JRE MMA Show #176 with Dustin Poirier

Joe sits down with Dustin Poirier, a mixed martial artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.www.ufc.com/athlete/dustin-poirierwww.thegoodfightgroup.comwww.diamondpoirier.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Uber Eats: Score Gameday deals all tournament long Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  What's happening, bro?

• 0:13Speaker 00

  Good to be back, bro.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Dustin Poirier, the light heavyweight.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's Thick Boy Summer.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  You're looking healthy, son.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, like 190, man.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  You look good, man.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  I feel good, dude. It feels good to eat and not count carbohydrates and calories.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were talking about that. Were you like, still, like, a little part of you is like, looks at meals and goes, "Ohhh."

• 0:33Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, for the last 20 years, I've been macro and, you know, I knew I had a fight coming up. Even if I didn't have a fight, I had to be in striking range from 155.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  So I was always looking at the back of every label, being real cautious of what I eat. It's like ingrained in my daughter now. When we go to Whole Foods, she'll grab something off the counter and say, "Dad, it only has three ingredients." Like, she knows what's up.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Well, it's good to think that way, anyway.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Especially with the ingredients.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the first thing she goes to. Like, if she wants some chips, "It only has five ingredients." That's like a thing for her when we're shopping.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's smart, man. That's cool. You're raising them right.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Trying to, bro. I'm trying to put the stuff I learned in fighting, you know, all the years.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, uh, it is kind of crazy. I think it's the worst thing about fighting is the weight cutting. Do you imagine if everybody just... First of all, tell me if you agree, but I think the UFC needs way more weight classes.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  I do, too.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Way more.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  I do, too. Because the gaps are so big, I mean, just if you look at boxing compared to mixed martial arts, the jumps in weight are so big from each weight class. But also, all the shows they're putting on, they'd have more titles, more belts, more big fights. But also, man, with that, there's gonna be a lot of people trying to cut a little bit extra, trying to be double champ in every weight class. I think it does cause more confusion.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's better than the extreme weight cuts. The extreme weight cuts are terrible. You saw that dude a few, um, like, I guess it was about three events ago, who face-planted and got removed off the card?

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  That is crazy. You're getting someone to the brink of death 24 hours before they have an MMA fight, which is the most... If not the most dangerous sport, one of the most dangerous sports in the world.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  And you're doing something to your body to extremely weaken it 24 hours before you fight. It's bananas.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Dude, I did it so many times. You preach it to the choir.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  There's been so many times I've felt like that, like stand up too quick after a weight cut and I'm like, you know, I might go down.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Oh dude, I mean, I can only imagine. When you see someone like Pereira that's cutting like 25 pounds and more. When he was 185, I mean, that guy was fighting inside the octagon at 225. And weighing in at 185 24 hours before.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  And even when he's big, he's lean. You know, it's not like he's fluffy.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Well, they say that when you're muscular, it's easier to cut weight.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  More water.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  It's water.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is counterintuitive. You see a fat guy, you're like, oh, that guy can cut weight. But you really can't, because you can't replenish, replenish your fat.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Right, not in a training camp's time, eight weeks, 10 weeks, you can't lose like 30 pounds of fat, but.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I don't think deplish, I said deplenish like it was a real word.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  You can dehydrate yourself.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I don't think it is a word. Deplenish?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Well, if you can replenish.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Right, but no one says deplenish.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Can you plenish?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  No, you say deplete, but I just threw it out there like it was real. I don't think deplenish is a word. Is that a word?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  It is?

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  I don't think it's ever used to that way. Oh, okay.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Nice, man.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Nice. I got lucky. That was just luck. Um, but I talked to Hunter about it, Hunter Campbell, and we're, we're trying to figure out a way. Um, without, it has to be more weight classes. I mean, California instituted a bunch of different weight classes. I think, um, I think they were doing it every 10 pounds.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  I think California also did like a percentage of your, your body weight.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Like, I don't, what was it, 15, 20%? You couldn't dehydrate more than that?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  That guy, Andy Foster, is on the ball.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  And I think that's good, you know?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  20% or whatever, some kind of rule where guys aren't cutting 50 pounds, 40 pounds.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Still crazy. Yeah, still crazy.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  I mean, if you're two. Yeah, you're right. 200 pounds, 40 pounds, I mean.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  It's a lot of weight. Well, that's another thing that freaks boxers out, when I tell them that there's a weight limit at heavyweight.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Two sixty-five?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  That doesn't make any sense. I go, I agree. Why is there a weight limit for heavyweight? That's crazy.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Dude, tha- tha- that gap too, like two oh five, anything over that, you can be two ten to two sixty-five, that's crazy.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  A fifty-pound gap that you, you know, but...

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Well, heavyweight in boxing, like, look, Mike Tyson, when he was in his prime, was only like two twenty, two fifteen, two twenty, you know, that's where he, when he was dominating, that's where he kind of fell in that weight limit.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  I wouldn't, I think it would be a good idea, anything past like two thirty, two thirty-five, super heavyweight.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  You know?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Well, the difference in boxing, though, is the grappling. The grappling in MMA, the gap, if a guy gets on top of you, is immense.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  If you got a, like, Nganu, when he was in his prime, was weighing over, like, three hundred pounds, and then cutting down to two sixty-five. He was a three hundred pound natural.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  He's a guy who's like a knockdown power for sure, but grappling, like, if you get a big guy who's two sixty-five and knows how to grapple very well, wrestled his whole life, they get inside control or half-guard, you're not getting up. That's the end of the round.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Also, if they did do a super heavy, the fights might be either awesome, or it's completely suck.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think it should be, heavyweight should be unlimited. And then you'll find out. Yeah, because like Kane Velazquez, no one's holding that dude down in his prime.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Even when he was two forty, when he was two forty and he fought Lesnar. Lesnar was gigantic, but it didn't matter because the cardio that Kane had, and the speed, and his technique, sort of, it

• 5:57Speaker 00

  He was ahead of his time, man. He was ahead of his time. He was like a hybrid, can do everything, great cardio, good athlete, before MMA got to where it's at now.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, the one fight that I always say that we missed is Kane and Fedor in their primes.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Because they were both in their prime at the same time, and they never made that happen.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  When UFC absorbed the, the Pride roster and stuff, I was crazy, it's crazy that Fedor never fought in the UFC at all, man.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Well, it was, they tried. The UFC tried, but Fedor's management were a bunch of very dangerous dudes.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, you don't mess around with those guys.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Fucking, yeah, man, there was like tense negotiations, and they wanted a percentage of the promotion. They wanted a lot more than just a big purse.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, UFC's not playing that game.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  No, they were like, look, we'll give you, you know, a very healthy purse, we'll bring Fedor over here, but the problem was when they purchased Pride, they thought they were getting everyone's contracts, but the contracts were all bullshit.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Well, some guys came over on crazy. Crazy money contracts, you know. I think Dan Henderson might have been one. I was a young fighter one time and I was making, this might have been twenty thirteen or some, twenty fourteen, I don't know. And they came to give me my check. This is back in the day before they wired. They used to give us checks on fight night. And they had, going through the checks and I saw Dan's and I saw the number and I couldn't believe it. This is before like people posting online fighter pay and all that and I saw the numbers he was making. I was like, no way, guy's rich.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Does it make you angry?

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Nah, nah, because the future, myself looking back or looking forward when guys are gonna be fighting for belts and stuff, the money they're gonna make in five years, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be that guy like, damn, you know, I got out too early or. You know how it is, the next generation always gets more.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Mike Brown tells me that all the time. Dude, you, I was fighting for the belt in W E C, defending it, making this. You guys on the prelims are making more than I was making, you know?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a weird, that, that sort of discussion about fighter pay. You know, I've always been of the opinion that fighters should be making more money, period. Because like the same way I feel about like the way I run my comedy club, the comedians make eighty percent of the money. Cause I feel like that's who's, you're paying to see. You're paying to see them. We make plenty of money, like with drinks and twenty percent of the ticket sale. It's like, it's enough. Like it should be, if we had a comedy club and there's no comedians, no one's coming, right? No one's gonna pay just to sit there and buy drinks. Like the whole idea is they're paying to see someone's work. If you fight, that's what people are paying to see. They're paying to see fighters.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Without the fighters, there's no show. Without the comedians, there's no show, I understand. But I think the big thing with the discussion of fighter pay is the, is the percentages. When you look at other major, major organizations like NFL, NBA, the percentages are so, so different.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not good.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  But dude, at the end of the day, I'm all for fight or pay too. I've been fighting my whole life. But you sign the contract, you agree. This is how business is done. Push for, try to get more of what you're worth. You know, you can't sign a contract and complain.

• 8:56Joe Rogan?

  Right. This episode is brought to you by the Mosquito Bowl. Here's a story that's pretty incredible. After Pearl Harbor, four of the best college football players in America walk away from promising NFL careers to enlist in the Marines and fight in World War II. And the craziest part, it's a true story. These guys had their whole lives ahead of them, but traded the glory of the gridiron for the brutal reality of combat, where the stakes were life and death. Directed by Peter Berg, the guy behind Friday Night Lights, and starring Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis. The Mosquito Bowl, now playing in theaters.

• 9:38Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Hook up a better speaker to your TV and your home theater experience is immediately 10 times better. Or add a little extra treat to your dog's food. They get so happy at dinnertime. Sometimes, it's worth it to go that extra step, to find people who will do that for your business. Check out ZipRecruiter. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. ZipRecruiter has what you need to find great candidates fast, like powerful matching technology to help sort through thousands of resumes, and a feature that puts people who are the most interested and most qualified

• 10:19Joe Rogan?

  first. Try ZipRecruiter and meet great candidates who'll go the extra step for your job. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free today at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. That's ziprecruiter.com/rogan. ZipRecruiter, meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Chime. And I know people don't usually get excited about banking, but Chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to. In a recent survey, they ranked the number One choice for new checking accounts in America. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks.

• 11:02Joe Rogan?

  That's because banking at Chime is fee-free. No monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and thousands of fee-free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you 5% cash back on a category you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, crazy high. It's nine times the national average. They're calling it the most rewarding way to bank. Go to chime.com/rogan. Takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card, provided by Chime's bank partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for more details.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  That's true too, but also, it's like, the reality of MMA is if you're not in the UFC, people are not paying attention. That's unfortunate, but it's reality. You know, and I think there's some really good fighters that fight in the PFL and really good fighters that fight in ONE. But they don't, no one knows who they are, other than the hardcore dudes.

• 12:04Joe Rogan?

  Right. Yeah, I got a buddy, Johnny Evelyn, who was the Bellator champion dude.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's awesome.

• 12:09Joe Rogan?

  I've been training with him since he started MMA, when he got out of college wrestling and stuff like, right now, he can go to the UFC and give the top five guys a run for their money. There's no doubt in my mind, and he's only getting better.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 12:18Joe Rogan?

  Just because you fight in the UFC, that's a great organization to fight for, the biggest, the most known worldwide, but dude, there's great fighters everywhere. You know, like on the mats at American Top Team, there's a dozen guys you've never heard of that can make a run in the UFC right now.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  That's what I heard is a nightmare about training at American Top Team.

• 12:37Joe Rogan?

  Because it's a revolving door, man. There's like 100 professional fighters on the mats at all times.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:42Joe Rogan?

  Different camps, they have dorms, so guys from Russia, guys from all over the world are just in, you never know who's gonna be there. And it's, it's tough rounds, you know, every practice is tough.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Well, not only that, but I've heard there's like guys coming in from Russia, and they'll throw oblique kicks at your knees, and you're like, hey, man. Like, what are we doing here? We're getting ready for fights. We're not in a fight.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Like, some of these guys are trying to make their name off of a named guy. And so you have to be very selective in who you spar with.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  For sure, and that's any, not just American Top Team. Especially guys who are established. Like, if I go to any gym here in Austin and it's open mat or something, I have a target on my back.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  You know, that's everywhere.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  But those guys, man, like at a big gym like American Top Team with the knowledge and the good coaches, those guys get weeded out. You know, you, you won't stay there long if you're doing that stuff.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  The problem is if you're one of the guys that has to weed them out. Like, you find out early on, this dude's, you know, throwing wheel kicks.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Full blast.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  And it happens all the time.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, this, you know, makes sense. I mean, you're from Dagestan or Chechnya or whatever, and you come to America. It's like, this is your big chance.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  And I do like to train hard to prepare for a fight. You gotta fight. But, you know, you gotta take care of each other. We're professionals, we're feeding our family with this.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  And injury can ruin everything.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Well, there's so many fighters that get concussions in training. And then, you know, they get chiny when they get into the fight. It happens all the time.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Especially the early days. There was a lot of guys who got hit.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Me, yeah, like, the early days, we didn't really have classes that were organized, man. It was just sparring and choking each other out and with four-ounce gloves sparring. Like, we didn't know, we didn't know.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Isn't that crazy?

• 14:20Speaker 00

  Like, 2006, dude, we used to beat each other up every day. That was MMA training. And then it wasn't these super gyms where everything was under one roof. I would drive to a boxing gym, drive another 45 minutes to a jiu-jitsu gym. You know, it was, put everything together on fight night, but you would train everywhere else because there wasn't mixed martial arts gyms back then, really. I would drive to a kickboxing gym, boxing gym, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, it was all separate.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, also, you were in a place that didn't have, like, a high volume of MMA fighters in your state.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Right. Back then, like Rich Clemente, Melvin Gallard were the big guys from Louisiana, you know?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Then Tim Crater came.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Crazy Tim.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Crazy Tim got on The Ultimate Fighter and then I went to his gym once he got out of the TV show. And me and him trained for years and years. He still has a gym in Lafayette, Louisiana?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I loved him. I've known Tim since I first worked out with him in like 98 at Machado's.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Well, he was in maybe the Navy, so he was in California Station there and I think that's when he started jiu-jitsu. He was Louisiana's first black belt.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew him from that and then he was fighting and he was fighting in the UFC.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  He was always around the MMA scene. Him and Eve Edwards were good friends. They opened a gym maybe in Houston or something. He was cornering Eve in Pride and then I met Eve through Tim and it's just, it's a big family, man.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Eve's a guy that I always say, there was a time where he was the best 155 pounder on earth.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  When he beat Josh Thompson.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  He's the uncrowned champion.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  He should have been the uncrowned champion.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  There wasn't a belt.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  I know. Isn't that nuts? Isn't that nuts? That's so hard for people to understand, like how crazy it is.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Like being through the lineage of thug jitsu, man, it sucks to say like that he can't say he was a champion, but I know he was.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  He was.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  He was. He was the best.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  He was the best. At one point in time, he was the best.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  He lived out here before he moved to LA, so before I moved to South Florida to train at American Top Team, I used to drive six hours here and stay with Eve. He always had wrestlers down here. This is like beginning of my WEC days. I would drive down here and train with Eve, man. He was another guy who was ahead back in the day.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Cause he comes from NHB, like hook and shoot.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  The crazy days.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  And he was doing it all. Good jiu-jitsu, good kickboxing. He fell in love with wrestling. I was such a big fan of Eve, man.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  He invented some moves too. You remember that one thing that he would do where guys were on a single and he hit a dude with a flying knee, a jumping knee?

• 16:46Speaker 00

  That was, uh, dude, I'm an MMA historian, bro. That was Elite XC, I believe, maybe?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Was it?

• 16:53Speaker 00

  And you know that was Edson Berto.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Was it?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  I think Andre Berto's brother, the boxer.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Oh wow.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  He had a single leg, he was hopping and then jumped up and out cold.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was crazy. It is a lead act. Hey, look at you, bro.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Try that again, look at this. This move is brilliant. That's brilliant.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  That's Edson Berto. And I believe Andre and Edson's dad was a mixed martial artist.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Oh wow. That's such a slick move.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's so crafty, man.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Well, that head kick that he landed on Josh Thompson from the middle of that wild, crazy scramble, jumping roundhouse kick to the head.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Dude, and they still play it every opener of the UFC?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  They still play it. As they should. I mean, it was incredible.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I gotta, you gotta give credit to Eve. He's, he was one of the real pioneers.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  And.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Way before this was cool.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Way before.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. But to be stuck at like 155, like that was his weight class, and then there's no title?

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. They were the two best guys in the world at that time, him and Josh Thompson.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Josh Thompson's another one, doesn't get the credit he deserves. That's it. Boom. Like, what a slick move, man. But that was Eve, very creative, you know?

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Man, Josh Thompson, like, peak Josh Thompson for me, what was it, Strikeforce when him and Gilbert Melendez maybe were going back and forth?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness, yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  They might have had a trilogy, it might have been two, two or three fights, but every fight was amazing.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Gilbert Melendez, another guy doesn't get the credit he deserves.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Dude, legend. Legend, man.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Legend. All those guys, they, they were the groundbreakers. You know, a lot of these young kids coming up, you bring up Gilbert Melendez, they're like, who? Like, bro, you need to know your history. You need to know how this thing got started. Go watch.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Even more newer stuff, go watch him and Diego Sanchez.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Slug it out.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Diego Sanchez is another guy that I say is a tweener, right?

• 18:47Speaker 00

  Swelterweight?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he really wasn't really a welterweight.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  And you, you know, and lightweight, I mean, he tried to get down to 45 for a while, but that was just brutal. He was killing himself getting down to 45. I remember seeing him making weight for 45. I'm like, oh, this ain't good.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  This ain't gonna last long.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  But if like, there was a 165 pound weight class, Diego Sanchez might have been the champion of the world.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Right. Honestly, man, like when I was competing, if they had a 65, I might have entertained it. 70 is just too big of a gap because I trained with 70s in the UFC and I know they're 200 something pounds. And my heaviest, I was like 182, 183 maybe. They're just too big, man.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Well, you got guys like Rumble Johnson. When Rumble was alive.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Rumble got up to 230 pounds in between.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  No, he was huge, man. Huge. Huge. I can't believe he made 170. He was, he was living in South Florida, so I see him every now and then. He was huge.

• 19:41Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. March is here and Uber Eats is delivering deals all month long. Each game day, score big savings on all the delicious food you need to turn your couch into center court and fuel your fandom. Whether you're ordering in or hosting the whole crew, Uber Eats is serving up deals on wings, burgers, pizza, from your favorite restaurant, plus game day snacks from top stores. Bracket busted? Still holding strong? Cinderella story or top seed? However the madness unfolds, these deals keep it going all month long. Visit the game day hub on Uber Eats for all the latest deals and start saving today.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  He was the ultimate, like, weight cutter. Like, he cut more weight than anybody. When he was fighting at 170, it was bananas. Like, how are you doing this? I remember running into him at a hotel. I was like, "Bro, how big are you?" And he was laughing. He's like, "I'm 230 right now."

• 20:37Speaker 00

  And muscle.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Jabbed! Like a heavyweight. And he went up to heavyweight, he beat Arlovski.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Yep, yep.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Which is crazy. He was a legit heavyweight.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Dude, Andre's still fighting.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  I know, and winning.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  The bare knuckle champion?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Winning. He's the bare knuckle champion. Like, how durable is that motherfucker?

• 20:53Speaker 00

  For the years and the miles that that guy has, I, I have to say, like, taking shots, receiving damage, I don't know if he takes it like he, obviously he doesn't take it like he used to. But his mobility and his movement, for all the wars he's had and the years he's been fighting, when I watch him in the gym, dude, he's light on his feet, flexible.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  He moves so well.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And enthusiasm. Still has enthusiasm for the game.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Which is crazy.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  He loves it.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  He clearly loves it. I mean, he was what, UFC heavyweight champion in 2005?

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Was it like 2005?

• 21:24Speaker 00

  2005 or 2006, I think he beat Tim Sylvia maybe?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  When he was the champ, first of all, that motherfucker had a piston for a right hand. I remember when he KO'd Paul Buentello, oh my god.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  That's a Texas guy.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Paul Buentello, another dude.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  I believe he's from a Galveston area or Corpus Christi or something. He's from Texas.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Well, if you think Arloski from 2005 and he was a top 10 heavyweight as recently as like 2023.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Well, when he came back to the UFC after that long gap, he went on a streak. He had a bunch of great fights. I think he knocked out Travis Brown.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  He beat Travis Brown, which is crazy.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Did he fight Bigfoot? Did him and Bigfoot?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  UFC 51 is when he went in. 2005, February 5th, 2005, that is bananas, man. That really is bananas.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Man, back in the day, Tim Sylvia used to train at ATT. When I first got there, he was the most uncoordinated, unathletic guy. I couldn't believe he was a UFC champion, man.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  I know, he was like.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Goofy.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Pigeon-toed.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  But down to fight.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Oh, down to fight.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Down to fight. Yeah, for sure pigeon-toed. His knees were.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Weird.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, they went in. Like, I don't, I tried to talk to a trainer about that and he goes, "That's learned." Like, "You can correct that." I was like, "Are you sure?" Yeah. The knees bowed in like that was, he said, "That's a learned, you could, you could correct that." I was like, "Really? How do you, what?"

• 22:49Speaker 00

  I never heard of that.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I didn't understand how you.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  It seems like something they would do maybe when you're born, surgery, like reposition the bones or something, no?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if it is, I don't know. I mean, I'd have to, I don't want to speak out of turn. Like, I'd have to bring in that guy and have him explain to me how you could correct that.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  But he's like, "That's something that could be corrected. That's like learned behavior." It's just from being so big.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  But dude, watching him with his toes pointed out, doing the ladder drills and stuff, you know, the ladders on the mat, in and out, like, it was so crazy.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Well, big guys have their toes pointed out like that, like Jelly Roll went from 500 pounds and he's down to the, he's in the low 200s now, which is crazy.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. I saw pictures of him, looks completely different.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Bro, he's lost like 300 pounds. And he did it the right way.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  No Ozempic, just like diet, exercise, runs all the time. But he has a problem when he walks, his toes are pointed out and he's trying to correct it. He's trying to be aware of it.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  When he runs, he runs the right way, like feet, feet pointed forward.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  You see it too on the, on the bigger guy's shoes. The, the corners of the shoes are always flat, like flat tires on the outside.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  They just walk that way, man.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Well, you gotta think, you have so much weight, you gotta, you kinda, kinda stretch out to kinda balance yourself.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  But I always point to Tim Sylvia when he knocked out Rico. Rico Rodriguez, that.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  That Tim Sylvia was a beast, dude. That was back when all the Mexican supplements were allowed. There was a lot of dudes who were very juicy.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And Tim had giant traps and huge fucking shoulders and.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  I remember he struggled to get down to two sixty-five for that fight.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, back in the day with the juice was just free flowing, man.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Free flowing.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  I just worked, um, the UFC desk with Bisping in Vegas when Max and Charles fought. And we started talking about the same thing we're talking about now. And he was like, oh, I fought veto, I fought them all in the height of TRT.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  You know, he's fought a bunch of guys.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Legal juice, which was bananas.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  I mean, Alistair.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That was the juiciest fight of all time. Alistair versus, uh, versus Brock was the juiciest fight of all time.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I recently watched the, uh, Mark Hunt documentary and, um, he's trying to like push back and do a lawsuit against the UFC for all the juicing and stuff. But I mean, it's such a.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a tough, that's a tough road because how much can the UFC do?

