#328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives

John Danaher is one of the greatest coaches and minds in martial arts history. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Audible: https://audible.com/lex to get 30-day free trial – Calm: https://calm.com/lex to get 40% off premium – Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit – MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings EPISODE LINKS: John’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/danaherjohn Watch full matches at FloGrappling: https://flograppling.com PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (07:51) – Road to ADCC (26:23) – Danaher Death Squad (35:07) – Mental preparation (59:52) – Gordon Ryan (1:56:50) – Giancarlo Bodoni (2:21:57) – Garry Tonon (2:35:54) – Nicholas Meregali (2:51:21) – Ruotolo brothers (3:01:00) – Takedowns (3:05:19) – GSP (3:13:48) – Renzo Gracie (3:18:24) – Boris (3:22:15) – Ali Abdelaziz (3:24:41) – Khabib Nurmagomedov (3:28:33) – Joe Rogan playing pool (3:31:47) – Advice for grapplers (3:41:43) – Day in the life (3:48:25) – Bear vs Gorilla vs Lion vs Anaconda (4:26:12) – Tom Hardy (4:37:46) – Emojis (4:40:15) – Love (4:45:38) – Fighting to the death (4:49:25) – Knives

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with John Donahue, his third time on this podcast. He's widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in martial arts history.

• 0:11Lex Fridman?

  And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Audible for audiobooks, Calm for meditation, Indeed for hiring, MasterClass for learning, and Aids Sleeve for napping. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will, too. This episode is brought to you by Audible, an audiobook service that has given me thousands of hours of education, enlightenment, inspiration, wisdom. I can keep going.

• 0:54Lex Fridman?

  All of that through listening to audiobooks. It's becoming increasingly my favorite thing to do when I'm running. I listen to audiobooks. And given a lot of things that I'm doing in my life on the technical side, but also on the podcasting, the people I'm interviewing, I actually prefer not to listen to the audiobooks about the upcoming guests, or from the upcoming guests, or about the topic that the upcoming guests are covering, because what happens is I get so full of ideas and I want to stop and write them down. I want to record audio notes, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, that gets in the way of running.

• 1:34Lex Fridman?

  So I try to listen to nonfiction books that are bigger picture relevant to my life. So I'm talking about history. I'm talking about technical topics that are outside of my particular focus at this particular moment. That's where I listen to a few audiobooks on rocketry, for example. Anyway, all of that is available on Audible. I highly recommend it. New members can try it free for 30 days at audible.com or text LEX to 500-500.

• 2:08Lex Fridman?

  This show is brought to you by Calm, a meditation and mental wellness app. Over 100 million people around the world use Calm to take care of their minds. Some folks tell me that Calm is the destination they arrive at when they listen to my particular voice. And it is true that the voice of the podcaster, no matter what it is honestly, becomes a kind of comforting blanket, or maybe a comforting path towards calmness. So I'm definitely a big believer into the intimacy, or whatever you want to call it,

• 2:51Lex Fridman?

  of podcasting, long form podcasts, where it's not like over edited, where it's just the raw human being before you in conversation or alone. I love all of it. Like Dan Carlin, that's alone, or Joe Rogan, that's in conversation. I just draw a lot of contentment and peace from listening to those conversations. Anyway, if you want to do that kind of thing, but do it more systematically and rigorously, you should definitely be doing guided meditation. I'm a huge fan of that and Calm is a great app for that. You can get a discount on Calm's premium subscription, which includes hundreds of hours of programming. Check it out at calm.com/lex.

• 3:36Lex Fridman?

  This show is also brought to you by Indeed, a hiring website. Even the thought of hiring excites me because it's like dating, but way better. I don't even know what the connection to dating is, except that it's really important that you surround yourself with people. That fill your day with joy, inspiration, that challenge you just in the right ways, that help you grow. I'm a huge believer that the team you work on, especially if you work on stuff that you're passionate about, that team is instrumental to your mental wellbeing, to your success and happiness as a human being. So you should be using

• 4:20Lex Fridman?

  the best tools for the job of hiring. If you're a manager, if you're building a team, all that kind of stuff. And I have used Indeed many times in the past. I'm currently using them. I'm currently hiring. If you're interested, you can go to lexfridman.com/hiring for the information on the jobs I'm hiring, or hopefully you'll find the posts I've made on Indeed. Indeed has a special offer only available for a limited time. Check it out at indeed.com/lex.

• 4:50Lex Fridman?

  This show is also brought to you by MasterClass. $180 a year gets you an all-access pass to watch courses from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. I've been reading off names of the classes I love on here. And one by one, I get to have a podcast conversation with them. And the MasterClass is just an inspiration to me. In preparing for those conversations, I listen to the MasterClass, I watch the MasterClass, and it just blows me away. So recently, I talked to Daniel Negrono, and just the quality of his MasterClass, I can't recommend it enough. It's just incredible. I think for beginners,

• 5:33Lex Fridman?

  for intermediate people, even experts, that MasterClass condenses the, the modern poker theory better than anything I've seen anywhere on the internet. And if poker's not your thing, there's a million other things that are likely your thing, where the best people in the world can teach you about it, like Martin Scorsese. Man, that's a good one. And I hope to talk to him on the podcast one day. I'm going to will it into existence. Get unlimited access to every MasterClass and get 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/lex.

• 6:10Lex Fridman?

  This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its new Pod 3 mattress. Sleep, like diet and exercise, I think of like a musical instrument in a band. So, sleep is like the guitarist. Diet maybe is the lead singer and the exercise is like the drummer. And all of those things you have to play with to create a beautiful hit song. I don't think there's one formula for how much sleep you should get, when you should get the sleep. But just like with diet and exercise, you have to listen to your own body, you have

• 6:51Lex Fridman?

  to understand your own body, and you have to take that journey, that scientific and of one study of your own body very, very seriously. And to me, you should have the right companion for that exploration on the diet, on the exercise, and on the sleep. That's why I'm going with Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. It cools the bed, it warms the bed. Obviously, for me, or not obviously, but for me, I just use the cooling. It's a cool bed surface with a warm blanket that's heaven. Check it out and get special savings when you go to eightsleep.com/lex. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's John Donahue.

• 7:51Lex Fridman?

  The ADCC is the premier submission grappling tournament in the world. We just had it a couple of weeks ago. We saw many demonstrations of greatness from athletes you coached. But a year ago, the team and you were at a very low point. Take me through that journey. What was the lowest point?

• 8:12John Danaher?

  We had a very, very tight team for many years, which began in New York City. During the peak of COVID, training in New York became very difficult to sustain. So, most of the team despised the city of New York. I was the only person in the group that liked living in New York. I think part of the problem was that I was the only one who actually lived in Manhattan. The others had to commute to New York. And there's a world of difference between living in New York and commuting to New York. So, most of them had a very negative view of New York City. That was compounded by COVID, when even the basic active training became very, very difficult.

• 8:57John Danaher?

  And so, everyone decided they want to leave. So, there was a prospect of a complete breakup between myself and the team, or I would have to leave New York. It was a difficult decision for me to make, as I'd lived in New York for 30 years. I had built my life there and had most of my friends and associates that I know here in America were New Yorkers. So, I thought, you know, these guys have been incredibly loyal to me as students. So, I should also be loyal to them, of course. So, I decided that if they wanted to leave, I would go with them. We decided to go to Puerto Rico, because there was a private gym where we could train through the COVID period.

• 9:43John Danaher?

  I personally wanted to go to Texas. I thought that Texas was a better place for the team to go. But many of the students, including senior students like Gordon Ryan, Craig Jones, had been to Puerto Rico and stayed with one of the head officials of ADCC, Mo Jasson. So, they loved their experience in Puerto Rico. And almost everyone wanted to go down there. So, I tried to explain to them, there's a world of difference between going to a place for vacation versus living there. But that didn't have any effect. So, the decision was made, a majority decision was made to go to Puerto Rico.

• 10:26John Danaher?

  In Puerto Rico, the conditions in which the team lived changed significantly. When you're in New York, New York is such a big city that if there's any tension between team members, and inevitably there will be in a competitive sport where everyone's fighting each other, you can kind of bury them in the size of the city because there's so many distractions in New York. You know, you come in, you do your workout, you go outside and it's New York City.

• 10:55John Danaher?

  In Puerto Rico, we lived in a very small local town, Dorado, and most of the athletes were living with each other. And so unlike New York where there was always a break, you trained together, but when training was over, you went about your life in New York and New Jersey. With everyone living in very close proximity to each other, any tensions got magnified because there was no relief from them. You didn't get to get away from people. If you had a problem with someone on the mat, well, now you had to to live with them for the rest of the day and the night. And this goes on for long periods of time. So I believe it had the effect of magnifying whatever tensions there were.

• 11:39John Danaher?

  In particular, there was a family tension between two brothers, which magnified over time.

• 11:48John Danaher?

  And, you know, as so often is the case, you get two brothers growing up, one older, one younger, and the younger one wants to grow and feels somewhat like a young tree underneath a bigger tree. And

• 12:07John Danaher?

  sometimes people just need their space. So there was some unhappiness and

• 12:11Lex Fridman?

  As a younger brother, I can understand.

• 12:13John Danaher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:14Lex Fridman?

  As a little tree that had to grow up under a bigger tree.

• 12:18John Danaher?

  Yeah, so

• 12:19Lex Fridman?

  Fuck the big tree. There's a lot of aggression I have to work on, I'm sorry.

• 12:23John Danaher?

  Unresolved family issues coming out here, like

• 12:25Lex Fridman?

  I'm just kidding, I love you.

• 12:27John Danaher?

  He doesn't, he's lying. So as time went by, these tensions started increasing. They came to a point where it was difficult for them even to be in the training room together. At that point, you're starting to, you know, when once training takes a hit, then you've got to start to address these. The attempts at reconciliation fell through and a decision was made to to move to Texas. I wanted everyone to move as a team. What I wanted to do was keep the team together as long as the period leading up to ADCC, so that everyone could train

• 13:10John Danaher?

  together. So I said, okay, there's problems, but let's just tough it out. One year, we move to Texas, let's just go there and keep unity. If some people don't want to train with other people, that's fine. But I believe that the team would be weakened by breaking apart. I believe that they had an excellent rapport as training partners. Their technical level was increasing dramatically. Many of the younger athletes are really starting to come into their own and really develop well. And so my take on it was, okay, if there's problems, so be it. But let's all just stay together until ADCC 2022 as a unified team. Go out, prepare yourselves as best you can. And and then after that, we can

• 13:55John Danaher?

  make a decision as to whether we break up or not. But that was rejected and the team split. And they moved to Austin. We'd made prior arrangements to go to a local gym and they took that gym and we were left with no gym and more or less homeless than in Austin. A year out from ADCC. Yes, this is one year out. So roughly three quarters of the competitive athletes left in one week. So at that point, that was probably the lowest point because at

• 14:38John Danaher?

  that point, not only did we not have a place to train, we had very few training partners for the few that had remained. And the main athlete in the team, Gordon Ryan, was going through a particularly bad spell with his. Unresolved stomach issues and there was doubt as to whether or not he could compete at all and was actively thinking about retiring from the sport.

• 15:04Lex Fridman?

  So maybe not compete ever again.

• 15:06John Danaher?

  Yeah, yeah. So that was a time when it's like, man, the whole program seems to be dead in the water at this point. Most of the competitive athletes were gone. There were very few training partners for the few that remained and the main athlete around whom the group had initially bonded was seemingly out of action, possibly permanently.

• 15:27Lex Fridman?

  Where was your mind? What were you mentally?

• 15:30John Danaher?

  My thinking is everything bad passes in time. I've had a lot of bad points in my life. So my life experience is whenever things seem dark, have patience. Time will ultimately cure most ills, not all of them, but most of them. And I'm confident that if you give me a new crop of students, I can, I can produce magic, but it's going to take time.

• 16:02Lex Fridman?

  So that confidence was in part a source of strength?

• 16:05John Danaher?

  Yes. It's just like, I wasn't confident that ADCC 2022 would go well because we only had one year without a gym and with a team that was completely broken up to, to, to even attempt to get into ADCC. So things looked a little grim, but I was confident, you know, given enough time, I'd get in a new group of students and work. As it turns out, one of the demonstration partners that I used during filming for instructional

• 16:44John Danaher?

  videos who lives in Boston, John Carlo Bodoni, was interested in the idea of coming down and training. But he'd always felt like it would be difficult because there were people in his weight class who were already there and he felt it would be awkward. But now that they had left, that opened up an area for him. So he was the first one to come down. He moved from Boston to Austin, Texas.

• 17:10John Danaher?

  I began teaching at a local school. It was rather like going back into my earliest days in juditsu. I went from teaching at the big Henzo Gracie Academy to a tiny school in Puerto Rico and now an even smaller school in Austin, Texas. And locals would come in and train and I would watch every day, teaching there twice a day, seven days a week. And I would see people come in and train and I would say, this guy has some potential, or this guy has some potential. And I would recruit people and bring them to another gym where they would train with the professionals. And if they proved adept and hardworking and someone who can work well in a team, they would stay and build their skills. As time went by, more and more such people started coming in. And we had

• 17:54John Danaher?

  some remarkable people, like a young South African purple belt, Luke Griffith, came in. He had lost in the European trials for ADCC. And he was down on his luck. He came into Austin, he did a show against a local purple belt and lost again. So he was feeling bad about his performance and his future. He came in and I thought he was a lovely kid who worked hard and trained well. So he became one of the main training partners. He was similar size to Gordon, so I encouraged him to train with Gordon whenever he could. And more and more people started coming in to train under that kind of basis. One day,

• 18:35John Danaher?

  I got a text from Gordon, who was filming an instructional video in Boston. He said, hey, you know, Nicholas Meregali was training at this, he was shooting video at the same time as me and we just did some grappling. He's a really nice guy and he's literally never trained without a gi before. For those of you who don't know, Nicholas Meregali is one of the outstanding gi juditsu competitors of his generation. Has an amazing game and is a superstar with the gi side of the sport. But had never even trained without a gi once in his life. So his first ever no gi training session is with Gordon Ryan, the best no gi competitor of all time. And I remember Gordon texting me saying,

• 19:19John Danaher?

  He's really talented. He's a nice guy and he wants to come down to Texas and train. So yeah, sounds great. So over time, just more and more people started coming in. And I told everyone, like, you guys are at a severe disadvantage. Like, you've got very little time to get ready for ADCC. Luke wasn't even in ADCC, he had to win trials. Same for Dan Manassoy, he had failed at trials and needed to get a win to even get into ADCC. So around this time, a doctor suggested by Mo Jassem, who had himself had stomach issues earlier in his life, began working with Gordon Ryan. And

• 20:03John Danaher?

  And Mo's the organizer of ADCC. Yes. Yeah, he's the head organizer. He was able to get Gordon Ryan not cured, but significantly better than he was before. And to a level where Gordon could could train, up to five to six days a week. And it was a big improvement on what was going on during the end of the time in Puerto Rico. So things started moving. We had a core group of athletes training at a local gym, which was very, very generously offered to us by

• 20:46John Danaher?

  the head manager of Roka Sunglasses, a company here in Austin, Texas. They have a private corporate gym which we were able to to train in. And these talented youngsters from around the globe essentially came together. And I said, you guys are going to have to train harder than you've ever trained in your lives because you've got less time to get ready for this than anyone. And you're going to be going up against people potentially who

• 21:14John Danaher?

  Know exactly what I teach because I've been teaching them a lot longer than I've been teaching you.

• 21:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 21:18John Danaher?

  Um, in addition to the other best people in the world. So it was a uh, an incredible challenge for them. And I must say, all of them gave literally everything they had. Everything I asked for, they gave twice as much. And um, we had a crazy training schedule, as many as three classes per day. I know that sounds easy, you know, three classes a day, right? But try doing it sometime. These classes are not your average classes. These are preparation for ADCC.

• 21:47Lex Fridman?

  They're both mentally and physically.

• 21:50John Danaher?

  Very, very hard. And um, uh, we had many people come in and try to train alongside us and they fell off by the side of the road within days. Forget about weeks, months, or a full year of this. Um, I gave a very abbreviated set of uh, skills for the athletes. I chopped everything down to what I believe were the, the most essential skills. Um, uh, anything that wasn't essential to ADCC preparation was just pushed aside. And um, uh, they had to focus almost entirely on ADCC with one exception, I'll come to

• 22:31John Danaher?

  that soon, um, over the, the period of their training here in Austin. So it was compacted by time and also by uh, uh, the breadth of skill that I taught. Everything was just purely for ADCC preparation. In a very short period of time, uh, Dan Manassoyu and Luke Griffith and Oliver Tazza all won European trials and got into ADCC. Nicholas Meregali was already a superstar, so he was invited, but he had to show himself. So we enrolled him in local shows here in Austin where he had his first three uh, no gi matches. Um, and with each match, you could see progress being made.

• 23:13John Danaher?

  And so that convinced the ADCC people, okay, he's good enough to, to compete. Um, he ended up winning decisively a match against one of the greatest American grapplers of all time, Rafael Lovato. And this was like the, a clear sign that his skill level in no gi was sufficient to, to justify an invite.

• 23:32Lex Fridman?

  And by the way, Lovato, an incredible uh, set of matches in this ADCC as well.

• 23:38John Danaher?

  Yes, that was actually very impressive.

• 23:39Lex Fridman?

  And retired.

• 23:40John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Lex Fridman?

  Which is really impressive and heartbreaking as well, but if you go out, that's a good way to go out.

• 23:48John Danaher?

  Indeed. So there was this long and tough preparation and it was compounded by the fact that as Gordon felt better, he felt a need to build up his own competitive record prior to ADCC. Because he'd been inactive for so long with his stomach issue. So he proposed one of the most ambitious fight camps that I've ever heard of in grappling, which was he would take on the current WNO champion, Pedro Mourinho.

• 24:21Lex Fridman?

  Whose number one is WNO.

• 24:23John Danaher?

  And also, I believe, the current No Gi World Champion and IBJJF. As a tune-up match, as a warm-up match. Then he would fight his old nemesis, Felipe Pena, the only man who submitted Gordon at black belt and had defeated Gordon in an ADCC match in 2017. And then ADCC itself. So there was going to be three big, high-profile matches back-to-back. And very different rule sets. So WNO was a 15-minute match. The fight with Felipe Pena was no time limit, which is a very different format to compete in. And then ADCC.

• 25:06John Danaher?

  So we had to drag out a 14-week camp, covering three matches with three different rule sets, which went in diametrically opposite directions. And the entire team had to go through all of this over this 14-week period. In addition to the previous year that they had been working hard.

• 25:27John Danaher?

  There was a further complication in the midst of all this. Nicholas Marigalli had to go to the Gi World Championships. And we had to throw an extra morning class for that to help him get ready. Nicholas went on to win the open weight gold medal in the Gi competition. And then the next day had to come back to Texas and begin his ADCC preparation. It was a crazy, crazy time. But they all came through it so well. I'm immensely proud of what they did. And shockingly, in the space of less than 12 months, we went from rock bottom to having a more successful ADCC.

• 26:05John Danaher?

  Team performance than we did the previous ADCC.

• 26:11John Danaher?

  It was in fact the most successful team performance of the event. And as testimony to how hard those those young men worked in in the course of less than a year to prepare themselves.

• 26:24Lex Fridman?

  If we can just linger on the low point. Is it heartbreaking to you that the so called Donnarheard Death Squad split? Or the team as it was originally called split? You know, we live a short life on this earth. And you put so much of your love and work into this team and everybody put in the work. Does it break your heart?

• 26:47John Danaher?

  It was a sad time. Yeah, it was. It was a. You know, I'm not a particularly emotional person. But it was a it was an emotional time for everyone. It was I had an element of tragedy insofar as not only was it a team breakup, it was also a family breakup, which is much more serious.

• 27:07John Danaher?

  I do believe that in time.

• 27:15John Danaher?

  Even the most intense family breakups can be reconciled. And I also believe that once dialogue begins. People will remember. Just how easy it was for us to get along and how tight we were for many, many years.

• 27:33John Danaher?

  It's so easy to let a minute of anger destroy. 10 years of of friendship. So. But there's also the weight of those 10 years. Like when I ran into the old squad members at ADCC, we got along like a house on fire. It's like we never had a problem.

• 27:55Lex Fridman?

  A house on fire is a good thing.

• 27:57John Danaher?

  Yes, yes. Sorry, that's a New Zealand expression, yeah.

• 28:02John Danaher?

  They definitely could have gone the other way, right? So.

• 28:06Lex Fridman?

  Only a New Zealander would say that is a good thing. Yeah.

• 28:10John Danaher?

  So there's this. I still believe, you know, in time, things will be fine. But.

• 28:17John Danaher?

  There was an element where, you know, youngsters need to grow. And sometimes.

• 28:25John Danaher?

  Think about it this way, from the athlete's perspective.

• 28:30John Danaher?

  There's definitely a generational problem. I'm much older than my students. Okay, and the years and the viewpoint that I have is a reflection of the time in which I grew up. And they're from a completely different generation with a completely different worldview.

• 28:48John Danaher?

  It's got to be hard from the athlete's perspective when you're training seven days a week. And you're getting very, very good. You're beating everyone that's getting put in front of you. You're losing very, very rarely, and it's always a tough competitive match when you do. Everyone around you is calling you a superstar. And you look phenomenal.

• 29:12John Danaher?

  You check social media, everyone's saying you're a god on the mat. And then you come into the gym, and there's some old guy telling you you're not good enough.

• 29:22John Danaher?

  And every day it's like, oh, what does this guy want from me? How hard do I have to work? Like, you're not good enough. Like, I want you to be the best in the world. I want you to be good. I want you to be great. And all of your friends are telling you, oh, man, you're incredible. You submit me so easily to do this. And then this old guy's just like, nah. You've got to get better. You've got to work more. You're not working hard enough.

• 29:46John Danaher?

  At some point, you're going to be like, you know what? Fuck this old guy. Like, it's tough. You know, mentally, I get why, you know, they left. When I was 20 years old, I didn't get along with authority figures at all. And to have someone telling you, you've always got to work that little bit harder. No, your skill set's not complete. You still need this, this, and this, when you're already doing very, very well. And far better than all but a tiny, tiny percentage of people. And then you've got this guy just constantly telling you, no, more has to be done. You're not there yet.

• 30:23John Danaher?

  I can, you know, of course, I understand. Just let me just enjoy this more. It's always a choice in life. You can be the best you possibly can, or you can... Go a route where you just get to enjoy life a little more, you do other things. You know, like there's more to the to the life than just the inside of a gym and learning how to do a better heel hook or a better double leg. So of course, you know, years go by, you want to try other things and

• 30:52John Danaher?

  you have to make this choice in life between extreme excellence versus being incredibly good, but maybe just enjoying my life a little more.

• 31:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's so interesting that incredibly good is a hard thing to deal with. I saw like when Kayla Harrison won her first gold medal at the Olympics. You know, to go back to the gym and to trust, again, the maybe the old man, you're you being do question yourself, but to trust the old man, so Jimmy Page or Jimmy Page or senior in that case, to say, okay, we're gonna go back to this grind and there's still a path to improvement, there's still a lot to grow and still have the humility, even though you've just demonstrated greatness. So really good is just a stepping stone to to to to true greatness.

• 31:43Lex Fridman?

  That's really tough for athletes, like winning is actually very difficult. Gold medals are very difficult. Plus, there's the personal stuff of depression that comes with that, which is you give so much of yourself to trying to win that. And once you do,

• 31:58Lex Fridman?

  there's a lot of personal stuff you have to deal with, which is like, what what do I want from life? To understand what is exactly, what am I chasing? Is it just winning? Or is it some bigger picture of excellence that's beyond just winning? So that that's all of all of that mixed up together. And then when you have to be as a team really close together, there's the personal relationships, all of that gets exacerbated.

• 32:23John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Lex Fridman?

  Do you think the team ever gets back together?

• 32:27John Danaher?

  I think there's, you know, there's definitely a chance of that. Right now, I think they have an excellent team themselves and they're doing very well. They had an excellent performance at ADCC. So there's not a need for them to, uh, to come to us. It's not like they, they lack anything. They still remember everything I taught them. They still coach and teach with the same methodology that I taught them. So, um, uh, I don't think they have any need to do so. Uh, if they did, it would be because they wanted to. I still think many of the same personality conflicts that originated the conflict would reemerge currently if, if they started training together.

• 33:06Lex Fridman?

  Uh, by the way, to, to pile on the compliments, they have really nice merch too. The T-shirts are just excellent.

• 33:13Lex Fridman?

  What have you learned from that process about how to have a team with personal conflicts? Do you have to deal with these giant egos as well?

• 33:20John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Lex Fridman?

  Because ego is a, is a part of superpower too. So you don't want to.

• 33:24John Danaher?

  Yeah, you, you, you don't want to suppress egos. Like I always laugh and people say, leave your ego at the door.

• 33:31John Danaher?

  It's like, what, what do you think drives competition? Like, if you want to be good at anything in life, you've got to have an ego.

• 33:38John Danaher?

  No, I, I don't believe it's good or even a healthy thing to suppress egos. Um, I'm, I'm a realist and I understand that this is a sport where they make one gold medal per weight division. There's, as guys get better, they're going to be looking at their training partners and thinking like, I'm going to have to fight this guy one day. And they're training next to each other. Of course, there's going to be tension. There's always going to be disagreements about, you know, what's the right way to act around, uh, certain people, certain issues. And people are going to come into conflict. Everyone's being programmed to be a, uh, an alpha competitor. You get a room full of people like that, there's going to be conflict.

• 34:21John Danaher?

  Now, your question was, well, is there a way to resolve this? Yeah, there was. And for eight to nine years, I was very successful with this. But there's also a tipping point where things can flare out of control and there will be periodic breakups. You know, you're not the first students I had that, that left. I've been coaching a lot longer than I've been coaching the squad. And, um, uh, I'm sure in the future, there'll be other students who leave me. They, that's just the nature of the beast. It's sad when it happens, but life goes on.

• 34:54Lex Fridman?

  Like Bukowski said, "Love is a fog that fades with the first daylight of reality," or something like that. So even love is temporary.

• 35:07Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask you about leading up the preparation for the athletes. I mean, this is such, given the darkness from a year ago, from which you had to find glimmers of light and try to get greatness out of athletes, what was the mental preparation like for Gordon, for Nicholas, for Giancarlo, for the other athletes? What was the mental side of things like? Is there some key insights you can give to their mental preparation?

• 35:36John Danaher?

  I really think that people, when they talk about mental preparation, need to take a step back and realize that almost every element of what people describe as mental preparation has physical underpinnings.

• 35:53John Danaher?

  Literally 95% of what I teach the athletes is physical skills. And it's my belief that every mental aspect of competition, the most important of which will be confidence onstage, is a direct result of the accumulation of physical skills.

• 36:14John Danaher?

  People tend to see things like confidence as a mental state. It is, but it comes out of the performance of physical skills.

• 36:29John Danaher?

  All my life, I've seen sports psychologists try to create confidence in athletes through non-physical means. And it always ends up being the same kind of cheesy motivational speeches, highlight video reels where they try to pump artificial confidence into people.

• 36:52John Danaher?

  I've never been impressed by this, nor have I seen it have any kind of positive effect on on athlete performance. What I do see build confidence is the sense that athletes are developing skills and using them successfully under conditions that closely mirror the event they're preparing for. Once they get this down, that's where true confidence comes from. Confidence doesn't come from words, it comes from accumulated skills, which experience shows you have been responsible for successful performances in the past. And if you accumulate enough of these, your confidence rises.

• 37:33John Danaher?

  So when it comes to the mental aspects of competition, I created a program where everyone had a was given a set of skills that they had to work on, skills directly related to what I believe is the most important elements of success in ADCC competition. In the gym, they accumulated those skills over time. I do it in two different ways, depending on whether these are offensive skills or defensive skills. For the accumulation of offensive skills, I like to have my athletes work with athletes who are lesser than themselves in ability, so that they start to gain confidence over time. Just as you would never send a beginner into a weightlifting gym and put 500 pounds on

• 38:15John Danaher?

  the bar and tell them to lift it, rather you would start with a wooden bar, then the metal bar, and then gradually accumulate weight over time, so you get a progression in weightlifting. So to a judo, you don't take a brand new move and say, okay, do it on Gordon Ryan. Never going to succeed. I have the athletes practice their offense on blue belts and work their way up. Defense, on the other hand, you've got to start them in the deep end of the pool, so that they start to see what are their vulnerabilities. Okay, so I put them with highly competitive athletes at the start, so they can see, okay, there is a problem here. And then even in defense, they start off with lower belts and build up their confidence over time.

• 38:59John Danaher?

  So just as a weightlifter builds up his ability to build weight, sorry, to lift weight over time, so too a judo player does it, by gradually increasing resistance. Now, in judo, resistance is not done by weight, it's done by skill level. And so over time, they started to accumulate this experience.

• 39:21John Danaher?

  In time, um, they uh, we were able to switch off and have them go against very, very tough athletes each other. So, you know, uh, Luke Griffiths will do a full power match with Gordon Ryan. Now, they're fully aware that there's no one better in the world than Gordon Ryan. So if you have a competitive match with Gordon Ryan, that's a very, very healthy sign. So they went from the start where they were being programmed, going against relatively mild resistance and building up over time, and then building up to the greatest resistance possible in the sport of jiu-jitsu. And their goal is not to win, obviously, but their goal is to provide a competitive match. Now Gordon

• 40:05John Danaher?

  doesn't have any confidence issues, so for him, it's just good, hard competitive training against people that are eh, in some ways, better than those you'll be facing in competition. For the other guys, it's getting a clear assessment of what their current skill level is by going against the best there is. Then we add to this a competitive schedule where the athletes have to go out into competition so they get used to the idea of performing in front of strangers on stage, getting used to the, the strange elements of going out, being observed and judged by people you don't know in a performance atmosphere. And so they were all given matches and WNO competition leading up to the event, uh, ADCC

• 40:48John Danaher?

  trials, local grappling events here in Austin, and given a competitive schedule to fight and prepare them for ADCC. Obviously, as ADCC got closer and closer, this was pulled back because of the danger of injury. So within about three weeks out was the last time we had a competition. And by this method, confidence starts to grow. And uh, and so the mental preparation came out of those physical underpinnings, the idea of progressive resistance increasing over time, uh, for both offense and defense, building up to a peak where they're going against the best athlete in the world so they can get an accurate assessment of where they stand. Once you're given a competitive match to the best guy

• 41:29John Danaher?

  in the world, you know damn well that when you go out in ADCC, you're ready to fight anybody.

