#260 – Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher & Gordon Ryan: The Greatest of All Time

Georges St-Pierre is an MMA fighter. John Danaher is a martial arts coach. Gordon Ryan is a submission grappler. Each are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Calm: https://www.calm.com/lex to get 40% off – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex and use code Lex25 to get 25% off – Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off premium – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings – ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod and use code LexPod to get 3 months free EPISODE LINKS: Georges’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgesstpierre/ John’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danaherjohn/ Gordon’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gordonlovesjiujitsu/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (07:35) – Success (22:35) – Trash talk (25:42) – Doubt (34:06) – Emotions (46:01) – Gordon’s beef with André Galvão (50:11) – Diet (1:00:12) – Training (1:28:21) – Human nature and combat sports (1:39:34) – MMA vs Grappling (1:48:53) – Gordon Ryan vs Felipe Pena (1:52:40) – GSP and shoot boxing (2:03:56) – GSP vs Khabib (2:11:56) – Pankration (2:15:08) – Effective grappling and takedowns (2:30:40) – Aliens and Mars (2:47:20) – Robots (2:51:15) – Advice for young people

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 George St Pierre, John Donahue, and Gordon Ryan, who are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines. And now, before we get into the episode, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. First is Calm, a meditation app. Second is InsideTracker, which is a service I use to track my biological data. Third is Blinkist, the app I use to read summaries of books. Fourth is Eight Sleep, a self cooling mattress cover I sleep on. And fifth is ExpressVPN, the VPN I've been using for many years. So the choice is mental health,

• 0:43Lex Fridman?

  physical health, wisdom, or privacy. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Calm. It's even fun to say calm. It's a meditation and mental wellness app. Over 100 million people around the world use Calm to take care of their minds. I am a big fan of guided meditation, whether it's daily practice or there's an emergency where the world puts a great burden on your shoulders

• 1:26Lex Fridman?

  and you must escape that burden because a burden is only real if your mind acknowledges it. Meditation is a way, I think, to escape

• 1:39Lex Fridman?

  from the busyness, from the anxiety of the world, and to find a place where you can think clearly and ultimately find contentment and even something that approximates happiness.

• 1:55Lex Fridman?

  Anyway, if you go to calm.com/lex, even that's fun to say, you get a limited time offer of 40% off a Calm, by the way, spelled C-A-L-M, premium subscription, which includes hundreds of hours of programming. Once again, that's calm.com/lex. Calm.com/lex.

• 2:16Lex Fridman?

  This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data. They have a bunch of plans, most of which include a blood test that gives you a lot of information that you can then make decisions based on. If you're human, if blood runs through veins. If you're a robot, they currently do not support that. They have algorithms that analyze your blood data, machine learning algorithms, my favorite kind, DNA data, fitness tracker data, all of that data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you and offer you science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. It feels like the future, InsideTracker, that is, because basically I think you should be making health decisions based on your own personal data,

• 3:01Lex Fridman?

  not population data. So this is obvious to me. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire InsideTracker store. If you go to insidetracker.com/lex, that's insidetracker.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things as I walked away from the mic briefly there. Blinkist takes the key ideas from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read or listen to. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of reading nonfiction, and I use Blinkist in several ways. So one of which is it helps me pick what books I'm going to read in full. Second, it helps me review which books I've already read because it really does bring out the key insights.

• 3:46Lex Fridman?

  And finally, if I just don't have the time to read a particular book, but it's one that's important in sort of the public discourse, it's a great way to as quickly as possible catch up to the key ideas in that book. And all of those reasons are great reasons to use Blinkist. Go to blinkist.com/lex to start your free seven-day trial and get 25% off a Blinkist Premium membership. That's blinkist.com/lex, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.

• 4:15Lex Fridman?

  Look, I can spell. Blinkist.com/lex. This episode is also sponsored 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. There are very few things in life I enjoy than a good power nap, on a cold bed with a warm blanket, and just me and my thoughts escaping at the speed of light into the abyss of my own mind, into sort of Alice jumping into Wonderland and returning fundamentally changed 20, 30 minutes later, ready to take on the world. I don't know, I'm a big believer in power naps and naps in general.

• 5:00Lex Fridman?

  It's just, it's a source of joy, it's a source of happiness. And productivity wise, performance wise, it's just, it's a super power pack, whatever the hell that is. Anyway, my rocket ship on which I achieved this superpower journey, if that makes any sense, is Eight Sleep. They have a Pod Pro cover, so you can just add that to your mattress. You can track a bunch of metrics like heart rate variability, but cooling alone is honestly worth the money. Go to eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings. That's eightsleep.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN. I use them to protect my privacy on the internet. There are so many reasons I love and you should love ExpressVPN.

• 5:45Lex Fridman?

  So one, ISPs get your data. Even if you have incognito mode on your Chrome browser and go to all those shady websites I know you go to, ISPs can still get that even when you're in incognito mode. A VPN helps add a layer of protection between the ISPs and your data. ISPs, by the way, is an internet service provider. Second reason is you can change your location to watch shows that are only accessible from certain geographic locations. And finally, my favorite reason is just the way the app works. First of all, it works on any device, any operating system, including my favorite, which is Linux.

• 6:24Lex Fridman?

  Ubuntu, or to be clear, Ubuntu Mate Linux. It also is just really, really fast in every, in terms of the interface, in terms of the, the internet speed with the extra layer of the VPN, super, super fast, which I guess is the most important thing for a VPN. Anyway, go to expressvpn.com/lexpod to get an extra three months free. That's expressvpn.com/lexpod. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here's my conversation with George St Pierre, John Donahue, and Gordon Ryan.

• 7:14Lex Fridman?

  I'm here with three individuals, each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines. The greatest MMA fighter of all time, George St Pierre, the greatest martial arts coach of all time, John Donahue, and the greatest submission grappler of all time, Gordon Ryan. So let me ask the first question. You guys didn't see the question, no preparation here. What is the key to your success, each of you? One thing or multiple things that come to mind? John, go first.

• 7:53Lex Fridman?

  Is it the rash guard?

• 7:56John Danaher?

  Yes.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  I like that you choose John right off the bat.

• 8:01Lex Fridman?

  He seemed the most nervous.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Please inspire us to give the right answer.

• 8:06John Danaher?

  For, for me, it's about finding a way to work in a world where most of the answers are already known. Okay, in, in any developed sport, by the time you enter that sport, most of the basic precepts, the, the, the major techniques, the, the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out. And so, in a highly developed world...

• 8:37John Danaher?

  The key to success is to be able to identify some area of the industry that you're in, which is currently undervalued.

• 8:48Lex Fridman?

  To do what the other people are not doing.

• 8:51John Danaher?

  Deeper than that, you're, you're, everyone has a view of, okay, the, these are the, the, the main skills of the industry I work in. At any given time, some set of skills, attributes, um, will always be somewhat undervalued. They're underappreciated by the people in the game.

• 9:13John Danaher?

  You see that at any, in, in any given industry, there are always trends which change, uh, the, the nature of the industry over time. So, uh, fashion trends, uh, in, in the clothing industry, you'll see at any given time, there's a, a, a, a general wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time. What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say, here is something which is genuinely useful, but which is currently being underused, underutilized, and I want to bring that back in and develop it.

• 9:55John Danaher?

  And because it's an inherently useful product, it will be very, very successful in its initial applications against people who aren't currently using it.

• 10:08John Danaher?

  If you can do this in whatever industry you're in, I believe you'll be highly successful.

• 10:13Lex Fridman?

  So this applies both for actual specific like techniques and the?

• 10:18John Danaher?

  Also tactics as well in the case of, of, of jujitsu. So for example, in my sport, leg locks have always been around. Okay, there's, there's no shortage of people, you can look back in history, who are applying leg locks. Nonetheless, as in across the industry, leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated. There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport, uh, for most of the history of the sport of jujitsu tended to de-emphasize leg locks and, uh... When I looked at them, I said there was immense potential, but it wasn't being realized and needed to be changed. Since then, that has more or less occurred.

• 11:00John Danaher?

  Now, most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important aspect and they're no longer undervalued. If anything, it's gone too far the other way and now perhaps they're a little overvalued.

• 11:11John Danaher?

  And this kind of fashion trend exists in every industry. And the job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify, okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued? And then look at what is their actual objective value? And then work to bring them back to the forefront.

• 11:36Lex Fridman?

  So John brought up fashion. George is wearing a really sexy shirt. So assuming that's not the reason, is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Well, of course, everybody knows the famous answer that every athlete are saying, oh, it could be genetic. I was maybe gifted, had certain predisposition, I worked really hard. But I think something that people don't talk enough is when everybody sometime go right, I was never afraid to try to go left. And I failed many time trying to do things that were not

• 12:20Speaker 02

  known to be things that would bring me success, but I tried it. You know, I was, very often I was the first of trying new things. And I failed many time, but certain times it gave me a certain advantage. And for example, I was sometime fighting guys that had much better wrestling background than me on paper. And nobody before that fought those guys, nobody had dared to try to take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good. And I didn't have on paper the wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight. But when everybody...

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Tried to go right, I was going left. I fought them in a different way and that was the blueprint to beat some of these guys, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?

• 13:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so we'll actually talk about a few fights where you did just that, this is fascinating. But let's stay at the high level. So Gordon, again, sticking on fashion, man, compliment your incredible badass hat.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Trying to fit in here.

• 13:30Lex Fridman?

  We should say we're in Texas now, so he's become a Texan overnight. So is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to your success?

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so first of all, there has to be a rule where you don't ask us all the same questions because how am I supposed to compete with the answer John just gave? There's nothing I can do that's gonna top that.

• 13:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  But I think it's, there's many things, but I think the number one thing is just is John. When I came in, I was a blue belt and I was beating brown and black belts in competition already. But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport. I would just come in and if something wasn't working, I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively and that just degenerated me into, degenerated into me spasmodically knee-sliding into crosshashi garami against Eddie Cummings for six months and then just getting heel hooked repeatedly. And I'm like, this is not working. And Eddie, like when I met him, was like a chubby librarian-looking guy. And I'm like, I'm like 6'2", like jacked, like 170. And I'm like, there's no way I'm losing to a guy who looks like this. But he just kept

• 14:32Speaker 03

  heel hooking me. So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn't work. And then John's like, well, if you learned leg locks, you might, you might have some more success. And then I was like, yeah, that probably makes sense. And from then on, I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport. Instead of doing things harder, I would actually try to get better at jiu-jitsu.

• 14:51Lex Fridman?

  Do you remember like a turning point where? You became, as opposed to being mediocre, not just in technique, but in approach to, uh, to great.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Um, I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training consistently. Started training full-time with John when I was purple belt, mid-level purple belt. Um, and towards the end of my brown belt, uh, days, I was beating up like legitimate, like ADCC champions in the gym. So I think like brown to black belt was a big thing for me. And then when I won my first EBI and I was, I submitted Yuri who won ADCC and I beat Roostum. Um, so I think that was like my turning point as a competitor. But I think I started to, to reach world level a little bit before that. I think somewhere around brown belt, mid-level to late level brown belt.

• 15:38Lex Fridman?

  So is some of that mental? Like, was there a moment when you, like after a training session? You realized, I can actually do this. Like I could be at the top of the world, like world class.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  The, the critical moment for me was when, uh, I think it was right, right when I got my black belt, or maybe a few months before I got my black belt. Uh, we had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and, uh, we did a hard round together. And I think I submitted him like four or five times and, uh, no one knew who I was. I never won anything up until that point. And I was like, okay, like if this is like one of the best guys in the world, then I could submit him multiple times around. I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a, make a career out of this.

• 16:21Lex Fridman?

  Okay. So the actual performance was the, like you don't need to, uh, believe before you could perform. Like a lot of Olympic gold medalists, they, they have to believe before they can perform. Because like they're, they're getting their ass kicked for a long, long, long time.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think, but the best way for me to believe in something is to have repeated success doing it against high level guys. Like I'm not going to just believe I can do a double leg if I can't hit a double leg on anybody. Um, so for me, the, the belief came from the repeated success in the gym.

• 16:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. But to get to the point where you're submitting somebody like Yuri Samo is like one of the, the greatest grapplers ever. It's like a long journey.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I had the confidence, I had the belief in myself because of the success that I had in the gym prior to that.

• 17:06Lex Fridman?

  Got it.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  To that event.

• 17:07Lex Fridman?

  Even, and it's one step at a time. First it's the brown belts, then it's the black belts, then it's world class. Okay. George, was there a turning point for you when you thought, like, I can actually do this?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yes, I always dreamed to become champion. But I think the turning point, there was, there was two turning point. And there were my two losses.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  First, my losses to Matt Hughes, I went into that fight

• 17:37Speaker 02

  just to not lose. I was not fighting to win. And it's after the fight, when I watched the replay of the fight, I realized, I was like, I was doing pretty well, but during the fight in my own mind, I was not seeing it that way. I thought I was getting dominated by Hughes like 100%. But when I watched the replay, I was like, man, I can, I can beat this guy. I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake. So it, I was very frustrating, but, but that's what gave me the mentally, the championship level mentality.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  And then I became a little bit overconfident because I started beating everybody after that. And I started to believe the hype of people, when they look at me, they were like, oh, he's the new up and coming superstar and he's gonna be unstoppable. And then when I became champion, I, I lost to, to, to Matt, to Matt Serra. So before I, I believe my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence. And

• 18:51Speaker 02

  And my second failure was because I was overconfident. So I think it's, there is a perfect center of confidence. I mean, I mean, it's good to be confident because John taught me like confidence is it's like money in your bank account. If you, you can have all the skills in the world, right? And if you're, if you don't have the confidence, it's like you, it's like you can, you can be a millionaire, but you don't have access to your bank account. So it's, that's a little bit the analogy that John told me. So that's how I feel confidence plays for an athlete. But to be overconfident, I think it's always good to, to be aware, to be afraid of what can happen. So to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  To me, that's what mentally gave me the edge to become, I believe, successful in my sport.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Playing off that, John gave me a speech one time and he was like, you have to be able to like flip a switch and turn it off. Where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who's super confident. And he plays the character of someone who's like, no one can beat me. I'm the best that there ever was and that's it. But if you look at me, I actually trained very hard. You can't, you can't play the persona of no one can beat me and then have it translate into your life. And you just think that you're so good that you don't have to do anything and no one could ever beat you. You have to be able to play that public persona of no one can beat me. But then you have to actually do the training to make that happen. You can't just, you can't believe your own hype and say, say that, you know, I can just do whatever I want. No one's ever going to beat me. You have to be able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete. And that made a big difference for me.