• 25:16Speaker 00

  And it's on the Athletic Commission as well, right? Wouldn't the lawsuit be against the state, not the UFC?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  I think his position is that the UFC knew that, um.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  But how would they know?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  That Brock was juicing. I don't know.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  This is before random drug tests, I believe.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yes, it was before.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  So that would, I feel like that would fall on the state Athletic Commission.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Maybe it wasn't before, cause he did get popped.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  You know, but.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  But it wasn't random. They weren't able to just show up in camp.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  No, no, that, the, back in the day, you would get tested on fight night.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  You know, they would knock at your door.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Well, it was super clear that. Brock was doing something. It was super clear, like he was like in his late thirties. He's built like a fucking like the side of a barn.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  I mean, there's a bunch of guys back then.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  A bunch of guys.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  But it wasn't, it was okay. Everybody was doing it.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  It wasn't, it wasn't, right? Cause it was illegal, but it was like, when you have Fight Day drug tests, that's an intelligence test. That's all that is.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  That's whether or not you have good people in your corner.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  And whether or not you have a chemist.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  It's gonna take this amount of weeks to get out, or this many days to get out of your system.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Well, there were certain camps that would employ scientists. And these scientists.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  The crooks are always gonna be ahead, you know?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  They're always gonna be coming up with something new, trying to stay ahead of the curve and get away with stuff. And I still think they're probably doing it, man.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's probably something that we don't know right now and it's gonna come out in the future. That's why they hold on to the drug tests for a prolonged period of time.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. They ask you, your consent, you have to do an extra signature if you let them test it or use it for.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  What happens if you say no?

• 26:54Speaker 00

  I, I don't know. I never said no. I always give it to them.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Well, it's good for you because you're clean.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I competed my whole career clean, man. Nothing. Nothing. I was even scared of certain creatine, like I got the trusted by sport on everything because I was so scared to be one of those guys. Cause every time I see it. Tainted supplement, yeah, sure buddy. But you know, sure tainted supplement, but it could be, you know, I don't wanna be one of those guys.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Well, for sure, there are tainted supplements. That's a real thing. And you know, I know that for a fact because as one of the owners of Onnit, when we were doing, um, when we're uh, doing third-party testing of some of our supplements, we would find stuff in there that's not supposed to be in there. And so we'd have to contact the distributor, the manufacturer. And the people that like mixed our stuff. So the way like Onnit would work is like, AlphaBrain has a bunch of different ingredients that.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Enhance your, you know, your mental focus and clarity. And we would give them the very specific numbers of what's supposed to be in each batch.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And then we would third-party test. We'd find a bunch of shit in there that's not supposed to be in there. And it's because, you know, if you're getting it done overseas, they have these vats where they mix all the stuff in. And they don't even clean the vats, man.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  They dump it out and then they dump the new stuff in there without cleaning it.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  There's residue in there and then also the level of drug testing, how high these things can sense anything.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Even if there's a tiny bit, they'll find it.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Right with John Jones, right, it was picograms. We got introduced to the term picograms.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Like a grain of salt in a swimming pool, they can find, they say.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  So the testing is legit. And I'm glad, you know, we're fighting. We're kneeing each other in the, in the face. If we were running track or something, I would.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  But we're fighting. You can get seriously injured, man. So I've always been against doping. But I'm retired now, Joe. I'm retired now.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Now you can get to the roof. Yeah, I love when guys get, well Cowboy got real jacked too afterwards. But then he talked about coming back and then he got off of everything.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  That's the thing though. Like, always back in the day, all the TRT guys, like, if you change your body's natural production of testosterone with exogenous testosterone, you have to be on it for the rest of your life.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Well, you don't have to because there's things called HCG and HCG and Clomiphene can restart your body's production of testosterone.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Yeah?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Cause I know your testicles will stop producing once you introduce foreign testosterone, right?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Well, for, for a period of time, especially when you're a young man, you can restart it. But, you know, my production, I've been on TRT since I was like, late 30s. Like, it's not coming back.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  I'm shooting blanks on it. Pow.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  But, you're good.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  But two of my daughters were born while I was on TRT. So it does work. I just had a limited amount. I had soldiers, just one fucking special ops guy at the front of the line.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  Only one was marching?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  But he got through.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Black ops.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you think about like all of the time where people were allowed to dope, it is a giant percentage of the history of MMA, like pride.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  The further you go back, for sure.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Pride, it was juicy as juice.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Like the, like Ensign Inua, when he was on the podcast, told me that in the contract, it said in all capital letters, "We do not test for steroids."

• 30:06Speaker 00

  We aren't looking. I've heard, I've heard other people say that as well. We aren't looking.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Thumbs up, green light, let's go.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Shoot up the juice, come fight, we'll pay you cash, get out of here.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  They wanted you to juice. They wanted you to fight better, which is like, okay.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  It becomes a spectacle, but man, people can get seriously injured.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  You can, especially, but then also the thing is like, does it make you more durable?

• 30:26Speaker 00

  I think it does.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Prevent you?

• 30:27Speaker 00

  I think it does, man, because just one that right off the top of my head, when Bigfoot Silva was TRT or whatever he was on.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  He was so durable.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  So durable.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  Him and Mark Hunt had those crazy fights, but when he got off, he started getting knocked out.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  You know?

• 30:42Speaker 01

  But there's also the switch. There's something that happens when you've had a certain amount of concussions where that's a wrap.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Another, another guy that comes to mind, remember Eric Silva?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  Walter Wade, was huge. Dude, whenever they started doing the USADA stuff, he was getting knocked out and just wasn't himself.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  He didn't look the same. He melted.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  I wonder what the like medical reason for that is, but I, I think it has something to do with confidence and like self-belief with the testosterone. They just, I think that's a big part of it. I really do.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  It's definitely a part of it, but also there's a part of it, your vitality. You're just more durable. I mean, when you're jacked up on testosterone, you're just more fucking durable.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Everything about you is more durable. Alistair's a great example of that.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Like animal mode, man.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Dude, I, I think Alistair Overeem, when he was Ubering, I think that is the best argument for TRT ever. Looked like a superhero. Bro, when he was in K1 and he was shelling up, how you getting through that? How you getting through that? Remember how small he was though, back in K1? He was like a 205 or 185? Well, no, in Pride. Pride. Pride, when he was fighting at light heavyweight. Chuck knocked him out. Liddell knocked him out when he was a legit light heavyweight and he was skinny. Yeah. Young and skinny. He just decided, time to get big. Yeah, look at him back then, when he fought Shogun. Still pretty jacked though. Oh yeah, man. He was shredded. He was shredded, but he was a shredded light heavyweight. You know, I think he's a vegan now. Dude, look at that. Come on, son.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Come on, son. That's ribeyes, that ain't vegan right there. Go back to that other one, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, that's what a UFC heavyweight champion's supposed to look like. Hell yeah. Come on, son. I mean, also- Put that on the White House card. Not just that, but highly skilled. For sure. He wasn't just jacked, he was highly, I mean, he was like K1 Grand Prix champion. I mean, that dude was the cream of the crop at kickboxing. He was the cream of the crop in MMA and he even won the Abu Dhabi European Trials as a pure grappler. Yeah, people don't know about that about Alister. His grappling is highly loved. He had one of the best guillotines in the game. Like, Alister in his prime, when he went over and he fought Brett Cooper over in, was it Bert Cooper?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Who did, who, no, who did he fucking fight in Strikeforce? Brett Rogers. Brett Rogers, that's right, sorry. I'm thinking of the heavyweight boxer, Bert Cooper. Bert Cooper? Who fought, he had some crazy wars with, um, with Evander, Evander Holyfield. I think Evander's down in South Florida too now. I don't remember Cooper. He was a really, he was a, he was a tank. He was a tank. He was a super jacked guy. But Brett Rogers, when he fought Alister, Alister like immediately hit him with a low kick and you could tell he was like, what is this? Yeah. Like, it was a different kind of low kick, because you're dealing with the tree trunks of Alister with perfect technique and

• 33:34Speaker 01

  that guy was as good a kickboxer as has ever entered into MMA. And when he was saucy, he was a problem.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  He was a real fucking problem.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Speaking of kickboxers from that era coming to MMA, dude, didn't Gokhan Saki come over?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  I thought he was gonna do, you know, so much better, but he was older.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  He was older and he was at a time where it's like, you know, he had had so many fights in K1. You know, he had so many wars. And he fought Khalil. When, you know, Khalil's fast as fuck.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  And, I mean, good kickboxer.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Real good kickboxer.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Thai style.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Khalil cracked him in the first round and knocked him out.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, which was a big fight for Khalil because, you know, Gokhan was the Turkish Tyson, was coming over here. You know, he was one of those guys, like Mirko Krokop was like an elite kickboxer who's entering into MMA. And everybody always gets excited about that. Obviously, Pereira is the best example of that.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  But he was a guy I knew. I told everybody, I was like, that guy's gonna be a nightmare for everybody because there's something about him, man. I don't know what the hell is going on with his bone structure, his DNA, and his intelligence. Like, he figures shit out that other people didn't. Like, the way he threw that low kick, like, the way he throws that calf kick with zero tell, no turning of the hips. Like, he fucks up guys' calves better than anybody on the planet.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  We had, like, a huge rush of the calf kick. I saw it for, like, a year and a half, two years. Everybody was doing it. Now it's kind of fading away, I've noticed that.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It is, but not with him. It's not with elite guys, guys that are really good at it.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  It does so much damage, man, so quickly.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  And it's so much, it's less commitment, so you're not giving, you don't have to turn your hips over as much. So wrestlers aren't grabbing singles as easy.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Well, I remember your fight with Jim Miller.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  It's just, oh, dude, tore me up.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was one of the first examples of calf kicks being really fucking dangerous.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  And I've never felt it before. And I'm a southpaw, so to land good calf kicks, you'd have to fight another southpaw, right? And that doesn't happen too often, especially with one who's throwing those. So I didn't know what kind of black magic he was doing, bro. I was like, I got a, I got a flat tire. What is going on? What is this?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  You know?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Isn't it crazy that it took that long for people to figure that out?

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Ben Henderson was a guy doing it early.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  But it wasn't that effective for some reason.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  He was doing it, but he wasn't having the devastating damage.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  I'm trying to think of who's the first guy to really, Edson Barbosa would do it every now and then.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Trying to think of somebody who really brought it over.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Bro, it's made its way into kickboxing now.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  It's.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Cause they were saying like the Muay Thai guys are not susceptible to calf kicks and everybody was saying that and I was like, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  They are light on their front foot, so that front foot is.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  They are, but there's times where they have to plant, like when they're throwing a right kick. There's a guy named Yuki Yozu, Yuki Yozu who fights for one, he's a Kyokushin guy, and he is fucking everybody up with calf kicks.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  He, he fights hi- like high guard, tight inside, and again, no pivot of the hips. He's essentially throwing his calf kick almost like he's kicking a soccer ball.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Straight up the middle.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  That's, that's the way I like to do it as well.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Just clip the top of the calf, there's no commitment, you don't have to pivot your hips or plant to turn, you can just snap it out like a jab.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, a great example of the changing of technique was you in that Connor fight.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, calf, over and over and over.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  And it was also Southpaw versus Southpaw. Same thing, you just destroyed that calf.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  And you could tell he didn't know what to do, because as good as he was and as many fights as he had, two division world champion, he hadn't been calf kicked.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Which is a crazy transition, when you see like the history of the sport, that is one of the clear differenti- the, the differentiation, that's another word that's fake. That's the clear line in the sand where the techniques changed.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's one of those things, like before it happened to me, I saw it and I was like, ah, it might be uncomfortable, but until it happens, then you have a different respect for it. So Connor probably learned a lot that fight, man, like, this is for real, calf kicks are for real.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  What's fucked that it's just one shot, that's what's crazy about it. Cause a thigh kick, like you can get a hard thigh kick and your leg goes dead for a couple seconds, but it comes back.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Whereas calves don't really come back.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  They explained it to me at the hospital after the Jim Miller thing. Apparently your calf doesn't have the chambers for the fluid to drain. So that's why it gets compartment. Oh, compartment syndrome. That's why it's so painful because it you can't like go out through your the swelling can't go out through your whole leg. So it sits in one pocket and fills up and it's just uncomfortable. It can stop nerves and.

• 38:08Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by Simply Safe. Stuff can always be replaced, but your loved ones, a sense of security. Those are priceless and often overlooked in security systems, but not with Simply Safe. In fact, they have a pretty interesting and smart approach, taking action before the worst can happen instead of after. Their smart cameras can alert real agents to any threats and those agents can take action immediately. That's why six million people already trust and use Simply Safe. It's important to protect your family and no one deserves to feel like their home isn't safe. So use Simply Safe right now. Get 60% off your plan with professional monitoring at simplysafe.com/rogan. That's simplysafe.com/rogan.

• 38:53Joe Rogan?

  And when you order, let them know we sent you in the survey. It helps to support the show. Simply Safe, ahead of crime in real time. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Scams have gotten smarter because criminals use AI to flood you with fake texts, emails and phone calls that are designed to be more convincing than ever. One wrong click could put your personal information and your identity at risk. So protect yourself with LifeLock. LifeLock helps detect and alert you to threats. And if your identity is stolen, LifeLock will step in to fix it guaranteed or your money back. Dedicated US-based identity restoration specialists will work with you until your identity is restored,

• 39:37Joe Rogan?

  backed by the million dollar protection package with up to $3 million in coverage for eligible losses and expenses. Visit lifelock.com and save up to 30% your first year with the promo code JRE. That's promo code JRE or go to lifelock.com/jre for 30% off. Terms apply.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Did you ever see what happened to Austin Hubbard? Dude, that's what they wanted to do after the Jim Miller fight. They wanted to cut me at the uh, I was like, no way. Filet you to release the pressure.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Well, another guy, Uriah Faber, when he fought Jose Aldo. His leg blew up like a balloon.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, apparently if it gets that bad compartment syndrome and the swelling is bad enough for long enough, you can lose function of your ankle and foot.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is crazy, right?

• 40:26Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Well, Uriah was one of the first guys to implement, going into, what, why can't I think of it? The fucking chamber, oxygen chamber.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Hyperbaric.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Hyperbaric. What's wrong with me today? I'm making up fake words, can't come up with things that I know. But he was using the hyperbaric exclusively to recover from that and documenting it. And I was like, oh, that's interesting.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  A lot of good brain benefits for hyperbaric. I don't have one. I've done it before, but it's never been like a routine thing.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Well, you have to have access to it.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  And also the tents, the zip-up tents at home.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Not as strong.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, you need a solid.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  You know, you need like one of those propane tank ones, those big, thick, walled ones.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  The glass, like it's, you can really get high pressure.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, you gotta be careful in those things. You can't, no sparks.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, I saw a story that a kid was in one, and you saw that? That was a couple of years ago.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Horrible, horrible story, yeah. But hyperbaric is awesome for recovery. It's also, it lengthens, there's a protocol that developed, one of the universities in Israel developed it, where you do sixty sessions over ninety days, and it lengthens your telomeres that's commensurate with, I think it's like a twenty-year difference in your biological age.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  It's nuts. It's super effective. Like, when you get a lot of oxygen into your system like that, it just helps everything recover.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Like, if you have an Oura ring or a Whoop strap and you go into one of those things, it shows you. It's like, oh, you have an amazing recovery day.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, the metrics we can track now with all the wearable devices is pretty awesome, dude.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Well, it gets you to understand, like, I think you can get a little addicted to those things.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  For sure, I, so when I was competing, I stopped using them. Cause every day wasn't ready, need to rest, red, red, red every day. So when I retired, I got back to it, now I'm using them, but like, when you're training for a fight, you can't.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Isn't that interesting?

• 42:22Speaker 00

  I'm not taking two days off, I need to train, and the fight's coming up, like, if I'm in the red zone, I still need to train.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  I know, isn't that interesting, like, there's, a wearable device would tell you, you're not supposed to train, but yet you know, in order to reach MMA peak physical condition, you have to push when you're not ready, so that your body's forced to recover quicker.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  I know this guy's training, that's why I got rid of it, during camp, I don't use it, or didn't use it.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Well, it's weird, because like, what if you listen to it? Like, some people say, like, Terrence Crawford was talking about, like, there's times where he wanted to push, where his coaches told him not to, and then he realized they were right.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, maturing through fighting, man, pulling back, got easier as I got older. When I was a younger fighter, I didn't want to take any time off, I needed to be as many reps, as much time on the mats as possible. But as I got to like mid 30s, 36, I was like, you know, this is, I gotta take days off. Complete days, complete days, not just an easy day or a technique day, I just need to be out of the gym.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Just relax.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, reset my mind, to where I want to be there.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Just hard for fighters, because you operate on momentum of the conditioning and the training, the discipline, it's like, you're in there, and then to have a day where you're not, you feel like you're slipping backwards.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Right, and you show up to fight week with that momentum, like, I did everything I could, I bust my ass every day, like, it just gives you so much

• 43:42Speaker 00

  energy and so much confidence going into fight week.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  You've turned over every stone.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the worst thing, though, is seeing a fighter fight flat, because you know they're overtrained.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  And the one thing that I always point to is when, um, Tim Kennedy fought Kelvin Gastelum, and he had gone through two solid camps in a row. So he went through one camp, peaked, got ready for the fight, and then the fight got canceled, and then went right back into camp for, to train for Gastelum, and didn't give himself the chance to recover. And, you know, he's too tough.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Too tough, too disciplined, and his body broke down.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  You're redlining that engine, over and over and over, I mean, we just saw it with Murab, I think, you know, not that, taking anything away from Yan, but.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  You know, you stay that busy, those kind of fights, those training camps, I mean, it's hard to do. That's what makes things like John Jones, Khabib, so impressive to me, man.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  To get on top and stay on top that long, you know?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I know, it's nuts. There's so few guys have been able to do that.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Especially in MMA. Too many variables, too many ways to slip on a banana peel, get caught in something, you know?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  I know. I kind of love that Khabib went out on top.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  And never came back, respect. That's awesome.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  And they offered him a lot of fucking money to come back. He's like, nope.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Good for him, man.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, good for him.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  That's the way to do it. And then you go out, all your faculties, everything's fine, undefeated, go down a legend.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Like, I think Floyd should have did it, you know, like that. Now he's fucking fighting Mike Tyson, dude, come on, man.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  I know. There was some rumors around that Floyd was gonna have a rematch with Connor, which is crazy. But I think Connor would probably do it, especially if there weren't any drug testing involved.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  I wonder if he's gonna come back for sure.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  But man, to heal from an injury like he had, you probably need a bunch of stuff to... I don't know the ins and outs of that, but you probably need some help to heal.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  He definitely needed some help to heal. The problem is, once you get used to that help, and you enjoy it.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm getting used to the help.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I know. That's what I thought about Cowboy, when he got jacked, and then he was like, he's gonna... And he slimmed back down again. He said he was gonna fight again, but I think he might have abandoned that.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  I got hooked up with Brigham in Ways Too Well. They did all my blood when I retired and got me... I turned down no testosterone for me, so I'm not on any testosterone. I just don't want to mess up my natural production. Because mine wasn't high, but it wasn't low. I'm just scared to mess with it, you know?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't need it. And it's peptides can do a lot for you.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm on a bunch of peptides.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, peptides are the way to go.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  And I feel great. Honestly, I wish I could have been on this shit when I was fighting, man.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I know.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  You know, especially like the growth hormone releasing stuff like.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Like tesamoralin.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  CGC, ipamoralin.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Pushed hard every day, man. As I got older, it got harder, man.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  I know, and all it does is help your body recover. It's not like it gives you some sort of a performance enhancing boost.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  I know it definitely helps with like fat mobilization and and stuff like that, but just being able to push hard every day is huge in fighting.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  But just BPC 157, which offers no performance enhancing, but would help you heal soft tissue injuries. Because you're getting injured. You're just getting small injuries every day training. Every time you get leg kicked, every time you get punched in the stomach.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Arm barge, shoulder lock.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Everything, everything.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Your joints are always messed up.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Always, always. And if you wanted fighters to perform better, something that would allow them to heal better is only good. And it's not, it's not gonna make you run faster, it's not gonna make you jump higher, it's not gonna make you an uberim. We're not talking about that.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  And I'm not even sure if that's banned. I haven't checked. It is?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  BBC 157 is banned. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, creatine, protein powders, that's the same stuff. You just recover better. I don't understand why.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Creatine's not banned, thank God, but creatine in the 1990s were thought of the same way as steroids.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, yeah, I remember.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  People thought like creatine's cheating. Oh my God, you're taking creatine. They they literally put it in the same category as steroids. Then they realize, oh, it's actually a part of food.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Great for your brain.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Great for everything.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  I just talked, I just talked my wife into starting creatine. Women need it more than men, I was reading.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  You know, so my wife's just starting.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  I think the key is to like make sure you're hydrated too, and to make sure you're not taking too much of it, and make sure you get your blood checked, and so you're not putting a lot of pressure on your kidneys. But like dehydration in kidneys, that like that is one of the big things that happens to a lot of fighters that cut a lot of weight. They start getting kidney stones. I mean, Jose Aldo dealt with that. Uh, DC famously got pulled out of the Olympics.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Cause he was having kidney failure.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, your kidneys, man, they don't like you being drained out like that.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  I've had a few weight cuts where I felt pain in my back, and I think that's kidneys.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, man. It's kidney shots.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Didn't happen often, but I've definitely had it. Tightness, it feels kinda like cramping in a weird place you never had before in your back.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  That's spooky, you're drying out your organs.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  And then fighting for your life.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Twenty-four hours. It was nice though when I started making it to the top of the cards, co-main event, main event, because then you have like thirty-something hours to rehydrate. If you're fighting early prelims in Vegas,

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  two or three in the afternoon.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  You know, it's.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Not too long, especially back in the day when weigh-ins were at five or six PM. There wasn't a morning and ceremonial.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  The real weigh-ins were at five and you were gonna fight at two the next day.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, those were nuts. That was crazy. That was crazy when guys would like shuffle to the scale for the real weigh-in. And you'd see them all like, like a skeleton.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  And you're facing off with the opponent trying to be tough, like both dying.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Well, I always remember Jose Aldo versus Connor. Connor looked like he was one of the Walking Dead.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  He looked like a zombie. He was so skinny.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  His face bones?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, see if you can find that. And he was also crazy, like.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Like flexing.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  He's always crazy.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Hyped up with no, like, no body fat, no water, just completely dehydrated. Like, look at that, look at that.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  The eyes, eyes sunken in.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  That is nuts. That guy weighed one forty-five and he probably weighed one seventy, or at least one sixty-five, when he got into the actual octagon that day.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  I wonder, if he does come back, I wonder what he's gonna come back at, lightweight or welter.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Well, the real key is if.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  If.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I mean, he's had a lot of opportunities and I don't know.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  I thought the, I thought the Chandler fight was a layup for him.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  That's the fight.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  A great matchup for him.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Great fight technically, it's a great fight stylistically, it's a great fight age-wise. Chandler's gotta be, what, thirty-nine now?

