... | ||
| What to destroy, how to punch other guy, how to show the strength above others. | ||
| And when there was, when there started, okay, like I said, when on these parties started the level of like, it was really dangerous, a fire and... | ||
| Firearms and the cars and the fire and it was not safe. | ||
| Then I said, guys, okay, we are a man. | ||
| Let's be mature. | ||
| Let's, yeah, please. | ||
| Yeah, take it down a notch. | ||
| Because somebody could die. | ||
| Yeah, that's something what you have to realize. | ||
| And this essence of looking for a strength. | ||
| This something. | ||
| This true madness. | ||
| Like when I see this picture. | ||
| Of that. | ||
| And it remembered me that when I saw that when I came here. | ||
| The JRE logo. | ||
| Yeah, the logo. | ||
| And when I saw it, it remembered me like, yes, go through, going through all the time. | ||
| Choose the... | ||
| Choose the hardest way and go through overcome whatever and show you are the you are the boss yeah and and this is this is it this is why i'm i came from that place where we are trying to to show each other this one and i trying to carry that energy and put it In the calm | ||
| way, to show it in the cage. | ||
| And that's why the Samurai Ideas, the Bushido Codex, helping me in that to show it. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| And then you feel that in training in nature and then experiencing the wild and getting it out there, it becomes even more pure because you recognize that all around you is survival. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You are on the wave now. | ||
| We're on the same wave, yeah. | ||
| So what year did you start doing this training in the wild? | ||
| Like I said, in 2014. I was inspired by Masutatsu Oyama. | ||
| Then I realized it's not about opponents, man, it's about just your body, just about rule your body, how much you can rule your body, rule your mind, rule your emotions, logical state of thinking, to find the way how to not overcome, | ||
| how to rule your breath, because this is the This is it. | ||
| This is the way. | ||
| Because this is the most primal thing of the body. | ||
| When the child is born, first is breath. | ||
| Everything is like... | ||
| You can settle by the breath in the body. | ||
| Not just by thoughts. | ||
| The thinking and thoughts is... | ||
| Like a great serve, but a bad boss. | ||
| So it serves you well, but you can't let it control you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So there's many levels what you have to rule in your body, what you have to understand and put it in one way in the present moment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you had your first fights when you were around 18, 19? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And then how long, when did you decide that you were ready for the UFC and how did you make that decision? | ||
| Because I do know that you were offered fights before. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But you said, I want more development time. | ||
| That was somewhere in the center of, between my sixth, seventh fight in Rising. | ||
| So around the year to... | ||
| to 17 to 18 yeah something like that and uh yeah I realized that man there is a there is a way in the rising yet yeah so I need I need to no I need to I want to take a title here I want to prove that I'm the how to say like the the king of Japan like yeah to to rule rule these guys Yeah, | ||
| I think that happens too often. | ||
| That's why I can't fight for a title in three fights. | ||
| In that boxing, they look at fighters, managers look at fighters as an investment. | ||
| So if you're a manager and you have like Floyd Mayweather, you don't give Floyd Mayweather the... | ||
| The best fight you can get him right away with the toughest guy. | ||
| You want to see how he performs with a guy who's an inside puncher, a body puncher who's a brawler. | ||
| You want to see how he handles a slick guy like Emmanuel Augustus with unorthodox movement. | ||
| How does he handle Diego Corrales? | ||
| Long, tall reach. | ||
| And you build them. | ||
| With fighters that you think you've got to know when they're ready. | ||
| And then there's an objective assessment. | ||
| Okay, he's ready. | ||
| Then you start moving him into top ten contenders. | ||
| Then you move him to a title shot. | ||
| The UFC throws you right to the wolves. | ||
| It's good to have this objective view. | ||
| I like to be... | ||
| I'm just a watcher of my progress, of the situation. | ||
| Think about that, how to plan it, how to see that not personally, just to see yourself as another person and put it in myself in a way where it will be the best for these targets. | ||
| And then go in and do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you had a very quick rise in the UFC to a title fight. | ||
| Was Volkan Ozdemir your first fight? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you beat Volkan Ozdemir, then Dominic Reyes was the second fight? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then, bam, title shot. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| So that's the reason to be so prepared. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because if you're successful, things go very quickly. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| You have to be ready. | ||
| When you look at your first fight with Volkan Ozdemir, and then you look at your fight with Jamal Hill, do you see significant improvement? | ||
| With who? | ||
| The first one? | ||
| When you look at your first fight in the UFC, when you fought Volkan Ozdemir, and now you look at yourself now, in the most spectacular performance against Jamal Hill, do you see the improvement? | ||
| Right now I can say yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because there was a... | ||
| With Volkan Ozdemir, there was just a pure raw power. | ||
| Raw... | ||
| Aggression. | ||
| Aggression, but not so... | ||
| Refined. | ||
| You can see that in the fight, man. | ||
| There was just a pure... | ||
| Chaos. | ||
| Pure chaos, man. | ||
| I was too much. | ||
| Sometimes it's the self-confident. | ||
| When you are too much self-confident, it's a bad thing. | ||
| Because... | ||
| Ego will took you to another line and it will destroy you. | ||
| It will burn you. | ||
| So you have to keep that burn, that fire under control and to give these attacks, these aggressiveness in just a small... | ||
| To keep it under control. | ||
| I like what you just said, that ego will take you to another line. | ||
| Man, it's good to have it. | ||
| We can't live without in this world with cooperations, with collaborations, talking, relationships. | ||
| You can't live without. | ||
| But also you have to cultivate that. | ||
| So there are two worlds without in life. | ||
| So you have to go in. | ||
| Yeah, they have to be working together. | ||
| The mind and the ego have to be working together. | ||
| And the no mind. | ||
| The Zen. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| The stink, the flow. | ||
| Yeah, and the ego will take you out of the flow. | ||
| The ego will be like, I'm going to go fuck him up, and then boom, you get hit. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I like what you said, though, about it takes you out of the line, because it takes you into a different line. | ||
| It takes you in a different line of fighting, and then... | ||
| Sometimes in that line, you'll realize you're out of place. | ||
| You realize you're leaving openings that shouldn't be there, and you're trying to force. | ||
| Yeah, good force. | ||
| Force and power. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And good when you realize that. | ||
| It's bad when you don't realize. | ||
| And sometimes it's good when you have the people around you to... | ||
| To, man, bring you back. | ||
| That's why I'm sometimes really glad for my team, my people around me, to keep me back. | ||
| That's what's amazing about having a coach who knows you. | ||
| Having trainers who know you. | ||
| They know where you're at. | ||
| Like, calm down, calm down. | ||
| Everything's great, but you're hitting the gas too much. | ||
| Be a little more technical, move around more. | ||
| Yeah, but not too much. | ||
| Not too much, not too much. | ||
| That's right, because sometimes it's this wildness, the aggression to take over. | ||
| It's too necessary, but... | ||
| Well, that's what I asked you after the fight. | ||
| I said, there's something about you where you thrive. | ||
| You get better when it's chaotic. | ||
| It seems like you relish in the chaos of these wild exchanges. | ||
| Sometimes fighters like to piece people up where they're not getting hit. | ||
| Jamal Hill's really good at that. | ||
| The Glover Teixeira fight, he did a fantastic job of utilizing his game and his accuracy and reach, and he just put it on Glover. | ||
| They don't want to be in these wild exchanges. | ||
| You seem to want to be in these wild exchanges because you thrive there. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And sometimes it's... | ||
| I don't know where it's keeping yourself. | ||
| And the control is going from... | ||
| Sometimes it's going from the fear to be not hit. | ||
| Sometimes it's going from to be careful for the takedowns. | ||
| But I want to be fearless in that. | ||
| To stay before the opponent and have no fear. | ||
| You can go as close as you want and try to hit me and you will not hit me because I'm here and I feel you. | ||
| I got you. | ||
| So I can't explain it and I don't want to explain it. | ||
| I want to show that in a fight. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| One of the things that we were talking about, Daniel and I were talking about when we were doing the commentary, was your head movement was so good. | ||
| It was different than before. | ||
| It was like at another level. | ||
| What specifically had you done to prepare that made your head movement so much better? | ||
| I have a long time working on that. | ||
| Before I stepped in the UF. Since my title fight, I really exactly know when I started to work especially on that because I realized that this is my game. | ||
| This is really what's me. | ||
| And it was around the title fight with King Mo Laval in Rising. | ||
| So that was a title fight in Rising. | ||
| And it's about the... | ||
| The feeling, the opponent. | ||