• 20:27Lex Fridman?

  It's tough because like you're, you dominate such a large fraction of the world in grappling. And George too, just the perfect dominance after those two. It's hard for the confidence not to just.

• 20:44Lex Fridman?

  Like, how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down? Where you completely deludes your mind?

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Um, for me, it's just, number one, the guys in the gym are so tough. So, the guys in the, guys in the gym that I train with are always like nipping at my butt and always giving me new, new problems to solve. Um, and for me, it's really just about trying to learn new stuff over time. So, that, that keeps it interesting for me and it's not really about, um, you know, no one can beat me, I don't have to train, I don't have to do it, I could do whatever I want. Uh, it's more, what keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I'm learning new stuff all the time and working on something new and progressing to new levels at all times. Um, it's not, I don't just come in and do the same thing over and over again. And, uh, that gets boring. You just come in and you don't learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time and like, okay, this is boring. But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals, short term and long term goals to reach, then it makes it interesting.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  It's, uh, for me, it's a little bit like Gordon says, is, is the fear, because sometime in the gym, uh, even before, when I was competing, I was, I was getting my butt kicked. But I don't care what happened in the gym. I mean, it, it hit my ego, of course, because I'm a proud person, I'm a competitor even in the gym. But it's not a malicious competition, competition in between each other. When you fight, you have to be malicious, you go there to hurt the guy. But it, it hit, it hit me in terms of my pride when I get beat in a gym, of course. But that fear, that I don't want it to happen in public, especially not during a fight, that what keeps, helped me keeps the balance between confidence and, and, and fear.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? It's kind of weird. It's a mix, it's a mixture of both that I believe, I, to me, helped me succeed, to have the right mindset to, to fight.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  And I talk so much shit that I'm like, man, if I lose, this is gonna be, this is gonna be rough. So.

• 22:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You put a lot of, I mean, that's, that's a hard thing to do when you talk shit, when you, when you play the heel, is so much.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  You have to perform.

• 22:48Lex Fridman?

  The pressure is, I mean, you have to be good under pressure. It's the Conor McGregor thing.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  You know, the reason I actually started talking shit was actually like indirectly because of George. Because, because I won.

• 23:01Lex Fridman?

  I will become the opposite of George.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  I won, I won my first EBI and I, I didn't talk shit and everyone was like, being like, oh, you know, you, he only beat Yuri because, uh, because he was tired or, uh, you know, this or that. And if they have a rematch under any of the rules that he would have lost. And I'm like trying to figure out what I'm going to do. So I'm scrolling through George's feed one day and he posted a clip of him beating someone. And I look at the comments and I'm, with this in mind, I'm like, George is the nicest person of all time. And if you look at the comments, it's like 10,000 comments and like 9,900 are just people calling him like, all you do is lay and pray, you pussy, you suck, you can't finish anybody. And I'm just, I'm looking at this and I'm like, people are going to say what they're going to say regardless.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  They're going to talk shit regardless. So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself.

• 23:51Lex Fridman?

  Is there some aspect, as I mentioned Conor McGregor, he, uh, he crossed the line with Khabib? At least in the eyes of Khabib, is there something you ever regret about crossing the line? Or does that, do you ever feel like there is a line or do you just keep pushing the line?

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I basically play it per, per person. I just, I, I basically fire back with like one step above what, what they do.

• 24:15Lex Fridman?

  It's always plus one.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:17Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  So I go, I usually go hard, like they fire a bullet and then I drop a duke. And then, and then after that initial shot, then we go back and forth and I'll just keep one upping them.

• 24:28Lex Fridman?

  So, you know, there's a lot of people that love you, but there's also a lot of people that love to hate you.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:35Lex Fridman?

  So like what, do those people like energize you or do you just, uh, or is it funny to you? Like what, as an athlete, as a performer, do you not think about them? It's like a fun thing outside of your.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  It's like, it's just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied. Like, because like, because most of them that like talk shit, they like just say stuff that's factually incorrect. So then I just argue with like actual statistics.

• 24:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  And it's just like, you suck or you're not going to beat this person. I'm like, I've already submitted that guy. Um, so I just, it riles them up and it's just, it's just a fun thing for me to do on my, on my downtime.

• 25:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Your responses are usually very factual, very scientific. I appreciate, like you, you actually, you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:19Lex Fridman?

  It's great. Okay.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  It's a good mix.

• 25:20Lex Fridman?

  It's a good mix. Um. I mean, a topic of haters or more specifically sort of doubts within yourself or doubts around you as you're coming up. Maybe George, you can comment. We're just gonna ignore John completely in this conversation. I was gonna ask you another question, but let me just ask you on this, on this topic. Are there times in your life you had to, you were surrounded by people that doubted you?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 25:49Lex Fridman?

  And so what's, is there something you could say as, by way of advice, how you overcome the doubt, either yourself or others around you?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  All the time. The first time I manifest my desire to become a professional mixed martial art athlete, everybody doubted me. Just not even, I'm not talking about the UFC, just to become a professional fighter, everybody doubted me. And I became a, I became a professional fighter. I had few amateur fights, I won them all. Then I fought my first fight in Montreal, I won, and I became a professional. Then I, I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC, everybody doubted me again. So it's a normal thing. So I worked my way up, beat

• 26:36Speaker 02

  a few guys, then I, at the time, Pete Spratt was just knocked, knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick. And the person who was my agent at the time did a great move for me. So he brought Pete Spratt in Montreal to fight me. Pete Spratt came to Montreal, and I believe he didn't know who I was, so he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck. And I, and I ended up beating him. So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC. Then after I was in UFC, I wanted to become champion of the world, you know, but Matthews was there and he seems invincible at the time. So everybody doubted me again. And I became world champion. And after when you, when I was world champion, I wanted to be

• 27:20Speaker 02

  I was competing against other world champion of other weight class for the title, you know, for the legacy and everything. So I was not no longer competing against my opponent. I was, you know, as a competitor, you always, you never wanted to be, you never want to be satisfied because when satisfaction is the death, you know, when you're satisfied, you better retire because it's over. So always have to find motivation, what you can have more. I want more. Don't be satisfied in life. So I wanted to be like the best, you know, I was, I was competing, you know, like to become the best and, and, you know, of course, people doubt, doubt you all the time. Every time you, you say something that it's

• 28:03Speaker 02

  outside of the norm of the normality. When I say there, there's nothing normal, but I'm talking about when you, you manifest your desire to do something that takes special attribute to, to, to succeed, or, or that is something that is hard to, to do, it's for sure, you're gonna always have people that doubt you.

• 28:24Lex Fridman?

  It's so strange that people don't, they don't lean into supporting, like people that love you too.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me. And I believe I, I, you need to use that as a positive, positive thing as a motivation to prove them wrong.

• 28:41Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  So for me, that, that was the thing. When someone doubt me, nothing gave me more, there's more energy because I want to prove him wrong. I want to look at him in the face and say, hey, you see, I got you, man. I, I did it.

• 28:55Lex Fridman?

  So, uh, John, do you ever use this in one way or the other by saying, I don't think you can do this to motivate them to prove, to prove you wrong? Or more general question of, um, you know, uh, the, the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness? Like what's your role as a coach when you have these two athletes?

• 29:15John Danaher?

  With regards to your, your first question, would I ever say to someone, you can't do this? As a kind of reverse psychology, I know, um, uh, my job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills. And, uh, as Gordon pointed out earlier, if you're In any way a rational human being and you're noticing that you're getting tremendous success with a given move in the gym against high level opponents who give a good read on what your actual opponent in a competition is like. You would have to be a moron to not recognize that kind of success and say this is something

• 29:58John Danaher?

  I should be building into my game and you will carry the confidence that you earned in the gym into the arena. So I never try to use reverse psychology. I build up, everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills. I know people say, oh, there's physicality on the one hand, there's mentality on the other and confidence is squarely in the the mental aspect of the game. But all the underpinnings and beginnings of confidence are physical. Okay, a rational human being will see where they're having success and where they're having failure and confidence will surround those areas where they're having success

• 30:41John Danaher?

  and will degenerate in cases where they're having failure. So my job as a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills and I don't have to do anything psychologically after that. I just, if I can set you up to be highly successful with a given move or a set of tactics ten times in a row against quality opposition in the gym, I don't have to do a damn thing when it comes to instilling confidence. I will tell people, hey, you're doing a really good job with that move, it's working well for you. But when they nod in agreement, I'm not trying to force anything on them, they're recognized, they already recognized that long before the words came out of my mouth.

• 31:25John Danaher?

  But on the other hand, intelligent rational people will recognize when they're failing with given moves and no amount of talk on my part can ever change that.

• 31:35John Danaher?

  If I teach Gordon a given arm lock and 15 times in a row he tries it over a month and all 15 are failures, there's nothing I can say verbally to come up to Gordon and say, "Hey, you're really good at that move." He's gonna look at me and say, "Bullshit, I'm terrible at it." And that will create a crisis of confidence where Gordon no longer believes the words coming out of my mouth. So I will never compromise that.

• 31:58Lex Fridman?

  But isn't there a lot, you just said 15, you have to believe that doing this arm lock 15 times over a period of a month is worth it because eventually you might get it.

• 32:10John Danaher?

  Yeah, that's a separate issue. That's a separate issue. There are times where I've more or less pushed athletes to go in a certain direction. For example, when I first met Gary Tonan, he never had a guillotine strangle. And I would say to him, "Gary, you're a scrambler. One of the greatest weapons a scrambler can ever develop is a guillotine. It should be in your arsenal." And he was like, "No, I just scramble for the back." And I said, "Well, there's gonna be a day. You can't take someone's back." And it's always good to have a strangle from front and back. Okay, of course, we all prefer a strangle from the back, that makes sense. But there's gonna come a day where it's gonna be useful for you. And so that

• 32:55John Danaher?

  was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said, "You're learning this. Shut the fuck up."

• 32:59Speaker 03

  He like literally wouldn't teach him anything else until he got a guillotine. Gary would like ask him a question, he's like, "Let's see your guillotine."

• 33:08John Danaher?

  And for the first three months, as gifted as Gary Tonan is in learning most moves, most moves Gary gets it in minutes. There was something going on with Gary, just couldn't get a guillotine on people. And finally, after around three months, he started having some success until ultimately it became one of his best weapons. We had to go through like 15 different variations of guillotine until he found one which actually worked reliably for him. And that was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said, "No, you have to learn this."

• 33:44Lex Fridman?

  So the long search had to do more with the physical characteristics? Like you couldn't figure out the right kind of...

• 33:48John Danaher?

  It made sense. It made sense in the case of Gary Tonan because there were more opportunities per minute of his grappling for guillotines that the investment in time was worth it. For another athlete, I might have said, "Well, he hardly ever gets in the situation for front headlocks or guillotines, so it's not even worth it." Investing the training time.

• 34:06Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask you a question on the on the competition side. We mentioned haters and do you think about this aspect of the competition with athletes?

• 34:14John Danaher?

  It's a great question and the answer is no.

• 34:19John Danaher?

  I'm you can see that you could you couldn't find two more polar opposites psychologically than than George St Pierre. And this monstrosity on my left and I've I've never said to my athletes, hey, I think this is the sort of demeanor you should carry yourself with. I'm myself a very flawed character and I'm the last person on earth who should be delving out moral advice to other people. The only thing is that I, you know, of course, I believe some things are off limits. But as long as it's done in the context of sport where no one's physically attacking people or doing anything crazy where it just goes completely over the top, then I give almost zero

• 35:05John Danaher?

  moral advice to my athletes. I'm a jujitsu coach, not a preacher.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Lex, I if I if I may, we are entertainers. You know, we're we're athletes, we're professional athletes, but we make we we make a living because of people are want to see us perform. Same thing an actor, same thing a singer. And a lot of the time, especially in the fight game,

• 35:33Speaker 02

  an event is promoted, it needs to be with emotion. Love me, hate me, but do not ignore me.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  And, you know, it when it's authentic and it it it's done well, I think me, my personally, my my favorite fighters to watch are the one that are that that have a so some sort of a bad persona. I really enjoy watching those guys because they bring an emotion element into a fight, which is great, you know, I I I feel to me it's more interesting to watch when there is an emotion involved. And I believe that's why some fighters make more money than others, you know, you know what I mean? That's the reason why we may we can make a living out of this.

• 36:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, they're better entertainers, but you're right. The authenticity seems to be really important there.

• 36:26John Danaher?

  There's actually something very interesting there. It's time to break out some some secrets.

• 36:33John Danaher?

  Do you know who, like you think of George St Pierre, you think of like the highly technical polished martial artist. That's just gonna be great. Do you know who his favorite fighters to watch were? You'd probably be thinking, oh, probably someone who's really technically advanced. Actually, it was Mark Coleman. Oh, no. Kevin Randleman and Phil Barone. He used to love watching, that was a hammer house. That was his favorite. He would love those guys. And whenever their fights were on, George would be watching the Hammer House crew. And it's funny what you said about how those guys brought an intensity to MMA that was off the charts.

• 37:16John Danaher?

  Have you ever met those guys in their prime? Let me tell you, it was something to behold. And they had this crazy, larger-than-life personality. Most of the things they did made no sense whatsoever. I mean technically. But that was their appeal. And these guys, and George loved to watch them more than anyone else.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  You never knew what could happen with these guys. I remember when Mark Coleman won the Pride Grand Prix, I was in my living room, I was jumping, I was so happy. I was like, yeah! He beat Igor Vorchevchen. I was like, to me, it was amazing, you know what I mean? Because of the emotion that they brought into the fight.

• 37:56John Danaher?

  George, I was actually very interested by something you said there. Normally, when I ask, what is the appeal of a given fighter? And what makes people watch a fight? You talked about the idea that fighters are entertainers, and that's absolutely correct. They are. It's this weird, weird industry where you're both an athlete and an entertainer, and you need to be successful in both regards to become financially successful. Insofar as your favorite athletes to watch, at least, were people who are almost like the polar opposite of who you are.