• 50:11Speaker 00

  He's up there, thirty-eight or thirty-nine, yeah.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  I mean, and then there was the hype of the Ultimate Fighter.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  True, but it's just a layup for Connor. Chandler's hittable, covers distance, not that technically, you know, huge movements.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  You jump in, you get carried out. Connor's a sniper, man. I just think that's a great matchup for him.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  It's also a great matchup for Chandler, cause he doesn't get tired.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  And, and he gets that, you know, cause he sat out for two years waiting on, waiting on Connor.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  He's also like, remember him with Olivera? Even in the fucking third round, that dude is carrying Olivera up and throwing him through the air and body slamming him while he's on his back.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Like, the dude's had, he has incredible endurance and incredible discipline. He's always fit.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  And that's been Connor's Achilles heel. It's that Connor, he's so explosive and so fast that if you're sprinting in that first round, guaranteed you're not gonna have that same kind of energy in the fifth round.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, but some guys are just designed like that, you know, you saw Taran Woodley, he's a guy who has huge explosion. But they don't necessarily keep that for twenty-five minutes. But on the opposite side of that, you got a guy like Nate Diaz, who'll keep that same pace from round one to five.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Round thirty.

• 51:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  That dude could.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Or a Hector Lombard.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Out of a cannon, you know, and then slow down.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  Just the way muscles and fibers are put, you know, connected, I don't know what does that to a human.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Well, the only guys that figured out how to fight with all that bulk and just is like Yoel Romero. He fought very smart, he was just like, calm.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Still fighting.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Still fighting.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Dude's still fighting.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Jacked.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Fifty years old, jacked, more jacked than ever. Yeah.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Forty-eight years old, forty-nine years old with abs, looking like a fucking super athlete.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  I think he's doing bare knuckle, maybe?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did bare knuckle, he did dirty boxing. There's a, there's a fight where he had in dirty boxing where he's, he's touching the dude up and then out of nowhere, he just leaps up into the air, he does like a vertical. He is like this five-foot vertical, lands on his feet and just starts putting it on a dude like, I'm tired of this, let me show you what I can really do.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  I've had fun, I'm not playing with the food.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I've had fun.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  He's a crazy, he's been on the mats a bunch at American Top Team as well, and just a freak athlete, man.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Freak, he's the freak of all freaks.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Just a freak athlete.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he came out of that Cuban.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  They build him different over there.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they build him with science.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he also figured out how to pace himself. You know, he figured out how to like explode out of nowhere, but not explode the entire time. Like, he had this casual, almost, he would lull you into a false sense of security and then just pounce on you.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Right. Like that knee he hit with Weidman with?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yes, a perfect example, perfect example, because you get used to this kind of pace.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  And then. You get into the rhythm and then you just break it up. But also, he didn't fight like. Obviously, he's a wrestler. He didn't wrestle too, too hard and really gas himself out. He fought smart to, to do what he's good at.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Rarely used his wrestling in MMA, which is so crazy.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It's really crazy if you think about how good of a wrestler he was.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Cause he's one of the best wrestlers to ever compete in MMA. I mean, that dude was elite as a wrestler. And in MMA, he's just starching people.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  When Luke Rockhold, starched Luke, like that was crazy.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Luke's another guy still fighting, I think.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  I think he might be done now. You know, when he got knocked out by Darren Till in the boxing, I think that might be it. I think that might be it. And Darren Till's got a resurgence, man. As a boxer, he looks fucking fantastic.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  I, I saw the highlights of that, but I haven't seen the whole lot.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Bro, he looks real good. He looks real.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  He's always been a good striker.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Very good striker, and his Achilles heel's been his knees. You know, he's had some serious knee problems and it really impeded him from being able to train hard. He wasn't the best grappler in the world, and so that was always his problem. But as a striker, I mean, that guy was like very, very good. And you're seeing him now in boxing, like he's making a real run. I think it's very interesting because if you watch him box Rockhold, and you realize like Rockhold's a really good striker, but against Darren Till, he looked like he had no business in there.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  That's something I would like to do, man, box.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Still?

• 54:19Speaker 00

  I always wanted to have a couple before I, you know, but I'm still under contract. Even though I'm retired, I still have a contract with the UFC, so.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Do you think the UFC would let you out? Or they have Zuffa Boxing now?

• 54:28Speaker 00

  So they, I, I, trust me, I already pitched it to them.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Me and Nate Diaz, Zuffa Boxing, let's go.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  170, whatever, or 168, super middleweight, let's do it. They don't want any crossover.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  What?

• 54:37Speaker 00

  They, I think Zuffa wants to be taken as a serious.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Hate money?

• 54:40Speaker 00

  They must hate money.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Do they hate money?

• 54:42Speaker 00

  They hate money.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Why do they hate money?

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Hmm, I don't know. They, they want to be taken by the Boxing World Series. And I think if you open that door of a MMA guy fighting under Zuffa Boxing, every guy on the roster, every girl on the roster is gonna want to do the same.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  It just becomes a mess, I think.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  I don't. I don't know about that.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  I don't think it's a mess.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  I think there are some really fun MMA boxing matchups you can make.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Yes, fuck yes, especially when guys get older and you know, you don't want to go through the training camp with wrestling and leg kicks and all that shit.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  That's the thing, like thinking about a boxing training camp, dude, with no grappling, no wrestling, just run, condition and box. It would be smooth sailing, dude, I would love it, yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Isn't it funny?

• 55:22Speaker 00

  I'm on the beach.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  As tough as boxing is, like for you, like, oh, this is gonna be so nice.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  I only have to box, that's great, yeah. Honestly, man, in training camp, those are my favorite days, striking, sparring is my favorite days, like the wrestling classes, two hour Mako on Monday, it's like brutal, bro.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Well, it'd be great for you because you've always had great hands, like for you, that's a perfect.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Well, I started boxing before mixed martial arts.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Hmm, that would be a perfect way for you to get some other fights in. I don't understand Zuffa.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would just love to lace them up and box professionally once.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  I know they want to like redo boxing and I know they want to like, and I think there's probably some real merit there. Obviously, what the Saudis have done with Riyadh season has been amazing, you know, making matchups that no one can make.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  I'm a big Connor Ben fan too, man, I'm excited to see him fight in Zuffa. And the guy he's fighting is from New Orleans, like I know the guy, like, you know, it's fun.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  It is exciting and it will definitely, I think they will elevate boxing and Dana is throwing all of his cards into that, so I'm sure it's gonna work.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm glad we're seeing more boxing, Zuffa boxing and less power slap on my feed whenever I go to online stuff, you know?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not a big fan.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  I've never been to one, but man, it's just.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Not my, not my jam.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I fought my retirement in New Orleans, Mike Brown went to the power slap they had there and he said it was awesome in person.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Oh, sure, it's awesome to watch someone get slapped, but like, I'm not interested. I watch it on my fucking phone every now and then, I'll see.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  I mean, the highlights are good enough, you see the knockouts and the crazy stuff, but.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  It's great TikTok content.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  You know, you watch someone get slapped and they they go forward and their head hits the desk and they fall backwards, but it's like, it's a concussion.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  And you can't, there's no defense, there's no, like, you can't flinch or you get, it's penalty if you do it.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  That's crazy. That don't make any sense to me. I don't, I don't get it. But I think they've missed out on the opportunity to have a Muay Thai league. That's what I think.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  I just, America just doesn't buy into it that big.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  I don't think that's true.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  No?

• 57:25Speaker 01

  No, no, I just think they haven't been served it correctly.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  One is doing it on Amazon and, you know.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  But it's like, who's watching Amazon? That's the problem. You have a show on Amazon, like, I know guys who've released comedy specials on Amazon, like, good luck finding it. Nobody cares. That's just the reality of this platform. Whatever, I mean, look, Amazon is a phenomenal platform for buying stuff. I love it for buying things. I use it all the time.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Every week.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  It's great for buying books, audiobooks, it's great for buying products, but for watching content, it's kind of a mess. They had a couple of big shows, like The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and The Terminal List. Those are great shows and those brought a lot of people over there, but I mean, you know how big The Terminal List would have been if it was on Netflix? As big as it was on Amazon? More people watch Netflix than are ever gonna watch anything on Amazon.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  That's why what Jake's doing with the Netflix and bringing boxing MMA there, like, it's, it's big, man. It's big. So many people are gonna be watching this.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  One hundred percent. But I think that if one was somewhere else, I think it would have been.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  What?

• 58:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, they got announced this morning.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  An MMA fight?

• 58:30Speaker 02

  It's with the, yeah, it's the third fight on that card now.

• 58:32Speaker 00

  That's the Rousey card, yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Wow, interesting. That's very interesting.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  That's very interesting. That's a good fight.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Dude, you said a lot of people don't go to Amazon to watch TV? I just, I just went down a rabbit hole for weeks because I have a newborn at home. So I did the night shift and I ran out of shit to watch on Netflix and Hulu.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  How do you run out of shit to watch on Netflix?

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Dude, staying up till 4 a.m. every night with a baby boy is like, hours of documentaries, hours of stuff. I switched over to Amazon and it was like a whole new world, man.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Well, there's a lot on there. It's just they don't have the same viewers. Like, our podcast is on Amazon. The numbers that we get from Amazon compared to everywhere else is so small.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  It's just the reality of the way they've sort of marketed it and Amazon Prime Video just doesn't have the audience that everything else does.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  Right. And it's such a big platform, you'd think it would be crossover from...

• 59:24Speaker 01

  I think it's a mistake on their part because the, the, the product side is so big. And like, Amazon for buying stuff is so big that it's almost like an afterthought.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  That they have video.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  And they put some money in it, but not the same sort of focus. Also, the interface, when I've gone to it, is a little weird. It's hard to find things. It's not as simple, like, the interface on Netflix is like, the algorithm's great. It's really good at recommending you things. It knows what you like. It shows you things. It's easy to find things.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Amazon's like a little tricky. You go there and you're like, what? But see, the One FC thing faces the same problem that PFL has. Like, look, PFL is on ESPN Plus. You would imagine PFL would get the same sort of audience that the UFC got, but it doesn't.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  No, of course not.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Because the UFC brand is like NFL, like...

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  The machine. It's just... Yeah, they, they own that space.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  But the fights on One FC are fucking amazing, like especially the Muay Thai fights.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  With the small gloves?

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Oh my god, man. And I was, I was trying to pitch this to Dana. So I started sending Dana. He goes, "Send me some." So I started sending him all these like high-level Muay Thai fights and high-level kickboxing fights. And they're fucking phenomenal. Look, he didn't like the Charles Olivera, this, excuse me, this Max Holloway-Charles Olivera fight. He didn't like it. Like, the BMF fight, he's like, the fight wasn't that good. I was like, I thought it was a great fight.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  It was impressive if you were a fan of technique and a fan of how hard it is to do that to somebody like Max. Like, super impressive.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  And I was a fan of Max's defense. I mean, Olivera was on his back in the first round. A lot of people would have got finished there.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  First minute and a half, I think, you know, dry.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  I got finished there.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean. I think Olivera is one of the greatest submission artists that ever competed in the sport. Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Not the best.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  Numbers, I mean, numbers prove it.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and against elite guys like you and like Justin and like he's.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  And then Gamrot, dude, Gamrot is, I trained with him for years. He's a wrestler, but his grappling is incredible, man.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  He got tied up in knots with Olivera.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Olivera's a nightmare.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  I knew it could happen, but I didn't think it would be that.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I was stunned too. I was like, God, he's good. He's so good on the ground. So like props to Max for surviving. But if Dada didn't like it, so I started sending him.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  For the, I mean, when you have the title, the BMF, like you want to see some violence.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  I understand, but it's still just a fight. You can't fight outside of your.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  Just because a BMF belt's on the line, you can't go out swinging for the fences, but.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  I get it. I get what you're saying.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  But I mean, on the feet, I think Olivera was winning on the feet too.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  Dude, he hurt Max in the first. I think he hurt him in the fifth.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Well, he definitely hurt him in the fifth when they did the point down on the ground.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  And then he cracked him and rocked him. Olivera is fucking good, man. He's so good.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  He is, man. He is. He's just known, we put the label on the grappler because he's finished so many guys and so many bonuses, but he can strike, man.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  He's good everywhere. Like with the Chandler fight, he almost gets finished in the first round, comes back and hits him with a clean left hook in the second.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  He's fucking good, man.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, knocked him out. Even when I fought him, like he, he did a good job of picking where the fight happened. He wouldn't fight me in boxing range. It was either all the way in clinch or out where he was keeping my body, staying long. Kicking range or clinching range is kind of where he fought me. The times I did have success was in the boxing range, but he didn't let that happen.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Well, this shows you how fucking good Ilya De Poria is.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  God damn that dude.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Dude, I love Justin. I love, I'm a fan. I don't like this matchup for him.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? I mean, Justin knows what he's getting into and it's hard to count that dude out. He's such an animal.

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, he can land the shot, but.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  And it's in the White House. Who knows? Who knows what's gonna happen, but. That dude has the touch of death.

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  He has the touch of death.

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  And he's not a big guy. I've never seen him in person, but I was talking to somebody recently and they said, no, he's five, seven, you know.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  He's small, man. He's not big.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a photo of me standing next to him when we did the podcast, we're standing next to him. He's much smaller than me. And bro, he puts people into the shadow realm.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  It's just technique and confidence. His confidence is crazy. He had a, he had a victory party for the Olivera fight the night before.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Drinking wine. I saw, I saw.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  I don't think he was drinking wine. I think he was drinking water the night before, but he has drank wine in weigh-ins.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  When he's getting ready to weigh in, uh, or what, the weight cut. He's, he, he only did that for two camps, he told me though. He said, it's too much. I was fucking hungover the next day. Like, what am I doing?

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  Right. And you're about to get your brain beat up. You're dehydrating. You're drinking, come on.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think he's dehydrating himself and he's said the wine actually helps you get dehydrated.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, alcohol definitely does.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is, but it's, nobody does that. Nobody drinks wine for the weigh-ins. That's crazy.

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  And like, I'm so, I'm not drinking anything. I'm so depleted by that time, you know?

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  I know. And he's getting hammered.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Lucky. And winning world championships.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Well, it was only two fights he did that for, so it became like something where people were pretending he does it every weigh-in.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  He's got all these young fighters out there in the world drinking on one day. I'm gonna be like the champ, man.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he's, he's, he's crazy talented.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  For sure. For sure.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Weird way.

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  Whatever it is, he has it. It, he has it.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  He's got it in his mind. He's got it in his technique, his grappling. I watched a video of him grappling with Murab. And he was all over Murab. It was crazy.

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  That's what they say. His grappling is just as good, if not better than his, his stand-up.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  That's where he started. He started as a grappler.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  I've never seen him grapple though.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Well, he finished, um, Bryce Mitchell on the ground. And, uh, he's, he's finished a few people on the ground. He's, he's like, he does clearly have phenomenal submission ability. What are you showing me here? What is this him?

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  He says he's done it for a long time.

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  You can see his face was already sucked in a little bit.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  He said that when he was on the podcast though that he only did it twice.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Three years ago.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. He's all tipsy and drunk.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  Look, I tell this to young fighters, there's no right, I mean, obviously don't smoke crack before a fight. There's no right or wrong way, everybody's different, whatever makes you feel comfortable to perform and compete, like, everybody's different. If there was a cookie cutter, perfect way to work, everybody would do it.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Well, look at Carlos's protest.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, smoking cigs.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Smoking cigarettes like the day of the fight, he's sitting there smoking Marlboro Reds.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Darts.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  Who was the boxer?

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Fucking everybody up.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Back in the day.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Majorca.

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  Majorca.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Ricardo Majorca.

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  He would smoke cigarettes.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  Drinking, fucking, Carlos drinking whiskey, smoking cigs, like.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  He's like, I'm always gonna party and always gonna fuck people up.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Respect.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he's gonna fight, is he fighting Jack Delamantelena, is that the fight?

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  I'm not sure.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  I believe that's the fight in Perth, that is a very good fight.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, a tough one for Jack to come back to, man. I was in, I was in MSG when Islam took the belt from him, dude, complete domination.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Well, that's another guy. How good is that guy?

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  And Ilya was talking about fighting him too, you know, the size difference would be so big.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  So big.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  Islam is huge.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  He's huge.

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  He's huge.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  He's too big for 55 and then you see him at 170, like, how did you ever make 55?

• 1:06:28Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Cause he's so dominant at 170.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, Hunter, uh, from the UFC, I was in his office not too long ago and they keep record of all the weights fight night. They don't release them all, but they keep it and we were talking about the Islam fight when I fought Islam and he was telling me his weight, I was like, that's.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  What did he weigh?

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  192 or something, I think.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  The day of the fight?

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Something 190, 191, something around there.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  I was 176.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  That's cra- but it looks like it in the cage, like whenever I interview him.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  I looked across under those spotlights and they had veins in his shoulders and shit, I'm like, fuck, this guy's huge.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  The ones where I'm like, how? Gregory Rodriguez is the one where I'm like, how?

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  How? How, how are you 185, how? You're 6'3", you're built like a Greek god, how, how do you ever weigh 185? How is that even possible? Whenever I interview him, I'm like, how?

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Cause I'm standing next to you and I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. Like this doesn't, you're not a hundred and eighty-five pound guy. You're huge.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  Like in his prime when Luke Rockwell was a champion, he's huge, man.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  Huge.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  One eighty-five?

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yo, Romero is the best example. Like how? How are you one eighty-five?

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Built like an anvil dude, solid all the way through.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  When he came in to do the podcast and Joey Diaz translated for him, he was like two thirty.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Just like his neck starts at the top of his head, just, just a tank.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  And shredded always. No, no jiggle dude shredded always. Veins in his abs like crazy.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he was, he was talking about the Cuban program. I'll never forget. It was like talking about like how they have the, the lower level guys only eat twice a day, but the, the top level guys eat three times a day. And so everybody is competing literally for food.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  Crazy you say that in Angola prison in Louisiana, there's a boxing league. If you're on the boxing league and get accepted into it, you get more meals and stuff. So the same thing, these, these prisoners are like trying their best to stay on this boxing league. You get more meals, more time, more free time.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  They actually fight other prisons, man.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  I was thinking this would be a great documentary to come out with.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  That would be a great documentary.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  And it's CCTV to the other prisons. So other prisons can watch in their cells.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  They bus them to Angola, other prisons in Louisiana, they box. They put out a schedule every year. If you ever want to go to one, it's invite only, but I, I.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  I'd rather watch at home.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  It's, bro, it feels, it feels illegal dude. It feels illegal.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Well, it might not be legal in other states.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, it might not be legal in Louisiana. I might be getting in trouble for saying this.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Is anybody any good?

• 1:09:02Speaker 00

  Hell yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Well, you think Bernard Hopkins came out of jail?

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  I mean, the guy, obviously Tyson beat him, but the black rhino was an Angola boxing prisoner who got out or pardoned to, to fight Mike Tyson.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  That's crazy. I did not know that.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  So, did they have a program where they have coaches and?

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  They have to.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Do they have equipment and everything?

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:09:27Speaker 00

  And different, according to the schedule, they'll bus them to the other prisons to fight and it's played through all the prisons in Louisiana.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Man, you find a highly skilled guy who's in that program.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  And they let them go, bro.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Nothing to lose.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  The refs, they're legitimate refs, but they let the fights go, man.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  What kind of nutrition are they getting, though? They getting prison food?

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Or they getting any better food?

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  No, prison food, but they getting more meals. They get to eat extra.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Still terrible food, right?

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, Angola's a crazy, crazy prison, man. Grow all the food there, make all the clothes there.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  They grow their food there?

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  So, maybe their food's not that bad.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Self-sustaining. I'm sure they ship a bunch of stuff in, but they do have crops. And it's such a big operation that, uh, the guards and the staff live on the prison grounds. There's a s- elementary school.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's ele- the, the worker, the guards, kids and stuff go to school on the grounds. It's, it's wild, man.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Oh, that can't be good.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  It's wild. Every October, they have a, or the rodeo there.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Article about that Boxing Association from twenty eleven.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  Some photos and an interview with some people, I think, that were part of it.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Well, you wanna focus. You know, women weaken legs? Ain't no women in there, dog.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  Hell, no.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, serious businessman.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  I did not know that. That's nuts, man. Yeah, how come no one's done a documentary on this, or have they?

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  I know. Well, B-Hop was a prison boxer in Philly, right?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, this would be a great documentary, man. Interesting.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bernard learned, I mean, I mean, learned like real discipline in prison and also learned that he never wants to go back.

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  You know, which is as important.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  And I think Angola's like maximum security, so you don't go there if you have less than like twenty-five years or something. So, these guys are in there for a long time, just trying to find things to do and boxing, eating extra, getting more free time. Why wouldn't you do it?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Also.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  Get in shape.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  Keeps you focused. You have something to concentrate on other than the fact that you're in jail.

• 1:11:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  It was wild, bro. They set up a ring like in a cafeteria. I went there once to watch it. It was, it was insane. It felt like I was doing something wrong. It felt like I was doing something wrong.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Were the guys good?

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Fuck yeah, some of them were good, man.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  Really good.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Wow, fuck. Of what, that's interesting, they pardoned that guy to, who's the?

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  There's titles too, they have bells. The Black Rhino, Cliff, Clifford, maybe?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Uh, ATN.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  So he was in prison boxing in Angola and he fought Tyson.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  No shit.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  I mean, why not, man? At least it gives him something to focus on. The idea is like, oh, you're gonna make a more dangerous felon? Bro, they're dangerous.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  They're danger, they're in there for murder. What do you think, what do you think? They're in there for armed robbery, murder, like, let them fight.