| To feel the opponent, but not be... | ||
| But to not be... | ||
| How to say... | ||
| To not let this feeling to... | ||
| To push you in some way. | ||
| You know, understand? | ||
| To feel the space, but still be calm, be unshakable, and... | ||
| Then you can feel the space around you, everything. | ||
| And whatever will move right now, you will react for that. | ||
| And naturally, because you will feel all these things like yourself, like everything is you. | ||
| And then you can step to the level I'm everywhere. | ||
| Because there is no difference between me, this thing, this thing, the opponent, but still. | ||
| And that's sometimes why I need to be a little bit hit to feel the aggression back to the fight. | ||
| That was before the UFC. And I was needed to get hit because I need to... | ||
| Because I felt him, felt the... | ||
| I felt the movement, felt the right movement, everything was right. | ||
| But I also needed to be more aggressive, wanted to go through the opponent. | ||
| Because I was too, how to say, too nice for them. | ||
| To just show them I can slip and I can move everything. | ||
| You can't hit me, but this is not the fight. | ||
| The fight is the answer. | ||
| Catch him in the right moment. | ||
| So yes, to be here and now, to be, like I said, to be everything, but still to not be pushed by this feeling like to be so nice, not too much aggressive, but something in the middle, still control that. | ||
| It's all about control. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Balance. | |
| I like what you said. | ||
| That there's no difference between you and your opponent. | ||
| You're just in this flow of movement and life. | ||
| And this thing you're choosing to do, there's no difference between you and them. | ||
| You don't even exist. | ||
| You're just a part of it all. | ||
| Yes, and the bad for fighting is when you really realize we are doing this, we are doing... | ||
| We are fighting each other and right now I'm going to hurt other person and you don't see really the difference between you and him so you know you are doing to yourself but this is the game what we chose and we are here to have a fun so not just have a fun to To live this experience. | ||
| To live this experience. | ||
| And an extreme experience that will teach you about yourself like no other experience. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| If you want to learn about yourself, go fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You'll really find out. | ||
| You can bullshit yourself all you want, but until you fight. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And when you go through a loss, like the loss is to Pereira, what is your process like of evaluating? | ||
| What went wrong and how to change things? | ||
| What's wrong? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's your process? | ||
| What do you do when you lose a fight and then you come back? | ||
| What is your thought process? | ||
| What do you say? | ||
| I have to learn. | ||
| I have to figure out what went wrong. | ||
| Let me... | ||
| After the second fight, the first time in my life I realized that, man... | ||
| That was really like... | ||
| I will not say what was that, how hard it was, because I don't like it. | ||
| But it was something that I didn't experience yet. | ||
| Not till now. | ||
| So that time I really realized how powerful the meditation and the true self-talking... | ||
| How does true meditation look like? | ||
| Because I have no other chance than to stop doing bullshit, stop doing just pure inspirational training in the garden, stop doing all these things. | ||
| And start doing just things that really matter, what have a real effect, how you can feel, how you want to be. | ||
| The power of true self-talking, the power of true overcoming the mistakes in the life. | ||
| And be the boss of your mind because sometimes it's... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sometimes it's... | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It was the next level. | ||
| Very difficult to recover from a loss like that. | ||
| But you... | ||
| Yeah, because especially when you lost, like... | ||
| That was bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For me, like... | ||
| How to say it? | ||
| Like... | ||
| Like a man who likes the honor and all these codes, like from Bushido Moral Code, like that was something that was for me really bad. | ||
| He gotcha. | ||
| That's how it goes. | ||
| Man, you can say it like that, but I really work on every... | ||
| Every move, every thought, every catching, every move in the fighting, and now this happened, that was not me. | ||
| That was really... | ||
| It was me, but, man, you show yourself your worst, your worst to the world, man. | ||
| But then you came after that and showed your best. | ||
| So this is the thing about overcoming a loss like that, is that I'm sure it was awful, but because of it, the pain that you felt from it caused you to rise to another level. | ||
| That's what is life about, yeah. | ||
| You need the challenge. | ||
| You need the Tong Po, you know? | ||
| Yeah, no, no, that's right. | ||
| And how I see this world, and this is what I wanted to speak with you. | ||
| What is here right now? | ||
| The true challenges in this world, in this age, like in a human's life. | ||
| What is there? | ||
| Because how I see that, like there is not too much thing what we... | ||
| Not too much. | ||
| There is a lot. | ||
| But still, we can go right now. | ||
| We have to go to another level. | ||
| Because there is too much of the comfort life of the people. | ||
| Because like that, you can have the food. | ||
| Like that, you can have a drink, a massage, everything. | ||
| So there is no... | ||
| No price, like I see in the young people, what they want to pay to really achieve something. | ||
| They just want things handed to them. | ||
| This is an entitlement error because things are very easy. | ||
| And when things are easy, it's very difficult to develop character. | ||
| That's why for young people, I always tell them you should choose to do something hard. | ||
| Choose to do something hard for your human development, for you as a human being. | ||
| Because if you just live your life in comfort, you will have a terrible life. | ||
| Yeah, I think. | ||
| And only one reason, only one thing what I realized, like, maybe the one thing, the step up will be like, take us two steps back and understand the true life. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think we'll realize that the people that live this way are living disastrous lives and people will learn from that mistake because this level of comfort that most people have is very new historically. | ||
| It's very new in human history. | ||
| There's never really been a time where the poor people were fat. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| This is a weird time. | ||
| That's right, yeah. | ||
| The poorest amongst us have no worries about... | ||
| About starving to death. | ||
| They're in America. | ||
| They're fat. | ||
| It's more common than not. | ||
| I think some crazy number of people in this country are obese. | ||
| What was the number? | ||
| It was like 60%? | ||
| 60% of people are obese. | ||
| Something crazy like that. | ||
| Which is just nuts. | ||
| And it's too easy. | ||
| It's too easy to exist. | ||
| And I don't mean it's too easy like you don't have to work and I'm sure everybody has to work and your work sucks and it's hard and you gotta get up every day. | ||
| But physically. | ||
| You have to do something to test your will and your discipline. | ||
| And if you don't, you're going to have a shitty life. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And you won't be able to control yourself in situations that require you to stay calm. | ||
| I think right now it's up to, like it was in every culture, up to the older people to teach the younger to real life, to tell them. | ||
| Like, simply tell them the stories. | ||
| Listen to the stories. | ||
| Live the true life, man, because we are forgetting all these things because we have the phones and this is the fake lives. | ||
| It's a fake life. | ||
| It's a fake life and it's bad for you. | ||
| It's bad for your development. | ||
| It'll hinder... | ||
| Your potential. | ||
| Like, whatever you want to do in life, if you want to be an artist, if you want to be a musician, whatever you want to be, you want to be an author, it will hinder your development if you live the comfort life. | ||
| And, okay, so this is it. | ||
| And how you see the, like, in the 10 years, in the 50 years, in the 100 years, what's the next step for the... | ||
| Not good. | ||
| Right now I'm trying to lead you in some way, but no, this is your podcast. | ||
| No, you tell me. | ||
| I'm curious about that because I'm trying to... | ||
| This is my true motivation, the human evolution, the evolution of myself, how to fight better, how to overcome the opponent better, how to show him that I am everywhere and you have no chance around me. | ||
| Please hold your head down and tell the other I'm the winner. | ||
| My ego wants this but the way to this there is but still in some humble way to show it peacefully. | ||
| Show it like... | ||
| Show violence peacefully. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was nice seeing you and Jamal Hill out after the fight having a drink together. | ||
| That was nice to see. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I bought him the, like, my original drink, what I'm drinking, the vodka, vodka, soda, lime. | ||
| And I told him, like... | ||
| We fight together. | ||
| We drink together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go for that. | |
| Yeah, because, man, we are everybody. | ||
| We are one. | ||
| In the end, there is no enemy. | ||
| Even if you're the baddest enemy of the world, man, it was a good life. | ||
| It was a good fight. | ||
| Let's drink together. | ||
| Let's celebrate together. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Was it cool? | ||
| Was it cool hanging out with him? | ||
| That was cool. | ||
| That's something what I like to do with my opponents, whoever won, you win, you lose, whatever. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| It's always nice to see. | ||
| That's one thing that people really do love about a great fight is afterwards when the guys hug. | ||