• 41:35Lex Fridman?

  And defense is broadly defined. So defense and In symmetrical positions, like positions like guard. And then defense also includes escaping from horrible positions.

• 41:47John Danaher?

  Yes, we're big believers in the idea of depth of defense. The idea that you should be able to mount defense all the way through from early stages, based mostly around anticipation of identifying danger visually before it emerges. And all the way through to the deepest levels of defense where you are 100% defensive in terrible positions and you have to claw your way out. And over time and get back to a neutral position or even better, back to an attacking position.

• 42:15Lex Fridman?

  You have an Instagram post on this topic. When you get ready to step out for the biggest moment of your life, ask yourself one question. How different is this really from what I do every day? If the answer is not very different at all, then step forward with confidence and do what you do every day in the same manner and ignore the hype and distraction. You're ready for action. By the way, for people who don't know, you need to follow John Donahue, Donahue John on Instagram. You have nuggets or large buckets of nuggets of wisdom often, which is quite profound, even bigger than jujitsu. But anyway, so there's some aspect where you want to mimic the conditions of your

• 43:01Lex Fridman?

  daily training in intensity and in what, for so physical to that of the actual matches.

• 43:11John Danaher?

  You asked a question about mental training. For me, the central focus of whatever small amount of mental training I give my students comes down to a very, very simple concept to understand. This is the idea of identifying competition in terms of its normalcy. Most people see training and competition as two different things. Training is normal activity that you do every day and competition is the exception. Okay, it's different. You're going out, there's people watching you, there's a big crowd, they're making lots of noise.

• 43:47John Danaher?

  In fact, the promoters of shows go out of their way to reinforce this. Look at, for example, ADCC, when Gordon Ryan went to fight Andre Galván. Okay, do they just come out on the mat and fight each other? Absolutely not.

• 44:01Lex Fridman?

  They're exposed to fire.

• 44:03John Danaher?

  There's music, there's pageantry, there's fireballs. They're literally shooting fireballs.

• 44:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, some dude in a tie, sitting with Joe Rogan.

• 44:10John Danaher?

  I heard about that guy.

• 44:11Lex Fridman?

  Meathead, uh, podcaster comedian, whatever.

• 44:15John Danaher?

  Which one was the meathead?

• 44:17Lex Fridman?

  Well, well played, John Gata, well played.

• 44:20John Danaher?

  But you see what they're trying to do. They're trying to create theater and pageantry, when in fact, it's just a grappling match. It's just two athletes, a referee and a ruleset. That's, that's the reality. Now, what they try to sell you is something which is not reality, which is this is somehow bigger and different. And they reinforce this with pageantry and theater, so that it becomes not just a grappling match, but a grappling performance, the same way you have a theater performance. And my goal as a coach is to dispel that and say, when you go out there, there's only one reality, you, him, and the referee reinforcing a ruleset. That's it.

• 45:02John Danaher?

  Everything else you see, the smoke, the fire, the music, is an illusion. And it's put there intentionally to make you feel a certain kind of way. And your whole goal is to see this as illusion and walk out and see only the reality, which is that this is the same damn thing you do every day in the gym. The only difference is you're going with a guy you've never grappled before.

• 45:25Lex Fridman?

  So the actual act of removing the illusion or realizing that it is an illusion, how do you practice that? So when you step on the mat.

• 45:33John Danaher?

  Once you're aware of it, I, I always have them to, it, it, it, it's like when you, when you see a magician and you have his tricks explained to you, you never see the magic again. The first time you see a good card trick from a good magician, it's, oh my God. Then when they explain it to you, I did this, this and that, step one, step two. Then you look at it like, hmm, it's not that special. And when you explain to people this idea of the pageantry is an illusion.

• 46:07John Danaher?

  Then, just as when you watch the magician and you learn the trick,

• 46:11John Danaher?

  all the magic flies out the window, so too with the nervous response.

• 46:15Lex Fridman?

  Well, so that's for the pageantry, but what about the, maybe the physical intensity of competition? Isn't there an extra?

• 46:24John Danaher?

  No, it's the same in every competition. It's not like, you know, they're twice as strong at ADCC as they are in the IBJF World Championships. The physical intensity is always pretty much the same. They experience it every day in the gym. And, um, uh, like, you know, if you go out and you grapple Gordon Ryan, it's not like the next guy you grapple is going to be twice as strong as him or twice as fast. He's be a little stronger, a little faster, but not so much so that it completely changes your approach of the game.

• 46:55John Danaher?

  You know, there's not that much difference between the human bodies out there on stage. So if you've felt intensity before, you're not going to be shocked by ADCC.

• 47:03Lex Fridman?

  But in terms of in training, do you have to try to match the intensity of competition?

• 47:08John Danaher?

  No, that would be false. You'd be, every athlete in the gym would be injured. You can do it for short periods of time. But the, uh, the training has to be carefully monitored in terms of intensity levels. Remember, we're training seven days a week, a minimum of twice a day.

• 47:25John Danaher?

  You, you've got to keep things under wraps. Like, you know, every other workout, you can have a, like, one of the five rounds can be full power, but not seven days a week, three times a day. That's, that's just going to break bodies.

• 47:38Lex Fridman?

  And the full power is just a reminder of?

• 47:42John Danaher?

  It's more about skill development. For us, it always comes back to skill development.

• 47:46Lex Fridman?

  But what about matching the, the feeling of the intensity of competition?

• 47:52John Danaher?

  Yeah, periodically.

• 47:54Lex Fridman?

  Periodically?

• 47:54John Danaher?

  But it can't be every single time. Not, not really. It's not rare.

• 47:58Lex Fridman?

  Like, meaning like?

• 47:59John Danaher?

  You know, like, like, uh, out of, you know, three hours of hard sparring per day, like 15 minutes might be like 100% full power. That way you, you, uh, that's more than enough to get psychologically ready for the intensity of conflict, but, um, uh, but won't break your body over time.

• 48:19Lex Fridman?

  Intensity of conflict, that's well put. There is, um, competition, doesn't it have that extra level of animosity?

• 48:27Lex Fridman?

  It's a little bit more conflict than it is.

• 48:30John Danaher?

  It can. Sometimes there's personality differences, like, for example, like Gordon Ryan and Filipe Pena. They admire each other a lot. They respect each other's skills, but they certainly don't like love each other, that's for sure. So there can be certain matchups where there's more intensity. But then there's other matchups where the two athletes come out and it's no more intense than a hard sparring session.

• 48:56Lex Fridman?

  So first of all, because I would love to look at a couple of matches with you. And before that, let me say a big thank you to Flow Grappling for, first of all, helping the sport of grappling and jiu-jitsu in general by having organized footage and tournaments that sort of show this sport in its best light to the world. And they do an incredible job of that. So if you're interested in supporting grappling as a sport, helping it grow, you should definitely support Flow Grappling. Go to their website, sign up. Also Flow Wrestling. I'm a huge fan of wrestling, so maybe there'll be a Flow Judo at some point. They don't currently, I don't think, do any major Judo stuff.

• 49:41Lex Fridman?

  So anyway, I'm a big supporter of theirs and I do have criticism that they know about, which is I hope they continue to improve on the aspect of making the footage discoverable and accessible, making it easy for you to do search through Google and on their website to find matches, to get excited. Like if me and Joe Rogan are getting excited about a particular match, we want to be able to pull it up super quickly. Want to be able to pull up Gordon Ryan's matches super quickly from ADCC, make it super easy to show and share. If we have to pay for it, fine, but make it easy. And when you sign, in order to sign up for Flow, it should be one click, not five clicks. It should be one click. It should be easy.

• 50:27Lex Fridman?

  I think it's inexpensive. If you care about grappling, it's definitely worth it. You should sign up. Anyway, my love goes out to Flow Grappling and also my love goes out to. Mo Jasim, as we said, he's the organizer of ADCC. The next one is in 2024? It should be 2024. Well, you should follow ADCC underscore official on Instagram and just send as much love towards Mo and ADCC in general. It's, like I said, the most prestigious. It's like where the best grapplers in the world show up and the magic happens. It's like some of the most historic matches in grappling and jiu jitsu ever happened on that stage.

• 51:07Lex Fridman?

  Anyway, if I could talk about some of the interesting performances for the athletes you coached, you post on Instagram, let's start with Gordon Ryan. Gordon Ryan, ADCC 2022, the greatest event in grappling history is over. New stars emerged, established stars shone bright again, but one man stood above all like a colossus, Gordon Ryan. You have a way with words, John Donner. I have seen many incredible feats of grappling, but I've never saw a performance like this. For many, Mr. Ryan is a polarizing figure in the sport. For many others, an inspiration to look up to. But after this weekend, there was no disagreement amongst haters and fans about his merit.

• 51:51Lex Fridman?

  He is the best ever. It was a long and difficult journey to ADCC 2022, just one year ago, and so on, as he told the story. It was a virtuoso performance of unmatched technique, preparation and confidence. No one else can claim credit for this achievement. This was his and his alone. No one else today brings together technical depth, tactical insight and confidence to use them on stage as he does. I had many students, but only one Gordon Ryan. And I think Gordon responded, oh, this is true, besides the credit that sits with you. Thank you. And a heart emoji. Very nice. So, anyway, that's as a way of introduction to Gordon Ryan.

• 52:33Lex Fridman?

  Can you take me through his set of performances and maybe any matches that stand out? So he competed in his division, which is the plus ninety nine kilos and in the super fight against Andre Gova.

• 52:48John Danaher?

  That's correct. This was in fact, the first time in in history that this was allowed. For your listeners who don't follow grappling, we may have been very rude and just throwing a lot of stuff at you without explaining ourselves. First of all, ADCC is like the Olympics of grappling. It occurs every two years. You can either qualify for the event through winning matches in a qualification process, or you can be invited. The only people who get invited are either former winners or people in the sport who are just widely recognized superstars who bring some kind of brand value, who have proven in the past that they have what it takes to compete at that level.

• 53:30John Danaher?

  In this format, there are two kinds of matches. There are weight division matches in which you compete against people your own, roughly your own size and weight. There is an open weight where anyone of any size can enter. So you can have very small people fighting very large people. And there is a second category called a super fight, where established champions who have won previous open weight tournaments, fight each other in one-off battles, one athlete against another.

• 54:12John Danaher?

  So in most of the matches, you will you will fight repetitively over time towards a gold medal. But in one category, you fight one fight, the so-called super fight, which is usually the headlined fight of the event. Traditionally, if you were in the super fight, you could not compete in the weight categories. It was seen as too risky because you might get injured. During the weight category, or you might have to fight four very tough fights in a row and get exhausted so that you're ineffective during the main event of the show, the super fight. So throughout its history, ADCC has always resisted the idea of an athlete being allowed to do both weight category and a super fight.

• 54:57John Danaher?

  It's never happened before. Gordon Ryan requested to be able to do this because of his extraordinary stature in the sport. The ADCC organisation granted his request. That was the first time ever. In addition, Gordon Ryan would be fighting to be the first person to win three gold medals in three different weight categories. This has never been done before. So it was a huge event on Gordon's part. And bear in mind also that prior to this event, he had fought just a month and a half earlier against a former ADCC open weight champion, Felipe Pena, who had defeated him in the past in a completely different ruleset, and then previous to that against the current world champion.

• 55:42John Danaher?

  So there'd been a build up to this. So he'd been very active coming up to the event, and then he went in to fight arguably the greatest ADCC champion of all time, Andre Galván, which would occur late on Sunday, and would have to fight the toughest people, including the possibility of fighting his nemesis, Felipe Pena, in the weight division prior to getting to the super fight. So there was genuine concern here that he may have completely overstepped himself. The biggest concern I had as a coach, and I'm sure the organisers, Mo Jazem, must have had the same concern, is that he would get injured or exhausted fighting in his weight division.

• 56:27John Danaher?

  There were two athletes in particular. Felipe Pena, who had given Gordon a very tough 40-minute match in a no rules setting shortly before ADCC, and his former training partner, Nick Rodriguez, who were expected to give Gordon very, very tough matches if they came up against each other. So there was a genuine concern that Gordon may burn himself out before he even got to fight the guy who most people believe is the greatest ADCC champion of all time. So our concern was, how do we manage this? So what we looked for is extremely efficient methods of reducing the time of the matches, making the matches as short as possible.

• 57:14John Danaher?

  Our favorite way to fight bigger, stronger athletes, and I think Gordon was the lightest athlete in his weight division. Everyone goes, oh, Gordon's so big and strong. He's actually quite light.

• 57:28John Danaher?

  I think he was outweighed by almost all his opponents.

• 57:31Lex Fridman?

  It's nice to see Gordon looking small relative to his opponents, which is absurd to say, but it is the open division, plus 99 kilos.

• 57:39John Danaher?

  It was plus 99 kilos.

• 57:41Lex Fridman?

  Right, that's what I mean, sorry, by open, plus 99 kilos.

• 57:44John Danaher?

  Everyone looks like the Incredible Hulk. Yeah, yeah. So our big thing is when we fight bigger, stronger opponents, we always go in two directions. You either go for the legs or you go for the back. And so we constructed strategies based around those two methods.

• 57:59Lex Fridman?

  So going for submissions. And we should also mention that AGCC ruleset is for regular matches, I think it's five minutes and five minutes total is 10 minutes. And then for finals matches is 20 minutes and half the time is spent with no points.

• 58:15John Danaher?

  So these can be very, very long matches. I mean, to put this in a perspective, a modern judo match is five minutes. A modern wrestling match, I believe, is six minutes in international freestyle. So these matches can be 40 minutes long. Now, that's a long, long grappling match.

• 58:31Lex Fridman?

  Depending on how you compete in it, that can have a huge toll on you.

• 58:35John Danaher?

  Absolutely. You can get to the finals and just be absolutely spent. So our whole thing is, okay, Gordon's got to not only get to the finals, then he's got to fight the toughest AGCC grappler of all time after that. So we were looking for quick and energy efficient matches. And that meant going to the back or going to the legs.

• 58:55John Danaher?

  And in the overwhelming majority of cases, that's exactly what he did. He was able to get some very, very quick matches, courtesy of leg lock finishes. And in the few cases where he didn't finish on legs, then he would simply take his opponents back. And that's a very low stress position to occupy. In one case, his opponent deliberately kept his back on the ground to prevent the back take and he just chose mounted position instead. And so he was able to go through his weight division with extremely low energy expenditure, which set him up well to go into the finals. No injuries, very little energy expenditure. Now, it sounds easy to say that, you know, okay, the strategy worked.

• 59:38John Danaher?

  But in order to get that strategy to work, you have to have one hell of a set of skills. And we can see those now. Would you like to?

• 59:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I would love to go through them. And I should also mention, for people just listening to this, I'll try to commentate on different things we'll look at. But the thing that was made clear is, maybe you can speak to that. Maybe to you, it looks like efficiency, but to me, it looked like Gordon was not even trying. There was a relaxed aspect to the whole thing. So maybe it had to do with saving energy, but he made it look very easy. And he made the path to submission look very easy. So here, the first match against an opponent that, again, looks bigger than him.

• 1:00:28John Danaher?

  Okay, I'll just give an initial comment here. First, you'll see that Gordon elected to sit to the bottom position. The hardest work in submission grappling is when two athletes take the standing position and joust for takedowns. That's where most of the energy gets burned up. So working on the idea of energy efficiency, let's go out and we chose to sit into guard position and then start looking to access our opponent's back. Because of our opponent's head position, a far side arm drag makes a lot of sense. Gordon's able to beat the arm and quickly get behind his opponent. Now, the question is going to be getting into a scoring position. It's too early to score at this point, but we're just concerned at this stage of just energy expenditure, make the other guy work harder than us.

• 1:01:11Lex Fridman?

  So Gordon did the arm drag to the back and I was working on the hooks.

• 1:01:16John Danaher?

  The hooks are not particularly important here. He'll use it just to get stability on his opponent. But interestingly, his opponent here had an interesting strategy too, which was to occupy bottom turtle position. And look to get to the critical five-point demarcation, sorry, five-minute demarcation point, where points begin to get scored. His idea, I believe, I'm speculating here based on his actions, was to keep Gordon at bay in a defensive turtle position until the five-minute mark occurred, in which case he would shake Gordon off, walk away, and force a takedown battle.

• 1:01:53Lex Fridman?

  How many people are comfortable in that? And what do you think about the defensive turtle position versus always trying to come back to guard?

• 1:02:00John Danaher?

  Turtle position is the second bottom position of judits. Many people only associate guard position with bottom position in judits. That's naive. There's two. There's guard position and turtle position. Now, as a general rule, guard position offers a much, much greater variety of attacking options than turtle position does. But that's not to say turtle position absolutely can be an effective bottom position. You can work effectively from there.

• 1:02:31Lex Fridman?

  So there's some case to be made that to wait out five minutes, turtle might be...

• 1:02:35John Danaher?

  I mean, I personally think against Gordon Ryan, I mean, I admire the fellow's courage.

• 1:02:42John Danaher?

  It's not easy. But there was a logic to what he was doing. People think, oh, he just got his back taken so easily. But he did have a strategy. Now, did he pick the right person to use that strategy against? Probably not.

• 1:02:56Lex Fridman?

  So Gordon's able to break the turtle down, get one hook in.

• 1:03:03Lex Fridman?

  At which point, is this becoming an extremely controlling position with Gordon at the back? At which point is there, are you happy with where it is?

• 1:03:14John Danaher?

  At this point, it just started to dawn on me at this point that this guy actually had a strategy, which was to maintain a prone position that he's in now, and then shake Gordon off after the five-minute mark. So once that became obvious, then I was, now I'm starting to look at the clock and how close we are, if we can take it up to five minutes.

• 1:03:38John Danaher?

  Right now, this guy's only intention is to stop Gordon from strangling him and finish.

• 1:03:51John Danaher?

  Okay, now the guy's trying to go up in vertical, freeze it there. Now, do you see how he's taking his elbows off the mat? In turtle position. In Jiu-Jitsu, there's only one reason you take your elbows off the mat from turtle position, that's to stand up. So now, it's clear at this point what his actual strategy is. It's to get up, force a standing confrontation, win a takedown battle and beat Gordon by points. So he did have a strategy. Now, our counter-strategy is always based around the power half Nelson. This is a common move in the sport of wrestling, and it's a great way to break people down as they try to stand up.

• 1:04:21Lex Fridman?

  That looks so heavy.

• 1:04:22John Danaher?

  Yeah, I mean Gordon is a master of it and...

• 1:04:25Lex Fridman?

  So there's a power half Nelson that Gordon has on him as the elbows are off the ground and knees are off the ground.

• 1:04:32John Danaher?

  He's going to return his opponent to the mat. And as you can see, he's successful in doing so. And now, it's clear what the man's strategy is, so I'm calling to Gordon to break him down to a hip. You put a man on a hip, he can't stand up. Gordon successfully does it, traps the shoulder, using that one-on-one grip with his right hand, puts him down to a shoulder and a hip. That means standing up is no longer an option for his opponent. Now Gordon goes in, he's already scoring because of the turtle position that he's in. His opponent stays down on his shoulder, now Gordon's responsibilities start looking for the stranglehold. His opponent has basic defensive structure, he's disciplined with his chin, keeps the chin down. Gordon is a master of tying up defensive arms and penetrating under the chin to get to a strangle, and you'll see that shortly.

• 1:05:15John Danaher?

  There's the trapping of the arm. Notice that no advanced grips were required, it was just a spontaneous trap. There's the penetration of the neck.

• 1:05:26Lex Fridman?

  So the arm was trapped with the leg?

• 1:05:28John Danaher?

  Yep. So now, he's only got one defensive arm, and he's just taking that away with his left hand, and he gets a one-handed strangle for the finish.

• 1:05:38Lex Fridman?

  And it looks like not much energy was expended during that process.

• 1:05:42John Danaher?

  Very little, yeah. So that's a, as the tournament got off to a very smooth start. Very little energy expenditure, no injuries and a submission win.

• 1:05:51Lex Fridman?

  Does that, there's a kind of certain look to Gordon of, that could be interpreted as nervousness. That was an incorrect interpretation?

• 1:06:01John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 1:06:01Lex Fridman?

  Okay. So there's a.

• 1:06:05John Danaher?

  What do you interpret as nervous behavior?

• 1:06:08Lex Fridman?

  Well, this is, part of me is trolling, but sometimes on the surface, confident behavior can look like, almost like anger. And there's, Gordon's face had like a vulnerability to it. Almost like.

• 1:06:32John Danaher?

  When you go to judge confidence, don't look at the face. Look at the extremities of the body.

• 1:06:37Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38John Danaher?

  That's where the truth comes out. You see it in body language and the further from the face and chest, the more honest the body becomes. Look at the feet and the hands.

• 1:06:48Lex Fridman?

  Well, there were, I mean.

• 1:06:50John Danaher?

  That's when you'll see if people are nervous or not.

• 1:06:52Lex Fridman?

  He was very relaxed in the extremities. That's true. See, you look more confident in this than anything. What are you thinking about? What I, what's going through your head here? Is this the same stuff? Are you intimidated by the two meatheads, one in a suit and tie? Or are you not thinking about that at all?

• 1:07:13John Danaher?

  I know. Now, for me, it's just about, okay, what's the most efficient path to victory against this particular opponent? It's just, okay, I've done my job. I've taken them through a, an extensive fight camp that prepared them for every conceivable situation that they're in. I've run an efficient warm up. Their body temperature is perfect. The elasticity in the muscles is perfect.

• 1:07:38John Danaher?

  My main role when I corner is I avoid what most people do when they corner, which is to be a cheerleader. Most cornermen, they're not cornermen, they're cheerleaders. They're there to express some kind of emotional support to their training partners or their student. Sometimes they're even worse than cheerleaders. They express their own emotional fears as the match goes on.

• 1:08:05John Danaher?

  I always believe that ninety nine point five percent of the job of the trainer is done, the coach is done, when the athlete steps their foot on the mat. At that point, you shouldn't need me at all. Everything I needed to tell you should have been not just told you, but imprinted into you. Remember, there's fifteen thousand people in that crowd. For half of the match, you're not going to hear a word that I can say. There's too much noise, but you'll hear my voice inside your head.

• 1:08:37John Danaher?

  Because you've heard it so many times over the last fourteen weeks, you're sick of hearing it at that point.

• 1:08:44John Danaher?

  And their program know what to do.

• 1:08:48John Danaher?

  So I'm, I'm usually pretty confident. I'm also very confident that even in worst case scenarios, they can have effective solutions because they train those worst case scenarios every single day in the gym.

• 1:09:01Lex Fridman?

  And so in part, you're there to have a front row seat to analyze what happened so that you can take that to the next match.

• 1:09:10John Danaher?

  The biggest danger an athlete faces is tunnel vision. Sometimes they will hit upon a certain move or strategy and just say, I'm going to go with this. When there's much easier alternatives, but because they're so focused on the alternative they've chosen, they get this tunnel vision and just focus only on that. The most constructive thing the corner man can do is alert them to the presence of time, which is very important in an ADCC match because all the scoring is structured by time. And to alleviate problems associated with tunnel vision. Okay, you're doing this, but if you just did this, it would be so much easier. So that's the main goal.

• 1:09:48Lex Fridman?

  So here, this was one of several anticipated matches against, a second one against Victor Hugo.

• 1:09:57Lex Fridman?

  Which is a very tough opponent. And

• 1:10:01John Danaher?

  Again, this was a situation where Gordon was considerably outweighed by his opponent. So the main thing here was efficiency. His opponent elected to avoid the standing position by jumping into guard.

• 1:10:12Lex Fridman?

  Closed guard, yeah.

• 1:10:13John Danaher?

  Yeah, Gordon would be in top position this time.

• 1:10:16Lex Fridman?

  He has a very good closed guard.

• 1:10:18John Danaher?

  But unfortunately, Gordon has very good guard passing. So he's an excellent guard player, very talented. But Gordon is renowned as the eminent guard passer in the world today. So it's a tall order to hold Gordon off for a 10-minute match.

• 1:10:35Lex Fridman?

  Is there something you can say about this guard passing? Gordon is making it look very easy. It's middle distance guard passing here. He eventually passes to mount, I believe, in a very

• 1:10:49John Danaher?

  Why don't you run through the sequence where he gets mounted? There's a couple, I believe he gets mounted twice. Just back just a little bit further.

• 1:10:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So he's trying to one arm under.

• 1:11:01John Danaher?

  Yeah, this is a stacking position. Now, normally, we always insist on the idea of getting advantageous angle first, controlling the feet and getting angle. But there's a height advantage that Victor Hugo has here, and the length of his legs means that he can play very, very wide with his legs. So getting an advantageous angle might be difficult. In these circumstances, it often makes sense to go right up the middle. Now, Gordon could just go back for legs because the legs, Victor Hugo's legs are so far apart at this point that you could easily isolate a leg and attack that. But Gordon wanted to show off his passing prowess. Very often, he'll go into a match and just say, okay, I'm gonna show this skill.

• 1:11:44John Danaher?

  And he'll often use it as a demonstration of techniques he teaches in instructional videos. So he wanted to show that he could pass to mount readily on a world champion.

• 1:11:55Lex Fridman?

  Like this part here. This little step.

• 1:11:58John Danaher?

  Okay, just freeze it right there. Go back one step. Okay, you can clearly see that all of his opponent's defensive frames are built on his opponent's left hand side. So everything is defense on the on the left. But you can see this comes at a price and that price is back exposure on the right hand side. You can literally see his opponent's back on that side. So Gordon's whole game is to to place sufficient pressure that you the opponent overcompensates on the side of pressure just to set up a quick switch across to the other side. There's the vulnerability. There's the back exposure. His opponent has to put his back on the ground, switches back. That's a world champion right there on bottom who does a good job of recovering from the first danger.

• 1:12:41John Danaher?

  But unfortunately, Gordon has been here a thousand times and just switches his hips and kicks out.

• 1:12:46Lex Fridman?

  Little little step.

• 1:12:47John Danaher?

  And so you see there's two changes in direction, left, right, in a very short period of time that people find very, very hard to keep up with. Now his opponent fills up to an elbow. He's looking to to create more and more space from here, but Gordon counters by just stepping over the hips. It's just when you you feel like every move, he he's doing the right things. The man on bottom is doing well. He's doing the right things. But the other guy's just been here too many times and is just a half second ahead of every decision.

• 1:13:17Lex Fridman?

  So that going up in the elbow.

• 1:13:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Gordon makes it look so easy here with the it's it almost seems like Victor is out. But this turning of the hips with the arm over the opponent's back is able to bring him back down and get and Gordon takes mount.

• 1:13:42John Danaher?

  Notice how Gordon is never satisfied with the mounted position itself. He's only satisfied with an extended mounted position where the elbow comes up over the shoulder line.

• 1:13:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, only then does he show. There's a there's a little bit of relief right there, right? Right? There's a little bit of relief.

• 1:13:58John Danaher?

  No, that's that's the look of a man who's just proved a point.

• 1:14:04Lex Fridman?

  Ah, yeah, this is very Michael Jordan like sticks his tongue out. So, yeah. I mean, there's no points at this stage. He really is going for submission.

• 1:14:15Lex Fridman?

  And then this this happens again.

• 1:14:27Lex Fridman?

  Is this the match that wasn't Gordon?

• 1:14:29John Danaher?

  This was the only match where Gordon didn't finish his opponent by submission.

• 1:14:36Lex Fridman?

  Was this very frustrating for him? Was there a...

• 1:14:39John Danaher?

  It's actually interesting that when he came off the mat,

• 1:14:43John Danaher?

  he was visibly frustrated. He wanted to get a finish. And I think he was more upset about not finishing Victor Hugo than he was delighted by winning his two gold medals.

• 1:15:00John Danaher?

  So I think that says a lot about the perfectionism of Gordon Ryan. Most people would be thrilled to beat one of the great grapplers of this generation decisively in this fashion, but he was not happy.

• 1:15:14Lex Fridman?

  And so this is Gordon's third match against Souza, Osvaldo Souza. Another guy who's very big.

• 1:15:22John Danaher?

  Yeah, this is different because now we're on to the second day. Your listeners should be aware that the event occurs over a two-day period. So the previous two matches occurred on Saturday. Now we're into Sunday. Now this puts a different context on things. If we could just freeze it right there. Maybe go back one step.

• 1:15:39John Danaher?

  Now we're on Sunday morning and the idea is that Gordon will be fighting the biggest fight of his life late that afternoon. So now we're into the idea of energy conservation, okay? It's okay to have two hard matches on Saturday because you get to rest on Saturday night. But now Gordon has to beat two people back to back and save energy for the biggest fight of his life on Sunday, late Sunday afternoon. So now the emphasis is on a quick win and you can see Gordon Ryan certainly delivers on this. Now, when you go to entangle your opponent's legs, the basic choice you have is between straight ashigurami and cross ashigurami.

• 1:16:22John Danaher?

  In the last five years, cross Ashigarami has proven to be statistically the more important of the two. And as a result, many people have forgotten the value of straight Ashigarami, leg-based leg locks, and undervalued them. Gordon has outstanding heel hooks from both straight and cross positions. And his opponent was probably more concerned about the danger of a cross Ashigarami, left the right leg undefended for far too long. And as a result, Gordon goes into a very classical Ashigarami you would normally expect to see from five or six years ago, and gets a very, very quick finish.

• 1:17:06Lex Fridman?

  So lifts his opponent.

• 1:17:08John Danaher?

  There's the Ashigarami, the entanglement of one of his opponent's legs with two of his. Now he's got to turn and expose his opponent's heel. So there's an initial off-balance to the left to get a defensive reaction. The opponent overcompensates, exposes his heel, and then there's the submission. There's the danger of a leg being broken here. Gordon has an absolutely ferocious outside heel hook. Until you felt it, it's quite different.

• 1:17:36Lex Fridman?

  So the opponent, probably before he even felt the heel hook, felt the control and that it's screwed.