• 38:36John Danaher?

  I've always said that most people, if you look at, say, a million people watch a pay-per-view event, what percentage of those million people have a genuine, technical understanding of what's happening as they watch a fight? It's tiny.

• 38:56John Danaher?

  It's absolutely tiny. The vast majority of people who watch a professional fight have almost no technical understanding of what's going on in front of them. So how do they relate to the fight? What's the only way they can? It's through emotion. And so when they get a sense that these two don't like each other, then they can relate to the fight. But only a tiny percentage of people watching a given professional fight can relate to it on a technical level. The overwhelming majority will always form an emotional attachment to the fight. That's why when you see things, shows like UFC primetime, they never focus on tactics and the techniques of the fight. They focus on the emotional elements,

• 39:41John Danaher?

  the preparation, the view of their own family members as athletes get ready. It's always an emotional pull because that's how 99% of the viewers relate to the fight. If I have, think about chess, okay? If I have minimal knowledge of two world champions coming to fight each other or match up against each other in a game of chess. I know so little about chess tactics and I can't really form any kind of technical appreciation of what's going on on the board. But if you tell me that these two chess players hate each other's guts and they've got a rivalry which goes back five years and they've said this and that about each other in public, then suddenly my ears prick up and I'm like, oh, okay, this sounds interesting.

• 40:26John Danaher?

  Because I just don't have the knowledge to appreciate what's going on on the board in a chess game to be able to appreciate the technical nuances of what they're doing. So any interest that I have in the chess match is going to have to come from some kind of emotional level because I'm just not qualified to make technical assessments. And that's exactly how it is in the case of both grappling and mixed martial arts. That's why the ones who evoke the most attention are always the ones who can form some kind of emotional appeal. Conor McGregor was the all-time master of this.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  I believe also emotion can be used as a weapon.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  For example, I've learned, I've learned this from, my favorite boxer is Sugar Ray Leonard. Sugar Ray Leonard, I remember, I was very young, so I, I watched his fight later when I was older. But I know that Sugar Ray Leonard was the best boxer of his era, to me personally. And I don't think nobody could beat him. I think he was, skill, skill wise, it was the best. However, when he fought in Montreal, Roberto Duran, Roberto Duran

• 41:36Speaker 02

  made it in a way that Leonard became very emotional. He wanted to stand in front of Duran and fight a different fight that, that he normally does, because he wanted to show that he's a man. And he lost that fight, which was a mistake. So by, by, then later on, he beat Roberto Duran in quite easy, you know, the, the favorite, everybody remembered the no mask thing. But my point is, emotion can be used in a way that it can make your, derail your opponent out of his game plan. And I felt a lot of my opponent trying to do that with me. So that's why I never got involved. That was my way to defend myself against

• 42:22Speaker 02

  some kind of bullying, to put like a, like a shield in front. Some other guy like Gordon, he, he expressed himself differently. Of course, there's like language barrier, but for him, he's better at giving, giving, giving back. That's his, he's a better counter attacker, you know, that's the way he respond to, to, to the aggression of, of a, of an emotional attack. I think everybody is different in that regard.

• 42:47Lex Fridman?

  What's interesting that John said that he doesn't

• 42:52Lex Fridman?

  study the tactics of this game, or maybe you're not interested in the tactics of this game. Because it seems like this is more than just being an entertainer. It seems like it could be an effective part of the match.

• 43:03John Danaher?

  Yeah, I, I just feel like whatever investment you make in that is,

• 43:09John Danaher?

  it's going to get negligible rewards. First of all, it's probably only going to pertain to one match in front of you, rather than the totality of your career. And whatever gains you get out of psychological trickery in play,

• 43:22John Danaher?

  typically.

• 43:25John Danaher?

  Don't last long. You've raised an excellent example with Sugar Ray Leonard. He did fight outside of his usual manner in that regard. But rather than me try to tell someone, hey, behave like this before a fight, I would have been probably more forceful between rounds with an athlete and saying, no, no, you're fighting this fight the wrong way. And that would have a much more beneficial impact on my athlete than psychological trickery before a fight.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  I believe another example of emotion that leads to failure is Jose Aldo against Conor McGregor. I think it was it was on purpose that Conor McGregor did this, tried to bait Aldo to become over aggressive to open himself because he's an excellent counter puncher. That's what I believe. He made a mistake.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  There's another great one. My match against Cyborg, 2018 No Gi Worlds, where he didn't even try to win. He just like wanted to smack me in the face the whole time because he was so angry. I was talking shit to him before the match. And it was like the finals of the absolute. It was like the biggest match of the weekend. And he just didn't even try to pass my guard or do anything. He just wanted to hit me in the face. And I was like, sick, I just won.

• 44:41Lex Fridman?

  He was incredibly fresh. It's fascinating to watch. Like a grown man sort of lose composure.

• 44:48John Danaher?

  Gordon, one thing I've always been very impressed with you, and that's no matter how heated talk gets before a match with you, when you go out to grapple, you're absolutely cold. Like you've never gone into a match carrying anything other than just cold blooded calculation. And you've always been able to separate very well. The idea of words and deeds, and I think that's always been one of your, um, one of your strongest assets. A way I often measure this is when a match is over, I will ask the athlete questions about the match.

• 45:31John Danaher?

  And if they can't answer the question, what were you doing in the fourth minute? Okay, what was that setup you used in, in the third minute that got you into the kimura lock? If they can't answer that, that tells me they were just fighting on instincts and emotion. But with Gordon, it's like a logbook.

• 45:50John Danaher?

  It's like, okay, in the seventh minute, you went for that, uh, judgy katami setup from, from, uh, on the left side. What were you thinking? He can always give an answer. He's absolutely stone cold.

• 46:03Lex Fridman?

  Speaking of emotion, uh, Gordon, you will potentially, if you're healthy, face Andre Galvao in the ADCC coming up. A super fight. Uh, who is Andre Galvao for people who don't know? Can you tell the story of your beef with, uh, the, the emotional interaction with the man?

• 46:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, uh, Andre is, uh, he's considered the greatest ADCC competitor of all time. Uh, multiple time black belt world champion, uh, winningest ADCC champion ever. He has six, six gold medals. And, uh, I've been trying to compete against him pretty much forever. Like since I got my black belt in 2016, I've been trying to get matches with him. Uh, he was in the first EBI that I did and he ended up pulling out and then I've been trying to get matches with him. And, uh, he would always say no and give one reason or another. And then, uh, after the last ADCC, I was like, hey, Andre said he was retiring after this, after this, uh,

• 47:05Speaker 03

  this competition. So if he wants to retire, you know, he's, he's the greatest ADCC competitor of all time. And I think it's great, but if he wants to compete, then that's great. I was like, super nice. And then he started like. Posting like passive aggressive Instagram uh captions and then we started going back and forth in the internet and there was like one point where I saw him in person when he acknowledged he's like I understand like what you're doing like we're gonna pump this fight up and he was like totally on board but then there must have been something that happened where like it changed from like him like going along with it to be like actually pissed and then uh there was that one night at flow where I went to go shake his hand and he he flipped me off and then he followed me backstage and started to try to fight me and then I smacked him and then he didn't want to

• 47:50Speaker 03

  fight anymore and then we've been going back he's actually blocking on Instagram now so he he just won't engage no one from Atos will engage now but it's gonna be interesting how he how he shows up if he can keep it under control or not

• 48:02Lex Fridman?

  Do you think how do you explain that level of emotion is this fear of losing your throne is it is it just a human being like with cyborg just just becoming emotionally unstable

• 48:14Speaker 03

  It might just be me I just have a way to get get under people's skin it's just I don't know uh he's he's he was he was cool for a while and then I just I don't know it's just that everyone gets like this they're all so emotional by the time they actually step up to compete that it's pretty easy to read them they're either so emotional that they want to actually come forward and and beat me like uh like Tim Spriggs is a perfect example at ADCC I posted like uh on my story on Instagram like 10 minutes before a match uh I said like what I'm gonna do to Tim Spriggs is gonna be criminal and he's like a very stally guy and he came he saw that and then he came out and actually tried to fight me like he came and actually engaged my guard and I ended up submitting him so it either has that effect or it has the effect where they know I've talked so

• 48:57Speaker 03

  much shit leading up to the match that they're so afraid to lose that they just get super stally and they move away so it either has one effect where they come forward and they wanna they wanna beat me beat me or they wanna just they're so afraid of getting submitted that they know if they engage they're super cagey and they just back away and don't really do anything

• 49:13Lex Fridman?

  Do you think this match happens?

• 49:16Speaker 03

  There's a lot of variables. And one, I have to see how my stomach is. And two, if I'm actually going to show up and compete, my stomach's healthy, I doubt that Andre will actually show up to compete. I've been trying to compete against him for six years and he hasn't done it. So there's no reason to think he would now.

• 49:31Lex Fridman?

  Is it possible for you to speak to where like your estimates are about your stomach? Or is it too unclear for now?

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Still too early to tell. I have this round of treatment that I'm doing until late February, and I'm pretty sure that I need to do the same test I did initially to retest all my levels and then go from there. So I've been feeling a little bit better, like it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. I was explaining to someone the other day, like for the last four years, I would be so nauseous that every time I would walk into a new room, I'd have to actively locate a garbage can in case I have to throw up. So I'm like one step above that right now. I'm like doing a little bit better than that. So it's definitely getting a little bit better, but it's not, it's not where it needs to be.

• 50:11Lex Fridman?

  Can we, can we talk about diet for just a sec? Because both of you, George and Gordon, like suffered from stomach issues, different kind, and have arrived for now for different places. So can you maybe George speak to the general question of what is the best diet for performance for training? Like what have you learned through your career about this?

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Well, I think everybody is different. To me personally, I implement fasting,

• 50:44Speaker 02

  time restricted eating and prolonged fasting.

• 50:48Lex Fridman?

  What's the longest you've done so far?

• 50:50Speaker 02

  The longest I've done is five days. I do it quite often. I do, I do four time a year. I do three to five days, water fast. And I, I liked it. It helps me with inflammation. I think it boosts the immune system. And that this about the, I read papers about, about this. And it helps me also feel, feel good. It's kind of very therapeutic.

• 51:17Lex Fridman?

  Physical and mental or just mental?

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Mental and physical, because when I eat my, when I break my fast and I sit at the table with, with other people. It doesn't matter what I eat. If we all eat the same thing, I always tell them, I said, my, my food right now tastes better than all of yours. You know, because I, you know, I, I have this thing that I, I believe sometime you need to put yourself into suffering to realize how pleasurable something is. And I tend personally, like diet wise, I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I don't, I no longer have any problem with this.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  But if I would have a competition coming up, like knowing that I, what I know now about my body, I would orient myself more, more towards an animal based diet. That's because I've tried different things and that's the kind of diet that I believe helped me having less inflammation and feel better in terms of performance for, for, for doing something physical.

• 52:27Lex Fridman?

  So high protein, high fat, low carbs?

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Well, it, it, this is, is different between animal based diet and keto. I mean, there is carbs, there, there is a lot of fruit. I get a lot of the, the, the carbs from the fruit.

• 52:41Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Uh, a lot of organs, organs.

• 52:44Lex Fridman?

  Organ meats, yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  I know a little bit about paleontology and, and the, the past of, of, on, about prehistoric human and, and I, I know that.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  And not only about that, I know because I, I've traveled cer- certain place in the world. I went to, to visit the Maasai in Africa, the Yantar Gadda tribe. And I know that when they kill an animal, they go for the organs first. And I know a pred- most predatory animal, they do the same thing. So organs, I believe is something that normally in, in our culture in, in the western part of the world, we don't really eat, but it's something that is very nutritious.

• 53:22Lex Fridman?

  Have you been able to convince Gordon to try fasting?

• 53:26Speaker 03

  We always talk about diets.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  It is a different situation, I think, for Gordon, because he's an heavy weight. He doesn't want to lose weight. You know, when a heavy weight, the range of, like, my, my range was, like, I was a welterweight and middleweight, but the heavy weight, it's like, some of the guys that you compete, can compete against, there might be 300 pounds. So if you lose weight, it's a, it's a big problem, you know what I mean? So and there is things that will work for me that might not works for Gordon, you know? So we have to make his own experience. And, and I told Gordon, sometime when everybody goes left, you try to go right, see how you feel with certain things.

• 54:02Lex Fridman?

  Experiment, not, not a topic that's part of your optimization, optimal performance formula?

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Well, what I used to do before my stomach issues, and for those of you listening who don't know, I had recurring staph infections in 2018, and I took a bunch of oral antibiotics, and it just completely wiped out my stomach. So I just was diagnosed, it was misdiagnosed as gastroparesis. So for those of you messaging me on Instagram, who are just watching Rogan, asking me about my gastroparesis, that's not what I have. They misdiagnosed it, and I did some other tests, and for four years, I didn't even know what it was. And then I got this, I went to this doctor in California who diagnosed me with, I have H. pylori, and then a fungal and a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestines. So the issues in the small intestines.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  So what I used to do was, I used to do like, seasons where I'd have a very clean season where I was competing, and I would have a lower body weight. And then I would do like an off-season, kind of like a bodybuilder, where I would eat a lot more food, and a little bit dirtier food, and I would have cheeseburgers and pizza at nighttime to have the extra calories. But now I can't eat those foods because they upset my stomach. So now I pretty much just try to eat whatever I can and maintain the weight the best I can, based around how my stomach feels. So right now, it's like rice, chicken, eggs, fish, vegetables, fruits, and pretty much nothing else, like, anything hard to digest, anything spicy, red meat, fast food, all that's, all that's hard for me.

• 55:33Lex Fridman?

  Which sucks because in Texas.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  All the best things, yeah, barbecue.

• 55:38Lex Fridman?

  And I mean, this diet is really important for you, John, I can tell.

• 55:43Lex Fridman?

  Like, is that something you think about for athletes at all? Again, this is part of the year.

• 55:47John Danaher?

  No, I've, to be honest with you, I've never seen any measurable improvement in sports performance in judo by change of diet. I do believe that diet is important for longevity in human beings, and I do think it makes a difference, especially once you get past the age of 40 with regards longevity. For older athletes, I do believe it makes some difference, but my observation is in athletes in their youth and working up into their prime, I've seen athletes have the worst diets.

• 56:24John Danaher?