| Yeah, but still, still, I don't like to speak. | ||
| About opponent in some way, in some bad way, before the fight and after fight, change it. | ||
| Like, it does not exist. | ||
| And right now we are friends and everything good, man. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Let's be honest. | ||
| You talk a shit about me. | ||
| Talk a shit about me. | ||
| Okay, so you are the motherfucker, but it doesn't matter. | ||
| Let's drink together. | ||
| You are who you are. | ||
| I am who I am. | ||
| Let's drink together. | ||
| But stay Stay honest. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Keep that energy. | ||
| Man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that's why I like to keep same word, same attitude before the fight, in the preparation and after the fight, in the fight, after the fight, all the time, like the same. | ||
| That's me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I want to show me, not me before and me after. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's a lot of guys. | ||
| Just for the sake of promotion, they talk a lot of shit and they're just trying to stir things up and make the fight more exciting by insulting people, insulting their families. | ||
| Yeah, and it gets very ugly. | ||
| And I think the audience turns on them over that. | ||
| And one of the things that's shown with your success and your popularity and guys like Alex is that you don't even have to speak English. | ||
| Like, it doesn't matter if you kick ass. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't matter. | ||
| You could talk all the shit you want, get everything hyped up. | ||
| What really matters is how you perform inside the octagon. | ||
| When you perform inside the octagon, like Alex has, like you have, there's no need for shit-talking. | ||
| People love you, and they love you just by the style of your fighting, and you're expressing your soul inside that cage, like who you are as a man inside that cage. | ||
| You don't have to talk shit about someone's wife or all that crap. | ||
| Yeah, that's why many people around me, like my manager team, try to be more focused for a promo and all these things. | ||
| The fight will do the promo. | ||
| This is the main thing of everything. | ||
| Not selling these things, these things, these, these. | ||
| Giving the... | ||
| The main thing is the... | ||
| The fight. | ||
| The performance. | ||
| The performance. | ||
| That's what kind of drives me crazy about when championship-level fighters have to do a lot of promotion before the fight. | ||
| I'm like, man, leave that guy alone. | ||
| What's really important is how he's going to perform. | ||
| If you want to promote it, have a bunch of people like me or, you know, Daniel Cormier or Chael Sunday, have people talk about the fight. | ||
| Hype the fight up. | ||
| You don't have to bother this guy at 7 o'clock in the morning and talk to him for an hour about some fucking nonsense. | ||
| That's what I like. | ||
| Leave him alone. | ||
| Yeah, that's what I like on UFC. They are focused for performance. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| And no talking. | ||
| Before, no one fight, other fight, no special promo before. | ||
| Afterwards, do interviews, like right now. | ||
| Afterwards, relax. | ||
| But when leading up to the fight, the most important thing is that you're 100% prepared and anything that distracts from that should be eliminated. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And, yeah. | ||
| And many, many, many fighters are, yeah. | ||
| We are, like, focused for talking. | ||
| Sildur, there are things about shit talking that I do like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what I do like is that... | |
| First of all, it gets a lot of people excited about it, which makes me happy because I want more people to watch the sport. | ||
| But also, there's a psychological aspect, especially Conor McGregor. | ||
| He's so good at talking shit that he gets people so angry. | ||
| When he fought Jose Aldo, for instance, no one had ever treated Jose Aldo any way other than with respect. | ||
| He was one of the greatest champions. | ||
| He's an elite fighter. | ||
| He defended his title multiple times, destroyed his division. | ||
| But you could tell that all that shit-talking from Conor had an effect on him emotionally. | ||
| And I think his ego... | ||
| Made him go out of line. | ||
| So he ran right at Conor and tried to hit him, and Conor stepped back and cracked him. | ||
| He was so energetic. | ||
| Now imagine if instead, if Jose Aldo fought that fight and dragged it into the fourth and fifth round and started using the leg kicks that he used on Uriah Faber and started picking him apart from be careful in the beginning, but stay inside the game plan. | ||
| Fight the best of your ability. | ||
| Don't get emotional. | ||
| That could have been a very different fight. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| But that's the weapon, the weapon of shit-talking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And especially if you know how to use that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| He uses it better than anybody. | ||
| He gets people so mad. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| But still, it's a big weight. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's a big weight what you need to handle, what you know how. | ||
| How to handle that. | ||
| Well, it's also that big weight weighs on you as well. | ||
| It doesn't just weigh on your opponent. | ||
| When you talk a lot of shit, it puts extra weight on you. | ||
| And that can get you out of line. | ||
| The additional pressure. | ||
| You might hear the audience boo when they introduce you. | ||
| You're like, oh shit, what have I done? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's right. | |
| Not everybody has this big self-confidence. | ||
| To keep that. | ||
| Yeah, it's an interesting aspect, but I don't like... | ||
| If I had to choose one way or the other, I would say just fight. | ||
| There's no need to talk shit. | ||
| We should behave like martial artists. | ||
| You know, my attitude about that is a true self-confident man, a true man who overcome... | ||
| And understand his body, his mind, the opponent's mind and body and his mind don't need to... | ||
| That guy don't need to talk shit. | ||
| Doesn't matter to show that to others, to the crowd, or to fear the opponent. | ||
| Because why? | ||
| I know that and all... | ||
| I don't need to make this show to anybody because I know what will happen. | ||
| I have this self-confidence. | ||
| The thing about talking shit, though, it does make you more money because it does cause more people to pay attention. | ||
| A good example of someone who doesn't need to talk shit but talks a lot of shit and becomes successful is Gordon Ryan. | ||
| You know Gordon Ryan, the jiu-jitsu champion? | ||
| That's his belt up there? | ||
| That's his Abu Dhabi belt? | ||
| Gordon talks a lot of shit. | ||
| And he's the greatest of all time. | ||
| And he still talks a lot of shit. | ||
| That's him. | ||
| But that's also why he's so popular. | ||
| It's because people talk shit back to him and there's a lot of back and forth on social media. | ||
| The most important thing is to be him. | ||
| To be not like, to play it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| To play it. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| To be true yourself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When you are like that, okay, be a bad guy or whatever. | ||
| Just show yourself. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Who are you for real? | ||
| Express who you are in there. | ||
| And you might not even like who you are after it. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So a lot of guys, that aggression, especially after a loss, it leads them to a place where they're like, I don't even like how I behave. | ||
| I don't even like me. | ||
| Especially with the bad feelings of a loss. | ||
| So when you have all this aggression and shit talking and then a loss and a bad loss and you have this feeling of like... | ||
| I was an asshole, and I lost. | ||
| And the crowd cheered when I lost. | ||
| Like, fuck. | ||
| That's the game they play, though. | ||
| That's the game, and this is something what is for me, I can't forget for myself, because I want to show really true myself, so I can't talk shit. | ||
| Yeah, you've got to be yourself. | ||
| That's me. | ||
| Yeah, you can't, especially now. | ||
| If you try to become an asshole now, everybody would be confused. | ||
| Like, what's going on if you took a heel turn? | ||
| I am an asshole. | ||
| But so big ones, so I need to keep myself so straight. | ||
| So I can't do that because that will be... | ||
| Just, like I said, ego line. | ||
| I will show you just this one line. | ||
| No, I need to show you the center. | ||
| You need to be pure. | ||
| You need to be you with no bullshit. | ||
| And that's how you perform at your best. | ||
| So after a fight like this, there was a lot of... | ||
| I brought back to the Luke Thomas video. | ||
| He was saying, like, you could be a middleweight champion. | ||
| If you fought at 208, that's a lot lighter probably than Drekas Duplessis. | ||
| Drekas is huge. | ||
| I look at him, I was like, how does Drekas make 185? | ||
| He's so big. | ||
| Have you thought about that? | ||
| I know there was some talk about that at one point in time. | ||
| Yes, I thought about that. | ||
| But the main thing for me is, right now I see the way in light heavyweight because I'm just... | ||
| One of the strongest guys in this division. | ||
| And I still feel like there is a way in light heavyweight. | ||
| And I said to myself, like, okay, you can go to the middleweight, but first show the consistency in light heavyweight. | ||
| Take a belt, then you can, with a belt from light heavyweight, you can fight for the belt in the middleweight. | ||
| To be a double champion. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, it's interesting because weight cutting is, in my opinion, the worst aspect of the sport. | ||
| Josh Barnett was just talking about this. | ||
| He was on the Ariel Helwani show and he was talking about the dangers of weight cutting in reference to Armand Saroukian's having to pull out of that fight. | ||