• 1:12:12Speaker 00

  Right, doing life, like?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Like, also, we trying to pretend that that's not gonna improve the quality of their life and improve them as a human being? Like, doing something difficult, even if it's difficult and violent like fighting, will make you a better human being.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Make you tougher, smarter, more disciplined, more focused. Also, release all the aggression there, so you don't have aggression in like, regular altercations nearly as much.

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's where I'm at right now, like, leaving fighting in the rearview is like, what do I do with my life now?

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Are you still training?

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  Dude, I've been traveling so much, twice a week, maybe, you know? If I'm home on Friday, I do open mat jiu-jitsu, couple kickboxing classes if I can make it, but I've just been traveling so much, man.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Why have you been traveling so much?

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Sponsors, appearances, cornering buddies, like, just saying yes to everything that I couldn't before, you know?

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  I'm more busy now, I think, because before I would shut everything down, like, I gotta get ready for this fight, I have to focus on this. No, I can't do anything, blackout these dates, now it's like?

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  You're really good on the desk, man.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  I enjoy, man, I really do enjoy.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  You can tell, yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the best things that the UFC does with former fighters, is they give them this opportunity to do stuff on the desk. I think that's huge.

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  I, I, I hope they keep bringing me, I just signed a contract for the year. Um, when it was ESPN, I was kinda doing like, independent contractor stuff, they would ask me, I would say yes, but I'm on contract with UFC for a year, so hopefully they keep bringing me, man, I- All the people behind the scenes, just being around the event that I've, you know, I've fought at for so long, it just makes me feel good.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  And I get nervous because it's live TV, you can't fuck up.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:49Speaker 00

  You know, live TV is different.

• 1:13:51Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by Noco, you're miles from home, you turn the key, nothing, dead battery. Normally that means finding another car, someone willing to give you a jump, and dealing with old jumper cables. But what if you didn't need any of that? Keep a Noco portable jump starter in your glove box and jump start your car yourself. No cables, no second vehicle, no waiting for help. It also works as a power bank and has a built-in LED flashlight. Noco, the end of jumper cables. Use code ROGEN10 for 10% off select jump starters at N-O dot C-O.

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  When you shop Kroger delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply, see site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Well, I would like to see they allow more of you guys to take the, the spots doing fights in commentary.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  Oh, like color?

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, right now it's just Dominique Cruz, Paul Felder, Michael Bisping in DC. That's essentially it.

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  I mean, those, those are only former fighters from the UFC that are doing it. And I, I really think there's room for more guys.

• 1:15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Dan Hardy was great.

• 1:15:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  He was awesome at it.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  I don't know what the fuck happened with him in the UFC. They had some sort of a squabble and he left, but he's fantastic over at PFL.

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  He's still with them?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he does that. He's really good, man. He's a smart-

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, he breaks stuff down.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Very good. And he's a great guy, I've known him forever. He was a 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu guy, so I've known him since like- Fuck, I must have met him twenty years ago.

• 1:15:48Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  I didn't know that.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, before he was fighting GSP, before he's fighting any of those guys. I I knew him.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  He would come over from England to train in America.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  He was such a knockout artist, we never really get to see him.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  Do jiu-jitsu.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he was good at jiu-jitsu too, man. I mean, he trained hard. And he's just a very smart dude who knows a lot about the sport.

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it seems like it. When he's breaking down stuff, you can tell he's studied.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  He's also just like a very skillful commentator because he's very intelligent and is the way he describes things, it's exciting. I mean, I think he they, I don't know what happened with them.

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  I try, man, when I'm on the desk with those guys, I try my best to not break things down too much, like on the stat side. I try to make it seem like a conversation sitting on the couch watching Fights With Your Boys, where I talk about experiences that I've had and stuff, because they explained it to me, like that's what fans want to see. If they want to look up stats, they'll go look it up. They don't want to hear you talk about submission attempts and exact stats. They want to know your experience.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  So like, each rep, I'm think I'm getting better, you know, opening up and being more myself. I'm trying to do a good job, man. I really, really enjoy it.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  I think stats are interesting sometimes, but what's really more important than that is like a technical breakdown of abilities.

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Because stats, it's, you know, it's variable depending on who you're fighting. Like, like you take Charles Olivera's stats and then you say his fight with Islam Makachev, and you say, okay, well, where's the stats? Like, it's, it's like, it's really dependent upon skill sets, who's your level of competition, who you're competing with.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  That was a quick submission, though. The stats are one submission attempt, one submission.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Bro, he's got a crushing squeeze.

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  It's different, bro. It's different. Yeah. Yeah, he strangled me. And the way he did it, I think he, uh, Moicano filled in last minute to fight Islam and got caught with the same choke.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  It's kind of like a, a Darsh choke, but he locks it on his forearm.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  He doesn't go to the bicep.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  And the squeeze is different. He's pulling to his chest. It's not like a angle squeeze. It's, it's different. So the defense is different. When I got my legs out and tried to walk around, he, he hooked my leg, but like the squeeze is completely different.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:17:53Speaker 00

  Completely different. You know you belly down and kind of get some space to breathe, you can't the way he does it.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Craig Jones broke it down.

• 1:18:01Speaker 00

  It's like a front choke, almost like a

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  Like a squeeze to your chest, it's not an angle that you use for a normal darts choke.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  I know, I was shocked the first time I saw him do it. I was like, maybe he just like couldn't cinch up the bicep. Then I saw him do it a second time, I was like, no, this guy's trying to do it that way. He grabs right here, right? Craig Jones did an awesome breakdown of it on YouTube. Where explains why it's effective and what's so good about it.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  And it, when he gets the grip locked in, like it's complete immediate blood shutdown. You know, usually you feel it slowly fading away, it was like right away.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Wow, so that dude's got a back

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Like the whole started

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Drive-through movie on

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  The darkness started coming in like as soon as he got the grip.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  He's so fucking strong, man. There's like something about those Dagestan guys, man. Like the discipline those motherfuckers have.

• 1:18:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  You know, there's Dagestan guys that are making their way into Muay Thai now, too. There's this dude, Asadullah Iman Gazaliyev. I talk about him all the time, but I can't talk about him enough. He's one of those One FC guys that is fighting in Muay Thai from Dagestan. And this fucking kid is 22 years old and he's knocking out like multiple time world Thai champions.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  I've never seen him.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Bro, this dude is a freak. I mean, he's a freak, he's just putting people into the shadow realm, every fight.

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  Dude, it's so wild to fight four ounce gloves in Muay Thai.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:19:28Speaker 00

  But I mean, you could throw elbows and stuff and knees, so it

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  It's perfect. It's like four ounce gloves, I mean, look, you're throwing elbows, knees, everything else in the clinch, it allows you to grapple better.

• 1:19:38Speaker 00

  It just makes it so much more dangerous for the blocking, you know, you don't have the gloves covering all the space around your ears.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  But this cat is special, man, he's special.

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  Nasty, buddy.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  And he's from Dagestan. It's like, okay, imagine this motherfucker gets into MMA, everybody's fucked. If this guy can wrestle at all, which you know he can if he's from fucking Dagestan.

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  Well, they do a lot of kickboxing for Sambo, right?

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. This dude's something though, he's something new. Oh my god. Cause he's twenty-two years old. And he's like world Muay Thai champions, he's sleeping them all. Yeah. It's nuts, man. What weight is that? Uh, one forty-five. I think he's one forty-five? Or thirty-five? One forty-five. Probably tall, tall and lean. One thirty-two? Is that what it says?

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  This thing right here says, uh, on screen. Weight limit one thirty-two point seven.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Interesting. Five-ten. Interesting.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  Sixty kilograms.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Twenty-two years old, man. Well, at that weight, well, and then you think about, one has some crazy thing, look at this, win knockout, win knockout, win knockout. He's a freak, man. And that one dude that made it to the unanimous decision is this kid from Morocco who's just tough as shit. But goddamn, he took a beating. They have such a great product, man, I wonder how many like viewers and how the ratings are. I mean, it's big in Asia, but um, they're, they have financial struggles. I don't wanna speak to it cause I don't know enough, but there's a lot of talk. I know they wanted to start doing shows in America. They've done a few. Yeah. Uh, I know they did one in Colorado, they maybe have done multiple, I'm not aware. But uh, it's a great product, that's the thing, it's like, I love watching their kickboxing fights on YouTube.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  And that kid Yuki Yozu that I was telling you about that throws calf kicks. He's fucking everybody up with calf kicks. And there's another guy from, a lot of these Kyokushin guys, especially in kickboxing. So, like, they have different rule sets over there in one. You can fight kickboxing where they use big gloves. Or you could fight Muay Thai where they use little gloves, and I think they've had Muay Thai fights where they have big gloves too. So, in the kickboxing, you're not allowed to clinch, not allowed to throw elbows. But in the, but you, you can throw knees, but you can't clinch and just continue to throw knees, and you can't sweep and you can't take guys down. It's a little confusing, I think Muay Thai's the way to go. But the thing about kickboxing in Japan is like, they just wanted to, that's what K-1 was.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  They, they're like, let's just take out all the clinching and make this as exciting as possible. What's the best way to do that? And the elbows, elbows are very effective, obviously, and knock a lot of guy, guys out, but also cut a lot of people open and stop fights prematurely. Which is why Pride didn't allow elbows, which is really crazy. When you think about that, because Pride had soccer kicks and stomps. But you were fighting multiple times. True.

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  Cuts, you know, if you get cut in the first fight, it could change everything. I think that makes sense.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  I kinda, but I mean soccer kicks? Stomps and soccer kicks with no elbows? It's hard to say because.

• 1:22:34Speaker 00

  And knees to a grounded guy.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ground and proud elbows are so effective. It's so important. I mean, it really like guys that think they're comfortable and safe in the guard, you're not. You're not when a guy can still bust you up with elbows from a short distance. It's a very effective technique.

• 1:22:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, very damaging cut. Yeah, very, very damaging technique.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Well, there's a real problem with the cage and the problem is the wall. Like the fence is an artificial structure that keeps you from being able to move. And I've always said this, that I think it should be an open mat. It should be a large mat. And you should, you should not.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  Like a wrestling mat?

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a big wrestling mat. Like think about a basketball game. Like think about how much space is on a basketball court? And you still get 16,000 people in there to watch a basketball game.

• 1:23:22Speaker 00

  Guys would be, I would think running, running around a lot of.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  You know, maybe you get penalty, penalty for moving too much. Maybe you have red zones. You have a red zone.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Yellow card or?

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Well, you have a, you have a center that you're supposed to stay in and then you have a red zone outside of it. And then you have a black zone outside the red zone where you get points taken away.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  You enter into the red zone too many times, you get a warning for the first time. Another warning for the second time, third time, you get a point taken away. So you could use it once or twice to evade, but then you gotta go back into the area where you're supposed to fight.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  I think that would be, that would be cool. How big of a, of an area are you talking?

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Basketball court.

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  That's too big, man. That's too big.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  How about football? How about football fucking field?

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  That's too big. That's too big.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  They're doing that with no rules fights.

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  Yeah?

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I watch a lot of no rules fights. They're horrible.

• 1:24:08Speaker 00

  The Russian, the Russian stuff?

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  They're so scary because guys just mount guys and gouge their eyes out.

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  They're mounting people and just shoving their fingers in their, and guys are screaming and tapping and it's like, oh.

• 1:24:18Speaker 00

  I run across some pretty crazy stuff on IG sometimes from those.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  But they're fighting in parking lots, they're fighting on.

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  Phone booths, cars upside down, underwater, they're fighting everywhere.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  They're fighting everywhere.

• 1:24:29Speaker 00

  I saw him on a cargo container floating on the, on top of water, where you get knocked off and.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  It's so ridiculous.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  American gladiators. KO'd and you fall into the water and you just breathe water and they don't rescue you in time.

• 1:24:42Speaker 00

  Just fight with those kid floaties on? If you get knocked out, you just float to the top?

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Instead of those Muay Thai things?

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Blow them up, your corners, your corners blowing them up.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think the cage, I, I'd like, like, you know how like the UFC, uh, BJJ? Does that sloped surface?

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  A perfect example of karate combat.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Karate combat does that sloped surface, that's a good one.

• 1:25:06Speaker 00

  And that's a big space they fight in karate combat.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Speaker 00

  Something like that I think would be good.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  It would be better. There's something about, but the problem is then you're, you're backing up and you hit that ramp and you fall down.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  Or what was the old karate, uh, it was like, I don't think it was Chuck Norris's league?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Chuck Norris.

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, his league, something like that.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was World Combat League or something like, I went to see that one.

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  WC, WCF?

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that. World Combat Federation, yeah. I think the first guy to do a slanted thing though, was Frank Shamrock. You know, a lot of people don't realize that Frank Shamrock had an organization for a while. And they fought in like this sloped sort of thing.

• 1:25:44Speaker 00

  Fucking Kumite.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he might've been the first guy. Frank was way ahead of his time, way ahead of his time. And he's another guy that got erased from, cause he had a falling out with the UFC and he got kind of erased from the lineage of like elite fighters from the past.

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  Fighting older in Strikeforce, like still bodied up and.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:26:05Speaker 00

  He was a student of martial arts.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, but by the time he got to Strikeforce, his kind of best days were behind him, like when Nick Diaz beat him up.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  It was, he wasn't the same guy. When he fought Phil Barone, he wasn't the same guy. He had a lot of knee problems and it's like, he's just not. After a while, it's like.

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  He might've been like 40s in Strikeforce or.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  I don't know how old he was.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  Late 30s, 40s.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Late 30s for sure, but when you go back to his fights in the UFC, I mean, he was a pioneer, man. When he fought Tito Ortiz, he was nowhere near Tito's size. And he just beat Tito with cardio, just cardio and defense. And then eventually wore his ass down and beat him up and changed Tito's entire strategy for fighting after that.

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  He was one of the guys early was like super fit, super, you know.

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Really focused on his, his health and nutrition and supplementation and everything. Back then, you didn't see a whole lot of that, but he was one of the guys for sure. Well, the Lions Den, you know, Ken Shamrock's, his, the thing that they put guys through, this gauntlet that they put guys through in order to make the team, to make the fight team was hell. It was just hell. They wanted guys to break. And so, extreme conditioning, extreme mental toughness, like all that was emphasized. Yeah. And so Frank was the best example of that though, because he was, he was elite everywhere. He was really taking guys down. He had great submissions. He had great striking. And you know, he fought some wild fights, man. He fought Ensign.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  I don't remember where that was. Was that in K1? But he beat Ensign with knees. Like he, he'd fought in multiple organizations. Obviously started out in Pancrase. Yeah. But he had only been training for like a year or something like that when he fought Boss Rootin' in Pancrase. He was super fucking talented, man. Why, they let him wear boots, right? Or some kind of leg? Yeah, you had some weird shin pad deal with, well, you had wrestling shoes with shin pads and open hand slaps. You know? Yeah, yeah. It was always palm. Uh huh, yeah. So what is this in? Does it say what it's in? 2011.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  This says UFC. It's not UFC. Oh, it's Valley Tudo Japan. Yeah, this was before 2011. Yeah. Okay, so this is Valley Tudo Japan. So Valley Tudo Japan, I wonder if it's the same Valley Tudo that Hickson fought in. So Hickson was, you know, the champion of Valley Tudo Japan early on. Well, that was like the, in the documentary Choke. You've seen that, right? A long time ago, yeah. Documentary rules. That documentary rules. That's how Hickson became a legend. Back in the real NHB, no. Yeah, no rules days. Well, the first UFC that I went to was UFC 12 in Dothan, Alabama.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  And you could wear wrestling shoes. You could punch guys in the nuts. Hair pulling, grab their clothes. No weight class? Uh, there was two weight classes back then. Um, like, cause Vitor won the heavyweight tournament back then. I think they had two weight classes back then. So they still recognize that there's some smaller guys and some big guys. The smaller guys are real talented, but they're never gonna beat the big giant guys. So let's have a weight class for them.

• 1:29:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Speaker 00

  I remember renting VHS tapes with my dad or the old YOCs, dude.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  What got you into this sport? Like, how old were you when you first started martial arts training, period?

• 1:29:37Speaker 00

  Seventeen.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Seventeen, that's late.

• 1:29:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  If you think about it, right?

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, if you wanna call wrestling, I wrestled for two years when I was ten and eleven for a private club. Did like traveling, Texas a lot, Louisiana, small club meets. But other than that, no combat sports, no martial art experience.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  How'd you get into it?

• 1:29:55Speaker 00

  Boxing, when I was seventeen, I wanted to box, always wanted to box. Started going to a boxing gym, met some MMA guys there. Didn't know they had MMA where I was from, then went to the MMA gym and never went back to the boxing gym.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  So what year are we talking?

• 1:30:09Speaker 00

  Two thousand and six, maybe?

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, so this was right when the UFC first started.

• 1:30:13Speaker 00

  This is like, I remember when Stefan and Forrest did the big thing. This was like, beginning around the time I was training boxing and mixed martial arts. So that wave, like, I just never stopped.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. What was it? The, uh, World Combat?

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  Like, Chris Horedekki was over there, Ben Rato was over there, remember? What was that?

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:36Speaker 00

  The team organization, that was big at the time.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Right, IFL?

• 1:30:39Speaker 00

  IFL, yes. Everybody had teams and stuff.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  That was weird.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  That was real big around that time. Uh, yeah, I didn't know.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  That's where Dan Miller, Jim's brother, landed the grossest guillotine I've ever seen in my life. Have you ever seen this one?

• 1:30:53Speaker 00

  I don't think so.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Oh my god, it's the worst guillotine of all time. He gets this guy in a guillotine, traps his head in his chest, and bends his chest. So his head is connected to his own chest sideways. So like this, his head went all the way down and touched his chest. I don't even know how he stayed alive.

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Watch this, watch this, watch this guillotine.

• 1:31:14Speaker 00

  There it is, IFL.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Now, watch this guillotine, look at that, look at that, bro.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  Jesus.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Bro, how's that guy alive?

• 1:31:20Speaker 00

  He's not.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  Look at that, look at that, how is he alive? Have you ever seen that before, ever? Like, that's crazy. That is the craziest guillotine I've ever seen in my life. That's so crazy.

• 1:31:32Speaker 00

  Looks like his neck's broken, bro.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  How, how's he alive?

• 1:31:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Like, first of all, why did it take so long for the referee to stop? Who's the referee?

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  Steve Mazzagatti.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  I don't know who it is, but you could have probably stopped that a couple of seconds earlier. But I mean, it's just hard to imagine that a neck can go in that direction. Like, it's so, that doesn't show it. The other angle that you showed is really what showed it.

• 1:31:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  The other angle where you see it from the side, where you see his head. Like, when he cinches it up here, that is crazy. That, you're not supposed to bend like that. You know, your ear is never supposed to touch your chest.

• 1:32:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  I don't know how it does. I don't know. I mean, it just seems like everything would break. It seems like you would never walk again.

• 1:32:18Speaker 00

  He's not, Dan's not fighting anymore, huh?

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  No. Jim's still fighting.

• 1:32:21Speaker 00

  Jim's still rolling, man.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  Jim's still fighting.

• 1:32:23Speaker 00

  Still rolling.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 1:32:24Speaker 00

  Most fights in UFC history.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  And, and still fine. No surgeries, no nothing.

• 1:32:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Still durable.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  Did get beat up, I think, was his last fight Bobby Green? That was the last time I think I saw him fight.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  I don't know if that was his last fight, but he definitely got beat up.

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  That was a, I think that was his last fight.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  He's definitely lost his step. I mean, he's 40 years old.

• 1:32:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  But man, dude still loves it. Still loves it.

• 1:32:43Speaker 00

  Respect to him, dude.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean.

• 1:32:46Speaker 00

  He sent me a cookbook. He came out of cookbook. He's a big cook and hunter and stuff, you know? He sent me a cookbook and a spatula.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  It's like Captain Redbeard or Jimmy Redbeard on the spatula. It's like engraved into it. Fuck, yeah.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  He's quite a character.

• 1:32:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like him, I like him, man.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  I like him a lot, too. He's a very fun dude. And also, complete wits about him, doesn't have any problems mentally, you know? He's like, all those fights.

• 1:33:08Speaker 00

  Seems like a hard worker, he's always on his farm doing stuff. Like, you would never think he was a fighter if you didn't know.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 1:33:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a fascinating character. Well, the thing about this sport is that it, like, exceptional humans are exceptional at fighting. Like, to be an exceptional fighter, you have to be an exceptional person. There's really no way around it. There's like, it's too hard to do. You have to be a very unique kind of human being that can get through those camps, that can perform under the big lights, that can figure out how to keep getting better and evolve.

• 1:33:40Speaker 00

  For sure. And that type of stuff is like, the last time I was on the show, what I was talking about, it's like a gift and a curse, man. It's like you have to be all in at something. Those kind of people who are built like that.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:50Speaker 00

  Whether it's fighting, or drinking, or whether it's good or bad, you're going all in. It's dangerous.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  That's the problem, yeah. The problem is, like, what you see with Connor, when they don't have the fighting, then they go all in with the other things.

• 1:34:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Speaker 00

  Fighting was always, for me, always pulled everything together, you know?

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  That's why, like, retiring is scary, man.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout, or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply, see site or store for details.

• 1:34:39Speaker 00

  Days are long, I have a lot of time. I don't have to get ready for a fight, I don't, you know.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  And you're still a young man, too. You still have a whole lot of life ahead of you.

• 1:34:47Speaker 00

  Thirty-seven, man.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it makes you think, like, what do I do now? What do I do with my future? What do I do, what do you want to do?

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  Dude, I kind of got like, for a week or so, I wouldn't say depressed, but I kind of got into like a funk, like, what the hell am I gonna do with my life? Every day I would wake up, for the last 20 years, how can I be a better fighter? How can I, what's new in fitness? How can I push myself? I want to be the champion, and then boom, you lay the gloves down and you wake up and you're a fucking civilian. Like, it feels crazy, you know? It's like I'm relearning who I am. Like, I always knew fighting was just something I did, it wasn't who I was. But after 20 years of doing it, even though you know that and you think that, like, fuck, I don't know who I am without fighting.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  How long did it take?

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a lot of things. But like, fighting was a cloud in my mind that never went away for 20 years.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:36Speaker 00

  And now I wake up and it's gone, like, what do I do? I'm still trying to find out, Joe, I don't know.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Did you still get nervous when you would go to events? You know, that feeling that you get, like, you feel like you could be competing? No, no, no.