  God bless Travis Stevens, but that guy won an Olympic silver medal basically on McDonald's and candy.

• 56:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 56:31John Danaher?

  George St Pierre, for 80% of your career, you were powered by McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  It was a Gina Alfredo, that was my meal of choice before a championship fight.

• 56:41John Danaher?

  Gordon, for in his youth was just Five Guys hamburgers, Gary Tonan, same thing. I've worked with Japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and won Olympic gold medals. I've worked with Russian wrestlers who just ate whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding. I've worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I've, I've never, I've never seen someone say, okay, I changed my diet and because of that, there was a measurable improvement in sports performance.

• 57:23Lex Fridman?

  Another way to phrase it, though, is I have noticed with a lot of elite athletes, what they eat, they begin to believe that that either is not a hindrance or it's actually good. Like Travis Steve is an example of somebody who eats shitty because he believes it's like, it's like a power because whatever he's traveling across the world, he can't rely on healthy, good food to be there. So I'm going to eat shitty so that that's the like, my body knows how to perform under whatever, Skittles or whatever.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Everywhere's got McDonald's.

• 57:54Lex Fridman?

  Everywhere's got McDonald's. So that makes like, and they've convinced themselves, and you talk about Russian athletes, a lot of them have very. Strong beliefs about like this, about particular food being good for them.

• 58:07John Danaher?

  But there's no agreement among them.

• 58:09Lex Fridman?

  Exactly, no agreement.

• 58:10John Danaher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:11Lex Fridman?

  So, belief is more important than the actual diet.

• 58:13John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  If I can, after, you know, after a night out, when you're hangover, I think the best thing, and I'm saying this in all sincerity, I think the best thing to eat, to me, was like cheeseburgers with, we call that a putz in back home, because it's very fat, it's greasy. So the next day, when you wake up, I think you feel better because it absorbed the alcohol.

• 58:42Lex Fridman?

  There you go.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  You can train and start the gas. My mom told me the same story once, and then I tried, I was like, I was hungover for some party, and I woke up, I was like probably, I don't know, nineteen or twenty, I woke up, and my mom was like, yeah, just have a cheeseburger, go eat something greasy. And I did, and I was like, oh, I feel kind of better now.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  I do not know the science, the exact science behind it, but I always notice, and I don't know if it's plausible, but I always notice that if I, if I'm, if I party hard and I've been drinking a lot, if I don't eat before I go into bed, if I don't eat shitty food, the next day I will wake up and feel worse than if I eat shitty food, I feel better. I know it sounds crazy, I don't know why, but it works for me.

• 59:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but it's also hard to do science on extreme performers. So the discussions we're having is amongst the very elite. You know, this might not apply to a general like recreational athlete, but for the elite.

• 59:42John Danaher?

  I've just seen champions in every kind of combat sport, and I've never seen a correlation between dietary habit and performance in people under the age of thirty. I do believe that diet is important for longevity, however, and for that alone, it may well be worth investing time in it. But with regards sports performance, at least in judo, I've never seen any significant difference.

• 1:00:04Lex Fridman?

  Well, we had a little bit of a difference of opinion on this, I think. What about strength training and muscle building? Or at least we had a discussion about this. So what do you believe is the value of?

• 1:00:16Lex Fridman?

  Of, you know, training outside of the sport. So fitness, lifting heavy, lifting explosive, all kinds of lifting.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  I believe personally, for me, I believe, and I've learned that from, from John.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  I used to do like, to train like a bodybuilder before. Because I thought in my early days of competition, that was the most efficient way to do things. To, because it was like, I was watching Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger. We thought back, back in the day, that was the thing. That that's how we should do it, you know, for, to get, to get ready for a fight. But I realized later on.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  That it's all about efficiency. And some guys, they don't lift at all, and they're doing pretty well. So I do cross training mostly for longevity. It's mostly for therapeutic, therapeutic, like a therapeutic. It's more therapeutic than for performance. It's to keep my body healthy, to do a certain movement that are different than what I do every day in the gym in combat sport, to keep me.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Healthy and athletic.

• 1:01:31Lex Fridman?

  So all the interesting movement stuff that you've done outside the sport, that was for therapeutic?

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Mostly therapeutic. I think it does, it could transcend to performance, but it's mostly therapeutic. I do not believe that squatting five plates or bench, bench pressing three plate will make me a better fighter. I do not, I, I believe actually it could hurt me more, it could damage me more than, than benefit me.

• 1:01:58Lex Fridman?

  So Gordon, as somebody who on Instagram posts, a lot of pictures of you being shredded and huge. What's the value of, of strength?

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  So I do like a combination of, uh. John got us big into like gymnastics type movements, like toes to bar and muscle ups and things like that. When we were young, um, like toes to bar, because that's like the exact motion you have to do when you're retaining guard, it needs the chest. So I do a lot of that stuff in combination with, I do a lot of opposite of George. I do a lot of bodybuilding workouts.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  Where I do like a basic split, like a chest and triceps, back and biceps day. And my idea is that.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Weightlifting should always be a supplement to jiu-jitsu. So you shouldn't be missing a jiu-jitsu session to lift weights. So I don't do, I do probably, I train jiu-jitsu every day and I lift three to four times a week. I feel like lifting seven days a week for me is too much and the lifting takes a lot of energy when you do like hard lifts like that. But my idea is if you want to get good at jiu-jitsu, do jiu-jitsu. And if you want to be bigger and stronger, lift weights and eat food. And I generally don't go super heavy when I lift because you start putting crazy weights then start tearing muscles and stuff. So I usually do moderate weights with a very high rep range, like four sets of 20 with a drop set at the end to fatigue the muscles, break the fibers and grow.

• 1:03:27Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so four sets of 20, that's interesting. So that's more for endurance and raw strength.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, and also I think closer to competition, I'll pick the intensity up. And while there's no real way to get significant gains in VO2 max, I think that lifting and just getting used to mentally redlining gets me kind of in competition shape. Because a lot of times in jiu-jitsu, the guys I'm training with, they're not on a technical level where they can physically exhaust me to the point where I feel like I'm going to die. But I get most of that like when I'm wrestling because I'm not as efficient in wrestling. So I get a lot more tired and lifting, when you do like, if you do like four sets of 20, leg press to squat and you go back and forth, like you're like about to die at the end. And I think, I feel like it gets me in the mental habit of redlining before competition.

• 1:04:18Lex Fridman?

  But does muscle help you? It's like the actual mass of muscle.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  I think being stronger will always help in a combat.

• 1:04:25Lex Fridman?

  Will always help.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, to some degree. It's not going to be to a degree where it overrides efficiency, but I think that it can't help being, or can't hurt being stronger.

• 1:04:36Lex Fridman?

  There's a bunch of people who believe, depending on the sport, that

• 1:04:42Lex Fridman?

  Strength can quickly become, uh, that have detrimental effects to efficiency.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 1:04:49Lex Fridman?

  Certain kind of, I mean, if strength is pure, is like very cleanly, purely applied to the exact movements of the sport. So in judo, the explosiveness you need is very difficult to replicate in any kind of way, except by doing judo.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, for us, uh, you always have to understand, there's only so much technique that can overcome a certain amount of strength. Like if we all try to fight a silverback gorilla, it's going to kill us. Um, but that, that being said, um, I do think that like, for example, heavyweights are usually the least technical because they rely on their size and strength to beat smaller people. Um, but I think that if you stay with this, with the discipline of doing everything very precise, and I train with a lot smaller people most of the time. So I get out of the habit of using, uh, using my strength. Um, I think if you're very precise of the way that you train, I think that the, the extra size and strength can help you.

• 1:05:43Lex Fridman?

  Quick question, how would you fight a silverback gorilla?

• 1:05:48Lex Fridman?

  I mean, is there, which animal do you think you can actually defeat that would be impressive? That most people would say you can't?

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  You know, I actually, I don't have an, uh, an answer to this.

• 1:05:58Lex Fridman?

  I thought you were gonna say.

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  I want, I want, I want to say that me and John had like a four hour discussion on this one time. I'm like, what would win bear or gorilla? And he went into like this whole dissertation about how like jaguars spin underneath and like barimbolo silverbacks and kill them and like rip their, rip their artery in their legs out. It was amazing.

• 1:06:16Lex Fridman?

  I guess, okay. So before we talk about strength, John, let me ask you, what do you think people would be surprised by if two animals faced, one of them would win and people wouldn't predict that? So they would be surprised by the effectiveness of certain animal at fighting in the, whether it's in the forest, in the jungle. So let's wait, slow down here. Okay, okay, okay. So there's two animals of different species fighting. And most people would pick, so for example, the lion gets a lot of credit for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why, the king of the jungle. Well, you know, a lot of people told me that the lion, for example, the tiger can be a lion.

• 1:06:56John Danaher?

  Yeah, this is one of those age old debates.

• 1:07:00Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, well, in grappling, in fighting, it feels like some animals use teeth and some use other parts of their body also, like a bear. Actually, I don't even know how they.

• 1:07:13John Danaher?

  They have extraordinarily powerful and long claws. And in addition, they're powerful biters as well.

• 1:07:20Lex Fridman?

  So I wonder, and the same with the silverback. I don't know how much they're, I love that we're having this discussion.

• 1:07:27John Danaher?

  We need Joe Rogan for this discussion.

• 1:07:28Lex Fridman?

  I think so.

• 1:07:29John Danaher?

  Yeah, I think so. So your question has gone in about five different.

• 1:07:35Lex Fridman?

  So it started with strength and let's go back there, which is, do you think for an athlete in jiu jitsu, let's stick to grappling.

• 1:07:46Lex Fridman?

  Do you think strength is helpful or detrimental?

• 1:07:49John Danaher?

  I've always believed that two things will create whatever, whatever effectiveness you have in grappling. Those are your skill set and your attributes. And the best athletes are those who excel in both.

• 1:08:07John Danaher?

  Don't kid yourself. If someone gets twice as strong by some kind of magic potion, they're going to be a more effective grappler. If someone gets twice the level of endurance that they had previously, they will be a more effective grappler. These physical attributes have a very important outcome on the, sorry, a very important effect upon the outcome of matches. It's always a good thing to be stronger. It's always a good thing to have better endurance. It's always a good thing to have better balance or whatever other attribute you throw out there. Gordon's point was, okay, everyone agrees on that, but there's a problem. In order to build these things, you have to carve into other elements of your training regiment.

• 1:08:52John Danaher?

  And then it becomes, well, which becomes more important? Increases in strength or increases in skill?

• 1:08:59John Danaher?

  There comes a point where investing in strength training starts to get diminishing returns. I can't tell the difference between someone who bench presses 300 pounds on the mat versus someone who bench presses 400 pounds, but that's a big difference. That's a 100 pound difference. And for an athlete to go from bench pressing 300 pounds to 400 pounds, that would require a great deal of training effort and focus. But if I can't tell the difference when I grapple, then why bother? Okay, once you get to a certain strength level, it doesn't really help that much to go from a 400 pound bench press to a 450 pound bench press. At that stage, you're really getting diminishing returns on your training investment.

• 1:09:43John Danaher?

  Now, skills, on the other hand, experience far, far less in terms of diminishing returns. Every new skill you develop can translate very, very well into big increases in performance. Look at the example of Gary Tonan that we talked about earlier. Investments in guillotine made a significant improvement in his effectiveness in matches and led directly to some of his most important victories. But if he had invested the same amount of training time in developing a bench press that was 25 pounds more than previously, that would have had no influence on the outcome of those matches.

• 1:10:23John Danaher?

  So the question always becomes, yep, everyone acknowledges that these physical attributes are important and everyone understands that becoming stronger or fitter is a desirable thing and every athlete should work on them. The interesting question becomes, okay, at what point do you start to say, I'm not going to be helped by further increases in strength training or endurance training? And my point with my athletes is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, if there's any kind of doubt, invest more heavily in skill training than attribute training, especially once you get to a certain level on the attributes.

• 1:11:05Lex Fridman?

  Well, the interesting thing that I think you should account for with strength training is

• 1:11:12Lex Fridman?

  There's Instagram. There's the world. It's a, it seems to be more fun to build muscle mass. It's like an addiction that people have.

• 1:11:22John Danaher?

  There's also economic elements too, like most people, I hate to say this, but it's true. Most people are more concerned with image than function. And it's hard to sell a fighter or a jujitsu athlete who doesn't look like one.

• 1:11:41Lex Fridman?

  Looks like Fedor.

• 1:11:42John Danaher?

  Yeah, it's a tough sell. Now, you can do it in fighting and jujitsu because ultimately it's about whose hand is raised at the end of the match. And you could even use it as a selling point. You can be a guy that doesn't look like he should be winning, but he is winning. That is a selling point. But if you give most people a choice between looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger and winning matches versus looking like Fedor and winning matches, most people will select, I wish I'd rather look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And so most athletes feel almost like an economic compulsion to be in good shape and in order to advance their marketability.

• 1:12:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Nike's not going to sponsor Fedor or Tank Abbott.

• 1:12:20John Danaher?

  Yeah, Tank Abbott, no. Fedor maybe. But yeah, yeah, we're at the very top. There's, there's something about aesthetic, like image of strength and power.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  It's also an, also a personal thing. If you look at yourself in the mirror, do you like what, what you see? You know what I mean?

• 1:12:39John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Do you find yourself attractive? You know, what can you do to make you look better? And I think to me, to me, it was something, one of the reasons I work out is also for, for that.

• 1:12:48Lex Fridman?

  Well, I'm sure if Fedor looks in the mirror, he says, I look damn good today.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could be too. It's also a genetic factor. Some people, you know, it's harder for them. I mean, yeah.

• 1:12:59Lex Fridman?

  All right. So the question on training, you guys, John Gordon, train often three times a day, every day.

• 1:13:09Lex Fridman?

  Georgia had a different, like, a different approach to training. So what is, I don't mean that kind of the opposite or something. It's just not every single day. So, and obviously you are legitimately at the very top in terms of performance accomplishment in the field. So what have you learned about what it takes to train to become not just elite, but the best?