| Armand is big. | ||
| He's big. | ||
| When I stand next to him, I cannot believe he makes 155. He's very muscular, very dense, and very lean. | ||
| And so for him to make 155, it must be an absolutely brutal weight cut. | ||
| I gotta think he weighs 180 easy. | ||
| Maybe more. | ||
| He's big. | ||
| And I think when he's out of camp, I bet he weighs closer to 200. I mean, he's fucking thick, man. | ||
| So for a guy like that... | ||
| Why do you do that? | ||
| Why they don't fight in higher weight class? | ||
| Well, the thing is, at that weight class, Islam Makachev is so fucking good. | ||
| And he's so big. | ||
| He's another one. | ||
| You stand next to him, you're like, how the fuck does this guy make 170? | ||
| And he was actually talking about his first fight with Alexander Volkanovski. | ||
| And one of the problems that he faced was that... | ||
| The fight was very early Australia time so that it could be on pay-per-view in America. | ||
| So he was getting ready at 5 a.m. | ||
| So he did not have the time to recover from the weight cut from the previous day. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So instead of having a full 24 plus hours, so if you're weighing in at 10 o'clock in the morning now, what time did you weigh in in Los Angeles? | ||
| Eight. | ||
| Eight in the morning. | ||
| Eight in the morning. | ||
| So eight in the morning, and then you have a full 36 hours plus before you fight. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Which is plenty of time to recover and rehydrate. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| But he did not get that with the Volkanovski fight, and you saw it in his performance. | ||
| He didn't look as good. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because he's fucking big, man. | ||
| I think weight cutting should be eliminated. | ||
| I said this to Ari Emanuel when they first bought the UFC. I said, listen, man, you know what you should do? | ||
| Get rid of weight cutting. | ||
| Just stop it. | ||
| Look, if you can randomly test people for drugs, you can randomly test their weight. | ||
| Show up with a scale. | ||
| Hey, buddy, step on the scale. | ||
| You're 190 pounds. | ||
| How the fuck are you making 145? | ||
| Do something like that. | ||
| And come up with more weight classes. | ||
| There should be a weight class every 10 pounds. | ||
| This idea of these giant gaps like 185 to 205, that's a 20 pound gap. | ||
| That's huge. | ||
| That doesn't exist in boxing. | ||
|
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That's right. | |
| They should have every 10 pounds. | ||
| 85, 95, 205, 225, and then unlimited. | ||
| Instead of 265, let them weigh whatever the fuck they weigh. | ||
| These got giant guys out there that can't fight in the UFC because they can't make 265. Which is kind of crazy. | ||
| Bigfoot Silva, when he was at his prime, when he was saucy, he was like 300 pounds. | ||
| He was fucking huge. | ||
| I like the way they're open weights. | ||
| Yeah, open weight, not 265. Let Francis Ngana weigh whatever the fuck he weighs when he doesn't cut weight. | ||
| He probably weighs like 290. Instead of having weight cuts, just take the champions, find out what the champion weighs. | ||
| Don't get rid of the championship belts. | ||
| Find out what does Islam Makachev weigh. | ||
| Islam Makachev is a UFC champion, best pound-for-pound fighter on earth. | ||
| Find out what he weighs. | ||
| What do you weigh if you were healthy, if weight cutting didn't exist? | ||
| Would it be 185? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| 190? | ||
| Whatever that is. | ||
| That's how you fight now. | ||
| And we're not going to weigh you in the day before and let you rehydrate. | ||
| That's crazy talk. | ||
| Fight people your size. | ||
| And also, the fights would be better, because too many guys get depleted horribly by these weights. | ||
| Like Max Holloway said, he would never make 145 again after he fought Ilya Toporia. | ||
| He's like, I can't do it anymore. | ||
| Because he had gone up to 55, he got thicker, and then he went back to 45. He's just drained. | ||
| He just wasn't himself. | ||
| He didn't look good. | ||
| So, I think that would be... | ||
| And I know this is not an easy thing to do. | ||
| But I do think it's just like getting steroids out of fighting. | ||
| When they brought in USADA, when USADA came in, you saw people's physiques melt. | ||
| You saw people that were doing steroids on a regular basis and gaming the system and testing negative on the day of the fight, but all throughout their camp they were using, you saw their bodies change. | ||
| They had started looking like doughy and flabby because they didn't have any testosterone anymore because they had fucked up their endocrine systems. | ||
| Allowing that they brought in USADA and USADA started randomly testing and a lot of people fell off. | ||
| Great champions fell off. | ||
| Guys like Vitor Belfort fell off. | ||
| Great fighters who when they were using were unbelievably good, but then as soon as they had to be natural. | ||
| Okay, so we realized that we're gonna have to sacrifice some fighters for that. | ||
| This is the same approach that should be made with weight cutting. | ||
| Weight cutting should not exist. | ||
| It's terrible for you. | ||
| It's unnecessary. | ||
| It's not necessary. | ||
| It's just sanctioned cheating that we've done forever. | ||
| If you're telling me that Alex Pereira, when he fought Israel Adesanya, he weighed 185 one day and 226 the next day. | ||
| That's crazy! | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy! | ||
| It's not a slight against Alex because Alex is willing to fight heavyweight. | ||
| He's willing to fight what he wears. | ||
| Weight cutting is something that exists. | ||
| It's sanctioned. | ||
| They allow it to happen. | ||
| They know what's going on, and it's cheating. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| They're not really 170 pounds. | ||
| That guy's 195. He's depleted and dried out, and then he's going to swell back up again, and he's going to look huge the next day. | ||
| Everything is evolving. | ||
| Yes, they should evolve that because for the safety of the fighters, for the safety of the fighters, it's not good to dehydrate your brain 24 hours before a cage fight. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| It's dumb. | ||
| But nobody's gonna listen to me. | ||
| Nobody listens to me, Yuri. | ||
| Nobody! | ||
| Maybe off to DCI. I don't think they should even have cages. | ||
| I think it should be an open floor. | ||
| I think it should be an open floor like a basketball court. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I think the cage allows you to get up when you wouldn't ordinarily be able to get up. | ||
| You could walk, wall walk. | ||
| The cage allows someone to press you up against an unnatural object. | ||
| There's a cage there. | ||
| So you could press a guy up against a cage. | ||
| Whereas if you were standing in the center, you could do Muay Thai sweeps. | ||
| You could rotate around each other. | ||
| There'd be more action. | ||
| There'd be more movement. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I also think if someone takes you down at the beginning of the first round, at the end of the round, you're on your back, you start. | ||
| Start that second round in the same position. | ||
| Yeah, you see that like, yeah, I have the similar rift of the fighting. | ||
| First, I thought like, why there is a ruse? | ||
| Why there is a... | ||
| Eye gouging. | ||
| Eye pokes is not allowed. | ||
|
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So I'm glad after this last fight, it's not allowed. | |
| It shouldn't be allowed, but it's very effective. | ||
| Man, yeah, but... | ||
| Show all your weapon of your body how you can defeat this man. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| One against one. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Yes, one against one. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| And the minimal amount of rules possible. | ||
| You know another thing that I think they should do? | ||
| And I'm going to talk to Dana about this this week. | ||
| Cover the fingers. | ||
| There's no reason to have these fingers exposed. | ||
| It doesn't help anything. | ||
| It doesn't help grappling. | ||
| You never grapple like this, right? | ||
| You never use the fingers. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Nobody does. | ||
| You do this, or you do this, or you do different things with your hands, but your fingers are always closed. | ||
| But still the feeling. | ||
| Still the feeling. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| But the problem is the pokes. | ||
| Because everybody does this. | ||
| Because you're used to sparring with gloves on. | ||
| So allow the eye pokes. | ||
| Man, everybody, you know what will happen? | ||
| Everybody will be more prepared for every possible attack for an eye because eye is the weapon too. | ||
| I can speak about that because I'm using that like I see. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| Maybe it's weird, yeah. | ||
| The problem is you don't want people to go blind. | ||
| Like Michael Bisping can't see out of his right eye. | ||
| I feel like for the sake of the athlete's future... | ||
| Everybody will took every fucking... | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| You can swear. | ||
| Every fight. | ||
| Every fight. | ||
| So seriously. | ||
| So preparation will be so... | ||
| And every people in the crowd will watch that with the... | ||
| Man. | ||
| In this fight there can happen something what after that fight we will not can nobody can change right right so we will like the fighters we will speak better perform better train better be prepared to die right and not like just in our mind just to die To show the best performance. | ||
| I mean that philosophically. | ||
| You have to stop thinking and be in the moment and all these things. | ||
| But that's what we are right now speaking about. | ||
| Ancient fights, like about the fight for a life. | ||
| Real fight. | ||
| Yeah, real fight. | ||
| No rules at all. | ||
| Do you think maybe get rid of cups too and allow kicks to the balls? | ||
| That's real. | ||
| It's a real target. | ||
| It's a vulnerability of the human body to ignore vulnerabilities of the human body. | ||