• 1:17:43John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Lex Fridman?

  That he's screwed there. So he doesn't even want to...

• 1:17:47John Danaher?

  When someone who knows what they're doing gets a bite on your leg like that, you feel it deep inside your knee and ankle tendons immediately. And it's...

• 1:18:01Lex Fridman?

  There's a sense in which you almost tap... He got a couple of taps, almost as if they're early, because the opponent knows...

• 1:18:10John Danaher?

  People came up to us often and said, "This guy tapped early."

• 1:18:12Lex Fridman?

  No, he knew.

• 1:18:14John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Lex Fridman?

  He knew that late would be a big problem. Got it. So this is within like 30 seconds, within 10 seconds?

• 1:18:23John Danaher?

  I think it was within 10 seconds. So this was an excellent example of someone saying, "Okay, I'm going to conserve energy with a short match. I'm not just going to go down into a neutral position. I'm going to directly pull into a leg lock attack from standing position." You don't see that much in heavyweight divisions. That's something you see more in the lightweight divisions.

• 1:18:41Lex Fridman?

  So we've got to go to the final match of Gordon's within his division, which I think...

• 1:18:49Lex Fridman?

  As opposed to facing Felipe Pena who lost to Nicky Rod.

• 1:18:55John Danaher?

  Nicky Rod had a great match against Felipe Pena and passed Felipe Pena's guard. I think only the second person in ADCC competition to accomplish that.

• 1:19:06Lex Fridman?

  I believe with a body lock.

• 1:19:08John Danaher?

  It started as a body lock, but he converted to half guard, top head and arm and passed out of half guard top, chest to chest.

• 1:19:15Lex Fridman?

  I think I listened to Craig Jones' interview summarizing what happened in ADCC and he briefly mentioned that Nicky Rod might have the best body lock pass that he's ever felt.

• 1:19:28John Danaher?

  He's very, very good with the body lock.

• 1:19:30Lex Fridman?

  The way to face Nicky Rod is don't get him, don't let him get the body lock.

• 1:19:35John Danaher?

  But there's a problem if you stand up, he's a good wrestler. So there's a dilemma there, like you have to sit down to guard, but that goes into his body lock. But then if you stand up, now you go into his wrestling skill. So it's a great dilemma that he has.

• 1:19:48Lex Fridman?

  And that's what's

• 1:19:53Lex Fridman?

  in facing, in facing Nicky Rod, Gordon Ryan here chooses to.

• 1:20:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, if you look at the limbs, there's a relaxation there.

• 1:20:07John Danaher?

  We should also explain some things here. This is a finals match, so instead of being 10 minutes long, it's 20 minutes long with the option of a 20 minute overtime. So this could potentially be a 40 minute match. So you can see why the ADCC people were very concerned about Gordon doing this match. Because what if, what if this match had gone 40 minutes and then an exhausted Gordon Ryan has to go out to fight Andre Galván, who's fresh and, and ready to maul him.

• 1:20:33Lex Fridman?

  And on top of that is former, two former teammates.

• 1:20:36John Danaher?

  Who know each other's game very well. So there was a high likelihood in most people's minds that this would go the distance. Cause you know, when you train with each other for years, every single day in the gym, seven days a week, you get to know each other's tricks.

• 1:20:49John Danaher?

  One big problem here for Nicky Rod is that his body lock guard passing game, which is his main weapon on the ground was taught to him by us. So it's not like. We're gonna be taken by surprise by it. So that that must have been figuring in his mind.

• 1:21:07Lex Fridman?

  Do you think psychologically for Gordon and psychologically for Nicky Rod, it's tough? So for him with that body lock, for example, do you think it's tough for him to know what to do here?

• 1:21:18John Danaher?

  It's tough because he would have remembered the outcome of the training sessions. It's hard to go up against a guy who used to dominate you in training and then say, okay, I'm gonna beat him in competition.

• 1:21:32Lex Fridman?

  Can you shut all of that off? Because.

• 1:21:34John Danaher?

  It's tough, man. Memory is memory. You can't lie to yourself.

• 1:21:38Lex Fridman?

  What do you think about competition? Sort of there, there's been a lot of Olympics bring this out. There's been a lot of big upsets at the Olympics. There's something where people find something in them. I mean, judo is a different sport than grappling.

• 1:21:53John Danaher?

  In judo, there's much more room for upset because a mistake in judo

• 1:22:02John Danaher?

  will have ramifications that will be felt within half a second. Like if you, if you take the wrong grip in judo, you can be thrown in half a second and there's no recovery. If your two shoulders hit the mat with momentum, it's over, it's done.

• 1:22:17John Danaher?

  In jujitsu, you could, especially in ADCC where there's no points in the first five minutes, you could get taken down and mounted by your opponent and still win. Like you can recover from a bad start. In judo, boxing, kickboxing, MMA, you get hit, there's no recovery time. You just get swarmed on. And jujitsu is a much more forgiving sport where you can make a series of blunders and you just recover from them. You make a series of blunders in boxing, you're unconscious.

• 1:22:44Lex Fridman?

  So that there's the blunder case, but there's also been just people where it's their day. I mean, again, maybe it's romanticizing the notion, but there's been some epic performances in wrestling, in Olympic wrestling, in Olympic judo. As an example, Satoshi Ichi, he had a 2008 performance. We talked about the All Japan and all that kind of stuff, but the Olympics, he destroyed everybody on this path to the Olympic gold medal. And that's when Teddy Reneau was also competing, he got the bronze. So, I mean, that.

• 1:23:20Lex Fridman?

  And you could say he was at that time the best in the world also, but he

• 1:23:24John Danaher?

  I mean, yeah, but I think it would be very fair to say he was the best in the world. I think about the people he beat to win three All Japan Championships. Like he beat Kosai Inoue, he beat Keiji Suzuki, they were Olympic champions. Like, he was already

• 1:23:41Lex Fridman?

  So you don't believe in people that

• 1:23:44John Danaher?

  I don't believe that a person can walk on stage and be better than what they are supposed to be. You have a skill level, it's set in stone, this is your skill level. You don't just go on stage and suddenly your skill level gets here. What you do have is a situation where you have a skill level, okay? Another opponent has a higher skill level, but he runs into confidence issues. So that he only uses a small percentage of his actual skills. And then he will fall below someone who is technically lower on the skill scale than he is. That can happen, but you can't just magically acquire skills.

• 1:24:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but all of us are able to fall in confidence.

• 1:24:26John Danaher?

  Yes, so the question comes, who manages that fall best? And that can create upsets, absolutely.

• 1:24:32Lex Fridman?

  So you don't think Gordon could have fallen in confidence against a former teammate? When the pressure is so high?

• 1:24:37John Danaher?

  There was just no basis for a fall to occur.

• 1:24:41Lex Fridman?

  You said he doesn't have confidence issues. Is, uh, what do you attribute that to?

• 1:24:46John Danaher?

  That's because he never loses in the gym. There's nothing and there's no experience that he's had that would make him say, I shouldn't be this confident.

• 1:24:54Lex Fridman?

  So it's the physical, uh, it's like, uh, like we talked about mental preparation.

• 1:24:59John Danaher?

  Don't get me wrong, if Gordon lost 20 matches in a row, of course his confidence would drop. Because experience is now, there's going to be a psychological dissonance between his experience, his recent experience, and what he believes. Okay, if you believe you're the best in the world, you just lost 20 matches. At some point, reality is going to break in. But if you're just never losing in competition, dominating people in the gym.

• 1:25:28John Danaher?

  Then there's nothing in your experience that would shake your confidence.

• 1:25:31Lex Fridman?

  Can I ask you this, just in a small tangent? Why is Gordon Ryan so good? So we're looking at, you've trained a lot of special athletes. You're a special human being yourself. I could just look at human history. There's a lot of, not a lot, there's some special humans. It seems like Gordon Ryan is one of them.

• 1:25:51John Danaher?

  I totally agree with that.

• 1:25:53Lex Fridman?

  Can you try to dissect?

• 1:25:54John Danaher?

  That's what I meant when I said I had many students, but only one Gordon Ryan. Like I've taught many, many people, but they don't all have his skill level. So there's an obvious elephant in the room here. Okay, what distinguishes him from other athletes? Great question. I'll try and give an answer.

• 1:26:14John Danaher?

  More than anyone else that I've ever taught, he has a memory for things that were taught to him. He has an ability to recall information that is extraordinary compared with other people in the room. So that's definitely a big part of it.

• 1:26:33John Danaher?

  Secondly, he has a pride in technique and technical prowess

• 1:26:41John Danaher?

  that will not allow him to settle for anything less than perfection. And he will hate himself when there is imperfection. So there is a love of excellence and a hatred of anything less than excellence.

• 1:27:01John Danaher?

  He has an ability

• 1:27:06John Danaher?

  to pull the trigger when opportunity arises, which is truly extraordinary. Many people know what to do, but when the moment comes, they back off.

• 1:27:20John Danaher?

  And they'll doubt themselves. If Gordon sees the opportunity, the trigger pulls every time.

• 1:27:27Lex Fridman?

  So can I just just linger on that briefly? There's a few times where he gets a little bit of an advantage and he just chases it to get a big like Andre Gavau, you know, you get, it's like, uh, there's a dance and you get one step ahead and he's able to chase that, you know, get a little glimmer of the back and he's able to chase that all the way to back control. So that, is that kind of the trigger that you're referring to?

• 1:27:52John Danaher?

  Yes, it runs deeper than that, too. It's the idea that good athletes are greedy athletes. Okay. When they see a small opportunity, they try and get as big a bite of it as possible. So that a mantra that we always have in training, if you can see the back, you can take the back. And if Gordon sees an inch of your back, you know, that's the direction he's going to be going. If your far shoulder is within an inch of the floor, he's going to be mounting you. If your shoulder comes off the floor, he'd be on your back on the other side. He's a maximalist with opportunity. He's not satisfied with, oh, let me get a good enough outcome. It's like, I want the maximal outcome. So when you combine

• 1:28:34John Danaher?

  all these things together, an ability to recall information, which is just far superior to anyone else I've ever coached, an ability to work in the training room towards not just good technique, but excellent technique, the confidence to pull the trigger whenever the opportunity arises, a maximalist mindset where it's never enough to have a good enough outcome. It's always got to be the best possible outcome.

• 1:29:11John Danaher?

  And the fifth element, which I believe is very, very important, is extraordinary depth in his technical prowess, in particular with regards his defensive acumen. Everyone looks at Gordon and focuses on his offensive prowess because they see him dominate other athletes.

• 1:29:40John Danaher?

  But what they don't see is what I see every day in the gym, where he works from impossibly bad defensive positions. Someone locked in on a full heel hook on his body and a full judgutami ambah.

• 1:29:54John Danaher?

  In a complete pin mounted with Gordon's two arms stretched out over his head in what looks like a hopeless position. And Gordon will work in these positions. And of course, because it's such a bad position, sometimes he'll have to tap.

• 1:30:09John Danaher?

  But he just works so relentlessly in these bad positions that when he steps on stage, he's like,

• 1:30:17John Danaher?

  if this guy got the worst possible position on me, there's nothing he could do with it. And within 30 seconds, I could turn it around on him and win this match.

• 1:30:28John Danaher?

  That gives his game

• 1:30:32John Danaher?

  an overall breadth and depth, which is very, very hard to deal with. It means there's no obvious weak point where you can just say, okay, I'm going to attack him here and use this strategy to beat him.

• 1:30:48John Danaher?

  And that goes back to his confidence. That the reason why most people lack confidence is because they fear bad outcomes. Okay, if you're a strong guard player, you've got an excellent guard, but you're terrified of leg locks. And your opponent has strong leg locks. You will shut down your own guard and won't play as freely and well as you normally do because you're afraid of the leg lock danger. You'll pull your feet in, you'll play a very conservative guard game. But if you had extremely adept

• 1:31:26John Danaher?

  leg lock defense, then you'd just play with all the confidence you normally do from guard position.

• 1:31:34John Danaher?

  Gordon puts himself in that situation. He's so defensively sound that it translates into his offensive confidence.

• 1:31:43Lex Fridman?

  When you talk about memory recall, which is interesting, I can't help but see parallels between him and Magnus Carlsen, who's a chess player, who's the number one in the world. The arguably the best ever, certainly the best ever, if you just look absolute numbers. Chess has the luxury of having a rating, which you can't have, cannot have in jujitsu, because it's a game of human chess. Chess is just a board game, so you can actually calculate the probability that you could win. So he has the highest Elo rating ever, and he's maintained that rating. He can, without competing against the number two in the world, he can just prove that he's the number one in the world for many years. Anyway, there's certain similarities.

• 1:32:26Lex Fridman?

  One is ability to recall. So memory recall of information is fascinatingly good. And the other one is not so much a love for perfection, which is something you mentioned, but the flip side of that, which is what you also mentioned, is the hate of imperfection. Now, in the case of Magnus, it almost creates a level of anxiety for him that's almost destructive. So the thing he seems to hate the most is imperfection against people he knows are worse than him. So the thing he loves is competing against people that are close to his skill level,

• 1:33:09Lex Fridman?

  or the favorite is people who are, might actually be better than him, especially in certain positions. He loves competing against them. He hates competing against people that are still, from the perspective of everyone else, what are called super grandmasters, so top three in the world. But he knows he's much better than them, and the anxiety of being not perfect against those people, that's why, that's why he, I don't know if you're paying attention, but he stepped away. He's not going to defend his world championship, because he hates the anxiety of playing people worse than him.

• 1:33:47John Danaher?

  Interesting. He figures they would somehow make him look bad?

• 1:33:51Lex Fridman?

  No, he just, for him, at least the language he uses, is just not fun. And he likes having fun. To him, it was fun to win, no matter the skill level, the world championship the first time, but then defending it is a very grueling process. It's...

• 1:34:13Lex Fridman?

  With classical chess, you play these many hour, it could be seven hour long games. And on top of that, he really hates the fact that it's only, I forget what it is, but it's a single digit number of games. He says it's a low sample. So I can't, I would like to play 20, 30, 40, 50 games if we're gonna do it this way. But then they're too long, it's gonna take too long. So he's really emphasizes the fun of it and the clear demonstration of who's the best. Now chess is an interesting game. It's probably different than grappling because it's been played for centuries.

• 1:34:57Lex Fridman?

  So there's this giant body of people that are playing it. Like there's other Gordon Ryans out there. Imagine a world where there's multiple Gordon Ryans or something like that, different dimensions, but you have like sharks everywhere. And so there, there is fun to be had even at the very, very, very, very top. But the memory recall is the thing that stands out and the hate of imperfection. More intense than anybody else in the game.

• 1:35:26John Danaher?

  Fascinating.

• 1:35:29Lex Fridman?

  That takes us back to the final.

• 1:35:31John Danaher?

  Ah, yes.

• 1:35:32Lex Fridman?

  So here Gordon is facing Nicky Rod.

• 1:35:37John Danaher?

  Former training partner. And again, the intention here is this has to be put in the context that Gordon will be fighting the greatest ACC grappler of all time in a few hours after this. So what we're looking for is a quick resolution.

• 1:35:55Lex Fridman?

  Still.

• 1:35:56John Danaher?

  The shortest possible match. Now, there's a complicating factor here. Nicky Rod was a wrestler before he was a jiu jitsu player.

• 1:36:06John Danaher?

  On paper, the way, his route to win is via wrestling. He's not going to be able to submit Gordon Ryan and he's not going to be able to pass his guard. So he has to win by wrestling.

• 1:36:22John Danaher?

  In the ADCC finals, you cannot sit to guard. So the, the approach that Gordon used earlier that we saw on video cannot be used in the finals. Gordon must wrestle his opponent. So on the way out,

• 1:36:40John Danaher?

  Gordon and I were talking and we'd had discussions obviously during the cam. What's the appropriate thing to do here? And there had been some

• 1:36:53John Danaher?

  matches earlier in the event where it was becoming obvious that stalling was being heavily punished by referees.

• 1:37:03John Danaher?

  So

• 1:37:05John Danaher?

  I said to Gordon on the way out, just give him your leg. Let him take you down because in the first 10 minutes of the finals, takedowns don't score anything. There are no, there are no means of scoring the first 10 minutes, but you can't sit to guard. That will be, that will award you a negative point. So I said, just let Nicky Rod take you down. And he's like, Nicky Rod's not going to take the bait. And I said, if he doesn't, they'll call him for stalling.

• 1:37:30John Danaher?

  And so.

• 1:37:31Lex Fridman?

  And then Craig Jones also commented after the fact is, I don't know why Nicky Rod took the bait.

• 1:37:39John Danaher?

  So if we see the start of the match, you see Gordon comes out and offers a leg. Now, it's not that, you know, Nicky Rod is smart. He knows what's happening here and what's he going to do? Stall for 10 minutes and get like five stalling calls put against him? So Gordon gives him the takedown. That way they go to the ground immediately with no effort. And the match now favors Gordon because Gordon is significantly more skilled on the ground.

• 1:38:08John Danaher?

  The question is, how can we make this match as short as possible? And as is so often the case, the answer comes back to legs.

• 1:38:16Lex Fridman?

  So for people just listening to this, Gordon's in an open guard and Nicky Rod appears to be trying to keep his hips away from Gordon's legs.

• 1:38:24John Danaher?

  Yes, Nicky Rod knows there's a danger here, so he's elected to go to his knees. That will set up his favorite body lock passes and it will, in some ways, mitigate some of the dangers associated with leg locks. So Gordon's whole thing is how am I going to get my body weight underneath him? He has a choice between linear entries where he enters between his opponent's knees and circular entries where he inverts and spins underneath his opponent to get under a center of gravity.

• 1:38:52Lex Fridman?

  Is there a way for somebody to try to get a body lock without giving Gordon an opportunity to get under them?

• 1:38:59John Danaher?

  Well, the body lock is an excellent way to shut down leg lock entries if you can get to the body lock. But you can see Gordon's very, very disciplined with his elbow and knee position. Elbows and knees are working in a position where it's very, very hard for his opponent to access his waist.

• 1:39:16John Danaher?

  That shoulder is always either across the hip or in front of the shoulder. Sorry, his knee is either in front of the shoulder or in front of the hip.

• 1:39:22Lex Fridman?

  And we're one minute into the match and just if I were to look at the video player here, it appears that the match is over soon. So I guess Nicky Rod is facing this, I need to get close in order to do the body lock. And the closer you get, the more danger there is to let Gordon get under you and get the leg control.

• 1:40:05John Danaher?

  Now they're starting to get close here. Gordon's going to try and get his head underneath his opponent, make a circular entry into the legs.

• 1:40:13John Danaher?

  He's clearing his opponent's head out of the way by faking the arm drag on the far side, the first move that he used against his first opponent earlier in the tournament. And there's the leg, spins underneath it, goes circular, rotates through, gets his body weight underneath his opponent.

• 1:40:28Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:40:29John Danaher?

  And now he's gonna trip him down to the mat.

• 1:40:31Lex Fridman?

  Now, I believe Nikirad tries to pull out his foot here. And Craig also said that Nikirad has gotten used to be able to pull that foot out from anybody. And that he was very surprised at the grip that Gordon was able to actually hold on. So I just wanna comment, I'm just, I'm just parroting commentary.

• 1:40:55John Danaher?

  If you, if you look at what's happening here.

• 1:40:57Lex Fridman?

  From the internet.

• 1:40:59John Danaher?

  If you just freeze it, you'll see that Gordon, like any good leg locker, will always treat his opponent's foot like a knot at the end of the rope.

• 1:41:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:09John Danaher?

  Just as you slide down a rope, if there's a knot at the end, your hand will catch.

• 1:41:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14John Danaher?

  So too with the human leg. When they go to extract by pulling, you just keep your fist as close to your shoulder, shoulder as possible, and narrow the gap, the foot will always catch. The failure that many people have is they let their hand drift away from their own shoulder. And so there's room for the foot to extract. But you'll see Gordon's extremely disciplined with thumb close to his own shoulder, which creates a situation that's very, very hard just to simply pull your foot out.

• 1:41:38Lex Fridman?

  You're focusing on the knot of the foot.

• 1:41:40John Danaher?

  Yeah. Also, it's very early in the match, there's very little sweat. Both athletes are still pretty dry. Now Gordon has to climb the leg. And now he's already captured his opponent's shoelace. There's the heel exposure coming up. Nikirad already knows things are getting bad. And there's the win.

• 1:42:00Lex Fridman?

  Actually, the comment I made, I guess, was from a little bit earlier, there's an earlier time where Nikirad was trying to pull out the foot and Gordon's able to hold on to the knot, which is, which is interesting.

• 1:42:13John Danaher?

  Now, that was a brilliant day's work by Gordon Ryan. He's had two matches against opponents considerably bigger and stronger than himself. And the time of the two matches can be measured in, I think, less than two minutes. So he's done what he's set out to do. No injuries, no exhaustion. He's beaten four guys back to back, all of whom are excellent athletes, with minimal energy expenditure, and he's ready to go on to his super fight.

• 1:42:43Lex Fridman?

  So, and that's against one of the greatest, arguably, for a long time, you know, really, really up there, jiu-jitsu practitioners, competitors, grappling nogi competitors of all time, which is Andre Gavau.

• 1:42:58John Danaher?

  Yes, Andre Gavau is almost certainly, at this point, the greatest ADCC competitor of all time. One more super fights than anyone else by a landslide.

• 1:43:07Lex Fridman?

  So, if I may, just read a few words you've written on Instagram about this match, about Andre Gavau, on greatness. How great you become in any given endeavor will always be assessed by the degree of difficulty of the barriers you had to overcome to get to the top. Just as the lion became king of the jungle, not by living among sheep, but by dominating a world of elephants, hyenas, buffalo, leopards, crocodiles, so too the greatness of an athlete will be determined, not just by his own ability, but by the greatness of the athletes he faces. Thus, in his quest for greatness, Gordon Ryan owes a debt to

• 1:43:46Lex Fridman?

  the greatness of his toughest opponent, Andre Gavau. And you go on to sing him praises. So, and that introduces this match. You know, there was an interesting moment. I didn't even listen to the words exchanged, but because I had the great fortune of sitting next to Hajar Gracie, there was this fascinating moment before the match. And I can't believe Gordon is sufficiently relaxed to do this. But he walked up to Hajar Gracie and had a discussion. What do you think? Face Hunter go out before, what are your suggestions? And they've talked back and forth, they brainstormed ideas like minutes before the match.

• 1:44:30Lex Fridman?

  And it was just a beautiful moment of like, I don't know, like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan talking to each other, something like that. I mean, I wonder how much brainstorming there really was? And how much was it just kind of

• 1:44:47Lex Fridman?

  like spiritual inspiration or something like that?

• 1:44:49John Danaher?

  Yeah, I think it's more spiritual inspiration. And he looks up to Hodger as a

• 1:44:56John Danaher?

  Hodger's a very close friend, a mentor of mine. So I always tell my athletes, look to Hodger as your example. This is a guy who always fought for the finish. He tried to express the highest ideal of jiu jitsu, which is control leading to submission. And every match he was ever in, he even lost matches on tactics against people that he could easily have defeated if he adopted a different tactic. But he always insisted on victory by submission. It defined his career, made him who he was. And I always try to have my athletes emulate him.

• 1:45:28Lex Fridman?

  So what was the strategy going into this match? What were you thinking? What were you thinking?

• 1:45:31John Danaher?

  Okay, for Andre Galván, he there's a sense in which Andre Galván had to fight literally the perfect match to win this. Okay, this is a match that's going to be 20 minutes long and potentially 40 minutes long.

• 1:45:51John Danaher?

  Andre Galván cannot win by submission. Gordon's submission dominance here is just too great. It would be exceedingly difficult for him to win on the ground. Gordon's ground positional game is just too advanced. And so for Andre Galván, he had to win. If he was going to win, it was going to be in a standing wrestling exchange, where most people assessed him as having a measure of superiority over Gordon Ryan. The problem is that it's hard to just keep a potentially 40 minute match on the ground, sorry, off the ground that whole time.

• 1:46:35John Danaher?

  It's very, very difficult indeed. So he would have had to fight literally the perfect tactical match to make it happen. And he would have to do it without getting called for stalling points.

• 1:46:47John Danaher?

  Gordon has the luxury that if at any point they go to the ground, he has Complete dominance, but Gordon too has a problem that he can't pull guard without being penalized. And if Andre Gavon can play this tactical game of forcing Gordon to pull guard and then staying at a distance where he doesn't, he's doing enough action not to get called for stalling, but not so much to engage with the dangerous Gordon Ryan on the ground, then it's feasible he could have won. But it would have been, as I said, it would have required the most perfect application and integration of technique and tactics that that he's capable of.

• 1:47:28Lex Fridman?

  How much intimidation was here? Was there, or are these assets already beyond that?

• 1:47:34John Danaher?

  When you say intimidation, be more precise.

• 1:47:36Lex Fridman?

  Do you think there is some degree, if you're just to empathize with Andre Gavao, do you think there's some degree in which Gordon was in his head? Because of the trash talk leading up to a certain events, because of the level of dominance that Gordon has shown in this competition and in the months and years leading up to it, also the fact that Andre Gavao is also a coach of a large team. So there's some pressure to demonstrate to the team that the old lion's still got it.

• 1:48:11John Danaher?

  Yeah, I can't speak for Andre, but I know for Gordon, it's hard to be intimidated when you know the other guy has no method of finishing you. It's, it just takes so much pressure off. When you just go in there saying, there's literally no way this guy can finish me. And there's no way this guy can pin and control me. I can't be finished. I can't be pinned and controlled. The only way I can lose this is if this guy plays a tactical game. So in his best case scenario.

• 1:48:48John Danaher?

  I lose by tactical, by tactical game. But from Andre's perspective, it's like if I make one screw up, this kid could finish me. Like it's, you can see which way the intimidation game goes. Now, for the start, things get interesting here. We've already said, if you could just freeze it right there. Andre's only realistic path to victory is standing grappling. Okay, that would require him to take Gordon down presumably multiple times after the first 10 minutes and not be taken down at all by Gordon. So it's a tall order, it's possible, but difficult. And here's where things get interesting.

• 1:49:27John Danaher?

  I told Gordon before the match, just go out and offer him the leg, same way you do with Nicky Rod. And that's where things get interesting. I must say that I loved what Andre Galván did at the start of this match. He's a little crazy here. This is, there was just so much energy in the room at this point that his hand finding got a little...

• 1:49:47Lex Fridman?

  For people just listening, there's a bit of hard slapping.

• 1:49:50John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Lex Fridman?

  That could be considered a strike.

• 1:49:52John Danaher?

  It's fine. It's, there was just a lot of electric atmosphere in the room. So now things settle down a little bit. But here's where things get interesting. Andre throws the whole tactical game out the window right from the start. He goes for the takedown. Gordon doesn't try to fight the takedown because it's in his interests to go to the ground. But this, I love this about Andre. He's literally like, fuck you, kid. Like, let's see how good your ground game is.

• 1:50:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:21John Danaher?

  So he shoots the takedown. And Gordon accepts it obviously because it's to his advantage to accept it. But I love the fact that Andre was like, I'm not even gonna try and stall this out. I'm just gonna bang, there it is. So he's like, okay, let's see what you got, kid. They say you're good on the ground, let's see what you fucking got. And I love that about Andre. Unfortunately, he's into the hornet's nest now.

• 1:50:46Lex Fridman?

  What happened there, real quick? Because that was very...

• 1:50:49John Danaher?

  Gordon immediately went into ashigarami. Not just any ashigarami, but ashigarami where he's holding both legs, so...

• 1:50:55Lex Fridman?

  There's an open guard and he scooted forward. Oh wow, that's really nice.

• 1:51:00John Danaher?

  So he splits the legs, now he dominates the space between the knees. So there's a guaranteed straight ashigarami here.

• 1:51:06Lex Fridman?

  He splits the knees against Andre Gavau, like effortlessly right there. Wow.

• 1:51:13John Danaher?

  So already Gordon's in his preferred domain now. So he's starting to off balance his opponent. He's looking for a reaction to get heel exposure. He does get heel exposure. Andre's does a good job of monitoring the feet to try and reduce the braking pressure. But the brute fact is it's in Gordon's realm now. This is, this is where he has all the advantage. So, um, and the match is going to be 20 minutes of in Gordon's realm. That's going to be a very, very tall order.

• 1:51:46Lex Fridman?

  Was there a moment here? Again, Gordon's on the legs. Are you impressed that Andre was able to get out from this?

• 1:51:55John Danaher?

  I would expect this. Andre's been preparing for this for two years. And, um, uh, remember Andre has gone against some of the greatest leg lockers in grappling before and prevailed. So he's, he's not naive, you know, he knows how to defend himself. The big problem is that he's going to create defensive reactions, which lead into other aspects of Gordon's game, in particular back exposure.

• 1:52:17Lex Fridman?

  So here, Ashigami goes to like a single leg type of position where Gordon runs to Andre's back.

• 1:52:30John Danaher?

  Now he has to return him to the mat. The most efficient way to do so is always courtesy of foot sweeping. So he pulls out a diashiharae from the back to sweep him down to the mat. And now Gordon's on top and this is a serious problem for any grappler in the world. Once Gordon gets top position, he's just relentless.

• 1:52:52Lex Fridman?

  But just getting Andre Gavau's good, just getting the guard back, all of that is great.

• 1:52:57John Danaher?

  There's also a sense here in which Gordon is pacing it too, just to physically fatigue an opponent.

• 1:53:04Lex Fridman?

  So he's passing the guard, but not rushing it.

• 1:53:10John Danaher?

  Now what Gordon's looking for here is complete chest to chest contact.

• 1:53:16John Danaher?

  He's getting very close to it now. And once he gets chest to chest on an opponent in top position, past one of his opponent's knees, it's going to be awfully, awfully difficult for an opponent to recover.

• 1:53:31Lex Fridman?

  What is he waiting for here? Is there pressure here? Over time, he just wears you out.

• 1:53:36John Danaher?

  Yeah, it's part of a campaign of attrition, of pressure over time. Now he's creating a situation where he's either going to get back exposure or mount exposure. And either way is pretty much fatal when you're dealing with Gordon. Andre elected to go the route of back exposure.

• 1:53:59Lex Fridman?

