Cory Sandhagen reveals his brutal weight-cut routine—two gallons of water daily, sodium restriction, and garlic cloves to avoid cramps—while criticizing the UFC’s rehydration test for potential cheating. He contrasts MMA’s global unity with political tensions like UK Facebook arrests, calling tech censorship "un-American," and shares how Buddhist meditation and psychedelics reshaped his mindset from ego-driven aggression to controlled focus. Now trusting adaptability over rigid strategies, Sandhagen prepares for a Madison Square Garden fight, blending martial arts mastery with futuristic tech musings on AI’s role in human evolution. [Automatically generated summary]
So Fanatics Fest is, I was just at it on Sunday, but it's just like kind of like Comic-Con, but for athletes.
And Gage got to do like the Fanatics game, which is like a celebrity thing where it's like 50 pro athletes do it, 50 normal people, and they compete in a bunch of sports or whatever.
He said he won because he was good at golf, so the fucking guy won a Ferrari because he got second place.
Tom Brady got first.
He got a million dollars.
And then like a normal, like non-professional athlete got third place, got like 200K.
Trevor's one of those guys where I'm kind of similar too.
Like most things aren't stimulating enough.
Like TV, kind of playing on my phone isn't really super stimulating to me.
So like he's always like doing something.
So he's always like making shit.
But he'd be when I would go into Onyx, he'd just be in the back like with this smile, like working on the gloves like every single morning that he's there.
And the style that they have is real cool.
People keep asking me when they're going to come out with them.
They were a little bit curved, but honestly, I mean, maybe.
I mean, even if you bring it down like 10 percentages, I guess that's saving 10% of people's eyes.
Yeah.
But I mean, honestly, I don't think it was like significant enough to be like, oh, no one's going to poke me in the eyes when they're wearing these things.
Yeah, I mean, your hand is in a permanent position like this.
So for you to do that, it's an effort.
Which, when do you do that?
You only do that when you're blocking things or, you know, maybe, you know, when you're sliding an arm under, like you get a choke or something like that.
But I don't think they're specific, significantly bulkier.
They probably ran a number that was from like all of the years of the UFC, and then maybe just when they started using the new ones instead of like just last year, how many knockouts?
Like, you can actually feel like you could hit the person and not be like, sorry.
You know, because that's a pain in the ass when you always have to, when you get like a stiff pair of gloves and then you have to hit someone and you're just like, sorry, man, I know that.
I love watching you fight because it's like, it's so, you can see that the fighter, if they don't, and by the way, they're probably not used to training with somebody like you because there's not a lot of guys like you.
You could see how there's all these adjustments that they have to make on the fly that makes you think.
I mean, I always really looked up to all of the defensive guys that I would watch.
Like, I know that in boxing, defensive, just winning the defensive battle is a big piece in boxing.
And the judges almost even score a little bit for it.
But in MMA, it's just only offense scores.
So that's not really the way that I grew up thinking was good martial arts, really.
Because some of my favorite guys were Mayweather, Purnell Whitaker, Nanito Dinair, like all of these really awesome movers that did a phenomenal job at protecting themselves.
But now, man, people, I feel like even more so now people want more blood and more offense.
I mean, if you want to take, for example, too, like even like a me and a TJ fight, like TJ was limping out of that cage.
And I was kind of, you know, like, oh, cool.
You know, and I don't think that that should count for everything.
But like you're saying, like, the reason that he was limping out of that cage is because I popped his knee really bad.
You know, like he had to spend the next 18 months making his knee better so that he could fight again.
And I was able to fight, you know, pretty shortly afterwards.
So yeah, there's got to be something to that.
Like if you pop someone's shit really bad, it should count just as much as a knockdown or something like that.
What do you think about the idea of like 10-8 rounds for like things that are known, not just like, okay, this person won by a mile, but like in kickboxing, they do if you get knocked down in a round, it's automatically a 10-8 round.
I do, but if a guy is tuning you up for like the entire round and you clip him and drop him and he gets back up and he's still okay, I don't think that's a 10-8 round.
I think MMA should be a completely different scoring system than a 10-point must system.
Because I think the 10, we just stole this boxing system, which is a great system for boxing because you only have two weapons and you only have your hands.
You don't even have elbows, right?
So think about all the different factors in MMA and we're limited to 10 points.
To me, that seems silly.
I think it should probably be 10 points for each aspect of the sport.
Like, okay, who landed more kicks?
Who landed more punches?
And then calculate all that shit up together.
You know, who had more takedowns?
Who landed damage from the top?
It should be a comprehensive system.
And I think there should be more than three judges.
You know, when you have a split decision and some of them are so crazy, you see like a five-round split decision and they gave like four judges or two out of the three judges rather give like three out of five rounds and the other person gives them the whole five rounds.
Like this is too much variability.
There's too much weirdness to it.
And if you're a fighter, especially in MMA because of the win bonus, which also drives me crazy, I think if you had three more judges, so if you have sick judges, six judges would balance it out, six good judges.
So the ones that fuck up and make mistakes, they'll be canceled out by the better judges.
But again, the casuals would have a hard time with it because it would probably be a much more moderate pace unless someone just tries to go for it right off the bat.
Like, a fight like that where two guys just fuck, and Mota, like, basically emptied out the tank, but Sadikov had fantastic defense, just kept covering and moving, and just getting bombed onto the body and to the head.
But he looked like it was getting close to stop.
And all of a sudden he comes back and you see, Mota's taking these big, deep breaths.
You know, we were talking about Gai Chi and golf, and I was saying that I'm scared of golf.
And, you know, you were like, I don't have time for golf.
The thing that happens with golf is it takes so much time and it's so addictive.
That it's going to take away time from other stuff, no matter what you do.
And when you look at a guy, like I always point to Murab because the day after he beat Sean the first fight, DC went to his house to go talk to him and he was out running the day after.
Like that's a guy that does not stop.
And that extreme physicality and that extreme endurance because he is just constantly working, that means something.
It counts.
If you take months off, you take, you know, like, like this was the thing that I was thinking about with John Jones.
John Jones said he needed six months to prepare for Aspinol if he's going to fight Aspinol.
So they were trying to make a deal and then he decided to retire.
But it's six months because he's not training like at all.
Like he just doesn't train.
Like in between fights, just doesn't train.
He used to do that a lot when he was younger too, which I always thought was crazy.
Like, I want it to make sense in my head that like the harder you work, the more shit you'll get from it, you know, which is like true to an extent.
But then you have like these weird outlier guys that maybe have something more figured out than me that I don't have figured out or whatever.
But I mean, that to me is like completely unacceptable in my head.
Like I think that I really hate when people say that they want to be something and then they don't do any of the actions to like actually do that thing that they're saying that they want to be.
So I don't get to walk around being like, yeah, I'm going to be a world champion.
I want to be a world champ real bad and then not do any of the fucking actions.
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This is the thing.
When guys are that talented, they're playing with their food, essentially, until, you know, like I always point to with John the first Gustafson fight, which by all accounts, he didn't train.
I do think two people have different wired brains, too, where some people need like cool down time in order for them to.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
I really, I don't know how it works.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it.
I don't, yeah, I'm more on the other end where it's like, I'm going to give every inch of myself to this thing, you know, in hopes that I get it one day.
But then I know a lot of guys, man, a lot of guys that are really successful that are just like, nah, man, I need my off time.
But that to me is really uncomfortable.
But I kind of got a little bit, I don't like chilling, you know, like me and my wife were just in Maui a couple of weeks ago.
It's like the first vacation for seven days I've ever taken like since I was a kid, probably.
Like when you're training really hard all the time, you have this like constant momentum in your head of improvement.
You're like, you're on the path.
You're in the process, you know, and you're feeling that.