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Well, I, a lot of people, when you say train, they see training hard. I believe you need to be very constant and very disciplined. You need to train, but you don't need to train hard every day. That's what John taught me.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  For me, the nervous system, sometime I feel if I load it up too much, it comes to a point that you're, it's too much. There is no more information that I can absorb. So, and I do believe that it's something that you can train to your, the capacity, your capacity of being able to learn, of absorbing certain thing. And I did a lot of volume of training, but when I, when I was getting ready for a fight, especially during sparring day, I like to do it quick because my, when I fight, it's five rounds of five minutes.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  I don't like to spend an hour or two hours in a gym because I need to know how hard I can be going for 25 minutes, you know, not for two hours, for 25 minutes. And my last fight, John and I, we, we, we, we were thinking of how could we make me more of a better finisher, you know, more opportunist. And John, I remember when we were training with Gordon, Jake Shield came, Gary Tonan, my round of grappling were different than if I would be training for Abu Dhabi, you

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  know, for, for ABI or like some, like in grappling, the round are longer, but. In a mixed martial arts fight, it's very rare that you're gonna spend more than four minutes or four minutes and a half on the ground. It's very unlikely. I mean, it could, it can happen, but so I, do you remember we did the round? Three minute. We did, all the round I was doing were three minute round. So it gives a different rhythm to the training. It forced me to be more opportunist, to be more of a finisher, because I had only three minutes to do what I needed to do. So if I, if I see something, I need to go for the kill right away. I cannot be too over patient, you know what I mean?

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  And it, it served me well in my last fight. And I think that's a good blueprint to follow. When you're a mixed martial arts fighter, I, if I would, if the result was great, and I think

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  maybe I should have done that before. It was a great, great idea that we had.

• 1:16:21Lex Fridman?

  Not to do, be very careful on doing too much volume.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:16:25Lex Fridman?

  Try to get out and then try to focus on finishing and getting, getting out as quickly as possible.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  To build up your foundation, I believe you need a lot of volume. But when you get ready for a competition, it needs some, to be something that replicate what you're gonna be facing.

• 1:16:42Lex Fridman?

  What are, what are we talking about? What do you think? Like, is there rest days, five days a week, twice a day, once a day? Is there any one formula like that or no?

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  This, this, I do not believe in over training. I believe in under rest.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  I believe you can be under rest and people always link that immediately to the volume of their, how much volume they, they, they train, which it could be something else. How are you feeling emotionally? Are you, are you having problems, personal problem? Do you have a, have a hard time sleeping because you have a, like someone died? Or I don't know, like you, you hold money, you're broke or what? Like, you know what I mean? It could be anything. There is something that can affect you psychologically or emotionally that made it in a way that you cannot sleep well because your stress, your cortisol level is high.

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? All these factors need to be taken in consideration. It's not only about the volume of training. People always think the volume of the training is the only thing that can affect recuperation, which is not, you know?

• 1:17:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so to minimize the amount of stress from all kinds of factors.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  It's a very stressful job to be a professional combat athlete, whether you're a grappler, a boxer, a kickboxer, a fighter, and you need to be taking into account.

• 1:18:14Lex Fridman?

  Is it more or less stressful than marriage? Just kidding. Uh, next question.

• 1:18:21Lex Fridman?

  So I don't know how to ask this question, given what George just said, but you're training three times a day.

• 1:18:29Lex Fridman?

  And finishing, what have you learned about what brings out the best in you as the elite level grappler?

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  So over the recent years, I've actually changed it up a little bit. When I was coming up through from white to black belt, I felt that the volume was the most important. So it would be anywhere from like three to seven sessions a day,

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  going from school to school, from New York to New Jersey. And I think that the volume was very important to build the skills,

• 1:19:04Speaker 03

  where I just didn't know how to move my body at purple belt the way that I should. So I think that building the skills is super important. I think that early on, volume is very important. Now that I already have the skills built, I think that acquiring more knowledge is the most important. So I find that if I do so many sessions a day, like if I do three sessions a day, I feel sometimes by the third session, I'm just like so mentally like, there's just, there's so much information that's went through my head the first two sessions that I feel like I'm not even there mentally on the third session. So I feel like doing less volume now, but having more mental clarity per session is more important because I already have the foundational skills acquired.

• 1:19:49Lex Fridman?

  So a lot of your training is almost like just thinking, like learning.

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  A lot of it, yeah. So I'll do like, I mean, our schedule's been messed up since the pandemic because Henzo's got shut down and they were using a French gym in Puerto Rico and now we're using a French gym in Austin. But once we have our own school, we'll have a setup schedule where I can pretty much just be there all day long. But right now I do like a lifting session in the morning and then I'll come in and help teach at Henzo's. So I'm there mentally, I'm seeing what's going on and I'm playing around with ideas in my head. And then I'm there physically and very sharp mentally for the competition class during the 1pm session. And then after that, I'll go home, I'll rest and get ready for the next day.

• 1:20:33Lex Fridman?

  What have you learned, John, seeing all these different athletes? Is there a universal rule that applies or is it athlete specific?

• 1:20:41John Danaher?

  First, one thing that needs to be addressed is that George and Gordon play very different sports with very different athletic demands. Gordon can be in matches that range from anywhere from six minutes to literally hours long. As a result, the overall pacing and intensity of matches is massively different. Most obviously, there is no striking in Gordon's sport. Striking by its very nature is a much more explosive physical action than grappling. Grappling is primarily an isometric kind of sport based around isometric tension and

• 1:21:20John Danaher?

  endurance. George's sport is, does feature a significant amount of isometric tension, but the majority of it is based around explosion. So the physical demands of the two sports are radically different. In addition, the time of application is radically different. George raised a very interesting point. His matches seem long, 25 minutes for a championship match. But always understand that

• 1:21:48John Danaher?

  A mixed martial arts fight at championship level, if it goes the distance, is really five, five-minute matches. Each round is a match in itself, and that's exactly how you're scored. You're scored by who wins the most matches over five matches. As a result, the application of the techniques, especially the grappling techniques, has to be done at a certain pace. As George pointed out, realistically, the maximum application time you're going to get in most situations is somewhere between 15 seconds and three minutes. Even for a specialized grappler like Damian Maia, there's still a significant part of

• 1:22:29John Danaher?

  each round which is spent in setup time to actually get the match to the ground. It's very likely that at some point your opponent will stand up out of grappling and you'll have to re-initiate the entire process again. So that even for specialized grapplers, you might be spending only three minutes out of a five-minute round on the ground. And as a result, you've got to get your work done in a very short timeframe. Gordon Ryan, once it goes to the ground, and it can go to the ground because he chooses to sit to the ground, may spend the entire match in ground positions. As a result, the matches have completely different pacing and completely different

• 1:23:11John Danaher?

  physical demands, and the preparation that the two athletes go through will reflect that. If George Saint Pierre, in training for mixed martial arts, becomes fatigued to a point where he's no longer physically effective and able to defend himself, the consequences for that in MMA training can be very deep indeed. Okay? If you make a mistake in mixed martial arts because you're fatigued and tired, and you take a full-power roundhouse kick to the head, that's some deep consequences. A grappler doesn't have to face that. You can be completely exhausted in grappling and just sit in the bottom of the mound and just practice just survival skills. We just don't get submitted from bottom out, and that can still be an effective training session. Complete and utter physical breakdown of fatigue can be...

• 1:23:57John Danaher?

  Can end an athlete's career in mixed martial arts. The consequences of training through fatigue and MMA are potentially very deep and very disturbing. The consequences of training through complete physical exhaustion and grappling aren't really that severe. Okay, you just tap whenever there's a problem, just tap.

• 1:24:19John Danaher?

  And so they're very, very different sports in the way you prepare for them. And a grappling athlete like Gordon Ryan, we can take many more liberties with physical exhaustion. And the amount of hours a day you spend in training than you could with a mixed martial arts athlete like.

• 1:24:37Lex Fridman?

  Actually be a benefit exhaustion as a framework of learning. So like from a place of exhaustion, is there any benefit to they you on the you said being at the bottom of Mao. Sort of understanding Jiu Jitsu grappling somehow deeper because you're physically.

• 1:24:55John Danaher?

  Absolutely, absolutely, because then the only thing you have left in your favor is your technique. And then you'll see how technical you are. In addition, you'll get to explore realms inside your mind that we don't spend a lot of time in. And you'll learn a lot about yourself and your ability to endure, which will have potentially great benefits in similar situations and matches.

• 1:25:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's a I mean, for me, for a recreational person, getting exhaustion allows you the great benefit to experience what it feels like to really get dominated. At an even greater frequency than you otherwise would. And there's something there, there's some animalistic thing that's very unpleasant. And then afterwards, it takes you to a nice to a place of like humility and. I don't know, you get it forces you to rethink life in positive ways. There's something about dominance, it give me if you get dominated a few times, you can rationalize it somehow. You say, okay, well, I screwed this up.

• 1:26:00Lex Fridman?

  But with when you're exhausted and you have to do like thirty minutes or forty minutes or an hour of just being dominant over and over and over being submitted. It I don't know, it's a very good process for.

• 1:26:13Lex Fridman?

  For other avenues of life, I find. I can't explain why, because I'm driving home, crying afterwards, listening to Bruce Springsteen. But afterwards, this, afterwards, somehow, you can think clearer. You can see clear about what is the right path through life, in all walks of life, like relationships, work, but also grappling. Actually, the grappling is the hardest one to see what you have to do. It clarifies other avenues, the humility, it removes the bullshit. It's like we see the world through some kind of fog, and it just removes it. And now you can see things clearly. I don't know what that is.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  I think, I think it's important, like you mentioned, to push yourself, like sometime, to see how far you can go, because sometime you can go further than where you think. And it can boost your confidence. You know, you can push yourself through a certain limit, and maybe you thought your limit was before that point, and you push through it. But, like John just mentioned, it's a risky thing to do in striking, because if you're exhausted, you're gonna get brain damage. In grappling, it's, you know, you tap if something wrong. But you can do it also in strength conditioning. I like to run track. I do it all the time, and track and field. It helps me to, to know myself better. I think it's important. It's a good point.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  And it's like, it's like the scrimmage wrestling rounds we do. It's like, you know, if you stop moving, that you're gonna get scored on. And you know in your mind, like, there's no mechanical reason why I, why I should give up a score here. But you're so exhausted that you're like, oh, man, this is terrible. If I, if I stop moving, I'm a pussy. If I don't stop move, if I don't stop moving, I'm gonna be twice as exhausted when we actually do stand up. So it's a, it's an interesting game you have to play inside your mind.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  It's, it's your pride, very often, that, that keep you, that keep you sharp. You know what I mean? Because you just wanna lay down and beat it, because you're completely exhausted, you know?

• 1:28:21Lex Fridman?

  What do you think is the connection, John, between this ego pride thing, martial arts, and actual violence in our, with our ancestors? Do you think, you ever plug into that? Do you think there's echoes of something going on there? Or like, you mentioned you have flaws and demons. Is it deep in there somewhere? Do you think we're struggling with those demons?

• 1:28:45John Danaher?

  Yeah, you'll need to patch up your questionnaire with those going in several different directions.

• 1:28:50Lex Fridman?

  Wow, that was, not only my being dominant in jujitsu, I mean dominant in interviewing.

• 1:28:55John Danaher?

  No, no, no, I'm not.

• 1:28:56Lex Fridman?

  Patched up that question.

• 1:28:58Speaker 03

  The stepbrother scene where they're like, okay, now we interview you.

• 1:29:02John Danaher?

  But you went down the evolutionary.

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  Bob Lazar, what do you think?

• 1:29:05Lex Fridman?

  I mean, do you think, do you, I don't mean just the line between what is martial arts and what is violence. I mean, there, there seems to be a gray area that connects us to the evolutionary ancestors.

• 1:29:18John Danaher?

  Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think there's a deep recognition in all of us that, and this is, the evidence for this is so easy to, to see in, in, in daily life.

• 1:29:35John Danaher?

  If you're walking down the street and suddenly you hear a commotion and two people are fighting,

• 1:29:42John Danaher?

  you will see literally everyone on that street stop whatever they're doing and watch the fight.

• 1:29:50John Danaher?

  Humans are fascinated by violence and you've got to ask yourself why? And of course, it's a recognition that for a significant part of our evolutionary history, violence was one of the most important elements in human existence. As much as we curse it, as much as we talk badly of it.

• 1:30:16John Danaher?

  The juxtaposition between humans' social nature and their need for each other to get along and to express love amongst the various members of a given community. There are disputes between humans that can't be resolved and ultimately throughout history, violence has been the number one method of conflict resolution, for better or for worse. And there's a recognition in all of us that this is where we come from. And there's a reason why combat sports have this thing where people will watch them and they might even be repulsed by them, but they find it difficult to take their eyes from it.

• 1:31:00John Danaher?

  And I do believe that most combat athletes carry that sense of their, even if it's on a subconscious level, this kind of belief that this is who we are. George, you used the word pride, and I believe that's a big part of it. I believe that most humans have this sense of self-worth and pride which they're willing to fight for. And if it gets crossed by someone else, they're willing to stand. Some people will stand more early and some people will be pushed further back, but everyone's got that line beyond which they won't be pushed.

• 1:31:42John Danaher?

  And there's some kind of deep recognition in all of us that we have that somewhere within us, no matter how hard we try to bury it or what have you. And that's why I believe there will always be this eternal interest in combat sports. Now, I don't believe that most people today have any kind of respect for unrestricted violence or non-consensual violence. I think most people, most good people are repulsed by that. And I'm sure that as humanity improves out into the future, that will become more and more widespread. But that's not to say we can't exercise these.

• 1:32:25John Danaher?

  Old evolutionary demons inside of us and um uh and sometimes there are just disputes between different people, different cultures, different nations, where ultimately it's gonna come to into into a shoving match and that will degenerate further into violence. There's always going to be a need for humans to be able to to uh express themselves through violent methods and to use physical force to get to their their goals and objectives. Um, our our need as humans is always to find a balance between the two forces of conflict

• 1:33:06John Danaher?

  and cooperation. We need cooperation because humans isolated from each other are more or less helpless and useless. Uh, in order to advance, human communities need to build and grow. And so that sense of cooperation occurs in most of our daily lives. But there will also be irresolvable conflicts where physical force has to be used to to form a resolution. And so most human beings find themselves swinging like a pendulum between conflict and cooperation. And um uh and that is something which really gives birth, I think, to combat sports because, sorry.

• 1:33:47Lex Fridman?