  Now Gordon got the body triangle, is on his back.

• 1:54:04Lex Fridman?

  And now it's a...

• 1:54:06John Danaher?

  Now there's one physical problem here. That's Andre Galván has a neck like a ball. And he's a very short and very thick neck. So penetrating under the chin for a strangle can be a real problem. He also has extremely well-developed shoulders and upper arms. So when the head comes down and the shoulders go up, there's very little real estate to work with with regards to his strangle holds. So Gordon in time will trap one of his opponent's arms with his legs in order to take away one of those strong defensive arms. There you can see the arm has been trapped. And now he can start working towards the strangle.

• 1:54:41Lex Fridman?

  And now here is still difficult.

• 1:54:43John Danaher?

  It's still difficult, but things are looking good. There's still considerable amount of time left on the clock. Gordon is well ahead on points. So all the pressure, all the tactical pressure now is on Andre.

• 1:55:03John Danaher?

  You'll see the critical penetration of the jaw.

• 1:55:06Lex Fridman?

  With the wrist, yeah, wow, yeah.

• 1:55:09John Danaher?

  Now Gordon elects for a one-handed strangle.

• 1:55:17Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 1:55:18John Danaher?

  Andre fought very bravely.

• 1:55:22John Danaher?

  But a strangle, it doesn't matter how brave you are.

• 1:55:26Lex Fridman?

  And where does the strangle actually happen in terms of,

• 1:55:32Lex Fridman?

  it felt like the strangle was at the blade of the, it wasn't even fully sunk in. So where does, is that like a full coma, it's like a one-handed?

• 1:55:42John Danaher?

  There's a sense in which, once you get underneath, you know the inevitable follow-up is coming.

• 1:55:47Lex Fridman?

  Again, the inevitable, you're feeling the inevitable.

• 1:55:50John Danaher?

  It's like a, to go back to your chess analogy, it's like resigning in chess.

• 1:55:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. In chess, it's considered almost like impolite to let it run out when you understand, when you understand that death is on the horizon. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of respect. That was the beautiful thing with all the trash talk and everything like that. Gordon always shows respect. I love that about the drama of combat. It's trash talk in the beginning and respected at the end.

• 1:56:21John Danaher?

  I think it's, you know, when you, when you feel someone, Andre has great skills. And when you, when you grapple someone, you feel just how skilled they are. And it, whatever issues you had prior to the match evaporate when you, when you feel that, okay, they're just like you, they do the same moves and same kind of concepts. And you see that there's more that bonds you together than separates you. And that's the feeling at the end of most grappling matches.

• 1:56:50Lex Fridman?

  So if we could talk about Giancarlo, who had an incredible performance. And I mean, there's a lot of things we can say, we can probably go through his matches. But if we could just talk without that, about some of the most impressive things that you saw about him. One of the things I think you mentioned elsewhere in here is about confidence. So one of the things you saw that could really benefit him as an athlete and competitor is to build up his confidence. Is there, can you speak to that?

• 1:57:18John Danaher?

  First of all, I should give you some background. Giancarlo Bodoni was a, a strong.

• 1:57:25John Danaher?

  Local black belt in Boston, teaching at Benadrypharia School. When I would film instructional videos, I would often talk to him and talk to him about his competitions in training. And he would do local competitions. He was trying to go from gi training, which was the majority of his competitive background into no gi. And he was struggling in local competitions, especially with things like leg locking, where he had no background in leg locking and would often get submitted. So as we worked together in instructional videos, we would talk and discuss. He would periodically come to the gym in New York City and come to work out with the guys. And he often struggled in the training room. He had no experience of things like body lock guard passing.

• 1:58:10John Danaher?

  And this used to mean that many of the training sessions didn't go well for him. So he was always like a very polite, well spoken young man and worked hard. When we went to Puerto Rico and the team ended up drifting apart. When we moved into Austin, he said, you know, now that many of your athletes have left, could I come down and train with you guys full time? And I was like, yeah, I'd love to. I thought he'd be a great training partner for Gordon and Gary. We didn't really have any training partners at that point.

• 1:58:51John Danaher?

  And sure enough, he literally just picked up everything he had and moved down to Austin. Now, anyone who just moves halfway across the country to begin training, that already gets my respect right there. That's a big commitment. And he began training. We put him on a training schedule where first he had to cover up his big weaknesses. He had limited attacks from bottom position. He had poor leg lock defense. And he was very, very vulnerable to certain kinds of guard passing, which weren't part of his experience.

• 1:59:28Lex Fridman?

  This is all a year out from AGCC.

• 1:59:30John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 1:59:31Lex Fridman?

  And we should also maybe give the spoiler, which is he wins his division in a dominant fashion. He also does incredibly well at the absolute.

• 1:59:44John Danaher?

  It was an amazing thing. To give you an idea, when he first moved to Austin, he competed in a WNO event and I don't think he scored a single point, lost a couple of matches and including matches to people who were in this ADCC. So he came out of that looking very depressed and he lost to Ken Andouate, he lost to Mason Fowler. So John Carlo always struck me as someone who was positionally sound, he had like good guard retention, things like this, but he had no offense, he had no leg lock defense and he just wasn't able to assert authority on matches. He was a guy who was always going to be tough to beat because he was hard to pass his guard, that kind of thing, but

• 2:00:29John Danaher?

  he wasn't dangerous.

• 2:00:30Lex Fridman?

  Can I ask you a question on that?

• 2:00:31John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:32Lex Fridman?

  Because my interaction with him early on when he came to Austin, I remember he interacted with me a bunch on the mat, showing me stuff, but I wonder if that kindness is a detriment to the confidence? Is there some connection?

• 2:00:45John Danaher?

  No, no. Again, confidence-

• 2:00:47Lex Fridman?

  So killers can be nice too.

• 2:00:49John Danaher?

  Absolutely. Confidence comes from skill level and confidence is a much more rational thing than most people describe it. People think of confidence as like this esoteric, ethereal element that you either have or you don't, when in fact, confidence is much more a reflection, a rational reflection on your past experience. And if you're successful with your past experience and you're expecting to compete in a situation which is similar to your past experience and that past experience has mostly been successful, you'll be confident. Are you pretty confident that the sun will rise tomorrow? Of course you are, because it's done so every time in the past. Now, there's no, as people like Hume pointed out,

• 2:01:34John Danaher?

  there's no supreme rational reason for believing this, but nonetheless, your confidence is high and it's the same thing in juditsu. If you're performing well and skills are the reason for that, your confidence will be high in the future regardless of what your mindset is. So it's not a question of, you know, this personality does better in competition or that personality. Ultimately, it's going to come down to your skills and your confidence will be a reflection of your accumulation of skills.

• 2:02:04Lex Fridman?

  So what was his journey like to a person who lost to a person who dominated the competition?

• 2:02:11John Danaher?

  Yeah, first things first, we had to say, okay, you've got an obvious weakness, leg lock defense. So every day in the gym, he would be taught, okay, this is where you put your feet. This is where you position your knees, you point your knee this way, not this way. Then he would have to start sparring situations in leg locks and have to work his way out.

• 2:02:35John Danaher?

  Initially, these were heartbreaking sessions for him where, I mean, I've got to give that kid full credit, like he just worked his way through it patiently, dealt with frustration, initial failures, and just said, I'm going to get better.

• 2:02:51Lex Fridman?

  Can we just look at that? So what's the experience of those early training sessions like from an athlete perspective?

• 2:02:56John Danaher?

  It's daunting.

• 2:02:57Lex Fridman?

  Is it, are you basically dealing with the rational thought that you're not going to ever be good?

• 2:03:04John Danaher?

  Yeah, you're wondering, have I even got what it takes? Like, you know, think about it, he's an established player who's been in I J F competition. I believe he's a brown belt world champion in the gi. And suddenly a group of kids that he's never even seen before repeatedly submitting them with leg locks in the gym. And he's like, man, this is terrible. Like a year from now, I'm supposed to fight ADCC against people like Craig Jones, like some of the best leg lockers in the world. Like it must have been hard, you know?

• 2:03:38John Danaher?

  But he just stayed in there and no one worked harder than him. He just was in the gym three times a day, studying every day. And unlike so many other people, every time he was shown something, he consciously and deliberately tried to enact it, even at the price of initial failure.

• 2:03:56Lex Fridman?

  Do you advise that that's a good way to go?

• 2:03:59John Danaher?

  It's the only way to go. Like if you, if you can't wrap your head around the idea that trying to acquire new skills will create a temporary time where your effectiveness diminishes as you're trying to bring on new skills, you're never going to make it because you'll always stay at whatever skill set you are. The whole mental trick is to, is to.

• 2:04:25John Danaher?

  imbue this idea of delayed gratification. That you have to accept that when I bring on new moves, my overall effectiveness will diminish. But there's the belief that in time, as my skill performance increases, it will increase over time. But it will come at the price of initial frustration and failure. And Giancarlo made that mental switch early on in his time in Austin. And to his credit, just stuck through. Within a very short period of time, it became very hard to leg lock. And even the best leg lockers in the room had a hard time with him. And that was the first step in confidence.

• 2:05:08John Danaher?

  He said, okay, I'm not getting finished quickly anymore. Then he had to bring in a whole new set of upper body submissions. He neglected upper body submissions. When you say upper body submissions, do you mean all the arm locks? Strangleholds, arm locks, things like this. And in particular, he put very, very hard work on his strangleholds. He had always been someone who was positionally strong. He could get to the back, but he could never finish from the back. And then suddenly, in the gym, he started finishing from the back. And then as gym performance against the lesser students increased, then you bump them up against better students. And then this goes on all the way up to the best guys in the room. And in time, in a relatively short period of time,

• 2:05:51John Danaher?

  there were significant increases in performance. And success begets success, and this kept going. We started to get a hint of his developing confidence in local competitions. I remember seeing Giancarlo compete in a local fight to win competition against a tough Brazilian kid. Giancarlo just came out, dominated and finished with a leg lock. Now, that was interesting. He said, okay. You're the guy that used to get finished by leg locks and now you're beating tough opponents with leg locks and that was an important psychological step for Giancarlo Bodoni.

• 2:06:30John Danaher?

  And with each little step as we went further and further, then he got to ADCC trials and had one of the great performances.

• 2:06:41John Danaher?

  I believe he submitted all of his opponents in ADCC trials and put on a fantastic display of grappling. Shockingly, no one paid attention to it. They were just like, "Oh yeah, he won." And Giancarlo flew into ADCC completely under the radar. They just saw him and was, "Oh, he's the guy that won American trials." And no one really paid much attention.

• 2:07:07John Danaher?

  In his first match, he took on a great Brazilian champion, Izaki, and won in dominant fashion. He was about to strangle him with just a few seconds left on the clock. And I remember Giancarlo being furious at the end of the match, thinking, "I was so close to finishing." He wanted a perfect finish.

• 2:07:27Lex Fridman?

  Up on points, six to nothing.

• 2:07:29John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Lex Fridman?

  Still chasing.

• 2:07:31John Danaher?

  Still chasing. He could have just coasted at this point, but he wanted to finish every one of his opponents. And he got very, very close, but not quite there. And then in his next match, he had to take on the defending gold medalist from the previous

• 2:07:48John Danaher?

  ADCC.

• 2:07:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Matheus Zanies.

• 2:07:49John Danaher?

  This was the guy who was the favorite to win. So you have a relatively unknown Giancarlo fighting the man who defeated Craig Jones in the previous ADCC.

• 2:08:01Lex Fridman?

  Do you remember what stood out to you about this match? So, Matheus Zanies is good wrestling, he's good everything.

• 2:08:07John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 2:08:07Lex Fridman?

  Good all-around grappler.

• 2:08:08John Danaher?

  He's got, by judicious standards, he's a very strong wrestler. So our intention was to match his wrestling with Giancarlo's judo skills. So you will see if we could perhaps go back.

• 2:08:25John Danaher?

  You'll see the first takedown.

• 2:08:33John Danaher?

  Arm drag. And took him down with a simple drag and pick. So that was John Carle's first takedown. That was more wrestling oriented and good for his confidence to see that he could score a nice takedown. But Matthias Denis is very, very good at standing up from bottom position. If we just go back just a step. Okay, now here we have something interesting. Matthias comes up from bottom, seizes a leg and John Carle defends the wrestling move and then goes immediately into. What the fuck? With a. It's kind of a mix of Sasai and Dashi Hari. Wow, that was beautiful. I didn't even notice that. That's really nice. Look at that.

• 2:09:11John Danaher?

  From defending a single, threatening a guillotine. One of the big themes of our ADCC camp was that most of our opponents now are getting very strong in hand fighting. Look at that. But they are not strong in foot fighting. And so we put a very heavy emphasis on foot sweeping attacks. You remember Gordon Ryan took down Andre Galván with a foot sweep. And here you have John Carle using the same technique, not from the back, but from the front. And an overhook.

• 2:09:43John Danaher?

  Left hand post. Catches the foot midair. Look at. And that's just a beautiful, beautiful takedown. That's beautiful Judo.

• 2:09:54John Danaher?

  And then. And then later in the match, you'll use a kusari gakke, another classical Judo takedown to get top position.

• 2:10:05John Danaher?

  Now, at one point, John Carle was in trouble. He got his back exposed. With this situation? Good.

• 2:10:16John Danaher?

  Double leg to. To a knee pick. Knee pick. So he has to expose his back in order to avoid giving up takedown points. But here's the defensive training that we work on is coming through.

• 2:10:30John Danaher?

  He's defensively sound, shuts out the hook, prevents the score.

• 2:10:35John Danaher?

  Keeps his body at the right angle to prevent a power half Nelson.

• 2:10:43Lex Fridman?

  Staying calm.

• 2:10:45John Danaher?

  Now he's got to turn this around. It's one of the hardest things to do in grappling.

• 2:10:51Lex Fridman?

  How dangerous is it to put your, in this position, to put your hands on the ground?

• 2:10:56John Danaher?

  Um, it's ordinarily, it could be dangerous because your opponent could switch to an armbar. Oops, and there's the body lock. Now, there's some controversy here, but you can clearly see it. The hands were locked, so it shouldn't really be as controversial as people are saying. Now, watch for the right leg kosorogake here. Pulls in the hips, exposes the leg, boom, and down. Beautiful kosorogake.

• 2:11:25Lex Fridman?

  Also, probably a lesson that complaining to a ref does not protect you from a good takedown.

• 2:11:33John Danaher?

  Yeah, that's why they say in combat sports, defend yourself at all times. But now, the great advantage of judo takedowns over wrestling leg tackles is they can feel upper body connection after the takedown, which is very, very important for ADCC. That's why we put such a heavy emphasis on them. And now Giancarlo's absolutely in the driver's seat. He just scored four points for that takedown, so he's well ahead at this point against the established favorite for the entire weight division. So now Mateus Denise has to start taking some risks. He's staring down the barrel of defeat, and there's not that much time left. And that's what's going to set up the pressure. Now it's tactical pressure, it's not physical pressure, it's tactical.

• 2:12:16John Danaher?

  Mateus has to turn away, and that's going to create back exposure. The most dangerous kind of exposure in ADCC. Oh, there it is.

• 2:12:26Lex Fridman?

  Mount to back.

• 2:12:31Lex Fridman?

  And Giancarlo capitalizes.

• 2:12:36John Danaher?

  Matthias is smart. He's keeping on his side so that less than 75% of his back is on the floor to deny the the mount points. But that comes at a price and that prices back exposure.

• 2:12:46Lex Fridman?

  So the thing we talked about with Gordon, the the circumstance of fate, which is he has a lot of grueling tough matches and still chooses to do absolute. So what's and he seems to just power through all of it. What how much of it? How much of the calculation is how to survive the cardio, the grueling cardio aspect of all of this?

• 2:13:09John Danaher?

  That's a it's a great question. And the truth of the matter is, you can't afford to pace yourself. Because if you say, I'm going to hold myself back for this match, in expectation of the others, you could end up losing your first match.

• 2:13:25Lex Fridman?

  So he didn't pace himself

• 2:13:26John Danaher?

  At all.

• 2:13:27Lex Fridman?

  Any of the matches?

• 2:13:28John Danaher?

  You have to just be in good shape. And that's what the

• 2:13:31Lex Fridman?

  Some of the mental or no?

• 2:13:33John Danaher?

  Uh, no, it's mostly physical. If that's what the campus for, like, he's felt more pressure in the training room than he felt in any of his matches.

• 2:13:44Lex Fridman?

  But still sort of attacking. Look at this.

• 2:13:47John Danaher?

  That was a beautiful transition.

• 2:13:48Lex Fridman?

  With him from back or from whatever the heck that position was. Uh, right. For uh, from looking for the back, transitioning here. What the heck is this transition?

• 2:14:00John Danaher?

  So Matthias is engaging in a very good tactic, which is to get most of his back off the ground to deny the the mount points. So as back exposure starts to occur, he turns in.

• 2:14:09Lex Fridman?

  Threatening an armlock.

• 2:14:10John Danaher?

  Yeah. But you can see what's happening here. As the left foot goes under, it's going to create a beautiful triangle entry. Right foot penetrates through underneath the neck. And now he's locking a triangle, a senkaku, but not just any triangle, a triangle with the the figure four locked on the back of the opponent's head, which makes any kind of stacking defense very, very difficult. It makes it very, very hard for an opponent to pull away and creates a much tighter strangle than average.

• 2:14:38John Danaher?

  And as a result, it's a quick submission.

• 2:14:41Lex Fridman?

  Beautifully done. Still chasing the submission.

• 2:14:44John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 2:14:45Lex Fridman?

  With a minute left up on points.

• 2:14:47John Danaher?

  Against the former champion.

• 2:14:48Lex Fridman?

  Against the former champion. That's match number two.

• 2:14:52John Danaher?

  Now, that's the first day. That's Saturday. So John Carle goes to sleep that night thinking, "Okay, I just beat a world champion in my first match and almost submitted him. And I just submitted the defending champion." So of course, he wakes up on Sunday morning feeling pretty damn good. Now, there's an interesting twist here. His opponent is a talented young Irishman who won European trials, I believe, almost entirely with leg locks. And almost all of his major attacks in the tournament so far have been leg locks. Now, bear in mind that a year ago, John Carle was losing to local blue belt competitors via leg lock.

• 2:15:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:26John Danaher?

  So in my mind, I'm thinking, "Okay, how's he gonna handle this? Will the leg lock training kick in?" And you'll see the result.

• 2:15:40Lex Fridman?

  John Carle is on top, passing an open guard.

• 2:15:43John Danaher?

  So you can see.

• 2:15:44Lex Fridman?

  Keeping his legs away from any attacks.

• 2:15:46John Danaher?

  Yes. His opponent Owen from Ireland is employing the same tactics that we made famous years ago, the idea of sitting to butterfly guard and looking to entangle the legs. He's kind of playing that game. So John Carle is obviously used to this from training in the gym. So he's doing a good job of preventing entanglement, controlling his opponent's shoelaces, and moving out to an angle which limits his opponent's entry options.

• 2:16:10Lex Fridman?

  So hands on the shoelaces and angles is a good defense here.

• 2:16:15John Danaher?

  It's an initial defense. Now, his opponent wants to get underneath the center of gravity. So John Carle wants to get outside the line of his legs. At some point, your opponent's going to entangle. If he's determined to entangle, at some point, it's going to happen. So John Carle decides, "Okay, let's let it happen. And let's see where his feet go. And let's see how disciplined he is with his feet."

• 2:16:40John Danaher?

  And the opponent is inverted. Here, he does a good job getting behind John Carlos' knee. So now they're fully locked in. So John Carlos moves away to protect the heel, rotates out, controls his shoelace. Now, at this point, the Irishman's starting to lose discipline with his own foot position. Okay, he's so focused on his own attack that he's starting to get a little sloppy with his own foot position. You see, he's assuming, oh, I'm the guy who's attacking, so my opponent will be afraid of my leg locks and is starting to make some small tactical errors that John Carlos will take advantage of.

• 2:17:19Lex Fridman?

  So he's threatening the sort of the north-south passer, like, uh...

• 2:17:26John Danaher?

  Yeah, he's not putting too much pressure on the pass because we're still pretty early in the match and he's not ready to score yet. So here again, he turns away his heel. Now his opponent's starting to get more and more cavalier with his foot positioning to a point where now it's just downright sloppy. So John Carlos sees it, identifies it, locks up a wrist-to-risk toe hold and breaks his foot.

• 2:17:54Lex Fridman?

  How, how, where's the dumb question? Where's the control here? How is he?

• 2:18:02John Danaher?

  The control comes from his opponent. The entanglement is his opponent's.

• 2:18:07Lex Fridman?

  Ah.

• 2:18:08John Danaher?

  His opponent is holding his own body in place with his own legs. So he's the root of his own problem here.

• 2:18:16Lex Fridman?

  So he got sloppy. Well done, well done. And a little smile from John Carlos, that's very nice.

• 2:18:22John Danaher?

  Now, the reason for that smile, you can probably guess, is because a year ago, this would have been a disaster. And now instead, it's a guaranteed ticket to the finals in either a gold or a silver medal. And so you can see in that compressed moment, that's the look of a man who's made, who's just recognized just how much progress he's made in what was once a weakness in roughly 10 months was the time it took.

• 2:18:48Lex Fridman?

  And so he faces Lucas Hulk Barbosa in the in the in the final here.

• 2:18:54John Danaher?

  Now, these two have a history. Hulk has beaten John Carlo many times. And so for John Carlo, it's a question of, okay, here I'm matched up against a guy who's repeatedly beaten me. How am I, how am I going to turn this around now? And in terms of, we talked earlier about confidence. If confidence was just a mental thing, John Carlo never would have won this fight. When you've lost all those times to to an athlete, words aren't going to change anything. But you can see right from the start, when they get into the hand fight, John Carlo is much more tactically adept with his hand fighting. He's doing a good job of controlling his opponent's hands,

• 2:19:38John Danaher?

  preventing any kind of prolonged pressure on the head. And Hulk gets a sense here in which he realizes he's fighting a very different person.

• 2:19:49Lex Fridman?

  And this goes, this goes a long time. Again, another super grueling match. Wrestling that eventually leads to a back take here, back triangle. Body triangle, apologies.

• 2:20:11John Danaher?

  Here you can see the same tactics utilized by Gordon Ryan. Back control based around the body triangle. Many attempts to try and entrap his opponent's arm and take away those defensive arms. The main difference here is, again, you have an athlete with a very powerful compact neck. So neck penetration is difficult. And so John Carlo will switch to a palm to palm strangle instead of the conventional figure four.

• 2:20:40Lex Fridman?

  And now there's eight minutes left, so all the time in the world. Is it only just a matter of time at this point in situations like this?

• 2:20:50John Danaher?

  Yeah, John Carlo has a massive tactical lead in points. There's literally no way he could lose this match at this point. Even if his opponent did get out of here and take him down, John Carlo would still be ahead on points.

• 2:21:04John Danaher?

  So this question, the question now is not whether John Carle will get the gold medal, but whether John Carle will get it by submission. And there it is, there's the penetration of the neck, and he can't get the figure four, so he opts for palm to palm instead, and there's the submission.

• 2:21:25Lex Fridman?

  Now, what a journey.

• 2:21:26John Danaher?

  John Carle is a relatively unemotional man, but you can see there's emotion, that's not fake, that's genuine. And that's the emotions of a man who 10 months ago couldn't have done that. And then 10 months later, by dint of his own hard work and dedication, and his ability to actively attack his weaknesses and turn them into strengths, and then develop an ability to finish, that was a truly, truly remarkable achievement.

• 2:21:58Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask you about Gary Tonan. So he is one of the, at least in my opinion, greatest submission grapplers of all time. There's a lot of components to that. But he lost in his first match.

• 2:22:15John Danaher?

  Not only did Gary lose, he lost to the bottom seed of his division. And that in itself says something pretty remarkable about what's happening in ADCC, how there's a sense in which the days of the invited athletes being far superior to the trials winners are over. It was a clear signal that anyone who makes it to ADCC can beat the best people. Sam McNally is a very talented submission grappler from Ireland. He specializes mostly in arm bars, but he has a good positional game as well, has a very modern look to his

• 2:22:53John Danaher?

  jiu-jitsu. And he did a fantastic job against Gary Tonan. I think tactically, Gary perhaps got a little far away from his true nature in grappling, which is relentless submission attack. And perhaps I should be.

• 2:23:14John Danaher?

  Given blame for this because I put such a heavy emphasis on the, in the training camp overall on positional pressure that I feel that worked very well for all of the athletes except Gary Tonan and.

• 2:23:25Lex Fridman?

  Interesting. So his, his nature, you have to acknowledge the nature of the athlete part.

• 2:23:30John Danaher?

  Yes. And I think I was coaching so hard to the, to the new people in the room on positional pressure that I neglected Gary's innate ability to, the fact that he does best when he attacks exclusively by submission. So I think if, if anyone should get blamed for the failure here, it should be me.

• 2:23:48Lex Fridman?

  Uh, there's another comment as, uh, maybe I'm over, overvaluing that sort of just the physical aspect of this, but it seemed like Gary was, looked skinny. Is, is the weight cut difficult?

• 2:24:05John Danaher?

  Yeah. He, um, this is the first time he ever went down to the, uh, 66 kilos. So, um, you know, it wasn't critical. There's other guys who were bigger than him who made the weight.

• 2:24:16Lex Fridman?

  But the weight cut, if you can just comment on is that, does that ever play a part in the athletes, the, the physical and the mental aspect of the weight cut? It is, it is a thing in wrestling that could break even some of the toughest minds.

• 2:24:30John Danaher?

  Yeah, but no, it wasn't a weight cut that would break someone like Gary Tonan. It was, it's more physical. You, you, you train lighter and weaker. You tend to get injured more in camp because you're lighter. Um, we have a team now after the breakout that's mostly comprised of people over 215 pounds. So, um, uh, there's very few small people left in the gym. Most of the smaller athletes went, uh, to B team. So, um, uh, Gary's been struggling a little bit with, with training partners and, um, uh, but here I think the chief problem was that, uh, Gary focused perhaps a little too much on the positional

• 2:25:11John Danaher?

  tactical game and got away from his, his true gift, which is, uh, relentless hunting for submissions. And as I said, I think the person to blame for that is me because I put, I had to put so much emphasis on the positional game for the. For the developing athletes that I didn't pay enough attention to Gary's unique attributes.

• 2:25:31Lex Fridman?

  So this, I mentioned I posted some stuff on Reddit, so there's a relevant question here. Somebody on Reddit asked, Gordon has said, and perhaps you have said as well, that there are two types of jiu-jitsu practitioners, ones who move themselves around like Marcelo Garcia, and ones that control the motion of their opponents like Gordon. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach? And how do those different approaches apply depending on which weight class you're in?

• 2:26:02John Danaher?

  That's a great set of questions. Yes, I'm the person who promulgates this idea that there's two broad ways you can go in jiu-jitsu. You can either focus on promoting your own movement to create opportunity, or by restricting the other person's movement. If you're a slower, less athletic opponent, then you should definitely focus on the idea of restricting the other fellow's movement. That's how slow, unathletic people win in jiu-jitsu. If you're quick with the ability to change direction, stand up quickly, go down quickly,

• 2:26:42John Danaher?

  and move like a leopard, then you're almost always better off generating movement in order to create opportunity. So one is based more on movement as the source of opportunity, one is based more upon pressure as the source of opportunity. So you'll get someone like Gary Tonan or the Ruotolo brothers. Their game is based around the idea of promoting their own movement to create opportunity. Whereas someone like Gordon Ryan or Hodra Gracie is about restricting movement and using that pressure to create reactive opportunity. Those are the two paths you can take in jiu-jitsu. Because our team now has become mostly associated with people over 200 pounds, and because

• 2:27:23John Danaher?

  most of them will begin, as I took the more high percentage approach of, okay, let's focus primarily on controlling the other fellow's movement. But Gary's a unique individual, and I feel like I let him down by not...

• 2:27:39John Danaher?

  Giving him special attention in regards to what he does.

• 2:27:43Lex Fridman?

  The fact that you've mentioned this now like four times in the in the span of a few minutes. Just I love that, that that all of this stuff weighs so heavy on you.

• 2:27:54Lex Fridman?

  And he is a truly special person. It is truly interesting to see what is the nature of a particular athlete that if you highlight makes them shine.

• 2:28:03John Danaher?

  Let's go to the part where Gary actually loses the match. Okay, so the match is pretty innocuous at this point. The guy does a good job of turning into the arm. And Gary gets caught reaching from the knees. Okay, that's always a mistake. And the guy does, I think, does a great job capitalizing on it. Now, there's there's limited time left on the clock. This guy realizes, oh, this is my opportunity. He's got good flexibility and he gets the hooks. If he just frees it right then. So there's a minute and a half left. And typically in ADCC, if you get the back, you score three points. So this is a huge score. For Gary to win here, it's got to be by submission. Okay, so Gary's made one mistake.

• 2:28:46John Danaher?

  Now, this talented young fellow from Ireland does a great job, not only of getting the back, but he really attacks well from the back. And let's look at the depth of Gary Tonan's defensive acumen here.

• 2:28:58Lex Fridman?

  And we should say, leading up to this, his defense is incredible.

• 2:29:01John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:01Lex Fridman?

  He keeps escaping every position.

• 2:29:03John Danaher?

  Our nickname for Gary is the slippery salmon, because it's like trying to hold a goddamn salmon on the riverbank, trying to hold on to this kid. So he gets into a position which looks absolutely hopeless here. It gets worse. This is already bad, but.

• 2:29:17Lex Fridman?

  It's one of the most fun things about to watch about Gary is the skill and the escapes. It's incredible. It's beautiful to watch.

• 2:29:24John Danaher?

  So the guy has an excellent opportunity to transition off here into a rear triangle, which is one of the hardest things in the world to get out of. And from here, if this was anyone but Gary Tonan, I think it would have been curtains. But you see Gary just extends, keeps his arm at just the right angle to pop out and gets out. So now Gary's like, oh, crap, I'm gonna lose to this fucking guy. So he's got a minute left to do something. So he goes back into his submission mode. He goes back to who Gary Tonan is. And immediately goes into leg lock action. Now.

• 2:29:55John Danaher?