And when that gets disrupted, when guys get injured and they have to come back or they get sick and they have to come back, there's like, you got to like rebuild that momentum.
I'm pretty familiar with like the process of like having to kick back into camp, you know?
And I do realize that it takes me about two weeks to get like, all right, this is my normal life again, you know, which is why I really like training camp and I really like fighting more than real life is what I say, just because it's like organized.
I know what I'm doing.
I don't got to think about stuff.
I'm not traveling places.
People like traveling.
I hate traveling.
It makes me feel like my life is moving on fast forward, which I don't really like.
I feel most alive when I'm in a routine and I have time to myself and I can sit and kind of reflect and all of that shit.
I'm just less competitive when I'm outside of camp.
And I won't, if I'm like beat to shit, dead tired, I'll miss a practice.
But that's really the only time that I'll miss a practice.
In camp, I won't miss.
Unless I have like a two-week rule where if I'm like dragging really bad, I'll make myself go for another week and a half, two weeks until I'm like, okay, I do actually need a rest, you know?
And then so I'll do that in camp.
But yeah, but outside of camp is pretty much the exact same.
I've been traveling a lot, which I really don't like doing.
Just because, again, like I don't really feel like I'm alive.
I feel like I'm like fast forwarding through a bunch of stuff.
But it's been like useful stuff, like seeing family and then like me and my wife going on our honeymoon or whatever.
So it's like normal life shit that I guess I got to check in and do every once in a while.
But if it were up to me, it would just be like training camp life all of the time.
Just because it's easier.
It's way easier.
It's fun.
It's easy.
I go to the gym.
I do my hard workouts.
I'm competitive as fuck.
I get to get that out of me.
And then I just hang with my friends for an hour afterwards.
I do that because I think that if I'm too competitive, I won't work on stuff.
Like, a lot of camp for me is getting better at stuff.
And then the last four weeks is figuring out how to win.
It's not like, I think that practicing winning is just as important as being able to practice a certain skill.
So a lot of my camps will be developing those skills, but then like the last four or five weeks, it's just, I need to focus on winning each round, regardless of who it's against or whatever.
I'm not like practicing a certain technique or doing anything like that.
And when you're less competitive, when you're just training and you're not in camp, you'll try things, you'll be a little more playful, try to like sort stuff, try new skills.
And I'm definitely not sparring hard as fuck like I do in camp too.
Like I won't do that outside of camp unless I got a guy that's been giving me a bunch of rounds in my camps and he has a fight coming up and then I'll like gear up to give him a good one, you know.
But no, outside camp, like just less competitive.
I don't show up as early and get my mind right before.
When I'm in camp, every single sparring session that I do, I try to put myself in the locker room while I'm warming up.
I think that that's like, I've had a lot of success doing that.
Just making my body make good decisions when I'm in a super elevated, high-intensity state is something you've got to practice too.
I definitely won't do that outside of camp because that's a lot of energy.
Or I'll be like, okay, this day, for whatever reason, I'm really distracted.
I'll do a little bit more visualization or mindful stuff, or whatever, because every day is different and sparring.
As you know, where some days you're good to go right off of the bat, and then other days you're dragging.
It's those days that you're dragging that I make sure that I'm like, those ones I'll be like, okay, fucking visualize because your body doesn't want to do this right now.
And I'll put myself in that state twice a week, which is has helped a lot, a lot, a lot.
That has actually been like a super significant piece in, one, my life getting a lot better.
And then, two, I think that like it, I think it's going to transfer over really well into my next few fights.
For a really long time, for a lot of reasons, I was like really micromanage-y over my stuff.
I don't like when people do things for me.
Like, I kind of like live in a way where everything is my responsibility.
And if I fuck up, it was like on me regardless of what happens, which is like a fine way to be, but also it's not like crazy realistic either.
But that's just kind of the way that I am, just the way that I grew up.
Like, it was kind of like take care of me type of thing, you know, and if I'm messing stuff up, it's on me.
So, I was like that for a really long time.
It was actually after the Umar fight where I realized how in the way I got of myself in that fight.
How so?
Overdoing it from insecurity a little bit.
That was my first camp with Trevor too.
And Trevor's a phenomenal coach.
I've known him for a lot of years.
He has a lot of champions.
There's no like, there's no reason to doubt any of what he has going on or my other coach, Carrington Banks, or anyone, really.
But because I kind of have this mindset on life, or did used to have this mindset on life, where it was, hey, man, like manage everything, like make sure everyone's doing their work, like blah, blah, blah.
Like after that Umar fight, I really got into, I was like, all right, fuck it, guys.
Like, I messed that one up, I felt like, because I was trying to be too micromanagey over this thing.
I started getting outside of myself.
You guys take over.
And the reason that I did that wasn't necessarily because I lost.
It's because I'm coaching a couple professionals now.
And coaching a professional is different than coaching an amateur.
It feels like a lot more responsibility.
And I realized what was happening when I would try to help these couple guys that I was trying to help is that they are too close to it.
The same way that I'm sure you get too close to your art as well, like in comedy, you're too close to it sometimes where you don't really, you can't see things from a perspective that is like true and real because you're so locked into what it is that you're doing.
I really big time realized that that was a thing in my other guys.
So when I would try to help them and they'd be like, hey, man, like, I don't know, like they'd kind of get a little bit argumentative.
I'd be like, you could keep doing that, but I'm a thousand percent sure that I'm right about this, you know, but do your own thing.
And I started to realize like, oh, fuck, that's what I do all the time.
Like, I gotta, I was like, fuck, dude, I gotta stop being argumentative and just shut the fuck up and listen if I really trust these guys.
I like 50-50 a lot because, one, I get to learn it from the guy who essentially invented it and is the best at it in the world.
The only guys that I feel like can beat me at 50-50 are guys that train at 50-50.
And so it's kind of like what it feels like 50-50, the position, and just kind of leg locks in general, if you really know how to do them in MMA, are a spot that you can pull people into and have them be completely lost.
It's like judo almost a little bit in wrestling where it's like, okay, cool.
If this guy's going to just wrestle with me, great.
But if this guy has good throws, that changes a lot of the way that I have to do things.
I can pull people into these really niche spots where I know that I'm going to win them.
So 50-50 is one of those.
It's kind of like what Jiu-Jitsu used to be a little bit before people have started to understand Jiu-Jitsu.
But now people fully understand Jiu-Jitsu.
So you don't really get to catch people in guillotines or whatever.
But 50-50 and a lot of the leg locks and a lot of stuff that Ryan teaches me and does is so niche that you would need an absolute expert to understand it.
I think it's just one of those things where you let one thing go and then another thing breaks and then another thing breaks and you kind of like are taping yourself back together and then one day you wake up and you're like, shit, I got to like take care of this.
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Yeah, he had, I think they call it necrotic pneumonia.
So essentially, it was rotting holes in his lung tissue.
So they had to put him on a ventilator, and apparently one of his lungs is just gone, and they have to replace it, which is that's so crazy because then you have to be on medication for your entire life because your body wants to reject the lung because it's not your lung.
So you have to take these immunosuppressant.
So now your immune system is severely suppressed because you have to take immunosuppressant drugs in order to have this.
Like I have a friend who had a heart transplant and he's all fucked up because of it.
You know, it's just like you're always worried about getting sick because your immune system is very compromised.
So did the type of antibiotic that I was on, I forget the name of it, unfortunately, but the reason I tore my tricep was because that antibiotic made my ligaments super shitty, pretty much.
Because dude, like I should never tear my tricep.
I'm pretty sure it happened when he was Kimura in me.
Dude, that shouldn't happen.
You know, like maybe something else, but definitely not tear my tricep.
Right.
So that's when it happened.
And then I was like, yo, what the fuck is that about?
Like, that shouldn't happen.