• 1:35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  When you go to other events, for other people?

• 1:35:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Like, just feeling like you might have to compete?

• 1:35:51Speaker 00

  Dude, my hands are sweaty, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  That's weird, right?

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously, I never.

• 1:35:56Speaker 00

  It just happened to me last, well, a couple of weeks, when Max fought Charles. I was nervous, I had armpit stains, my hands were sweating, I'm like, dude, I hope those people don't see this.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Right, because you feel like you're still there.

• 1:36:07Speaker 00

  I was connected to both these guys for some reason.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Well, you are, forever. Yeah, that's the thing. That's what's so interesting about watching, like, old fighters, even old boxers, when they go to, like, Hall of Fame ceremonies, and they're seeing each other and hugging, like, those guys are connected in time, forever.

• 1:36:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, Max, Max came up to the desk and I was like... We spent an hour of our lives fighting each other, you know, as hard as we could. And he didn't even know, he's like, no way, an hour? I'm like, yeah dude, we went to two decisions, two five-round decisions. And we fought, the first fight was one or two rounds, so it's an hour of fight.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Speaker 00

  We spent an hour beating each other up.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  That is crazy when you think about it.

• 1:36:43Speaker 00

  An hour is a long time.

• 1:36:46Speaker 00

  An hour is a long time to fight another man.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Especially bearing your soul in front of the world. It's not a regular hour, just hanging out at the beach.

• 1:36:53Speaker 00

  It's the biggest hour.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  And it's an hour you're prepared for, for months each time.

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  But because of that, like, like you were saying with the boxers, like, we know, we have an unwritten thing we know about each other. You know, something we never spoke about, but we know each other better than a lot of people do.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know when a person breaks and who doesn't break.

• 1:37:11Speaker 00

  Max doesn't break.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  He doesn't break. I mean, you see it in that fight. I mean, how's he, how does he go through that whole round and not get submitted?

• 1:37:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Dry, with Olivera on his back, and got close a few times, like first.

• 1:37:24Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that old shinaioki, where you go the angle, you can choke through the jaw.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, man. Guys go to sleep.

• 1:37:32Speaker 00

  Neck crank, it'll choke you to sleep through the jaw.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Well, even just a rear naked across your face, I've seen guys go to sleep.

• 1:37:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  They just go to sleep. You try not to tap and you just wake up and you're like, how did he choke me out over my face? Cause it's like.

• 1:37:46Speaker 00

  If you get enough torque and crank, it'll, yeah, it'll cut off the vein or whatever, you know, it'll, it'll put you out.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  It's enough, which is nuts.

• 1:37:53Speaker 00

  And it's so much pain on the jaw, too.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Oh, it's horrible.

• 1:37:56Speaker 00

  Choking, getting, lack of oxygen to the brain is one thing, like the jaw binding up against the bones, like, you know that sharp pain you get when somebody's face cranking you in your jaw?

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Hell.

• 1:38:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it feels like it's gonna dislocate.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that was the thing with Khabib and Connor, where he did that torque, that torque crank, where he got his neck and he cinched it up with the forearm behind the neck?

• 1:38:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  And pulls back like this, like, that is hell.

• 1:38:19Speaker 00

  And those guys squeeze is different, man. Those guys squeeze is different.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Well, there's something about lifelong grapplers, there's like a density to them that's just different.

• 1:38:29Speaker 00

  The density, the strength, and just like, the knowing of where to put the pressure and what angle to turn your hips to make a big difference, you know? People outside don't even see it, but it's so, so. Crucial in the moment.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Speaker 00

  Somebody's on your back and they just turn a little bit with the elbow, you know, rather than just squeeze straight on, small things like that. Or, you know, when fights.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  I'll tell you the fight that I'm really looking forward to. Really looking forward to, because I don't know what's gonna happen, is Hamzat versus Strickland. I'm very interested in that fight. Strickland is a fucking nightmare standing up.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  He's a nightmare.

• 1:39:07Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  When he did a Fluffy Hernandez, I was like, holy shit, man.

• 1:39:11Speaker 00

  The body shot, the finish, but he made Fluffy fight, you know, he fights at a slower pace. He has his own pace in there and he kind of forces the other guy to fight. His opponent has to fight this pace with him. I think the best, the best chance is to, to blitz him, do unorthodox things. Because he wants to jab, circle, throw a kick, jab, circle. He keeps a very slow pace. He's not sprinting or trying to blast you out of there. He just.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Well, he doesn't get hit much.

• 1:39:34Speaker 00

  Chips, chips away, high guard, good show.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, very good show. His defense is extraordinary. He, you know, one of the things he was telling me is like, I spar more than anybody and I get hit less than anybody. And that is true. Like, if you think about how much that guy spars, it's a giant part of his training.

• 1:39:50Speaker 00

  Look at James Tony. He was hard, he was hard to hit and all he did was spar.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:53Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Right, perfect example.

• 1:39:55Speaker 00

  There's something taught in that, in those moments.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Understanding of distance, timing, pattern recognition, you're constantly in there, moving around.

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  It's like, and then there's also the cardio that comes from sparring.

• 1:40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  It's different.

• 1:40:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  Like, because his cardio is almost entirely based on sparring. And, man, that motherfucker doesn't get tired in there.

• 1:40:16Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  And the Fluffy fight was like, I thought Fluffy was gonna be a problem. I'm like, Fluffy's really good, man. You think, he submitted Adolfo Vieira, he's got all this fucking crazy cardio, he puts a pace on guys and Strickland made it look like he just did not belong in there.

• 1:40:33Speaker 00

  He's so heavy on that front foot, though, I can't believe guys aren't smashing that calf, man.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  I know. Well, he's hard to hit, man. And he also knows how to do that, that, um, fucking, that hacky sack thing. Where, you know, like you're bending your knee upwards. You know what I mean?

• 1:40:47Speaker 00

  To check it?

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you don't even check it. You just kind of like relax your leg and lift it up. You know who showed me that is Alex Pereira. He's like, instead of checking it, it's like, if you check it, it still hurts you.

• 1:40:59Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  But he just lifts his leg up. He just goes heel to knee on the opposite side. And so like a hacky sack move.

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. I've seen guys take thigh leg kicks like that.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Speaker 00

  Kind of let it swing a little.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  But he does it with the calf. So it's like, he sees it coming. Instead of doing that, stepping out and checking it, he did like, like, look at this.

• 1:41:18Speaker 00

  That, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it. Well, that, I think in this instance, I think that was probably the, I don't know if that was the first fight or the second fight, but Izzy's calf was already done. He was really happy. He told me after that fight, he goes, when he got stopped in the first fight, he goes, dude, I wasn't even that hurt. It wasn't that. He goes, I couldn't move. He goes, my calf was cooked.

• 1:41:39Speaker 00

  It doesn't, it doesn't go away.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one's crazy. That.

• 1:41:44Speaker 00

  That's hard to do, bro.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  That's kind of silly. Soccer move.

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  That's hard to do.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  That's kind of silly. I don't think he really does that.

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  Block it with the bottom of your foot?

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  He could though. I'm very interested in that fight too. Him versus Cyril Gahn. That's very interesting.

• 1:41:56Speaker 00

  For sure, for sure. And I know the power's going to translate over to heavyweight.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, man.

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  He'll be able to flatline heavyweights.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  One hundred percent, especially with zero weight cut.

• 1:42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. He's probably two thirty, two forty, walking around, two thirty something, maybe?

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  He's two forty.

• 1:42:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, come on.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  He's two forty walking around.

• 1:42:11Speaker 00

  That's a legit heavyweight. He's big, tall, long.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Fucking guy fought at eighty-five.

• 1:42:15Speaker 00

  So is Cyril, man.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Cyril's good.

• 1:42:18Speaker 00

  An athlete heavyweight, not just a big guy fighting at heavyweight. He's a legit heavyweight.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  It is a crime in the sport that that fight with Aspinall got stopped the way he did, that he eye poked him. It's a crime.

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Because that fight was playing out in a very interesting direction because Aspinall was having a really hard time touching that.

• 1:42:36Speaker 00

  He was bleeding.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  He was getting busted up. He was getting touched up a lot. Cyril's jab is legit.

• 1:42:42Speaker 00

  And that's what I was most excited for. I wanted to see Tom have to come back, lose a round and come, I've never seen him. Obviously, I've seen him fight, but I've never seen him in a real fight where you have to fight your way back into it.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  How many times has he even been in the second round?

• 1:42:54Speaker 00

  Twice, maybe. Something crazy like that.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Nuts.

• 1:42:56Speaker 00

  And that's why the fanbase kind of blew me away. I was like, these guys are so high on Aspinall right now. Like, for a few months, everybody was talking about Aspinall, how good he is. I've never seen it. Not that he's not. He might, I mean, he has to be good to be where he's at.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10Speaker 00

  But I haven't seen it.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  Well, my thought was the real problem that Aspinall's gonna present is in the grappling. He's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. He's a big fucker. He's fast. He's got a power double. I mean, he explodes. But when he's standing there and trying to stand with Cyril Gahn, this is the first time that he was ever in front of a guy who is agile and quick and very technical. Like, Cyril Gahn was doing a lot of sneaky shit. One thing he does is he keeps his hand low and he pops that jab out. So you don't know where it's coming from.

• 1:43:40Speaker 00

  Up jab.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  He does a lot of weird shit with his front leg, too.

• 1:43:43Speaker 00

  He is pretty quick for his size.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  Real quick. Real quick. And he's a great athlete.

• 1:43:47Speaker 00

  Good hips.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Cyril's a great athlete. Like, it's not just that. I've seen him dunk basketballs and shit. Like, he's, he can move.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  But it's just the fluidity of his striking is so efficient. Like, that's his world. If you just want to strike with him.

• 1:44:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  I mean, Jon Jones is so smart. Jon's like, fuck all this.

• 1:44:05Speaker 00

  Guillotine.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Even Francis. Francis, well, he had a blown-out knee in that fight. But Francis just, like, took him down every round and beat him up.

• 1:44:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  But that's a different Cyril. That's a Cyril that wasn't concentrating enough on his grappling and probably never thought that Francis could employ that tactic.

• 1:44:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  And then really worked with a lot of wrestlers and tried to evolve his game and, you know.

• 1:44:29Speaker 00

  Francis is on that Nate J. card as well.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Right. Right. He's fighting Phillip Linz.

• 1:44:35Speaker 00

  He has an A to T guy.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  How good is he?

• 1:44:38Speaker 00

  I've never really watched him train that much. I know he made it to the UFC for a stint. Then he maybe went PFL. I'm not sure how good he is.

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's.

• 1:44:46Speaker 00

  I've seen him at the gym, but I've never watched him train.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Fortunate that there's not another big name for him to fight. Like, I was hoping they could get a big name.

• 1:44:54Speaker 00

  Bob Sapp.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  I mean, who would be the big name? Like, who's?

• 1:44:59Speaker 00

  At heavyweight?

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, at heavyweight. That's still talented.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  No one. Yeah. Heavyweight is the most shallow division in the sport. Kane's out of jail. Get him in shape. Nah. Kane's got crazy back surgeries and knee surgery and shoulder surgery. Kane was like too tough for his own body. And all the years of wrestling, man. Mm-hmm. Wearing tear, wearing tear. Also just never giving his body a break, just constantly grinding and pushing and that's why he was so good. It's like. I think in his prime, the best. I think he was the best. Well, he was certainly in the argument. In my mind, it's him and Fedor, but honorable mention always I give to Fabrício Verdum. Yeah. It's Fabrício Verdum. People want to think about losses. Think about peak performances. Fabrício Verdum tapped everybody. He tapped all the legends. Great triangle, man.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  He tapped Minotaro, he tapped Fedor, and he tapped Kane. Like, just that, just that alone. He tapped all the legends. I don't know why his name didn't, like, when I was thinking about heavyweights, why his name doesn't even come in. Want to give him respect. I always put it out there because the same way I do with BJ Penn, because people for, they only want to think about BJ Penn, maybe when he fought Frankie Edgar or when he fought Yair Rodriguez. Go back to BJ Penn when he fought Sean Schur. Go back to BJ Penn when he fought Diego Sanchez. That BJ Penn was a motherfucker. Joe Stevenson. Yes, Joe Daddy Stevenson. You got to think about the guys when they're in their prime, when they're at, when they're redlining for X amount of years at peak performance. When you're talking about like all-time greats, I get it.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  All-time greats, you got to think about guys like John Jones, it could be, but he never lost. They stayed flawless their entire career. You're right. But for peak performance, when they're at their best, how good were they? I put primetime BJ Penn at 155 against almost anybody. You're right, man. Bro, he was so good and his jiu-jitsu was so good and he can knock you out and he was an animal. Just an, when he was training with Marv Marinovich when he went over there and was like really learning how to get in insane shape and he would come there with that big ass. Carrying rocks underwater and stuff. All that shit. I think the carrying rocks was him. Marinovich had him doing a lot of like crazy plyometric stuff and

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  the Marinovich's strategy was, you already know how to fight. Fuck all this fighting. You know how to fight. What we're going to do is just give you the most insane gas tank. So your fight training is like secondary. What's really important is just having the most spectacular gas tank so you never get tired. Yeah. But he hated those camps, man. He hated it.

• 1:47:36Speaker 00

  Even in the peak of his shape, he was still a little soft. He was never shredded, like.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  He was pretty shredded when he fought Joe Stevenson.

• 1:47:42Speaker 00

  Was he?

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had a six pack. He looked good. I mean, he was, it was different, but at 55, it was different.

• 1:47:47Speaker 00

  And everybody's body type's different, you know?

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Well, at 70, he was never really a 170, you know? He was never, I mean, he was much smaller than you.

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  He was, he was never really a 170. He was just so tough that he went up to 170 and beat a prime time Matt Hughes.

• 1:48:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, he stuck around longer than he should have.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  He definitely did. He did. And he definitely fought without training well sometimes, and that's the thing people remember.

• 1:48:10Speaker 00

  Yes, I hate that, though.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  They remember that one fight we fought on his tippy toes, remember that fight?

• 1:48:13Speaker 00

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  Crazy, weird shit. But you gotta think about him in his prime. That's what I always say. Don't look at, like, Fabricio Verdoom. Don't look at all the fights, look at the fights when he was in his prime.

• 1:48:26Speaker 00

  When he was putting it all together.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Fabricio was a nightmare. He was a nightmare.

• 1:48:30Speaker 00

  Like when they hit their stride. That's, that's what I was scared about staying around, fighting too long. Like, I retired at 36, I'm like.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:48:37Speaker 00

  How much more athletic am I gonna get? How much faster am I gonna get? How much, you know? Power is the last thing to go, but durability, speed, reaction time, everything that I need, like, and if I'm not right in line for a title shot or knocking on the door of it, like, what am I doing?

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:52Speaker 00

  I'm fighting just to fight for a paycheck?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  You know what's really crazy? That's when...

• 1:48:56Speaker 00

  I had to look myself in the mirror, you know, like, okay, this is it, I'm, I'm gonna...

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  You did the right thing.

• 1:49:01Speaker 00

  Be healthy. Leave with my faculties, for the most part.

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  The age that you retired was the age that Yoel Romero entered into the UFC.

• 1:49:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  Isn't that nuts?

• 1:49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  It really is crazy if you think about it, because that's, that's really what, and there's a few outliers out there in the sport. Like in boxing, Usik is the great outlier. Terrence Crawford is another great outlier.

• 1:49:22Speaker 00

  Dude, what about Usik and Rico?

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:49:25Speaker 00

  Rico's a super nice guy. I love Rico, man. Super nice guy.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  He's a nice guy, but without leg kicks, the fact that he's gonna just box and he's gonna box maybe the best technical heavyweight that's ever lived? I don't know, man.

• 1:49:39Speaker 00

  I learned my lesson, dude. I bet $5,000 on Fury.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 1:49:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  The second fight?

• 1:49:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  Interesting. If anybody could beat him, it's Tyson Fury. If anybody can beat Usik, it's Tyson Fury. Because Tyson Fury was beating him in the first fight. He just got clipped. He got clipped in the, I think it was the ninth. He got really badly hurt. I don't remember what round it was, but he got really badly hurt. And dropped. But Usik is just so slick.

• 1:50:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  His footwork, his movement, he's like, and the fact that he's essentially a blown up cruiserweight and he's beating all these giant heavyweights like Dubois. Like Daniel Dubois is terrifying. What he did to Joshua?

• 1:50:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Just charged forward and just put fucking leather on his face.

• 1:50:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, Rico's a real heavyweight, but he's not a pure boxer.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  No. I mean, he can hit hard. I mean, there's that.

• 1:50:29Speaker 00

  But he's such a great kicker, you're taking a weapon away. It's interesting. It's a spectacle. I'm watching for sure, but I just...

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  I'm sure he's boxed with a lot of like really elite boxers in the gym. I mean, but it's just the payday.

• 1:50:42Speaker 00

  For sure, he has.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  The payday's probably bananas.

• 1:50:44Speaker 00

  I'm sure.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  And they're fighting in Giza.

• 1:50:46Speaker 00

  In front of the pyramids?

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Nuts.

• 1:50:48Speaker 00

  Crazy.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  Who's putting this together? Who put that together?

• 1:50:50Speaker 00

  I have no idea.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, aliens.

• 1:50:53Speaker 00

  Aliens.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  That's where they're gonna land.

• 1:50:55Speaker 00

  Dude, they need to do a Colosseum fight. MMA or boxing, where they set it up either in the Colosseum or right in front, you know, that would be crazy.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Well, they were talking about doing that with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They were talking about them fighting in the Colosseum.

• 1:51:08Speaker 00

  A real fight.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  I know, that's so crazy. Dude, that would be so crazy, have those guys be the first fight in the Colosseum.

• 1:51:15Speaker 00

  Do that one at Meta headquarters or something. Don't do that at the Colosseum. Don't disrespect the...

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  Don't disrespect the Colosseum.

• 1:51:22Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  I know, that's silly. So where, who's live at the Pyramids of Giza? WBC World Heavyweight Championship, The Zone. But like, I wonder who the promoter is.

• 1:51:34Speaker 00

  WBC, I don't.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  Is that their faces? That's so ridiculous. Look at their fucking, with their circular golden gloves on. Glory in Giza.

• 1:51:45Speaker 00

  It's gonna be interesting, man. I'm excited about it.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  I wonder who's gonna buy that? How much is that gonna cost? I'm gonna buy it. But I mean, I mean, how many people are gonna buy that?

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna buy it because it's, I love Rico. I've had Rico on the show. I mean, I think he's the greatest heavyweight kickboxer of all time.

• 1:52:02Speaker 00

  For sure. I, I feel like the way combat sports has kinda intertwined all different stuff, boxing, MMA, how big mixed martial arts is now, you're gonna get a lot of cross, crossover. Before, you'd get a lot of hardcore boxing fans buying this pay-per-view. But now, you're kinda gonna get a little bit of everything. Kickboxing, MMA, boxing fans.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Glory has such a small audience, unfortunately. And this was the, you know, this is the argument that Dana said to me about kickboxing in America, that they tried with Glory. I just don't think they got the right promotion. I think if the UFC was behind it-

• 1:52:33Speaker 00

  I mean, it's non-stop action. It's highlights the whole time. Why wouldn't you?

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  Why wouldn't you? I feel like if the UFC got behind kickboxing in America, it could be gigantic, especially kickboxing with MMA gloves. Like, that Gazaliev guy was fighting in the octagon. You know how fucking gigantic that would be? Or Yuki Yozu, there's another guy, Masata Inori. There's a bunch of guys. There's a bunch of guys that are like really elite that are fighting.

• 1:53:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, a bunch, man. A lot, a lot, a lot.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Masaki Inori.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  Usik, open to fighting Jon Jones in crossover MMA fight. What? Wait, okay, now you got me interested.

• 1:53:19Speaker 00

  Dude.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  If the UFC comes up with the cheddar...

• 1:53:23Speaker 00

  You better start wrestling now.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you better start wrestling now.

• 1:53:26Speaker 00

  Wrestling right now.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  Is that real? Did he say that? Rico is first, second is whoever wins between Wardley and Dubois, and the third fight is my friend, greedy belly Tyson Fury. So he's not gonna, a rematch with Dubois is a tough sell, he just starched him. The Tyson Fury fight is the big fight. Cause Tyson Fury is the only guy that in my eyes makes sense. Says a fight with Jake Paul in MMA at this stage is not being considered, but we're always open to creative and interesting collaborations in the future. If we were talking about cross-swear fights, a very interesting matchup could be against Jon Jones, the United States. Whoa.

• 1:54:04Speaker 00

  I don't know what Jon's gonna do, man, with all the stuff going on with the UFC. He might be done, he might, who knows?

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  He doesn't wanna be done. I know he got stem cells on his hip. I know cause I helped him get it. He got it over at, uh, he's talked about it. I wouldn't have talked about it, but he talked about it. He got it at Wasted Well. And so, uh, he, he's feeling a lot better. He does have arthritis in his hip, it bothers him, but it doesn't bother him enough where he can't fight. And, you know, he's the greatest of all time, period.

• 1:54:32Speaker 00

  I did stem cells and PRP in my hip, I didn't notice anything from that.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Well, it really depends on where you're getting the stem cells, what technology they're using, there's a bunch of different kinds of stem cells.

• 1:54:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  Talk to Brigham about that, he can explain it to you.

• 1:54:45Speaker 00

  I got maybe-

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  But you had a labrum tear, right? It was pretty significant.

• 1:54:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I had to get the head of my femur reshaped, like a resurfacing. It was kinda egg shaped and it needed to be rounded, so it tore everything off the inside of my hip.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  So how do they do that?

• 1:54:58Speaker 00

  They take your leg out of socket.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Ugh!

• 1:55:01Speaker 00

  They, they shave the top rounded and then they micro, they put like a bunch of small holes in it to where it cracks, and then stem cells leak out of your body to create a new surface, out of your bone.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  Whoa. How long did that take to recover?

• 1:55:13Speaker 00

  Eight, I couldn't put pressure on it for eight weeks.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, cause it's like-

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  So you're just walking around on one leg for two months, solid?

• 1:55:21Speaker 00

  Crutches, crutches, yeah.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  And then once you start walking again, how weird was it?

• 1:55:24Speaker 00

  Very weird, cause I had to sleep in like a, a motion machine where my leg wouldn't stop moving at night.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:55:31Speaker 00

  Cause your hip capsule is like tricky, if you, if it heals up too tight, you know, your leg won't have any, any range of motion at all. So while it's healing, you need to be in- Perpetual motion, I guess.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:55:41Speaker 00

  And every week, they would send a new code for my wife to type in the machine and it would be a little bit different angle.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, so my my.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  What a nightmare.