  The, the, uh, the young man from Ireland realizes, hey, I'm, I'm gonna win this match against the number one seed. So Gary goes into the legs, gets to one of his favorite techniques, the, the heel hook. Now Gary has a brutal heel hook as heck and gets real pressure on the kid's leg.

• 2:30:14Lex Fridman?

  Oh, I can't, oh, that's hard to watch.

• 2:30:18John Danaher?

  Yeah, but to his credit, the kid is smart. He's like, you know what, let me, let me take some, let me take some.

• 2:30:25Lex Fridman?

  Is there a weakness to that? Like, well, he turned his hips.

• 2:30:29John Danaher?

  Yeah, it's unclear from the video whether Gary's, uh, arm slipped up. There's considerable braking pressure.

• 2:30:36Lex Fridman?

  Oh, it slipped. I see.

• 2:30:38John Danaher?

  Yeah, it's unclear.

• 2:30:39Lex Fridman?

  Even before.

• 2:30:39John Danaher?

  But sometimes the heel can slip because it's, because something's popped. So it's unclear what happened there. There seems to be a reaction from the part of the opponent, like, it definitely did some damage. So Gary goes back for a second one.

• 2:30:52Lex Fridman?

  Oh, no.

• 2:30:53John Danaher?

  And again, you get that same kind of pressure.

• 2:30:56Lex Fridman?

  Oh, no. Oh, right.

• 2:30:58John Danaher?

  But I, I like, I like the Irish kid's reaction though. He's just like, you know what? Let me eat this because I'm gonna win this match and I'm gonna be a legend for beating Gary Ton. So I admire his internal fortitude. And, um, but now Gary knows he's, he's lost it. So it, it, there's a sense there in which you, you see how close it gets in these situations, how little there is between winner and loser. And sometimes you just get these heartbreaking, um, uh, situations where someone who ordinarily you would probably do very well against and you make one mistake and it's an, it's an unrewarding, uncompromising sport. One mistake can be fatal.

• 2:31:34Lex Fridman?

  In class, you talked about escapes for arm locks and it applies here as well. Uh, so you were teaching arm lock escapes and I think, uh, choke escapes and, and the question came up of when should an athlete not tap and risk their arm being broken? And you quoted George Patton, as of course you would, uh, that no bastard ever won an award by dying for his country. He won it by making some other bastard die for his country. So what's your view on when to tap and when not, not to tap in competition?

• 2:32:03John Danaher?

  First off, in, in training, you should be tapping. Very early because you're not getting paid to fight in the gym. You're getting paid to fight on stage. So be a professional in the gym. Tap early, tap fast. That way you'll you'll last a lot longer. In competition, things are a little different. You also have to specify what is the situation. Okay, if you're in the first round of ADCC, your first match, you get caught. I would always expect my students to tap. Because if you get your leg broken or your arm broken in the first round, you've still got three more matches before you get to the final.

• 2:32:40Lex Fridman?

  There is a escape clause there is if you're a guy from Ireland and you're fighting the number one seed.

• 2:32:47John Danaher?

  There is always an escape clause, yeah.

• 2:32:49Lex Fridman?

  Like, let it snap.

• 2:32:51John Danaher?

  Yeah, let it go. But.

• 2:32:53Lex Fridman?

  Your students, yes.

• 2:32:54John Danaher?

  Yeah, I would expect them to tap. I also think that if you're in a stranglehold, it doesn't make a lot of sense in not tapping because you're going to pass out. It's like you said in chess, it's kind of impolite to make the guy take it through to its conclusion. So I don't see any heroism and just letting yourself pass out. Now, things change when you get into a final. If you're in a final and you're ahead on points and you're willing to. Most people at that point are going to be willing to let something break in order to win a gold medal. At that point, I leave it up to the student.

• 2:33:39John Danaher?

  It's a deeply personal decision. I would never say to a student, I expect you to let your body break in order to to win a gold medal. I think my students are more than mature enough to make up their own minds. I would be angry if they let their bodies break in a meaningless fashion in some random tournament or in a first round match where there's no way you could have go on to to the second, third and fourth matches with a broken limb. But in a final, in a gold medal match in ADCC, I would leave the decision to them, a spontaneous decision in the moment. I would be confident that I had prepared them to do their very best to defend themselves.

• 2:34:23John Danaher?

  Um, but what ultimately they do is their decision. And winning ADCC is for a grap or at least life changing. You're a world champion forever and no one can ever take that moment away from you. So I would, I would understand if they took a decision to take damage. Hopefully it will never come to that because I do a good job of preparing people to get out of situations as he saw with Gary Turner, who was in a dreadful situation and got out within five seconds.

• 2:34:51Lex Fridman?

  I saw, man.

• 2:34:53John Danaher?

  Uh, Gary's been in arm locks that looked like even I was in the corner going like, oh my God, what is happening here and still got out. So, uh, it comes down to training preparation. But if they did make that decision, I would understand, provided it was a situation that would make their lives better and they made a calculation, it's not an emotional thing. Now, sometimes you get emotional, you fight a guy you just don't like and you just don't want to tap to him. Um, then things get a little more interesting. Like then, again, it's a personal decision. If you hate someone so much that you literally can't even conceive of yourself submitting to them, probably best you don't get into matches with them in the first place.

• 2:35:36John Danaher?

  Um, but if it should happen, um, again, it comes down to the student. I, I teach technique, not morals. So I, I let people make their own decisions on that. My thing is, look, don't get injured because if you're injured, you can't train, you can't train, you can't get better. So stay away from injuries as much as you can.

• 2:35:54Lex Fridman?

  So one of the other incredible stories here is, as you mentioned, Nicholas Marigalli, one of the incredible gi athletes in jujitsu world, not ever having done no gi, uh, training or competition and so on in a period of a year.

• 2:36:12John Danaher?

  Actually is significantly less than a year. Nicholas only came about, uh, six months, I believe, before ADCC. As a phone call came from Gordon, he was just like, okay, Nicholas wants to come down and train, wants to move to Austin.

• 2:36:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:25John Danaher?

  So he came down, it was, it was funny. I remember the first day Nicholas came in, Nicholas Marigalli, as you can see, is this tall, handsome Brazilian guy with a great personality and a wonderful smile.

• 2:36:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, also a super nice guy.

• 2:36:40John Danaher?

  So he comes in, he sits down on the mat and we're, we're all kind of looking at the new guy and. Introducing ourselves and I look at him like, buddy, what the fuck are you doing here? And he's like, what do you mean? And I go like, look at you, you're like tall and good looking, you should be a fucking model, not a judo guy. Look at us, we're all fucked up with horrible bodies and bad personalities. You're like a, you're like a happy, good looking guy. You should be surrounded by supermodels. What are you doing judo for? And he just laughed and he started training with us. So, uh, he came in. Now, historically, he has been an athlete who always pulled guard. This in, in judo parlance for your viewers. In, in judo, you have the option of sitting down to the ground.

• 2:37:25John Danaher?

  Judos was mostly performed on the, on the ground. You can, and many athletes take advantage of this. They just come out and sit to the, the, the ground position and completely forego takedowns. Nicholas did this his entire career. Judas who also has practiced both gi and no gi. Nicholas was a, a shining light in the gi side of judo, who was one of the great champions of his era. But he had not only never competed without a gi, he'd never even trained without a gi. So there's significant differences between the two. There's a lot of overlap, but there's also some very significant differences. We're talking about a sport where even small differences can make a difference between a guy who gets the gold medal versus a guy who loses his first match.

• 2:38:10John Danaher?

  It doesn't take a lot. So this was a very, very tall order. Yeah, a lot of his attacks involved the gi from guard. Absolutely. He's in a very dangerous attack. I mean, he doesn't just wear the gi, he really uses the gi. Like his, 90% of what he's based around is based around a combination of cross and, and straight collar controls with, with the control of the sleeve cuff. And so he really actively uses the gi. So when it came off, his first training decisions were like, oh, this, he looked like a fish out of water. In addition, he had no experience of leg locking. So one of the most significant parts of the modern game, he just had nothing. Plus the wrestling.

• 2:38:50John Danaher?

  He had literally zero wrestling, which is half of ADCC is, is, is based around this. So ADCC is like six months away and he has to get ready for the gi world championships. He'd, Nicholas had won many accolades in gi judo, but he had never won. The open weight division of GIE World. So he's like, the first day he's there, he's like, John, I want to be the first guy to win GIE open weight and ADCC open weight in the same year.

• 2:39:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:26John Danaher?

  I'm like,

• 2:39:30John Danaher?

  I'm like, um, yeah.

• 2:39:34John Danaher?

  Now, in my mind, I'm thinking, yeah, that's never gonna fucking happen, you fucking weirdo.

• 2:39:38Lex Fridman?

  Do you think there was a degree to which he actually believed that?

• 2:39:43John Danaher?

  A degree? He, he thought it was like a certainty. So he's looking at me like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. So I'm, I'm like, you know, well, Nicholas, this is, uh, this is very laudable and, and I, I approve of your confidence and, um, but this is a difficult goal you've set yourself. But perhaps maybe like 2024 would be a more realistic. He's like, no, no, I'm gonna do it.

• 2:40:04Lex Fridman?

  In all seriousness, it is incredible that Nicholas Meregali had the guts to set such a nearly impossible goal. So what do you learn from this experience of setting a goal that most people would say is just unachievable and him actually almost doing it?

• 2:40:23John Danaher?

  It's on the surface, just absolutely crazy. When he's mentioned the goal to me, I was, as I said, just looking at him in almost like disbelief. I didn't want to show it on my face. And yet he came within inches of actually doing it. He won his first ever gold in the open weight with a GIE and got to the finals and lost a tight decision in, in the finals and to take a silver medal. He wanted two golds, he got a gold and a silver. And there's a sense in which the sheer audaciousness of, of, of the goal set

• 2:40:58John Danaher?

  seemed ludicrous when it first happened. It's like, this is, this is insanity. And yet he came at it with a plan. He came at it with his characteristic passion and hard work and came within inches of doing so. And there's a sense in which you could look at it as, oh, he had a plan and it failed. And yet, of course, no one in their right mind would look at it that way. They would say he set an audacious goal so high that it seemed impossible and it pulled his entire performance up to a level where even failure creates something truly memorable.

• 2:41:29Lex Fridman?

  Do you encourage athletes?

• 2:41:33Lex Fridman?

  Or do you not get in their way when they set such a goal? Maybe even just, forget athletes, human nature.

• 2:41:40John Danaher?

  Yeah, that's a great question.

• 2:41:43John Danaher?

  There's a sense in which, you know, you don't want to make people delusional, that's it. But I do believe that if people are sufficiently embedded in a given project, if they're committed to it to a certain degree, then you can skimp on many things in life, but don't skimp on your goals. Okay, because the bigger your goals, the bigger your achievements will be. And even failure, as we saw in the case of Nicholas Meregali, I almost frowned to use the word failure, because if this is failure, give me more of it, you know?

• 2:42:16Lex Fridman?

  Falling slightly short of perfection.

• 2:42:19John Danaher?

  Falling short of what would otherwise be a perfect year. Even that still creates such a massive uptick in your performance that it's absolutely the right way to go. But there is a danger to this where people aren't committed and simply aren't working from a framework where they can realistically achieve these things. Then it descends into delusion, and that direction goes towards madness. You can't have that. So there has to be some kind of reality check here, where you have to be physically and mentally capable to some degree of moving towards these goals.

• 2:43:01John Danaher?

  You can't just, you know, a random blue belt can't make audacious goals like that. It's just ludicrous. But with that in mind, if you're committed and there's a sense in which this is a definite possibility, set your goals high. Okay, make big demands. Yes, there'll be times of frustration. There'll be more failure in your lives than otherwise. But even your failures will be something great, something memorable.

• 2:43:28Lex Fridman?

  See, but in the near term. You would be hard pressed to find any data that justifies that goal. Because in his case, he probably wasn't very good in no gi, even in the training room. So it's like, where do you look for even inklings of hope?

• 2:43:47John Danaher?

  We saw it in incremental progress with each successive competition that he was in. His first competition, he looked good, but not great. Second competition, a little better. Third competition, took on one of the legends of American grappling and won decisively. So there was a sense in which it was becoming more realistic with each outing.

• 2:44:11Lex Fridman?

  So now, now putting that inspiring philosophy aside, what was the actual plan on how to make it happen?

• 2:44:18John Danaher?

  So.

• 2:44:18Lex Fridman?

  So the leg locks?

• 2:44:20John Danaher?

  First, same thing with John Carlos. First, you got to learn how to defend a leg lock. So initially, just as John Carlos struggled, he struggled. Then he had to learn not just takedowns, but just how to set up a takedown. He had to learn basics like stance and motion and how to fight with the hands, et cetera, et cetera. So he had to learn from the ground up. And then he had to improve. He always had a very good triangle, always had a very good arm bar. Those were his two strengths coming into the no gi training. And those translate pretty well between gi and no gi. But he had no guillotine, he had no, his strangles from the back were, he has great collar strangles from the back,

• 2:45:03John Danaher?

  but he really, really struggled with finishing people from the back. So he's learning all this and then he's like, well, now I got to get ready for the gi. So we had to switch his training to gi training. And that took out a couple of months. Then he got, he went back briefly to Brazil and got a terrible rib injury right before the world championships and came back like more or less unable to move. So the world champion just is a week away and he's like, John, I can't move. So I'm like, what are you going to do? He said, I'm going to compete. So I'm like, are you sure? So we fly to California, he goes out, competes. His first opponent is literally the biggest man who competes in jiu jitsu.

• 2:45:47John Danaher?

  This man is almost like 400 pounds. Nicholas has got completely broken ribs. We're taping up his ribs backstage before he goes out to compete. He beats everyone by submission and wins for the first time the open weight.

• 2:46:03John Danaher?

  A title he had never won before. He steps off the mat, looks at me, goes, well, I got the first of them. He wanted gi, open weight, and now ADCC. And now he can barely move. He's still gone through two days of brutal competition. And his ribs are completely screwed up. Takes a week off to try and get his ribs somewhere back in order. And then begins light training, building up to ADCC. We start putting him in no gi competition. He fights two opponents of good quality, but not like world beating quality. And then as his game starts improving, we're getting closer and closer. He's starting to develop a sense where he can wrestle confidently on his feet.

• 2:46:49John Danaher?

  He's no longer easy to leg lock at all, and he's starting to leg lock people. And he's starting to get his very strong guard passing, which was based mostly around pant grips and the gi, to adapt to leg no gi grips. In addition, he's starting to develop strong chest to chest positioning, which was never really part of his game, a pressure top game. And so things are looking good. He's matched against Rafael Lovato, one of the great competitors of ADCC, and wins a convincing victory, featuring a lot of takedowns and a lot of pressure passing. And people were just absolutely shocked.

• 2:47:33John Danaher?

  I remember the staff of Flow Grappling coming out going like, who is this guy? He's like, he's literally transformed. He's like a different person. So he goes into the world championships in his weight division. He was matched with a fellow Brazilian in the first match and they had an absolute barn burning battle where at one point Nicholas was picked up and slammed and then ended up winning by kimura, beautiful kimura.

• 2:48:01John Danaher?

  Then he took on the man who ultimately wins ADCC open weight division and defeats him.

• 2:48:08Lex Fridman?

  Again, grueling matches.

• 2:48:10John Danaher?

  Yeah, tough, tough match. Now Yuri Semoy at that stage was two time gold medalist in ADCC. Nicholas wins a very, very close match against him and then fights Craig Jones, who's one of the best leg lockers in the world. So I think most people were expecting Nicholas to get leg locked very easily by Craig. Nicholas showed the degree to which he had improved his leg lock defense in a six month period. Craig never really got close to the legs and ended up becoming a takedown battle. Could have gone either way. Craig, I thought, did a really good job of pacing himself. Both athletes were very tired, but Nicholas was ahead on points and then Craig hit one last takedown, which sat Nicholas down to a hip.

• 2:48:55John Danaher?

  Didn't score, but it was the most aggressive takedown of that last period. And so Nicholas got the nod and won a narrow victory.

• 2:49:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Craig commented afterwards, he said that I really wanted the submission. And he said Nicholas seemed to really want the submission, but it ended up being a grueling match and took everything, like exhaustion wise, everything he had.

• 2:49:19John Danaher?

  It was a tough, tough match and they were very well matched. Once they figured out they couldn't submit each other, it came down to their wrestling ability. Neither one of them is a wrestling specialist, but they're both competent in wrestling and it became physically very, very tough.

• 2:49:38John Danaher?

  Then Nicholas went on to win the bronze medal in his weight division. So the next day, when we get called for the open weight, obviously Giancarlo had won a gold medal. The, everyone agreed that he should go into open weight.

• 2:49:53Lex Fridman?

  Did Giancarlo agree?

• 2:49:56John Danaher?

  Of course, he was.

• 2:49:57Lex Fridman?

  I mean, like, because he didn't have an easy four matches.

• 2:50:00John Danaher?

  You don't order people until you ask them.

• 2:50:02Lex Fridman?

  No, no.

• 2:50:04Lex Fridman?

  I guess the question I'm asking is, how do you find the strength to then go on to absolutely after?

• 2:50:11John Danaher?

  Because you've done a 14 week training camp where every day was just as intense as any ADCC day. So you're used to it at that point.

• 2:50:19Lex Fridman?

  But he had very, very long, tough matches.

• 2:50:22John Danaher?

  But he's used to it. He's a good athlete. So Nicholas and Giancarlo went out and Giancarlo had a spectacular submission victory against his first opponent.

• 2:50:35John Danaher?

  Nicholas had some, uh, some firework matches and one of the toughest opponents he came up against was the brilliant Tai Rua Tolo. They had an absolute barn burner. It was a very, very close match. And Tai had, had an incredible, uh, first two matches. He'd beaten Pedro Mourinho by submission and he'd beaten the great Felipe Pena in a very narrow match, very, very tight. Felipe lost on a guard pole.

• 2:51:06John Danaher?

  But Felipe is considerably bigger and stronger than Tai. So for Tai to, to win that match, even by a guard pole, was deeply impressive. It was a, it was an action packed match that went back and forth. Very, very impressive.

• 2:51:19Lex Fridman?

  Can I ask you a small tangent?

• 2:51:20John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:21Lex Fridman?

  Both the Rua Tolo brothers had an incredible performance. What do you think makes them so good? If you were to analyze their game, sort of outside of you and just this specific match?

• 2:51:29John Danaher?

  Absolutely. Um, there's, there's a range of factors. One is that they, they started the sport very, very young. They're probably the first example in American grappling of American students who started at age four or five. Most people, when I began juditsu.

• 2:51:50John Danaher?

  Started JUZU as adults. I was 28 years old when I had my first lesson as a white belt. So in time, people got a little younger. For example, Nicky Ryan started when I think when he was 12. But the Ruotola started when they were literally children. They had excellent coaching going all the way up through into their teenage years.

• 2:52:13John Danaher?

  So they had the advantage of starting the way so many successful athletes do as children and going up through

• 2:52:22John Danaher?

  adulthood and with strong coaching all along the way. Excellent parental support. So they had like a great history where their their youth didn't show off just how long they'd been in the sport.

• 2:52:37Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 2:52:38John Danaher?

  So you're dealing with a kid who's 19 years old, but he's been grappling for 15 years.

• 2:52:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:43John Danaher?

  And what counts is not your age, but your mat age.

• 2:52:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:49John Danaher?

  And

• 2:52:50Lex Fridman?

  Quality.

• 2:52:51John Danaher?

  Now, they were very young in years, but they were very old in mat age. And

• 2:52:57Lex Fridman?

  But there's a lot of athletes that have now, as you correctly said, have spent from a very early age on the mat. But still, these particular ones stand out. It's interesting.

• 2:53:08John Danaher?

  Yeah, no, there's a lot more to it than that. This is just the first setting the scene. But what really makes them stand out is that they've mastered this idea of covering up and improving initial weaknesses while building upon strengths. When the Ruotolas first encountered my students, they were relatively easy to leg lock because none of their training experience had prepared them for that.

• 2:53:36John Danaher?

  Now, they were they were young at that time, I believe, like 16 or 17. And it was an obvious problem for them. They both got heel hooked

• 2:53:48John Danaher?

  by my youngsters also, Nicky Ryan and Ethan Crowlston. And

• 2:53:57John Danaher?

  You could clearly see that they identified their current weakness and made prodigious steps to improve upon it, to a point now where they're winning championships with their own leg locks. Like, I, I love the fact that even as teenagers, they had the maturity to say, okay, here's an obvious weakness, let's get around this, let's turn it into a strength. Um, I love the way they did that. And Focusing on the weakness and let that guide you to the thing you're working on. But they also, they, they covered up their weaknesses, but they also understood what are our actual strengths. Now physically, both of the brothers have extraordinary reach for their

• 2:54:37John Danaher?

  height. They both have extraordinarily long arms for their height. That means that variations of kara gatame, in particular, dases, anacondas, uh, are going to be much easier for them in their weight division than for most people. These are all chokes? Yes, strangleholds. So they specialize in those. They adapted a game based around movement, which forces opponents not with physical pressure, but with tactical pressure into positions which expose them to those specialized strangleholds that they use. Um,

• 2:55:15John Danaher?

  traditionally, when, when we looked at the Ruotolas when they were young, we saw that there was a disparity between their top game and their bottom game. They were generally much better in top position than they were in bottom position. Again, they saw that as a, as a potential weakness and they turned it around, using again their unique, long limbs relative to their height. And they make use of a buggy strangle. I'm not sure why it's referred to as a buggy strangle, but it's in it. Basically, it's a variation of kara gatame using the legs done from disadvantageous positions and bottom. And they both make brilliant use of that to not so much as a strangle weapon. Occasionally, they'll strangle someone, but they mostly use

• 2:55:55John Danaher?

  it to create pressure to make people back off. And as a result, they're able to, uh, they overcame the disparity between their top game and their bottom game. Now their bottom game is Part of their offense and they're very, very successful from there. And so again, you had that, that really impressive sense in which they identified their weaknesses and leg locks and bottom position, turned it around and made it into strengths. And at the same time, they identified, okay, what, what are our physical gifts? And how can we maximize their use? And they created a program of initiating movement that created tactical rather than physical pressure to set up their best strangle holds. Um, I deeply admire what they've done. Those two young men have a huge future ahead of them.

• 2:56:37Lex Fridman?

  And so here, uh, one of the brothers faces, uh, in the, in the absolute Nicholas Meregali.

• 2:56:43John Danaher?

  And bear in mind, Ty, Ty has just fought two very tough matches against guys bigger and stronger than himself. So he's coming into a third match against a, a third guy who's also bigger than he is. So, uh, hats off to Ty fighting open weight against three monsters in a row. Um, now Ty and Cade, one of their best attributes is they are two of the best scramblers in the sport of jiu jitsu. So whenever you go to shoot on the legs with them, there's a danger of running straight into a da strangle hold. They're very competent at counter attacking single legs with da strangles. Um, it's also very hard to control them after a takedown. They do a very good job of springing back up to the feet.

• 2:57:27John Danaher?

  So I told Nicholas to favor upper body judo based takedowns rather than wrestling takedowns. And you see here a fine example of Nicholas's gathering skill and uchimata, one of the great throws of, of judo.

• 2:57:40Lex Fridman?

  Set up with a, there's a bit of a foot, an, a foot sweep.

• 2:57:47Lex Fridman?

  Like, uh,

• 2:57:48John Danaher?

  Good.

• 2:57:50John Danaher?

  The nice thing is he starts off with what it looks like. It's actually a two directional uchimata. He threatens uch, uh, uchigari to the back. That's a throw that throws your opponent to the back. His opponent pushes into him, then he changes direction with his support foot and takes him over with uchimata. Uh, as we said earlier, the great advantage of judo over wrestling is that because there's upper body connection during the throw and after the throw, it's much harder for an opponent to scramble away from you. And even Ty Ruotolo is one of the best scramblers in the sport. Has to stop scrambling here and just go back to guard position and enable Nicholas to to hold top position.

• 2:58:28Lex Fridman?

  I mean, some of it is also the surprise. There is something less understandable about judo techniques because there's less data. It feels like.

• 2:58:38John Danaher?

  The Ruth Hall is also have a good Uchimata. I think they're very familiar with it.

• 2:58:41Lex Fridman?

  Do you? How often do you think are they on the receiving end of an Uchimata?

• 2:58:46John Danaher?

  That's a good point. Yeah.

• 2:58:47Lex Fridman?

  So I just feel like they have more data in terms of defending. I mean, of course, there is fundamentals to the Uchimata that make it difficult to scramble around, but.

• 2:58:57John Danaher?

  This is a good example of someone who literally didn't have a single takedown six months ago. Now he's throwing one of the toughest guys in the sport with one of the more difficult throws of judo. You're a judo man.

• 2:59:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:09John Danaher?

  You'll back me up on this. Uchimata is not an easy throw to learn. It takes some time. You're hopping on one foot with both of your body weight.

• 2:59:15Lex Fridman?

  It's very counterintuitive. Yeah. You have to really.

• 2:59:19John Danaher?

  It's one of the more difficult throws.

• 2:59:20Lex Fridman?

  Let go of your understanding of takedowns, of maybe wrestling style takedowns or more intuitive kind of takedowns to understand it. There's many throws like this. Uchigari is like this. Sotogari is like this. Uchimata is like this. It's weird. What? I'm on one foot? I'm hopping around? This makes no sense.

• 2:59:40John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:41Lex Fridman?

  But it works. Foot sweeps are also weird in that way. They're a little bit more intuitive, but like to get very good at foot sweeps, you have to understand timing, weight distribution. It's a it's a dynamic thing that's weird. You have to.

• 2:59:55John Danaher?

  I always laugh and I talk to Nicholas and I say, you know, I try to teach him a single leg, which is traditionally most, you know, like a high single leg is one of the easier takedowns to perform in terms of mechanical difficulty. And Nicholas always struggles with it. And then I teach him one of the more difficult takedowns, Uchimata, and he does it flawlessly.

• 3:00:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you never know. Certain things get attached. I mean, you see this in judo. It's kind of interesting to see.

• 3:00:23Lex Fridman?

  There's classes of takedowns and certain people just gravitate in their philosophical, intuitive understanding of body mechanics or something like this. It's like Seinagi versus Ichimata. You very clearly see there's some people that understand, they like to have both their feet planted on the ground. And there's some people that are okay with this one foot on the ground and the other one is doing something else. And I think that, I don't know what that, what is that? I don't know. It's what makes you fall in love with one field versus another. So what, can you speak to that? That, you know, you've released a new instructional on takedowns and standing skills for jiu-jitsu.

• 3:01:05Lex Fridman?

  Just at a high level, using Nicholas as an example, what are some key ideas about takedowns?

• 3:01:14John Danaher?

  Okay, first, whenever people talk about standing position jiu-jitsu, they always say, oh, I need to learn some takedowns. But it's never a question of just learning the takedowns. It's learning the prerequisites to the takedowns. The takedowns are more or less like an afterthought. You've got to begin with stance, motion, the ability to engage and grip and contact, get your opponent out of balance, and then comes the takedowns. The takedowns in jiu-jitsu are mostly divided into lower body takedowns, tackles to the legs, single legs, double legs, to a lesser degree, high crotch in jiu-jitsu, and then

• 3:01:57John Danaher?

  upper body takedowns, which are mostly judo derived. Nicholas had to start more or less at the ground. I mean, he didn't even know how to come out and make grips or hold a stance. So he had to learn every element of it. And the fact he was able to do so in six months is just incredible.

• 3:02:17Lex Fridman?

  Can you comment on the?

• 3:02:20Lex Fridman?

  The upward posture that seems to work for Jiu Jitsu.

• 3:02:24John Danaher?

  The matches in Jiu Jitsu are much longer than the matches in wrestling. In addition, there are many kinds of submission threat which are not there in wrestling. So the stance has to be significantly changed. In wrestling, they favor generally a very low crouch because the vast majority of attacks are tackles to the legs. So anyone who stands upright in wrestling tends to get heavily punished by being taken down immediately with a leg tackle.

• 3:02:50John Danaher?

  In Jiu Jitsu, the matches are so much longer, it would be difficult in a 40 minute match, for example, to maintain a bent over crouch. You'd be exhausted. There's also problems associated with submission holds. There are many forms of submission hold, guillotines, tass, etc., where if your head comes down too low, you become a little vulnerable to this. And so the stances in Jiu Jitsu competition tend to be much more upright, more like judo and greco. So right off the bat, you see the stance is different. The motion tends to be much slower and more evenly paced because you've got to be able to do this for long periods of time. So the number of fakes per minute, the number of shots attempted per minute is usually much lower.

• 3:03:33John Danaher?

  So these are obvious differences. The biggest difference, however, has nothing to do with that, it has to do with tactics. In Jiu Jitsu, the scores will be judged by what happens after the takedown. In the case of ADCC, you can take someone down in ways that would score in both wrestling and judo, and possibly even win the match in the case of judo. And it would score zero in ADCC because of the nature of the rules. The whole idea of ADCC scoring is to demonstrate control after the takedown. It's what happens in the critical three seconds after the takedown that creates the score.

• 3:04:18John Danaher?

  In judo and in wrestling.

• 3:04:23John Danaher?

  The emphasis is placed on the takedown itself. In jiu jitsu, the emphasis is placed on the aftermath of the takedown. That's where the score is allocated. And that can be a period of up to three seconds. Now, three seconds doesn't sound like much, but in a scramble after a takedown, three seconds is a fucking eternity. It goes on forever. And so you will see many examples of takedowns that, as I said, would score very well in judo and wrestling, but don't score at all on ADCC. And so the whole skill becomes packaging the standing position in terms of the takedowns themselves, but in particular, preparing the athletes for that critical three seconds after the takedown.

• 3:05:08John Danaher?

  That's why many people who are very fine wrestlers struggle in ADCC. They take people down by wrestling metric all the time, but don't score on their ADCC rules.

• 3:05:19Lex Fridman?

  What makes GSP so good at takedowns? I've got a chance to even recently watch him do takedowns. Is it within this framework that you're teaching? What stands out to you about him that you draw lessons from?

• 3:05:32John Danaher?

  Yeah, that's another example of someone who's performing takedowns in a rule set radically different from wrestling.