| It sounds weird, especially in this age of the full of loss and all these things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's... | ||
| That's how I see that. | ||
| We are living in the age where the laws and the system is working. | ||
| So we have to put some system on the fighting too. | ||
| Eddie Bravo actually came up with an idea. | ||
| He was joking around, but he wanted to call it ultimate sack fighting, where you would allow to kick a guy in the balls and your balls would be exposed. | ||
| It's like when the balls are in play, the game changes. | ||
| And the idea was that your balls are so vulnerable, but yet you cover them like a tie cup. | ||
| And that if they didn't, if the balls were hanging out, like your chin is hanging out, that it would change everything. | ||
| He was just joking around. | ||
| It was very funny that the guy who would win would just have iron balls. | ||
| But nobody has iron balls. | ||
| I mean, the human body... | ||
| It has the eye pokes and ball shots. | ||
| Bizarre vulnerabilities. | ||
| You didn't saw the monks? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How were they kicking? | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| I think they're just hitting each other in the tank. | ||
| I think their balls are tucked up. | ||
| I think otherwise it doesn't make any sense that you could just slam your foot. | ||
| Because also the way they're doing it, the monks, they're kicking up. | ||
| They're kicking up. | ||
| So I think they're just slamming their shin, instep into the taint. | ||
| It's not really the balls. | ||
| Like if you front kick that monk in the balls, just front snap. | ||
| It would fall down dead. | ||
| Nobody has iron balls. | ||
| Nobody has iron eyeballs either, you know? | ||
| The problem with eyeballs is, yeah, these guys. | ||
| Yeah, see how he's doing that? | ||
| He's getting kicked in the taint. | ||
| I can even see the way his sack has pulled up. | ||
| See that little thing that he's got on there? | ||
| But still he's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He probably has little balls too, unfortunately. | ||
| It's stupid. | ||
| Either way, that's stupid. | ||
| If that was the only way, like if you could train that way, you know, like a lot of the Thais, they kick banana trees and kick sandbags. | ||
| You know, we have a sandbag out there. | ||
| It's so brutal to kick. | ||
| But if you do that enough, you'll develop those micro-fractures on your shins, and it'll make your shins much tougher. | ||
| You can't make your balls tougher. | ||
| You can't make your balls tougher. | ||
| Yeah, I think there is no... | ||
|
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This guy just punched himself in the dick. | |
| This is so ridiculous. | ||
| This is so ridiculous. | ||
| Oh no! | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| Oh no, don't do it! | ||
| Oh god! | ||
| He's getting slammed in the nuts by a log. | ||
| These guys just hit each other in the balls. | ||
| But again, I think if you step to one of those guys and front snap kicked him right in the balls, I think they'd fall down. | ||
| This is stupid. | ||
| What I realized when I saw a lot of masters of these Kung Fu doing these weird stuff and all these things. | ||
| So there is a way to like about obsession of the martial arts, of doing something in your life to the deepest level. | ||
| But still, this is a fighting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is about the win. | ||
| So... | ||
| I don't know if this will help you to really defeat the... | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| Especially this is just defense? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, so you are prepared to defense your boss. | ||
| So, man, really, like... | ||
| Think about it in real. | ||
| Don't give it too much on this side of an art of just doing... | ||
| It's good to know one thing. | ||
| One, two. | ||
| Really, really deeply so you can timing that in every situation to know how to do this movement in every situation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These movements they're not an effective use of your time. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, it's not gonna help you be a better fighter It's there's a lot of ancient movements that are probably good for the development of your consciousness And they're probably good overall for your ability to be a better martial artist because they teach you certain movements Which are almost like a form like kata a lot of people talk about forms and they say it's a waste of time But I think it's a moving meditation I used to think it was a waste of time when I was a young man. | ||
| When I got my black belt, I just learned the katas and then afterwards I had forgotten them. | ||
| I just learned them so that I could pass the next test and then once I knew all the forms and the katas, I didn't care anymore. | ||
| I just wanted to fight. | ||
| But all these moves are written in your body. | ||
| Maybe you don't realize that yet, but in the hardest situation, Maybe one move will jump up and bomb. | ||
| Because you've trained your system about those things. | ||
| Like the Neo in the Matrix. | ||
| I know the Kung Fu. | ||
| They think they're going to be able to do that now. | ||
| I was just reading an article about that and they were comparing it to Neo and the Matrix. | ||
| They think they're going to be able to download skills into people's brains. | ||
| Man, it's... | ||
| Which sucks. | ||
|
unidentified
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But it sucks because I want them to learn the way you learned. | |
| I think, no, man, there is the ego, the force. | ||
| The force. | ||
| We will do that by... | ||
| I will take it and there it is. | ||
| Dimitri. | ||
| That's Dimitri. | ||
| Dimitri, hey. | ||
| And instead of like to take a, find a real snake and whatever, I cannot describe on the snake. | ||
| I know what you're saying. | ||
| Train those movements. | ||
| So when the punch comes, you block, you counter. | ||
| And then that it's in your mind. | ||
| You will take some information. | ||
| And by the force, you will give it in yourself to, I don't know, which form you meant. | ||
|
unidentified
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Like the matrix we spoke. | |
| Let's Google that, because Jamie will find the article. | ||
| Maybe like Elon Musk had that... | ||
| Neuralink. | ||
| Yeah, Neuralink or something like that. | ||
| I don't think it was that invasive. | ||
| I think it was some other technology. | ||
| That they think they're going to be able to utilize. | ||
| Scientists use matrix-style learning to write skills into human brains, see, non-invasively. | ||
| So they don't have to inject anything, put a wire in your brain. | ||
| Techniques use real-time brain imagery and neurofeedback. | ||
| It bypasses learning processes that require effort, study, or practice. | ||
| With our method, not only can we nudge complex patterns around in the brain towards known ones, but also, for the first time, write directly a new pattern into the brain and measure what effect that has on a person's behavior, said Dr. Coraline Lorden, lead author of the study and assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And this is the one side. | ||
| The second side. | ||
| How I'm taking that is about... | ||
| Right now I have no antenna. | ||
| But it's not just about the hair. | ||
| It's about to be open, to be connected with the consciousness. | ||
| And there, I don't know how it's working, but it's working to be just connected for... | ||
| All the information, whatever happened and will happen, is there in this moment, right here, right now. | ||
| And it's just about the state, if you can be really connected for that. | ||
| Because I don't know where. | ||
| Many moves, I didn't... | ||
| Rehearse them. | ||
| I didn't train. | ||
| They just came out while you're fighting. | ||
| And they just came out. | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| And in the fighting, in the fight, and I don't know where, and I didn't train spinning elbow. | ||
| Never. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Never, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I didn't train that. | ||
| Never. | ||
| That's crazy! | ||
| And just follow... | ||
| You just saw it. | ||
| It was just there. | ||
| I'm just following the flow, following the movement, because there is one elbow. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You have to... | ||
| And it's going really slow. | ||
| You have a second... | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| Yeah, you have the second elbow. | ||
| We'll see it here. | ||
| Use that. | ||
| Boom, boom, bam. | ||
| And between one and second one, there was a long conversation of, you can do that. | ||
| Try to do that. | ||
| Okay, I don't believe that. | ||
| No, do that, please. | ||
| This was such a phenomenal exchange. | ||
| People love that antenna, too. | ||
| They love that crazy hair. | ||
| Are you going to bring that back? | ||
| I liked you like this. | ||
| Yeah, I... Streamlined. | ||
| The thing I'm worried about that antenna, like, that could get caught in something. | ||
| The what? | ||
| It could get caught. | ||
| Like, if you're in a submission situation, and you know how people grab shorts? | ||
| I don't think anyone should wear shorts either. | ||
| I think you should wear tights. | ||
| Maybe I can grab it, like, in some choke. | ||
| You could. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| Yeah, you could. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| You could, and it would be legal. | ||
| Dominic Rez caught me in a guillotina. | ||
| And I was there and I said, fuck, I have the hair, big fucking hair. | ||
| I can't give the heads up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. | |
| That was the problem in that moment. | ||
| Yeah, I think shaved is better for you, but it looks cool. | ||
| And that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Like, it's not about... | ||
| Right now, I feel like it's not about the hair. | ||
| It's not about anything. | ||
| It's just about... | ||
| To be there. | ||
| Be here and now. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| No bullshit. | ||
| Just be in the moment. | ||
| Especially right now. | ||
