#242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA

Ben Askren is a wrestler and MMA fighter, former Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight champion, a two-time NCAA wrestling champion and four-time finalist. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Notion: https://notion.com/startups to get up to $1000 off team plan – NI: https://www.ni.com/perspectives – Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings – NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour EPISODE LINKS: Ben’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Benaskren Ben’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benaskren/ Ben’s Website: https://www.benaskren.com/ Ben’s Wrestling Academy: https://awawisconsin.com/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (06:59) – Woodley vs Jake Paul boxing match (10:48) – Askren vs Jake Paul boxing match (13:23) – Jordan Burroughs and Kyle Dake (24:37) – Askren vs Burroughs charity match (29:21) – Champion mentality and handling losses (43:40) – Future interest in competition (53:09) – Askren’s early career (1:03:58) – Robots wrestling (1:18:39) – Olympics (1:24:46) – Dagestan wrestling (1:30:51) – Askren Wrestling Academy (1:46:32) – Khabib Nurmagomedov (1:53:08) – 2020 Olympics (1:54:49) – Wrestling dominance in MMA

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

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Ben Askren, wrestler, MMA fighter, and a brilliant, opinionated, and fun personality in the world of martial arts. And yes, he occasionally likes to talk a little trash. Given his wild online antics and his boxing match with Jake Paul, some people may forget just how dominant he was in the sport of wrestling and in MMA for most of his career. In wrestling, he is a two-time NCAA Division One national champion and four-time finalist. In mixed martial arts, he went undefeated for 10 years with a record of 19-0

• 0:40Lex Fridman?

  before losing to Jorge Masvidal with a flying knee that caught everyone by surprise. He's also into cryptocurrency, disc golf, and is the co-host of Flow Wrestling Radio Live. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool that I can't believe is actually sponsoring this podcast, given how amazing they are. It combines note-taking, document sharing, wikis, project management, and much more

• 1:23Lex Fridman?

  into one space that's simple, powerful, and beautifully designed. There's a lot of note-taking apps out there, and I talk to a lot of people that do similar things that I do. They're like really into organizing their ideas, which is what note-taking is. And so many people love Notion. So if you don't want to take my word for it, take the word of the internet. They love Notion. And Notion is running a special offer just for startups. Get up to $1,000 off Notion's team plan by going to notion.com/startups. To give you a sense, that's almost a year of free Notion for a team of 10. Go to notion.com/startups. That's notion.com/startups.

• 2:07Lex Fridman?

  This show is also brought to you by NI, formerly known as National Instruments. NI is a company that has been helping engineers solve the world's toughest challenges for 40 years. Their motto is "engineer ambitiously," one of my favorite mottos ever. They have a podcast called Testing 123. They have amazing articles at NI.com/perspectives covering engineers and innovators and just talking about their whole process from origin story to the success, going through the testing processes, the fail and fail and fail again until you get it right as part of the rigorous process of perfection, chasing perfection.

• 2:50Lex Fridman?

  It's the design, meaning the harsh truth of reality, over and over and over until you get to that product that works great and reliably is resilient to the conditions of the real world. That's why I love engineering. That's why I really enjoy NI and their amazing slogan of "engineer ambitiously." Do that at NI.com/perspectives. That's NI.com/perspectives. This episode is also brought to you by Onnit, a nutrition supplement and fitness company. They make AlphaBrain, maybe you've heard of it, which is a nootropic that helps support memory, mental speed, and focus. I use it as a boost when thinking about

• 3:34Lex Fridman?

  a difficult problem on a deep work session that I anticipate to be two, three, four hours, so longer than, at least longer than 90 minutes. And I know that it's going to be a particularly challenging problem. When thinking through stuff, dead ends to me are the most difficult because you have to stop, you have to calmly back up and start again. I mean, that's really difficult. Through that maintaining focus, keeping a clear, calm mind is essential. So AlphaBrain really helps me with that. Even though I keep mumbling and not speaking clearly, I assure you, my mind is, at least somewhat, does a little bit less mumbling. It's a little bit clearer. And once again, that's what AlphaBrain can help with.

• 4:18Lex Fridman?

  Go to lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off AlphaBrain. That's lexfridman.com/onnit.

• 4:27Lex Fridman?

  This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress. It controls temperature with an app, is packed with sensors and can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately. It's really up there, to be honest, in terms of joys in life, is a good power nap on a cold bed with a warm blanket with a little bit of air conditioning, but really the cold bed is where the magic is at. Just having a tough day, just being worn out by thinking, worn out by physical activity, and just a nap of 30 minutes just cures everything. I love it. And the same goes for sleep.

• 5:07Lex Fridman?

  A great sleep experience, a cold bed, whether that's for a power nap or a full night's sleep, is just magic. It can track a bunch of metrics like heart rate variability, but cooling alone is worth the money. Go to eightsleep.com/lex this Black Friday and Cyber Monday to save on the biggest sale of the year. That's eightsleep.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by NetSuite. NetSuite allows you to manage financials, HR, inventory, e-commerce, and many more business-related details all in one place. Running a company, I think, is really, really difficult, and not because of the idea development,

• 5:49Lex Fridman?

  not because of the innovation and design and engineering, all the things that I love dearly. It is difficult for that, but it is also difficult because of all the, maybe you want to say minutia, the management of the details, the administrative tasks, the financials, the human resources, all the business-related details. That's really tough. And using the right tools, having the right team of getting that kind of stuff done makes the difference between a business that runs well and not. Anyway, right now, special financing is back. Head to netsuite.com/lex to get their one-of-a-kind financing program. That's netsuite.com/lex. Netsuite.com/lex.

• 6:34Lex Fridman?

  This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Ben Askren.

• 6:59Lex Fridman?

  Before we talk about your incredible wrestling career, your MMA career, let me ask you, I have to ask you, what did you think about the Jake Paul versus Tyron Woodley fight?

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Well, I thought, I mean, I'm obviously biased. I thought Tyron won. I had five rounds of three. And again, this, maybe this is my bias in the way I was seeing it. I thought he was more effective with the striking and he was more aggressive and Jake had more volume. But that was the only like thing I would give him. And I guess a lot of people just didn't see it that way. They thought he landed more, significantly more punches. I just didn't think he really did any damage.

• 7:35Lex Fridman?

  It was a split decision?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Split decision, yeah.

• 7:38Lex Fridman?

  Were you surprised?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Um, well, it's the thing. So the thing I said when I went in to fight him, I said, we don't really, maybe he's good, maybe he's not. We have no, we really have no idea to this point, you know? And so I knew Tyron was a lot better at boxing than I was. And so I thought, okay, Tyron's, I think there's a good likelihood that Tyron beats him up. But there's a chance that Jake's kind of good at this. And I think that's kind of what played out is he's kind of good at it. Even if you saw it the way I saw it, he still was impressive in his showing and he's obviously put a lot of time into it. So he's, he's not bad. We'll say that much, you know?

• 8:16Lex Fridman?

  But isn't it surprising to you that like an elite level athlete, combat athlete, lost to somebody who just takes it really seriously, but is nevertheless not elite level?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Um, hmm. But I think boxing is a really specific rule set. So I'll speak about Tyron, not myself. Tyron had good striking, but obviously it was his first boxing match ever. And within mixed martial arts, you have the, the fear of the takedown and the fear of the kick and fear of other things to go along with the punching. And so if you look at Tyron throughout his MMA career, lots of times, what set up his punches were like level change fakes at a takedown. They dropped boom and then something comes over the top, right? So there's many more elements to worry about in mixed martial arts. Whereas boxing, there's only one. It was his first fight. Yes, I thought Tyron was going to win. I thought this was going to happen. But like I said, I mean, it's pretty evident that Jake's.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  He's not bad at boxing. He's pretty solid, you know, gets in there and works hard at it, I guess.

• 9:16Lex Fridman?

  Out of 10 times, how many times do you think Jake wins?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Against Tyron?

• 9:20Lex Fridman?

  Against Tyron.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 9:22Lex Fridman?

  They fight again and again and again, like iterative.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, I, I, part of the thing is, okay, so Jake's corner said you need a knockout going into the eighth round, right? So I think they thought, maybe they're trying to motivate him, but I, I don't see it that way because if they, if they were actually thought that he was winning, why would they encourage him to take a dumb risk when Tyron has, clearly has knockout power, right? It's a really stupid coaching philosophy if that's what you're thinking. So you obviously are thinking, hey, this is actually in the balance, it's competitive. Um, and I feel like Tyron thought maybe he was winning and didn't have the urgency necessary. And so I think he, he, there's a chance he turns it up a lot. Hmm. Man, I would want to watch him again before I, I, so, okay, I have this problem with my personality.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Here's my personality, Lex. Um, I have an issue with not being able to give really exact answers. So I hate giving you an answer that like, I don't feel like is 100% calculated.

• 10:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  So, um, I would like to see them go once more because I would like to see, hey, can Tyron, if, if, because if Tyron can turn up the pace and, and Jake can't handle it, then I think it's an eight, one or nine, two, right? Um, if it goes the exact same way and maybe Tyron wins a close split decision, I'm saying, oh, well, it's probably going to be close every single time. We're probably going to get a five to five type of thing, you know? So it's like, I feel like out of one match, it's not totally indicative of what the future is going to look like.

• 10:40Lex Fridman?

  I feel like Tyron would get a knockout and then you would still be in the same place, like not, not knowing,

• 10:46Speaker 02

  It's possible, it's possible.

• 10:46Lex Fridman?

  Not knowing what to predict.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:48Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so your fight with Jake Paul.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:52Lex Fridman?

  Looking back, you have, had a little bit of time now.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:55Lex Fridman?

  Uh, how would you analyze that fight?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I mean, the, the fight specifically, I got cracked with an overhand right, so I mean, it kind of sucks. Um, I would say. You know, and this is where everyone's like, I don't, I really don't care. And everyone's like, why would you make it turn to your reputation? It's like, well, I wanted to do it. I had an enjoyable time training and in the buildup. Obviously, I wasn't skillful enough to get the win. But if I even, even despite the fact that I know it's gonna happen, would happen. If someone asked me to do it again, I probably would have done it again, you know? And so the way I was thinking about when I was deciding whether to do it or not. Cause I got the offer. It's like, okay, is this money, it can change my life? Yeah, it could, right? It's not gonna double my net worth, but it's gonna add significantly, make my life easier.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Number two is like, when I was in high school, we used to do boxing matches for free just because we thought it was fun. We didn't have something going on Friday night. Me and my buddies would get together and we had some boxing goes on basically, and we punched each other in the head. So it's like for something I think is enjoyable, not that it'd pay me a whole bunch of money. Yeah, sure, I'll do it.

• 11:59Lex Fridman?

  Would you, do you think if you got the rematch, if you did the rematch, would you? What are the odds you win?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm not, probably not very good. I think he's pretty good, actually, and I'm not very good. Now, it's probably at a low point for me because, so when I started training for that, I was like 215 pounds, which is the heaviest I've ever been. I came off my hip surgery. I literally, like, when I said, yes, like, I'll do it. Like, I had literally started working out like the week before for the first time in my, you know, in, since the surgery. Cause I wasn't able to do anything. So could I, could I perform better? Yeah, but now after watching him box Tyron, like, if you ask me, Ben, can you beat Tyron? Probably not. I don't, I don't think I can beat Tyron. So in boxing, yeah, so my chances of beating him, you know? And watching that card, it's like, damn, like, can I be fun to box someone who I know sucks? Who I know I can beat?

• 12:51Speaker 02

  That's what would be fun, you know? Cause like, the training, the preparation was fun. But then obviously, I got my butt kicked up, so that sucked. You know, can I swear on this podcast?

• 13:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, of course.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I was gonna drop an F-bomb, but I wasn't quite sure.

• 13:04Lex Fridman?

  I think it sucked to swear.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 13:06Lex Fridman?

  You could, you could drop all, all of the F-bombs you want. So preparation wise, do you think you were more prepared for that fight? Or the, the Jordan Burroughs exhibition?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 13:20Lex Fridman?

  I mean, like, how did you approach it mentally, you know?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Um, well, the Burrows thing, I, I obviously, it's okay. So when I retired the first time in 2017, Burrows was the only current, like, we'll say, really elite level wrestler that I'd never trained with. Um, I was really good friends with Nebraska's head coach, still am. And I said, hey, I just want, I'm gonna pay my own way. I want to come down and train with Jordan, because I want to see what it feels like. You know, I want to get in there and mix it up. I mixed it up with David Taylor and Kyle Dake. I mean, there's just something about wrestling that I love. And so I flew myself down there in January of 2018, and I spent four days training with Jordan. It was a really good time. It gave me some great insight into how he thinks and, you know, what a great champion he is.

• 14:01Lex Fridman?

  What was it like training with him? Like, what, can you give some insights?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 14:05Lex Fridman?

  Like, what the, like, how hard is the, the live training? Is it more drilling? Is it technical? Like, how does his, it seems like his style is very different than yours. So how does that match up in the room in terms of, like, what you learn from each other? That kind of thing?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  We went full live for one, I think it was like a 12 or 15 minute go, where we would just go wrestle. Um, we did a bunch of simulated live, but obviously, he, he had, so I was a senior in college and he was a freshman at Nebraska, and so we, our teams had dueled each other. He was obviously a lot smaller at that point in time. But he, he had followed my career. And so when I went in there, it was like, hey, I know you're really good at this position. What about this position? What are you trying to do? How exactly does it work? And then let's wrestle there, you know? And then, hey, what about this position? And so, you know, we would spend 30 to 40 minutes talking about that position.

• 15:00Lex Fridman?

  On the ground or?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  I, it was like, uh, one was a chest strap, one was a headlock, one was, uh, I don't know, it's called the, we called the lightning dump, but it's a.

• 15:08Lex Fridman?

  The lightning dump?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I named, my buddy's name was Lightning Luke Smith in high school, and he was the first person I saw do it. So usually when I see someone do something, then I name that move after them.

• 15:17Lex Fridman?

  Got it.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Um, I know, right? Great name.

• 15:20Lex Fridman?

  It's a good name.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so what I said with that is like. He was still trying to be the best in the world. I was just trying to go work out with Jordan Burroughs because I enjoy wrestling.

• 15:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Is like someone who at that point, when he has five world titles, at that four or five at that point, a lot. And so I used it with my high school kids. It's like, hey, this is a guy who's the best in the world, who's bringing someone in and saying, how do I do this? How do I do that? What about this? What about that? And so the level of inquisitive in it, that's a hard word, inquisitiveness he has, is really impressive. And then it's obvious why he got to the level he did because he's figuring out all these little situations. And that's honestly one of the biggest things I think wrestlers, a lot of wrestlers fail to do as they get older. Even when they get to early college age, they say, this is my style. This is what I do. I'm gonna lift and work out hard and I'm, and I'm not gonna add anything to my game, you know, whereas you've seen many progressions in Jordan Burroughs'

• 16:14Speaker 02

  game. He just made his 10th world team. And you, and I, you know, if you have a really keen eye, you've been able to watch him change, you know. So I've been watching him since 2007. He's changed so much. And obviously still maintained a world-class level almost the entire time.

• 16:31Lex Fridman?

  When you say change, like what changed? Because he's, he's got that double leg.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. But there's no double leg anymore.

• 16:37Lex Fridman?

  What's that?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  He like hit his double leg for the first time against Alex Deardre. He hadn't hit it in years. Yeah. So that's like, when people think about Jordan Burroughs, they think about the double leg. Because in his early years, fire, he had a great double leg, right? And even in, so in those years, I would say, the, the biggest thing with Jordan Burroughs' double leg wasn't his level of explosiveness, it was his level of persistence. He would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot. And it was a lot of times it would be from fun, creative angles and out of screeching, boop, all of a sudden he's on you, you know? And it was just, he was just super persistent with it. And I think that was probably the key. And then you saw, you know, when he came out to the, won the first world championship in 2011, it was kind of that type of mentality. And then shortly after then, obviously everyone was starting to lower their standards, getting lower. And he developed a really good like

• 17:21Speaker 02

  mantis go behind series where he would go one way, the other way. Then he started developing really good like low single ankle pick type thing, you know? And then his hand, his hand fighting got really tremendous, like 15, 16, 17. His hand fighting was really good. And now I just commented the 21 trials, like, a few of the defensive sequences he got into, it's like, holy shit. Like, just not from an athletics standpoint, but from a technical standpoint, the things he were doing were just tremendous. So I've seen him as someone like who's continued to reinvent themselves over the course of the last 10, 12 years.

• 17:53Lex Fridman?

  Especially in the, as a junior and senior in college, you're exceptionally dominant.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:59Lex Fridman?

  If you were to face him at the peak, both of your peaks of NCAA wrestling, could you, could you beat him? And if you can beat him, of course, you can beat him.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:10Lex Fridman?

  How do you solve the Jordan Burroughs?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Well, so for a folkstyle wrestling standpoint.

• 18:15Lex Fridman?

  Folkstyle, yes.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Folkstyle, so, you know, he, he had some competitive matches his junior, senior year. He had a 2-1 win over, or maybe it's 3-2 over Michael Chandler, who was my teammate, who's fighting in UFC now. He had a 2-1 win over Tyler Caldwell. So I think you can glean some insight into that. You know, he got ridden, he, he got so mad, brought this up on the podcast. So during Corona, we had to make up all kinds of bullshit to talk about.

• 18:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  And we were doing like the last 10 years best 165s. And I said Kyle Dake would ride him for over a minute.

• 18:44Lex Fridman?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  He got so mad, he wanted to come on the podcast the next day. So hopefully he doesn't listen to this, like, fuck you, Ben, you know? But, you know.

• 18:51Lex Fridman?

  When, when was this? This is during Corona?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Corona, last year. He got mad, we were talking about, we were.