• 3:05:42John Danaher?

  Just as the ADCC rule set is so different from conventional wrestling rule sets, that the whole manner in which you approach takedowns and even your understanding of takedowns has to be quite strongly modified. So to an MMA, it's even more extreme. People always think, oh, this guy's a good wrestler. He should be able to get takedowns in MMA easily. What you find is that the wrestling skills in MMA enable you to finish takedowns. If you get in on your opponent and get to the legs or the waist or what have you, your wrestling skill will enable you to finish the takedown. But getting to the takedown is massively different in the context of MMA than it is in wrestling.

• 3:06:26John Danaher?

  The entire stance is different.

• 3:06:30John Danaher?

  The entire set of distancing is different. There's the idea of positioning within a cage, like how close you are to the perimeter of the cage changes radically how you approach the takedown. The setups are literally night and day different. The setups are almost entirely composed of striking setups rather than grappling setups. And so the act of getting to the takedown is like a completely different sport. Now, George studied wrestling and used to go to wrestling practice twice a week. In Canada, they do freestyle wrestling. They don't use the American college style of wrestling. Now, George's main emphasis in wrestling training was takedowns.

• 3:07:15John Danaher?

  Obviously, the whole ground element of freestyle wrestling was of no interest to him. Like, learning how to put people's back on the ground and turn them with leg laces and gut wrenches was of no value in MMA. So he devoted almost all of his study to just the act of taking someone down. So in pure wrestling, George is not bad. I think he would be a very competitive match even for a highly ranked American freestyle wrestler. Obviously, he would lose easily on the ground because he's not used to the partier. He'd probably be leg laced or gut wrenched quite easily by a skilled opponent. But in just a pure takedown battle, he'd be a competitive training partner for even a good wrestler.

• 3:08:00John Danaher?

  But in actual MMA competition, he could take down even the most highly credentialed wrestlers and in some cases make it look almost effortless. And that came from his unification of striking skill with wrestling. So he used wrestling skills to finish the takedown and his karate and boxing, kickboxing pedigree to enter into the takedown. Now, when he initiated the study of this, this is at a time when MMA was pretty much in its infancy and he was one of the...

• 3:08:38John Danaher?

  Most impressive people I've ever seen in this regard. He was a true innovator. He innovated this specialized area of striking to a takedown to a greater degree than anyone else I'm aware of.

• 3:08:51Lex Fridman?

  Well, let me ask you about this innovation because you're one of the most innovative people in martial arts. There's several major categories of innovation that you have led. Obviously, leg locks, body lock, now wrestling.

• 3:09:12Lex Fridman?

  What's your process of innovation? So seeing the problems in a particular system, the gaps. How do you identify them and how do you figure out systems of how to fill those gaps?

• 3:09:30John Danaher?

  First thing I look for is what are the current weaknesses in a given combat sport? So in the case of jiu-jitsu, it was very obvious that historically jiu-jitsu had always been weak in leg locking. Jiu-jitsu had always been weak in standing position overall. And these were things that needed to be sorted out immediately. In its infancy, mixed martial arts was divided between grapplers and strikers. And most of the emphasis in early mixed martial arts was on the idea of specialists in a given domain,

• 3:10:15John Danaher?

  forcing the fight into their domain.

• 3:10:19John Danaher?

  And that my early work with Georges St-Pierre convinced me that the right approach wasn't increased specialization and learning to force your athlete into that area of specialization at the expense of the opponent. But rather, the real battles of the future would be won and lost, not with... Techniques per se, specialized techniques, but rather the integration of techniques and the overlap between the various grappling and striking skills. So that someone who was an inferior grappler would have just enough grappling skills to

• 3:11:01John Danaher?

  be able to hold a grappler off and then defeat them with the striking. And a striker who was, if you went to fight someone who's superior to you in striking, you would have just enough striking skill to be able to hold them at bay and then enter into grappling. This went further and further until it got clear that there were whole areas of the sport that needed, you needed to change your entire mindset about them. So that people went into early MMA thinking in terms of grappler and striker. What I started to think is in terms of, okay, there are four fundamental skill areas of mixed martial arts.

• 3:11:44John Danaher?

  There is shoot boxing, which is the integration of takedowns and striking. There is clinch boxing, which is the integration of upper body clinch skills combined with striking. There is fence boxing, which the two athletes are locked up with each other on the fence. And they have to integrate takedown, takedown defense and striking skills. And there is grapple boxing, which is the merging of ground grappling with striking. And when you broke MMA down into those four categories, you saw that each one of those four domains transcends the specialized martial arts that form their components.

• 3:12:29John Danaher?

  So for example, in, in clinch boxing, you would incorporate things from judo, greco-roman, freestyle, judo submissions, Muay Thai, clinching techniques. But even if you took all five of those.

• 3:12:46John Danaher?

  The rule set that you're operating in required such extensive modification that the final product of clinch boxing transcended all five of its component martial arts and became its own autonomous skill, needed to be worked autonomously. And when we broke Georgia's training down into those four areas, that's when real progress started to be made. That's when you started to see the integration of those four phases and the striking and grappling within each of them was where victory was being won and lost.

• 3:13:24Lex Fridman?

  So, once you reframe how you see a particular combat sport, then you can start doing these detailed development of ideas that actually like they fit.

• 3:13:37John Danaher?

  There's a sense in which it had to start with a paradigm shift and then a research program began after that. You don't start with research, you started with a paradigm shift and then went to research.

• 3:13:48Lex Fridman?

  Well, let me ask you, I got a chance to hang out with you and Henzo Gracie at ADCC. He keeps messaging me saying he's gonna call me and not calling me. I think aside from being hilarious, charismatic and handsome, he is also, and wise for his young age, he's also one of the greatest coaches and athletes of all time in martial arts. So, let me ask, what have you learned about life from Henzo Gracie?

• 3:14:19John Danaher?

  The degree of difficulty that Henzo must have encountered, he never talked to us about it, but I figured this out as the years went by. The degree of difficulty that he must have experienced when he first came to Manhattan and started teaching, it must have just been incredible. You've got to remember, Henzo came from Brazil, training with...

• 3:14:44John Danaher?

  The best people in the world at that time, you know, Hickson, uh, all the Machados, all of them were located around Gracie Baja and, um, uh, that Rio de Janeiro set. They all knew each other and they all trained together. They had internal problems, of course, and but, um, uh, they all knew each other well and knew each other's games. So they, all of them had beautiful and highly developed jiu-jitsu. So all Hinzo knew from childhood on was perfect, beautiful jiu-jitsu and communicating with other people who also

• 3:15:24John Danaher?

  knew perfect, beautiful jiu-jitsu. Then he comes to New York.

• 3:15:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:30John Danaher?

  Where he has to teach in a language that he, at that stage, barely spoke.

• 3:15:37Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:37John Danaher?

  To a bunch of fucking morons.

• 3:15:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:40John Danaher?

  Who didn't even, uh, on my first day in jiu-jitsu, they had to explain to me the difference between the mount and the guard. Cause as far as I was concerned, yeah, you're on top. It's the same thing.

• 3:15:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:50John Danaher?

  And they're like, no, no, no, mounted is different from guard. And I'm like, no, it's not. Like you're on top of the guy. You just hit him.

• 3:15:56Lex Fridman?

  So he has to argue with you about this?

• 3:15:59John Danaher?

  And imagine going from training with, with Hickson Gracie to having to tell some moron that guard is different from mount. And we was, we were so primitive back then. It, he went from the best training culture in the world to literally the worst. Just a bunch of guys in their mid twenties who knew nothing about the ground. Just.

• 3:16:24Lex Fridman?

  Well, luckily he's known for his patience.

• 3:16:28Lex Fridman?

  But out of that, he molded one of the greatest gyms ever in New York.

• 3:16:34John Danaher?

  Yes. Uh, he had, uh, he did a fantastic job and most of it was based around the idea that he gave us complete freedom. We came in, we trained all day and. I started teaching beginners classes. Um, and then some of his senior students, uh, Ricardo Almeida, Rodrigo Gracie and Matt Sarah, opened their own schools around the tri-state area. So they left. Uh, there was a vacuum of teachers and he asked me to start teaching. Um, uh, I taught for, for many, many years there and he always gave us complete freedom. His only thing was to say, okay, do whatever you want. Just make sure it's effective. Prove to me it's effective.

• 3:17:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:16John Danaher?

  And that's the best research program you can ever have. You know, show me proof. And, um, uh, then, you know, so many times, and especially in those days in Judas, who there were so many things that were just off limits. Like you couldn't study Legos. You couldn't do this, couldn't do that. Like this kind of game was for cows. This kind of, this is the only kind of game we accept. And Hinzel was never like that. He was just like, okay, just do what you want. Prove to me it works. And if you give people that simple structure, you give them some time, some ingenuity, a lot of things can happen.

• 3:17:50Lex Fridman?

  I gotta ask you, and by the way, he'll come on this podcast and I do feel like it's a little bit like riding a dragon or a bull of some kind. It'll be, it'll be a fun journey. There's, I can't, at least from my perspective, uh, having interacted with, having met him, it's hard not to smile. Um, from

• 3:18:07John Danaher?

  He's easily one of the most charismatic people in Judas.

• 3:18:10Lex Fridman?

  It's kind of fun to watch that humans can be like this too. It's, it's just the, the, the love that radiates from him is incredible. I gotta ask you, this is from Reddit. There's, there's a, there's a few legends that come from that gym, but people on Reddit kept asking me about some guy named Boris. Apparently you coached him at Hinzel's and he was a legend and he was terrifyingly good. Uh, what made him a legend? Who's this Boris character?

• 3:18:37John Danaher?

  Uh, Boris is one of my early students. When I think he was either my first or second black belt. Boris came from Long Island. He was a wrestler. He was of Russian Jewish descent and highly intelligent.

• 3:18:50Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 3:18:50John Danaher?

  And, um, now he was short of stature, but very powerfully built and compact. Um,

• 3:18:58John Danaher?

  Uh, very nice, polite young man, um, but also slightly eccentric, which uh, I always liked about him. Um, he would always come dressed with glasses on and he would leave the gym, uh, dressed like, to use the American phrase, a complete nerd. With like his pocket protector and he, uh, no, he was heavily muscled, but he would dress in such a way that he didn't appear so when he left. And we always used to laugh, like, you imagine some guy tried to mug Boris. They would see him with his nerdy glasses on, his pocket protector, and they would literally run into like one of the most formidable human beings

• 3:19:42John Danaher?

  in the entire New York area. Boris started training judo, I believe, in Long Island. And then, um, when he got a tech job in Manhattan, started training with us in a morning class. Now, these were relatively early days in Manhattan and in my teaching career. And, uh, uh, he and a group of others, a very small group, he used to train early in the morning, around six AM before work. And, uh, Boris was a legend in those days. Now, a very young George St. Pierre came to, uh, train with us at that time. And he would come in at six AM to do his morning class. And, uh, he was one of the main training partners for, for Boris.

• 3:20:27John Danaher?

  And, um, Boris being a wrestler, he used to generally prefer top position. And I would always encourage George to play bottom position. I'd say, you've got to get good in bottom position. You never know. I know you're good at takedowns, but one day someone's going to put you down. So you've got to work bottom position. Um, and Boris had very strong guard passing. I remember one of George's happiest days is finally after like two years, one day he, uh, swept Boris, got on top and finished him. And I remember he was, that was one of his biggest, uh, thrills in all of, uh, his, his, his training career. That was the last time that ever happened for it. No, Boris was, uh, he was a very formidable man for that time.

• 3:21:07John Danaher?

  The funny thing about Boris is, uh, every time we would have a conversation, he would say, I'm only going to do this sport until I'm forty years old and then I'm going to stop. And I was like, why? Like, why not be like a lifelong martial artist? You know, you got so good. You're good at jiu jitsu. You've got great skills. You've worked hard. Why not just keep going? He's like, it's ridiculous for a man to train after forty. There's no need. He never gave any reason for this. It was just ridiculous. So one day, now, this is a guy who came in literally every day, six AM, every day.

• 3:21:45John Danaher?

  One day, he comes in, he comes up to me at the end of the training, he goes, hey, John, I just turned forty, so I won't be seeing you again. And I thought, he's joking. So I'm like, I'll see you tomorrow, Boris. He's like, no, you won't, and walks off.

• 3:21:59Lex Fridman?

  How gangster is that?

• 3:22:00John Danaher?

  And then he never came back. I've never seen Boris since. He came in, was one of the best grappas I ever saw, and just said, that's it, buddy, I'm out. And to this day-

• 3:22:13Lex Fridman?

  No one to walk away.

• 3:22:14John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:15Lex Fridman?

  I also got to hang out, got to meet, hang out with Ali Abdelaziz. He's a hands of Gracie Black Belt, fourth degree Judo Black Belt, and friend and manager of Khabib Nurmagomedov, who's coming down to Austin soon. We'll do a podcast. Hopefully, you get on the mat and have a bit of brainstorm. Also, he's a manager and friend of many other amazing fighters.

• 3:22:43Lex Fridman?

  I really love the guy. The loyalty, the fact that he looks for loyalty and has that inner, close inner circle, and integrity and character in people. I really like them. I connect them really quickly. But any fun stories about Ali? Did you train together?

• 3:23:01John Danaher?

  Yes, he trained for many years in the basement of my classes. He's, his story is one of the most unlikely stories. Like, if someone wrote a movie plot about his life, they'd be like, this is absurd. He's thrown out the door in a second. And yet, it all happened. You're absolutely correct. He is-

• 3:23:27John Danaher?

  From the unlikeliest possible starts, created a situation where he's, I think it's incontestable now to say he's the most successful manager in mixed martial arts history. He has more champions under his care than than anyone else I'm aware of.

• 3:23:42Lex Fridman?

  And respected and influential, so on all on all dimensions, yes.

• 3:23:47John Danaher?

  Now, many people aren't aware of the fact that he was actually a very good judo player. He had.

• 3:23:52Lex Fridman?

  Jidoka first, yeah.

• 3:23:53John Danaher?

  Yes, yeah, he had very good no gi judo.

• 3:23:57John Danaher?

  He had an excellent harai goshi, a very good taniyatoshi. And he threw many people who were highly credentialed wrestlers in back in the basement, back in the glory days of MMA training. He was a good example of a guy who had very, very good judo hips and often used it to to counter wrestling and was a fine demonstrator of the idea that

• 3:24:28John Danaher?

  when judo is adapted to no gi gripping, it can provide a very effective foil to many of the standard forms of wrestling attack. And he would often use uchimata to counter leg tackles and do so in very, very spectacular fashion.

• 3:24:41Lex Fridman?

  Well, what do you think about Khabib? Is there something from just watching him? Or is there something you can imagine if he comes down to the gym that you might learn from the way he moves, the way he approaches wrestling?

• 3:24:56John Danaher?

  Oh, absolutely. He's one of the greatest combat athletes of all time. If you can't learn from someone like that, there's something wrong with you.

• 3:25:01Lex Fridman?

  So he emphasizes control?

• 3:25:03John Danaher?

  Hmm, yes, he does. And he's absolutely a master of exerting control.

• 3:25:10John Danaher?

  The amount of grappling control he was able to put over some of the most difficult people in the world to control was truly astounding. He he beat people from every style. He beat wrestlers, he beat jujitsu players, he beat kickboxes, and he controlled them all in more or less the same way.

• 3:25:28John Danaher?

  He has a very underrated bottom game. People think, oh, he's just about stifling top control. But people forget he was. Taken down on several occasions and ended up in bottom position and he showed excellent guard work from bottom. He was able to get into submission holds readily on opponents from bottom position. He's got an excellent bottom game. People say, oh, he's just a positional guy. No, he's not. He's got great submissions. The application of his triangle from both top and bottom was top class. He had a sharp arm lock from bottom position. Excellent kimura. If you look at his kimura finishes in MMA, they were technically very, very well set.

• 3:26:09John Danaher?

  Excellent breaking mechanics. He's a very, very fine grappler in both submission grappling and MMA grappling. I think we'd probably learn a ton from moving around with him.

• 3:26:21Lex Fridman?

  Is it possible to learn something about him or about Hajar Gracie or about Gordon by watching them or rolling around them for a little bit? So maybe Hajar and Khabib are good examples because they're able to do seemingly very basic things on everybody and dominate them with that. I think Gordon is as well, but Gordon seems to have more preference and range of what he's able to do. It's just, it's almost miraculous how much Hajar can do by just like the same

• 3:27:01Lex Fridman?

  exact thing on everybody. Is that like, is it possible to understand why Hajar or Khabib were so good at very basic positions? Or do you have to feel it? Or do you have to, or is it just something that's developed over years and years?

• 3:27:18John Danaher?

  I think for most people, for the vast majority of people, it would have to be explained to them. For a smaller group of people, if they felt it, they could try to replicate it. And there are a few people who could look at it and have enough knowledge and say, okay, I can see what he's doing. Like, for example, Hajar could probably look at video footage of Khabib grappling and say, okay, I understand what he's doing. But the average person, it would probably go over their heads.

• 3:27:48Lex Fridman?

  You sometimes think of like these great athletes, like Maybe they're too narrow. Like you, you, you might imagine they're kind of so focused on a particular thing. They don't develop in interesting ways. He's, he's just a sweetheart.

• 3:28:02John Danaher?

  Yeah, he's a wonderful person to be around.

• 3:28:06Lex Fridman?

  Uh, yeah, he'll, he will, he's also visit, visiting Austin, but just I was so, I mean, first of all, I'm honored just, uh, drinking a little bit too much in Vegas with Hadja Gracie and just, and talking about, uh, love and relationships and life and, and death and all those philosophical topics as one does in Vegas. Um, and a little bit too much to drink. Anyway, after ADCC was beautiful. And on top of that, uh, hanging out with Rogan, uh, many days for UFC and then the ADCC. You know, one thing, I don't know if you've gotten a chance to hang out with, with Joe when he plays pool.

• 3:28:45Lex Fridman?

  I, so I spent a lot of time with him when he was playing pool, like recently on that trip to Vegas. And there's something zen-like about, first of all, just watching him. But I've never seen the focus the guy's got on the game for hours. Just deep focus, unshakable focus. That was so interesting to watch that this human being, he's a celebrity. He does all kinds of stuff that he's able to, to allocate as close to a hundred percent of his mind as I can imagine to a particular task and nothing can distract him. That was really inspiring that you could still do that on any task.

• 3:29:30John Danaher?

  Well, pool is a game of physics. That should be your domain.

• 3:29:34Lex Fridman?

  Oh, it is, but that, that wasn't just physics. Yeah, I would think you understand the game. You understand the physics of it. Uh, you also understand the, the fun of it because there's friends and laughter and so on.

• 3:29:47Lex Fridman?

  I would be distracted by that a little bit. I wouldn't be as. Like not Joe. He, he literally, as the closer you get to the table, the more it's, everything zooms in. The jokes, there's funny things. You can't get his attention on anything. It's that focus. I don't know. That stays, that really stuck, stayed with me. That, like, uh, you know, those memes like, I, I want to find somebody that looks at me the way X looks at Y. I want to find somebody that looks at me the way Joe looks at a pool cue or whatever. The focus there. I want to find something in my life.

• 3:30:24Lex Fridman?

  Rather, I want to attain the level of focus he has for pool on a task that I care about. And that, that focus, like, fuck everything else. This is now it's time to do work.

• 3:30:40Lex Fridman?

  I don't know. That was really inspiring. I haven't seen that kind of focus.

• 3:30:45Lex Fridman?

  For prolonged periods of times on a task. You should, you should see some time. The guy, the guy is, uh, I mean, part of it is just being competitive with himself. It's the hatred of imperfection, all those kinds of elements, but embodied in a singular focus. I had no idea he even played pool. It's interesting. He should, we should watch him. He, he won't. I think it, it could be one of his greatest obsessions. Like there's deep, uh, see, I thought pool is for like degenerates, like gamblers and like hustlers, right? Like, uh, the same way I see poker. But like, I saw like a wolf slash like elite athlete in Joe. I said, I didn't know this. I don't know much about pool.

• 3:31:30Lex Fridman?

  I didn't know that you could have that level of focus while still drunk out your ass, but extremely focused. It was beautiful to see. I don't know. Inspiring, inspiring, uh, for me as a person who highly values singular focus on a task. Let me ask you from a perspective of a hobbyist, what major?

• 3:31:52Lex Fridman?

  Practical changes can a hobbyist who works regular nine to five job do to improve their jiu jitsu? So they're in a gym, there's a lot of excellent gyms throughout the United States. What can they do to improve their jiu jitsu? About their, about the way they think about jiu jitsu, about the way they approach their actual schedule, those kinds of things.

• 3:32:11John Danaher?

  That's a great question. Okay. The less training time you've got, the more you want to maximize its effect. So a question becomes, okay, well, if I'm training, say, twice a week and sometimes even once a week, what can I do to make sure that that two hour period is used maximally?

• 3:32:37John Danaher?

  The less training time you've got, the more the onus is on you to have a plan before you walk in the door. If you go in just saying, I'm going to roll around and see what happens, or I'll just follow what the instructor says, you'll get a certain amount out of each class, but it will never be what it could have been. Go in with a plan and enact it. Many people go in with a plan and don't follow it. Let's say, for example,

• 3:33:13John Danaher?

  we start with a program that goes like this. First, try to create the most honest assessment of yourself as a jiu jitsu player. It's tough to make an honest assessment of yourself because you never actually get to see your game. So what I would recommend is to start by videotaping yourself inspiring with your peers.

• 3:33:42Lex Fridman?

  That's fascinating because we don't even have that level of introspection, ability to reflect of what we actually look like in grappling.

• 3:33:50John Danaher?

  Start with an assessment of yourself and the most honest one comes not from you, comes from the camera.

• 3:33:57John Danaher?

  Have a look at what you see and start to say, okay, many of the weaknesses in your game are made much more apparent by looking from the outside in, rather than feeling them during the heat of a match. Identify four or five of the biggest weaknesses that you see, and start actively attacking those weaknesses. Ask yourself, let's say, for example, in the course of watching the videotape of yourself, you observe yourself losing three triangles. You attempted three triangle strangleholds, you failed all three.

• 3:34:39John Danaher?

  You could start by saying, okay, let me ask myself, who are the people I look up to the most with regards a triangle strangle? Who are the guys who have the best triangle strangles out there? Then ask yourselves, of those people, who are the ones whose body type and personality most closely mirrors my own? And that would be a good example of, of taking a problem in your game, contrasting it with elite level performance of, in people whose body type roughly matches your own, and then try to take lessons you learn by observing the best people and bringing them into your own game in one specific area.

• 3:35:24John Danaher?

  As time goes by, you do this with more and more elements of your game, you will undoubtedly improve. You will also have to make sure that you take time during class to actively work on these things. Now, sometimes in class, you don't get a choice. The instructor sometimes says, okay, today we're working this, this, and this. But there's always time after and before class where you can do your own drilling, where you can make your own inquiries. And during sparring, there's no rigorous control over what you do. You can try to work the game into the areas of focus. So, for example, if you want to work on front triangles, it would be wise for you to do most of your sparring from bottom guard positions.

• 3:36:07John Danaher?

  That'll give you the most opportunity. And in this sense, it always begins with...

• 3:36:16John Danaher?

  An accurate assessment of your current skill level. You've got to start there. Then, I always encourage people to use video camera to make the most Honest. Honest appraisal you can. Yeah. Because your own mind is not dishonest, but it's understandably inaccurate. You tend to feel things rather than see them when you're performing jujitsu.

• 3:36:40John Danaher?

  Then make a program for yourself based around what you see as excellence.

• 3:36:49John Danaher?

  Look at the people in the sport who's in the area you want to work on, people who are renowned for skill in that area.

• 3:36:58John Danaher?

  If possible, narrow it down to people who have excellence in that area and their body type corresponds with your own. And then try to take lessons learned from observing the excellence in these elite athletes and bring elements of them into your game. Never try to bring an elite athlete's entire game to your game. That will create an inauthentic game on your part, which will always be a poor copy of what you're trying to watch. Rather bring very specific areas and skills that you see and import them from different people until eventually you find something for yourself. Experiment a lot, okay?

• 3:37:40John Danaher?

  Everyone's different and so you will, don't see the video research as the final word. See video research the way a writer will see a muse. As someone who initiates discussion, opens inquiries for your own research.

• 3:38:01John Danaher?

  The most powerful moments you will have on the mat come from making discoveries for yourself, not being told what to do, not observing someone else doing something, but self-discoveries.

• 3:38:15John Danaher?

  Those are the ones that will last inside you. So use video research not as the definitive answer to your problems, but as initiating research for yourself on the mat. And as time goes by and you do this more and more often in more and more areas of the sport, I promise you, you'll improve.

• 3:38:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and I guess when you have the plan, have a plan that carries across many training sessions. So I just remember, I know this is perhaps dumb, but I saw in my own game early on, a lot of growth is by self identifying a problem and coming up by myself with a solution by watching, in that case Marcel Garcia. I just thought my butterfly guard was very weak. And so I thought, okay, what's the solution here? I thought maybe this X guard thing, double X guard. Okay, so I watched a bunch of video, let me try to work on this.

• 3:39:15Lex Fridman?

  And then all I did, just this self, but when I could get time by myself, meaning like not instructor guided classes, but in training, I would just, everything I would put myself into butterfly and X guard.

• 3:39:31John Danaher?

  That's good.

• 3:39:32Lex Fridman?

  And then just let go, like, don't progress. Sweep and figure out a way to get swept, to get right back to it, back to and everything. It was annoying probably to train with me because that's all I did and that's all I thought about.

• 3:39:44John Danaher?

  But you learn quickly.

• 3:39:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I learned it's the most progress I've ever made. Now, you could say that X guard wasn't the right solution for me, that maybe that wasn't the weakest point for me to work on. If I were to look back now, it's still to this day sadly, the obvious weakest point for me is escapes from much worse positions. That should be worked on, that should have been worked on from the very beginning. That's still today, if I were to say what's the weakest thing that I should work on absolutely, is even with one day a week is escapes. But yeah, a lot of that has to do with just carrying, like focusing on the one thing over and over and over and over across training sessions.

• 3:40:30Lex Fridman?

  Now, it also, I would write down on a sheet of paper, the number of times I would get an X guard sweep.

• 3:40:39Lex Fridman?

  And I would set a rule that I have to get whatever it was like 500 sweeps a week. So I have to, and then like the closer you get to the end of the week, the more you like, just pick up a small wipeout.

• 3:40:51John Danaher?

  500 in a week?

• 3:40:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:53John Danaher?

  Your training partners must suck, bro.

• 3:40:55Lex Fridman?

  No, you start with with good ones and then you get more and more desperate. Start like finding the kid, right? You could just sweep over and over. But like that number, for me, the numbers for some reason, like it's a goal to pull off a technique. It enforced like we're staying with this for a while. This is a journey we're doing. And then for some reason, for me, that helped me focus to study to understand the deep complexities of this thing that at least for me, other people, like nobody at the gym was doing X Guard or any of that. So you had to kind of figure everything out yourself.

• 3:41:36Lex Fridman?

  I'm sure there's, there's better ways to do that, but at least that focus helps from a hobbyist perspective. What's the day, what's the perfect day in the life of John Donner? If we're talking about a basic non ADCC. Now, you're, I'm really grateful that you sit down with me on a Sunday, late at night, but it all starts again for you tomorrow. So three training sessions a day. What, what time do you wake up? Do you do like a mantra in the morning? Do you listen to like some Zen music? What do you eat in the morning?

• 3:42:18Lex Fridman?

  What, what's the perfect day look like? Sacrifice a small animal?

• 3:42:23John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:26Lex Fridman?

  To the gods?

• 3:42:27John Danaher?

  I, I usually, when you say a perfect day, what I think you really mean is an average day.

• 3:42:36Lex Fridman?

  Perfectly productive average day.

• 3:42:38John Danaher?

  Yeah. So let's take Monday morning. For you watching this video, we're filming this late on a Sunday night. So after this, I'll drive home. We just had ADCC. It was two weeks ago. It was one of the longest training camps. It was the longest training camp I've ever run because of the fact we had to go through three different matches for Gordon Ryan leading up to it.

• 3:43:07John Danaher?

  So immediately after ADCC, I cut the training down for the competitive athletes to one session per day for the first week after ADCC to give their bodies a bit of a break. I still have to teach two classes in addition to that, two recreational classes. So my teaching schedule went down to three classes per day. After one week of relative break, we go back to two competition classes per day plus two recreational classes plus an MMA class for Gary Tonan and his friends.

• 3:43:47John Danaher?

  The first class requires me to get up around 6:00 AM to drive. I'm still a student driver, so I'm not very good at driving, so I have to spend a little extra time to get to the destination on time.

• 3:44:02Lex Fridman?

  Just for the record, John pulled in in a red Lamborghini.

• 3:44:08Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 3:44:09John Danaher?

  You're the worst liar I've ever met. My day typically starts pretty early. I don't eat in the morning. I just get up and go to work. And I teach through the day. My last class finishes usually around 8:00 PM.

• 3:44:26John Danaher?

  During that time, I

• 3:44:30John Danaher?

  coached jiu-jitsu. I try to find time for one Instagram post per day, which usually describes some basic theme of jiu-jitsu in most cases, unless we've just had a competition, in which case I'll talk about upcoming competitions or what happens after a competition. But most of them just express a simple jiu-jitsu theme. I try to do a short workout for myself.

• 3:44:57John Danaher?

  And then I go home. At the end of the day, I always start by asking myself, what do my students need from me tomorrow? Based on what I've seen today, what do the recreational students need and what do the competitive students need? This is always done in the light of what are the upcoming competitions?

• 3:45:18Lex Fridman?

  But throughout the day, you're doing a lot of really in-depth classes. So how do you either prepare for them or think through them as they're happening? Think through. The material that you're teaching.

• 3:45:32John Danaher?

  I can look at a class. I've been doing this a long time, so I can just look at a class and be like, okay, these guys need this, this and this. And then I make reflections at the end of the day. Then I'll take care of things that we all do, talk to family, occasionally go out on, for dinner with friends, dates, things like that.

• 3:45:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Henzo had to really harass you to drag you out and to hang out, and he was very convincing. And food wise?

• 3:46:01John Danaher?