And then when I read into it a little bit, they told me that that specific antibiotic, it doesn't mess with your respiratory stuff, like your conditioning as much, but it makes your ligaments just really not good.
So this time with my elbow against font, I got it really bad.
I was on one round of antibiotics for seven days or something, and then it came back immediately.
So then I was on it for two more weeks, and then I got off it the week before the fight.
So I was essentially on it for like a month, which sucks.
And then against Umar, I got it really bad in my knee.
Like super bad.
I'm not a crazy anxious person, dude, but I finally got to like experience what it was like to have a panic attack because I was in Virginia training, got it.
I was like, something's up with my knee.
It hurt really bad.
Couldn't put weight on my leg.
This was probably like a month before the fight, maybe, maybe a little bit before that five weeks or so.
I got a really bad knee infection.
I started taking the antibiotics, but they told me like, hey, man, if this doesn't get better, like if you start taking these antibiotics and tomorrow it's not better, we need you to cut it.
Come in, we're going to cut your knee open and clean it because that's how they take care of it.
And I was like, sure.
I was like, I'm not coming back here, you know, like I'm going to take these antibiotics.
Dude, that's why I think I freaked out really bad with my knee is because I remember laying in bed and being like, I called my wife and just set the phone next.
I was like, hey, like, until you get home, like, can you just be on the phone?
Because I'm kind of afraid I'm about to die a little bit.
Yeah, it was really, it got like really scary there.
But I remember every time I've taken antibiotics with the staph infection, my experience has been that it gets really painful and a lot worse for like the first few hours when the antibiotics kick in and start killing it.
And then it starts to get better.
But the first couple of hours is like kind of scary.
So when I first started taking the antibiotics, that's when I called my wife because I don't take a lot of medicine.
Like if I take an ibuprofen, I will feel that shit working through my entire body.
And yeah, so I like took the antibiotics and I started to feel it through my body.
And I was like, this is scary.
And I was like, hey, like, till you get home, let's be on the phone because I'm afraid I'm about to pass out and die here.
The one thing that I'm really big on is I like won't fucking like I'm really in touch with what's going on usually with like my body and stuff.
I'm really big on, I don't know why it doesn't get talked about more, but like digestive, like things that mess up my digestive system, I don't mess around with at all.
Yeah, just tell me what to do and I'll just do that thing.
But it's actually a lot more food than what you'd think and I can lose a lot of weight when she has me do it.
She do it.
I'm Trying to think what it is.
It's more so a lot of carbs more towards the end of the day.
Like before, because I really don't sleep good.
Usually, when I'm really training a lot, my nervous system is like not ever down.
So at night, I usually won't sleep well.
So I'll eat like a big bowl of oatmeal at night.
Everyone is kind of different.
What I will say, though, that I would big time recommend to fighters and stuff is after hard workouts, drinking dextrose or Gatorade with like some electrolytes.
If you have multiple workouts in a day, that's a giant game changer.
Like, because there's a little bit of a window from my understanding, I don't really know how this shit works, but there's a little bit of a window where it's like 45, like 20 to 45 minutes after you're done working where your body will just take sugar and put it back into your muscles.
And so I'll drink a shitload of sugar after like really hard workouts, like really hard sparring sessions, like 50, 60 grams of sugar, which is insane.
When you're training that hard, like it's not like, you know, people are, oh, soda's bad for you.
Well, sure, if you're just drinking soda.
But if you're fucking running marathons or something crazy like that, or you're doing something like really exhausting, it's really good for you right after a workout.
The other ones kind of mess up my stomach a little bit.
Oh, really?
Just the ones that are made out of like milk and whey makes you fart like crazy.
Yeah, yeah.
Those ones, yeah.
If I take something, I almost immediately know if it's going to mess with my digestive system, and I can't be having that while I'm rolling around with dudes and chilling.
Garlic, apparently, there was a study that was done with garlic with like external staph infections, and it's as effective or more effective than antibiotics.
Yeah, that might be why, because they have these little things that the UFC gives us, too, called hot shots, where if you're cutting weight, you're supposed to drink it, and it's pretty much just cinnamon and cayenne and like some other stuff.
Yeah, and it's supposed to stop you from cramping.
A week before, I try to be like 16 to 18 pounds heavy over.
And then I'll lose that last bit that week.
But I'll walk around if I'm really fat, like on vacation and shit, not giving a, just not caring, I'll be about 162.
When I'm training good and like all of that, I'll be about 157, 158, and then I just got to lose until I'm about 52, 51 the week before, and then that week I lose.
But yeah, 10 days away, I start loading up on the water.
And then on the Tuesday, so we weigh in Friday, so however many days before that is, on Tuesday, you'll do the cut the sodium.
And then that pretty much, you lose a lot when you're chugging that much water and cut sodium.
So I would say on Tuesday, a lot of it is water.
And then it's kind of up to me how crazy I want to go with food.
I'm obviously not eating like super huge meals that week, but I don't let myself get too hungry.
I'm pretty good about a lot of stuff where now I can kind of be like, if I go to bed like at like an eight amount of hunger instead of like a seven, I'll know almost exactly how much I'll lose the next day, which is like kind of cool.
I think that the way to solve that, because one's tried doing that with like the rehydration test, then everyone that I talked to that's like been involved with that has been like, dude, I could cheat that easy.
I mean, there's just like, if you know that you're going to get like hydrate tested at a certain time, I'm sure that they probably just drink most of their water during that time or something like that.
And apparently it's easier to cut weight like Yoel Romero style, like when you're that muscular because most of the muscles water, which is kind of counterintuitive.
You think like a fat guy would you could be able to lose more weight, but no, it's actually to dry out.
But I don't think that there would be a problem with doing multiple weight classes because then you would just have like what you do in boxing where you just have like a ton of, you have like one dude with like eight belts.
Yeah, I think that it'd just be better for the athletes and I think it'd be better for the sport in general.
You're still going to have like incredible fights because the level of competition, particularly at the lowest weight classes, is so high right now.
Like I think your weight class, feather weight, and lightweight are the most competitive weight classes in the sport.
And there's almost too many top contenders where guys are forced to take fights that maybe you really shouldn't take that fight because you're kind of in title contention.
And then, oh, you lose a close decision.
Fuck, now you're back to the drawing board.
Now you got to fight this guy.
Oh, you got injured in camp.
Fuck, you lose to that guy too.
Now you're set back when you could have been a champion.
You know, there's a lot of weirdness going on with possibilities and, you know, just luck, bad luck, and good luck.
I was like, watch, like, if I go out and finish Figgy, which not a lot of people are able to do, the timing of everything is going to be perfect for me because there will be no one else.
And that's me also, you know, coming off of a loss from Umar just a year ago, which anytime you lose is kind of devastating.
You're like, oh, it'll never happen for me, you know?
But then it's like, oh, wait, no, if I just, if this thing gets timed out right, you know, like it could work out.
It's always like things get compiled and then they exponentially get worse.
One big thing was I knew I was fighting in the Middle East and I wasn't going to get like a nod if it was a close fight.
And Umar's a defensive guy and I'm a defensive guy.
And I knew that it would be, there was potential for rounds to be really close.
My game plan wasn't going to be to take him down.
So anytime you're going to be like, hey, like I'm committing to striking, there is a little bit of a level of rolling the dice because one striking matches in a five minute round are really hard to like hammer down and be like, I won this round against really high level guys.
That's my opinion.
I thought that I would be able to stuff most of the shots.
I was like, okay, most of this thing is going to be done striking.
I need to have like big moments in order for me to feel like I'm really winning these rounds so that there can be no argument that I'm losing.
And if we just are point scoring each other, which Umar's good at and I'm good at, I'm kind of rolling the dice a little bit and kind of leaving it into the hands of God knows who the judges are.
So a piece of it was I didn't want to lose another close split decision.