| You have all this momentum on your side because of that spectacular victory. | ||
| So you must be very energized right now. | ||
| You must be really feeling like you're on the right path. | ||
| Yeah, but still. | ||
| This state and this feeling have the two sides. | ||
| So that's why I... Because I know how it is to be a champion. | ||
| How is all these feelings? | ||
| And still, how is... | ||
| What is the... | ||
| To not be the champion. | ||
| To really... | ||
| Lost like a... | ||
| Like a shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fell on the ground like a shit after... | |
| And... | ||
| So... | ||
| I realized that it's about... | ||
| To be just here right now. | ||
| To be just here right now in this moment and show true yourself. | ||
| Not playing. | ||
| You don't do stupid shit. | ||
| Don't have the war hair. | ||
| Be angry. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just be. | |
| That's it. | ||
| Show your true self. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| And that's what I like on the States, on America. | ||
| Everywhere, like, they are okay with that, to show yourself, true yourself. | ||
| And we, in Europe, we have some special thinking about America. | ||
| Like, there is something better than everywhere. | ||
| And you, here, just... | ||
| Pushing more to everyone to just live through yourself. | ||
| And maybe I'm wrong. | ||
| No, you're right. | ||
|
unidentified
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But... | |
| Freedom. | ||
| This is... | ||
| Freedom. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| Freedom allows you to be your best self. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And this is something what, man, what is for me so inspirational. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But still, it's a gift, a big gift, but a big... | ||
| How to say? | ||
| Big weight. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Big responsibility. | ||
| Responsibility. | ||
| Because if you don't know how to work with the gun, it can be dangerous. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With great power comes great responsibility. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where... | ||
| You sit right now at the top of the heap. | ||
| Like, after Ankulaev, especially after that performance, it's very likely that either you or a lot of people, forgetting about Jan Bochowicz, always like to give him his props because Jan Bochowicz is still one of the best fighters in the world. | ||
| And I would like to see him get another shot because he's also 41 or 42, I think, now. | ||
| And, you know, he doesn't have much time left in his prime. | ||
| Jan has maintained, like, even at 40 years old, still, it doesn't show any signs of deterioration. | ||
| That's right, man. | ||
| When I thought about my next opponents, there was just, like, these guys. | ||
| Ankalaev, Pereira. | ||
| The Pereira's most, but let's see how the negotiations will be. | ||
| The Pereira, Ankalaev, and maybe the Bakovic. | ||
| So these three guys I see. | ||
| Still, there I see the challenge. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The challenge, because I want to go somewhere where I will feel I can... | ||
| Because every time, when there is a challenge, there is a new you. | ||
| There is something new, what you need to overcome, what you need to rule, what you need to observe. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They're the elite level of the game. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, Jan Bohovic, he's one of the, I think, the only guys to go the distance with Pereira other than Bruno Silva, right? | ||
| Yeah, because he have the hands up. | ||
| Also, that guy's made out of iron. | ||
| I mean, I'll never forget the fight with Ankoliyev when he was just going shin to shin with Ankoliyev, and Ankoliyev could barely walk. | ||
| Jan Bohovic is made out of rocks, man. | ||
| Man, I thought, like, he won that fight, but... | ||
| Very close. | ||
| Very close fight, but you could definitely see... | ||
| Giving it to Jan Bojovic. | ||
| There's a lot of those fights. | ||
| Here's another thing that I think should happen in the UFC. I think we need more than three judges. | ||
| I don't even think that the judges, some judges are very good. | ||
| I think the judging in California was very good. | ||
| I think overall, I think we need at least five judges. | ||
| I think three is too little. | ||
| I think we need, because there's too many times where two judges get it wrong, and the crowd is like, what the fuck? | ||
| I think if you had five judges, then you have two judges that would counterbalance that other, and there'd be three-two in the right direction, and you'd get a good result. | ||
| I think you're more likely to get a good result, an accurate result of what the fans and the experts see about the result of a fight, than you would if there was only three judges. | ||
| Or fighting to win. | ||
| Yeah, fighting to win. | ||
| Well, that's the, I mean, what Gordon likes to do. | ||
| Gordon Ryan likes to do is no time limit fights. | ||
| He does no time limit fights with no points. | ||
| We're going to submission. | ||
| This is what this game is about. | ||
| It's a bit me strangling you. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Imagine that if they started doing the UFC like the old UFC. Like UFC 1, no rules. | ||
| Maybe for somebody it will be a little bit... | ||
| They will not like it because maybe sometimes it will be long. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| So what? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's fighting. | ||
| Yeah, that's fighting. | ||
| People watch baseball. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No offense against baseball, but that shit's boring as fuck compared to fighting. | ||
| You know what's my theory about that? | ||
| So there is sports, a lot of sports, but the first one, first sport, first... | ||
|
unidentified
|
First version of sports? | |
| First version of... | ||
| A version of sport was like one man wants to overcome the second man. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And it came from... | ||
| DNA. From DNA, from fight. | ||
| From fight for this piece of... | ||
| From being caveman. | ||
| From food. | ||
| From eat, from food. | ||
| Fighting predators. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| That's why it came from. | ||
| And in the time, there was like, let's... | ||
| Let's do another competition. | ||
| Another competition. | ||
| To not be... | ||
| So violent. | ||
| So violent. | ||
| But to be honest, the realest one competition is the one man against the second man. | ||
| That's why that sport translates through all languages. | ||
| It's the only sport that translates... | ||
| Like cricket. | ||
| Cricket is huge in other parts of the world. | ||
| Nobody watches cricket in America. | ||
| In other parts of the world, billions of people watch cricket. | ||
| Nobody gives a fuck about cricket here. | ||
| Put cricket on TV, no one's gonna watch. | ||
| And we, in a time, we gave some rules, the kimonos, all these things. | ||
| No, let's... | ||
| Well, that was the beauty of the first UFC. The first UFC was just wild. | ||
| No weight classes, no... | ||
| No real rules other than eye pokes. | ||
| Joe Son was fighting Keith Hackney, and Keith Hackney was caught in a guillotine, and he's just punching Joe Son in the balls. | ||
| It's a famous scene. | ||
| Do you remember that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I remember watching that going, oh, this is awful. | |
| This is awful. | ||
| There's another one in Brazil. | ||
| Big Daddy Goodrich was fighting this guy named the Pedro. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| Just pure nut shots. | ||
| Just one after the other, right to the balls. | ||
| This was horrible to watch. | ||
| Show me the monk training. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| If he's wearing a cup... | ||
| Especially if he's wearing a tie cup, a steel cup, which I also think should be illegal. | ||
| I don't think you should have steel cups because steel cups act as a leverage point as well. | ||
| Not only that, you could break your foot on it. | ||
| It's an unnatural object. | ||
| And then if you get someone in an arm bar with a steel cup, you could break it. | ||
| It's an extra leverage point. | ||
| It's like bending a stick over a rock. | ||
| Use it like a weapon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Kenny Florian used to always fight with a tie steel cup. | ||
| He's like, I don't know why anybody would fight with anything else because it hurts them when they kick me. | ||
| Yeah, and it really is like a good leverage point. | ||
| It's also good for the mount. | ||
| If somebody mounts you, there was a guy that I used to train with, Amir Renovardi, and he used to get on top of you and mount you and drive his cup, drive his dick in your solar plexus, and you'd want to tap. | ||
| It was horrible. | ||
| But it was smart. | ||
| I mean, if it's legal, it's a smart thing. | ||
| Find a way between the laws. | ||
| Imagine if nobody had cups, if cups were illegal. | ||
| There'd be so much more nut shots. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Maybe somebody will find a way how to jump with these couple to do a face. | ||
| Like those guys? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I don't think that's real. | ||
| I don't think that would work. | ||
| But other than that, you know, the rules, they're pretty good. | ||
| They're getting a little bit better. | ||
| I'd like knees on the ground as well. | ||
| Knees to the head. | ||
| I don't think a pro should be allowed to be in a turtle when your head is vulnerable. | ||
| You have to move. | ||
| You have to avoid those knees. | ||
| Like before my last fight right now. | ||
| The referee, sorry, I didn't, with the big mustache. | ||
| Oh, Mike Beltran. | ||
| Mike Beltran, yes. | ||
| Sorry, Mike Beltran. | ||
| Because he's a good guy. | ||
| And he tried to tell me, like, how to, when, because I didn't know that. | ||
| The change of the rules? | ||
| The change of the rules. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Like, when the hand's down. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When it's not the elbow, when the hand's down. | ||