  I eat once a day.

• 3:46:02Lex Fridman?

  Eat once a day?

• 3:46:03John Danaher?

  Yeah, at the end of the day, I usually stop off at a place like a supermarket like Whole Foods or some equivalent to that and buy something simple and eat.

• 3:46:14Lex Fridman?

  The internet wants to know the details. Did you end up getting wifi for your apartment?

• 3:46:19John Danaher?

  No, I'm still thinking about it. It's a, yeah.

• 3:46:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so what are the pros and cons?

• 3:46:26John Danaher?

  Um, there's no cons, lots of pros, but I just don't put much importance to it. Things that are unimportant, I just ignore.

• 3:46:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's a lot of things in life that have a lot of pros, but like they're lower on the priority list. Why? Why? Cause the 5G already?

• 3:46:42John Danaher?

  5G's got it covered.

• 3:46:44Lex Fridman?

  Do you watch much video? Do you watch video? Do you watch footage?

• 3:46:49John Danaher?

  Uh, video footage quite often, yeah. I, I especially things from freestyle wrestling, Rico Roman wrestling, judo, um, uh, and mixed martial arts, also, uh, subsidiary sports to mixed martial arts like boxing, uh, Muay Thai and European kickboxing.

• 3:47:06Lex Fridman?

  Just for long-term idea generation?

• 3:47:08John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 3:47:10Lex Fridman?

  Like a plant a seed?

• 3:47:11John Danaher?

  What, what could, yeah, this is an interesting thing. How could this be incorporated in the context in which we use it, MMA or judo?

• 3:47:18Lex Fridman?

  And maybe it's immediately obvious, or it might become obvious in, in, in a few weeks or months.

• 3:47:26Lex Fridman?

  Is there some aspect to the way you approach life and training and martial arts that amends itself to minimalism? It seems like you live a pretty stoic life. Or is that just a symptom of a focused existence?

• 3:47:40John Danaher?

  You know, my, my life wasn't always like this. I've gone through different phases in my life. I was a university student and teacher at university. I was a nightclub bouncer for more than a decade. I've been through different areas of life. I've seen most things. I've experienced a lot. I've traveled the world. At this point in my life, people think I live some kind of like monk-like existence. But, you know, I have a private life. I like to go out and have fun like everyone else. I'm not like some kind of like monk who just, you know, sits under a waterfall and meditates or anything crazy like that.

• 3:48:19Lex Fridman?

  Well, that's, that's why I'm currently going through that stage in my life, the monk-like existence. So I would be amiss not to ask you one of the most important questions one can possibly ask John Donahue, which is on the topic of animal combat. Who wins in a fight to the death? Or maybe in a sport competition setting, but let's go with the fight to the death. A grizzly bear, a silverback gorilla, and maybe a lion or tiger, an African lion or one of the flavors of tiger. I don't know who you think is more ferocious. What are the parameters to consider here?

• 3:49:01Lex Fridman?

  Maybe I can throw a few out and maybe you can give me some thoughts about how much of these parameters matter. So first of all, intelligence. I do believe the gorilla is the most intelligent. I've did research for this, as you can imagine. Solo or with Joe Rogan? The, the expert advisor to this very podcast and this very topic is indeed Joe Rogan, yes. So in captivity, gorillas have been documented to show complex emotions, form family bonds, the ability to use tools, and to be able to reason about the past and the future.

• 3:49:45Lex Fridman?

  That's impressive. So that, that's something that at least in captivity, the other animals have not been able to do. They already sound much more advanced than I am.

• 3:49:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so that's intelligence. Then there is weight. I think that's something that you think of at first. The lion, let's go with the big ones. I took notes here. 550 pounds for a big lion.

• 3:50:12John Danaher?

  That's exceptionally large. Like, most male lions are around 450 pounds. That's an exceptional beast then.

• 3:50:20Lex Fridman?

  Thank you. The tiger can be larger than that.

• 3:50:23John Danaher?

  Yeah, much, much larger.

• 3:50:25Lex Fridman?

  So we got the grizzly bear, which is probably the biggest of the bunch. At the large ones get to 1,500 pounds. Correct me if some of this numbers.

• 3:50:34John Danaher?

  I believe most grizzlies are around 1,000 pound mark. It's a big, big beast.

• 3:50:39Lex Fridman?

  I was looking up the biggest, but I didn't want to do the biggest ever. Just what are the big, like, the top of the range? Because there's always a range.

• 3:50:48John Danaher?

  You can put it in at roughly double that of even a very big lion.

• 3:50:52Lex Fridman?

  Of course, how that weight is used is very important. So there's also things which I find is interesting is anaconda. Would just let me throw that in there because it's 200 pounds. What I really like about that is it's not just the weight, it's the form factor. And I think out of all of these, the anaconda is the most non-standard form factor.

• 3:51:14John Danaher?

  I totally agree with that. It's like the knight on the chessboard. It comes in from a completely different angle.

• 3:51:22Lex Fridman?

  So we got that. We got also a strength in which could be measured in ability to carry stuff. So this was surprising to me. I did look into this carefully. The grizzly bear at 1,000 or 1,500 pounds can only carry at most its body weight, which is a lot. But a gorilla can carry 10 times its body weight. A gorilla can lift over 2,000 kilograms. So that's over 4,000 pounds.

• 3:51:51John Danaher?

  And gorillas themselves, an adult male weighs in around 350 to 400.

• 3:51:56Lex Fridman?

  400 pounds, yes, that's. So I like how in this particular place where I found this, 2,000 kilograms is as heavy as 30 average humans. So gorilla can. Thirty humans. So that's carrying strength. And then, of course, bite force, because that's one of the weapons in question here. So now, this is really surprising to me. The gorilla has won me over through this, by the way. Intelligence, I'm a sucker for intelligence, but the gorilla bite force is the highest of all these with thirteen hundred PSI. Bear is second with twelve hundred PSI. Tiger is third. I think Tiger and Lion is third with a thousand PSI.

• 3:52:37Lex Fridman?

  It's comparable. And a bear is anywhere from nine hundred to a thousand PSI. They're close, but gorilla, I would not have expected. Now, gorilla is not a carnivore, but apparently it chews, it mostly eats grassy stuff, but like.

• 3:52:55John Danaher?

  It's difficult to explain why it has such a powerful bite. And it also, of course, has very large and size of teeth as well as chewing teeth. So.

• 3:53:03Lex Fridman?

  Also, no neck.

• 3:53:05John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 3:53:07Lex Fridman?

  So.

• 3:53:07John Danaher?

  Its neck begins at the top of its head and just goes down to the shoulders.

• 3:53:10Lex Fridman?

  Well, a lot of the way they use their teeth, all of these animals, the ultimate kill is to go for the neck, the bite in the neck. I don't know exactly why that is, probably has to do. Why is that? Because it's a very strong, controlled position, not just that it's a. Is it the same as jujitsu, you think? Because they get to also choke them out?

• 3:53:31John Danaher?

  It's very much in line with jujitsu. Like, lions are famous for using strangulation as their primary method of killing. They get a hold of the neck and hold it until the animal drops.

• 3:53:41Lex Fridman?

  Plus claws. I believe the tiger and the bear use their claws.

• 3:53:48John Danaher?

  And the lion, too.

• 3:53:49Lex Fridman?

  The lion, right, and the lion. This is something that the gorilla doesn't do. And a condor, obviously, doesn't.

• 3:53:59John Danaher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:53:59Lex Fridman?

  Different. So what do you think? How do we think about this? Also, there is, I'm just not letting you talk, apparently, there's levels of aggression in terms of.

• 3:54:10John Danaher?

  These are also very important considerations, yeah.

• 3:54:12Lex Fridman?

  What is most important to you?

• 3:54:14John Danaher?

  All the considerations you've raised are very important, and we would have to address them if we're going to go through this topic. First things first, whenever you go into a discussion of this kind, there's.

• 3:54:30John Danaher?

  A kind of natural impression that we all have as to which one would be the most formidable.

• 3:54:37John Danaher?

  And it's important that you become rather skeptical of your first intuitions because they're often very misleading. Just as every boy thinks his father is the strongest man in the world, and then when he grows up into adulthood, he realizes his father was not even close to being the strongest man in the world. It's not because of anything other than inexperience. To a boy, his father seems overwhelmingly strong. He literally can't even imagine anyone else being stronger than that. So naively, he thinks his father is the strongest man in the world. So too, in our relationship with animals, when we look at a silverback gorilla,

• 3:55:19John Danaher?

  it just looks overwhelmingly strong to us, to a degree which is almost absurd. Like,

• 3:55:28John Danaher?

  you picture the greatest combat athletes that humanity has ever produced. They'd prime Mike Tyson, Gordon Ryan for grappling. They would literally be torn limb from limb by an angry gorilla. It wouldn't even be remotely competitive. And so there's a sense in which we look at them in awe because of what they could do to us. But that can be very misleading. And just as a boy looks at his father as like the pinnacle of strength, you can't necessarily, from a position of inexperience and weakness, look at a given animal and say, oh, that must be the toughest animal in the animal kingdom. There's levels to this game. And I think we can point out

• 3:56:08John Danaher?

  that the gorilla ultimately would be pretty low on those levels despite the fearsome appearance.

• 3:56:14Lex Fridman?

  I have some pushback to this analysis because the data, we don't have much data on this. We don't have...

• 3:56:20John Danaher?

  We actually have slightly more than you think, I believe.

• 3:56:22Lex Fridman?

  Oh, boy. Well, it's anecdotal. I feel like it's out of context. So these species don't use, this is not MMA. They don't do interspecies fighting often.

• 3:56:32John Danaher?

  Yeah, but there are some ways of looking at this, which can take this already interesting question and make it a lot more interesting.

• 3:56:42John Danaher?

  First, we've seen that intuitions aren't to be trusted. So if intuitions aren't to be trusted, well, what is to be trusted here? Well, I've always believed that there are three general elements that determine what level of success or failure anyone will experience in combat. And this is true both for individuals and for groups and even all the way up to nations.

• 3:57:11John Danaher?

  The first is, what are your skills? The second is, what are your physical and mental attributes? So it's skills, attributes. Those are the two primary ones. And there is a third, which is your experience in using those skills and attributes in real world scenarios. Okay, so whenever two, we'll start with two humans. When two humans get into a fight, ask yourself, what is their skill set? What are their physical and mental attributes? And what is their experience in using those in real world applications? And that will give you your first look at, okay, who's going to be the more successful?

• 3:57:55John Danaher?

  Then, in addition to those three general elements, there's also four more specific elements.

• 3:58:04John Danaher?

  What is the ability of the combatants to initiate combat? Because initiation is a big deal in fighting. The one who sees the enemy first and can create ambush conditions or initiate combat, combat in an area or a terrain which is favorable to them. This is huge in determining the, the outcome of battles. Second, not only is initiation important, but disengagement is important. A lot of battles don't go according to plan. And so your ability to disengage at will and break off and away from a battle is key to success. So initiation and disengagement are big.

• 3:58:49John Danaher?

  The third big element, what is your ability to end a fight? Okay, do you have an efficient method of ending conflict? Without that, the conflict could go on to a point where you no longer have the ability to to continue it. If you have some succinct method of finishing, this is huge in combat in determining winner or loser. So both from a winning and a losing position? Yes, if you don't have one, there's a high, much higher chance you'll lose. But if you have an ability to finish an opponent in the conflict reliably, this is very, very important in determining success or failure.

• 3:59:30John Danaher?

  And third is your ability to endure a conflict longer than the person you're engaged in. Okay, engaged with, sorry. And so you get these four more specific elements now. Do you have the ability to initiate contact at will? Do you have the ability to break contact and disengage at will? Do you have the ability to finish your opponent efficiently? And do you have the ability to endure longer than your opponent does? If you have all four of those, that's huge for combat. That probably applies to human on human. Everything. Military conflict. Everything, even all the way up to nations.

• 4:00:10John Danaher?

  Also ask yourself, what are the most efficient

• 4:00:18John Danaher?

  methods of combat across the globe, across all species, all times, et cetera, et cetera? And you'll see that ultimately, they always come down to

• 4:00:33John Danaher?

  three things. The first is concentration of force. Okay, one of the most successful combat strategies of all time is the ability to take concentrated force against a zone of weakness in your opponent. And if you can do this, you will often break through to a point of vulnerability, attack that vulnerability in a way where your opponent cannot respond and cannot recover from that vulnerable point being broken. Do a high amount of damage with precision. Yes, so this is one of the great combat strategies and across the animal kingdom, across human history, et cetera.

• 4:01:12John Danaher?

  The second would be ambush tactics.

• 4:01:18John Danaher?

  If you can ambush an opponent with the element of surprise, this is huge for success in combat. They're almost all the truly successful predators on this planet are ambush predators. The ability to get off to a good start in a way where opponents simply can't recover is huge for combat.

• 4:01:38Lex Fridman?

  Are we allowing ambush in our discussion? Because humans would call this cheating perhaps.

• 4:01:47John Danaher?

  Yes, we would. And humans are pretty damn good at it too.

• 4:01:54John Danaher?

  And then the third is endurance. Okay, some species, some people, humans actually are pretty good at this. Use endurance as a weapon and they simply wear an opponent down over time and break them. Internationally, this can be done economically through numbers, et cetera, et cetera. And you can destroy someone with sheer endurance.

• 4:02:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, a lot of wars throughout human history has been siege warfare.

• 4:02:24John Danaher?

  Yeah. And so when you ask yourself, okay, which one of these animals are going to be the most successful in combat? Ask yourself, well, there's these three elements which tend to determine success or failure in warfare. Which animals exhibit these three principles the best? And we'll discuss this. But as far as generalities go, whenever you ask a question, who will win between A and B? Ask yourself in terms of the light of what we've just discussed.

• 4:02:59John Danaher?

  What is their skill set? What are their attributes, both mental and physical? What is their experience in utilizing these in real world situations? And then the four more tactical elements, who gets to initiate contact? Can you break off contact at any given time? What is your endurance? Can you keep going longer than your opponent does?

• 4:03:22Lex Fridman?

  So with skill set, I wonder if a big component of that of how much practice there is off the battlefield. So how much quote unquote, you would probably call it play, like play fighting.

• 4:03:33John Danaher?

  Now, let's start going through our animals. Okay, when you look at the gorilla, you will see immediately that almost every experience a gorilla has of combat is theatrical.

• 4:03:44Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 4:03:45John Danaher?

  They don't engage in killing things. They scare rival males away in order to gain ownership of females. But there is almost no uh interspecies death in those conflicts. They're almost entirely theatrical. They have, for example, enormous canine teeth, but there is no record of them ever being used in combat.

• 4:04:13John Danaher?

  They appear to be used purely for intimidation purposes.

• 4:04:21John Danaher?

  There's a sense in which they have this tremendous appearance and they have tremendous potential. Like they they really do have freakish levels of strength uh uh in in many different ways. And yet, the actual track record of using it is negligible.

• 4:04:39Lex Fridman?

  So strange that evolution would develop such a powerful killing machine.

• 4:04:43John Danaher?

  Like their bite force just makes no sense with regard to what they actually eat.

• 4:04:48Lex Fridman?

  I think, well, no, I I think they have like.

• 4:04:50John Danaher?

  Even the presence of canines doesn't make a lot of sense. They're not going to use them. What are they?

• 4:04:54Lex Fridman?

  That's true.

• 4:04:54John Danaher?

  It comes down to this idea, their their big thing is intimidation.

• 4:04:58Lex Fridman?

  So the show, you wanna uh fake it and don't care if you ever make it because fake it is good enough, given that particular dynamic.

• 4:05:06John Danaher?

  Now, let's contrast that with a male lion.

• 4:05:11John Danaher?

  Lions take on the biggest, meanest, toughest animals in the most competitive killing war on planet Earth, which is continental Africa. Um, and they literally just take, I mean, occasionally they lose, but it's rare. And they take out everything. Just in order to eat, they have to take down wildebeest, cape buffalo. Like like cape buffalo are incredibly dangerous beasts just by themselves. And yet lions regularly take them down.

• 4:05:52John Danaher?

  Occasionally, large numbers of lions will even swarm elephant and over twelve hour periods take down elephant on some occasions. This is all on video. This is not just speculation. So they just have a level of combat experience which no other animal can can do.

• 4:06:10Lex Fridman?

  If I were to also project, so the the Eastern European style of wrestling, where they spend so many hours on the mat, they really value the number of hours on the mat at play from childhood. The lions, probably for my extensive watching videos on YouTube, they seem to play with each other

• 4:06:28John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 4:06:28Lex Fridman?

  for fun, a lot. And I guess with the gorilla-

• 4:06:31John Danaher?

  Even as cubs, you see it.

• 4:06:32Lex Fridman?

  You don't interact, you don't play with other gorillas, you have, like, you're more spending a lot more time around the opposite sex.

• 4:06:41John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:06:42Lex Fridman?

  So, yeah.

• 4:06:43John Danaher?

  I mean, even lions, when they they fight each other, the mortality rate when lions fight each other, male lions for ownership of a pride, is very, very high, much, much higher than I believe any other species on earth. They're almost always fights to the death for the simple reason that when a male lion loses control of a pride, the first act the new lion does is to kill the genetic offspring of the previous male lion. So when a lion fights another male lion, when one male lion fights another, it's not just a fight for his own life, it's a fight for his genetic offspring.

• 4:07:24John Danaher?

  And failure means not only does he die, all his offspring dies. And so when they fight, the implications are so deep. It's it's like a fight for your, not just you, but your your DNA. Most male lions have very short runs at the top. They get killed or run off by by other lions. Now, this kind of harsh combat experience, no other animal can claim to have this. Between what they kill to eat and what they have to do to defend their their stake in a pride. No other animal fights like that.

• 4:08:09John Danaher?

  They just bring a level of depth to combat, which is unmatched in the animal kingdom.

• 4:08:17John Danaher?

  They also have some other elements too, that they get to, they get the luxury because of their social nature of taking more risks than other animals. Like a tiger hunts alone. So if it gets injured, it's a big problem. It can die if it's injured. A lion can fight a Cape Buffalo, get injured and be covered by the other lions for food until it recovers. So it learns to take risks and it's not afraid to go out and fight very, very hard. Whereas other animals tend to shy away from risk because they're solitary. Bears are solitary, tigers are solitary. So they learn from an early age not to take the big risks, to go up to a certain level and stop.

• 4:08:58Lex Fridman?

  If I could push back. So that's, that's aggression and risk-taking. That's a plus for the lion. But to defend the gorilla, because you said skill set, they are of all of those, the only ones that use tools, have shown to use tools. We didn't say anything about weapons. A gorilla could, in theory, pick up a rock. And it does have the, like, the force, the power, and the capabilities to do a lot of damage. It doesn't have the practice. It doesn't have the experience. But don't you think if, if a gorilla's back

• 4:09:38Lex Fridman?

  is to the wall, so you put them in a situation of it is life and death for both the lion and the gorilla. Don't you, don't you value intelligence at least a little bit here? There's a reason why humans, this is like evidence that, you know, humans have spread all across the world while being kind of weak. Why?

• 4:10:00John Danaher?

  Okay. Intelligence is a huge, huge asset. Humanity is positive proof that it is the most important asset. But it takes time in order to.

• 4:10:12John Danaher?

  Work is magic. It took humans 200,000 years to go from the bottom of the food chain to the top of the food chain. And gorillas have a lot of work to do before they get to that level.

• 4:10:23Lex Fridman?

  Because we can, I guess, humans can pass.

• 4:10:25John Danaher?

  You said, you said in theory gorillas could do this, but let's talk about practice now. First off, there are many documented incidents of leopards killing gorillas.

• 4:10:36Lex Fridman?

  That's anecdotal evidence.

• 4:10:38John Danaher?

  No, it's not anecdotal.

• 4:10:39Lex Fridman?

  There's a bunch of bitch ass gorillas walking around. We know this. We're asking.

• 4:10:43John Danaher?

  Not anecdotal. It was observed by a group of people who specialized in observing gorillas over a 12 year period. They regularly found gorilla toes in leopard defecation.

• 4:10:58John Danaher?

  They also saw that over a certain period, some 36 gorillas had been killed and evidence strongly suggested leopard predation was the reason. Apparently leopards had figured out that there was a femoral artery in gorillas' legs and were doing a move which, from the sounds of it, sounds a lot like a barimbolo, where they were spinning underneath gorillas and biting the femoral artery and then disengaging and watching them bleed out and die and then eating them. Now, a leopard is no match for a lion. The only defense it has to a lion is to run up a tree. It cannot engage with a lion on anything close to equal terms.

• 4:11:38Lex Fridman?

  It may seem like we're going on tangents, but we're not. Just because of the foot, the attack of the artery on the foot. Is there weaknesses that the lion might have of that?

• 4:11:47John Danaher?

  What I'm saying is, I know it's not equivalent, but the fact that a leopard does so well against even fully grown male gorillas makes you, should make you rather suspicious of a gorilla's ability to fight a lion.

• 4:12:01Lex Fridman?

  Fair enough.

• 4:12:01John Danaher?

  Let's also go further into this, about concentration of force. The lion has the quintessential concentration of force, which is fangs and claws.

• 4:12:13John Danaher?

  The gorilla is the exact opposite. It can't even make a fist. And so it can only throw open-handed slaps and grab things. So it has no ability with its with its arms to concentrate force in any kind of efficient way. When a lion or tiger, or a bear for that matter, swings at you, it's got four claws from four to six inches long. It's like four blades going into you. They can retract their claws, so they're always sharp.

• 4:12:41Lex Fridman?

  But the reach is significantly longer for the gorilla. The length of the-

• 4:12:46John Danaher?

  The ability to engage with speed on the part of the cats is far, far greater.

• 4:12:51Lex Fridman?

  And also mobility on two feet, the bipedal nature of a gorilla. The temporary bipedal, the bear has the same.

• 4:12:58John Danaher?

  It has no impact. Humans are bipedal and lions kill 240 humans a year on average.

• 4:13:06Lex Fridman?

  So, okay, okay, okay, what about bear?

• 4:13:09John Danaher?

  Now, bear, bear is a different-

• 4:13:10Lex Fridman?

  Has all the same things that a lion has. The claws, the teeth, has more weight, has more strength, has more power.

• 4:13:22John Danaher?

  Okay, now this is an interesting question. Okay, you get a fully grown North American grizzly versus an African lion. This is an interesting battle.

• 4:13:29Lex Fridman?

  I also have questions about polar bears. It's unclear to me, because they're bigger in every way than a grizzly.

• 4:13:36John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 4:13:36Lex Fridman?

  But they probably don't get the experience and the practice.

• 4:13:38John Danaher?

  Yeah, also they have a much more limited set of animals that they prey upon. So I'm pretty sure grizzly is going to be tough to beat as far as top bear goes.

• 4:13:53John Danaher?

  A grizzly bear, I believe, would be a formidable adversary, even for a male lion. They're literally twice their size. They have an ability to get away from strangleholds by standing up on two legs. So the lion's primary method of killing, which is to strangle, would be very difficult for them to employ upon a bear.

• 4:14:17John Danaher?

  Interestingly, the bear's primary method of killing is to pin. It pins animals and then just slowly eats them while they're still alive. They have a rather barbaric means of killing. Lions are much more humane in the way they kill.

• 4:14:32John Danaher?

  I, what I see as the primary problem is that neither one would able, be able to kill the other. That finishing thing they imagine. Yeah, they would both fail on the finishing criteria. The lion would not be able to strangle a bear, even in a best case scenario where he got his teeth into the neck, the bear can stand up and presumably shake him off.

• 4:14:53John Danaher?

  Um, uh, the, uh, the, the, the, the bear would never be able to pin a lion for long enough to be able to hold it down and, and slowly maul it over time the way it can with an elk or a caribou. So I don't believe either would be able to finish the other. They would just become exhausted. It would be, it would come down to endurance. Now that's where things get interesting because the bear is much more of an endurance hunter and the lion is much more of an ambush hunter. Lion's quick, explosive, much higher top speed, they've got a top speed of forty five to fifty miles an hour. A bear can do up to thirty five, but it can run for long periods at up to twenty five miles an hour, very long periods.

• 4:15:34John Danaher?

  They're mostly a, uh, uh, an endurance hunter, they just run, uh, elk and moose down until they're exhausted and then pin them and kill them. So if it came down to endurance, it might go the way of the bear if they were, uh, if they were caged up together. Um, however, there is very strong evidence from both hunters and, uh, video which shows on many occasions bears being chased off by cougar and wolverines. Now. What's that? That's fear? What is that? What do you mean chased off?

• 4:16:13John Danaher?

  Uh, if they fight over, uh, uh, meat, which, uh, and say that for example, a cougar has killed something and the bear wants the meat. The cougar will almost chase off.

• 4:16:23John Danaher?

  The bear has risk aversion. Exactly, exactly. The bear's a risk averse. What I would say is this, the bears are very, very powerful in their domain, but they don't have the battle experience of a lion. They don't take on animals as tough as a cape buffalo, they don't take on elephant. What the toughest thing it would probably take on would probably be a, a bull moose and, uh, a bull moose is a formidable animal, but it's nothing like a cape buffalo, it's nothing like an eleph, uh, an elephant or a hippopotamus. So what I would suggest is this. In the wild, I don't believe either one is capable of killing the other. But I do believe, based on video evidence of cougars and wolverines chasing off bears,

• 4:17:08John Danaher?

  that a lion would provide enough threat in a brief fight that a bear would back away. If you put them in a cage, however, where neither one could back away, I would slightly favor the bear, based on the fact that neither one can kill each other. It would come down to endurance.

• 4:17:26Lex Fridman?

  You mean like an octagon?

• 4:17:27John Danaher?

  Yeah, that's got to be the next UFC, by the way. Bear versus lion.

• 4:17:32Lex Fridman?

  But things change. Joe Rogan is a big fan of the idea of fighting in a stadium, for humans fighting in a stadium.

• 4:17:39Lex Fridman?

  So in a stadium, a bear.

• 4:17:41John Danaher?

  I would slightly favor a bear. Now, I still think that the lion would have a chance, but I would favor the bear in a betting match. Some of the best evidence we have for animal versus animal fights come from the ancient Romans, who actually used to put animals in gladiatorial combat. And they, for example, had several incidents where they wrote about tiger versus lion conflict. And in one famous passage, they described a lion getting destroyed by a female tiger. So there's some evidence to suggest that they had more expertise of this than we do,

• 4:18:23John Danaher?

  because they had a big population of wild animals, which they just put to fight each other. Unfortunately, there's nothing that they wrote about bears versus lion. They did talk about bears versus bulls. They did talk about lions versus tigers. But they never mentioned bear versus lion, so we don't have any evidence for that. So we have to be a little bit more speculative. Now, given that bears do get chased off by cougar, and cougar is weak compared with a male lion.

• 4:18:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, listen to you draw from that, by the way.

• 4:18:58John Danaher?

  I would suggest that.

• 4:18:59Lex Fridman?

  Is it about the bear or is it about the cougar?

• 4:19:01John Danaher?

  Yeah, it's more about the bear. Like, in theory, a bear should be able to crush a cougar. But it seems to be the bear is just saying, eh, this thing could hurt me, so I'm not going to risk injury, and backs away. I think it would back away in the wild from a lion, but put him in a cage, and I slightly favor the grizzly, based on endurance.

• 4:19:23Lex Fridman?

  So the final conclusion. If you had to just bet everything you own, so you got, uh, let's say we got the octagon. We bring in a bear. Now, this is like legendary bear. Okay.

• 4:19:37John Danaher?

  Full grown grizzly.

• 4:19:38Lex Fridman?

  Full grown grizzly, but not only that, that grizzly has seen some shit.

• 4:19:43John Danaher?

  What, what's the most it could have seen? A bull moose? A caribou? That's the toughest opponent he's ever had.

• 4:19:49Lex Fridman?

  It once, no, no, no, no, this one once ran into a pack of other grizzlies and had to fend.

• 4:19:58Lex Fridman?

  And he's got scars.

• 4:19:59John Danaher?

  A pack of grizzlies, isn't a pack of grizzlies, it's solitary.

• 4:20:02Lex Fridman?

  Wolves, wolves, wolves. What's good practice for a bear? Who attacks a bear?

• 4:20:06John Danaher?

  That's, that's my point. Bears don't really live in a competitive environment. Lions do.

• 4:20:10Lex Fridman?

  But sometimes it can get desperate as it was a pack of wolves.

• 4:20:14John Danaher?

  But that pack of wolves is nothing. It's nothing.

• 4:20:18Lex Fridman?

  All right, fine.

• 4:20:19John Danaher?

  Lions deal with packs of hyenas.

• 4:20:20Lex Fridman?

  Okay, what was the, just imagine over the past hundred years, what do you think is the hardest fight? That a grizzly bear has been in, like somewhere in Alaska, we never heard, all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, all you hear is the bear just.

• 4:20:35John Danaher?

  Yeah, they didn't really, there's nothing that tough.

• 4:20:37Lex Fridman?

  There's gotta have been something. Humans have killed hundreds of millions of people in wars.

• 4:20:42John Danaher?

  They run away from cougars and wolverines, like.

• 4:20:43Lex Fridman?

  No, that's anecdotal evidence. There's gotta be one bear.

• 4:20:47John Danaher?

  There's video footage of it, you can watch it yourself.

• 4:20:49Lex Fridman?

  Called anecdotal evidence, there's got, I guarantee you, in the dark of the night, there was an epic battle of which there's still legend amongst the bears of that part of Canada.

• 4:21:00John Danaher?

  Who did it battle? In Canada.

• 4:21:02Lex Fridman?

  Moose. Other bears, you don't think they'd go at it.

• 4:21:05John Danaher?

  Yeah, bears fight each other, but it's largely theatrical, they never kill each other. When lions fight each other, they kill each other all the time.

• 4:21:13John Danaher?

  Someone would have seen it by now.

• 4:21:15Lex Fridman?

  Interesting. Alright, so you're.

• 4:21:18John Danaher?

  My point is that bears are just, they want to get their feet wet.

• 4:21:22Lex Fridman?

  And you're giving no credit for gorillas. So you're saying lion wins. Your money's on the.

• 4:21:26John Danaher?