Like a lot of my losses or a couple of my losses are just close split decisions.
And I'm like, fucking man, I'm not, I'd rather just go for it than lose.
But that pulled me out of my game plan and just the way that I typically fight.
Like I'm not the guy that hunts for knockouts.
You know, I'm just not that guy.
And so I just got pulled out of my strategy.
I got really frustrated in the fight by it not working, like me not being able to have really big moments.
And now looking back, I'm just like, man, what were you thinking?
Like, just go out, fight like how you do, and you'll do awesome.
I would have fought him the exact same way that I would have fought the first round.
Like that entire fight, I was being really defensive and just looking for one big shot.
In the first round, I didn't fight like that.
The first round, I was cool with point scoring.
I was like, okay, this guy's going to wrestle me.
Let's see how good he is at wrestling.
And if I can hang, once I was like, oh, okay, cool, like I can hang.
Then I just started going for big shots, which is just like not a good way to beat a really high-level guy.
It's kind of a lazy game plan, honestly.
Like if the plan isn't to completely outclass the person and win in every area and be good enough to do so, in my opinion, that's just like not an expression of the highest level of martial arts.
That's a little bit lazy, you know?
And I was a little bit lazy in maybe my approach to that, which maybe lazy isn't the right word, but I could have done a lot better at just trusting myself more, being more confident in my ability to just be like, no, like I'll beat him everywhere.
That was probably like my happiest moment maybe ever in life.
Just because I had just come off the most embarrassing loss ever against Sterling.
And they were like, hey, you want to fight the number one guy in Abu Dhabi during COVID?
And I was like, and that was like kind of back when Marlon was still a really scary guy.
He's kind of been on a skid since then.
But back then, he was real scary.
And I was like, I don't know if you guys are setting me up for Marlon to knock me the fuck out or how this is like what the thinking behind me fighting the number one contender is.
But I was like, yeah, cool.
Like, if you guys are going to give me that shot, I'll take it for sure.
And then when I finished it, I was just like, yes.
And when I started training in kickboxing, I realized that Taekwondo was kind of bullshit because my hands sucked.
And I would spar with kickboxers.
And I was getting cornered in the ropes.
And I just, I didn't have the skills.
And I was like, oh, this is like, I have this distorted perception of my ability to fight based on my ability to fight in Taekwondo.
I was really good at that.
But then when I started boxing and kickboxing, I was like, this is like that piece that's missing in Taekwondo without the face punching, it nullifies so much of what Taekwondo is good at.
But then when I learned that stuff, I realized like, oh, but I have a massive advantage with my legs because they have to close the distance with me and I can do things they can't do.
Like regular kickboxers, I was amazed at how many of them were just kind of boxers who learned a few shitty kicks.
And they would stand on the outside and they would take a step forward and I just blast them and they just had no idea what to do, like a really hard kicker.
And then I started doing Muay Thai and I was like, fuck, leg kicks.
And so I went from American kickboxing above the waist to Muay Thai.
I was like, there's too much to learn.
And then I was doing comedy at the same time, so I just quit fighting.
Yeah, I wrestled in high school, but only one year because I was doing Taekwondo at the same time, and I had to pick one.
And I did a year of both.
And then I was like, the problem with this is I would rather kick someone and knock them unconscious.
To just quack and hear the whole crowd go silent was the wildest thing.
And watch someone cry.
I fucking loved it.
It was my favorite thing in life.
And I was like, wrestling is cool.
Like, it's good to know.
It's good to be able to pin people.
But there was no UFC back then.
So it's like everything you were doing was just like, you had to find a thing and get really good at it.
But the disillusionment of going from Taekwondo to boxing and kickboxing and then to Muay Thai and then jiu-jitsu.
So when I started doing jiu-jitsu, I was like, oh my God, I'm fucking completely helpless.
So I had this thing in my head.
Well, at least I know how to leg kick.
I know how to box now.
I know how to fight.
Oh, my God.
I'm tapping out constantly.
And so then I was like, fuck, I got to learn how to do jiu-jitsu.
But it was this thing where, you know, I feel real fortunate to have grown up in a time where no one knew what was the best style and then see the UFC emerge in 93 and then watch this incredible transformation of martial arts where martial arts advances more in 10, 20 years than it had the last 30,000 years.
So many of those guys, like you see them later in their career, they got like one small arm because their fucking nerves are all shut off in their neck and then fused discs and they're just like, I did a good job.
Well, you got to learn how to kick from both sides.
That's so important.
That's one thing that I really admire about your style because I think that there's going to be a time where that is just ubiquitous, where everybody switches.
Because there's so many guys that are just like, oh, he's a South Paw.
Oh, he fights Orthodox.
Like, man, that's just leaving too much to predictability.
And I would say that if you're starting, you don't need to be like super stellar at both, but just have a couple good attacks to do from your other stance and then just like build off of there or whatever.
I started switching stances, one, because I really liked watching Nanito Da Nair, who wouldn't like fully switch, but he would have like kind of steps like that where I was like, oh, cool.
And then also I dislocated my elbow really bad about like a week and a half into training, just landed on it, posted, dislocated it.
And so I could only, or that was my left arm, so I could only use my right arm.
So for like six months, I just went lefty and only used my right arm as like my lead hand.
Yeah, just forcing yourself to just constantly be in that position because everybody wants to be in the position where they're the most strong, especially if you're trying to be competitive at sparring, right?
That's like what's so important about like the Gracies always talk about keeping things playful.
Like learning how to like not, don't try to win.
You're trying to develop your skills and to be able to switch.
I think like TJ in his prime, like when TJ fought Hennan Burrow, that fight to me was one of the best championship performances that I ever saw.
Dwayne flew me out for that fight because that's when they were training an alpha male to be TJ's sparring partner for one of those fights.
I'm almost positive it was that one.
And I remember the whole time I was like, this isn't going to go good for TJ, you know, because Burrow was just that guy at the time that everyone was afraid of.
And then when I watched it, I was like, oh, shit, that shit really works good.
I used to train in the Netherlands a little bit, too, with Andy Sauer and those guys.
He's doing like the highest form, like intellectually, he's doing that style at its highest expression with the strategy of I'm about to knock you the fuck out.
So squared and bladed stances, when you're in a squared stance, you can move really good left to right.
That was most of my career was being like, I came from a basketball background.
I know that I'm very quick and agile, and I can move left, right really good.
If I just keep my hands up, whatever, it'll be fine, probably, you know?
So a lot of squared stance stuff is I'm just going to cut left, right, overwhelm This person with all of my weapons and angles, and always constantly make them move off of the things I'm doing and not the other way around.
That's good, but it's really hard to get a ton of leverage in anything that you're doing when you're standing square.
Like, I can't, like, if I'm gonna throw a ball, I don't throw a ball like this, right?
So, squared stance is super good for being agile, moving left-right, and overwhelming people with the amount of attacks that you could throw at them.
Because also, if I'm standing square, all of my weapons are really available for me to throw.
Like, it doesn't take like this is faster than this, just because it's like six inches closer or whatever.
In a bladed stance, you get a fuckload of leverage because if you watch Ilya, he's always standing like he's about to throw a javelin.
And that's pretty much what he's doing is just like, and this is kind of like the science of boxing a little bit, like I said, that Trevor helped me with.
So I'm a lot more bladed now than I was because now we're trying to get like some serious leverage on stuff because five-round fights, moving the entire time, fighting these really good wrestlers, it can get to the point where it's like, it just gets quirky and just like a little bitchy looking, you know?
And like, I don't really want to like tap people to victory, you know.
For a long time, I would compensate and being like, all right, but I'll have wheel kicks, knees, and elbows.
And that like took me a decent amount of ways to where it's like, cool, now I can finish guys like that also.
But these bladed stances where you can make a shitload of leverage with them are really cool.