• 18:55Lex Fridman?

  Before the trials?

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct, yeah. So, you know, Michael Chandler rode him for two minutes plus. And that was his junior year, not his senior year, sure, right? But it's close. So I think there's some things there. I think the interesting thing would be if, if I would have stuck around, right? So I chose to go into mixed martial arts after dozen eight. I would have been 74 and he would have been 74. So we would have had to wrestle. And then I think that the freestyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle is a lot more difficult to solve than the folkstyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle. And I think, I don't think he would, I think he would acknowledge that he's much better at freestyle than he was at folkstyle. You know, although he was very good, he's better.

• 19:31Lex Fridman?

  This is like raw speed explosiveness?

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Um.

• 19:35Lex Fridman?

  Presents a problem to you?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Well, so he was never, I mean, he, he didn't really excel on the mat in kind of either style. In freestyle, he has got some good lace transitions. But in folkstyle, like his whole, like in his entire college career, I think he has like 10 pins, which is almost nothing, you know? So he was gaining no value off the top position. He was good enough on most people to get off bottom without it being an issue. But it wasn't like, oh my gosh, this is an area where we really have to be careful. There's a lot of things here. You know, it's just, he wasn't gaining value there. Whereas in freestyle, he, I don't want to say never, but the amount of times he gets turned is incredibly rare, very, very rare. And he does have like lace transitions, so he gets a lot of points there. So, and obviously freestyle is.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  It can be geared way more in the neutral position, right? Where we're only doing takedowns, so yeah.

• 20:25Lex Fridman?

  Were you surprised that he lost to Dak in the trials? To Kyle Dak?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Oh, Kyle's so, so he's so good, right? I mean, I think, I think his performance in the Olympics was, uh, was his loss and was shocking to, I mean, we never seen it happen to Kyle Dak. You know, he's been a guy who's competed with Jordan Burroughs forever. And obviously he was on the losing side for a while and now he's on the winning side. Um, but I think a lot of people thought it was a coin flip. And I think actually Kyle Dak made it feel like it's not a coin flip. It feel now, to me, it feels like Kyle Dak is going to win that match significantly more times than he isn't, is what it feels like.

• 21:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I forgot which trials it was. Was it four years ago where Kyle Dak threw him? Like he, he, you saw inklings of like,

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:16Lex Fridman?

  Oh, wow, there might be a eventually a changing of the guard.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so 13 Kyle came out and he had the one throw, but then he lost one of the matches decisively. Um, and then he was hurt in 14. And in 16, Kyle Dak actually went up to 86 kilograms. So in, actually in 16, at the trials, we had, um, so Jake Herbert was number one seed. He was former, as Guy Russell, was a former world silver medalist. So you had, uh, David Taylor, who had not made a team yet, who is now a world champion, Olympic champion. You had Kyle Dak in the bracket, who was a two-time world champion now. And you had Jaden Cox in the bracket, who had not made any teams yet, but is now, what, a four-time world medalist, two-time world champion? So, and then obviously Jaden came out on top of that, won his first Olympic medal, Olympic bronze medal.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Um, so Kyle didn't wrestle Jordan in 16 and Jordan, Kyle's contention the whole time.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  And they argued about this. So I actually did a little bit of backstabbing. Well, it's not, it's not backstabbing.

• 22:15Lex Fridman?

  And both of them or just one?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  I didn't tell any of them. Okay. So Jordan got mad. We talked, we talked about this fake match during Corona, right?

• 22:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  We had to make, we had to make up something to talk about.

• 22:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  There's obviously no matches. So we talked about this fake match and.

• 22:26Lex Fridman?

  Do you stand behind that statement, by the way?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Listen, here's, here's what I said. Kyle, Kyle Dick's four time NCAA champion. Yes, I said, you gotta pick a, you gotta pick a winner. I said Kyle Dick wins 2-1 on a minute and six ride time, which I mean is little, we're talking.

• 22:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  As close as it gets, as close as it gets for Kyle Dick, who's a four time NCAA champion.

• 22:45Lex Fridman?

  Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. We're talking.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Over Jordan Burroughs.

• 22:47Lex Fridman?

  Over Jordan Burroughs.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  In a folks now match.

• 22:49Lex Fridman?

  In a folks now match.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Hypothetical.

• 22:51Lex Fridman?

  College or now?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Completely hypothetical.

• 22:53Lex Fridman?

  Now or in college?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  In college. They're, both of them at their peaks at 165 pounds. So completely hypothetical. And so Jordan called in, he was all pissed at me for picking Kyle Dick. He wants to come on the next day and argue his point.

• 23:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  So I said, F that. That's, that's dumb. Well, we had to pick a winner. We had to do something hypothetical. So then I called Kyle Dick and I said, Kyle, Jordan's gonna come on and argue his case in the morning. If he's gonna do that, why don't you come in and argue your case? So no one else knew Kyle was coming on the podcast. So they both show up and they went at it. But one of the contentions Kyle had for years, and there's still this rule, if you win a world level medal, the following year, you sit out until the very end of the American trials. And they do, they do a best two of three. So every time previously that Kyle had wrestled Jordan, he had to come through a tournament on Saturday.

• 23:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Okay. Probably three matches. And then on Sunday, he would wrestle Jordan in a best two out of three, right? So his contention was, I'm only wrestling Jordan at a disadvantage because I have to compete on Saturday. And then competing on, which it's a fair argument. It really is. But I also see USA Wrestling's point is like, if someone wins a world medal, we're, we're gonna reward them because we want that person on the team again. So.

• 24:06Lex Fridman?

  It's crazy though that you're like Kyle Dick had to wrestle, because he's not wrestling bums in that division.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:12Lex Fridman?

  And, and then, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how wrestlers do it. Cause.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:17Lex Fridman?

  You have to go to war like three matches and then face Jordan Burroughs.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially a few of those years with, you know, Daikad, the name Andrew Howe, but those were really competitive matches. David Taylor had really competitive matches with him. Isaiah Martinez even got in there, DeRinger. So he had some really competitive matches before he ever got to Jordan Burroughs. So I never answered your initial question was, how did I feel? So the Jordan Burroughs match, I was not in wrestling shape at all. Meaning wrestling is heavily dependent, especially in neutral positions, heavily dependent on timing and other things. I was wrestling very, very minimally because I was, I started fighting again. So like my, my athletic shape was great, but it was mainly for fighting. I wasn't wrestling. So I think they were actually trying to do Burrows, Daik at, Beat the Streets. It's a big, it's the biggest fundraiser in wrestling every single year.

• 25:07Lex Fridman?

  In New York?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  In New York City. They usually raise like a million dollars. They started all these programs in New York City, which I really wonder what they're doing with the money now because they probably can't get, have the kids wrestling because New York's crazy. Anyway.

• 25:18Lex Fridman?

  I think New York figures out a way what to do with the money. Hence, Michael Malice complaining that they're corrupt and all that.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Well, no, but it goes to the Beat the Streets organization.

• 25:26Lex Fridman?

  Oh, it does.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Who then starts the clubs in New York. So I don't know what to do with the money. Anyway, so I was called like, I don't know, two, two weeks before the event and said, hey, you know, someone saw us wrestle Jordan Burroughs. It fell out. Would you wrestle him? I said, yeah, sure. Why not? You know, and it's like, well, listen, I, I trained with them for four days the year before. I had a pretty good idea how the match was going to go. It wasn't going to go so well for me. But it's like, okay, you're missing a main event. I can bring, because of where I'm at right now in my life, I can bring a lot of attention to wrestling. I can help you guys raise a bunch of money for Beat the Streets. My, my goal is, I think, I thought I could get one takedown or turn on him was kind of my goal for the match. I didn't get there.

• 26:08Lex Fridman?

  He went kind of hard.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  He went hard. Yeah, that asshole didn't give me a point.

• 26:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that, that.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  I said, this is bullshit, Jordan. I told him during the match, like, this is bullshit. You're fucking going too hard right now.

• 26:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  I'm not a wrestler. I'm not a wrestler anymore. I'm a fighter. I'm coming in here. So, yeah, so I, I had a really good idea. I mean, we wrestled together. I think in, in, he'll probably get mad because I, I think in the live go, we did like the 12 or 15 minutes. I think I actually scored a takedown in that, I believe, maybe, or maybe it was a turn. He'll probably say, no, I didn't, but whatever. Yeah. So I, I knew what was going to happen. I, I knew what the outcome was going to be. I knew I could, I was hoping I could stay competitive and maybe, you know, lose like 10-2 or something like. Yeah.

• 26:46Lex Fridman?

  Well, let's walk back because I think I originally brought it up in terms of how prepared were you against Jake Paul versus Jordan Burroughs?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:56Lex Fridman?

  So, did you prepare for Jake cardio wise?

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I worked hard. Yeah, I did. But it was, I told you, I started training for my, I mean, once I had my hip surgery, they said, you know, for the first six weeks, you can't even walk. And it was hard for me to listen to him because by week four and a half, five, I was feeling pretty good. I want to get rid of my crutches. But I'm like, you know what? This is for the rest of my life. And if you get the, so if you get the real hip replacement, there's no wrestling, there's no nothing, right? So, that's the next step. So, okay, I'm going to take this serious. So, I do my crutches the six weeks. The next six weeks, it's still like really low weight bearing, can't do anything, you know? So, then I get done with the three months, which is like January, and I'm like, okay, I should start working out. So, I started riding a bike a little bit.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  And then, okay, I'm now, I'm fat, I'm fucking fat, I'm going to get in better shape because I haven't been able to do anything. So, I'm actually start working out. And then that happened, right? So, I'm like, okay, well, now I got three months and it gives me a good reason to get back in shape. And, you know, I knew I wasn't going to be a full-time boxer. So, it's like, how do I put a boxing camp together? So, I found, you know, I had my old teammate, Mike Rhodes. He came up and kind of lived with me-ish kind of thing for three months. I found a couple of this guy, K9, out of Michigan. He came over three weeks. He was great. I went to Freddie Roach for a week. So, I kind of like, you know, tried to give him as good as ideas as I could. And my thought was like, okay, well, if this dude sucks, I can just be tough and, you

• 28:28Speaker 02

  know, block a few punches, get him tired and then beat him up. If he's good, that's probably not much I'm going to do about it in the next three months because I was never good at boxing in the first place. All of my stand-up and mixed martial arts was predicated on how do I get through the two or three punches that are going to come at me in the time I need to get a hold of them? You know, it's all, you only have to make two or three of them miss and then boom, you're on top of them, at least for me. That was all my striking was predicated on. It wasn't about, hey, I'm going to do damage on the feet in order to make something else happen. It was like, how do I clear this barrier, get a hold of you? And if you, I actually did the math one time. I think I got to take down. If you include the knockout round against Masvidal, I gotta take down every round except two. So it was like, it was like 53 out of 55 rounds in MMA I gotta take down.

• 29:12Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Somewhere, somewhere in there.

• 29:14Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so you're hunting the take down once you, once.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Right away.

• 29:17Lex Fridman?

  Once you get, uh, your hands on them, you get the take down.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:21Lex Fridman?

  Okay. But the incredible thing about you, I, I just recently talked, uh, spent a couple of days with Jimmy Pedro and, uh, he talked about his guys and just champions in general hating to lose more than they love winning. And the way you talked about losing, you lost very few times in your career, like later, you, you were dominating both the wrestling and MMA. But the way you took these losses against people that are, I don't know, below elite level?

• 29:55Speaker 02

  It's fair. I was also gonna get pissed at you, but.

• 29:58Lex Fridman?

  No, no.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  But it's completely fair. I thought he was a bum too.

• 30:01Lex Fridman?

  No, that's not what I meant. I'm in trouble.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  It's okay. No, it's good.

• 30:05Lex Fridman?

  No, no, no, but like, what, can you explain the psychology behind that? Like the, what, is, is there a system behind this? Is there a philosophy behind this?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Well, I, so I, I wasn't very good in the beginning. I, I think, I think that's where it all starts from. So I didn't start getting good until the age of like 13. I started at five. I probably started competing more at age 10, 11. Didn't really get good till 13. And still at 13, I'm, I'm, it's not like I'm great. I'm getting better, right? I'm pretty good. Um, so I actually, I've actually, I have written this book on sports psych, but this, it's, I got, well, I got someone to write it for me kind of thing. Uh, cause I've had this philosophy for years that there's, there has to be this balance between two things, right? So on the one hand, in this category, on the one hand, you have hating to lose. A great champion has to hate to lose, like you said, right? But on this other hand, you have to have someone who seeks out challenges, right? Cause if you

• 31:00Speaker 02

  don't have that, you're never gonna reach your full potential either. And so you have to balance these two balls at the same time, right? And so like for me, I always, and this is maybe because I wasn't good, but I was always like, let me go find the best people to wrestle all the time. Let me go find, I, I would like literally, uh, like seven days ago when I was starting to get better, it was like, and this is on the internet. Well, there was, no one was using the internet. It was like a wrestling magazine. And like, hey dad, there's a tournament here. I think that, are the kids gonna be there? Can you take me two hours across the state today, please?

• 31:30Lex Fridman?

  You would wrestle like in competition against them?

• 31:32Speaker 02

  In competition, yeah, yeah, in competition. Hey, I heard there's this tournament. Here's the magazine, says this tournament. Hey Dad, will you take me over there tomorrow?

• 31:39Lex Fridman?

  You, you weren't trying to win, you were trying to get the experience?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  I was trying to wrestle the best guys. Maybe I win, maybe I lose. There's no, when you do a competition, there's no guarantee of a win or a loss. You're just doing competition, right? So I, I wanted to go, I wanted to challenge myself against the best guys. Of which I thought maybe I could come out on top, right? So like eighth grade year, I won way, way, you know, I probably lost a handful of ti- times in the state of Wisconsin, it was probably really, really minimal the amount of times I lost, you know? But it was just about getting the challenge. And it's like some, some kids, and not kids in my club, because I'll, I'll push them very hard on this, are scared of challenging themselves. They like being the big fish in the small pond. They're not willing to go say, I'm, I want to go get that guy, and I want to get that guy, and I want to get that guy. And so that's like, so I think that's part of it for me is like, I always just love the challenge.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I enjoyed competing thoroughly, right? And I understood from a young age, because it wasn't very good, losing's a part of it. You're not always gonna win. And that was kind of it. It's like, hey, sometimes, you know, and for my MMA career, I never planned it to go that way, but yeah, I didn't lose for nine years. And like, that's, that's pretty rare. I didn't plan for that to happen, that was just what happened.

• 32:48Lex Fridman?

  Okay, but you also didn't lose like the second part of your college career?

• 32:53Speaker 02

  My eighty seven, I lost, I won my last eighty seven matches.

• 32:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So that didn't come along with a hatred of losing, you just?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I don't like losing, I still don't like it.

• 33:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:04Lex Fridman?

  But you seem to, okay, but you're, you don't, you don't seem, you, you seem to kind of shrug it off a little bit.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Okay, so like specifically with these two instances that you bring up. With the Masvidal, it feels definitely, so, okay.

• 33:18Lex Fridman?

  All right.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Let's go, let's go deep, let's go deep. So the Masvidal one, it feels different, because.

• 33:23Lex Fridman?

  So whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's, for people who don't know, Masvidal's loss was your first loss?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  First loss.

• 33:29Lex Fridman?

  In MMA?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and I mean, and it was a dramatic loss.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Very dramatic.

• 33:34Lex Fridman?

  And there was this kind of build up as you were potentially one of the greats of all time coming into this fight. And so this pressure, all of that?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  So the, no, I mean, I, I was thoroughly enjoying it. I don't, I didn't feel the pressure. So the Masvidal fight is? He got one fucking move on me. It's not like he beat me. And if we do that again, I think I win. At that point in my life, for sure, I think I win way, way, way more times than I lose. He, he knew that too. That's why he didn't want, he didn't want something, sound about agreement. That's why I had to taunt him and why he got so mad. Cause I had to continue to taunt him in order to get him to sign, right? Um, so that one hurt because, uh, and so people don't know my, my career, I'll just go through it fast. I did three fights in like, uh, smaller leagues. I got signed by Bellator. I was undefeated for three and a half years. I was nine and O.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  When I got done with that in 2012, no, 2013, um, I, at that point in my head, I was just going to transition to the UFC. Cause that's where you go. I was ranked like six in the world. I hadn't really had a competitive match at the end of the Bellator thing. And Dana White, for a reason still unknown to me, we still haven't had this conversation. I wish I could ask him. I should ask him sometime. Chose to refuse me any entry into UFC. He just said, I went to his office. And he literally said, we're not interested. We're not going to make you an offer.

• 34:58Lex Fridman?

  Did you, did you mention something to, about him, about the UFC?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  That was a year before that. That was a year before. That, that, that might play a role in it, I think. So, uh, yes, what happened the year before that was, uh, I called him a liar, which, but listen, I'm right on this one. Cause he said, you can't test for drugs. Cause I'm, I'm all natural, which you could tell by my physique. And I was always put off by the fact that so many people cheated. And I, I was very vocal about that. And so he had made some statement like, oh, there's no way you could test. I said, bullshit. You, you so very specifically, I said, USADA does it for all other sports worldwide. You can do it. And then it was funny because I hired USADA a couple of years later. So I think he took some offense to that, but that was like a year and almost a year and a half, I think somewhere it was later.

• 35:44Lex Fridman?

  It's not like he holds a grudge or anything.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, so I, I literally go to Vegas.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  It's a long story, you can read about it other places. I, I, so I got released from a belt, it's not like, this is a negotiation, I got released from my belt or contract, I said, I'm out of here. I'm going, I'm going to go to the UFC. I go to Vegas and then I was told, hey, there's no offer for you. Tough shit, you know? So then I ended up signing with one championship. I spent, what, three and a half years there. I won the belt in my second fight and retained the title the entire time. And then I just, I think-

• 36:19Lex Fridman?