  No, I'm saying lion would win in the wild because they can't kill each other. They can't end the fight. That's one of our most important criteria. But lions can almost always initiate the action because they have much better ability to see at night, for example. Bears have very average night vision. Lions have superb night vision. So at nighttime, they can always initiate the fight. Lions are natural ambush predators, so it's always going to be able to have the advantage of ambush. The great advantage that bears have is endurance, but bears are very risk averse and they're not used to fighting like the toughest, toughest animals. The toughest animal they fight is a moose or a caribou.

• 4:22:08John Danaher?

  These are not, not even close to the animals that lions have to go up against on a regular basis.

• 4:22:13Lex Fridman?

  So if somebody wins, it's going to be the lion for you?

• 4:22:16John Danaher?

  I still think that the size and endurance of the bear, if they were locked in a cage together, I would still favor the bear under those circumstances. But in the wild, I believe the bear will back away quickly.

• 4:22:26Lex Fridman?

  But in the cage, no time limit, you favor the bear. What if it's five rounds of five minutes championship?

• 4:22:32John Danaher?

  Then I would go with the lion because the lion has a huge speed advantage.

• 4:22:35Lex Fridman?

  So it's gonna.

• 4:22:36John Danaher?

  It's gonna injure it, tear it up and do immediate damage. Like, I'll put it this way. If lion and bear fight, first 15 minutes, I favor the lion 100%. But then as time goes by, that size and weight is gonna, and endurance is gonna have an effect.

• 4:22:51Lex Fridman?

  I'll bring up shortly, somebody that's gonna probably disagree with you about some things.

• 4:22:56John Danaher?

  Hopefully it's a grizzly bear and he comes and he just eats me.

• 4:23:00Lex Fridman?

  Oh, that would be so epic.

• 4:23:02John Danaher?

  Make a hell of a podcast.

• 4:23:04Lex Fridman?

  I wonder who he would eat first, who would look scarier, more delicious. I'm not sure. The black and white could either piss him off.

• 4:23:11John Danaher?

  He would think you were a penguin.

• 4:23:15Lex Fridman?

  Is that a good thing or not?

• 4:23:17John Danaher?

  Not good.

• 4:23:17Lex Fridman?

  If it was a polar bear, maybe it's different. So you care.

• 4:23:21John Danaher?

  There's penguins in the North Pole.

• 4:23:22Lex Fridman?

  Deeply about your, about athletes you coached, about people in your life. So I have to ask this question. If one of those athletes, let's say Gordon Ryan. Now, I was the dictator of the world and this would entertain me. So I force you and Gordon to do this. To fight a bear or a lion, Gordon has to. How would you coach him to do it? To have any chance of winning?

• 4:23:53John Danaher?

  He goes in empty handed.

• 4:23:54Lex Fridman?

  Empty handed. You can choose stadium or cage.

• 4:24:00John Danaher?

  Gordon Ryan, empty handed versus a lion.

• 4:24:03Lex Fridman?

  You get to choose lion versus bear. It's up to you.

• 4:24:06John Danaher?

  Okay. My advice would be very simple.

• 4:24:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:09John Danaher?

  I would say Gordon, you're fucked. You're going to die badly. Choose the lion because it will strangle you to death rather than pin you down and maul you to death.

• 4:24:20Lex Fridman?

  Didn't we just talk about audacious goals? With Nicole Smirga.

• 4:24:25John Danaher?

  This is not a question of audacious goals. This is a question of minimizing pain.

• 4:24:29Lex Fridman?

  So you coach your athletes to quit before the battle has been fought?

• 4:24:33John Danaher?

  A hundred percent, yeah.

• 4:24:36Lex Fridman?

  You don't think he has a chance? You don't think he has a chance?

• 4:24:38John Danaher?

  How? What's he gonna do?

• 4:24:40Lex Fridman?

  You don't think there's a technical, first of all, intelligence. So technical.

• 4:24:43John Danaher?

  What's he gonna do, a heel hook?

• 4:24:44Lex Fridman?

  No, no, well, first of all, maybe.

• 4:24:46John Danaher?

  He can't do a double leg, he's got four fucking legs.

• 4:24:48Lex Fridman?

  Okay, what if Gordon gets any starting position he wants?

• 4:24:52John Danaher?

  Oh, yeah, that's gonna be really useful.

• 4:24:54Lex Fridman?

  You don't think he can have back control?

• 4:24:56John Danaher?

  On a thousand pound bear?

• 4:24:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:58John Danaher?

  What good would back control?

• 4:24:59Lex Fridman?

  Shaken off?

• 4:25:00John Danaher?

  Shaken off, he'll get torn off.

• 4:25:02Lex Fridman?

  With what? Like the.

• 4:25:04John Danaher?

  Reaches back. He's got four six inch claws.

• 4:25:07Lex Fridman?

  It's hard to, oh, okay. I wonder what is the reach?

• 4:25:10John Danaher?

  Whatever he touches, he's gonna destroy.

• 4:25:11Lex Fridman?

  If it's not a flexible bear. So you think there's no control? What about like a low, like a, uh, some kind of controlling position from? Yeah, like you said, like from underneath, nothing?

• 4:25:24John Danaher?

  This discussion is so insane that I didn't even know where to begin criticism.

• 4:25:28Lex Fridman?

  I don't think you're open minded enough.

• 4:25:31John Danaher?

  We could, we could turn this down. Forget about Gordon fighting a, a, a lion or a bear. That's, that's completely impossible. An adult male chimp will destroy Gordon.

• 4:25:41Lex Fridman?

  It's not even gorilla. What about the aggression? Yeah, the, the, the.

• 4:25:45John Danaher?

  A male chimp is more than enough to kill any human on the planet, including Gordon Ryan.

• 4:25:49Lex Fridman?

  So Gordon Ryan, fighting a chimp, a good sized.

• 4:25:53John Danaher?

  Dead.

• 4:25:54Lex Fridman?

  No, a thousand times. How many times does he win?

• 4:25:56John Danaher?

  He loses a thousand times. It's not even competitive. It's not even remotely competitive.

• 4:26:01Lex Fridman?

  Do you think he will disagree?

• 4:26:03John Danaher?

  No.

• 4:26:05Lex Fridman?

  Do you think anyone will disagree? Anyone?

• 4:26:07John Danaher?

  Yeah, moron.

• 4:26:11Lex Fridman?

  Okay. Uh, somebody that I, I think you might know, uh, there's a famous actor, Tom Hardy, but he's also doing, uh, quite a bit of jujitsu. The reason this makes sense to bring up now is he's also, uh, I saw narrating a new Sky original series called Predators. Coming out in December where they follow five different predators and tell their full story about all the fighting and the killing and all that kind of stuff. And he's doing that. He's like, it's like Morgan, uh, it's like Morgan Freeman from March of the Penguins. It's Tom Hardy for, for the predators. So I don't, I saw a bear and a lion in the, it's in the trailer, but they also had something.

• 4:26:54Lex Fridman?

  I didn't watch it too careful, but they had something like a hyena. So I think they were talking about, I don't know if it's a hyena, but something like that, like pack animals.

• 4:27:02John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:27:02Lex Fridman?

  That attack and.

• 4:27:03John Danaher?

  Hyenas are formidable, formidable animals.

• 4:27:06Lex Fridman?

  So it's not all about size. It's about like strategy and all that.

• 4:27:09John Danaher?

  The most important thing in nature is numbers, like, uh, you know, a pack of animals will always destroy a single animal.

• 4:27:15Lex Fridman?

  And I think that show in particular is not a hundred percent about who wins or so on. It's about the fascinating stories of how these predators sort of dominate their particular environment. Cause it's, it's not about these like artificial matchups. It's about given your environment, how you succeed and all that kind of stuff.

• 4:27:34John Danaher?

  Maybe we could do Gordon Ryan versus a house cat. Gordon might have a small chance against the house cat, maybe, maybe.

• 4:27:44Lex Fridman?

  See, now I know you're just trolling me. I, I think Gordon has a chance against, uh, well, definitely against the smaller apes, but I have no way of proving it and, and the internet will say I'm an idiot. So there you go.

• 4:27:58John Danaher?

  The internet is correct every so often.

• 4:28:01Lex Fridman?

  So there's a, oh, it's funny enough. I'm looking at Tom's Instagram. He has a picture with Hanzo. He's competed recently, which is very cool in jiu jitsu.

• 4:28:08John Danaher?

  That's awesome.

• 4:28:09Lex Fridman?

  That's tough to do for a celebrity to step up.

• 4:28:11John Danaher?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, he, he used to, um, consult with me a little bit on, um, moves when he was starting out. He's a very, very nice person.

• 4:28:20Lex Fridman?

  Oh, about jiu jitsu?

• 4:28:21John Danaher?

  Yeah, yeah. He asked questions about jiu jitsu. He struck me as being a very, very nice person.

• 4:28:25Lex Fridman?

  I would love to be a fly in that wall, but he, uh, he made a post on Instagram, which I'd love to get your opinion on. It has very much like a John Donahue style of digging into the philosophy of the impact of jiu jitsu on one's life.

• 4:28:40John Danaher?

  Is his Instagram post 18 pages long?

• 4:28:43Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 4:28:44John Danaher?

  He's got potential then.

• 4:28:45Lex Fridman?

  Yes, with a profound, deep picture of somebody practicing the art of jiu jitsu. I think, uh, I think he's at least a trainee in this art of the Donahue style of communication. If Miyamoto Musashi would be alive today, he would probably be doing these five page Instagram posts like you do. Addiction writes Tom Hardy, addiction is difficult and complex stuff to navigate, as is mental health. Subjects which are both deeply personal for me and extremely close to my heart. It is an honor to be able to represent the charity and my team, Reorg, and the great work they do supporting the mental health and wellbeing of veterans of service, military and first responders through the therapeutic benefits

• 4:29:27Lex Fridman?

  of jiu jitsu and fitness training. He represented them in this competition that he competed in. Uh, simple training for me as a hobby and a private love has been fundamentally key to further develop a deeper sense of inner resilience, calm and wellbeing. I can't stress the importance it has had and the impact of my life and my fellow teammates. And he goes on to talk about this organization, Reorg, that uses Brazilian jiu jitsu, um, to form a therapy to overcome physical and mental challenges, strengthen social connections and improve overall health and wellbeing. This is for veterans, for people going through PTSD. They have saved lives around the world by not only providing an effective and positive

• 4:30:10Lex Fridman?

  means for navigating and managing the challenging psychological aspects of military and first responder careers, but also has allowed many to find a renewed sense of purpose, identity, and community that's often lost when transitioning to civilian life. Do you have thoughts about that, sort of the effects of jujitsu on folks who've gone through some really difficult

• 4:30:33John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:30:33Lex Fridman?

  things in their life?

• 4:30:35John Danaher?

  First of all, I think that's just a beautiful statement by Mr. Hardy. I must give him a phone call after this and talk to him. That was beautiful to read.

• 4:30:51John Danaher?

  One thing that's always struck me when I train people who either have a military background or on more than a few occasions, we have special forces soldiers coming and training with us for a week or two. And when you talk to them,

• 4:31:12John Danaher?

  the overwhelming sentiment I get when the conversation's over and we go our separate ways is I'm always asking myself, the transition from military life, especially the more extreme military lives of special forces soldiers, back to civilian life, it must be the craziest experience of all. You've got people who

• 4:31:40John Danaher?

  are fighting and dying alongside their comrades in the most extreme circumstances that any human being can go through. And then they're pulled back into a life where people are arguing with them over parking spots. Just like the average person's day-to-day life is so mundane that imagine what must be going through a man's head who a few weeks or months ago was literally fighting for his life and his comrades' lives, watching people that he loved die or get mutilated in front of him.

• 4:32:21John Danaher?

  Things that You know, in a matter of seconds, people's lives can be torn apart and changed forever. And then suddenly you get thrown into a life where people are arguing over, you know, who's who's cut who off, who in line to buy a coffee.

• 4:32:36Lex Fridman?

  The intensity of camaraderie and love that you have for each other.

• 4:32:39John Danaher?

  And then you you go from incredible intensity in war to just mundane, boring life. And going from one to the other where people are yelling at you or nagging you over issues that just seems so inconsequential compared to what you've been through. And you're supposed to take these people seriously and listen to them.

• 4:33:03Lex Fridman?

  But not only that, you do have trauma visions of dead brothers and sisters.

• 4:33:12John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:33:12Lex Fridman?

  And you feel like you can't really talk to these civilians about it.

• 4:33:18John Danaher?

  There's nothing in their experience that would enable you to have a conversation with them. Like they they don't even, how do you talk to your new girlfriend about, you know, watching one of your friend's legs get taken off? Like, there's no conversation you could have with them. So I find that typically

• 4:33:40John Danaher?

  they do best when they hang out with each other because they have shared experience and they can talk about these things.

• 4:33:48John Danaher?

  But I do find that most judo schools have something like a kind of military barracks

• 4:33:58John Danaher?

  demeanor to them of like camaraderie, hard work, shared hard work,

• 4:34:06John Danaher?

  teamwork, uh, uh, building towards a goal over time, the acquisition of skills, usually along with that, a kind of.

• 4:34:16John Danaher?

  For want of a better word, rustic and primitive sense of humor and a kind of soldierly way of talking to each other and disparaging, you know, self-deprecating sense of humor. And it's something that most people with military service kind of naturally come into because it's part of what they were in. And so it's like a toned down version of it, which enables them to form a stepping stone between the military life that they were in, all the way down to civilian life. And jujitsu was kind of like a bridge between those two.

• 4:34:52Lex Fridman?

  And also the honesty, so you said like the skill acquisition, the honesty of really testing that skill. There is a deep honesty to war in a distant way, but in a way, there is an honesty to jujitsu too, of technique, working and not. And there's a final, there is simulated death. It's not real death. It's simulated death on the mat. And there's a similar kind of honesty there.

• 4:35:16John Danaher?

  And there's also a similar kind of esteem towards skill. Just as regular soldiers look up to special forces soldiers because they see them as people have, you know, greater skills than themselves, something to aspire to, so too in jujitsu. The thing that we esteem most on the jujitsu matters skill. No one gives a damn what you look like or what you think, that you're judged mostly by your skill level. And so they tend to identify with that. I do think that most people from a military background kind of find a natural gravitation towards the atmosphere of jujitsu learning. And if it proves to be a positive

• 4:36:00John Danaher?

  way for them to rehabilitate and come back into civilian life, then that's a wonderful, wonderful thing. I know we're linked with We Defy, which is an organization which caters to former soldiers who were badly injured in combat and many of whom lost limbs and suffered mental trauma. And they come in and train and they often speak very, very highly of the degree to which jujitsu has helped them come back into civilian life. And for them, it's even worse because they come back not only mentally. But physically disadvantaged after war.

• 4:36:43John Danaher?

  And I've always been proud to be associated with We Defy. And I'm very happy to see Tom working with this organization. Is this an organization based in England for English veterans? Or is it international?

• 4:36:57Lex Fridman?

  That's a good question. I'd have to look into it. It certainly is based in England, but it could be international. But it's just nice to see somebody use that large platform for that kind of message. And also to step on the mat and show the kind of jiu jitsu you would probably be proud of. With chasing submissions. You got an arm lock, you got a straight foot lock. We're not going to analyze the techniques because, you know, there could be

• 4:37:26John Danaher?

  Doesn't matter.

• 4:37:26Lex Fridman?

  Different perspective.

• 4:37:27John Danaher?

  It's the intent.

• 4:37:28Lex Fridman?

  The finish is the finish.

• 4:37:30John Danaher?

  Yeah, no, that's impressive. He's actually quite an athlete. He's in great shape and strong and flexible. And I'm glad he's doing well with his jiu jitsu.

• 4:37:41Lex Fridman?

  And it's good to see Henzo's smiling face next to him. I can only imagine the conversations. I have to ask you a deep and important question. You often, when we text back and forth, send me two hugging emojis. Can we psychoanalyze the reason why that's your favorite emoji? The hugging face? It's kind of like sending a heart, but a little bit more.

• 4:38:08John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:38:09Lex Fridman?

  Gender neutral.

• 4:38:13John Danaher?

  When jiu jitsu players meet each other, they often shake hands and then give a quick hug. So I thought it was the most appropriate emoji for jiu jitsu players.

• 4:38:23Lex Fridman?

  I see.

• 4:38:23John Danaher?

  It's a pretty simple explanation, nothing too Freudian in there.

• 4:38:26Lex Fridman?

  Are you sure?

• 4:38:28John Danaher?

  Quite sure.

• 4:38:29Lex Fridman?

  Okay. Have you really asked yourself deeply? Because you really lean on that emoji. Is there something behind it?

• 4:38:34John Danaher?

  Tomorrow, I'm never going to use that emoji again.

• 4:38:38Lex Fridman?

  Walk away.

• 4:38:39John Danaher?

  I'll shock you tomorrow and hit you with three.

• 4:38:42Lex Fridman?

  Three. It's almost always two. I think maybe you're a creature of habit in communication.

• 4:38:49John Danaher?

  There's a I'm a creature of habit in almost every aspect of my life, so even emojis.

• 4:38:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you fall into these little pockets of how you communicate, how you show affection towards others. I send, I say love a lot. I send, I send hearts and don't give a fuck if it's too like, you know, like in a, you know, me sending a message to like a CEO I'm about to interview, I'll send a heart. I don't give a damn. They'll probably just like, look, uh, what is this? But I think people are too afraid of simple communication of affection.

• 4:39:29Lex Fridman?

  Like, uh, it could be in any form, but there's a hes- a hesitance to that because I think underneath it, in order to show affection, you're taking a risk and you're showing vulnerability. Because if you show affection and the other person rejects that affection, you've now placed yourself in a hierarchy, going back to Lyons, of like, oh, this person, you're just like the silly, weak person and they're the strong person. I think that's how you might see it, I guess, but I, I don't. To me, the display of vulnerability is a display of strength,

• 4:40:09Lex Fridman?

  not, uh, not weakness, at least in human society, at least at this time. I don't know. Uh, let me ask you about love.

• 4:40:18Lex Fridman?

  You know, I must ask John Donahue about love. What, what do you think is the role of love in the human condition at the highest philosophical level? Let me first ask, what's?

• 4:40:30John Danaher?

  Like romantic love?

• 4:40:31Lex Fridman?

  Romantic love, let's say romantic love.

• 4:40:33John Danaher?

  I have one or two areas of apparent expertise in my life. Romantic love, definitely not one of them.

• 4:40:43Lex Fridman?

  So like lions versus bears.

• 4:40:45John Danaher?

  I'm good.

• 4:40:45Lex Fridman?

  Animal combat.

• 4:40:46John Danaher?

  I'm good.

• 4:40:46Lex Fridman?

  Pretty good at, and then different grappling arts, judo, sambo, jujitsu. Uh, wrestling, uh, for MMA, so fighting and so on.

• 4:40:56John Danaher?

  Romantic love.

• 4:40:57Lex Fridman?

  You don't see them as similar. It's a kind of fight.

• 4:41:01Lex Fridman?

  It's a kind of dance.

• 4:41:02John Danaher?

  By the way, do you? I'm, I'm, there's a there's a sense in which I'm kind of glad I'm not an expert on that. Imagine what it would be to be an expert on romantic love. You would take the one thing in life that's actually interesting and make it boring. Because you've, once you develop an expertise about something, you can start to predict how things are going to unfold. You get answers before events even occur. You see, you can read into the future of everything. Um, I think there are certain parts of human life where you want to be a beginner at all times. And you don't want to gain expertise.

• 4:41:39Lex Fridman?

  So excellence and systematizing something in order to achieve excellence might destroy the very magic of things.

• 4:41:45John Danaher?

  Yes, and I think that the, the magic of romantic love is the fact that we're all beginners at it. And the minute you try to gain expertise in it, what does that even mean? Like, what would it mean to, and would it be good? I don't think it would. I think you'd be better off just having fun with it and plowing through and making dumb mistakes and looking like a fool. And, um, uh, and then whatever success, whatever that means, comes in a kind of lighthearted frivolous kind of way. And, um, and that I think is, over the course of a lifetime, far more desirable than having, you know, expertise and, and affairs of, of love. So I don't, I don't think it's even a good thing to study too much.

• 4:42:27John Danaher?

  And I think if you did, you would actually take something good out of your life.

• 4:42:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's, there's communities of people called pick up artists that try to optimize this particular aspect, which is of dating, of, of guys picking up girls and turning that into a system and seeing what's the most successful.

• 4:42:46John Danaher?

  I think that would be, I mean, maybe the first few months would be good. And then after that, I think it would be a disaster. Um, uh, I mean, given that.

• 4:42:58John Danaher?

  Humans are fairly easy to study from a, from the standpoint of psychology. I'm sure it's not that difficult to gain expertise in things like picking people up, the same way advertisers can pick up your attention to sell a product. You can do the same thing presumably with romance and sex. But I don't know, I feel like if, if you became very good at it, you would end up being very disappointed by the results. And so as I said, I think there's, there's some things in life where it's better to be a beginner.

• 4:43:34Lex Fridman?

  And this is one of those.

• 4:43:35John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:43:36Lex Fridman?

  Enjoy the chaos, the push and pull of being a beginner and make that a lifelong journey. That's really inspiring to hear you say that. And there's a deep truth to that.

• 4:43:45John Danaher?

  That also justifies the fact that I suck at it.

• 4:43:49Lex Fridman?

  I think it also justifies, and it would sell very well, that John Donner should write a book on dating. And that would be chapter one, embrace being a beginner.

• 4:43:58John Danaher?

  Chapter two will be bear versus lion.

• 4:44:01Lex Fridman?

  Pivot quickly to violence.

• 4:44:03John Danaher?

  By the way, we totally skipped over anaconda.

• 4:44:06Lex Fridman?

  I, I assumed the implied.

• 4:44:10John Danaher?

  I'll, I'll, I'll put it to you this way. On video, you can watch puma.

• 4:44:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 4:44:17John Danaher?

  And, and similar sized cats, jaguar destroy anacondas.

• 4:44:26Lex Fridman?

  Oh, no.

• 4:44:27John Danaher?

  Even in water, which is anaconda's preferred domain. So given that puma and jaguar are several orders below lion, you have to go with the idea that lion would utterly decimate anaconda. So it's probably good that we did skip over it.

• 4:44:45Lex Fridman?

  And I think going back to the original thought that you had about this, don't trust your first instinct.

• 4:44:52John Danaher?

  Also think about the other elements. An anaconda has no ability to disengage from the fight. Once the fight's on, it's got to go until the end. It has no ability to disengage and get away. Its only hope would be ambush and it's got a tiny, tiny chance against

• 4:45:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 4:45:11John Danaher?

  A truly formidable animal. And the fact that if we look at actual concrete, real world results, when, when puma and jaguar are kicking your ass, you know, lion and bear, it's going to be a lot worse.

• 4:45:24Lex Fridman?

  Science is not to be found on YouTube. Rather YouTube is not science. I bet you there's a bear somewhere in Canada that has seen some shit. I'm just going to leave it at that.

• 4:45:38Lex Fridman?

  You're a fan of knives.

• 4:45:42Lex Fridman?

  There's guys like Miyamoto Musashi, who instead of doing who's number one type of tournaments, when both competitors walk away, only one competitor walks away. Miyamoto Musashi is known for somebody having John Donahue-like philosophical skills, but also is known for having fought 61 duels to the death and won them.

• 4:46:12John Danaher?

  Incredible.

• 4:46:13Lex Fridman?

  Obviously. What do you think made him so good?

• 4:46:16John Danaher?

  I don't feel qualified to talk about him because I haven't made an in-depth study of his life and times. And we also don't know how much truth there is to his recollections. And there's a lot of controversy over this. So I don't feel like you can give a definitive statement of, certainly I can't give a definitive statement of, of, of his prowess. But his writings are fascinating and deeply insightful. But as to like what actually happened out there in his duels, it's unclear.

• 4:46:50Lex Fridman?

  But there is, you know, with guys like that, you almost certainly know that they were people.

• 4:46:57Lex Fridman?

  Like the character he projects that have existed.

• 4:47:00John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 4:47:01Lex Fridman?

  Whether it's sixty one, whether it's twenty, but people really put their life on the line in a different time in human history. Is there something compelling to you about fighting to the death?

• 4:47:11John Danaher?

  I think it's not just compelling to me, but to anyone. I mean, there's nothing we value more than our than our lives. And to be able to say, I'm I'm prepared to die for a sense of honor, things that are so foreign to our modern society.

• 4:47:28John Danaher?

  Imagine, you know, we we criticize people for something as simple as like road rage. And yet you can imagine someone who has a sufficiently developed sense of honor. You know, if you took them out of the seventeenth century and put them in a modern car, they might be killing people on the side of the road on a regular basis, just over the smallest acts of honor. To say that your your your sense of self overwhelms your sense of self preservation. It's a very unusual thing in the modern age, and yet it appears to have been quite common back then.

• 4:48:00Lex Fridman?

  You often wear a fanny pack. I'm not going to ask you what's inside the fanny pack. But if you were to design a perfect killing machine that also wore a fanny pack, what would you put

• 4:48:13Lex Fridman?

  in that fanny pack? Would it be something mundane and practical? Or would it be something surprising and hilarious? Would it be something of philosophical significance or maybe sentimental significance? Or would it be empty as a troll in human civilization?

• 4:48:34John Danaher?

  But if it was a perfect killing machine, it would have to be some kind of weapon.

• 4:48:39Lex Fridman?

  But in a fanny pack.

• 4:48:41John Danaher?

  Then it has to be a very compact weapon.

• 4:48:48Lex Fridman?

  We mentioned offline that there's also things in the chess world where there is a different kind of vibrating devices that could be used to communicate information

• 4:49:01Lex Fridman?

  in communication with AI systems that can help you in your particular pursuit. I don't think in jujitsu you need, it's possible for a machine to give you information that gives you advantage. You can in chess and in poker. So you could put one of those vibrating devices in your fanny pack, but in jujitsu would not help you.

• 4:49:21Lex Fridman?

  Any idea what kind of weapon?

• 4:49:24John Danaher?

  To fit in a fanny pack?

• 4:49:26Lex Fridman?

  So you're a fan of knives. Where's the interest in knives come from, by the way?

• 4:49:29John Danaher?

  That's more metaphorical.

• 4:49:34John Danaher?

  The truth is, in the modern world, a knife is not an efficient weapon. Easily be overwhelmed by firearms.

• 4:49:41John Danaher?

  My fascination with knives comes more in the sense that they they convey a spirit to my students where a knife

• 4:49:52John Danaher?

  is made of steel and steel begins as ore in the ground. It's

• 4:49:58John Danaher?

  an ugly

• 4:50:01John Danaher?

  unfinished product, which through the enactment of knowledge, time and discipline can be transformed into beautiful shining steel. It can have something which it begins as something which has no real function and becomes one of the most functional and important tools in all of human history, without which human civilization could never have even begun. It's what separated humans and took us from the bottom of the food chain and began our gradual rise towards the top of the food chain. So it has immense historical and cultural value, but it has this metaphorical value insofar as the martial artist begins as a white belt like iron ore, but over time transforms into some beautiful shining steel,

• 4:50:47John Danaher?

  which can have immense value.

• 4:50:52John Danaher?

  In addition, there's a sense of of maintenance. As remarkable as steel is, it is in need of constant maintenance. It will fall apart through rust and neglect will destroy a blade, both in terms of rust and then the edge falling apart. And so just as the martial artist, it's not good enough just to to learn the techniques. You need to maintain them over time. And just as steel is perishable, so too are the skills of martial arts. And that when I give a gift of a knife to a student, these metaphorical elements start to emerge. They see, okay, I began as iron ore and I want to become the finished blade.

• 4:51:34John Danaher?

  There's another sense in which a knife is morally neutral.

• 4:51:42John Danaher?

  A knife can be used to save a life. It can be used to cook a meal. But it can also be used for murder, for the worst possible purposes.

• 4:51:52John Danaher?

  Jiu-jitsu is the same way. Jiu-jitsu can make you a better person, it can make you a worse person. Jiu-jitsu is just a power. It's not a particularly great power, but it is a power. And like all power, it can be used for both good and bad. It's morally neutral in itself. And it's up to us to make sure that just as the knife gets used for good purposes rather than bad, so to let jiu-jitsu be used for good purposes rather than bad. There's also an element where the basis of the knife is steel. And historically, there's always been a riddle of steel, which is, steel has the property of both hardness and suppleness.

• 4:52:38John Danaher?

  The harder you make steel, the better its edge retention becomes. The longer that edge will stay sharp. This is good, but it comes at a price. The harder you make steel, the more brittle it becomes. And now that edge can be damaged easily.

• 4:52:59John Danaher?

  So the solution is to make the steel softer, more malleable. That will prevent breakage of the blade and chipping of the edge. But when you make the steel softer, that comes at a price. And that price is now the edge loses its sharpness very easily. And so the riddle of steel is how to work with these two to the greatest degree possible and create an edge which is hard enough to stay sharp for long periods of time, but without making the steel so brittle that the blade overall is compromised. So too in jiu-jitsu.

• 4:53:40John Danaher?

  Your task in training is to make the training competitive enough that you actually get used to the rigors of real combat. But on the other hand, it can't be so brutal that the athletes get broken down in the gym to a point where they're no longer effective. And so this duality of hardness and softness, which we see in the case of blades, is there in the training of the Jiu-Jitsu athlete. So I often give a gift of a knife to a student when they've done something significant because it demonstrates in a metaphorical way these key themes of the sport.

• 4:54:19Lex Fridman?

  Well, I've been honored to be a student of yours. I've been plagued by injury, but I hope to one day earn one such knife. And I think that's a really powerful metaphor. I'm really honored that you would spend any time with me in any context, but especially on the mat and especially today in conversation. John, you're an incredible person. Thank you for everything you do. Congratulations for historic accomplishment. It's always beautiful and inspiring to see greatness. And what I saw, what we saw at AGCC was greatness, rare greatness. And it's beautiful to see that humans can achieve that kind of thing. So thank you for making that happen.

• 4:55:03Lex Fridman?

  And thank you for talking today.

• 4:55:05John Danaher?

  Thank you, Lynx.

• 4:55:07Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with John Donner. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi. The only reason a warrior is alive is to fight. And the only reason a warrior fights is to win. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.