I think finding a balance between the two is really awesome.
Ilya is like only, and that's just my expression of my martial arts.
I want to be like the jack of all trades guys and be able to be like, oh, you're that style.
I'll just archetype you in this style.
But Ilya is like always ready to throw a javelin and he's really good at closing space with his lead leg.
Like he'll like jab, hook, and really creep his lead leg near and then just bomb a right hand.
Because he is a shorter guy, but he never seems like he's having that much of an issue getting super inside.
Yeah, a lot of those really good grappler guys, they're strong, definitely, but they're really strong at closing up all of the space.
Like I can, if you let me get an underhook, like I could feel pretty strong.
Like even if you're much bigger than me, I'll like make you take a couple steps back, which really shouldn't happen.
But if I just close up all of the space, which I think is a big component of being a really good grappler, is being able to be like, nope, that's my space.
You don't get that.
This, you know, and you're not going to get inside of mine.
I can feel strong as fuck, you know?
And yeah, those types of guys, they're just so used to being so compact and never letting anyone get inside their arms or wherever it is that they need to get that it's just, it's like impossible to feel like you can move them.
I feel like there's two types of being strong in grappling.
There's being strong in like, I don't let you move me.
And then there's strong in, I get to move you really good.
And the good, good guys get to do both.
Like if I can grab you and move you really easy, I'll feel really strong.
If you grab me and I feel like a rock, I'll feel really strong.
And I think that some people do both of those really well, and then some people do one or the other really well.
But those types of guys, like the Islams, they do both really good.
I stopped drinking, I guess it's like close to four months ago.
And I used to have days where I would get up, you know, I'd work at the club, do stand-up, have a couple of drinks, and the next day I'd be working out going, oh, what did I feel bad?
I was like, that's just life.
Just deal with it.
Drink your electrolytes, get through it.
I have no days like that now.
That's nuts.
Like, even if last night I only had like five hours sleep.
I know there's a lot of questions, never been out of the first round, a lot of questions, but never been out of the first round because he fucks everybody up in the first round.
Yeah, I really wanted to see that fight, but also at the same time, I kind of, I appreciated.
I forget which interview it was recently, but John was pretty honest in it.
He was like, look, man, like, I don't want to fight up-and-coming tough guys.
He was like, I want to fight guys with seasoned champions that have names.
And I was like, that could also be interpreted as you don't really want to fight kind of the best guys that there are right now.
You want to fight like a certain category of fighter who you're comfortable fighting, but you don't want to fight the guys that are tough and that are saying that you're going to win.
And that's okay, but that's essentially how I interpreted what he was saying in different words, which I appreciated the honesty.
When people ask questions to me all the time, like casuals on the street, is John Jones going to fight Tom Aspinall?
It's constant.
That's like the constant question.
To me, the real fight would have been John Jones versus Francis.
That's the real fight.
If I, like, clearly, I'm not responsible for making decisions because I would have made a lot of different decisions.
And I would have like, Francis, let's talk.
Let's work this out.
That guy's a star.
Francis is the fucking scariest heavyweight of all time.
That's a star.
You know, like that guy as the heavyweight champion is so fucking marketable.
He puts people into orbit.
You know, he flatlines Steep Bay.
He flatlined Alistair.
He flatlines people.
He's fucking terrifying.
Like, that's the heavyweight champion.
And for that guy to walk away from the belt and then almost beat Tyson Fury and then get knocked out by Anthony Joshua and then to come back and destroy that dude in PFL.
What's his name again?
That big, tall Brazilian dude that he ground and pounded into unconsciousness.
I see it happen all of the time, and I can't help but think a lot of it is like, hopefully it's just maybe money business stuff, but I really, I think that some of it is ego, and that's kind of what I try to just drift away from.
My philosophy on winning the belt has always been, if I can't beat whoever it is, if it's like a number 10 ranked Umar, if it's a number 2 ranked whoever, if I can't beat that person, then I don't deserve the belt, and I don't think that I should get it.
It clearly doesn't represent what it represents if it doesn't mean that I beat all the best guys on the way to doing so.
Not everyone really has that philosophy, and I get it because once you start involving money, and then money is taking care of your family, which is what is kind of an excuse to be greedy sometimes for people, it just kind of, it's just never really been my philosophy, and I think that it's kind of a shame when that stuff happens because in my head, we're doing two things.
We're seeing who the best fighter in the world is, and we're getting people to watch so that the fans can appreciate something that I find to be the most loved thing in my life next to my wife, you know?
So I don't know.
I think it's a shame when that shit happens, especially when it's like an ego thing.
But also at the same time, I don't really think that that's too much of what John Jones is doing.
I'm more speaking In terms of what I kind of see in other people, I think John Jones also has to have some level of awareness around Tom's a young guy, and we age, you know, we age, and that's okay.
I don't really understand the game because there's too much going on right now.
Or like when it's happening, it just looks like a chaotic mess sometimes to me.
But I recently started watching it because a dude from the Avs, I've been seeing him at the gym a little bit.
He's been training a guy named Nathan McKinnon, who's like one of the better guys in the league right now.
I've kind of been paying a little bit of attention because me and him will chat sometimes.
But dude, hockey culture is cool.
Like when they score, they smile and cheer for a half of a second, and then they're all just like stone cold killers back again, which I really appreciate about sports because I feel like a lot of sports have become like all of this top players are like really super starry, like flamboyant-y.
It's like not quite the same, not in the same, like they don't, they don't reach the same.
You have a few Gretzkys, you know, Bobby Orr, you have a few guys that become national celebrities, but for the most part, there's not like a whole ton of them that everybody, the general public, knows about.
So because of that, they're probably a little more dedicated, a little more humble, a little more on the grind.
When I did that time in the Netherlands that I was talking about, I grew up playing soccer a little bit too, but I only did it until people stopped thinking it was cool.
And then I switched sports.
I was like, dude, when you're growing up, bro, all of the goal is just to not be called gay.
And soccer didn't do that for you.
That's so true.
Dude, just your entire existence as a kid is to not be made fun of and called gay.
Yeah, but, oh, dude, when I went to the Netherlands and I watched some of those kids play, I was like, oh, this is soccer in Europe because they were like 10, 11, 12-year-old kids, just freaks, dude, and like crazy athletic.
You could just tell that that's like what they do with their entire lives.
And I was like, thank God I didn't choose that sport because I just wouldn't be anywhere.
Which is really interesting to see this influx of guys from Russia, Dagestan, Chechnya, like some of these guys that are making their way into the UFC now.
I think that MMA or martial arts just in general is such a fantastic thing for the world.
And this, to me, has brought so many people together, kind of.
Like, I didn't follow, I didn't know what Dagestan was or Azerbaijan was or anything like that.
It was 2014, so You know WKA, the organization?
I did their national tournament.
And if you win, you get to go do the world tournament for them in Italy.
So I got to do that and won.
And when I was out there, a lot of the competitors were from all over the world.
And there was a place called Azerbaijan that I didn't know how to pronounce at all.
And they were whooping guys asses, dude, like bad, like spinning hook kicks, like all kinds of crazy shit.
And I was like, damn, I hope I don't fight one of those guys.
But the entire time, I was like, the second these guys start getting into the UFC and stuff, they're going to wreck a lot of Americans, you know?
Yeah.
But I really like that.
Like just the UFC in general has done a good job, in my opinion, because they're really the only globalized or one of the only super globalized where people from all over the world are fighting each other.
I don't know, man.
It kind of feels like it brings everyone together, or at least for me, like I could feel like I could walk into another country and have something super in common with someone, which is just like a cool feeling, you know.
But this, you know, this thing that we've done over here is allowing people to express themselves.
Whether you agree or disagree, that is just so gigantic.
And they're squashing a lot of that in other countries.