  Again dominating people.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I didn't have a competitive fight. And so, um, I retired 18-0, never, never get, and for someone who loves a challenge, never getting to really challenge myself was incredibly frustrating. And I left the door open, but I said, if I ever get the chance to prove I'm the best world, I'd love to come back. So somehow, a year later, I get traded, trades have never happened, and this is the one and only trade ever. I got, I've been retired for a year, I got traded, I get to come back, I fight Robbie Lawler, the first fight, I win, and then essentially they're saying, okay, if you fight, uh, you know, if you beat George, you're gonna get the title shot against Marty. And, um, it's like, this, this is what I've been working for the entire, I've been trying to prove I was the best fighter in the world for the last 10 years, and I have, I've not been afforded this opportunity.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  So when I lost to George, that was, that was hard, because I, it was, it's something that I had waited for, for a really, really long time. It was something that I, you know, I thought I could compete for, and I never got the opportunity to do. So that one was hard. At the same time, from like, just a competitive logistician, it's like, he got me with one move. It wasn't like he beat my ass for 15 minutes and I got beat a bunch of different ways. So that was like, fuck, like, if I get it again, I could have done it, but I'm not, I'm not, they're not gonna let me have it again. It's not like wrestling where you could go the next year, the next week, or whatever, you know? You lose a big 10, you go to nationals two weeks later.

• 37:37Lex Fridman?

  Does that loss change you in any way, your psychology?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think so.

• 37:42Lex Fridman?

  It's the first loss.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  I mean, had I, had I had a longer MMA career post that, yeah, there definitely would have been a lot of time spent. Getting better at the entry point to the takedown, right? Which I'd already spent time there. And I hate making excuses, but yeah, the hip, the hinging of my hip, what I couldn't do was preventing me from doing some things. And it's why, if you look at the fight, I'm like bent over as I go for the double leg.

• 38:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So what happened for people who don't know, you went in for a double leg.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  He went.

• 38:12Lex Fridman?

  He did a flying knee.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:14Lex Fridman?

  And the way.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Caught you well. Specifically, the way he did that knee was kind of different than the way anyone had thrown flying knees before. Most people go more just from a stand straight vertical, whereas he took a few like running steps and went more, you know, the trajectory of the angle was different. So I think that's kind of probably why it caught.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  I think a lot of things in combat, well, probably everything, but I focus specifically on combat, happen subconsciously. Like our brain is reading what's coming at us and lots of times it's stuff we've seen before, so we can judge how to move correctly.

• 38:45Lex Fridman?

  You misread because it's something you haven't seen before.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Had not seen him come at that specific angle, yeah. So that loss was really hard. With the Burrows one, I told you, I knew I was gonna lose. So it was like, whatever, you know, I'm taking this because I want to put the sport of wrestling out there in a big way. I want to help them raise a lot of money. We sold at Madison Square Garden, Hulu Theater, and we raised a whole bunch of money. So my goals were accomplished. Jake Paul fight, I took it because they paid me a whole bunch of money and I thought it was gonna be fun. Did I have any illusion I was a great boxer? No illusions whatsoever. Would I have preferred to win? Absolutely. But, you know, like I told everyone, whether I win or lose on Saturday night, I'm gonna be back coaching wrestling on Monday, because that's what I enjoy doing. And I was back coaching wrestling on Monday. And once in a while, these middle school kids give me a little bit of shit about it and...

• 39:30Lex Fridman?

  That's it.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  That's about it.

• 39:32Lex Fridman?

  But where were you in terms of your shape and how you felt in the Mazadal fight? Would you say you're on the... I mean, it's a difficult question to ask of a world-class athlete, but like, were you... Past peak?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And so I don't know. I don't know why guys like to lie about that. I mean, the peak for me was really evidently in my late twenties. And maybe they are all fueled by extra supplements. I don't know. But for me, that was evident. But you get this. So you get this crosshair where you're, if you're smart, like, you know, like I mentioned, John Burrows was, you're still gaining wisdom, you're gaining strategy, gaining a lot of things, right? And so while your physicality may go down, your overall skill level still may be rising, especially in MMA, because people usually start later. Because they're gaining wisdom, strategy, all the maybe more tools in their toolbox, right? They're getting all these things. So their actual competitive peak, despite their athletic peak going down, might still be

• 40:31Speaker 02

  a few years past that, right? Because these things are crossing. No, so I thought I was great. Obviously, the hip was an issue.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  It's funny, because so that I knew I had a lot of pain here. I knew it was because of this. And it was like, okay, whenever I'm done, I'll just get it taken care of, whatever. But every time I train, I have pain kind of like all up my back. And the day after the surgery, I woke up and there was no pain on the right side of my surgery on the left side. There's no pain on the right side of my back. I'm like, that's fucking weird. Like, every morning I wake up, there's a lot of pain there, you know? Like, okay, well, I'm on pain pills. Maybe it'll maybe it'll come back tomorrow. And it's actually never never been back. So it's weird because it was like this. I thought this was affecting this, but it was affecting all the way across my whole back. So, you know, if I get to get a new hip, honestly, if I if I

• 41:23Speaker 02

  I don't know if this is going to change the competitive outcome whatsoever. If I had known how good the hip replacement was going to be, I would have done it the second I retired from one championship in November of 2017. I would have had my hip surgery scheduled for December 1. Just from a lifestyle standpoint, I could only sleep in one position. There's a lot of things I couldn't do. I was in a lot of pain. So I would have done that a lot earlier. But no, from an athletic point, I was ready. This shit goes wrong sometimes.

• 41:51Lex Fridman?

  I don't know how to ask this, but you know, Joe Rogan, me, had a, had a sense about you similar to like, uh, Fedor. That you are potentially one of the greatest ever.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:05Lex Fridman?

  Does it hurt that you're not in the discussion now of being in the top 10? Yeah, of all time.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  I didn't prove it. I don't deserve it.

• 42:14Lex Fridman?

  But I didn't, I didn't prove it. I mean, and so it's like, uh,

• 42:20Speaker 02

  had I, had I somehow gotten to convince Dana White, we go and convince him in 2013 to make me an offer, and I didn't even need a good offer. I didn't need any offer. Had I gotten the offer then, maybe the outcome's different, right? But given, I would never expect anyone to think of me that way. I didn't prove it. I know, I know what I was, and I'm good with that. And yeah, other people never got to see that.

• 42:41Lex Fridman?

  Do you think, well, you don't know, you can't know fully, right? Do you think if you, uh, went to the UFC at that time instead of one championship?

• 42:49Speaker 02

  I think I would have had a lot of success. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously certain guys, there's a lot of guys I've trained with that I had a lot of really good results against and, um,

• 43:00Lex Fridman?

  Who was Walter Wade at that?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Tyron was a champion for a long time there. So I was around, Tyron was a champion, Anthony was a champion at lightweight. I was, you know, same gym as him. And we had a lot of people coming through. Yeah.

• 43:12Lex Fridman?

  Would you face Tyron?

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Would I have fought him? I don't think so. I mean, so he was still the champion when I came into the UFC and we said, no, we're not gonna fight.

• 43:21Lex Fridman?

  Alright.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Hey, so he can't change history, right? So once something happens, you gotta accept it for what it is and move forward and, and obviously hope you can continue to keep accomplishing great things, which for me, obviously my athletic career's over. So now it's gonna be through my wrestling academies and, you know, who knows what else I could get into.

• 43:40Lex Fridman?

  Oh, you might do exhibition matches and all that kinda stuff, right?

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Says who?

• 43:46Lex Fridman?

  Wrestling and stuff, no?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think so. So here's my thing with the wrestling matches is like, Just for fun, if you said, hey Ben, just for fun.

• 43:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Would you love to go wrestle someone? Yeah, I would, I would, right? I love wrestling, get in there. I love, you know, I love like, so one of my guys has gotten to be pretty good, he's in college, he got into Keegan O'Toole, he just won a junior world title this year. And so when, when I'm doing private lessons, I have such thing about the development of the athlete, sometimes I can wrestle hard, but most of the time it's like, I'm just gonna help them with whatever they need help with. And it's still wrestling and it's fun, but it's helping them. You know, for like, for Keegan Cozak this summer and he's training for the junior world title. So to be able to shake hands sometimes and say like, I'm gonna try to kick your ass. You try to kick my ass, you know, like just to go like.

• 44:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's a good feeling.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  It's so much fun and I don't get to do that very much. So if you said, Ben, would you love to do some matches? And the answer is yeah. The problem unfortunately for me, and maybe you could talk me off the ledge here, is like because of where I've gotten to in my career, if I choose to do wrestling matches, it's gonna, people are gonna be really excited about it, it's gonna blow up. And it's like, I just wanna wrestle just to wrestle. I'd rather just like go in a room where no one can watch and just wrestle and just enjoy it.

• 44:54Lex Fridman?

  Well, you could also wrestle, so there's different kinds of wrestling. There's wrestling where there's an event. And like, you know, there's a buildup and then an announcement.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:04Lex Fridman?

  And you could also do like Khabib style, like in the room, there's cameras and you're kinda going.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Wait, Khabib does that?

• 45:12Lex Fridman?

  No, in a.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Marcelo did that, he whooped my ass a few times.

• 45:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've seen Khabib some videos.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:19Lex Fridman?

  It's not like set up, it's just people going hard and then it's more fun.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:23Lex Fridman?

  You know, and it's, it's also more like presenting the beauty of the sport.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:31Lex Fridman?

  And like, and there's no winning or losing really in that context.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:35Lex Fridman?

  Like you're just, you're always joking around a little bit, even when you go super hard. So I feel like, especially in the modern day with, with the internet, that's a compelling way to do.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  So I've thought about, this is the one thing I've thought about doing. Cause I told you about my buddy who was the content thing. It's called Rockfin. Thought about doing, you know, the old really famous Gracie challenge?

• 45:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Okay, so I thought about doing the Askin challenge. You wanna hear my rule set?

• 45:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, let's go.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I'm gonna do this.

• 46:00Lex Fridman?

  People are gonna show up to your, like in Wisconsin.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  I have to select you. I'll start with a thousand bucks, right?

• 46:05Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Okay, 30 minutes. You pin me or I pin you. That's it. No points, no nothing. We just wrestle. Camera, that's it, right? It's camera in the room. Maybe, maybe, maybe this is where I free, cause we don't want there to be contention over the pin. So.

• 46:17Lex Fridman?

  Just one pin.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Just one pin. 30 minutes, 30 minutes, okay? If I pin you, you don't get shit, you go home. Right? Every person I pin, it goes up by a thousand dollars, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, and so on. If you make it the distance and I don't pin you and you don't pin me, I'll pay for your travel. I'll give you 500 bucks. Right? Just the consolation prize for showing up. If you pin me, you get whatever the jackpot is.

• 46:41Lex Fridman?

  Wait, who's adding to the jackpot?

• 46:43Speaker 02

  I am. It's my, it's my money. My money.

• 46:45Lex Fridman?

  But then, what's the incentive to keep winning for you? Cause it's jackpot.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Well, cause I would put the content somewhere and people would watch it.

• 46:51Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so you're gonna make money?

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you'd make money that way.

• 46:53Lex Fridman?

  But it's not exponentially growing, right? It's just going up by like.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I really think there's probably only a couple of people that could pin me. So I would either just not choose those people or wait till I get a really large audience and people get really excited. In that case, I'm making a lot of money, so.

• 47:07Lex Fridman?

  What, what do you think? How many matches would go with you? Like, Kaldek shows up.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  I don't think he could pin me.

• 47:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  I mean, like, so Jordan Bros, Jordan Bros could beat me, but he can't pin me. He was never a pinner.

• 47:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  He ain't gonna pin me. There's only a few people who have the skill level to do so, right? It's, it takes a lot. Cause that, so pinning was one of my specialties. I had the fourth most of all time and I won the pinning award the last two years.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  So, and then even.

• 47:32Lex Fridman?

  Down on points and just pin them.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  This is actually one of the issues I have with. Jiu Jitsu and the point system and the Eddie Bravo thing. I actually think Eddie Bravo thing is kind of, people get so mad at me. Sorry, Jiu Jitsu. I think it's bullshit. And you want me to tell you why it's bullshit?

• 47:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  So like if Jordan Burroughs whoops my ass and the score is 16 to 2, but he can't pin me, then I get to go to overtime and get a cradle on him? I'm probably gonna pin him. So I'm better than Jordan Burroughs? Nah, that ain't right. He just whooped my ass. Do you know what I'm saying? Like if we can go to the hole, because they do submission only. So if Jordan Burroughs beats me up for, what is it, eight minutes, 10 minutes? I don't know. What's the length of an Eddie Bravo match?

• 48:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's something like that, yeah, yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  So we go 10, me and Jordan Burroughs go 10 minutes. He's gonna outscore me significantly. He, he will not pin me, I promise you that. Okay? So now we go, we go to the overtime.

• 48:21Lex Fridman?

  Strong wars, but yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  He won't, Jordan Burroughs is not gonna, he's gonna beat me. I will give you that.

• 48:26Lex Fridman?

  Kyle Day won't pin you either.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:28Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Okay. They will both beat me on points very badly. Now David Taylor, he might, he might pin me because he's a very good pinter also. They'll beat me very badly, they will not pin me. But now we get to overtime and we get to pick like, right? So in Eddie Bravo, you get a rear naked choke or an arm bar. Okay, give me a cradle, I'll probably pin him. Okay, a good cradle. You can say cradle or maybe give them, they're probably not gonna pin me, right? Maybe, maybe there's a chance, but probably not because that's just not their specialty.

• 48:53Lex Fridman?

  So for people who don't know, the Eddie, Eddie Bravo thing is, when it goes into overtime, you get a dominant position on a person and you get to, yeah, basically put them in a cradle, this is the wrestling equivalent.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:06Lex Fridman?

  But you take their back.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Maybe an arm bar, yeah, a wrestling arm bar. So, and I don't think that's very fair because if someone whoops your ass, they whoop your ass and then, you know. And so I think the reason why Jiu Jitsu people accept that rule set is that I don't think, I think they know this but would admit it. I don't think their, their point scoring system adequately, adequately rewards what people value. So like in wrestling, we value takedowns because it gets closer to the pin. And the, the most valuable scoring is a near fall, near to the pin, because that's the ultimate goal of the sport. Whereas in Jiu Jitsu, for example, like if I were to get a takedown, so like if I went to Gordon Ryan and he just didn't pull guard, I would probably get the takedown. Now, if somehow he didn't submit me, which he probably would, right?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  But say he got, got close to like 12 submissions, but somehow I slipped out of all of them. Now, I win two zero, like, that's ridiculous. Like, he should very clearly win because he almost submitted. You know what I'm saying? Like, there, and I, and I realize the difficulty. I realize the difficulty in rewarding near submissions. But that is the most valuable thing, is getting close to finishing the match. And in most competitions, they don't actually reward that.

• 50:12Lex Fridman?

  But, okay, so this, this isn't about the sport. This is about the Ben Askren challenge that we're talking about. What, why 30 minutes? Why not unlimited time? Why, why go until whenever?

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Well, because then it's just a cardio thing. Because at some point, um, then someone would just have to fall over dead. Right? There's no more skill level involved. It's just who can, who can stand up the longest?

• 50:35Lex Fridman?

  You honestly don't think, 30 minutes is a cardio thing, too. How do you think that's actually going to look? How they going against you for 30 minutes?

• 50:44Speaker 02

  So it's going to be kind of boring, um, for the most part.

• 50:49Lex Fridman?

  What position are you going to be stuck in?

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Well, because you, well, you can't, but you can't, you just can't have a gigantic amount of action for 30 minutes. So I, I relate to, because some of my kids, when, when I'm teaching them wrestling, they're like, well, but I can't do that for seven minutes. And I'm like, well, you know, like, say, say if I had you do, uh, hang cleans at a relatively heavy weight as hard as you could. You're not going to last seven minutes. You're going to, your pace will slow down, right? So my thing is like, well, your pace doesn't have to step here because in wrestling, you're competing against someone. So if you're here at 100 and you go to 80, but they go to 70, that's great. And then you go to 60, but they go to 40.

• 51:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  This is even better, right? Because the gap is growing. So we don't necessarily, if we get tired, that's fine. If they get more tired, that's better. So I think most people would know that, so they would kind of slow it down. But yeah, I think it's 30, I mean, I've wrestled 30 minute goes, I've wrestled 60, I've wrestled hour long goes. You're not going to get so tired, you're going to fall over in that time period. But at some point, if we, if it's unlimited, someone will get so tired that, or dehydrated, that they're just going to freaking fall over.

• 51:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. But you, you think, what about making it exciting and dynamic? You think the other person is always going to be going for the pin? And thereby make a dynamic.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Well, if they're working that hard, then they might exhaust themselves. Right? And, and obviously then if you're, if you're being that dynamic, then you're adding risk to yourself too, because you are, you know, doing that.

• 52:15Lex Fridman?

  Well, I love this. This is a great idea.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Well, I figure I'd rack up like 20 pins against bums, you know, or not, not as great people in the beginning. And then I would start bringing in better people because they would be enticed by, you know, $20,000. The possibility to win.

• 52:29Lex Fridman?

  And not, not much fanfare, just a camera and just a local.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  That's it, in my wrestling room.

• 52:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah, like the Gracie Challenge.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. And so then maybe you have like,

• 52:40Speaker 02

  you know, for most people, you have someone edit like the 90 seconds of the most fun things that happen. And then you can watch the entire 30 minutes if you want to.