  Well, I really have to ask you about this then. There's a guy in Harvard uh named Richard Wrangham, and there's a lot of people that believe this. He wrote this book that um basically, there's a lot of people studying is what happened? How do we get from apes to humans? Like, what was the magic thing? Right? A lot of people attribute it to fire and ability to cook meat. There's a lot of different theories. So he actually um his theory, how do I describe this, is basically that that the beta males won. That the the the apes that were able to cooperate.

• 1:34:27Lex Fridman?

  So you the the way you develop cooperation is that there's a big bad leader. That the the alpha male that you can only um knock off their throne if you cooperate. And so we built big tribes that just excelled the cooperation by practicing the overthrowing the leader. And so and anytime an alpha male would rise up, they would get we would we would develop our skill further and further of cooperation. And so we're all just beta males, the descendants of beta males. That's his kind of theory that cooperation is fundamental and it's so distinct to the the rest of the neighboring animal kingdom.

• 1:35:11John Danaher?

  Fascinating.

• 1:35:12Lex Fridman?

  So I I wonder what you think about this tension of violence of cooperation and how important is this cooperation to the core of.

• 1:35:19John Danaher?

  Yeah. Uh, who. If you you can look at it in the in a given training room. Jiu Jitsu and mixed martial arts are solo sports. A solo athlete steps into the cage or steps onto the mat. But all of your preparation is done in a cooperative training environment with many peers. And as much as it's an individual sport, all of your preparation is done in as part of a group. There's a sense in which that's an interesting metaphor for humanity itself. Everything we do in life, we do alone, but we grow up in this given community and and what have you.

• 1:36:03John Danaher?

  With regards to the the whole alpha male, beta male thing, humans are it's true, this fellow is correct. You know, most primates do have very strongly defined alpha males who rule the roost and determine the entire direction of the um of of the community they they build around themselves. Humans, on the other hand. Don't have an alpha male in that strict biological sense of someone who's responsible for the next generation dominates all the female population, et cetera.

• 1:36:43Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, physically dominates.

• 1:36:44John Danaher?

  But we do, on the other hand, have our own version of alpha males insofar as we have political and sociological leaders who have a disproportionate impact on the direction of a of a community. So.

• 1:37:00Lex Fridman?

  Was the cooperation allowed us to to have a greater scale of hierarchy with the alpha male on top or the alpha creature on top?

• 1:37:09John Danaher?

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's a fascinating theory.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  In in nature, we're we're very weak as a species, so we needed to cooperate cooperate in order to to evolve. That, I think, made us the the top of the food chain.

• 1:37:27John Danaher?

  If you look at humanity and in nature, really, the two things that seem to, more than anything else, determine whether or not a given human community will be successful in a predatory world are numbers and technology. Okay, the more your numbers increase and the the higher the technology of the weapons and support systems you have around you, the more successful you'll be in a predatory world. So it's not clear that just killing off the idea of an alpha male was the the the single biggest thing. The rise of technology and the growth of community after the imposition of language,

• 1:38:11John Danaher?

  these are other things that would have been very, very important factors in in humanity's rise. George, you made an interesting point. If you look at humans, just the raw material of humans, we're we're fucking pathetic. And in a predatory animal kingdom, we're just the absolute bottom of the food chain. We don't have a single effective. Weapon other than better than average endurance, that's about it. But you put us in a community who can talk to each other with language, give us the time to come up with technological advances such as metals. And suddenly, a human will go from no combat effectiveness in the animal kingdom to a

• 1:38:55John Danaher?

  human armed with a simple metal tipped spear can kill damn near any animal in the in the animal kingdom when working as a group.

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  I'll beat your silverback, you know, I'll fight him in a deep water pool because he cannot swim, so I don't have to touch him. He'll drown.

• 1:39:14Lex Fridman?

  How will you get him into the pool?

• 1:39:16Speaker 02

  You know why? Because someone told me, because we live in a community, someone told me that information. So I know he passed it on to me.

• 1:39:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. He taught you. Well, you have to convince him to, you have to somehow convince him to join you in the pool, which is very difficult. Yeah, exactly. It's a very problem, very, very difficult.

• 1:39:36Lex Fridman?

  From a technical perspective, John, you've looked at mixed martial arts, fighting in general and grappling. What's the difference between fighting and grappling? That's something I'd love to ask all of you. Maybe John, you can start like.

• 1:39:51John Danaher?

  Well, when you talk about fighting, you mean unrestricted MMA type fighting?

• 1:39:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's funny, you said unrestricted MMA type fighting. So there's, there's the street fighting, there's MMA fighting, and then there's grappling, purely the sport of grappling.

• 1:40:09John Danaher?

  You're saying, okay, what's the difference between MMA and grappling?

• 1:40:12Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 1:40:12John Danaher?

  Okay.

• 1:40:13Lex Fridman?

  See, that would have been a much better question to ask.

• 1:40:16John Danaher?

  Well, the, the single, when you talk about grappling, you're talking about Jiu Jitsu rules or?

• 1:40:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I mean, you could maybe also mention different rule sets that somehow fundamentally challenged, changed the sport.

• 1:40:29John Danaher?

  Yeah. In the sport of mixed martial arts, you've got two.

• 1:40:36John Danaher?

  Ways to inflict damage on the human body. You've you've got kinetic energy, which is done through striking, kicking, knees, elbows, fists, and you've got isometric tension used along the lines of lever and fulcrum, which can be used for strangulation and joint breaking. In grappling, you lose one of those. You're no longer allowed to hurt your opponent with kinetic energy. You can do it accidentally through a throw, but you're not allowed to just, you know, knock someone out with a throw. In most grappling sports, it can happen, but it's relatively rare and it's it's not encouraged by the ruleset. So.

• 1:41:15Lex Fridman?

  Cyborg with.

• 1:41:16John Danaher?

  Yeah, you got close. So there's a sense in which in mixed martial arts, you've got twice as many problems to deal with. And and they occur in a much shorter timeframe. The single biggest difference between grappling technique as a weapon in human combat versus striking technique is time. Grappling technique takes a huge amount of time to apply. Okay? The great advantage of grappling technique is certainty of outcome. Once you get there, it takes a huge amount of time to set up a takedown, physically take them down, work

• 1:41:59John Danaher?

  their way, work your way towards a dominant position, culminating in your opponent's back, and then apply a stranglehold. That's a long chain of events, as opposed to a strong punch or kick, which can take quarter of a second in application from start to finish, and the match is over. And so there's a sense in which grappling is it's it's fighting for the patient and the calculating, whereas striking is much more for in this short timeframe, where everything gets done in the in the blink of an eye. There's a

• 1:42:40John Danaher?

  sense also in which grappling is a much more forgiving sport. You can make a terrible mistake, end up in a terrible position, and still fight your way out and win.

• 1:42:52John Danaher?

  In mixed martial arts, it's much, much less forgiving. If you get hit and stunned, your chances of recovery are minimal. You're gonna get swarmed on, and unless it's right at the end of the round, it's very, very hard to recover from getting hit and swarmed on. So there's a sense in which the biggest difference between them is time of application of technique. In mixed martial arts, it's incredibly unforgiving in terms of time. Even the smallest error can have the deepest consequences. In grappling, you can make massive errors and still come back and win. Grappling will typically be won in a much higher percentage case

• 1:43:35John Danaher?

  by the more skilled and conditioned grappler. Whereas there is much more of what they call a puncher's chance in mixed martial arts, where there's a much higher likelihood of a lesser athlete defeating a greater athlete in MMA than there is in grappling, simply because of time of application of his techniques. Even the smallest period of inattention in MMA, and the match is over. Gordon Ryan could fall asleep for 30 seconds, have his opponent mounted on him, wake up and finish him five minutes later. It's not gonna happen in MMA.

• 1:44:11Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so the stakes are much higher. You can do a lot of damage in a very small amount of time, and just the dynamic, the temporal dynamics of how things happen is very different.

• 1:44:19John Danaher?

  Everything you'll see will be a reflection of that. Then you go further into things like rule sets. In the sport of grappling, if Gordon Ryan comes out and sits down in the middle of the mat, his opponent must follow him to the ground and engage. In mixed martial arts, if you come to the center of the cage and sit down, the other guy can just walk away from you. They're completely oriented in different directions. Grappling is ground-centered, MMA is typically standing-centered. At the beginning of every round, you have to start standing again. If I disengage from a ground grappling situation, stand up and walk away from my opponent, my opponent must follow me up to the feet. In grappling, it's the exact opposite.

• 1:45:03John Danaher?

  If I sit to the ground, my opponent must follow me to the ground. It's written into the ruleset. And so one is inherently ground oriented and one is inherently standing oriented.

• 1:45:12Lex Fridman?

  So it's more it's more difficult to dictate where the fight happens in mixed martial arts?

• 1:45:16John Danaher?

  Yes, you have to be able to impose where the fight is, whereas in grappling, you can simply choose it.

• 1:45:22Lex Fridman?

  So, George, what is your sense of the the difference in terms of how you approached it?

• 1:45:29Lex Fridman?

  Between the two sports? So you also are a student of wrestling and grappling. So in preparing for fights,

• 1:45:37Lex Fridman?

  what parts of grappling, purely the sport, did you have to leave behind?

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Well, I I'm very lucky. I had the opportunity to I I train with. I consider the best mentor trainer I ever ever had. And I have some of the best grapplers that I can train with. They were they were there to help me through my career. So for my training is, of course, because I do not dedicate as much time in one specific area. It's hard to be, you know, a world class athlete in that in in only one particular area. I always, for me, like the idea to be more well rounded, to be very competent in every of those areas.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  Striking, grappling, takedowns and and all those areas than being just very good at one and not as good as as others, you know? Because I like the idea that it gives me more option. When I fight someone, I can mold myself to become the perfect nemesis to that person better if I'm more well rounded. If I do not have those well rounded skill.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  I don't have that option, you know?

• 1:46:59Lex Fridman?

  You have less tools to work with, less technology. What about you, Gordon? What do you think is very distinct about grappling and the way you approach it versus fighting?

• 1:47:10Speaker 03

  I think most of it was covered, but I think that the one, one of the big things is the fact that when you're looking at MMA, you have a pretty general agreed upon and unified rule set where if you look at UFC versus Bellator, they're, they have slight differences in the rules maybe, but it's pretty much the same thing. Whereas in grappling, you have EBI rules, then you have ADCC rules, you have IBJJF rules, you have no time limit rules. And each rule set will play to the skills of different athletes. If you have, if you do ADCC rules, it generally is slightly biased towards wrestlers. Or if they can stall to the overtime and then hit a takedown in the overtime and not really do any jiu-jitsu, but they score a takedown, they're going to win.

• 1:47:55Speaker 03

  Whereas if you have like an EBI, for example, you have to finish the guy in regulation or you start in a jiu-jitsu position with your back taken or in an arm bar. So I think that you have certain rule sets that play in the favor of certain athletes. And certain athletes can win in one rule set, but then they just have no chance of winning in the other. Like when I fought Yuri the first time in EBI, I beat him in EBI. The chances of me beating him on that night under an ADCC rule set were probably pretty low. When I fought Leandro Lo under an ADCC rule set, he beat me that day, but the chances of him beating me on the same day in an EBI rules that were like next to zero.

• 1:48:35Speaker 03

  So I think it's interesting that in MMA, you have one unified rule set, which has small differences, but they're all generally the same. And in jiu-jitsu, you have a wide variety of different rule sets that have biases towards certain athlete skill sets.

• 1:48:53Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned Leandro Lo. I gotta ask you again about ADCC. You have lost very, very few times in your career. One, I mean, this is, the same is true for George. And the only person who has ever submitted you is Felipe Peña.

• 1:49:10Speaker 03

  At Black Belt, yeah.

• 1:49:12Lex Fridman?

  At Black Belt.

• 1:49:14Lex Fridman?

  He is a DCC World Champion, multiple time IBJJF Gi and Nogi World Champion. You may face him at DCC or elsewhere in the future. Will you beat him?

• 1:49:25Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean, I have to say yes, right? But I fought him initially when I first got my black belt, and I fought him a year later, so 2016 and 2017. And despite what people remember about the match, and whenever people talk about it, it's like, oh yeah, the guy who strangled Gordon. But no one remembers that the first match was like a 45-minute war, and then the second match with the full 20 minutes of ADCC. And if I didn't get my back taken in like the last minute and a half, two minutes, it would have went into an overtime. And that could have changed the outcome of the match. I think that if you look at Felipe's performances, especially Nogi, specifically Nogi, since then, it looks like he's almost gotten worse.

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  Whereas since that match in 2017, the only match I lost after that was against Vinnie Magalish by points. And I'm on like a 55-match win streak over the course of four years, winning all the major tournaments, Nogi. And Felipe, since that match, I think is like 5-2, Nogi. And he's lost his last two matches. One was convincingly where he was dominated by Andre, and one was by submission. So I don't think that he's progressed nearly as fast. If anything, it looks like he's worse than he was when he beat me in 2017, based on his previous performances. That being said, I know he's going to come in training very hard for this one, and he's going to be prepared.

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  But I just don't think that in terms of technical ability, he's anywhere near my level. And he was much bigger than me, both times we fought. The first time, he was much bigger than me. The second time, he was one-way class above me. So now, there's not going to be an advantage in technicality, and there's also not going to be a physicality advantage. So I think he's just going to be beat everywhere.

• 1:51:20Lex Fridman?

  This is a good example of the scientific response to a comment, to a question. Yeah, so he's not...

• 1:51:32Lex Fridman?

  That's a match you're not deeply concerned with. In terms of the set of opponents, because you have and you will be facing a lot of really difficult...

• 1:51:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's actually, in my opinion, one of the easier matches because of the fact that we're relatively the same size. If I show up at 230 pounds, like a lot of the guys are 260, 270 plus, so that extra weight does make a difference. I think out of that entire bracket, Felipe is probably going to be one of the easiest matches because of the fact that I can easily take him down. And if I take him down, I'm going to pass his guard. Whereas I feel like the other guys, because they're so much bigger and they're very cagey, it may take me a while to actually take them to the ground and get on top of them. And I think it may be, they may be longer drawn out matches because of the fact that they're so much bigger and stally. It's hard to take them down, but Felipe is relatively my size and his wrestling is atrocious.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  So, and I've already taken him down in the last ADCC match. So I'm pretty sure I can just easily put him down, pass him and then finish him.