And that scares the shit out of me.
That's what I was really scared about in this last election because because I'm friends with Elon, I knew what was going on in Twitter behind the scenes.
I knew how the government was stepping in and silencing posts.
I'm like, this is fucking dangerous, man.
Because if they get a real grip on social media and you no longer can protest about things and express yourself about things, including a lot of things that happen to be true, like during the COVID crisis, people were getting their accounts banned for posting factual information.
That was scary to me because that's very, very un-American.
It's going to come with a lot of good and a lot of bad, but you have to be okay with it because when it's your turn at plate, like you're going to want to be, you're going to want to have your opinion respected too.
I've kind of thought about how to like get to a place where there can be world peace and all of that stuff.
I don't know.
I think that a lot of people, I know you've talked about it a lot, they get really attached to the egos and the identities that exist inside them and then they see the world from only that perspective.
That's why I think that like a lot of the old religions and the old like echoed through time ways of being are to destroy your ego, eliminate yourself, be like this watcher of your thoughts and all of that stuff.
And then start to identify with the watcher of what you think that you really are.
And then once you spend enough time doing that, you'll spend enough time realizing that everyone else has that watcher inside them and that maybe they don't realize it yet, but they're still really connected to their egos that are really just a bunch of ideas that were indoctrinated to them based off of our environment or who we grew up with and all of that stuff.
And then you can start to love people a little bit more.
And it's kind of a shame that I just know that that's not super big in the West, that idea.
It's kind of an Eastern philosophy, you know, like we just meditate here.
Like that's just such a bitch ass way to think about doing it.
Like, that's what you're doing is you're settling into being able to watch what you think you really are and be like, hey, if I don't want to be that anymore, I don't have to be that.
Or if I, if that doesn't serve me anymore, I don't have to be that.
This is one thing that I walk through a lot of my guys within fighting: it's like, you want to not be scared of something, don't desire anything.
And don't be anything if you don't want to be scared.
Because fighting fearless is a really big thing.
I think that I do a really good job of performing really well because I'm not scared of a lot of things because I don't have a ton of egos inside of my brain as much anymore.
I, of course, do because we all have to.
But yeah, once you start spending a lot of time with that watcher, I think that that's kind of why it always ends on the idea of love being the answer is because once you spend time disconnecting from what we think we are, you always end up in the spot where it's like, oh, that person's that.
Yeah, there's a lot of energies in life that will serve you, I think, up to a certain point that just will stop serving you because it's not a fuel that you can sustain for long enough.
It's a lot of like, I've been fascinated by religion my entire life.
I was raised pretty, not like crazy, not like religious in like a dogmatic way, but religious in like a, hey, think about these things type of way by my parents, which I'm really grateful because I developed a super healthy understanding of those types of ideas where they didn't feel like they were something I was latched onto as much as they were things to be explored.
And so it kind of started when I was really young.
I've just been fascinated by the idea of God, like in church when they're like, hey, you're going to burn in hell forever if you don't agree with this.
That became number one priority from that day on, dude.
I was like, hell, once I could understand hell and forever, I was like, oh, okay.
I was like, oh, okay, so nothing else matters in life.
Like, we got to figure this out right now.
So that kind of took me on like a really religious thing.
And then after I lost my first fight, that was my big first experience with facing an ego that I didn't have control over.
It was against a guy named Jamal Emmers, who's actually in the UFC now.
But it was pretty much just I shit the bed and choked.
I would have got signed to the UFC and I just choked and lost.
And I was supposed to, in my head, and based off of what everyone around me was telling me, I was supposed to be this like super big prospect guy, blah, blah, blah.
After I lost, I had to face that maybe that's not what I am.
It was just like afterwards I was like, but I was supposed to win.
It's like someone fucked up here, man.
It's like, I was supposed to win that.
And so it was just like, oh, so maybe this universe doesn't revolve around me and like my ideas and who I think I am and all of that stuff.
And then so spent a lot of time in nature, read a lot of books like Power and Now, a lot of Buddhist stuff, a lot of Thiknan Han stuff, a lot of just spirituality books, but just the overarching idea of separating yourself from your thoughts and your body and all of that stuff.
And just whether it's in our imagination or not, because I'm still not fully bought into any of that stuff.
Like I don't have any beliefs is what I say now.
But I'm willing to entertain a lot of stuff and I want to believe something really bad because it would make life a lot easier to navigate through.
I'm a comic book fan, but honestly, dude, how it happened is I was like, I wanted to come up with this really cool story.
I'm just an idea machine.
Like, I just think of ideas all day.
Like, I don't have many hobbies.
I think it's super fun, just me hanging out with me inside my head all day.
So, I came up with this really cool idea, which is essentially like a bunch of ideas from a bunch of religions that I really like, and then putting them into a story.
And the story is, okay, we got some time for me to explain this.
But pretty much it takes place where this guy goes to the Garden of Eden that's being protected by these tribespeople.
And inside of the Garden of Eden are these trees called Khalis, where when you eat the fruit of them or you eat the crystals of them, you get teleported to a place where the sixth lives.
And the sixth is like the god of our universe.
The world takes place in densities, which are pretty much our chakras.
So there's seven of them.
The first density, second density, third density, which is what we are as humans.
The fourth are aliens.
We're like we're humans that have merged with the technologies that we've created.
It takes place about 20 or 30 years in the future where AI is a real like actual fucking player in the game, you know?
Fourth is aliens.
Fifth is like psychedelic creatures slash angels slash all of that stuff.
Sixth is the gods of the universe.
Seventh is the all.
It's just like love.
everything.
And so Yeah, it's pretty in-depth, dude.
I mean, it's not like simple shit.
It's not like fucking some guy goes and saves the world.
It's like a pretty...
So you go through each density, our souls do, for billions and trillions and whatever's past trillions of lifetimes.
And you spend time in those densities learning what it is to learn in those densities.
So right now, in the third density, because it's the power chakra of life, what we're trying to do is discover that the positive path of love is what we're really shooting for instead of the negative one.
And what that means is the positive path is in, we're doing things in service of others instead of in service of self.
So we're choosing love of others over love of self because love isn't like an emotion in the book.
It's like a structural building of the world where everything is love.
It's this all.
It's not like Disney shit.
It's like a structural way of building the universe.
So choosing to be in love of others is what we're doing.
But Earth is in its late third density, getting ready to move into its fourth density.
And this scientist who interacts with this tribe takes a seed from the Kali and grows them and makes it so that the entire world can take this fruit and then interact with God.
And then what it would be like in this world today if we were actually able to sit in front of God and ask God questions.
I just know it's long and sometimes I lose track of time.
Okay, cool.
The AI in this story is the way that we get moved into the fourth density.
And the way that we get moved into the fourth density is when we merge with the nanotechnology that merges with like the AI supercomputer called Oblivion, which is pretty much just a hive mind.
Once we all get merged with that, we either based off of our polarity or our frequency or whatever, that tells us if we're positive or negative.
If we go negative, then we pretty much just extinguish each other because all we care about is love for self and we like kill each other.
It doesn't say exactly how, but you can use your imagination.
And in the positive way, we move together in this hive mind into being aliens, essentially, where we live millions and trillions of lifetimes as aliens until we can enter into the fifth, which then we become psychedelic creatures and all of that stuff or angels or whatever.
And that's like a non-physical realm at that point.
But yeah, that's pretty much the idea behind the whole book.
I think the hived mind thing is promising because, and I have a feeling that that's where we're headed.
I have a feeling that if with either some wearable or some sort of technology with an implant where we no longer require language to communicate with each other and we essentially have instantaneous access to everyone all the time, and the thing that people are going to have to deal with is that there's going to be no more secrets.
There'll be no more lies.
It's going to be impossible to deceive.
Everyone's going to know exactly what's going on in your soul, like how you interface with the world itself.