• 52:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I think most people, if they're not really, really elite, I'm probably going to pin them.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  If they're not really elite.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  So, yeah, but I don't know. I, I, that's something I've been thinking about. This has been like fun for me to think about. Obviously it plays into my skill sets because my cardio is good and my pinning is good also. So, yeah.

• 53:09Lex Fridman?

  So, like you said, you weren't very good in your early days until 13, 14. What was the switch? You began, you started to dominate people. In your college career, you dominated.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:22Lex Fridman?

  And obviously you stopped losing at some point.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, uh, well, I was, so even when I didn't lose in collegiate competition, I, I would go in the summers and try to make the world team. So I would lose some, not a lot, right? Minimally. Okay. So when I'm five, I start playing all sports like, I, I know you moved to America at what age?

• 53:44Lex Fridman?

  13.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Okay. So five, so at least I don't know what it was for you, but in America at my age, you usually played like a sport every season, right? So that's what I did in the beginning. I had minimal success in wrestling. I was kind of chunky. And then in fifth grade, I don't, and I can't, I can't tell you, I want to be better. And I told my parents, and it is funny because now I look at other 11 year olds and very few of them are this mature. And I actually think emotional maturity is kind of one of the key indicators of how long-term successful someone's going to be. And at age 11, I said, I don't want to play baseball. I like baseball, but I don't want to play baseball because I want to wrestle more because I want to get better at wrestling. So age 11, I quit baseball so I could wrestle in a club for March, April and May. Cause that was, that was all that existed at that point in time. You couldn't wrestle in June, July or any of those other months.

• 54:29Lex Fridman?

  What was that desire to get better? What is it? So it's not about.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  I don't know where it came from. I just want to get better. I want to get better. I want to be good at this. I want to be really good at this.

• 54:38Lex Fridman?

  So when you're looking at kids now as a coach, you're looking for that. Somebody who says, you know what? I kind of suck. I want to get better.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  And I, and I want to try to also inspire that. I mean, honestly, I think, I think as a coach, that's probably my, my biggest job is to get a kid and get them to believe I can do this. Cause if I can do this, what can I, I could, I could do that. I can do that too, right? And there's so many kids who unfortunately have like shitty parents or bad teachers that tell them, you suck, you can't be anything. Right? So I think my biggest goal as a coach is to get someone to believe they can do it. So actually some of the ones that believe they can do it, they're the most fun, but they're not the ones who needed, needed the most, right? The ones who think they can are the ones that need me the most.

• 55:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Cause they need someone to, let's go. So I don't, I don't know in, in, what inspired me, I'm not sure. So age, at age 11, fifth grade, I quit. I started, so then I started having more success. You know, when I'm like, say placing at the state tournament.

• 55:36Lex Fridman?

  In high school.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  So you, you right. Fifth, so sixth grade, I placed at like the state, the local youth state tournament, you know? So I'm like having more success. Seventh grade was the first year I won the youth state tournament. So I'm getting better. Eighth grade, I actually feel like I got pretty good, but like when I went to the national tournaments, I was still having really minimal success. My freshman year, I decided to quit football. Same reason. It's like, well, I need to put more time into this. My parents, we got, my dad luckily got a mat in my basement. So, you know, there's no, so we have a year round club and our impetus was that we didn't have this opportunity to go to a club year round. So we had a mat in my basement. I had to go find, hey, you want to, you want to come wrestle? Well, yeah, to find partners for myself.

• 56:15Lex Fridman?

  What'd you do? Did you drill? Did you live wrestle? What'd you do in that basement?

• 56:19Speaker 02

  So actually I think you'll enjoy this. I think the start of. My scrambling was was kind of based around that. So I got kind of, I think it's probably my freshman sophomore. I'm kind of, the years are a little fuzzy, right?

• 56:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  It's been a while. But probably my freshman, sophomore, junior year, I found two kids who were really consistent, who would come out, like you would come out, he would come out on Tuesday and this dude would come out on a Wednesday, right? And they would come every week and they were really consistent partners for me to have in the summer. But they weren't nearly as good as me. They were way worse. So it's like, okay, how do I, how do I make this kind of like fun and compelling for them to come back? If I whooped their ass, they're not going to come back.

• 57:00Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  You know? So it was like, I would let them get as close as I thought they could do a takedown before not getting it and then try to like escape or get out. So obviously if I let them get really close, sometimes they get it, you know, so they're they're enjoying it. I don't know if they ever knew I was doing this, right? I have no idea. And that was kind of like the start because I had to figure my way out of bad positions because I had to try to make it entertaining for them where they still got something out of it and they wanted to come back the next week. And I also got something out of it.

• 57:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I love this.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:30Lex Fridman?

  Because that relationship is so important with that, like that. I've had a few drilling partners, training partners that were really important to my life. And I always wondered why it's difficult, why it's so difficult to find them.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:45Lex Fridman?

  Like I, if anyone's listening to this, I'm looking for a judo person in the Austin area, actually. Getting the reps with people is hard, even in jiu jitsu. That it's just like people want to do the fun stuff. They don't want to really put in the work.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:01Lex Fridman?

  And it takes a certain kind of personality. And then you also have to make it fun for the other person, just like you said. If there's a skill mismatch, but also if you have an interest mismatch in terms of the the amount of drilling you want to do, all that kind of stuff, you have to figure out ways to make it fun.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:17Lex Fridman?

  It's tricky. So you did.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  So yeah, I think I did that and no one told me. As I get frustrated because now we have, you know, just in my academy, we probably have. Fifty, sixty, high school kids only that are year round, that they're year round. You know, maybe they're not consistent in the summer or whatever, but they're there. So when they don't have a great partner, they start whining. It's like, you little bitches, like, you know, I, I, some days I get really mad about it. Cause it's like, I had no partner. I had to find freaking two partners, come twice a week. You guys, there's still 22 people in the room. I'm sorry, there's not the perfect partner for you, but like, go work out with that dude.

• 58:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  You know, and get, yeah.

• 58:51Lex Fridman?

  So what was the switch to change? Was, or was this gradual or?

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Gradual.

• 58:54Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, uh, let's do this, the ninth grade, I quit football, cause I want to get really serious.

• 58:59Lex Fridman?

  Um. What position football?

• 59:01Speaker 02

  I was actually a nose tackle. And I was, but at that point, so I, okay, so I was also, the other thing I kind of left over is, I was really fat growing up.

• 59:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Uh, in a sixth grade, I also decided, okay, I'm really fat. And if I want to be competitive wrestling, I shouldn't be fat, cause weight matters. I went from 130 pounds to 100 pounds in sixth grade. Um.

• 59:17Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  So by the time I was a freshman, I was 119. So I had, I still wasn't as heavy as I was in sixth grade. So I was pretty small too, but I was also slow, unfortunately. So, uh, they put me in nose tackle. I, you know, I liked competitiveness, so I was decent at it. Um.

• 59:32Lex Fridman?

  So that's where you wrestle 119?

• 59:33Speaker 02

  My freshman year, yeah. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, so then I still, I started having a lot of success statewide, but not nationally. It's my national success didn't come till like my junior year in high school. Um, but yeah, I was like grinding and getting better the whole time. And then senior year, I started having a lot of success nationally and I got recruited. And then, but then even when my freshman year of college, I, uh, this is where I love competing. I would go every weekend, cause I knew, if you, if you take the emotions out of competition, all it is, is seeing your failures, acknowledging them, and then figuring out what you need to work on.

• 1:00:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Right? If we take all the emotion out of it, that's what it is. So I wrestled 50 matches as a redshirt freshman, which is incredibly rare. I had 10 losses. So it's not, and like to not, not so great guys, you know? So like my, my skill level still at that point was not that great. And then the next year I came out and I made the NCAA finals. So my, my, I made a gigantic jump in that redshirt year to the, to, to the real freshman year.

• 1:00:28Lex Fridman?

  So a few questions.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Lex Fridman?

  Where did the funk style of wrestling, the, the creative style get developed at which stage?

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  So I, so I think like, looking retroactively, there was no, there was no intention to start when I was in high school with those kids. But I think that's kind of like. What was happening, right? So what I would really say is I had one influential coach my retro year of college named Mike Ironman, great guy. But then the second thing was it was just out of necessity, I had this burning desire to be the best. And when I was getting my ass kicked every day in the room, because we had, you know, the tireman was there, we had All-American 157, we had All-American 184, so I wasn't having a ton of success. And very quickly, I realized from like a more traditional athletic perspective, strength and speed, I couldn't keep up with anyone, I was way worse. So it's like, okay, fuck, how do I, how do I do this? You know, I want to do this, how do I do this?

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  There's gotta be a way, you know? So Mike Ironman showed me a couple of things, but then it was just like this creative expansion for the next, you know, say three to five years. And then even now, it's like, I don't know, there's something, and maybe you feel this way about judo, or there's something that's like fun about the way the body moves and works and, and exploring something new and thinking about, hey, wrestling's been happening at a relative high level for, we'll say 80 to 90 years in America, and there's still new things being developed. And so when you see something new, you're like, oh damn, like that's great. Or like Jason Nolte may have to win Dixie, I'm like, how did I not think of that shit? Like, why did I think of that? That's so easy, I should, I should have thought of that, you know?

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  So there's this like obsession with the sport of wrestling and, you know, positions where, I actually think sometimes thank God we didn't have smartphones, because I may have been distracted by my smartphone. Maybe I wouldn't have been because I was so obsessed, but maybe. But, you know, some days I had, couldn't finish the single leg on the specific person, or they, maybe they were finishing on me, and it was like, go home and I just fucking obsessed about that one position, like, okay, how do, what, what am I missing here? And, and not just accepting like that whatever the coach says is the answer, but like, what am I missing? What ways can my body move that no one's told me it can move yet? Where can my arms go, right? Where can I do all these things? And so I would just obsess about these things.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  And then, you know, sometimes you come in the next day and you say, oh, well, maybe this, you know? And maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe it works twice and then it doesn't work the next time. And so you kind of like have this creative process and it's like, you know, there's a lot of things that are on the cutting room floor that never made it to the, the light, because you thought they were good and they failed and they sucked. And then, you know, to the point where like my senior year,

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  I got to this point where the people, they were just figures. Figures would wrestle in my head about positions I was thinking about. I wouldn't tell them what to do. They would just, they would go in my head. And then like something, oh, fuck, wait, that's it. That, that's it. Like, that just happened. That's the move. And then I'd go try to practice it. Sure enough, boom, that's the move.

• 1:03:25Lex Fridman?

  That's exactly where you have Alpha Zero playing, learning chess. You have, uh,

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:03:29Lex Fridman?

  It's called self-play. So you have, uh, what, did the figures have, um, like a clear?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  No faces, they were just like.

• 1:03:37Lex Fridman?

  Did they have a human form or is it just like stick figures essentially?

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, it was not like, yeah, it was not like humans. It was more like stick fig, it wouldn't stick figures exactly like they were, uh, so.

• 1:03:47Lex Fridman?

  They had some volume?

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, it was like a gray person and they had, you know, three dimensions essentially, because I had to see how the things moved and, yeah.

• 1:03:58Lex Fridman?

  I mean, this is exactly what OpenAI and Deep, uh, DeepMind at Google are, uh, I don't know if you've seen, but there's something called reinforcement learning in artificial intelligence where you have like, they've done it for like sumo wrestling. You have, you have like, you, you have these two stick figures that don't even know how to get up at first. And they figure out how to stand on their two feet. And then they figure out how to push the other person off of the, the pedestal.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Wait, so, but what about like, uh, when you look at the, the Boston Dynamics? Sometimes they have trouble with like jumping and balancing and the other stuff. So are they, are they doing that same program or no?

• 1:04:36Lex Fridman?

  No, no, no. This, the, uh, the, everything Boston Dynamics is doing, uh, is hardcoded. So it's not, um, it's not learning the, all the sophisticated movements and strategies, like high level strategies and movement. That's all something that Boston Dynamics does not do. And if it does it, like the parkour stuff, that's all hardcoded in.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:04:59Lex Fridman?

  People like project and think like, these robots have like discovered, like how to move in sophisticated ways they haven't.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Well, that's what, when you and John were talking about the, the grappling robot.

• 1:05:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  I mean, the one thing I was, I was obsessing about in my head is that. With the chess, right, if a chess piece moves, right, the horse can move like an L, right? It can only move like an L. It doesn't matter if it moves at two meters per second or seven meters per second. It can only, it can only move there, right? Whereas like a single leg, I can shoot a single leg with many different velocities. I can shoot at different angles. I can shoot with different amounts of force. Right? I can shoot with my, my head up versus my head, I mean, right? All these things are gonna matter. We're talking about a human being defending the single leg. All of those things are gonna matter and, and that's where human beings are, uh, who wrestle are calculating those things subconsciously.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  They're obviously not consciously calculating in their head, oh, the, the force is coming at me at this, so I need to do that, right? They're just doing it because.

• 1:06:01Lex Fridman?

  But see, the, the thing is, so you would absolutely, if you're doing a robot that you're wrestling, you're going to have to constrain the speed at which it moves and the power that it's able to deliver. So that presumably there'll be the limitations. So then it'll be just the same exactly as a human.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  But then, but it's, it's even, so if we go human max force, which Jordan Bros double max force, right? That's the highest, that's the highest we get. And then we go down from there. Even, even with, even within that, it's like, sometimes I can shoot a single leg with a maximum force of, I don't, we'll just say, we'll say 20 is the number, right? I don't know, I shoot at 20 because I feel sometimes I shoot at 15, sometimes I shoot at 12, right? Cause you, you feel something in your opponent that makes you do it differently. So they would have to learn how, and then, you know, all of these different things and sometimes maybe I clamp a little harder. So the, the robot would have to learn all of these different incoming inputs to the system and then create this reaction.

• 1:06:57Lex Fridman?

  Oh, no, no, 100%. So this would be all continuous, like, so unlike chess, it would not, it's just chess is discrete. There's, it's, uh,

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  One and.

• 1:07:05Lex Fridman?

  You move, it's, it's a very specific set of moves. Now here you would, those are all variables you control and they're continuous variables. So the speed, the force, there's actuators, so there's all these joints, right?

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Lex Fridman?

  You can move. I mean, it's just an optimization problem.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  It's kind of, and it's fascinating. So I've been fascinated thinking about it since you guys talked about it. Would I, it was a long time ago. I listened to it probably three, three to four weeks ago. I've kind of been like obsessing about it ever since.

• 1:07:31Lex Fridman?

  Well, yeah, it just changes when, um, so unlike boxing, for example, or striking, it, you know, once you grab a hold of somebody. It it changed, you're now one body.

• 1:07:44Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:44Lex Fridman?

  So it's very complicated. It's not just shooting a a double leg without like maybe doing like like faking a double leg and then shooting a double leg. That's very doable with robotics, but then like do a clinch. And from there, doing like a Russian tie like that.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Lex Fridman?

  That's I think that's way harder than people realize in terms of how many things are involved. Like the force of the grip, the leverage you're providing with all the different parts of the shoulder and the arm and the torso, the twist, how much of your weight are you allocating like leaning on the other person?

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Lex Fridman?

  Like taking weight off of one of your legs and the other leg, all of that. I I think that's the really interesting thing about humans is we're able to do all of this calculation.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Subconsciously.

• 1:08:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, subconsciously.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I've been thinking about since we is like how many things even these high school athletes who are like getting medium good are subconsciously thinking about all the time or not even not even thinking about like reacting to. Um, but then even like for me, I'm, you know, I'm a few or is a mag do better than some of these kid that player. And so when I when I go like super hard, it's like I can feel their weight moving the wrong direction. And so for me to off balance them or trip them or whatever is kind of easy sometimes, you know, because they're not feeling it the right way, right? Or their timing's just a little bit off or the way they're grabbing the hip. Maybe they should be up a little higher, right? These really small things.

• 1:09:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I think that's all easy to take advantage of for a robot. It's just there's so many things. The the big problem is ethically. I don't know how many people are willing to train with a robot because you're gonna get hurt.

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  Well, can you make a robot train as a robot or no?

• 1:09:28Lex Fridman?

  Yes, but then it's expensive. So because they're gonna

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Put the padding on that thing.

• 1:09:34Lex Fridman?

  I know, but that but then it's not. You know, it it's then you're not capturing the full.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Why can't you put like some rubber coating on them, you know, something for that effect?

• 1:09:47Lex Fridman?

  You could. I mean, you could.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Lex Fridman?

  You could. I mean, you're talking about robots that are, these are humanoid robots. So we're talking about 500,000 million dollar robots. So you would have to be motivated.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Spend a lot of money.

• 1:10:04Lex Fridman?

  To spend a lot of money because you have to have them wrestle for like a lot.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  To get better.

• 1:10:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, to get better.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Lex Fridman?

  And then the the open question is, how long does it take to get good enough to be a human? Uh, I don't, I don't think, I don't think we understand. I don't know. I don't think you understand how hard wrestling is.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Lex Fridman?

  Like, is it a really hard problem? Like, what's harder, chess or wrestling?

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Wrestling by far. Not even close.

• 1:10:36Lex Fridman?

  That's, yeah, that's the sense.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  So because there's an infinite amount of moves, right, and possibilities. So once I shoot the single leg, now you have X amount of choices. Once you make your choice, now I have a choice, X amount of choices. Now, now you have X amount of choices on the defense and we can just keep going back and forth, right? And this number becomes.

• 1:10:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but the same happens with chess.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Correct. But then in wrestling, you have to make these movements very instantaneously, right? Because I should have seen like, I'm not going to wait and say, what's your defense?

• 1:11:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Right? It's instantaneously. And then also again, based on the force and the vectors and and the angles, you have to calculate that and adjust. So really, you know, if you're saying, why can't you just single leg? It's not like moving the chest is not one move, right? It's if you want to talk about different forces and stuff, it could be hundreds or thousands of different moves based on how hard I shoot it, the angle, the direction, all of those things.