• 1:52:32Lex Fridman?

  Well, I'm not sure what response I was expecting, but that was phrased beautifully.

• 1:52:41Lex Fridman?

  We talked about the Thiago Alves fight that George had. And John borrowed up in class yesterday, I believe. But the point is, we're talking about wrestling and I think that's a fascinating fight. That there's an incredible display of strategy, of skill, of heart. George, could you maybe talk about that fight, John, maybe too? What lessons you gained from that fight?

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Go ahead. It was your fight, not mine.

• 1:53:09Lex Fridman?

  Or maybe also tell what happened in terms of your injury, I think, third round?

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So I was fighting Thiago Alves and in the third round, I...

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  Tear my adductor muscle. It happened when I was on the bottom and he, I think he pushed my knee down, tried to pass my guard and I heard a pop. I don't know what.

• 1:53:30John Danaher?

  I think you were going for an arm bar. You were on his back, you switched to arm bar and he cleared the leg by pushing on your leg and you went in with a pre-existing injury and it tore.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  Yes, and it it it it got worse and and I heard a pop. I didn't know what it was, but I know it it really hurt, so I came back standing up and there's a famous video that goes on the internet about when I go back in the corner and I tell my my coach, I'm like, I don't know what it is, I think I tore my my my adductor muscle and Greg Jackson is like, I don't care, hit him with your groin.

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  I was very worried because I I was in pain, but I didn't I did not know what what I had. So I didn't know the gravity of it and it it it plays on your mind. So but I had to bite to bite down my mouthpiece and finish the fight, you know, I knew I was ahead on the on the scorecard and I needed to finish finish strong.

• 1:54:28John Danaher?

  So what was your strategy there in terms of strikes, in terms of wrestling? So he's exceptionally difficult opponent to take down.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, at at first I I I knew I had a good jab, a good, you know, to stay always from the outside, you know, fight him from the outside and and use my footwork. Because he was like a tank, he was much bigger and much stronger than me. And I didn't want, never wanted to stay in front of him. So he was all the way out or all the way in. And when I was coming all the way in, it was with my proactive or reactive takedown. Where I myself initiated the takedown by using a distraction, like a jab to make his his hand goes up and then I go with a single double leg. Or to react, baiting him for him to come hit me and then

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  while he's coming to hit me, I go change level and and that's the way I like to take my opponent down, you know, some guys, for example, like like Khabib, for example, he's very good at at bringing his opponent to defense and use chain wrestling to to take his opponent down. I I find it for me, for myself, I specialize more into explosive takedown in the center of the takedown because I found it more economical for me.

• 1:55:48Lex Fridman?

  What did you see? You were commenting, John, about the wrestling. That was quite interesting. I mean, also, can you generally comment on the fact that George St. Pierre, who don't, I don't think you wrestled?

• 1:56:01Speaker 02

  I wrestled, I started wrestling when I was 19 years old, but I wrestled with some very good Russian guys. So they took me underneath their wing and, but my ability to cover distance come from karate. It does not come from wrestling. Wrestling is how I finish. Once I got the leg, how I finish the takedown.

• 1:56:20Lex Fridman?

  So the, the timing and the movement and the explosion required for this karate?

• 1:56:25John Danaher?

  I think an important distinction to make here is one which George made throughout his career. And I believe, George, you were the greatest innovator in MMA history with regards to this. And this is the creation of what George calls shootboxing, which is the amalgamation of striking technique, in George's case, mostly karate, because that was his martial arts background, into grappling and in particular takedowns.

• 1:56:58John Danaher?

  When most people say so and so has better wrestling in mixed martial arts, you have to be very careful what they mean by this. There are many highly credentialed wrestlers in the early days of mixed martial arts who went in and truly struggled to hit a takedown. Now, these are very, very good wrestlers who in a wrestling match would easily put down their opponent. But in a striking situation where the ranges are completely different and the setups are entirely different, the stances are different, even the, the overall conditions are different. You're no longer wearing shoes. People underestimate just what an impact it is for a wrestler to take the shoes off.

• 1:57:42John Danaher?

  You lose like 20% of your forward drive the minute you take off the shoes.

• 1:57:48John Danaher?

  All of these make massive differences in whether or not you're going to be able to even make contact with an opponent for a takedown.

• 1:57:57John Danaher?

  As George pointed out, the true value of wrestling in MMA is finishing the takedown once you've established contact, but that's only about 20% of the action of a mixed martial arts takedown. 80% of it is in understanding range, rhythm, setup, opportunity, et cetera, et cetera. And that's not part of wrestling at all. Even the overall conditions are completely different. In the sport of wrestling, you start at very close range in a very bent over stance, and you're expected to wrestle for, in international styles, for three minutes at a time. Now suddenly, you're completely upright, and you're not wearing shoes. All the conditions, the rhythm

• 1:58:42John Danaher?

  and speed of it is different. The counters are completely different. It's just an entirely different animal. And so George was an early recognizer of this, and started to put the emphasis on direct training for shootboxing in addition to wrestling. So he practiced with very good wrestlers in the Montreal Wrestling Club. Just the sport of wrestling. And that's what made him very good at finishing takedowns. But it was in his shootboxing training, which he himself largely developed. Remember, George started at a time when MMA was pretty damn young. And when you entered the sport of mixed martial arts, George, it wasn't

• 1:59:26John Danaher?

  even allowed on TV. Like, it was completely banned. It was, in his country, it was physically banned. They had to fight on Indian reservations. And this is way back in the Wild West days of MMA. And so as a young developing athlete, he had to more or less do this by himself. If you ever want to hear some incredible stories, talk about teenage George St. Pierre, had a coach who used to make him put on boxing gloves. Now, he was 16, 17 years old, and just put him on a hardwood floor against a professional boxer who was in his late twenties, at the peak of his career. And he said, "George, you're not allowed to punch. You just got to take him down while he tries to knock you out." And it was crazy.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  It was like Darwinism. He was like... It's like you're gonna, you're gonna adapt or you're gonna die, literally.

• 2:00:18John Danaher?

  And he had that.

• 2:00:18Speaker 02

  It could have been very bad, but it turns out to be great, his methods.

• 2:00:22John Danaher?

  But there's a sense here in which people think, oh, you know, what determines your takedown ability in MMA is your wrestling skill. Hmm, that your wrestling skill will determine your finishing ability on takedowns. But there's so much more to it than that. Um, whenever people say, you know, what, what are the broad elements that determine the outcome of a mixed martial arts fight? Okay, uh, on the broadest possible level, I always give the same three things. The athlete who can dominate the pace of the match. The athlete who can dominate the direction of the match. And the athlete who can dominate the setups will win the vast majority of fights they're in.

• 2:01:07John Danaher?

  Those three things, the direction, the pace and the setups. You dominate all three of those, you're gonna win 90% of the matches you're in. Um, George could always dominate the direction of the fight. Because he could stop the other guy taking him down. And he could impose his own takedowns at any point in a match. So whether it went to ground or whether it stayed standing was always up to him. George had the most sophisticated array of setups into takedowns that I've personally ever witnessed. Um, the whole distinction between reactive and proactive takedowns came very early in George's career. And he excelled in both. Most people tend to favor one or the other.

• 2:01:51John Danaher?

  Most athletes have a very hard time imposing their setups on an opponent. And as a result, they have to use the cage as a crutch for their, for their setups. Where they just bully someone towards the cage and then put them down on the cage. George is one of the very few people who was equally good against the cage or in the open. And could do so in both proactive and reactive situations.

• 2:02:18John Danaher?

  And the scary thing is that as good as all of you saw him look in the octagon, anyone who knows George as a coach will tell you he was twice as good as that in the gym, where he would often go against people, several weight divisions above himself. I could sit here all day, I won't name names, but I always laugh when people say, oh, this is the greatest pound-for-pound guy of all time. And I've personally seen George take that guy down and crush him in the gym. And I can't say anything because it's rude to talk about that in public because it's just training. But I've seen George go with people all the way up to light heavyweight, some of the greatest names in the history of the sport, put them down, advanced position on the ground and dominate them in training.

• 2:03:01John Danaher?

  It's what he did during that time. George, I gotta say, I deeply admire many of the things I saw you do, not just in the octagon, but in training as well. The impact that you had on, the degree to which takedowns were used in the sport was absolutely inspirational. That's why, one of the reasons why I always say you're one of the, the only athlete I ever met who taught me more than I taught you, because you opened my eyes to a whole new world of shootboxing and how, I grew up in a time when, I was laughing before when you talked about Sugar Ray Leonard, I was a kid watching that match. And I grew up

• 2:03:45John Danaher?

  in a time where there was boxing and there was kickboxing. And then I came to America and I learned grappling. And this young man here was the innovator when it came to the integration of the two.

• 2:03:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, then I have to ask, because George sits here uncomfortably being complimented, if George St Pierre and Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime, who wins?

• 2:04:09John Danaher?

  Cool. That's a very, very loaded question.

• 2:04:11Lex Fridman?

  And how?

• 2:04:12John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Lex Fridman?

  Like, what are the different trajectories you see? Okay, how does each one win, in your view? If one wins or the other one wins?

• 2:04:19John Danaher?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:20Lex Fridman?

  What happens?

• 2:04:20John Danaher?

  Interestingly, they're actually very similar in size, despite the fact that George fought at welterweight and Khabib fought at lightweight. If you actually see them stand next to each other, they're of similar height. Khabib's actually a little more thick set. Yeah, he's actually heavier than you walking around. George walked around most of his career between 188 and 191 pounds. And so Khabib actually would ironically have a kind of size and strength advantage. Despite being in the lighter weight division. That's been the general trend as MMA has grown is that athletes will come further down in weight to make weight divisions.

• 2:05:03John Danaher?

  I believe that George has the best takedowns in history in the open, in the cage.

• 2:05:12John Danaher?

  Khabib was, his great strength was using the fence to facilitate takedowns.

• 2:05:19John Danaher?

  Khabib's other great strength was not only his ability to take people down, but to keep people down for extended periods of time. Both of them were powerful strikers on the ground and could do terrible damage to opponents on the floor. So they're both very similar in that regard. Khabib was mostly a puncher from the back. George was mostly an elbow from the front. But both of them could lay waste to opponents with strikes on the floor. Both of them were highly competent with submissions on the ground. They weren't submission specialists in the sense of someone like Gordon Ryan, but they were certainly no slouches with submission holds.

• 2:06:06John Danaher?

  Yeah, it's just a fascinating idea.

• 2:06:09Lex Fridman?

  So it's almost like who gets the first takedown?

• 2:06:11John Danaher?

  Yeah, I do believe that they could probably stand up on each other. I don't think either one of them would be able to hold the other down for a whole round.

• 2:06:23John Danaher?

  Both of them are notoriously difficult people to hold down. So I don't think that whoever won the first takedown wins the match. I don't think it's like that.

• 2:06:32John Danaher?

  I do believe that George would hold a decisive advantage in striking and distance management.

• 2:06:39John Danaher?

  The few times that Khabib did look shaky is when he

• 2:06:44John Danaher?

  Khabib was either advancing forward menacingly, but when he had to fight moving backwards, there was a definite asymmetry between his ability to fight going forwards, which is very good, and his ability to fight going backwards, which was noticeably weaker. George would often fight both forwards and backwards. With the Thiago Alves fight, most of the standing time was going backwards. That's probably the single biggest difference between the two athletes in skill level would be in the standing position. On the ground, Khabib slight edge and takedowns on the fence, George slight edge and takedowns in the center.

• 2:07:29John Danaher?

  Ability to inflict damage on the floor roughly equal, ability to fight off the back roughly equal, ability to stand up from bottom roughly equal. It's a very, very hard match. In terms of the biggest difference in skill level is going to be in the standing position. And so it would come down to, that doesn't necessarily mean that Khabib would lose in the standing position, he might just push it to the fence and just use match tactics where he kept the fight on the fence for significant periods of time. And you can win rounds in that fashion. So it's a match that could go either way. Both of them are absolutely the best that you'll ever see. I've always believed the three greatest

• 2:08:10John Danaher?

  mixed martial artists I've ever seen in my life were George St Pierre, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Jon Jones. The three of them have some interesting similarities and differences. All three beat every single person they ever faced. I know Jon Jones officially has a loss by DQ, but no one believes that was a loss. George does have two losses, but he defeated both athletes decisively in rematches. Khabib did it by having no losses. Interestingly, all three athletes have at least one match, which is controversial in terms of who won and who lost.

• 2:08:53John Danaher?

  John Jones has had several matches which could have gone either way on the judges' scorecard. Khabib's match against Gleason T-Ball could have gone either way. George's match with Hendrix was, could have gone either way. They all had matches that they won, which people would dispute the outcome. So that was a similarity between the three of them. All three of them have had the ability to dominate the direction of fights. When they want it to go down, it goes down. When they don't want it to go down, it doesn't. That's why I put such a heavy emphasis on that idea that a mixed martial arts champion must be able to determine the direction of a fight.

• 2:09:35John Danaher?

  It's the single most important attribute that they all must have. As to which of the three is the best, it's going to come down to criteria. You can't pull them apart. Which answer you give as to which of those three is the greatest of all time will come down to the criteria that you use. Okay, is it being undefeated? Is it the amount of time? Was it the quality of the opponents that they had? If you do it by quality of opponents, I think you probably have to give it to George. If you do it by measured dominance through not being defeated, then it has to go to Khabib.

• 2:10:13John Danaher?

  Arguably, you could say the same with John Jones since his one loss is by DQ. But then you could also say the last three or four fights that John's had haven't been the same measure of dominance as we saw previously. So ultimately, you've got those three guys, in my opinion. And which one you choose will come down to who, it says more about who you are as a viewer than it does about the respective label of the athletes. You could throw a blanket over them. The three of them are just that good. And which one you select will probably say more about who you are as a viewer than it does about them as athletes.

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  I believe the best fighter, the goat, is not even born. Because the generation that is present benefit of a huge advantage. They have knowledge, technology that we didn't have before. And we had the knowledge that the other generation did not have before.