• 1:55:49Speaker 00

  For those eight weeks, I was sleeping in this metal brace that moved my leg all night.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  How did you sleep?

• 1:55:54Speaker 00

  It was horrible because it went up to like your your junk in inside your leg and the outside of your leg. So it's like you had a wedgie by this machine and your legs just motion all night.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 1:56:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it sucked, man.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  That's terrifying.

• 1:56:07Speaker 00

  But it healed up fine now. It healed up good.

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  That's crazy that it worked.

• 1:56:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:56:12Speaker 00

  Resurfacing.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:56:14Speaker 00

  The guy actually who did it in Vail, Colorado, invented the surgery. GSP's had hip surgery there.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:56:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. He invented this surgery.

• 1:56:23Speaker 01

  And GSP had to do the same bullshit?

• 1:56:24Speaker 00

  I don't know if he had exactly what I had, but he he had surgery there on his hip.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  God, that sounds like two months of no sleeping. How'd you sleep? Did you get used to it?

• 1:56:33Speaker 00

  Well, the first week with pain medicine and stuff, you're on all that stuff. It was after, like when I stopped taking all that.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Pain medicine must have been fun.

• 1:56:45Speaker 00

  Triple Z, dude. I was having dreams and getting the best sleep of my life.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a time where it makes sense to take that shit. Like, you're in a fucking crazy brace. Let's party.

• 1:56:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  Let's watch Netflix and just not give a shit about my leg.

• 1:56:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sleeping in this machine.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  Hamster wheel.

• 1:57:00Speaker 00

  For real.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  What the hell's happened to my leg? I was on one of those when I got my knee reconstructed.

• 1:57:05Speaker 00

  You had a bunch of knee surgeries.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but my left knee, uh, they put, I had a patellar tendon graft and they put me on one of them things where it does this, like when I was in the hospital.

• 1:57:15Speaker 00

  So that's that's how it slipped.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  Drip. So you could press the button to get more morphine. I was like, boink, boink, boink, boink.

• 1:57:20Speaker 00

  Dude.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  It's like, oh.

• 1:57:22Speaker 00

  I had the same thing on my hip. They they put an epidural and then they had a nerve block through my stomach. So I was like completely paralyzed from the waist down. But I had the button thing. I don't think it was working anymore because I.

• 1:57:35Speaker 00

  I I revved it up. It was.

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  He redlined it?

• 1:57:38Speaker 00

  It was shooting blanks, man.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. It is weird, though, to see your, like, knee constantly moving forward, but I only had to do it like a couple of nights. I can't imagine.

• 1:57:47Speaker 00

  I did it for weeks.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  I can't imagine. That must have been so hard to sleep, man.

• 1:57:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, the motion wasn't so bad because it's kind of slow.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  Oh, OK.

• 1:57:56Speaker 00

  It was the metal in my groin.

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It probably.

• 1:57:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  Rubbed it raw and shit.

• 1:58:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:58:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  Fuck, man.

• 1:58:04Speaker 00

  But I, like I said, I was on the pain medicine, so.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  It's crazy that it all worked, though.

• 1:58:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  Shout out to that doctor. Shout out to all these doctors. I say that all the time, like, both my knees would be fucking completely useless if it wasn't for amazing doctors.

• 1:58:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Shout out to these guys.

• 1:58:17Speaker 00

  I was just talking about.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Figuring shit out.

• 1:58:18Speaker 00

  Uh, I worked with Paul Felder at that Vegas show, and he just had a hip replacement.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had the real deal, right?

• 1:58:25Speaker 00

  But it's so, yeah, no, he had a replacement replacement.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Why did he have to do that versus what you did?

• 1:58:30Speaker 00

  I'm not sure exactly. It's something to do with the spacing, I think, inside your hip, how much spacing you have. Because my spacing was good, I wasn't a candidate for a replacement.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  Well, Paul went full nutty after he stopped fighting and started doing Ironmans.

• 1:58:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, he was telling me he travels with a bicycle, he does like.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  Still does that?

• 1:58:46Speaker 00

  Cycling for five hours, like, in a hotel room, like, crazy.

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  That's not good. That's unhealthy.

• 1:58:51Speaker 00

  Crazy, man.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  That's unhealthy.

• 1:58:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Why are you doing that, Paul?

• 1:58:54Speaker 00

  Five hours, he told me.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Well, the same kind of drive that made him a great MMA fighter made him want to, like, be the best Ironman dude in the world.

• 1:59:01Speaker 00

  You need something like that, man.

• 1:59:03Speaker 02

  Way before the surgery, just a couple of years ago, when he first got.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  Diagnosed, I guess, with some injury.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so range of motion in my right hip, reached out to Heather and Dr. D from the UFC to help with an MRI. Long story short, I have the hips in an 80-year-old man. No soft tissue left, grinding bone on bone. Oy. The problem is, once they put an artificial joint in you, you have that artificial joint forever.

• 1:59:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  It's never going back.

• 1:59:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:30Speaker 01

  And as biologics get better and stem cells get better, they're better and better at re-healing or healing that that actual tissue. And if you could just hang in there, you know, this is the kind of the conversation that I had with John, because if you could just hang in there, they're so close. They're injecting stuff into discs now and making the discs larger.

• 1:59:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  So like people with back problems where the doctor's like, look, we gotta take some of your disc out and hang in there, hang and also look into other therapies, decompression. There's a lot of different things that you could do that can create space where your, you know, disc is pushing against your nerves, you can alleviate a lot of that.

• 2:00:09Speaker 00

  Surgery is the absolute last step.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Especially with your back.

• 2:00:13Speaker 00

  Absolute last step.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Look, if you have a blown ACL.

• 2:00:15Speaker 00

  Of course, they're gonna cut you up, they'll do it anytime.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:00:18Speaker 00

  You know, it's good business, cut you open, then the medicines, the hardware, everything, it's a racket. That's the last step.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  That's the problem. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And, you know, and when doctors get paid for doing surgery, they wanna do surgery, cuz that's where they make their living.

• 2:00:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  And it's a, it's a real problem with stuff like the back, because I don't know anybody that's had a back surgery and been better.

• 2:00:43Speaker 00

  Right. The only big one I could think of, I remember Nate Quarry was a big advocate for some company. Remember he had a bad-

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  He had an artificial spacer. Yeah, he had artificial discs put in his back way back in the day.

• 2:00:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's the guy I think about back surgery.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  But he also like got, it was an intense pain because of that. And I think it wound up like becoming a problem later on. Like I know guys that initially had some relief because of back surgery, and then it started getting way worse after that.

• 2:01:12Speaker 00

  That's the same-

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  Follow-ups.

• 2:01:14Speaker 00

  Always the same story, like, same thing with necks, like you lose strength, it's always bothered you for the rest of your life, like Mike Brown has a fusion where they went in through the front.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Fusions are rough.

• 2:01:24Speaker 00

  My buddy Alan Jobin had a neck surgery where they, Kayla Harrison just had one. Like, once you have that, something-

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  What did Kayla have done?

• 2:01:31Speaker 00

  I don't know exactly.

• 2:01:32Speaker 01

  I don't think she's telling anybody.

• 2:01:33Speaker 00

  I know that, I'm pretty sure they went in through the front.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Right, but I don't think she's telling anybody what exactly happened, cuz like Al Jermain had a disc replaced, and he came back and beat Pyo Doo Hyun in the rematch, and looked fucking great, and fought really well with that neck issue.

• 2:01:47Speaker 00

  And you don't hear him complaining about it?

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  No, I mean, he said it's great.

• 2:01:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  I think that the new artificial discs that they're putting in the necks, a lot of them, it works out really well. I know quite a few people that have had those.

• 2:01:59Speaker 00

  I've been fortunate, man, I haven't had any neck-

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  She had to repair herniated discs in her neck. Right.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  So the thing is, what they usually do is just take some of the, the disc out. And then you have less disc. So it's not bulging anymore, but you have less disc now. So now you have more degenerative disc issues and. I just think there's other options and one of the options is decompression. And I don't know if anybody ran that by her, but I have a fucking neck harness. But I, I, it's attached to a chin up bar and I put it around my neck. It straps under my chin and I put my weight on it. I just like stretch my neck out. It works. You know, relieving, I hear it pop like.

• 2:02:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  Pop, pop.

• 2:02:43Speaker 00

  They said they replaced the disc.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  Oh, she had to replace. Okay, so she got that thing that Al Jermain got done. Yeah, how's she gonna fight that quickly? Oy, look at that. Oy, oy, oy, oy.

• 2:02:58Speaker 00

  I wonder what her turnaround time is. I mean, International Fight Week, maybe her, her and Amanda?

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  Well, she's fighting, isn't, she was supposed to be fighting in the White House.

• 2:03:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. But they decided. Her and Amanda was supposed to.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  They decided not to do that. Yeah.

• 2:03:11Speaker 00

  So maybe this summer?

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:03:13Speaker 00

  Cause it's gonna be, I mean, that's a big fight, her and Amanda.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  It's a big fight, but I mean. There's a possibility that you do something like that and you're never the same again. So she might not ever.

• 2:03:22Speaker 00

  Oh, the surgery, yeah.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, you're, whenever you deal with your spine, it's very tricky.

• 2:03:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  You know, it's just one of those things. It's like, err.

• 2:03:31Speaker 00

  Shoulders, knees.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:33Speaker 00

  There's some things, man, you don't wanna injure.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  I don't think anybody's ever come back from a knee replacement and fought MMA. I've never heard of that. I've heard of disc replacements. I've heard of a lot of knee surgeries, guys come back. But Desus Bukakis was the worst. Remember that? He fought Khalil and Khalil side kicked his knee sideways.

• 2:03:50Speaker 00

  And it hyperextended it?

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Oh, went sideways.

• 2:03:53Speaker 00

  John does that knee stomp thing too. I don't, I don't know how I feel about that, man.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  Well, Ian Gary did it to Shavkat.

• 2:03:59Speaker 00

  I don't know how I feel about it.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Fucked Shavkat's knee up. I know, it's kinda fucked because, look, yes, it's effective, but so is eye pokes.

• 2:04:06Speaker 00

  I feel like, that's what I was about to say. I feel like it's kinda dirty, like legalize eye pokes.

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  It is dirty. I mean, so are nutshots. Like nutshots are effective too. Are we gonna allow those? No, I mean, why are we allowing someone to do a technique that you can't?

• 2:04:18Speaker 00

  We do have twelve to six elbows now, so that's, at least we're getting somewhere.

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 2:04:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  But I'd rather have knees to a grounded opponent than kicking the knee sideways. It just seems like. It takes a year off of your career, at least. Soaking a knee bar, soaking an arm bar, like. Yeah, but you could tap. True, true, true, true. You get a knee bar, you could tap. Right. Inside heel hooks are scariest, because you only got a couple of, like, microseconds to tap. When you get that one, that one's so nasty, the knee across, you have no time. You just gotta tap. Yeah. You just gotta know when you're done. You gotta know when he got ya, and not let it. Did you ever see when Mikey Musumichi fought some cat in, uh? I think, I think I know what you're talking about. And the dude would not tap? Yeah.

• 2:05:01Speaker 01

  And he was just ripping his knee apart, and Mikey was talking about it afterwards, he was, he was so gross. I was like, why did you make me do that to you? Why didn't you just tap? He mangled that guy's legs. Think I saw a highlight of that. It was horrible. It's so horrible to watch. You got it? Yeah, show me. Yeah, let's see this. Here it is. Like, look at this. Look at his leg. Bro, bro, bro, that is almost as nasty as watching that arm bar, or that, uh, guillotine from Dan Miller. Look at this.

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  This dude won't tap. It's so crazy. And Mikey is just a master at destroying your knees. Any normal human being would have tapped. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And he does this like seven times in this match, where he rips this guy's leg sideways, left ways, right ways. The guy's knee's destroyed. Like, look at that. Look how nasty this is, man. This is so nasty. Look how si- right there. That angle too? That angle's so awful. The fact that this dude is just tolerating it, like, right there, that's destroyed. Yeah. That is destroyed. I don't know if that dude ever competed again afterwards. He might never be the same. No, not be the same. He won't be the same. He won't be, he'll never be a hundred percent.

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Like, you get your shit ripped apart like that, for sure there's some meniscus damage. ACL, ACL, meniscus. MCL, everything. Fuck that. Heel hooks, that changed.

• 2:06:24Speaker 00

  I've been fortunate man with my knees. I have a torn meniscus in my right knee, but never needed surgery, you know. Had a partial tear on my ACL when I fought Islam. He pulled me off against the fence and my knee slid, and I felt it tear. It felt like fire in my knee, you know. And when you feel pain in a fight, you know it's bad, because you usually don't.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:41Speaker 00

  But I felt it burning like fire.

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  But you didn't need surgery?

• 2:06:46Speaker 00

  Didn't need surgery. Did a bunch of physical therapy. I had a partial tear. There's something called maybe a ligamentum, or something that connects where your ACL is. Every time you tear your ACL, the ligamentum's completely torn. Always. And mine had a partial tear in that, so I must have took the weight off, or we switched the position right before it tore my ACL.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:07:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. But I had like bruising, you know, back of my leg was all bruised up. Couldn't bend it for a little bit.

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  But now it's 100%?

• 2:07:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel great.

• 2:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting. Like, Arnold, no, who was it that was telling me that? Like, there's different people that have had different levels of tears, and then in those levels of tears, like, some of them you can come back from 100%, but some of them... Okay, this dude-

• 2:07:31Speaker 00

  A broken ankle too.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  Oh my god. So this dude that... Try saying his name. How do you say his name?

• 2:07:38Speaker 00

  Gentamer.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Bionduran? Um, so this is the guy, Mikey Musumichi. He was torn ACL, torn MCL, torn meniscus, and a broken ankle. That's crazy. That's crazy.

• 2:07:53Speaker 00

  He did like a toe hold or something? How'd he break his ankle?

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  So, was it Brendan Allen? Brendan Allen was in the podcast, he was telling me this. He tore his ACL completely, and never got it fixed, and it reattached. Yeah. Like, at a slightly different angle, but reattached. Like, it tore off, but it was still hanging in there, and it rehealed. I was like, that's not, I've never even heard of that before. But I know some people that have had like a three-quarter tear, and it heals, but it's not really the same.

• 2:08:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  It's still a little funky.

• 2:08:24Speaker 00

  You know Brad Pickett fought his whole career with the torn, no ACL in one of his legs.

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  I think Justin has that situation.

• 2:08:31Speaker 00

  Yeah?

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:32Speaker 00

  Like Brad would sit on the ground on the mat, and then grab his shin, and slide it forward, and you could see like the the movement.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  How does that not chew your meniscus apart?

• 2:08:40Speaker 00

  He fought so many fights like that.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Oh my, well Rico Rodriguez did too. Rico always had a blown-out ACL.

• 2:08:46Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 2:08:46Speaker 01

  And he fought.

• 2:08:47Speaker 00

  Rico was down in Louisiana for a while, man. Rico Rodriguez was.

• 2:08:51Speaker 01

  Oh, he was one of the first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts.

• 2:08:53Speaker 00

  I trained with him at Tim's Gym before.

• 2:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was really good on the ground, man. Rico was really good on the ground. And he was a UFC heavyweight champion at one point in time.

• 2:09:01Speaker 00

  I know.

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  People forget.

• 2:09:03Speaker 00

  Dude, I didn't even know who he was. I was sparring him. And Tim was like, that's... Was a heavyweight champion of the UFC. I'm like, no way.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  I know, isn't that funny?

• 2:09:09Speaker 00

  He was out of shape, you know. I was like, who's this big tattooed guy? Let's go.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  There's a lot of guys that people forgot they slept on. It's interesting when you think about that.

• 2:09:20Speaker 00

  He was running a gym in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I don't know if he still is.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  Rico was?

• 2:09:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. He had partnered with a...

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  In Baton Rouge?

• 2:09:25Speaker 00

  In Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He took over in LA Boxing. They turned it into a UFC gym now. But he was part owner or something. He was running it.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:09:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a hard road when guys retire and people don't even remember them. Like, at least you have a giant name. Like, you're always gonna be able to do seminars. People are always gonna wanna bring you into events. You have a career no matter what.

• 2:09:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been doing a lot of watch parties where I get with the fans and watch the fights. It's fun, man. I enjoy it.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 2:09:53Speaker 00

  It's sometimes a little awkward because the fans will stick around too long. Like, I'm watching the fights with you, but you come sit in my booth and, like, we run out of things to talk about. It's like, okay, buddy.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  Hey, man, let me get your number. Like, hey, bro.

• 2:10:03Speaker 00

  Oh, hey, my buddy's on FaceTime. Can you talk to so-and-so? Like, dude, just chill.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  I know. Some people just can't hang.

• 2:10:08Speaker 00

  Dude, but I fought, like I said, nineteen years. I say twenty, but it's nineteen years that I fought. Until that Connor fight, like, that's when things changed for me.

• 2:10:17Speaker 01

  When you knocked out Connor?

• 2:10:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:10:19Speaker 04

  When you shop Kroger delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of fifty dollars or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  Wow, that's interesting. That's crazy because-

• 2:10:52Speaker 00

  Like the door opened for seminars, for appearances, that's, that changed, changed.

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  That's so weird.

• 2:10:58Speaker 00

  And I had been in so many UFC main events, I had fought for the belt, done all this stuff, but this, that guy's name, man.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  Isn't it nuts? A just personality got him so, well, obviously, very skilled.

• 2:11:09Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  The Eddie Alvarez fight, that's Connor in his prime form, when he was in the Matrix.

• 2:11:14Speaker 00

  Aldo.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:11:16Speaker 00

  Eddie.

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  The Aldo fight was great, but it, because it was one shot and he's-

• 2:11:19Speaker 00

  And, and nobody's done that to Aldo ever.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Ever, ever, and since. That was amazing, but, but the Alvarez fight was him in the Matrix. When the punches were like-

• 2:11:29Speaker 00

  Moving up and weight-

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Literally touching his nose, and he's firing back those combinations, he was just in the zone. He was, that was focused Connor.

• 2:11:39Speaker 00

  And walking the park, you know?

• 2:11:40Speaker 01

  No, Eddie's good, man. Eddie's tough as fuck. When Eddie beat, um, Dos Anjos, I was like, holy shit, man.

• 2:11:47Speaker 00

  I was always a big Eddie fan.

• 2:11:49Speaker 01

  Oh, he was, bro, his fights with Chandler, you want to talk about taking-

• 2:11:55Speaker 00

  Oh, Bellator, yes.

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  Years off your life.

• 2:11:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  Those fights that those two had, that nobody was watching, other than the hardcore guys, those were cra- to this day, I tell people, you want to watch some chaos? Watch Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler in Bellator, they're some of the best fights of all time.

• 2:12:11Speaker 00

  Knockdown, drag out, both guys.

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  If you're a fan of chaos, watch those fights. Those fights were fucking bananas. And so that's what we anticipated when Chandler came over, and then we knocked out Dan Hooker in the first round, I was like, oh shit, he's here.

• 2:12:25Speaker 00

  Same card, same card as me and Connor.

• 2:12:27Speaker 01

  But I think that it was too late. I think we, he had already suffered so much punishment and been so, if we got a hold of Michael Chandler, like, six, seven years before that, when he was fighting in Bellator, this is the problem with PFL, this is the problem with Bellator, and I don't think it's a problem, because I think these guys are prize fighters. You know, like, I think Francis Ngannou said it best when he was talking about this Netflix card, they're saying, someone said to him, do you think this is, this fucks with your legacy? He goes, legacy, who's legacy for? For you? He goes, fuck, keep your legacy, give me my money.

• 2:13:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:13:01Speaker 01

  Give me my pay, this is what I'm supposed to be getting, I'm, I'm Francis Ngannou. And I think he's right. But he's Francis Ngano. He's already the UFC heavyweight champion. Left as the UFC heavyweight champion. But for a lot of these guys that are starting their career, their best years are in these other organizations. And not enough people know. Like Johnny Eblen, perfect example you were talking about before. He knocked out Leon Edwards' brother. I mean, he's fucking good, man.

• 2:13:27Speaker 00

  Beat Musa- I cornered him when he beat Musashi. Dude, Musashi's-

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  Musashi's a legend.

• 2:13:31Speaker 00

  I grew up watching him, a legend.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  There's a guy, another guy that people forgot about. Gagar Musashi was a fucking beast.

• 2:13:37Speaker 00

  By the time he made it to the UFC, I was already such a big fan, but like the casuals didn't know who he was.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  Oh, he was so good, dude. Gagar was so good, so smart.

• 2:13:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  Just so smart and so unassuming.

• 2:13:48Speaker 00

  Was it him who upkicked Jacare back? Yeah, yeah, into a triangle.

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 2:13:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  Yup. Yeah, I think that was in Dream. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Gagar was a beast, man. He was a beast.

• 2:14:00Speaker 00

  Eddie Alvarez in Dream was a bunch of good fights.

• 2:14:02Speaker 01

  And Gagar stopped wide men in the UFC.

• 2:14:06Speaker 00

  Really good fundamental boxing, great jab.

• 2:14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, great everywhere, man.

• 2:14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, good wrestling, good wrestling defense.

• 2:14:12Speaker 01

  Just super smart, too. Just a very, very intelligent guy. But he got put on the shelf with the Bellator deal. He got put on the shelf and I don't know what's going on with him. What was the last-

• 2:14:23Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Why not win Gagar Musashi last fight?

• 2:14:26Speaker 00

  He might not even still be under contract with PFL or whatever.

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  Well, I think he's 40 now.

• 2:14:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was old in the UFC.

• 2:14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's gotta be close to 40, if not older. Where's Gagar Musashi these days?

• 2:14:41Speaker 02

  He got drafted in the Global Fight League, but that got canceled, I think, so.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Oh, that thing.

• 2:14:47Speaker 00

  I knew that was gonna fall apart from the jump.

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  That thing was weird.

• 2:14:51Speaker 00

  When I was talking to coaches at American Top Team and they were telling me, like, all these ex UFC fighters, what their contracts were with this company, I was like, dude, they haven't even put on one show and they're signing guys to these kind of contracts? I mean, the money was crazy.

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  So 2023 was his last fight. How old is he now? So he lost to Fabian Edwards, the same guy that Eblen knocked out.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  Forty?

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  Forty.

• 2:15:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, cornered Eblen-

• 2:15:12Speaker 01

  The dream catcher.