• 1:11:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but wait a minute. So robots can do this kind of stuff really fast. You would, I, people probably know the physiology of this, but it's the the reaction speed for a human is maybe 100 milliseconds, something like that. I don't know, from sensation to to to, like from the the signal traveling up your to your brain and down. I don't know what that number is. But robots certainly could do it way faster. It, you would actually have to like constrain the speed.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Well, so the robots are already killing the chess people, right? So, yeah, theoretically, they could eventually beat wrestlers. But you ask what was harder, wrestling or chess? And I think wrestling is because of the time component in it. And then the and and the physicality of, you know, is it this force or that force? You know, because if if I'm going to say, say, we're in a seatbelt side by side, right? A wrestling seatbelt, not a jujitsu. Based on the pressure you're giving me, I might do a bunch of them things, right? And so like to an untrained eye, they might both look like the same thing from you. To a trained feel, it's like, well, in one case, it's really evident, I should go this way. In another case, it's really evident, I should go that way.

• 1:12:31Lex Fridman?

  So the other thing to consider, just like with chess, the AI systems. So human versus human play a certain way together. They actually haven't considered a really large number of strategies that AI systems discover. So one possibility with a robot, they'll discover certain ties and certain takedowns.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:12:52Lex Fridman?

  That like will dominate no matter what the human does.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  You think that so you think there's that so this, I mean, it's what I'm talking about. The wrestling is so fun is there's even after 80, 90 years, there's this continuous evolution.

• 1:13:04Lex Fridman?

  So you think some like low single type thing like John Smith type of situation.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Well, like a down block go behind is something that has really, I would say, really in the last five ish years has really been evolved.

• 1:13:14Lex Fridman?

  What's a go behind?

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Down block go behind. So when you shoot, well, they they just head inside or head outside matters, but there's one for both. You shoot at me essentially, I take my leg, boom. And then so that was kind of in existence when I was in college, right? You down block them and you stop, but usually you hit on this side of their head, right? And now immediately as you shoot, I attack that shoulder and then I start hitting a go behind on you. Right? And so like that in in its current incarnation, it absolutely wasn't around when I was in college. I would say it probably became popular five to seven years ago. So, yeah, there's these big things that are happening. Now, now I really want a robot because I want to be ahead of the game. I want to know what I'm missing.

• 1:13:52Lex Fridman?

  I mean, one interesting thing you have with Alpha Zero that plays chess is it sacrifices pieces much more than humans do. So it'll give you a piece, and not only does it give you a piece, it will wait a bunch of moves before it makes you pay. So.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Because it knows that that's better for the long term.

• 1:14:13Lex Fridman?

  Long term. So like, humans rarely sacrifice without getting the piece back like two or three moves after. Alpha Zero can wait like five moves. So, so basically, you'll have, potentially with wrestling, you might have a a robot that like puts itself in bad positions, but in a certain kind of way then that will actually.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Lures the opponent in to trap.

• 1:14:37Lex Fridman?

  Exactly.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  That's what my style is based on.

• 1:14:41Lex Fridman?

  You basically narrow, one, one thing to do is you narrow the set of choices. You put yourself in a bad position, but it narrows the set of choices.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  For them, because they're not used to it.

• 1:14:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, they're not used to it. And, and then you, you drag them into, into your, yeah. So, but there's also, the problem is there's mechanical issues. Like, it's actually just difficult to build robots that are able to sense, because we have sensation throughout our body. Yeah. It's just difficult to build that kind of robot. It's expensive. You start talking about multi, multimillion dollars. And then people start asking you questions. Why did you invest all this money?

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  I want to see what moves they do. Duh. Hello.

• 1:15:19Lex Fridman?

  It could be a better investment. Okay. So I mentioned John Smith. He is, if people don't know, one of the great wrestlers, wrestling coaches ever. He's also creative like you. He spoke really highly of you. What do you think about that guy? Did you guys ever work together?

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Not really. So, so you know what? When I was a senior and I had the people wrestling on my head, I was lucky enough to be doing. I was pretty much graduated, so I did an independent study with the sports psych. I was potentially going to go to grad school for sports psych. Well, I actually did nine credits and then I just decided I didn't want to do it anymore. I continued learning on my own. But I had an independent study with the guy, he was the head of USA Track and Field Sports Psych. So the class was, I got to go sit down and talk with him for an hour. And he was fascinated by me. So he didn't really make me do a homework. It was like the greatest three credits ever. We just talked. It was, I learned so much. It was so awesome. But, so I started, so one time it came up, I had these robot or people wrestling in my head, you know? And he said, well, who else do you think?

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  I said, I bet John Smith happened. So I went and got John Smith's number and called him and said, hey, you ever had these people wrestling in your head? And he said, yeah, but as soon as they stopped coaching, they went away. Same thing happened to me. As soon as they started coaching, they went away. So if I really force myself now and I'm like, you know, I see something in practice. And it's really higher level because high school wrestling, I don't want to make you guys feel bad, but it's like, it's a little bit lower level, right? So if like Keegan, for example, who won the, if he's struggling with a problem or asked me a question. And I can force myself to like see the bodies moving and think about it again, you know? Kind of like I was in the early age, but it won't just, it won't just flow there anymore. So he said it went away and for me it went away also.

• 1:16:59Lex Fridman?

  By the way, if you can pause on the, on the bodies in your head.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:05Lex Fridman?

  What, like, how are they generating new ideas? Are they just kind of?

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  I don't know. You tell me.

• 1:17:12Lex Fridman?

  So it's just, they're just like scrambling in your head?

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  It would be specifically based on a problem I was struggling with or a specific position, you know?

• 1:17:22Lex Fridman?

  Kind of, it goes in for a single and then, and then go from there?

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm sitting in geography class and, you know, I don't have to work that hard because it's easy, right? And yeah, I'm just sitting there like kind of acting like I'm looking at the board and these guys are wrestling and I'm watching them wrestle. And yeah, sometimes they come up with a really good solution.

• 1:17:40Lex Fridman?

  Is there somebody you looked up to, style wise? Like Gable, John Smith.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Lex Fridman?

  All these like, like legend status people.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Probably Gable, or it's Gable, um, John Smith after the fact. So the problem with wrestling in my era was you couldn't watch it. There was no, there was no access, right? It wasn't, it wasn't really available. Even if you want to say, go find a bunch of John Smith, man, they're kind of hard to find, right? There's a couple of them on YouTube, but I've obviously seen all of those. But in, in my era, there was, there really wasn't any of it. So it was hard to be a fan of something. And that's why wrestling, wrestling has, is the fans are going like this because now, you know, you flip on the Flow app and you can watch, uh, you know, something that's happening in Europe. Right? We can do this easily. So we can be a fan of people. So now I'm more a fan of wrestling than I was then because there just was no access. So now I can watch them when I like and say, oh shit, like that guy's wrestling.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Oh, boom, I flip my phone on, I watch them wrestle, you know, that type of thing.

• 1:18:37Lex Fridman?

  You know, on a quick rant, it's really frustrating that you can't watch the Olympics.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Oh my God, so frustrating.

• 1:18:45Lex Fridman?

  I, I've been, I, I'm, I'm, I think I'm going to go to war on.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Go to NBC's headquarters, I'll go with you. You, you gotta, you gotta soldier here.

• 1:18:52Lex Fridman?

  I was talking to Jimmy, uh, Jimmy Pedro, he was surprised by this too. Most matches you can't see, even you talk about like a comeback, uh, Gable steals and.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Lex Fridman?

  You can't see the full match. You get like a crappy highlight.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  So the two, the two biggest things in wrestling, and really the three, the NCAA championship on ESPN.

• 1:19:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  The Olympic trials are on NBC and the Olympics are NBC. And these, these, these companies are so big, they don't have a department dedicated to selling their rights to that footage. Right? So the, the, the rights to wrestling footage, which no one like cares all that much about except a niche, are the exact same as track and field or, or basketball and the Olympics. So yes, all of this stuff is completely inaccessible to us. The, the NCAA's, the Olympic trials and the Olympics, you can't go watch old film on it. It sucks.

• 1:19:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, older, current film, yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  Uh, so you came to watch a Gable match?

• 1:19:47Lex Fridman?

  The Gable Steelers, no. They did a, you know, they do something that annoys the fuck out of me.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:19:52Lex Fridman?

  Okay. They, they, they, they do like a three or two minute highlight. So it's like they capture the, the most important thing, but like it's all about the buildup.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:05Lex Fridman?

  It's like the, that very beginning when you step on the mat and the nerves and you walk out and like that. I mean, I don't know. Uh, you miss, then, then when the, the triumph happens or the heartbreak happens, it has that much more power.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you want to go to war with NBC or ESPN, I'm, I'm happy to join that.

• 1:20:25Lex Fridman?

  I think, unfortunately, the IOC.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, does the IOC own it or does it?

• 1:20:30Lex Fridman?

  IOC is selling the, for the Olympics is the one that's making.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  Well, so NBC broadcasts, so they obviously have the live rights. You would think they would have recorded if they, I mean, they're the ones recording it. You would think they keep the rights when you think so.

• 1:20:43Lex Fridman?

  No, no, no. I, they're like getting a license of it. They're getting exclusive like license, but like the, you know, for example, I've had this, I talked to Travis Stevens, the G-Dog player, and there's a really sort of famous match. It's a heartbreak in his career from 2012 Olympics where he goes against a German, Ole Bishov, whatever. It's a 20 minute match to go to war and that's not available anywhere, but it's uploaded on YouTube and set to private. The reason I know this is because on the IOC channel, so they've uploaded all of these matches.

• 1:21:21Speaker 02

  They have it and put it up. So actually, so my Olympic match, the, the one I won, got put public and I, so I don't know if it was private. It got put up on YouTube. Uh, I was alerted to it the week of my Jake Paul fight. It was so dumb. I'm like, what? This is every 13 years later. This is bullshit. Like this should have been up. So, uh, I mean, what, okay. So what about Olympic trials footage? That has to be the USOC then or NBC?

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  So I know like, okay, so I know Flow, right? Because I work for them. I know if Flow buys your event or whatever, right? They buy the rights. Generally in the contract, they'll have rights to both livestream it and then use that footage at any point moving forward. So those matches live on Flow's website. That's why I would be surprised if NBC didn't have something similar.

• 1:22:09Lex Fridman?

  Flow does a pretty good job of providing like a place where you can watch all these matches. NBC does not.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Does not.

• 1:22:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And also, there's an argument with Flow as well, but certainly with Olympics. There's a difference between what Flow does and what the Olympics represent.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:22:26Lex Fridman?

  Like, it feels like the Olympics, which is what the charter says, should be as accessible as possible.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true.

• 1:22:34Lex Fridman?

  Like, you should really lower the barrier for entry for the Olympics.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  You know that's what the charter says, but those people in the IOC, those, these are the worst people ever.

• 1:22:42Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  They're very bad.

• 1:22:43Lex Fridman?

  Well, they're not, they're not bad. They just lost touch of the dream they once had when they joined the IOC.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Well, I would argue, I would argue all the way back that these are rich fat cats too. Like, I get so mad about the NCAA, which finally now got rid of this term, bullshit term amateurism. It's like, well, there's some holy grail where you can't make money to be an amateur athlete, but the people who own the IOC or the people who own the institutions, college institutions, are making boatloads of money off of you? That's crap.

• 1:23:11Lex Fridman?

  So you competed, like you said, at the 2008 Olympics. Did you believe you can win gold?

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:23:20Lex Fridman?

  So your mental game was on point?

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was ready.

• 1:23:24Lex Fridman?

  So what went wrong?

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  This wasn't good enough. That was what I said.

• 1:23:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so at that point in time, I, it was my first year of international competition. So when I came out in 2007, it was my first time making 74 kilograms, which is pretty small for me. I had some failures, but then quickly I turned that around and I was having success. In America, I was beating everyone. I don't want to say easy, but yeah, you know, I was doing really well. I went international one time and I, there was one match I got cheated on. The Russians, they're cheaters. Excuse you, Ukraine, not Russia. I lost one real match where I actually lost. And it was to Denis Sargush, who had gone to win three world titles. But he was behind Zetiev that year. And it was competitive, you know?

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  So I knew, okay, I'm like, I'm going with the best guys in the world. I beat a bunch of other guys who, you know, were, were good. It had passed decent results. So I, I knew I was like, right there. Unfortunately, I ran into this guy, Ivan Fundora. And in, I had someone who scouted reports for him, actually my high school coach, who now coaches for our academy, John Massimerick. And Fundora was the worst stylistic matchup. I got him. And I lost him second round. So I wasn't good enough. I, you know, I had, I decided to keep wrestling. I probably would have gotten better, but at that point, I just wasn't in the cards.

• 1:24:46Lex Fridman?

  So in your division was, like you said, Zetiev, Vaisa Zetiev. That guy is special.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  He's very special. So that would be my other guy that you asked earlier, who I enjoyed watching. And that was a guy, I, it was kind of after the fact because it was hard access footage, but he, he was a lot of fun to watch.

• 1:25:04Lex Fridman?

  What do you think made him great? A lot of people talked about him as potentially one of the great, greatest ever.

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, six and, so he won six and three, six worlds, nine, uh, six worlds, three Olympics, nine total, which there's only one or two people above that. So again, it was, it was hard to watch any live footage of him. But from what I've seen, his, his feel is different. He was just ahead of his time and the feel and the touch he had for certain moves and different things. Because obviously physically, he's kind of unimposing. He's, um, you know, taller and skinnier, which is, you know, it, it can work in wrestling, but he is by less represented. Yeah, he was special, so good.

• 1:25:47Lex Fridman?

  Do you take any inspiration from?

• 1:25:51Lex Fridman?

  Let's talk about Dagestan in general. What do you think makes those wrestlers great?

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fascinating. Have you read the book The Talent Code?

• 1:25:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  It's great. And that kind of talks about these talent hotspots all around the world. And so now, obviously with our wrestling academies, we try to take some lessons from that and apply it. I got to assume, they didn't cover Dagestan in that book specifically, but I got to assume a lot of the same principles that are in that book apply to Dagestan in wrestling, right? They did South Korea and women's golf, they did Kursk and baseball, right? They picked a lot of these other places that were really elite. I think it was maybe Moscow and women's tennis also. So I think all these things that make any group great or organization is probably the same things that's happening there.

• 1:26:37Lex Fridman?

  Well, the hardship, I mean, what, is there something specific about wrestling that can create so many great champions?

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  From that area, so obviously they're all, they all love it. Like it's a big deal that wrestling is specifically is a big deal there. You know, they do sambo also, obviously. So that's part of it is a lot of the kids are doing it. They obviously have rough tumble, tough life.

• 1:27:01Lex Fridman?

  Getting a lot of fights.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  And then I think that also that a lot of them, it is a way out, right? They're the elite level athletes in that part of the world, from my understanding, are really well compensated compared to what the average person makes. And they're treated really well. So people see it as a way out. Whereas like, and then honestly, if America's getting better. But in 2008, the reason I went to MMA was because I didn't want to be poor my whole life.

• 1:27:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? It sucks. It's like, well, I don't want to make $20,000 for the next 48 years. So I'm going to go do something else. If I could have made, even, and I didn't need to be rich, right? If I could have made a hundred thousand dollars or $70,000 wrestling, I probably would have kept wrestling. So I think, I think there's factors and obviously now they have a really like, a bunch of really good people in one area. So there's probably, and it's been going on for a long time. So there's probably been a bunch of like adults and coaches that are coming back and helping that progress. So, yeah, a lot of those things that happen.

• 1:27:54Lex Fridman?

  So I'm definitely going to travel there to talk to them because I can speak Russian. It makes it very.

• 1:28:01Lex Fridman?

  Makes me uniquely qualified to uh.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  My brother can speak a little bit of Russian.

• 1:28:07Lex Fridman?

  Your brother can?

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Lex Fridman?

  Okay, like a little bit like. Squares and.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  No, no, no, like he would. Oh, man, don't, don't make me over sell. I think he would be able to have a conversation with you. I think.

• 1:28:18Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  Probably not like you.

• 1:28:21Lex Fridman?

  What's the, uh, what's the reason he knows?

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  He, I don't know why he got obsessed with languages and so his college degree is actually, um, what do they call it? Inner dis where you have three minors. He had a minor in Russian, a minor in a Spanish and maybe Japanese. I'm messing up. It's definitely Russian and Spanish are for sure. I don't know what the third one is. No, but yeah, the Agastan, it's, it's really fascinating.

• 1:28:45Lex Fridman?

  But the, the emphasis on technique, the lighter drilling, like they don't really go super hard.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I only spent a couple. So I was there, I was in Vladikovka in 2008. That was where the World Cup was. We had to train there for like two days afterwards. So, um, I didn't get to dig deep, did dig deep into what was going on or anything. But yeah, I mean, I think sparring has, sparring is very beneficial for wrestling. Um, not like sparring MMA is we fight, right? Sparring in wrestling is, so I always just describe it to be really simple. If we're drilling, it's relatively 0% resistance. If we're going as hard as we can, that's 100%. There's all this gray area in the middle. That's sparring, right? And so,

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  you know, if you have a good relationship, like, you know, especially college, me and my brother, we could just go and we, we know where each other's at. We don't even have to talk about it, right? But like in my wrestling club, I'll say, okay, hey, I want you guys to go 50% in this position. Or I want the high crotch guy, I want him to shoot and this is for him. So I want him to go 70. And defensive guy, I want you to go 40. So you're not, you're not supposed to be trying to win here. You're gonna go a little later. I want you to give it, give him some looks, you know? So I think, I think it has really taken hold in America. I think it's really beneficial for success. And I think that's, I mean, America's doing better than we've ever done.