I think if we don't, we're going to become obsolete.
I think it's one of two things.
Either we become obsolete and AI becomes a new digital form of life that's far more intelligent, far more capable than we are, and then it makes better and better versions of itself until it makes God.
Or we merge and we just transcend whatever this state of being these primitive territorial apes with very sophisticated weapons.
If I did have beliefs, I would like to believe that it is going towards a God or something, or there is like some point to all of the hard times that we have in life and we're actually progressing, whether it be through many lifetimes or in other universes or dimensions or whatever.
And something inside of us that isn't human, but is maybe a watcher or something, is progressing towards something great and loving and more beautiful than what we got going on here on Earth.
And if that is true, then AI will probably be pretty awesome.
I think it's also very strange that we are in this position.
It's very strange that we are living our lives at this unbelievable, unique moment in history where things are going to change in this undeniably radical way.
Unless something happens, unless we blow ourselves up or we get hit by an asteroid, it's going to happen.
And it's going to happen probably within the next 10 years.
Like 10 years from now, we're going to be looking back.
Remember the old days of 2025 when you didn't know what was coming?
We're all like bunkered down in our house and shit five years ago.
Even the UFC five years ago was crazy.
Like life, like I only get to view life through the lens of my job and my love, which is through fighting, which is cool because it like helps me understand the macro picture a little bit better.
But yeah, man, I mean, like, even just five years ago, how different the UFC was.
Like, life is going to be really weird in 10 years.
Yeah, the whole world is going to be really weird.
And, you know, one of the things that always freaks me out about Elon and Neuralink is one of the statements that he said, you're going to be able to talk without using words.
If I don't have like a filter of feeling something, my brain making it into words and then spitting it out, and it was just, I have this feeling and you feel that thing, that might be a really great thing.
So if we all have a universal language and we are working on this fucking tower to get closer to God, the stairway to God.
And do it right and you make it there.
Do it wrong and it becomes completely chaotic and divided and you're scattered across the world with a thousand different fucking languages and nobody can communicate with each other, so nobody understands each other, and it's just chaos, which is what happened to the human race.
If we develop a universal language, and if this universal language is transmitted through whether it's this implant or wearable, some sort of interface with technology, then we bypass.
We bypass this primitive state of chaotic tribal monkeys and we become something superior.
Yeah, the Tower of Babel was initially in my story because I've loved that idea for a really long time, which is essentially it's just like a symbol for like, hey, if we all work together, we can actually Do this thing, which is kind of the main idea that I got from it.
Because if you think about it, what is AI going to be?
Well, if super intelligence gets achieved and then you're attaching that to quantum computing, right?
Quantum computing right now is only able to just do integers and do equations.
But what if quantum computing and AI merge?
Then you've got some insane amount of computational power attached to an insane intelligence that is going to make better and better versions of itself.
Well, if you scale that up exponentially, 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 1,000 years, if you keep going, you get a God.
I mean, who knows, like, if we want to go real sci-fi with the idea, like quantum particles communicate to each other, so maybe they'll be able to communicate with the ones that are in other dimensions, and that's how we're able to communicate with other dimensions or whatever.
Well, that's the freakiest concept about quantum computing when they said that the way it works is so confusing and it's so powerful that they think it might be evidence of the multiverse.
Now, I talked to Roman Yampolsky, who's a scientist who talks about the dangers of AI, and he thought that that was all nonsense.
He might be right, but there's a lot of scientists that believe that it's correct and that this is why quantum computing is so powerful.
Because Mark Andreessen said this, and it's the fucking craziest quote ever, that quantum computing, it can solve an equation that if you converted the entire universe, like every molecule, every atom of the universe into a supercomputer, it would take so long for the universe as a supercomputer to solve this problem that the universe would die of heat death before it solved it.
Essentially, what we would be doing, I bet you when they were trying to invent electricity, they didn't know that it would be this.
And maybe that's what we're in the middle of.
Except like times a thousand billion where it's like, oh, because I always think I'm like, we're only looking through the lens of the future through all of the inventions that we have now.
What if we invented something that was like electricity or quantum computing or quantum communication?
Or like if you can change things at a quantum level, like maybe I can turn this thing into the hardest steel metal in the entire world.
And then that just completely changes the board game that we're even playing.
Like we're not even playing the same board game anymore.
So it's like, I don't know.
Anytime anyone says nothing's possible, I'm like, you sure?
Because if we just change the board game, shit can get pretty crazy.
You can't say nothing's possible because everything that we have today is impossible 200 years ago.
You're a sorcerer if you go back to the 1400s and show them an iPhone.
You know, like this, none of it makes any sense.
The fact that you could FaceTime someone in New Zealand right now, that's bananas.
All that stuff is fucking completely insane and it's real and it's happening right now.
And the other thing about AI being if artificial super intelligence creates something that we can't even imagine.
Like we're just dealing with this framework, this structure that's so antiquated because it's all been created by humans.
If you get something that's a thousand, ten thousand times more intelligent than us, and it's going to have solutions to things that we can't even comprehend.
You know, one of the things that always weirded me out about these stories about UFO encounters and in particular the Bob Lazar story is that when he was working on back engineering these crafts that were supposedly from somewhere else, one of the things that he said is there's no controls.
There's no controls in this thing.
Like they don't know what is happening between these beings and this craft that they power it.
But they're probably completely connected to this thing.
What you're seeing with those little grays is probably us in the future.
That's probably what every primate eventually becomes once it integrates with technology.
It would be really cool if that's, like you said, what the religions were talking about too.
Like to me, the science shit is all cool and stuff, but I also like the idea of like intertwining like science modern ideas with really traditional ideas.
It would be super cool if it was something where it's like, hey, like once we reach this certain of technological advancement, there is a spiritual religious side to the thing that we also make discoveries in too.
Well, you know, if artificial superintelligence does become live, all belief systems are going to get thrown into the wood chip or we're not going to know what the fuck is what.
But I have a feeling that a lot of these stories, like these ancient religious stories, they're based on truth.
It's just truth that was a spoken word thing by people who really couldn't even read because they were illiterate and that they had these tales that were told for a thousand years before anybody wrote them down.
They're writing them down in these ancient languages that even when you take those ancient languages and you try to translate into like modern English, a lot is lost in the translation.
But I think there's something to all of it.
And there's something they're trying.
They're not telling stories for no reason.
I think they're telling these stories because they're trying to document something.
And I just don't think we get a full picture of it.
But there's so much truth in those stories.
And there's so many lessons in those stories that are applicable and that resonate today.
I got super into Joseph Campbell around that time when I was kind of, you know, doing the whole figuring myself out part after losing.
But, I mean, the idea that there's pretty much a blueprint to all of the stories that are Across civilization is crazy.
It's like the pyramids being everywhere.
Like, it's just naturally ingrained to us for stories to be like: superhero gets called to action, finds a guy, beats monster, beats mega big monster, returns back home.
Like, that's like the blueprint to a lot of stories.
And I think it just goes underneath the rug because we're just so used to all of the stories being like that.
I've messed around, like I said, like I spend a lot of time in my head.
I don't really like talk a ton.
I kind of just, but I've done the whole like hero's journey thing in my head during the Joseph Campbell time.
I could share with you.
It's kind of fun.
Sure.
Okay.
I just come up with stories and shit in my head.
But anyway, so I did my own hero's journey during that time when I was trying to eliminate all of the egos inside of me.
And the easiest way to identify one of your egos is to ask yourself, what is it that you feel like you desire?
You know, that's why I think in Buddhist philosophy and all of that stuff, it's always like, let go of attachments, let go of your desires, and that will lead, like, just good shit will happen if you do that.
And I was like, okay, cool, I'll buy into that a little bit.
So I tried to identify all of these egos that were inside of me.