| You're staying and the legs and hands down, you can knee the opponent to the head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Still. | ||
| So, man, that's... | ||
| That's better. | ||
| That's better. | ||
| Much better. | ||
| Much better. | ||
| Because guys were gaming the system. | ||
| They put a hand down so they couldn't get knee in the face. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| That doesn't make any sense. | ||
| You should not be doing that. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good rule that they changed. | ||
| Another rule is the 12-6 elbow. | ||
| That should be legal, too. | ||
| And now that's legal again. | ||
| That's the only reason for Jon Jones ever having a loss. | ||
| You know, so there's... | ||
| There's good movement on the rules. | ||
| Ryzen allowed knees to the head to a grounded opponent and kicking. | ||
| Did you get accustomed to that and have to, like, get that out of your system when you came to the UFC? Was there any moments where you thought about throwing a soccer kick? | ||
| No, no, I didn't thought about that, but when you are still in the control, in the fighting, what's, I think, the biggest... | ||
| Biggest thing of the fighter in the fighting to stay in, in the control. | ||
| So you know what to do, what can't to do. | ||
| But there's moments when you don't control yourself too much. | ||
| So it's dangerous. | ||
| But in racing I used that. | ||
| I did that like I think twice. | ||
| Yeah, it's very effective. | ||
| It should be allowed. | ||
| I think it should be allowed. | ||
| I think the only problem with soccer kicks is the cage. | ||
| So the cage, if your head is right there and you get stomped, you can't move. | ||
| So it's the unnatural barrier of the cage that's the problem. | ||
| That's why I think basketball court. | ||
| Yeah, matted down basketball court. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Just two men in the center of it. | ||
| Have a warning track where you go outside the warning track. | ||
| Too many times you lose points because you're trying to avoid the fight. | ||
| Plenty of movement. | ||
| Plenty of time to room. | ||
| And if someone gets you down. | ||
| I was just trying to imagine that. | ||
| It's better. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| It's much better. | ||
| It's better. | ||
| Because you wouldn't be able to just stall the fight out by holding someone against the cage. | ||
| Because sometimes when fighters are exhausted, they'll just clinch against the cage to try to catch their breath. | ||
| That wouldn't be... | ||
| Allowed. | ||
| You couldn't do it. | ||
| There would be no opportunity to do that. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| Also, if you got taken down, you'd have to get up with skill. | ||
| You can't just use the cage to get up. | ||
| It's very hard, especially if you got a great wrestler like Islam on top of you. | ||
| Very hard to get up any other way than wall walking. | ||
| Just right now, I'm thinking about it. | ||
| I think about the... | ||
| What's the name of the movie? | ||
| Hunger Games. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just to put somebody and somebody somewhere, and they will find each other's... | ||
| In the natural environment. | ||
| And they will fight together and everybody will watch that. | ||
| So give them weapons. | ||
| Have you seen those? | ||
| They do have people with armor on fighting sword fights now. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Just a matter of time before they take that armor off. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| In some crazy country. | ||
| Some wilder country. | ||
| Million dollar purse. | ||
| You fight with swords. | ||
| Then you're back to the Roman days, the Colosseum. | ||
| Yeah, but still, how I see that, when we are going higher in understanding everything, we have to go... | ||
| Maybe I'm wrong. | ||
| Deeper in these raw things. | ||
| We want to see more raw, because to be not... | ||
| You understand me? | ||
| Yes, I do because the consequences are higher. | ||
| You have to get more pure. | ||
| So, balance. | ||
| Did you ever read any Miyamoto Musashi? | ||
| You know I read. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| I don't even have to ask. | ||
| But the Book of Five Rings, he talks about that because Miyamoto Musashi was such a great sword fighter that he believed the only way to fight at your best is you have to be a balanced person. | ||
| Very balanced. | ||
| You have to be an artist. | ||
| You have to be able to do calligraphy and write poetry. | ||
| You can't just be aggression. | ||
| You have to be completely balanced. | ||
| And he believed in that so strongly and taught that so strongly in the Book of Five Rings that if you think about how he applied it to sword fighting, it makes sense. | ||
| Everything what you're saying makes sense. | ||
| Because you have to be completely pure when it's just two men and swords. | ||
| You can't have any bullshit. | ||
| You can't let the ego get you on the wrong line because you're not just going to get punched in the face. | ||
| You're going to lose your head. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| There is no time. | ||
| And that's why I don't like it. | ||
| There is no time for talking. | ||
| There is no time for a bad word in your talk. | ||
| No time for a bad move in the fighting. | ||
| So, your mind has to stay controlled, stay present, and do nothing that's not useful for this moment. | ||
| Right now, we are natural here. | ||
| But when our life will... | ||
| These podcasts, these talking... | ||
| Maybe when you will not talk everything honestly, it will cost you a life. | ||
| So we will pay attention to every word. | ||
| Because in that age of Miyamoto Musashi, even the word can cost somebody's life. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So that's why they were so precise in everything. | ||
| That's the Japan. | ||
| Every movement, even the teapot, even the tea ritual is the art. | ||
| So that's why they were so precise in the thinking. | ||
| In expressing your true self, not just talking, whatever, motherfucker, hey, how are you? | ||
| Hey, what's up? | ||
| This is something that I don't like to America. | ||
| Everybody asks you, hey, how are you? | ||
| And they don't care about your answer. | ||
| And I want to stay in. | ||
| Hey, I'm great. | ||
| How are you today? | ||
| No, he's don't care and he's going somewhere. | ||
| So why ask me, why are you doing this? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's a figure of speech, unfortunately. | ||
| But still. | ||
| It's a kind figure of speech. | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| I know. | ||
| But it's not real. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But it's not real. | ||
| They don't really care what you're doing. | ||
| They don't care how are you. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| It's Kaizen. | ||
| Let's be real, but sometimes don't push it too much to the I'm important, every my word is important, every movement. | ||
| So the true power is coming with lightness, to be lightness. | ||
| And lightness is not to take it so much seriously and take it too... | ||
| Too much light, so taking like, don't care about what I'm saying. | ||
| So some... | ||
| Balance. | ||
| Balance. | ||
| It's just balance. | ||
| It's constant balance and staying pure. | ||
| Is that what you're feeling when you stare your opponents down? | ||
| Because like, one of the fights with Pereira and the fight with Jamal Hill, you just lock on your opponent and you stare. | ||
| And is that what you're doing in that moment? | ||
| Just trying to be completely present? | ||
| Just empty yourself of all bullshit? | ||
| Yeah, this is the moment before the fight. | ||
| It's all about that. | ||
| Because there is no opponent. | ||
| There is just this moment. | ||
| I'm everywhere. | ||
| You're everywhere. | ||
| I like it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm everywhere. | |
| Yeah, but this is not something what I'm telling you that because I want to be... | ||
| Cool. | ||
| No, no, no, I don't think you are. | ||
| This is a real truth. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| So, now that you have this big victory, what happens next? | ||
| Do you wait for the UFC to call you? | ||
| Do you wait for Anka Live and Pereira to fight to see what happens next? | ||
| This is what I am right now, not expecting what I want to do, to see the fight. | ||
| If the fight will happen because they are... | ||
| Translating that so much this their fight so so let's see let's see who's the best and my attitude and right now I know that how I what to do to not to get better to do a real serious preparation to get prepared for Both of them, | ||
| doesn't matter who, and be ready for negotiation about the next fight. | ||
| I won a title, but I will let the life to give me who's before me right now. | ||
| Who's the challenge right now before me. | ||
| So it's just about whatever the challenge is, accept it, and then try to find your best self for this next performance as well. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| It's an exciting time for you, man. | ||
| How old are you right now? | ||
| 32. It's a perfect prime. | ||
| That's in your prime. | ||
| It's an exciting time. | ||
| Are you enjoying this life? | ||
| Yes, yes, yes, yes, enjoying. | ||
| But, man, a long time nobody asked me for these questions, so I didn't thought about that a long time. | ||
| But, yes. | ||
| Since I decide I want to go this way of the warrior, of a true man, to feel the true power and take it to my life and live with that, not just to feel that and go away, but to keep it in a daily life. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, I'm enjoying that. | ||
| And I don't know who said that. | ||
| Watch yourself like an art, like a David you are. | ||
| Right, you're making a masterpiece. | ||
| Make a masterpiece from your life. | ||
| And that's what I like to do in my meditations, to take a step up. | ||
| Watch yourself, watch where you're going, who you spend time with, where is your daily, what's your daily routines, how it makes it better, and then go into the deepest level of the present moment and live that. | ||
| And stay with these, your best ideas, what you are connected with. | ||