• 1:30:03Lex Fridman?

  Well, that's 70 and 40. That's like an art form to find that right place. Cause uh, like what, the, the really good people I've trained with, they go much closer to 100% speed wise. Or like, but without like forcing things.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:19Lex Fridman?

  You would when you're going. It's some weird combination of things that, like, if you truly earn a technique. Then you're given that technique.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:29Lex Fridman?

  But like if you don't, you don't.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:31Lex Fridman?

  And then it becomes much less injury prone. It becomes somehow more fun, more dynamic. You don't get stuck in positions. It's just a lot of movement.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one thing, so you and John talked about, you know, like different ways to learn and get better. And so I think John obviously innovated within the sport of jujitsu.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  And so for us, and maybe there's a differentiator for us. I think about it.

• 1:30:56Lex Fridman?

  So sorry to interrupt. You have this academy and you sent me this plan. They have like a really well thought through plan for how to develop a good wrestler.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  So but I, so I think it's, for me, there's four categories, right? There's the teaching, which is like, you don't know shit. I'm, you're coming in and I'm showing you the move and you're literally going out there and you're trying. To me, that's not even drilling. That's like teaching, like you're trying to learn something. So obviously in someone's earlier periods, they're spending a lot of time in that phase because they literally don't even know how to move their bodies the right way. Once you learn the skill, then there's the drilling because you need to, you absolutely have to get those reps to become really proficient in that movement. And then the sparring and then the live, right? And so like, I think, obviously by the time you get to the kind of, I was endpoint, right?

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  But further on, the time you spend teaching is so, I don't want to say in, I'm sorry. In the learning, teaching phase is not insignificant, but so much smaller because to someone who's really good, who have coached for 10 years, I don't have to give this big, long drawn out explanation. I just have to say, hey, move, move your hand a little differently. Right, or just do this. Right, we don't have to spend any time there. So I think that's like something that consumes for the younger kids, say five through 12 or 13. We're consuming a massive amount of time there on that teaching, learning phase. And then as we get older, that time wanes a lot.

• 1:32:21Lex Fridman?

  But that makes total sense, right?

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:23Lex Fridman?

  It's funny because when you look at like jujitsu schools, they spend a lot of time in the teaching, learning and then the live. It feels like there's not enough drilling. I like how you draw a distinction there.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Lex Fridman?

  Because it feels, it feels like you're always starting from scratch. Like people have like very crappy short term memory. Like they're not. Like the way teaching is done is you show a technique from scratch. And it seems disjointed.

• 1:32:49Speaker 02

  It is for sure, especially if you have a class that's been with you for a while.

• 1:32:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  You don't have to start from scratch. You can say, hey, let's focus on this one little thing here.

• 1:32:56Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Or let's, after we do this, let's do that, you know, and you kind of start putting it all together. And then with jiu-jitsu, the thing that I really struggled with was a couple of things. It was, and this is not speaking for all the jiu-jitsu, my personal experience through the sport. And I actually found my, so when I unretired, I found someone really great that I loved and I really wish it was Mark Lehman. I don't know if you know him at all. I wish I would have found him earlier because he was just tremendous.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  But number one, there's no drilling. So it's like in wrestling, I can boil down to,

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  I could probably name you the best six moves, right? So we need, as younger people, single leg, right? Single leg is going to be the most proficient takedown. It always has been. I don't know, probably always will be unless they figure out something different.

• 1:33:43Lex Fridman?

  The robot.

• 1:33:44Speaker 02

  The robot. We're gonna shoot a lot of single legs. Why? Because we're, because everyone's gonna do that, right? We're gonna shoot a lot of single legs. So just like saying arm bar or some type of sweep, right? Why can't we go get 50 reps there? Hey, we, I mean, by the time I've been in your jiu-jitsu school for two years, I better know fucking arm bar. I better know it. So don't, don't spend 10 minutes teaching me. Just tell me to go hit 50 reps. And then if, when I'm hitting my reps, if there's something I'm doing wrong, then just say, hey, Ben, move your leg a little bit that way or raise your hips up a little more, right? Like correct as you're drilling. So you're getting all these reps at it. So you're becoming more proficient. And then the other thing I really struggled with was to your point during, live so many times, it's just this five minute, go, go.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  Go. And that's not the most efficient way to learn because when you have two people, especially when they're focused on winning, and you say, go, they're gonna go to where they do best. Well, if I'm trying to make you good at something, I don't want you doing what you do best all the time. I need you doing some other things, right? If you have a great single leg, but you can't shoot to the other side of their body, we need to work on that.

• 1:34:44Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Right? You need to start shooting the other side.

• 1:34:47Lex Fridman?

  There's some sense that you, it's not like you should be told what to work on, but you should be told to work on the thing that you want to work on. Meaning, because I don't know, maybe you can comment on this, but you know, everybody develops a different game as you get better and better.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:01Lex Fridman?

  There's a set of things you need to be working on. So I actually have, like when I, especially when I'm like training very seriously, I'll have. A specific technique that I have in mind and I have a sheet of paper on the side. Where I literally my head keep count off how many times. I put myself in that position and pulled off the technique and that's all I care about.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Lex Fridman?

  And like training, so I'll just. Uh, whatever it is, if it's a guillotine, it's a guillotine. Arm drag, arm drag, but I want to make sure I don't. I love numbers, so I'll say like, I'll make sure I get 50 arm drags. And I'm not getting off the mat until I do and that, you know, if it takes.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  And it's drilling or a live contest?

• 1:35:44Lex Fridman?

  Uh, so in this, in the thing I'm describing right now is the live contest.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Okay, got it.

• 1:35:49Lex Fridman?

  But drilling, obviously drilling.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  So I feel like.

• 1:35:53Lex Fridman?

  I can't find a drilling part, like it's so hard to find drilling partners even.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  So boring.

• 1:35:58Lex Fridman?

  It's, it's annoying to me that this is boring and there's nothing more annoying to me. Than the look of boredom on another person's face when we're drilling.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:06Lex Fridman?

  It's like.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Do you really think drilling is that beneficial to you? Cause you said it to Josh.

• 1:36:09Lex Fridman?

  Yes, and he thinks I'm an idiot, but yes.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:36:12Lex Fridman?

  Why am I, am I an idiot or why is drilling beneficial?

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Well, let's go with such a explanation. Why is it so beneficial?

• 1:36:21Lex Fridman?

  Um, I think for me, it's, there's a meditative aspect to it where. The more you drill, the more you start noticing the, the details.

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  Okay, let me, let me push back a little bit here. I'm not gonna push back all the way, cause um, so every time if I was wrestling, I won't. My head crouching like whatever, right? But even so, say like at a high level, when I'm really wrestling 10 years ago. Even during that drill portion, if we talk about the resistance of our opponent from zero to 100. It's very likely that my partner at that point, because people I'm really comfortable with. They're probably at least going 20 or 30, right? They're probably giving me a certain look with the sprawl. Or, you know, I gotta get through their hands. If I, if I don't set it up right, they might put their arm down. Right? So it's like, it, we are drilling, cause we're, we're wrestling at a really low resistance level. But there's a little bit of sparring.

• 1:37:13Lex Fridman?

  Oh, yeah, the 20%, the 20, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's not really drilling. Cause I, I think a drilling, I think literally. You're shooting and I'm, I'm just like boom, I'm like, show me your dummy, boom, boom, boom, boom. Type of thing, you know?

• 1:37:24Lex Fridman?

  It's very hard to be a dummy that doesn't do 20%. You're gonna do 20%, yeah. That's so, so yes, that's 20%, but.

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  So that's like sparring a little bit then.

• 1:37:32Lex Fridman?

  No, but they're not really resisting. They're just giving you the right frame. They're giving you the right like movement and they're being they're being an intelligent dummy.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Lex Fridman?

  I mean, but also like the really important component of this is you pick the techniques for which is beneficial. If the technique is has dynamic elements to it, you don't want to be doing that with. I'm saying like there's certain moves and I like those moves and I select the game base in those moves.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Like, so are you drilling to get better or are you drilling just to work out?

• 1:38:04Lex Fridman?

  No, to get better. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I I believe you can become like exceptionally good, very fast by drilling.

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  But how?

• 1:38:14Lex Fridman?

  First of all, let me let me ask you an empirical question. Let me have you actually drilled 10,000 times a particular move?

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Millions.

• 1:38:23Lex Fridman?

  You haven't drilled millions.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands likely.

• 1:38:27Lex Fridman?

  I think you're just saying numbers. I don't think you know what a hundred thousand.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  Astronomical. It's way more than 10,000.

• 1:38:32Lex Fridman?

  I don't think you know what a hundred thousand feels like.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  There was a 10 year period where I wrestled every single day. That's that's 3,000 days. So you're telling me 10,000, that's only three of them a day. I do way more than that.

• 1:38:43Lex Fridman?

  Three of them.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  Probably 30 of them a day. That's 100,000.

• 1:38:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, hundreds of thousands.

• 1:38:48Lex Fridman?

  I doubt you get 30 a day for a particular technique.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  I am for sure 100%. There's no doubt.

• 1:38:53Lex Fridman?

  All right.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Because some days I might do 100, right? So 30 of 30 is not very many, especially if we count all reps, if we're counting drilling and live. So like our coach, college coach would make us just drill a lot and I hated it. So I would I would rebel and just kind of give a little spar. You shoot a high crotch. We'll start. You coach wants to drill high crotch. Okay, we'll start. You shoot the high crotch. That's great. Then I'm gonna sit the corner. I'm gonna give you my hip or I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna try something. So then you have to react and I would argue that all skill level past like the beginner stuff is is some necessity of that, right? I'm gonna do this, then what are you gonna do? It's it's back and forth. I shoot a single leg. What are you gonna do? I shoot a high crotch. What are you gonna do? And you have to start unconsciously programming these things in your head because even if you consciously think about it, it's gonna be too slow to actually hit it in a match, right?

• 1:39:38Lex Fridman?

  But the drilling is the unconscious programming.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  But but the simple movement, the first simple movement, the first simple movement, that single leg or the high crotch or arm drag, whatever, like. I feel like the amount you're gonna get better at it is so miniscule compared to the amount you're gonna gain at doing other things around it.

• 1:39:57Lex Fridman?

  No, but that's the key word, you feel.

• 1:40:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40:01Lex Fridman?

  That's your opinion.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  I think if we did a, if we did a study on it, that I would be proven correct.

• 1:40:06Lex Fridman?

  No, perhaps. So first of all, your brain as an exceptionally creative combat athlete, it's clear that you don't like the boredom of drilling. Like it's obvious that you, that you have like, you're such a creative energy that you're just not going to be somebody who's going to enjoy that. So enjoyment is probably, having an active mind is really important. So the, the question is, do you have the kind of makeup that has an active mind during a drilling on a dummy? And I have that mind.

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  But you really think, okay, so if you're, uh, let's pick a technique. What technique do you want to drill a lot?

• 1:40:45Lex Fridman?

  I would do Jiu-Jitsu or wrestling.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  Whatever you want.

• 1:40:49Lex Fridman?

  It's hard to describe with words, but certain guard passes. Uh, let me, let me think, just guard pass.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  Okay, so you have a guard pass and you get it to be as a nine and a half out of 10, right? Just from a, from a technical standpoint. Don't you think you need some resistance to feel? Cause essentially all, all benefit after that is going to be, what are they gonna try to do to me? If they shift that way, do I need to, do I need to sink here or move there? So it's like, I, so I, I actually think we're agreeing, but maybe terminology wise.

• 1:41:19Lex Fridman?

  Well, the split is the important thing, like how much of each.

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  So I think it is spar. Like I, I think it's a very light touch spar is what you're talking about, which is, in my opinion, really isn't drilling. And it's because drilling past the basic proficiency, I don't think brings much value.

• 1:41:35Lex Fridman?

  No, but that's what I'm trying to tell you is I think it does. I think, I think, um, If you're doing that same movement, I think you begin to learn more over time. Like you're saying, like, once you get the basic proficiency, then there's diminishing returns. I don't think so.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I think.

• 1:41:54Lex Fridman?

  I don't think so. I think everything has diminishing returns when you're learning a technique.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  But with something as complex as wrestling or grappling, if you can have way more gains over here, why focus on going from a 9.7 to a 9.8? If this other area, if you're spending so much time here that there's other areas left unexplored and you can make gigantic gains over there.

• 1:42:16Lex Fridman?

  No, but you're gonna lose. I think a lot, depends on your style. I think a lot is determined by how good you are at one thing. And so if you want to become a master of a particular thing and then make your whole game where it's all pulled into that system, then I don't know.

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  I think one is too small of a number.

• 1:42:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's small. I feel like you can't be easily this, like I've.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you want to funnel, you want to create funnels.

• 1:42:42Lex Fridman?

  Funnels.

• 1:42:43Speaker 02

  Funnels, right? Where everything goes into a few positions.

• 1:42:45Lex Fridman?

  And then it's all feel.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  Where I can do it 100%.

• 1:42:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:48Lex Fridman?

  But I feel you can get like drilling on a dummy 80% of the time and 20% of the time live rolling with people worse than you. Like a little bit worse than you, or a lot worse than you.

• 1:43:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think, so I definitely think, so my buildup would be, so we're talking a complex technique, right? So by the time we're talking about, we'll say a late high school kid who's pretty proficient. He's probably done the drilling part. So then now it's like, okay, if I want to get something new to you, I'll probably tell you, you'll probably be able to do the basic premise within five to 10 minutes if they're good, right? Do this. Okay, they do it. Then it's like, okay, so now here from here, what are we gonna do? We want to go light sparring, so I know you have success. Cause I need you to complete the task in order to get better at it. That's something a lot of people in wrestling mess up, is they just want to go to the toughest person. But if you go to the toughest person, you're not gonna actually execute any skills. You're gonna get worked up and I need you to execute, cause I need you to get good at this.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  In order to get good at it, you have to get all the way through the technique.

• 1:43:50Lex Fridman?

  Why do you need them to complete it just so they gain confidence in the technique? Or they go through all the steps?

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  They have to feel all the way through. Like if I said. Learn a high crotch when you're drilling, but stop halfway every time. But you're not actually gonna be able to do it because you're gonna stop, you don't have the feel. So, you know, try it on someone spar lightly, get it. Do it on someone who's not as good as you, get it. Then kind of work your way up the ladder till you can get it on someone your own skill level or maybe better than you, right, in a live competition. So it's like, I don't know, I feel like that, that basic drilling, like, so a kid like Keegan, who I've brought up a few times, like, I feel like if there's something new, I could literally tell him, like, this is what I want you to do, and he has such a great feel, like, he could go drill it proficiently within probably a minute or two. But then to hit it on someone high level, that's gonna take quite a while longer.

• 1:44:36Lex Fridman?

  And that's a mix of drilling and sparring on people a little bit worse than you?

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then, yeah, then equal and the better, yeah.

• 1:44:45Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, because there's, there's, there's this, with grappling, right, there's such like a feel component to the, the pressure, the movement, and all these things, and there's still, like I said, there's so many things you can throw at someone out of one position, not just moves, but moves at different levels of force or whatever.

• 1:45:02Lex Fridman?

  Are you and these kids developing like a big picture strategy of like, what are the main setups and takedowns and just like a whole system?

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  Um, so we, you know, I kind of sent you our technique book, right? And how we kind of go at, approach it. So I, I think in wrestling, you're going to need, you're gonna need a handful of things just off the, off the word go, right? You're going to, so I think on our feet, I need to be able to take this out of the body, I need to be able to take that side of the body, I need to be able to bring you underneath me, I need to be able to go around you, right? Now, we can accomplish those different ways, but we should have all of those weapons if we want to be really good some way, right? Um, so if I neglect one of those, so if I neglect the ability to say, pull you down, right, front lock you, um, now if I have a good shot and you're smart, you're just gonna lower your stance, so my shot is not gonna be as successful, and I have the inability to pull you down, right?

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  So I kind of need all of those, so I can, as they get better, I can point those things out. Um, on bottom, my focus out bottom, there's certain things, like, you have to be good at leg right defense. Right? You have to, I mean, at a high level, or you're just gonna, you're gonna, when you get it in, you're just gonna get stuck there. Not gonna be able to escape.

• 1:46:15Speaker 02

  But besides that, yeah, there's a, there's a multitude of things that you can choose from, and I'm gonna, depending on your body style, uh, and what you're good and bad at, I'm gonna probably develop something a little different. I might give you, hey, you do the quad pod, you'd be better with a knee slide, whatever. Yeah, top, kinda same thing.

• 1:46:33Lex Fridman?

  I have to ask you, Bakib. So I remember a while ago, Rogan said that, uh, that's the perfect fight. For Kabib, you are. So let me ask two questions. The first, do you think you can beat him in an MMA match when you're at your peak?

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I don't like, uh, yeah, I mean, this is one of those people, where people like, will get really mad at me if I say yes, but yeah, I mean,

• 1:46:55Lex Fridman?

  But how would you do it? How would you solve that puzzle?

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, I mean, we would grapple, and I think I would be better than him, but I, you know, I, I, it's, I feel weird saying this, people, but yeah, right, you're full of shit, you know, and, but that's, no, no one outgrappled him, right? I mean, nobody did, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but I, if we, we'll get the best possible candidates, I'm definitely one of them, and then obviously I'd have a small sized advantage, too.

• 1:47:21Lex Fridman?

  So in a wrestling match, so we can just reduce that MMA match to a wrestling match, what do you think is the right strategy on him? Like, do you understand his style, that, the, the, his wrestling style, the pressure he applies? Do you understand?

• 1:47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:34Lex Fridman?

  How the hell he makes that happen?

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he, he never, unfortunately, fought any real, who I would say really, really high level wrestlers. I was actually really disappointed how bad Justin Gagey's wrestling was, because Justin Gagey had some solid success, but his wrestling was really bad in that fight.