• 2:15:14Speaker 00

  In that fight, dude, he got cut so bad with an elbow, like I can see the vein in his- I have it in my phone, it was crazy. I have it in my phone. The vein's still intact. It didn't cut the vein, but you can see it.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 2:15:24Speaker 00

  Oh, it's pretty gnarly.

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  And then he stopped him.

• 2:15:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, elbow. We were in Ireland.

• 2:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, Eblin's a tough guy, man, and I think he's like one of those guys that's like at the very top of the heap at 185. But again, I know about him, but how many people do? That's unfortunate.

• 2:15:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  You know, because he's been fighting over in the PFL for how many, how many years now?

• 2:15:44Speaker 00

  Well, he was Bellator.

• 2:15:45Speaker 01

  Bellator in PFL.

• 2:15:46Speaker 00

  And then they bought him, yeah.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  For how many years now?

• 2:15:47Speaker 00

  A long time. I mean, I think he might have had one or two fights when Bellator signed him. He got in early at Bellator. But he's a student, man. He's gonna keep getting better. He's pretty young, young still.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  Submitting Mark Hunt's crazy.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  That's crazy, right? And you think how small he is? He's fought at 185 in the UFC, and he submitted 260-pound Mark Hunt. Gagarin Musasi was a fucking beast. He was a beast.

• 2:16:12Speaker 00

  Just technique.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:16:13Speaker 00

  Just technique.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  Technique, toughness, and intelligence. Just so crafty, just so good everywhere. Good on the ground, good standing up.

• 2:16:21Speaker 00

  And super patient, man, methodical.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've always been a fan of his.

• 2:16:25Speaker 01

  There's a lot of those guys that just got, people forget about. They forgot, you know?

• 2:16:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, a bunch.

• 2:16:30Speaker 01

  I always say people, one guy that people underestimated because they didn't get to see him when he was in his prime, or they just forgot, is Masvidal. People forgot how good Masvidal is. Masvidal knocked out Eve Edwards with a head kick. Remember that? In Bow Dog.

• 2:16:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro, Masvidal in his prime was a motherfucker. He was good. When he knocked out Darren Till, remember that shit?

• 2:16:54Speaker 00

  That switch step or?

• 2:16:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 2:16:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  Switch step, I think he caught him with a left hook.

• 2:16:59Speaker 00

  Knocked him out cold.

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  Cold.

• 2:17:01Speaker 00

  And he was a dog, like when he started focusing on his wrestling, he was a dog in Strike Force, man, at 55.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Oh, yeah.

• 2:17:08Speaker 00

  He was a dog back then.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  No, Masvidal was a beast, man.

• 2:17:11Speaker 00

  And he's good everywhere, man. He's good everywhere. He has good jiu-jitsu, good wrestling, good kickboxing.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:16Speaker 00

  He's good everywhere.

• 2:17:17Speaker 01

  I mean, when he went up to 170, that's not really his weight class. His real weight class was 55.

• 2:17:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think as he got older, he's, he's a big guy. He's a big guy. He has really thick legs and he's a little bit taller.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:17:28Speaker 00

  Taller than me for sure, but.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  But like when he was really competitive, I feel like it was at 55.

• 2:17:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:17:33Speaker 01

  But I mean, like he gave guys problems at 70. Like the Darren Till fight was at 70. He fucked a lot of guys up at 70.

• 2:17:39Speaker 00

  Cowboy.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Yep, cowboy. Was that at 70?

• 2:17:41Speaker 00

  Body shot at 170?

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  Damn. Yeah, no, Masvidal, people forgot. There's people, and then, you know, he was having those backyard fights in the Kimbo Slice days.

• 2:17:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  Which is crazy. The bare knuckle Kimbo fights, Kimbo Slice fights.

• 2:17:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. Kimbo used to come to the American Top Team, he used to bring his kids and stuff. It was crazy talking to him, because I grew up watching his fights, you know?

• 2:18:03Speaker 01

  But he was like the first guy to become a legend on YouTube.

• 2:18:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:18:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, everybody knows who he is.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  Plus, he looked so cool. The bald head and the beard and the hair in the back. Like, everything was cra-

• 2:18:14Speaker 00

  The braids in the back?

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, super jacked and just fucking people up in the backyard.

• 2:18:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:21Speaker 01

  Like, they were moving around like satellite dishes and shit.

• 2:18:24Speaker 00

  A bodyguard or a driver for a guy in Miami who started a porn company, and that's how it started?

• 2:18:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  And they organized these fights.

• 2:18:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Where there was just no warm up, just, "All right, let's go."

• 2:18:35Speaker 00

  No, he would get out the car in the front driveway and walk to the back and just start scrapping.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  I know, it was crazy.

• 2:18:40Speaker 00

  But as a kid, like, when that stuff came out as a kid, that was such a big thing to watch, you know, that we had to download it illegally on, like, LimeWire or something back then.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:48Speaker 00

  You know? That was wild times. And then to see him in the UFC in The Ultimate Fighter, dude, what a journey that guy had.

• 2:18:53Speaker 01

  I know. What balls it took for him to do that, to enter into the UFC with, like, basically zero grappling.

• 2:18:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  And, like, really just kind of learning the sport, but, you know.

• 2:19:03Speaker 00

  Good boxing, but I don't think, like, gym, not trained boxing, just natural ability and...

• 2:19:07Speaker 01

  Well, he definitely had some training, right?

• 2:19:09Speaker 00

  The way he moved was, even in the bare knuckle, the way he moved was like a boxer, a shell, you know?

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:14Speaker 00

  Like a Mike Tyson movement.

• 2:19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was, like, rudimentary. Remember when he fought Seth Petrazelli?

• 2:19:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, last minute, Petrazelli comes in last minute, like, Ken Shamrock had some sort of a dispute with them and maybe got cut backstage or something, instead of having a cut. And so, like, last minute, they swapped out Seth Petrazelli.

• 2:19:33Speaker 00

  And he knocked him out.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I called that one. I called that one on camera. No, I wasn't doing it, the commentary, I think it was Elite X C.

• 2:19:42Speaker 00

  I think that bankrupted them or something, I don't know how, like they-

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  That fight bankrupted them?

• 2:19:46Speaker 00

  I don't know if it bankrupted them, but after that happened, they didn't have many more shows after that.

• 2:19:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think they were going under anyway, unfortunately.

• 2:19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know how that fight would have bankrupted them, but-

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Well, they had some guy who was a boxing guy who was running the whole thing, was his name Gary Shaw?

• 2:19:59Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know back then.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  I don't remember either, but I, you know, like, it's hard to make money in these things, man. Like, those things are hard, they've cut, like, the UFC doesn't get the credit it deserves in terms of the promotional machine. Like, that's a smooth-running machine.

• 2:20:13Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20:14Speaker 01

  That machine's been around for a long time, it's so polished, between the production, all the guys in the truck, the directors, the producers-

• 2:20:22Speaker 00

  They're the best of the best.

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're the best. It's hard, and then you got all the best fighters, and it's like, the product, so when they have a fight like Holloway and, and Olivera, and like, oh, this fight wasn't good, like, that's a great fight, man, it's just, you, you can't be a casual.

• 2:20:39Speaker 00

  People are just bloodthirsty.

• 2:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know? Like, this, listen, to do that to Max Holloway is crazy, do you not appreciate that? Go watch baseball.

• 2:20:47Speaker 00

  Wrestlers, great grapplers have never done that to him.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  I know, it's nuts, it's nuts if you think about it.

• 2:20:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's exciting, man, the UFC's definitely the best at it, with this whole Paramount thing, I was kind of, we'll, we'll see how it turns out, I was kind of worried, like, if you take pay-per-view off the table,

• 2:21:05Speaker 00

  how much are, is UFC gonna put the biggest fights together, because they don't need to sell pay-per-views, they're guaranteed money, you know? I was just wondering if that would not water it down, but it would get a bunch of weaker cards, and I'm still waiting to find out, man.

• 2:21:17Speaker 01

  Well, it is weird, right, because with pay-per-view, you're always building it up so that people buy it, and then, it also, points, like, the fighters get paid, points, so how are fighters getting paid now?

• 2:21:29Speaker 00

  I've been asking every show I work, I ask everybody, I want to know, because I've, you know, my last few years in the UFC, I-

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Nobody's telling you?

• 2:21:36Speaker 00

  Nobody's telling me anything.

• 2:21:37Speaker 01

  They keeping you in the dark?

• 2:21:38Speaker 00

  Keeping me in the dark.

• 2:21:38Speaker 01

  What the fuck is that?

• 2:21:39Speaker 00

  Keeping me in the dark, man. Because you know, I was pay-per-view partner, multiple fights with the UFC. If there's, and that was always the thing, they kinda in this, in, in discussion about contracts and about future fights, that they kinda held over you, like.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:21:52Speaker 00

  You win this fight, one day you're gonna fight for the belt, you're gonna get pay-per-view, your life's gonna change. That was always a carrot they hung, like to make, you know, to do anything, to, that was the goal. To one day fight for the belt and get the pay-per-view money. But now that that's gone, I mean Connor's not gonna fight, even Justin at the White House, there's no way these guys aren't fighting with that backdoor money. So they must be just guaranteeing him a bigger per, I don't know.

• 2:22:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think Justin would fight no matter what, because it's for the title, this is his last fight.

• 2:22:17Speaker 00

  Well, that, yeah, the title, the title.

• 2:22:19Speaker 01

  It's the title, it's at the White House, he's a patriot, it's the last fight, you know, I think he would fight, no matter what, but. Like, you know, Ronda Rousey, uh, you know, she's promoting the Netflix fight, and she made, I don't know if you saw what she said, but she had this big, long speech about the UFC selling for $7 billion. And these fighters aren't making enough money, and, you know, look, she made some good points, and the most important thing is that she gets the conversation out there. And it puts pressure on the UFC to pay people more, you know, and if Netflix can become successful at MMA. If they can become successful at putting cards together and pulling fighters away, like right now, they're doing a one-off, right? It's one-off, and it's kind of a gimmicky thing.

• 2:23:04Speaker 00

  And listen, this payroll is gonna be crazy.

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  It's gonna be crazy.

• 2:23:07Speaker 00

  You got Ronda, Francis, Nate, these, everybody's getting.

• 2:23:10Speaker 01

  Crazy money.

• 2:23:11Speaker 00

  The payroll's gonna be nuts.

• 2:23:12Speaker 01

  But if anybody's got that kinda money, it's Netflix. They throw around a lot of ridiculous money. They make so much money. So they can kind of do that. The question is, are they gonna do that more than once? So if they do that more than once, then what happens is, it's all about the name of the fighters, just like boxing. Like if boxing, no one cares if it's Golden Boy, or Bob Arum, nobody cares about that. What they care about is who's fighting who. Is it Benavides? Who's he fighting? Is he fighting Bival? Let's go, that's a great fight. So if, if Netflix can kind of do the boxing thing on Netflix with like big-name stars, they can be a major player.

• 2:23:51Speaker 01

  And that will elevate everybody's pay scale. So is, is a lot of people like, oh, Ronda, how could you turn her back on the UFC and talk shit like that? If she's, what she's saying doesn't make any sense, she can't say it, right? So if what she's saying makes sense, then you have to go, she's got a point.

• 2:24:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:24:10Speaker 01

  She's got a point, she's got a point. They sold it for seven billion dollars, or whatever it is. They got this billion, seven billion dollar deal, whatever the fucking deal was with Paramount. Not even selling it, sold rights to it, right? That makes sense. She's making sense. And so if she's saying this and Netflix listens, and if someone comes along, they're a shrewd businessman, they go, look, and there's a lot of people, their contracts are coming up. And when these people's contracts are coming up, let's get in negotiations. And then all of a sudden, some people start drifting over.

• 2:24:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:24:39Speaker 01

  So of like, you get like an Islam Makachev starts leaving, and they leave and go fight in Netflix. And then they can talk four or five top major contenders into doing, look, it's a big ask.

• 2:24:50Speaker 00

  Look, I love the UFC. Spent my, most of my professional career there. But I love seeing these other organizations come up and people making money. Like you said, it rises every, everything. It's more places for people to work, you know? It's, it's great. It's only good.

• 2:25:03Speaker 01

  Olivier Alba Mercier made a million dollars in the PFL.

• 2:25:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  And I think he did it more than once, right? Didn't he win the tournament twice or something like that?

• 2:25:12Speaker 00

  I'm not sure.

• 2:25:13Speaker 01

  He definitely won it at least once.

• 2:25:15Speaker 00

  The Canadian gangster?

• 2:25:16Speaker 01

  Right. A guy who's not in the top 10 of the UFC, goes over to another organization, makes a million dollars. Okay. I don't know if that's sustainable for them. I don't know how they came up with that money.

• 2:25:28Speaker 00

  They gotta be bleeding money out.

• 2:25:29Speaker 01

  Have to be bleeding money. Nobody's watching.

• 2:25:31Speaker 00

  Or even guys like Pettis, who was a former world champion, who you know his contract was good in the UFC.

• 2:25:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:25:37Speaker 00

  Didn't, she was not to resign with the UFC and he went to PFL, they had to be paying him big money.

• 2:25:41Speaker 01

  They have to be.

• 2:25:41Speaker 00

  You know?

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  So it's all competition ultimately is good for the most important thing, which is paying the fighters.

• 2:25:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  So I'm happy.

• 2:25:50Speaker 00

  And places to work. Like if the UFC cuts you or something, you back, you know? Ten years ago, there's only place to make money.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:25:58Speaker 00

  They cut you, now you gotta get a job, maybe fight. Try to get back in part-time fighting, like try to get, you know, now you can pivot and still have a career.

• 2:26:05Speaker 01

  Well, this is the thing with Francis, when Francis left the PFL, everybody's like, well, now he's fucked. Because he can't fight in the UFC, can't, like, I wanted him to come back to the UFC. And I was like, come on, can we figure out a way to make this happen? But Dana just does not want to have anything to do with him. Like, apparently, they did not get along very well. Which is like, I'm like, come on.

• 2:26:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:26:26Speaker 01

  I don't, come, can I help? Can I fucking get you guys in a room together and fucking calm everybody down? But, at the most important thing is if there's another player.

• 2:26:36Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. You know?

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  Fuck, yeah.

• 2:26:38Speaker 00

  I wanna watch.

• 2:26:38Speaker 01

  I mean, he's the legit heavyweight champion, if you think about it. He never got beat in MMA as a heavyweight champion. You know, and then he fought Henning Ferreira, uh, in...

• 2:26:49Speaker 00

  PFL?

• 2:26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:50Speaker 00

  It's another ATT guy.

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  But it's another one where it's like, who's watching that? I mean, and if you're watching it, you're just watching it for Francis.

• 2:26:57Speaker 00

  Me and you.

• 2:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, I mean, I wanted to know, like, what were the numbers for that fight? It's probably the biggest fight they ever put on.

• 2:27:03Speaker 00

  I don't think I've ever seen any numbers from PFL.

• 2:27:05Speaker 01

  And I think, like, the cra- if he was, like, getting twenty million a fight, and he wanted his opponents to get a huge amount, too, I forget what the, he had, like, a minimum amount his opponents would get in his contract.

• 2:27:18Speaker 00

  Respect, I didn't know that, yeah, that's awesome.

• 2:27:20Speaker 01

  That's part of his contract. I forget what the number was, but it was substantial. So Henning Ferreira got a giant payday for that fight, too.

• 2:27:28Speaker 00

  Good.

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  It's like, how are they, where are they getting, I guess they have Saudi money?

• 2:27:32Speaker 00

  I think they did for some of the shows, because they went to Saudi to, to do some shows. But, uh, I don't know if they're backing them the whole, the whole company.

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  You, you, you're gonna need something like Netflix. And Netflix can kind of pull it off, because Netflix has a massive promotional machine, and, but they, they need big names. So, like, now that they have Nate and Mike Perry on the card, too, like, okay. Okay, so you got Nate, Mike Perry, you got Francis, Phillip Linz, you have, uh, Rhonda and Gina. Okay, now you have three interesting fights.

• 2:28:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:28:07Speaker 01

  You're gonna need a few more.

• 2:28:08Speaker 00

  And it's on Netflix, so it's gonna be free, but even if Nate and Mike Perry was the headliner, I would have bought that pay-per-view.

• 2:28:14Speaker 01

  100%, well, you don't have to buy it.

• 2:28:15Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:28:17Speaker 01

  So this is what gets interesting. So if this fight goes on Netflix and gets 50 million views.

• 2:28:23Speaker 00

  It's gonna get a lot.

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it could get more views than any fight ever.

• 2:28:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:28:27Speaker 01

  It could. It's very possible. That that, because Netflix is bigger than anything. If they got more views than anybody ever, that would be fucking, but then YouTube might come along.

• 2:28:38Speaker 00

  Most views on a mixed martial arts event?

• 2:28:40Speaker 01

  Hey, guys, we're YouTube. We're even bigger than Netflix. Because YouTube is bigger than fucking Netflix. YouTube is everywhere. And if they come up with some crazy, if more players get involved in this and more people become free agents, it could get very interesting.

• 2:28:54Speaker 00

  Dude, it's crazy to see how far the sport has come, because like back, all these big companies wouldn't want to touch this human cockfighting back in the day.

• 2:29:00Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:29:01Speaker 00

  Now, everybody wants a piece of the pie.

• 2:29:02Speaker 01

  I know, it's nuts.

• 2:29:03Speaker 00

  It's cool now, they know?

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wild, right, that cage fighting became something that like corporate America wants to get involved in.

• 2:29:09Speaker 00

  Dude, I'm in the airport, I'm in the grocery store, grandmothers, old, you know, ladies are walking up to me talking about fights, which is insane.

• 2:29:16Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 2:29:17Speaker 00

  Insane.

• 2:29:17Speaker 01

  My wife's mom loves it.

• 2:29:19Speaker 00

  Because 15 years ago, it was bearded guys with tattoos would be in the grocery store. We'd whisper about it, you know?

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:25Speaker 00

  It was frowned upon. We'd talk about Fight Club, you know?

• 2:29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:28Speaker 00

  Now, it's like soccer moms, "Did you see the fight last weekend, the armbar?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

• 2:29:33Speaker 01

  Well, that's all the UFC. UFC with that one deal, the Fertitas have such huge balls, because they were down $40 million when they made that deal for Spike TV to do The Ultimate Fighter. And they were like, "We're fucking hemorrhaging money," and they were talking about selling it.

• 2:29:49Speaker 00

  And just a perfect storm, Stefan and Forrest and the world was watching, man, and it felt special. I remember being at my mother's house, I knew I was watching something special.

• 2:29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:59Speaker 00

  Like, this is special.

• 2:30:01Speaker 01

  I know, it was crazy being there live, too. It was so nuts. It was so nuts to watch it evolve and watch it burst out. And by then, by 2005, I'd already been working for them for like four years. Cause I, well, I started in ninety seven with the old owners and I did like the backstage and post-fight interviews. And then I did it for a little bit and then I had to quit. I was like, this is costing me money.

• 2:30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:30:26Speaker 01

  I made more money going to a comedy club for a weekend than I would flying to Dothan, Alabama.

• 2:30:33Speaker 00

  Bossier City, Louisiana?

• 2:30:34Speaker 01

  But I, I was happy I did it because it was fun, this is exciting. And I remember me and Eddie Bravo back then, we were like, man, you know what the UFC needs? This is like literally a conversation we had in like ninety eight. They need some crazy billionaires that love the sport to just dump a bunch of money in it. Cause we know it's exciting. It's just the rest of the world doesn't know. And along came the Fertitas and they did it.

• 2:30:54Speaker 00

  Did they saw it and rode that vision out and it paid off?

• 2:30:57Speaker 01

  It's nuts. Literally like exactly what we said needed to happen. And then for that fight to happen in the Ultimate Fighter, between Stefan Bonner and Forrest Griffin, because it was a perfect kind of fight, was it was so evenly matched. It was so chaotic and they knew each other so well from being in the house together, they just went after it. For three solid rounds at the end, both guys were like, ugh.

• 2:31:18Speaker 00

  But dude, how could the idea of the actual Kumite idea of putting the best fighters from all over the world, whatever's discipline they train in, let's find out what's the best, that's, I mean, it has, it's, of course it's gonna succeed, it's chaos.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:32Speaker 00

  It's everything you wanna see.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  And the crazy thing, it was really kind of invented as a showcase for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Cause the old Horian was like, you know, like, look, Jiu-Jitsu's gonna prevail. And he was kind of right.

• 2:31:43Speaker 00

  No, I mean.

• 2:31:44Speaker 01

  At first.

• 2:31:45Speaker 00

  Dude, Hoist was in there against giants.

• 2:31:48Speaker 01

  Dan Severn.

• 2:31:49Speaker 00

  Dude, come on.

• 2:31:49Speaker 01

  Chemo.

• 2:31:50Speaker 00

  What did he weigh, a hundred eighty pounds, a hundred ninety pounds?

• 2:31:52Speaker 01

  Maybe, not even, maybe even one seventy-six.

• 2:31:54Speaker 00

  Fighting, fighting these bodybuilders?

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  And I asked him, why'd they pick him? He goes, look at this face. And look how beautiful I am. I'm so good looking, that's why they picked me.

• 2:32:03Speaker 00

  Wearing pajamas, we even know what a gi was?

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  Well, I had no idea Jiu-Jitsu was that, that effective. I was so confused.

• 2:32:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:32:11Speaker 01

  I was like, someone's gonna kick him. He's fucked. Someone's gonna punch him. Uh, no. Like, he's just taking dudes to the ground. That stomp.

• 2:32:19Speaker 00

  And no idea of anything that they're doing. Just letting them pass guard, letting them do.

• 2:32:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:24Speaker 00

  Do anything. You don't know any.

• 2:32:25Speaker 01

  He's choking guys with the gi too. He's grabbing his own.

• 2:32:27Speaker 00

  Lapel.

• 2:32:28Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh, this is wild.

• 2:32:30Speaker 00

  That's one thing I do. Like, I got away from the gi, so from white belt to brown belt, I competed IBJJF. Every tournament I could would do my weight class, would do absolute, get the reps. I love jiu-jitsu, but I could probably around 2011, 2012, I stopped putting the gi on, you know? It was all a mixed martial arts training. Cause I was getting, before I would use jiu-jitsu to prepare for fights at a small school I was at, but when I went to American Top Team, I didn't need anymore because I had such high level guys on the mats at all times. I was doing jiu-jitsu, no gi, every day. But it's been so many years since I've put on a gi and had like a jiu-jitsu practice, man. And even the practices I do now are all no gi.

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 2:33:10Speaker 00

  I wanna get back into gi.