I even went as far as naming all of them and giving them characteristics and personalities.
Like when I would notice an angry person inside of me, I would just name it Samson, give it a tiger's face, and like just treat it as a completely separate imaginative piece of my psyche that I no longer wanted to be attached with anymore.
Which is an idea that I came up with myself at the time, but it's an old idea.
There's a really good book called Taming Your Gremlins.
If anyone wants to look into that idea more, that guy does a really good job of doing that.
So anyways, I started going through like my hero's journey.
And I spend a lot of time meditating a decent amount, but not just like normal meditating, like fucking around in my own head type of meditating and just seeing what type of unconscious things are kind of below the surface of my everyday like Corey me.
And so I'm walking myself through like, okay, what is this?
What are all of these things inside me or what are these desires that are inside me?
I would name them.
I would turn them into a monster and I would kill the monster.
And then at the very end of this story, and I'm like crying during this process when I was doing it or whatever.
In the hero's journey, a lot of the time you have a mentor, like a Yoda.
You have this thing that kind of guides you through how to defeat all these monsters and all of it.
So I get to the end of my story.
And one part that they never really bring up in heroic stories is the return back home, which is a really big deal.
Like you've just eliminated all of this stuff and now you've got to return back home.
So I'm getting ready to return back home.
And my mentor at the time, because I did grow up really religious, it was Jesus at the time.
We're like, Jesus was my homie at the time.
You know, he was like this guy.
And so we get done defeating all of these monsters and we're sitting at the cliff and it's like, okay, time to go home.
And he's like, hey, man, like you got one more monster to defeat.
And I was like, well, what is it?
And he was like, me.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
And he was like, man, like, I'm the last thing that you're attached to.
Like, in order for you to continue on, I'm the thing that you got to defeat.
And I was like, well, what does that mean, dude?
Like, I'm not about to stab you, bro.
And he was like, you have to push me.
And I was like, push you off the cliff.
He was like, you have to let go of me the same way that you let go of all of your other desires and fears and things inside of you, too, if you really want to do it.
And so I'm like bawling, crying because that was a big thing.
So I do it.
And Jesus falls, but then he grows wings, flies away, and says to me, now you can be like me.
And then just flies off into whatever.
And then I return back home.
And I just remember that being a really big moment for me in my, I don't like to use the word spiritual because it sounds stupid.
But that was like a big deal for me in my development as a person because it really like made me understand.
And they weren't things that I was planning out.
They were just unconscious things that were hitting me like over and over and over again.
I found that through hypnosis and through like trying to see what's underneath things, you can't talk to it.
You can't tell it what to do.
You can't control your unconscious.
You just have to watch what's underneath there.
So it was just like a thing where it's like, now I get to be like you was like a really cool thing that just like popped into my head.
I remember I was folding laundry and they asked me to fight this guy, Tejinho Galval, on four weeks' notice for LFA.
And Tejinho Gaval is a fucking savage at the time.
Still, I think is doing pretty well, but literally every YouTube video I could find of him was just knocking people out.
He was like 6-0 or something and just murdering people, Brazilian guy.
And I was like, I don't think that's a good idea.
Like, I just lost.
I don't really want to lose again.
And I remember going back and forth with myself big time.
And as I was folding laundry, I kind of got hit with another bit of wisdom that came from wherever, not from myself, came from wherever.
And in this bit of wisdom, it told me, man, I gave you this life for you to make it up yourself.
Quit asking me to make decisions for you.
And so I was like, all right, fuck it.
I'll do it.
You know, I'll do it.
And a big piece of me going through that whole thing and what I learned a lot about it was love of fighting isn't really love of anything, I don't think is like Disney shit.
It's like a mega commitment to something that you want to achieve.
And it works like a marriage.
More like a marriage, less than like a romantic, like, hey, this is a fling.
Like it's like, hey, man, I might not like you every day, you know, but I'm going to commit myself to you and I'm going to do this thing.
And it helped me really wrap my head around what kind of true love is because I feel like that's what true love is.
And if you want to love this sport And you want to say you love this sport, you got to love it on the months, days.
It might last years that you really don't like it.
And just trust that on the other end of it is like a good experience.
Well, I remember one time we talked and you said that you'd made this adjustment in your head from trying to fight and win to really trying to hurt people.
Two is that wasn't a fuel that I could hold on to for super long.
It was like angry fuel doesn't really like work.
It's not super sustainable.
I also found too that being that way got distracting to me being able to do what I was trying to do.
So any thought can be distracting when you're fighting, as you know.
Like even like silly ones or whatever.
But if I'm being too aggro and too, I got to hurt this guy, I got to hurt this guy, that was good for me to learn because I got to learn all of the different aspects of what it means to be a fighter.
Before that, I was really Zen, peaceful, like whatever happens, happens.
I'm going to do my best, you know?
And then I went way on the other side of the spectrum where it's like, I'm fucking killing people and that's what I'm doing now.
To now kind of somewhere a little bit in between where for me now, all of it is about focus and doing the correct thing at the correct time.
I think that where I am today as a fighter is very focused on just exactly what I said, where what do I need to do right now in order to win?
And I don't make it angry.
I don't make it motivated by anything else.
It's just, no, this is like a laser focus in doing the right thing.
And that's what I found recently has been the most helpful thing.
So even though there's 16,000 people, the people on this side are seeing the people laugh on this side, and everyone's seeing everyone laugh, and you're just walking around in a circle.
I think he has some obviously really good physical traits that make him like his conditioning is a superpower that other people don't get to have.
And that's unique to him, and he's made a way to weaponize that in a really smart way.
Every time I like kind of too technically break down things, I feel like I'm trying to be really convincing instead of, you know, just believing in it, which has always kind of been a big problem of Mine in the past has always been: I need evidence in order to believe in something, which kind of just and like with that in like fighting for a world champion, what am I going to just walk in and be like, Well, I've been a world champion before, so I could do it now.
Like, I don't get that luxury of doing that to be a world champion.
So, recently, I've had this realization of belief in self that Trevor and Carrington Banks have both helped instill in me big time.
Um, where I feel like approaching Marab is going to be unique in its own, but I don't need to tailor what it is that I'm doing too much to Marab.
I've really bought into this idea where if I can go out and be the best martial artist that there is in all areas, be able to wrestle with him, be able to strike with him, be able to grapple with him, if I can go out and trust and be that, I can do it.
Against Umar, I did not as good of a job with that.
I treated him like I had to change in order for me to be able to beat him.
Against Marab, I'm not going to do that.
I think Marab also has this narrative buzz around him where he's an unbeatable force, a freak of nature who has conditioning out of whatever.
And while that is true to an extent, that doesn't mean anything to the fact that the guy can't be beaten.
If I look at myself as a fighter and break myself down technically, I would say I'm somewhere between Umar and Sean in the task that he'll have in front of him.
I think I know that I wrestle a lot better than Sean does.
Although Sean does have really good takedown defense, his process of getting up is just like a little dated and pretty slow.
Like you're going to lose some minutes doing it the way that O'Malley does it.
I think that I get up super good.
Being tall and lanky, it's really hard to not let short little guys get underneath you.
Like that shit's going to happen, especially if they're springy and fast in our weight class, like they're going to.
You just have to be able to pop right back up immediately, which I know that I can do because I fought Umar, who's easily one of the best wrestlers in the UFC, and I was able to do that whenever I wanted.
So that brings me a lot of confidence about that.
So I get to fight Murab with a lot of confidence going into it about that.
On the striking end of things, I'm obviously, I think, a way better striker than Murab is, even though he does make his shit work the way that he makes his shit work.
But I'm honestly not going to read too much into it, man.
I'm going to keep worrying about getting better every single day all the way leading up to the fight, and I'm going to make Murab deal with me instead of me having to deal with Murab.