• 1:47:50Lex Fridman?

  Gagey had success in, uh, in CWA?

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think he was seventh place, maybe, or so somewhere. He was definitely All-American, uh, he was lower, though.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  So yeah, I would like to see how he dealt with someone who was like, who I think, oh man, this guy's a really high level wrestler. Cause you know, we saw, and this is early in his career, but you know, Gleason Thibault did give him some issues earlier in his career. Um, so I would like to see him in that situation and see how he does. I would love to like, you know, like I'd say, I just love wrestling and grappling. Like, yeah, I'd love this. Someone said, hey, Ben, you know, Khabib wants to roll with you. Okay, I'm there tomorrow. It sounds like a blast. Let's go.

• 1:48:26Lex Fridman?

  He's probably competitive as hell.

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:29Lex Fridman?

  You're still competitive?

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  I know when to be and when not to be. Like, you know, say if I'm going to high school kids are not going to be competitive because then I'm just being a dick.

• 1:48:38Lex Fridman?

  How'd you take him down?

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  What? What, what, what, real wrestling? Like, wrestling, wrestling?

• 1:48:43Lex Fridman?

  Wrestling, wrestling.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  I would probably try to attack single legs and stuff.

• 1:48:46Lex Fridman?

  Single legs?

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:48Lex Fridman?

  Haven't, okay.

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  No, no. I mean, I have, no, I honestly, I don't have the slightest clue. I'd have to feel, I'd feel him out. Um, but single legs, my best take.

• 1:48:56Lex Fridman?

  When people talk about his wrestling being really good, the people that trained with him.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  So, okay, so I, I grilled someone, I will not say who, on the Ed Ruth thing, because Ed Ruth is very elite at folk style wrestling. He never became that great at fighting, unfortunately.

• 1:49:10Lex Fridman?

  Wait, Ed Ruth wrestled Khabib?

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  They were on the same team for a while, yeah.

• 1:49:13Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  And there was rumors that Khabib beat him up. And I said, I, I sure can't believe that. And I've heard that that was, if they were just straight wrestling, Ed would get slightly the better of it.

• 1:49:25Lex Fridman?

  Well, Ed Ruth is like, one of the greats.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  He's great. He's really good. Yeah. So that was what I heard. But in an MMA setting, because of all the tools that Khabib would get him.

• 1:49:38Lex Fridman?

  I don't know. Uh, it, well, but I agree. I agree with Rogan on this one. That would have been good to see.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that would've been fun. So yeah, if Khabib wants to work out, I'd, I'd love it. I love, I love wrestling and grappling. I don't do much Jiu Jitsu because I just don't have time for it anymore. I'm at the wrestling academy like every single day. Uh, but yeah, I, I love Jiu Jitsu. Well, I did it. And, you know, if I didn't have wrestling academies, I probably would still be doing Jiu Jitsu.

• 1:49:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you did well in Jiu Jitsu as well, but. Let me ask you a ridiculous question. Who's the greatest of all time freestyle or folkstyle?

• 1:50:07Speaker 02

  Oh, wrestling.

• 1:50:08Lex Fridman?

  Wrestling.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  Hmm. Well, I, I will say my knowledge past like the year 2000 is really not that great.

• 1:50:17Lex Fridman?

  In which direction? Sorry, after 2000?

• 1:50:20Speaker 02

  No, no, before. Cause you can't find any film or anything, you know, and so you hear of all these.

• 1:50:23Lex Fridman?

  So you need evidence? You need direct evidence?

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  I want to be able to watch them and see them and feel the times and feel their opponents and, you know, all those things to really like, I hate giving bad answers, you know? So, um, I would, I, there's just not enough footage of any of those people, you know? We took, we go back to someone like Alexander Medved, like you can't find footage, you can't find anything on him, you know? It's like, who was he wrestling? I, you know, I'm not sure. So, um, post 2000, I think, and also just freestyle. So, um.

• 1:50:53Lex Fridman?

  Americans, Russians?

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  SITF has the probably the best argument post 2000. I think Sadjolov, um, if he.

• 1:50:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the Russian tank. That guy is, yeah. So who's, who's better, Snyder or Sadjolov?

• 1:51:04Speaker 02

  So Sadjolov just won at the Olympics.

• 1:51:05Lex Fridman?

  I understand this. I understand how that works, but it's pretty close, right?

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 1:51:10Lex Fridman?

  Not, not that match, but in general, the matchup.

• 1:51:12Speaker 02

  So, well, so Kyle won the first one in 17. Sadjolov pinned him the following year, but then Kyle lost and took bronze in 19. Um, and then just lost. I don't want, I don't want to say fairly decisively, but it was, it was six to three and that there was a late takedown. He kind of gave it up and maybe if it was really competitive, maybe he wouldn't have, um, they're gonna wrestle again in like two weeks here. So that, you know, yeah, you, I mean, you have to say Sadjolov at this point. There's nothing else to say unless Kyle proves us otherwise.

• 1:51:43Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Not enough people talk about Sadjolov. Okay. Why? You think that guy should go to MMA? Think Kyle should go to MMA? Some of these guys.

• 1:51:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're making enough money wrestling where they don't really feel the need to. It's, it's great.

• 1:51:56Lex Fridman?

  It's terrifying though. As a heavyweight, Sadjolov would probably, it's like, it's like Khabib, but heavyweight.

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know if you remember, do you remember Bilal Makov? So Bilal Makov actually was the Russian representative in both styles of 2016, Grekland freestyle. And he was, to my knowledge, the only person the UFC's ever signed that was zero in, in modern era, signed that was zero and zero. And then he actually never ended up fighting. But weird, right? So, yeah.

• 1:52:22Lex Fridman?

  No motivation.

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know what the story is. Sometimes out of Russia, I mean, maybe you have better sources than I do. Sometimes it feels like dudes just disappear. Like they're a world champ or Olympic champ and then all of a sudden you're like, wait.

• 1:52:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  Where'd he go?

• 1:52:35Lex Fridman?

  You talked shit about Russia earlier in the conversation, so.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  Oh, what'd I say?

• 1:52:39Lex Fridman?

  I forgot, but I think.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  Steroids?

• 1:52:41Lex Fridman?

  I think somebody's gonna show up to your door.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  I'm worried. Honestly, I've said enough bad things where I would be kind of looking over my shoulder if I went to the Olympics or something.

• 1:52:51Lex Fridman?

  I, for one, love the Russians.

• 1:52:53Speaker 02

  What about Icarus? How does that make you feel?

• 1:52:56Lex Fridman?

  What about it? It's fake news.

• 1:52:57Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:52:58Lex Fridman?

  I'm just kidding.

• 1:52:59Speaker 02

  It's propaganda? Maybe it is. I don't know. I don't know what to believe anymore.

• 1:53:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You know, it's troublesome, man. I hate cheating in all of its forms. Any other like recaps from the Olympics of 2020, Tokyo, that stood out to you? Gable Stevenson, like anything like that?

• 1:53:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I think America's coming to the point where we're gonna compete with Russia every single year in wrestling, which obviously, you know, I, long, long time ago, many, many years, we did, we were great. And then kind of after that Soviet Union period, I think there was a lot of poverty in that area and that kind of led the wrestling team going down a little bit. And then obviously, a lot of those regions, where they found oil and gas in the Caspian Sea, I believe, and they've been really kind of on the upswing for the last 20 years. And now, America, really since 2012, has been on the upswing in wrestling and we're kind of really competing with them. And they're not sending a couple of their best guys to Oslo.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  So, for those who don't know, the Olympics got put back in the air. So, they are hosting the 2021 World Championships, despite the fact that we just had the Olympics two months ago. So, it's happening next week in Oslo, Norway. So, like, Russia's not sending their number one at 57 and their number one at 65. So, it's like. America's probably gonna win, I think. I don't want to guarantee anything, but there's a really good chance.

• 1:54:19Lex Fridman?

  It's Dave Taylor, all those guys competing.

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  So, America gave any of the Olympians that medaled the opportunity to not even have to wrestle off. They just got to keep the spots since it was two months later if they medaled. So, the only one who's not is Gable. Gable's moving on. We have a pretty good guy behind him named Nick Wazdowski who's a world medalist. But then, so Burlesfield in the 79 spot, Jaden Cox filled in the 92 spot, who's a world champion also. So, we have a

• 1:54:44Lex Fridman?

  It's a hell of a team.

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Pretty good squad, yeah.

• 1:54:46Lex Fridman?

  Pretty good squad. Okay. So, given your run in Bellator and one championship, that was like one of the most dominant runs in MMA. What would you say was like key to your dominance in that long undefeated streak?

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  Huh. I'd probably consistency would be one. The fact that I just, I lived and trained the same way no matter where my life was, whereas a lot of fighters, once they start making money for the first time, they have all these obligations and they travel and they really enjoy making money and that's kind of why some of them fall off.

• 1:55:20Lex Fridman?

  So, you had like the same process, like the same camp?

• 1:55:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I stayed at my house. I didn't vacation. Yeah, everything. Just, you know, and so that was a big part of it. Obviously, the style thing is like no one could, there's only a few people who could stop my style. And I think I continue to get better as a mixed martial artist and I wasn't as innovative in mixed martial arts, but there was a handful of things that I innovated, specifically in the top position where I spent a lot of time, where it was just like, there was just, once I got on top of you, it was like in a spider web and there was just kind of no way out, you know? You never felt the certain things I was doing. And so, people just, they gave up eventually.

• 1:56:04Lex Fridman?

  How's the level of wrestling in MMA, would you say? So, I saw somewhere like champions, the most popular martial art for current UFC champions are all wrestling.

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  So, we just lost a bunch of the belts.

• 1:56:19Lex Fridman?

  Wrestling, wrestling as a sport, right?

• 1:56:21Speaker 02

  But yeah, at one point, we had, I think it was eight of nine, maybe, or something to that effect. And I think it's not just wrestling, not just the actual martial art of wrestling that contributes to

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  Our success in mixed martial arts, but other things like the way we're systemized. So most kids have went through the high school program and the college program and they know how to show up on time and they know how to work hard. So when they go to ATT or AK or wherever, they know how to show up on time and they know how to work hard and that's going to get you a really long way. Just those two things, right?

• 1:56:54Lex Fridman?

  Not even the techniques, it's just the discipline.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  Those things. Then I think you throw on top of that the fact that most of us have competed 1500 to 2000 times, probably by the time we get to 20 something, like that's a huge advantage too. Most of these other people from other disciplines maybe have competed 100, if that, right? So we have this competitive process down really, really, really, really well.

• 1:57:14Lex Fridman?

  Plus the weight cut.

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  The weight cut. There's all these things, right? The factor into it. I think the fact that we're really open minded, like I think if you would, I don't pick on jiu-jitsu again, but like how many jiu-jitsu guys have became highly proficient in wrestling versus how many wrestling guys have became highly proficient in jiu-jitsu? I think that number swings one way and not that much the other way, you know? So we're open to adapting and learning and, and for some reason, like jiu-jitsu people, how many of them have got high level wrestling or even mediocre wrestling? The number's really small, like they refuse to. It's really frustrating. Like why won't they do this is obviously a part of it, you know? If like, I don't pick on specific guys, but there's certain guys in the history of MMA

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  where you're like, listen, man, I mean Damian Maia, who was my last fight is a great example. Somebody actually did get proficient wrestling, right? But there's some of these jiu-jitsu guys, it's like, if he's got on top, you would submit him. Why can't you learn a freaking takedown? Like holy moly, like just learn how to take someone down. Once you get them down, they will not get up and you win the fight. Like it's so easy, you know? But they refuse.

• 1:58:21Lex Fridman?

  How complicated is that journey? So like Donna Hare that you mentioned, Craig Jones, they're big on wrestling as part of jiu-jitsu now. Like wrestling, not just on the feet, but wrestling from the bottom coming up and all that kind of stuff. So how difficult is that whole skillset, would you say, for a jiu-jitsu person to learn?

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  Uh, not that hard. If they really put their mind to it, because they already like, when you grapple, and this is any grappling art, like, there's a certain part of it that you kind of get. And it can, might not be the exact same thing, but you understand how your body moves and how to feel certain pressures, and you can adapt yourself pretty quickly, you know? So, I don't think, I think there's a certain level of stubbornness where they didn't want to, certain people didn't want to do it for whatever reason. I think a lot of times in MMA, it's the "I'm so macho, I can stand and bang" thing, you know, where they want to, you know, show how macho they are. Um, but yeah, that was a frustrating one that they, it, there's a lot of wrestlers who became highly proficient in Jiu-Jitsu, and really adapted, and it doesn't go the other way. And then, I guess the other thing there too is, um,

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  they can both steal from each other, right? As any martial art can steal from another. And like, I feel like Jiu-Jitsu didn't do enough stealing from wrestling. Like, they should have looked at all the wrestling possible and said, "Well, why don't we steal that and that and that?" You know, and like, "Hey, let's take that over, and maybe we'd make a little tweak because it's different, but there's something we can definitely use there." So like, in wrestling, for example, you know there's the one-arm guillotine in Jiu-Jitsu, right? Okay, so there's a move called, well, it's got a hundred and ninety, it's like the oldest move in wrestling, because it's what they did to cows, where they go around the chin and they throw them on the back. I don't know what you call that one.

• 2:00:00Lex Fridman?

  I don't know.

• 2:00:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:00:00Lex Fridman?

  Sorry, did you just ask me what I call that one?

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:04Lex Fridman?

  Where you take a cow and grab it by the throat and say?

• 2:00:08Speaker 02

  No, but in wrestling, in wrestling.

• 2:00:09Lex Fridman?

  I don't know.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  Okay, we call it-

• 2:00:11Lex Fridman?

  Are you putting it under?

• 2:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you grab their chin, and then you go under their arm, and then throw them on their back.

• 2:00:16Lex Fridman?

  Okay, gotcha, yeah.

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we call that the honey badger, but it's got-

• 2:00:19Lex Fridman?

  Honey badger.

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  Different names, wherever you go, it's got different names. Um, so I would always, I would say like, pre-Jiu-Jitsu, I was, I was average at it. Like, I could do it, but against good people, you'd never get it for, because, oh, I'll tell you what, because they would get the back of their head up, and they were too strong where you couldn't collapse them by going over their neck, right? Because the forces weren't right. So then, in Jiu-Jitsu, you learn the one-arm guillotine, where you grab their chin, and this is more of running along the side of their head, and then, and then you go here, and you choke them, right? Much more efficient way to move their head, because the fulcrum is way down here, and their head can move into that, right? So, once I learned that in Jiu-Jitsu, I'm like, "Wait." I can do this in wrestling. So now, once I learn how to grab their chin the right way and I do the honey badger, no one ever gets out.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  I just had to steal that jiu jitsu, put it in wrestling, and boom, there we go.

• 2:01:09Lex Fridman?

  But very few people steal any direction. That takes creativity.

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:01:12Lex Fridman?

  And open mind.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  It's so easy because it's already done. You just gotta steal it.

• 2:01:16Lex Fridman?

  I mean, same with judo. If you're a gi jiu jitsu person, there's so much stuff in judo that that's ripe for the stealing because judo is much more emphasized as explosive moves on the transition, which is something jiu jitsu does not do.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  You have to say from the takedown to?

• 2:01:36Lex Fridman?

  From the takedown, but also just in general, just in the transition, the concept of transition, the like jiu jitsu is very much about like we're in this position, then we're in this position, then we're in this position. The judo is much more in when it when there's chaos of any kind.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:54Lex Fridman?

  That's when you need to strike.

• 2:01:56Speaker 02

  It's great time.

• 2:01:57Lex Fridman?

  And to learn that, I mean, that's why people like Travis Stevens and Jidoka, when they go to jiu jitsu, they can dominate, but jiu jitsu people should steal that.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  They're too stubborn.

• 2:02:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but so is ever wrestlers are stubborn too.

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  No way. There would never be any stubborn wrestlers.

• 2:02:13Lex Fridman?

  Well, I mean, I was surprised. You know, all these coaches, John Smith, Dan Gable, they don't really have interest in MMA or jiu jitsu and so on. Like, but you would think somebody like a John Smith would like put on a white belt and roll around.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think he's just too focused on, you know.

• 2:02:32Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's a coach.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  What he's a coach and what he's doing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think if you if you take him when he's younger, he would have had a lot of fun. We actually have a really good wrestler making his MMA debut tomorrow. I don't know if you Bo Nickel, I'm sure you've heard of him. Third level, I think he's gonna have a lot of success.

• 2:02:47Lex Fridman?

  I mean, some people might say that like jiu jitsu makes you a little comfortable being in your back and for a wrestler that could be like really bad.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  I hate that take.

• 2:02:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but that's the Dan Gable take.

• 2:02:59Speaker 02

  It's so stupid. It's so stupid. For God's sakes, we know the fucking rules. Just wrestling, you don't go to your back. In jiu jitsu, you can. It's like, whatever.

• 2:03:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  You know, but like to jiu jitsu, for example, so I coached, when I was at Rufus, I coached the wrestling for a long, about three, four, five years. So I've been taking a jiu jitsu guy. And teaching them a wrestling technique where you needed to use your feet. To teach you Jiu-Jitsu guys, so easy, so simple, because they're they're understand the concept Butterfly Guard, etc., etc., etc., right? To take a wrestler who's never done any of it and teach him how to use his feet, oh my God, it's such a beast, it's so hard. You know, because they just that's not a weapon they're thinking about using. So it's like, we understand the rules, it's like freestyle focused wrestling, freestyle for on the mat, I can lock my hands. You don't see people locking their hands all the time in focused out just because they did freestyle, it's like they they get it, there's a rule, they understand it.