| Yes, so, yes, you ask me, yes, I live that. | ||
| But I didn't in the time, right now, I can say it right now, I didn't expect it will cost you. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| It will cost you your old personality and you will be reborn like a new personality. | ||
| But still, I know somebody, my spirit, whoever, choose that. | ||
| Because I know this is the way. | ||
| One of the things that I have to talk to you about was in the Alex Pereira fight, you thought that they were using... | ||
| Some magic spirits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Black magic, yeah. | |
| Black magic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why did you think that? | ||
| You know, okay, I will take it from another start. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| When I'm doing something, I'm doing that like, I'm extreme in everything what I'm doing. | ||
| So I want to go to the bottom, to the bottom of the, to the start where it's the source. | ||
| The source. | ||
| Of that. | ||
| Where it's going. | ||
| And the source of the spiritual world, of that question, what is the spiritual world? | ||
| Where the source is? | ||
| If there is some weapons, how they use that in the cage? | ||
| And I went in that... | ||
| So deep, so I get lost. | ||
| Really. | ||
| So I had no other chance just to totally close these doors. | ||
| Just believe that I am who I am. | ||
| To believe just... | ||
| For ideas which I started with, like the martial arts and all these things, and just be in the gym and train. | ||
| Don't do another of this bullshit, because with Pereira, I really get lost, and I started to believe to another people, to not just myself. | ||
| This is something, this is the way to the hell, when you start, stop believing yourself, your true yourself. | ||
| And when you start believing some spiritual guys who's trying to protect you or giving you something and trying to lead you and they know what's the best for you. | ||
| And that was my biggest school in this life, I think. | ||
| So yeah, that was my last preparation. | ||
| To just believe in myself. | ||
| Go to the gym and train. | ||
| Do a good camp. | ||
| Do a camp what was the first, your biggest inspiration. | ||
| So in Japan, I made a camp in Japan. | ||
| Then I made high-attitude training in Mexico. | ||
| Then I went back to my city, Bruno, for my guys. | ||
| My team and we made a solid good camp, hard camp and the last fight I'm happy that... | ||
| happy. | ||
| What is it about getting down to the source that made you think he was using black magic? | ||
| Yeah, it's every time a big No big difference. | ||
| No experience. | ||
| I said that. | ||
| That word. | ||
| Big power when you are... | ||
| Responsibility? | ||
| It's big responsibility. | ||
| Not just big responsibility. | ||
| We are... | ||
| I want to speak right now. | ||
| So I don't want to speak about that fully because still it is something what I am humble for and I can say This is it. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| Because everyone has their own way. | ||
| And nobody is, like even me, prepared for saying something, what can be for somebody, like, take it seriously, you know. | ||
| Maybe, man. | ||
| Again, I get lost in that. | ||
| So, the thing is, I just started to believe. | ||
| I will not speak about where is the magic, how to use the magic. | ||
| But you believed that there was magic working against you. | ||
| Man, and that was the biggest power for my opponent because I was focused for him. | ||
| Not for me. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And that's where the black magic lies. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Because it gets you outside of your own head. | ||
| Is that... | ||
| But is that black magic or is that just his presence as a champion? | ||
| Because the aura of a fighter is a weapon. | ||
| Israel Adesanya when he was in his prime had that. | ||
| Mike Tyson in his prime had that. | ||
| Anderson Silva had that. | ||
| There's an aura that champions have when they're in their prime that makes you think about them instead of yourself. | ||
| And it probably seems like black magic. | ||
| Yeah, but still, this is the... | ||
| Just for me, it's the pure self-confidence. | ||
| And to be pure self-confident... | ||
| You can't think about your opponent. | ||
| And that was something that I made. | ||
| That was something that I really went to another level. | ||
| So when you look at yourself now in this amazing performance against Jamal Hill, are you imagining yourself even better? | ||
| Are you constantly imagining yourself even more precise, even more accurate, even more effective? | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| But right now I'm more in reality about that. | ||
| Not just in imagination. | ||
| I want to see that in video. | ||
| I want to be real. | ||
| I want to see the results of my work. | ||
| All these things, real. | ||
| Not just think, like, still think about, I can be better, I can do this, but I, no. | ||
| I want to do, I want to be a champion, and I'm going for it, and I want to show that to everyone. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| And I will show that, and then, then we can speak about the black magic again. | ||
| No, because... | ||
| So right now you don't even want to concentrate on the idea of that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And to protect yourself from that, you just don't think about it and be in your own mind. | ||
| It's all about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's all about that because, like I said, the mind is a big, great to serve, but the baddest boss. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's why. | ||
| It can run away from you. | ||
| Yeah, that's why I had to go back to Japan, where my old belief started to go really deep, because there I started to be, I don't know how to say, not just inspired, but to live it, really live it, without no... | ||
| You know, anything. | ||
| In managing your mind, I'm sure one of the most important things is to not have a lot of negative influences, not have a lot of negative thoughts. | ||
| Do you spend any time on social media when you're in camp? | ||
| Yeah, but I'm doing just some posts and that's all. | ||
| Yeah, just post and go. | ||
| Just post and go, yeah. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's how to do it. | ||
| I'll post and maybe some answer to just a few of my friends. | ||
| And that's all. | ||
| No reading comments, no reading anything. | ||
| Because I'm here to, right now, I'm here to show you my way of the martial arts. | ||
| My way to the strength. | ||
| When I still feel the way. | ||
| And this is it. | ||
| What is the The days that you spend in darkness and silence. | ||
| What does that do for you? | ||
| Still, it's about exploring your mind. | ||
| Keep your mind disciplined. | ||
| Keep your thoughts on the ground. | ||
| Observe. | ||
| It's all about the mind. | ||
| And then about the training, because I trained there too. | ||
| In that dark, you mean that dark room? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, meditation, observing mind, follow your and find the best, the best of your, what you can, what you can achieve in this life, what you can If you can, if you want, really. | ||
| And this is the question what everybody have to answer to ourselves. | ||
| Which life we want to live? | ||
| Which thoughts are useful? | ||
| Which not? | ||
| Which I need to let go and which I want to keep in my life? | ||
| And so it's just a deep exploration of your own mind. | ||
| Yes, maybe because there is a lot of levels like imagination, see some visualizations, some life dreams. | ||
| All these things, because after three days there is an opening, the third eye is opening, and you can see truly who you are, and maybe sometimes somebody needs more days without food, so without food it's going to be more intensive. | ||
| Yeah, everything's going much faster. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| So when you started doing this, you do no food? | ||
| Do you just drink water when you're in there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And to understand me, all these things I'm doing because I really decide to use everything like a weapon in a fighting to use my mind, use my visualization, use everything. | ||
| And that's why I went to do this trip of the spirituality so deep because I thought there will be some special weapons that I can use in the fighting. | ||
| And the biggest special weapon is to be yourself, the realest yourself. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| That's the key. | ||
| That's the key. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, listen, brother, I'm a big fan. | ||
| I love watching you fight. | ||
| I really enjoyed talking to you. | ||
| I wish you nothing but success and I can't wait to see you get after it again. | ||
| And I'm very happy for you and your improvement. | ||
| The last fight was incredible. | ||
| And thank you for everything. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Tell everybody, do you have a website? | ||
| Do you have a website online? | ||
| What is your website? | ||
| I have just a brand. | ||
| You mean like... | ||
| Do you have a website or do you just have social media? | ||
| Social media, yeah, sure. | ||
| Social media, just Instagram, Yuri Prohaska. | ||
| Yuri Prohaska, yes. | ||
| Instagram, Twitter too. | ||
| Twitter is Yuri BJP. There it is. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| What does BJP stand for? | ||
| Wow, man. | ||
| This is... | ||
| Well, what I came from, the stand, that young Yiri, not young Yiri, the true Yiri, who's... | ||
| But UFC don't like that. | ||
| Because I'm trying to tell them, like, this is the best Yiri Prochaska. | ||
| But in the real, in Czech, is a Bombiak Pica. | ||
| That means, like, bombs as fuck. | ||
| So, because, yeah, that's it. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| So it's bomb as fuck Yuri Prohaska. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Looking for a biggest strength, that's all. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| This was awesome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Really appreciate you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. |
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