• 2:33:11Speaker 01

  Gi's fun, but Eddie Bravo said it best. He goes, if you were a professional tennis player, would you practice for tennis by playing racquetball? No, you wouldn't.

• 2:33:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:33:21Speaker 01

  You would play tennis. You would do the thing that you do. If you wanna get really good at MMA jiu-jitsu, you need to do no gi.

• 2:33:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Speaker 01

  And he's right.

• 2:33:29Speaker 00

  I mean, gi definitely helps as well, but you gotta do no gi.

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  What gi does is it teaches you that you have to be technical with your defense because you can't muscle out of things.

• 2:33:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:33:38Speaker 01

  But the reality is, like, you should just be technical with no gi.

• 2:33:42Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 2:33:42Speaker 01

  That's the thing. Like, get out of the thing. Like, I always say that the best jiu-jitsu is to learn jiu-jitsu from a small guy. Like.

• 2:33:50Speaker 00

  All technique.

• 2:33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like a Barrett Yoshida, Hoiler Gracie, Eddie Bravo. Like, learn jiu-jitsu from small people.

• 2:33:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:33:58Speaker 01

  Cause they're all technique. They can't muscle out of things.

• 2:34:00Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 2:34:01Speaker 01

  Brazilian jiu-jitsu from some big giant motherfucker. Like, their, their game is gonna be so different because they're so strong.

• 2:34:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:34:08Speaker 01

  But, like, look at, like, the Sambo guys. Look at the Makachavs and Khabibs. Like, that, that's the game of no gi. That's no gi. It's like, their, their no gi game is finely polished.

• 2:34:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  Finally, that's, it's not gonna help them to wear a gi.

• 2:34:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  Their, their game wouldn't be better. Like, Khabib's game wouldn't have been better.

• 2:34:28Speaker 00

  It's all top. You never see those guys on their back in guard. It's a different, it's a different, it's a different speed. It's jiu-jitsu, but it's a different, different game.

• 2:34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:36Speaker 00

  What they do. Small, small changes on the locks like we were saying with the Darce choke, grabbing your forearm. They do things a little bit different, man. Even their wrestling like is, is different. It's not collegiate fundamental wrestling that you would teach at, at a wrestling camp. It's just chain wrestling that they kind of developed and have their own style, man. It's different.

• 2:34:55Speaker 01

  It really is interesting. And then, you know, when I've talked to Daniel, he's like, dude, I've seen could be put it on. Like high level amateur wrestlers in the gym. Put it on them. And I believe it too. I mean, he's just, his discipline, when he was in his prime, man, his discipline was just above and beyond. His discipline, his drive, his focus. And there's something to be said for those guys too, because they're super religious. So there's no partying, there's no drinking, there's no chasing women, there's no bullshit. It's just drive, drive, drive, drive.

• 2:35:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:35:29Speaker 01

  You know, and that collecting the legs that he does with the triangle underneath the legs when he's in mount.

• 2:35:33Speaker 00

  Against a fence.

• 2:35:35Speaker 01

  So hard to get out of that.

• 2:35:37Speaker 00

  Everybody's doing it now. You know, the wrist ride, the handcuff he's doing, everybody's doing it.

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, he, I mean, it's been really interesting to watch like these dominant forces come along and like sort of remap the landscape of the game, you know? And we've seen it with them.

• 2:35:55Speaker 00

  Especially in such a high stakes game. How do you do it that many times without catching a heel to the face, without catching a knee? You know, the guys he's fought, so many dangerous guys, he's just drowned them, you know?

• 2:36:06Speaker 01

  I know. Well, you know, Islam got caught in that one fight and got knocked out.

• 2:36:10Speaker 00

  Adrian Martin's.

• 2:36:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Right, but it just shows you as a human being.

• 2:36:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, it can happen to anyone.

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  It can happen to anybody. And the Gleason Tebow fight with, uh, with Khabib. I feel like Gleason won that fight.

• 2:36:21Speaker 00

  Oh, man, I know a lot of people always talk about that.

• 2:36:23Speaker 01

  I feel like Gleason won that fight.

• 2:36:25Speaker 00

  Me and Tebow have been training partners for some, we beat each other up so much. He's such a fun guy, man. Gleason's such a good dude.

• 2:36:30Speaker 01

  He's another guy, like, how the fuck are you 155?

• 2:36:33Speaker 00

  So much energy, dude, never complains about anything. He could have 50 pound weight cut, smiling in the sauna, just happy to be here. Just hope, he just hope both teams have fun.

• 2:36:43Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 2:36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:36:44Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 2:36:44Speaker 00

  Just a happy go guy, man, just.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  I watched that fight again, cause I was like, am I talking out of school? Should I shut the fuck up? And I watched it again, I go, no, I think he won.

• 2:36:53Speaker 00

  Was it a split?

• 2:36:54Speaker 01

  I don't remember. I don't remember if it was split.

• 2:36:57Speaker 00

  But he was stopping takedowns.

• 2:36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he was a tank. That guy was a tank. He was big. He was big and jacked.

• 2:37:07Speaker 00

  Dude, probably five eight, five seven.

• 2:37:10Speaker 01

  Little saucy.

• 2:37:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe.

• 2:37:13Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:37:14Speaker 00

  Maybe. I don't know.

• 2:37:16Speaker 01

  I don't know either, but. Skillful, super skillful, you know, solid striking, solid jiu jitsu.

• 2:37:23Speaker 00

  Oh, great jiu jitsu.

• 2:37:24Speaker 01

  Very good, everywhere. Black belt in jiu jitsu, strong as fuck and just, you know.

• 2:37:30Speaker 00

  They knew from an early age, because I think his middle name is Herculino. I'm serious.

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  That's hilarious.

• 2:37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:37:35Speaker 01

  Herculino.

• 2:37:36Speaker 00

  Herculino.

• 2:37:37Speaker 01

  Brazilians have some of the funnest nicknames.

• 2:37:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, he might have eight names, you know.

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 2:37:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:42Speaker 00

  Gleason Tibal, Alves, Herculino, a few other things that I'm missing, I'm sure.

• 2:37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:47Speaker 00

  I'm serious, though. Johnny Gleason, maybe, Tibal. I don't know. He has a few names.

• 2:37:52Speaker 01

  That's funny.

• 2:37:53Speaker 00

  I'm being serious.

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:37:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:37:54Speaker 01

  He's got a bunch of names that nobody knows?

• 2:37:55Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:37:56Speaker 01

  That's hilarious, man. Well, at American Top Team, man, you probably have seen more elite talent come through those doors. Shout out to Dan Lambert.

• 2:38:04Speaker 00

  Well, Dan's a man.

• 2:38:05Speaker 01

  That motherfucker put the money in, put the time in, when there was no money to be made. There was no, that guy was.

• 2:38:13Speaker 00

  He just loved it. It was a passion thing.

• 2:38:15Speaker 01

  And just think, it's just like what we said with the UFC, we need a rich guy to come along and just throw the money at it.

• 2:38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:38:21Speaker 01

  Like, that's what Dan did with American Top Team. I remember when he was putting together the, the new American Top Team facilities and he showed me, we're gonna have dorms, we're gonna have this. I'm like, I was like, this dude's trying to go broke. Like, what are you doing?

• 2:38:32Speaker 00

  Dude, it's huge. And that area's crazy expensive. It's on a huge piece of land.

• 2:38:36Speaker 01

  I need to get Dan in here. I know.

• 2:38:37Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  I talked to him about it before, but he deserves, he deserves the credit because that guy.

• 2:38:42Speaker 00

  And dude, honestly, like, him building the gym and asking fighters for 5%, which is, you know, crazy, unheard of. Other gyms are taking crazy amounts, you know, and he's giving you all these amenities, giving you a place to stay.

• 2:38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:54Speaker 00

  At one point, he had houses as well, fighter houses that he bought and he would put fighters up in the houses for camps and stuff. Dude, I've heard of him paying, covering medical bills that. Fighters didn't have money for, never getting paid back.

• 2:39:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:39:07Speaker 00

  Like, all, all time, he's done so much stuff, man.

• 2:39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, a good, good for the sport.

• 2:39:13Speaker 01

  Amazing for the sport, and if he didn't put together that super gym, who knows how many of these super gyms would have ever evolved? Because he kinda set the blueprint for what, what a gym could be. To this day, that's still the best gym in the world, in terms of like,

• 2:39:27Speaker 00

  I mean, there's just so much knowledge, man.

• 2:39:29Speaker 01

  Right. And so many, Knowledge, so much equipment, it's so big, it's so well-made.

• 2:39:34Speaker 00

  And you never know who's gonna be on the mat. At any time you walk in and do an MMA class, there's literally thousands of mixed martial arts bout experience on the mat at any time.

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  Was Robbie his first world champion?

• 2:39:47Speaker 00

  I was there for every camp when Robbie came over.

• 2:39:50Speaker 01

  Uh, I feel like it might have been like, there was like, everybody was like, Dan Lambert deserves a world champion. Someone's gotta be a world champion.

• 2:39:57Speaker 00

  Robbie might have been the first, dude.

• 2:39:58Speaker 01

  I think he might have been the first.

• 2:39:59Speaker 00

  I mean, Mike Brown was WC.

• 2:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:02Speaker 00

  There's been,

• 2:40:02Speaker 01

  But UFC champion, I think Ruthless Robbie Lawler was number one.

• 2:40:05Speaker 00

  I remember when he came over, man.

• 2:40:08Speaker 01

  Hey, how was Pantoja? Do you know how his elbow was?

• 2:40:11Speaker 00

  I don't know how the injury is, but it has to be bad if they're skipping him and going with this, uh,

• 2:40:15Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:40:15Speaker 00

  Other title fight.

• 2:40:16Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:40:17Speaker 00

  I was there like, two weeks ago, I went down to help some buddies. I spent a week there, I didn't see Pantoja at all, so.

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  It was so nasty, but what, what was really weird was, like, when Megan Olivi was talking to us, they were saying that he dislocated his shoulder. And I was like, what, what? Like, what are you talking about? His elbow went out. Like, I'm watching his elbow go out.

• 2:40:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, it looked like the elbow.

• 2:40:36Speaker 01

  And they said, no, but I think they, the doctor had misspoke. And I'm 99% sure that it was actually the elbow that went out, because the, the elbow clearly moves, and it, and it caves in and gives out.

• 2:40:48Speaker 00

  Right. And when that happens, ligaments, muscles, everything gets damaged, but I just don't know the extent.

• 2:40:53Speaker 01

  Well, it's too bad, because also Pantoja's older, and he's older and dominant in flyweight, which is very hard to, to do.

• 2:41:00Speaker 00

  It sucks at any time to see a fight in like that.

• 2:41:03Speaker 01

  Terrible. But especially, Especially a title fight.

• 2:41:05Speaker 00

  Especially a title fight, especially on the streak he was on, defending the belt, like, it just, fuck, man.

• 2:41:09Speaker 01

  Not just that.

• 2:41:09Speaker 00

  And he's such a hard worker, and such a quiet guy, and just a good dude, you know?

• 2:41:12Speaker 01

  He's a fucking savage, too. I think he's one of the greatest of all time.

• 2:41:16Speaker 02

  The post-fight, Dana said something about the shoulder also.

• 2:41:18Speaker 01

  They popped his shoulder back in. I thought it was the elbow. Well, it was the elb-, it says it's not the elbow, it was his shoulder. It's his elbow as well, though.

• 2:41:28Speaker 01

  It's gotta be, that's weird.

• 2:41:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, follow up posted there was no ligament damage, but I was trying to find, uh, updated.

• 2:41:34Speaker 01

  So even if there's no ligament damage, there could be cartilage damage.

• 2:41:37Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:41:38Speaker 01

  A lot of other shit.

• 2:41:39Speaker 00

  Anytime something bends the way it's not supposed to, soft tissues damage.

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  His weight and Joshua Van's weight, all on one arm posted, and that arm gives out. But damn dude, when he fought that Japanese cat, who was that guy? Ran through him.

• 2:41:54Speaker 00

  When Pantoja did?

• 2:41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, you, you just see how good he is. When he fought Kai Car of France, ran through him, I was like, this dude is on fire right now.

• 2:42:03Speaker 00

  No, he's good, man.

• 2:42:04Speaker 01

  He's on fire. I think Pantoja's just one of the best of all time.

• 2:42:07Speaker 00

  And dude, not loud, not flashy, quiet. He'll walk in the gym, go be in practice, you won't notice him. Just working, always.

• 2:42:14Speaker 01

  Just does his work.

• 2:42:15Speaker 00

  Just working.

• 2:42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, just fucking focused, just a soldier.

• 2:42:18Speaker 00

  I love to see that though, man, cause like a few years before he was the, the, well, I mean, the flyweight champion, he was driving Uber or Uber Eats, like just trying to

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 2:42:27Speaker 00

  Making, you know, scrapping to, to get bills paid and you see a guy become, that's what makes fighting so special though.

• 2:42:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:42:33Speaker 00

  You know, like Teddy Atlas has a speech about it, but it's like, where else can you be from any discipline, any creed, anything, any wa- background? And call yourself the world, the champion of the world, like.

• 2:42:45Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:42:45Speaker 00

  So powerful, and any given night, you can go against the odds and be a Buster Douglas, or be, be an Uber Eats driver and be the world champion, you know, a couple of years later, like, it's just special, man. Fighting combat is special.

• 2:42:57Speaker 01

  It is special and it is the end all of all sports. Like if someone shoots a basket and they make a three pointer on you, you're like, okay, but I could still fuck you up. You know, no one says after you fucked them up, yeah, but I could score a basket on you. No one cares.

• 2:43:14Speaker 00

  Dude, it's the.

• 2:43:14Speaker 01

  It's the end of all sports.

• 2:43:15Speaker 00

  The end of all, everything, the middle, the best middle school comeback. Somebody could be, can't beat me though.

• 2:43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:21Speaker 00

  Can't beat me though. That was like they'd come back for anything. Can't beat me though. Like, that's the top of the line. The best, the top challenge.

• 2:43:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:43:26Speaker 00

  The top challenge.

• 2:43:27Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter if you're better at backgammon.

• 2:43:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Does, does it matter?

• 2:43:31Speaker 00

  You dunked on me, but I'll beat your ass.

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, beating someone's ass is the, that's the end goal. That's what all sports aspire to be.

• 2:43:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:43:38Speaker 01

  Is combat sports. So, do you have plans for stuff you wanna do outside of fighting now? Like now that you're retired and now you're settling in?

• 2:43:49Speaker 00

  Be a good dad, be a good husband. That's my, that's my goals always. But I have a few other businesses, you know, I've had for years. I got a documentary.

• 2:43:57Speaker 01

  You got a great hot sauce.

• 2:43:58Speaker 00

  Got a great hot sauce.

• 2:43:59Speaker 01

  That hot sauce is legit, dude.

• 2:44:01Speaker 00

  Well, let's not, thank you, man.

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  It's legit.

• 2:44:03Speaker 00

  Poirier's Louisiana Hot Sauce. It's not white label. We made this.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  It's very good, dude. It's very good.

• 2:44:08Speaker 00

  I'm proud of it. I'm proud of it.

• 2:44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you sent it to me, I was like, okay, I'll try it. I'm like, oh shit.

• 2:44:13Speaker 00

  It's legit.

• 2:44:14Speaker 01

  Vinegar based.

• 2:44:15Speaker 00

  Vinegar based, cayenne pepper.

• 2:44:16Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 2:44:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:44:16Speaker 01

  Very good hot sauce.

• 2:44:18Speaker 00

  Thank you, man. I put a little celery in there.

• 2:44:20Speaker 01

  You can tell you put some work into that.

• 2:44:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I didn't want it to, there's so many vinegar based hot sauces on the shelf, you know, you get lost in that. And the shelf space is so hard to get. I learned, I'm learning all this business stuff as I've moved forward, you know? And now that I'm done fighting, I get to really see where the hot sauce is, because every fight, every promotion, I got to talk about it and sales always, around every fight, were great, but now we're gonna level off and see what kind of stride we have.

• 2:44:43Speaker 01

  Well, it's legit, man. It's, I, I recommend it highly.

• 2:44:46Speaker 00

  Thank you, man.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 2:44:47Speaker 00

  Besides that, I have a few businesses in Lafayette and I'm really getting excited to have a documentary coming out this year. The same guys who made my first documentary, Fightville, I don't know if you've seen it, came out in 2011. It was on Netflix. Actually did a premiere here at South by Southwest. Showtime picked it up, but the same company that did that, Pepper and Bones, is doing my retirement documentary. So they did the whole last training camp filmed. They live in Germany, so they would fly down, stay with, in camp. They did the whole Fight Week in New Orleans. Then they came back down for Thanksgiving, this recent Thanksgiving, and finished up the documentary. And they have hundreds of hours of footage unreleased from when I was seventeen, eighteen years old.

• 2:45:31Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 2:45:31Speaker 00

  So they got the, they got the whole journey.

• 2:45:33Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 2:45:34Speaker 00

  Just randomly, this guy was filming a a war veteran who turned, he was doing a, him and his wife are documentary makers. And they were following this guy who just got back from the Middle East and he happened to be a fighter. And I met the guy at a fight show I fought on. He was filming the other guy for a war film. Started talking, then he just, "Man, I'm interested in you. Let me start..." Started filming me and then dude, now I have all this hundreds of hours of footage of me fighting amateur, small shows, behind the scenes, at my house, like as a kid.

• 2:46:05Speaker 01

  Oh, that's incredible.

• 2:46:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we're gonna put it all into this documentary.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  Dude, that's awesome. That's amazing. Well, listen, brother, whatever you do, you know, if you put the same energy that you put into becoming a great fighter, you'd be great at anything you do.

• 2:46:18Speaker 00

  I think that.

• 2:46:19Speaker 01

  That's just, the beautiful thing about doing the most difficult thing is everything else is definitely gonna be easier.

• 2:46:24Speaker 00

  I wanna go back to the difficult thing, though.

• 2:46:26Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:46:27Speaker 00

  I don't want the easy path, man.

• 2:46:28Speaker 01

  It's so hard. It's so hard to let it go, right?

• 2:46:30Speaker 00

  It's hard to be as, like, like I tell my wife, I say this a lot, be a civilian. To go from fight life every day for so long to being a civilian, it's like I'm relearning who I am.

• 2:46:40Speaker 01

  Maybe a couple boxing matches. Maybe the UFC let you out.

• 2:46:43Speaker 00

  I would love to.

• 2:46:44Speaker 01

  Do you think the UFC would let you out of contract, do some boxing matches?

• 2:46:47Speaker 00

  Nope, I don't think so. Unless the pot was big enough to where, I don't think so.

• 2:46:51Speaker 01

  Ah, they should.

• 2:46:52Speaker 00

  But I'm not fucking fighting Floyd Mayweather. The pot ain't gonna be big enough.

• 2:46:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:46:56Speaker 00

  You know? Cause there was a Russian company that wanted me and Nate to box.

• 2:46:59Speaker 01

  Oh, and UFC said no?

• 2:47:02Speaker 00

  I didn't even bring it to him. Ariel Hawani hit me up and said, "Hey, any interest in this?" I have interest, but I didn't wanna bring it to Hunter and Dana. I didn't wanna ask them.

• 2:47:10Speaker 01

  Pivot and Tron.

• 2:47:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:47:12Speaker 01

  Pivot and Tron. See what happens after this Nate and Mike Perry thing.

• 2:47:15Speaker 00

  I tried to do the benefit. I tried to, let's do it in Zufa boxing.

• 2:47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's silly that they don't wanna do any crossovers, but I get it.

• 2:47:21Speaker 00

  Dude, I don't know if I want any more head trauma either, Joe.

• 2:47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wanna raise my son and my daughter.

• 2:47:26Speaker 01

  That's true too. That's true too.

• 2:47:28Speaker 00

  I have fifty something fights.

• 2:47:29Speaker 01

  Right. That's true too. Maybe just let it go.

• 2:47:32Speaker 00

  It'll never be gone.

• 2:47:33Speaker 01

  Well, keep it in the back of your head, just work out.

• 2:47:37Speaker 00

  It'll never be gone. Nah, dude, I wanna take, I wanna take care of my head.

• 2:47:40Speaker 01

  I'm never gonna stop.

• 2:47:41Speaker 00

  I'm never gonna stop, but I hope Williams is there tonight.

• 2:47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he'll be there tonight, for sure.

• 2:47:44Speaker 00

  I didn't, I didn't message him.

• 2:47:45Speaker 01

  Oh, he was there. William Montgomery. Shout out to William.

• 2:47:48Joe Rogan?

  Dude, I didn't even catch that you were saying that and when you were jumping guillotine.

• 2:47:51Speaker 01

  Oh, in Miami?

• 2:47:52Joe Rogan?

  He said, "I'm never gonna stop." I didn't realize that. And then everybody online told me, "Oh, he, he's doing William Montgomery." I was like...

• 2:47:58Speaker 01

  Oh my god, how did I miss that?

• 2:48:00Speaker 00

  I was 100% doing Muay Thai Montgomery. But also, I give you the benefit of the doubt. Dude, my delivery was kinda bad. It wasn't the exact...

• 2:48:07Speaker 01

  I was just so focused. When I'm doing post-fight interviews, I'm just always so focused in trying to get everything out of the fighter that they wanna say. That's all I'm thinking of is, what can I ask him that can help them better express themselves after this big victory?

• 2:48:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:48:23Speaker 01

  You know, so it's like...

• 2:48:24Speaker 00

  I was the underdog, and Mike, every time I went to the corner, he's like, "Stop jumping guillotines. You're giving up takedowns. You're not gonna get... Cut it out. Don't do it."

• 2:48:33Speaker 01

  I know. Was that the Ben Wallace underneath?

• 2:48:35Speaker 00

  Never gonna stop. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:48:37Speaker 01

  That was a great victory too, man. That was a good one.

• 2:48:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, with the streak he's on, it's aging well. Aging well now.

• 2:48:41Speaker 01

  Very well. Listen, brother, you're an all-time great. It's an honor. So cool to have you here again.

• 2:48:46Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:48:47Speaker 01

  And congratulations on an amazing career.

• 2:48:49Speaker 00

  Thank you, Joe.

• 2:48:50Speaker 01

  And like I said, you're gonna kill it with whatever you do. Whatever you do in life.

• 2:48:54Speaker 00

  Try to be... I'm gonna try to do the desk work and see where that goes, man.

• 2:48:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and buy his hot sauce. It's legit.

• 2:48:59Speaker 00

  You heard?

• 2:49:00Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you, sir. Bye, everybody.

• 2:49:16Speaker 04

  When you shop Kroger delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.