• 2:03:53Speaker 02

  So the notion that somehow you come from your back.

• 2:03:56Lex Fridman?

  But pinning, that's like a, it has a special meaning.

• 2:04:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I actually think so Jiu-Jitsu, you you don't actually want to be.

• 2:04:07Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Flat, flat, very often, right?

• 2:04:10Lex Fridman?

  I always wondered this because I did a couple of catch wrestling tournaments. And I did, I would put myself in Butterfly Guard. And I wasn't going against good people, so which is why I was doing all these things. But I wondered if you could create a system of wrestling where you're Butterfly Guard.

• 2:04:29Speaker 02

  So I think that there's there's a few places where I use it. But so specifically the elevator series, which my main series up bottom, it is, it's not Butterfly Guard. It's a Butterfly Guard like grip with your foot. So I boom, I go here, I catch with my your leg with my foot, boom, and I elevate you over, right? And then also sometimes like, I think Keegan does this too from watching, but like a double leg. Sometimes if I'm accepting, so freestyle, obviously you're going to give a point, you're going to focus out. Accepting that you've already got me and as I go down, I'm just going to Butterfly Guard you up, you know? And then I'm going to try to flip my hip back to the mat and get end up in a wizard position. Like I've used that quite a few times where it's kind of like a bailout mechanism that gets me back to maybe not a great position, but obviously much better than being taken down.

• 2:05:16Lex Fridman?

  Beautiful.

• 2:05:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:17Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask you quickly about crypto, because you're also, you have a, you have a show. You are, you have a lot of interest in cryptocurrency. Why are you interested in cryptocurrency? Is it just a financial investment or is it a philosophy that attracts you to it?

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  Philosophy. So I, my friend told me about it in 2017. I was actually, I went to, I was, I was, uh, my friend met me in Shanghai. I fought in one championship. And he told me, and the second he told me, I'm like, oh, I'm so in. Cause I had read Ron Paul and the Fed. I had read, I, you know, kind of had an understanding how the Fed is unfair. And so he told me crypto is a decentralized system that no one has control over. It just made sense. And so like we've, I have the podcast, we had to say Michael Saylor on it. And I love the way he said, it's like, who do you trust more with your money? Do you trust the politicians or do you trust engineers? I think that's an easy choice. I don't even think, I don't even think I have to think about that. I don't trust politicians, no matter what country they come from, China, America, wherever.

• 2:06:17Speaker 02

  I don't trust them.

• 2:06:18Lex Fridman?

  So. So what about, uh, in two, in, uh, 2017, what was it? Bitcoin? Are you, um, what do you, what do you find, which ones do you find interesting?

• 2:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Lex Fridman?

  There's all kinds of ideas. So there's the, the, the more sort of primal mechanism of proof of work and Bitcoin. And then there's smart contracts, ideas, and, uh, there's all kinds of innovations across the different, uh.

• 2:06:45Speaker 02

  So I can't say I'm, I'm in super deep where I understand the technical components of a lot of them. I understand what Bitcoin can do for people. And so that's probably the one I, I focused the most on. And I actually, I was, I think I was talking about, I was trying to convince Michael to talk about Bitcoin because he hates it also. We did it last night. And I think most of the main problems Bitcoin solves, people in America are so American centric, they don't understand it. So like high levels of inflation, that hasn't happened, it started to happen. It hasn't happened in America in a long time, right? But someone in Venezuela is like, oh, I get that. You know, or remittance payments, right? Remittance payments to, you see it. So I saw this in, when I was spending all the time in Singapore. Singapore is obviously a really wealthy country.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  And so you'd have Indonesian workers or Philippine workers. And they would all go on Sundays. They would go to these places to ship stuff back to their families. And through Western Union, Western Union gouges the shit out of these people. I mean, they're taking eight, 10, 12% of whatever they're sending. Then it takes five days and the person's gonna go pick it up. Whereas Bitcoin, I could send you Bitcoin person to person, right? So like, American people don't understand that. American people don't really understand the unbanked, right? A decent portion of the world is unbanked. They don't have access to it. And a much, much, much smaller portion of the world doesn't have access to internet. So if I can put a mobile wallet on your phone and we can send money person to person. So there's a whole bunch of those problems where Americans don't really think about that are really obvious that this solves. So I think that's a key one.

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  Obviously, the fact that the value goes up is really outstanding also. But if you look at it, I got in in 2017, so I got to watch it go up. I didn't sell shit at the top, really stupid. And then the majority of my time was spent through the bear market. And so I had to love it for the principles that it provided, not the fact that actually I actually lost money in the beginning and now I'm way up. But yeah, so I.

• 2:08:38Lex Fridman?

  And you're just holding.

• 2:08:39Speaker 02

  Just holding. I think at the top of this bull market, I'll probably sell a very small portion.

• 2:08:46Lex Fridman?

  You mean like right now, there's a bull market?

• 2:08:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, most, most people think say in the next three to six months, we'll be at the top of the market. And so probably when that happens, I'll probably sell a little bit.

• 2:08:57Lex Fridman?

  You gotta huddle it, Ben.

• 2:08:58Speaker 02

  You gotta huddle, well, yeah. So I, well, I don't, here's, I, so my pod, one of my podcast co-hosts, he's, he's like super rich, like uber rich. So he has lost touch with the everyman.

• 2:09:08Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:08Speaker 02

  So here's my argument to him is really simple. And listen, I'm doing well for myself in life, but if, say, someone buys a Bitcoin, right? One Bitcoin at $5,000, which it was last year. And this Bitcoin goes from $5,000 to $200,000, which is, you know, right around what a lot of people think the peak is going to be. They bought one Bitcoin and they are living in a $200,000 house. So to take half of that, right? You started $5,000 of Bitcoin to sell half a Bitcoin for $100,000 and pay off your house, your remaining house payment. That's life changing to someone. It really is. And so you still have a Bitcoin. So if Bitcoin goes to a million, you're still going to have half a million and you're going to feel really, really rich with a half a million dollars because you bought it for

• 2:09:52Speaker 02

  for effing $2,500, you know?

• 2:09:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:55Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so I would encourage anyone who's not uber rich to, if you have huge profits, take a little bit of them because it could change your life.

• 2:10:04Lex Fridman?

  And if you hold it and it goes down, you're going to feel the pain of that. Like sometimes if you're more constrained financially, it's much more psychologically difficult to ride the ups and downs.

• 2:10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is for sure. They have these really fascinating things in Bitcoin. Actually, we said the guy, one of the main guys on our podcast, it's called on-chain metrics. So all, all wallet transactions are visible, you know? And so they have these, all these fun categories. So I actually, I think you said you don't like numbers, but.

• 2:10:32Lex Fridman?

  I like numbers.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  Oh, you love numbers. So I love numbers also. So they have all these different categories, like you can see how long a wallet has held a Bitcoin, right? Or how many Bitcoins are in a certain wallet? And so what they've seen during this, the downturn, right? So April, it kind of peaked and went down is that the whales are still buying whales, if people have a thousand or more are still buying. They've said the main group of sellers is the ones who held it from zero to three months. So like, they don't have money. They bought it because they thought it was going up and I was like, oh shit, I gotta sell it, right? Whereas anyone's held for a long time is generally still holding on to it.

• 2:11:08Lex Fridman?

  That's interesting. That's a good indicator, right? For the whole space.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:12Lex Fridman?

  Well, let me ask you for some advice. You've been through one heck of a career, one heck of a life. What advice would you give to a young person today?

• 2:11:21Speaker 02

  Well, in wrestling, I, I, I think wrestling is really a microcosm of what your life's going to be. And that's why one of the things that I stress to kids is like, if we can go through this now and you figure, I, I have a couple of kids who are struggling with certain things right now. If you can figure it out this now in wrestling. It's gonna be a lot better to figure out now and get over this mental hump than when you're 32 and you have two kids and right and your job's not going well. It's gonna be a lot worse, it's gonna be a lot more painful then. Let's, let's fucking figure it out now. So a lot of these things, a lot of these lessons we can learn from wrestling, whether it's persistence or perseverance or work ethic or, you know, I said wrestlers show up on time and they work hard, right? These things, if we can learn these things at an early age, those are generally, those characteristics, characteristics will generally carry on throughout our life. And those are the things that are gonna make us really successful. So, um, I,

• 2:12:06Speaker 02

  you know, I would say find a great coach, someone who's gonna spend a lot of time and put a lot of time into you and make sure they have a lot of wisdom and steal all the wisdom that you can from them. And then the, if you can be successful at one thing, generally whatever that recipe was that took you to be successful at that, apply it to everything else, right? Apply it to the rest of your life. Apply it to getting a wife that you enjoy, uh, apply it to, uh, living in a place you wanna live, doing a job you wanna do, right? There, there's so many possibilities and you just have to be bold enough to go take those chances.

• 2:12:38Lex Fridman?

  It's interesting, cause like early on in life is when you have much more time. Like people don't realize this, time to learn the lessons. Like somehow later in life, you get busier, responsibilities and all that kinda stuff. Like high school's a magical time, even college.

• 2:12:53Speaker 02

  In college, yeah.

• 2:12:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's so much time to learn.

• 2:12:58Speaker 02

  Well, you didn't even have kids yet.

• 2:12:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I don't have kids. It still fills up. Well, no, I, on purpose and I did something that many people don't seem to be able to do. I walked away from a lot of responsibilities just by saying goodbye.

• 2:13:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:13:12Lex Fridman?

  But like, but you know, meetings, like there, everybody around me at MIT was like, meetings fill the day. And then you have more projects and you do a great job and you become successful. And then the more meetings fill the day and more responsibilities as opposed to like, wait a minute, do I wanna be involved in all these things? Uh, and instead, do I wanna find one or two things to really focus on and? That's what I choose, but like that becomes harder and harder and harder as you get older.

• 2:13:43Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I'm sure and also the more success you have, you become sought after other places.

• 2:13:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:48Speaker 02

  Too, I'm sure that's happening with you.

• 2:13:50Lex Fridman?

  And it's hard to say, keep saying, no, no, no.

• 2:13:52Speaker 02

  Saying no is hard.

• 2:13:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:55Lex Fridman?

  You're known for roasting people with a single boom roasted line. So any ideas, maybe you want to mention Malice, but any ideas come to mind when you look at me?

• 2:14:07Speaker 02

  Man, I, you know what? If I was gonna boom roast someone, I would wanna kinda like research their career and dissect them and figure out their biggest negatives.

• 2:14:15Lex Fridman?

  Get to the core.

• 2:14:16Speaker 02

  And I didn't, I didn't have that notion with you. I figured, I got a general sense of, okay, he's really successful, he's super sharp. He's really interested in some really interesting things. I bet we'll have a great conversation, but I had no intention to roast you.

• 2:14:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there you go. What about Malice? You had dinner with him last night.

• 2:14:32Speaker 02

  Hmm, for him. Oh, man.

• 2:14:37Lex Fridman?

  How'd you get to know him, by the way?

• 2:14:38Speaker 02

  Twitter.

• 2:14:39Lex Fridman?

  Just Twitter?

• 2:14:40Speaker 02

  Twitter's the most magical place in the world, right? I always tell people it's the greatest source of information if you know how to use it.

• 2:14:47Lex Fridman?

  He's insane on Twitter, actually.

• 2:14:49Speaker 02

  He's quite a lot. I had to unfollow him on Twitter, cuz he.

• 2:14:51Lex Fridman?

  It was too intense?

• 2:14:52Speaker 02

  It's just too much, no, it's too much. It fills up, like, I wanna be able to consume the content. So if I wanna see something he says, I can go to his page, right? But it's just too much for my timeline. I want to be able to consume who I follow, so I try to not follow a lot of people cuz I wanna be able to consume them. And he was, he was, he was too much. He, he fights the trolls, which, I don't know why you'd ever fight the trolls, there's just too many of them.

• 2:15:14Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's a troll himself. He's like the big troll fighting the little trolls. He's the king troll.

• 2:15:19Speaker 02

  There's a million of them, so even if you kill, if you kill a hundred thousand, there's still not a hundred thousand left.

• 2:15:24Lex Fridman?

  There's just keep following.

• 2:15:24Speaker 02

  You just gotta ignore them.

• 2:15:25Lex Fridman?

  It's like the Nightwalker or whatever.

• 2:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:29Lex Fridman?

  Well, I'll take it because you had nothing, you couldn't roast GSP out of respect too. So I'm just gonna take that as a sign of respect.

• 2:15:36Speaker 02

  What do you say bad about GSP? Now I try to roast his hair, like, why is he trying to grow hair now after all these years? He looked good bald, everyone loved him with his head shaved. Now it looks kinda strange, like, why you got hair now?

• 2:15:47Lex Fridman?

  Well, it was one of the more surreal moments in my life is, so he was here and he wore a black suit and tie.

• 2:15:54Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:15:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, we did the podcast with him, just mirror image of me. And then we also did, I haven't released it yet, but just the video together and I was doing martial arts stuff in a suit and tie. That was quite, that was quite, that's like, like, certain moments in your life are just like, I can't believe I was part of that.

• 2:16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, from, with GSP, so yeah, I don't think I have anything to roast him about. I mean, maybe the Matt Sarah thing would be the one that you could get him with, you know, but. I would be, I would be really fascinated to like really dig deep from a sports psychology standpoint, because he always talks about how much fear he had when he was competing. And I, and I find that to be interesting because obviously, so it's almost like, to me, it's almost like, was he successful despite that, not because of that, right? And because anxiety usually is a really negative performance for the majority of people. And what was it about him that the anxiety wasn't super negative? You know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's very interesting.

• 2:16:54Lex Fridman?

  I wonder that too. So I have, I wondered that about him, but I have a huge amount of anxiety. Interacting, especially with people, just about everything, yeah. I wonder if that's helpful or not. It feels like it's very helpful.

• 2:17:07Speaker 02

  I think, so, so, okay, I think in two different, so I think probably your everyday life, okay, is different than like in a performance or a competition. It's, you have to be like super in the moment of what you're doing. So anything that's pulling you away, like, oh, my gosh, you know, high school kids, right, that coach? Oh, my gosh, that girl's in the stands and if I get beat then, and they're actually, they're actively thinking about this other thing when this is going on and I need a hundred percent of your focus right here.

• 2:17:37Lex Fridman?

  He's never, I don't think he has anxiety in the ring, that's the point. I think, like, I have the same thing, like, if I have a really high performance thing, that I have to do, I don't know, lecture in front of a lot of people.

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that'd be a great example.

• 2:17:51Lex Fridman?

  That, there's huge amount of anxiety weeks ahead, days ahead, hours ahead.

• 2:17:56Speaker 02

  So you have a system to get rid of it then?

• 2:17:58Lex Fridman?

  No, maybe, but it's just the body gets rid of it somehow. Yeah, there's not a system.

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  Subconscious system.

• 2:18:05Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's.

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  So you don't, you don't actually have anxiety while you're performing. So that's like, so then, then, then that problem somehow, that problem has solved itself, right? The problem is when the anxiety is actually happening while the wrestling match is happening. That's the real issue.

• 2:18:20Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but it's, it like sneaks in there too. Is that's the difference between MMA and wrestling is there's no breaks in wrestling, right?

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:29Lex Fridman?

  I guess there is, you can look at the crowd a little bit, like you can look, so maybe.

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  Out of bounds, maybe.

• 2:18:35Lex Fridman?

  But like the, there's other things we have to perform. Well, there's more breaks, like a lecture, you can catch yourself thinking like in this conversation, you know?

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:44Lex Fridman?

  Like I'll, I've said a bunch of stuff where I think, why the hell did you say that? That's dumb, right? That, that's the anxiety because there's a pause.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:18:52Lex Fridman?

  And that, that, that can be, um, I don't know. I, I think it just pushes me to be better, but maybe I could be way better if I let go of that.

• 2:19:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:00Lex Fridman?

  It's scary to think that GSP, if you let go of that.

• 2:19:02Speaker 02

  That's something, could he, could he have been better? Or did he have a, did, did he have a, like you're saying, like you don't necessarily feel those. So I think certain people that I've coached, like they would describe how they would feel literally during the wrestling match, right? And you're saying like during the, the speech performance, it's mostly gone.

• 2:19:20Lex Fridman?

  Yep.

• 2:19:21Speaker 02

  And that's, so that's, it'd be interesting to see if like, you know, he talked a lot about that, but if it was all, if it was all the way somehow gone. And he, and it means he would have a mechanism for it. So I had a really bad performance my freshman year of high school at Nationals. Cause I had, I had the ability to be anxious and one of my coaches talked about like, and a lot of A type personalities are kind of that way, you know? Because they're trying to consider all possibilities at the same time. And, and, and while we're actually performing or competing, it's negative to performance, right? Um, so he said he would always, leading up to the match within say an hour, he, his thing was talking about fishing. He would get someone to talk about fishing with him because it would stop him thinking about the match and, and being uber anxious.

• 2:20:00Speaker 02

  So I, I kind of really took it hard and it really helped me as I would always like have someone to talk to and just goof around about whatever. So I'm not thinking about this thing. And then once I step in, it's time to go. So I didn't have this like anxious buildup. Now it's out for me, I took it away, but like me, you know, like you said, you have. A way to get it away, obviously, because it's

• 2:20:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I guess so. I guess there's little tricks you come up with. Yeah, you start thinking about it's not fishing. Maybe I should try the fishing thing.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  But I hate fishing. So boring.

• 2:20:26Lex Fridman?

  Well, maybe. Maybe it's good to think about that. All right, Ben, this is, like I told you, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of your wrestling, your fighting, your personality. Thank you for coming down. Thank you for talking today.

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  Appreciate it.

• 2:20:39Lex Fridman?

  It's a huge honor. Bam. Let's go wrestle. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Askren. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Muhammad Ali. Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

• 2:21:08Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.