• 2:11:16Speaker 02

  But I believe the best, the goat is not even born yet. As good as they are today, I think you, in sport where you can measure the performance, track and field, Olympic lifting, you can, you know, someone is better than the other one because you can measure the performance. Fighting is all subjective. We always debate of who would win, but ten, the tendency in sport is that performance get better. I don't think it's because the athlete necessarily get better, it's because they have access to better technology, knowledge, and they learn from their predecessor.

• 2:11:54John Danaher?

  As long as that knowledge is transferred forward. Something tells me that the greatest of all time lived a few thousand years ago and has forgotten some of the greatest warriors. Can you imagine the kind of grapplers, we just, the history didn't record them. There, there could have been small tribes where they developed mini UFCs and they've developed the kind of things we, you, you have to think of like the Gracies, just a small family was able to develop so much so quickly.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  I often, as this, this discussion with John, and I think it's very important like to, to mention, I asked you very, several time, like, what would happen if we would take a fighter of modern days facing the champion of Pancreasian?

• 2:12:38John Danaher?

  This is an interesting question.

• 2:12:39Speaker 02

  And you, you brought some incredible good point and, and people don't, don't realize it, you know?

• 2:12:45John Danaher?

  Yeah, no, I, I think one of the great tragedies of martial arts history is our loss of the historical records of Pancreasian. Like, most of what we know was, from what I'm told, is actually lost in the fires of the Library of Alexandria. And we're left with only a pitiful amount of information on Pancreasian matches. But what we do know is that there was a very large participation in the sport and that it was widely considered the most popular sport in the ancient Olympics and that it was represented in the ancient Olympics for many hundreds of years, plus a long period of time before its introduction into the ancient Olympics.

• 2:13:31John Danaher?

  And so the development time that it may have had would have been very significant.

• 2:13:37John Danaher?

  As far as we know, most of the development would have been in the major Greek city-states for literally hundreds of years of development. Given its prestige as an Olympic sport, then the best athletes would have been doing it. Some of the sharpest minds that we know of in human history were involved in the sport. Plato, the great philosopher, was a pancrationist in his youth. In fact, his name Plato is a nickname. Platus is like plate. It means broad or big guy, like the big guy. And he spoke often about pancration in his written works.

• 2:14:22John Danaher?

  Imagine people with the intelligence of Plato, thinking about grappling technique for hundreds of years in the most popular Olympic sport of that time. Significant numbers of people with financial backing as city-states put great prestige upon Olympic success, they would have funneled athletes in, bought in the best coaches, and they had that for many hundreds of years. Like, it's quite conceivable that the best pancration athletes were of the absolute first quality. And it's so sad to think we'll never know what was their skill level.

• 2:15:00Lex Fridman?

  It's interesting to think about what kind of techniques they developed, whether there's stuff we haven't discovered yet. In class, you were talking about the most effective takedown strategy in wrestling, in collegiate wrestling. So maybe, let me ask first, because we offline talked about this too. What is the highest percentage submission in grappling?

• 2:15:20John Danaher?

  Overall, you have to go with the rear naked strangle, strangles from the back. If you look at most tournaments and most rule sets, it has success across all rule sets, all weight divisions, all body types. It doesn't require any kind of specific physical advantage at just height in order to be effective. It works equally well in both fighting and grappling.

• 2:15:48John Danaher?

  It will work regardless of how physically and mentally tough your opponent is. Okay, a heel hook is a very high percentage technique in in modern day competition. But if your opponent simply makes up his mind that he's not going to tap and is willing to take the physical damage, it won't result in the end of a match. A stranglehold by contrast will always end the match regardless of your opponent's mental toughness. So I believe it's fair to say that at the end of the day, the single most high percentage method of submitting people in grappling is a rear naked strangle.

• 2:16:25Lex Fridman?

  So when you look at an athlete, maybe Gordon, you could speak to this, like what's the best, you mentioned Gary with the guillotine, what's the best submission to really invest in? Is it the rear naked choke? To really invest your development, like understanding the entirety of the system that leads into that?

• 2:16:42Speaker 03

  I think that, I mean, you have to do them all, obviously, but if I had like one submission that I would, only one submission I could pick for the rest of my life, it would definitely be a rear naked.

• 2:16:51Lex Fridman?

  Can you explain maybe some of the actual technical details of why that's the case?

• 2:16:56Speaker 03

  Well, as John spoke about, they're different in joint locks, whereas you don't have to tap, you can just let your leg break and then keep going with the strangle. There's no, there's none of that. And then it's just an inherent advantage you have being behind someone. Whereas if you go for an arm bar, you start, you start from top mount and you're facing the guy, then you put him down and you're not directly behind them. With leg locks, you're facing the guy. Whereas when you're on someone's back, you have them in a pin where you can, your chest to back, you have a body triangle and you're pinning the guy in place, he can't explode out, he can't grease his way out most of the time. And there's an inherent advantage you have being behind them due to the fact that we're poorly set up to deal with threats behind us.

• 2:17:40Lex Fridman?

  So would you say that's the most dominant position jiu jitsu, like more than mount?

• 2:17:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:46Lex Fridman?

  More than sack control?

• 2:17:48Speaker 03

  I think if you look at most matches historically, most guys who get stuck in positions for long amounts of time are guys that their back taken. If you get an explosive guy from bottom mount, he can bridge and he can off balance you and lock half guard maybe and then work back to guard. But if someone locks a body triangle on your back, that's where you see most guys getting pinned in place for long amounts of time.

• 2:18:12Lex Fridman?

  Was the body triangle like a well-understood thing? Was that an invention at some point? Like as a system, as a control function?

• 2:18:22John Danaher?

  Perhaps some of your listeners can correct me on this, but I believe there was a technique banned in Judo called Doji-Mae, which involved crossing feet or locking a triangle around the abdominals from the back. And it was banned in Judo, I believe, because of intestinal injuries, which occurred in the early developmental days of Judo. And in the modern era, when I first began Jiu-Jitsu, body triangles were relatively rare. They were not a standard part of class. And sometime around the late 1990s, early 2000s, people started to realize, hey, this is a stronger method of control.

• 2:19:02John Danaher?

  It greatly increases the amount of control you have of your opponent's hips and torso over regular hooks. It's not for all athletes. It's difficult for most people who are of shorter, thicker stature to employ on big people. If your opponent's very broadly built through the stomach, it's almost impossible to apply. And so because it can't be applied by all people, it tends not to be taught much at beginner level. So as a result, it was always seen as a kind of a specialist move for taller athletes at a higher level of competition, rather than a broad-based move for everyone or every body type in every class to employ. So it just didn't get emphasized that much.

• 2:19:47John Danaher?

  But in top-level competition now, I think you would see that it's very apparent that the vast majority of athletes, whenever they have the opportunity or a choice between body triangle and regular rear mounts, the majority of modern athletes would choose a body triangle.

• 2:20:03Lex Fridman?

  So we also had this conversation about wrestling. Maybe, George, you can comment on like, what's the highest percentage? Not statistically speaking, perhaps that's also interesting, as John talked about. But just for you, in terms of mastery of a takedown, what's the best way to take down a human being?

• 2:20:22Lex Fridman?

  In wrestling.

• 2:20:22Speaker 02

  Well, I, I personally, for me, it depends for every fighter are different. They, they have a different set of skill. For me, I, when I look someone want to bring down a tree, a big, strong, high tree. He, he cut it from the base. So the legs, that, that's what we stand on. So it was to attack the leg.

• 2:20:47Lex Fridman?

  But is it single leg, double leg? Is it, we talked about like, uh, there's also the, the John Smith low single. Actually, I don't even know if that's applicable for jiu jitsu at all.

• 2:20:58John Danaher?

  You, you can use it, but it runs into the problem with submission holds. Yeah, it's, it's not impossible to use, but without shoes and, and a situation where there's a whole plethora of submission holds and the scoring that, that it's a little more difficult to use, you know?

• 2:21:14Lex Fridman?

  It is interesting. Something being a high percentage in terms of effectiveness tells a story. You're saying that every athlete is different, but if it's more effective for most people. I mean, it's interesting. It's, it's interesting. What John talked about is that the highest percentage thing is actually, um, in collegiate wrestling that he was talking about is on the defensive side. So blocking a takedown and then spinning around to the, to the back. So that, that's an interesting idea. Then also there's all of these kind of going in for a single and then switching to a double or wizard position and doing knee tap. Like there's all these kinds of combinations that seem to be effective when you look at the statistics.

• 2:21:57Lex Fridman?

  And it, it seems like there's, uh, maybe it's a scientific way of thinking, but it seems like there is some conclusion to be drawn there.

• 2:22:04Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I, I believe you need to, the, the high percentage move, there's a reason why they works. I think it's, it's made for a bigger amount of people. For example, I, one of my main strength, athletic strength is I'm, I'm an explosive person. So I'll use technique that are explosive. If I got a single leg, my, my, one of my thing I like to do is to go for the double, power double. But for someone else, we got, for example, in a single leg position, maybe he likes like body throw better. He's more a Greco guy, or he's a Judo guy, he's gonna go for something else. So, but there is move that are, I would say, like you just mentioned, are universal.

• 2:22:49Speaker 02

  Like statistically speaking, they're the highest percentage move that works for pretty much everybody. Everybody pretty much can do an adakajimmy, you know, it's very easy. But it's not everybody that can lock a triangle with their legs. So, so those move like rear naked choke, adakajimmy is the highest percentage move because it's maybe more accessible, it's accessible for a bigger range of.

• 2:23:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, based on the physical characteristics of the people. Do you draw on your wisdom from these high percentages, John, for like in terms of what to focus on?

• 2:23:24John Danaher?

  Yeah, absolutely. Jiu Jitsu has an ocean of moves and you can get lost on that ocean. You can drift for a long period of time and end up with very little to show for it. So my whole thing is focus. We only live one lifetime and your training lifetime is even shorter than your actual lifetime. So in that time.

• 2:23:45Lex Fridman?

  Unless you die on the mat.

• 2:23:48Lex Fridman?

  That is the same.

• 2:23:51John Danaher?

  I, I put a very high value on choosing what I believe to be the most high percentage moves and putting an extraordinary amount of focus on them. The only problem is that in one generation, a move which can be considered low percentage might actually turn out to be high percentage in another generation. For example, we talked earlier about leg locks when I was first started Jiu Jitsu. They were considered the ultimate low percentage move. And a big part of my career has been convincing people that in fact that was, that was incorrect, that they can be a high percentage move if we just change our approach to them. So we can't just follow tradition and say, oh, this is low percentage, this is high percentage.

• 2:24:37John Danaher?

  It has to be part of a fairly systematic study where you investigate.

• 2:24:43John Danaher?

  What are the reasons why it's high percentage or low percentage? With regards takedowns, if you look at what we can consider the most high percentage takedowns, if you're in front of someone, the single most high percentage way of taking them down is to get a hold of both of their legs and push them backwards. Okay, if you get a hold of one of their legs and put a force on them, they can use their other leg to defend themselves and hop around and funk their way out of takedowns and cause all kinds of problems for you. I don't care how athletic your opponent is, if you get a hold, a firm grip of both of his legs and start pushing him backwards, he's gonna fall down to his butt. Now, he might be able to recover from there, but he will fall down. Even easier than that is to be behind someone. Takedowns from in front of someone are difficult.

• 2:25:28John Danaher?

  You go right into their hips, their head, their hands, you go into all their defensive weapons. If you're already behind someone and you're doing what in America they would refer to as a mat return, this is significantly easier than taking someone down from the front. If you have control of their head in a front headlock position, you have already closed distance on your opponent, you already have close contact, you don't have to worry about shooting anymore. There's no sprawl out of that, you don't have to worry about guillotines, kimoras, or the standard defenses. Those will intrinsically be easier takedowns out of front headlock. And so if we're gonna talk about high percentage technique, I always go back to the mechanics of it, rather than just historical tradition, because historical tradition can be wrong. It was wrong about leg locks.

• 2:26:12John Danaher?

  It can be wrong about other things too. So my primary thing is, okay, talk to me about mechanics. That's what ultimately is gonna determine whether something is high percentage or not. Gordon pointed out earlier that when you're behind someone, you have innate physical advantages over the other guy. The human body is set up entirely to defend threats from the front. We are poorly adapted to defending threats from the rear. We don't have eyes in the back of our head, we can't apply pushing strength backwards. If you get behind someone, takedowns are 10 times easier from behind someone than they are when you're in front of someone. If you have to take someone down from the front, get a hold of both of their legs. If you can get a hold of both of their legs and impart a pushing force, you will almost always knock them down.

• 2:27:00John Danaher?

  If you can get a hold of their head and work takedowns from there, again, it's much easier because most of their defensive apparatus has been taken away from them before the takedown even begins. And so for me, the most high percentage takedowns will always be from the front, double legs, from any takedown from the back is going to be significantly easier than any takedown from the front. So all manner of mat return takedowns are going to be very high percentage. And takedowns done out of situations where the opponent is broken down in front of you and you have either front headlock or front chest wrap position are going to be significantly easier than takedowns from the open.

• 2:27:37Lex Fridman?

  Of course, you have to consider the full spectrum of mechanics involved here. It's possible that an outside low single leading to a double leg is much higher percentage. It's like there's a lot of chain wrestling, you know, that needs to be considered as a possibility, maybe a straight on double. And part of this is cultural, too. Are people afraid of this kind of thing that they came to be the case with leg locks? Are people aware of this? Are they worried about this? Are they training for this to defend this? And then there's opponent specific, of course, that, you know, with Jordan Barros, people are preparing for the double, which is why he had to develop a whole other kinds of different stuff. And then the head to all the different controls, all the different

• 2:28:20Lex Fridman?

  ties within the rule set. And that's where it's so fascinating to see the effect of rule set and all of this. Judo over the past, I think, 20 years went through this, every Olympics, different changes to the rule set, like fundamentally different in terms of what's allowed to grip, whether you're allowed to touch the legs at all. That was a big one in 2012, I think. And that changed the sport completely. It's so interesting. It's so interesting to watch how a tiny change in the rule can change the sport at the highest when you're talking about people competing at the highest level. And the cool thing there is The rule change happens on a scale of every four years.

• 2:29:02Lex Fridman?

  So you get to see people that are at the top of their game have to like recompute. So it's not like you have a new generation of people coming up with the rules. They have to figure, oh shit, you're not allowed to. Like it's the equivalent of saying you're not allowed to kick anymore in MMA. Because you were not allowed to grab legs anymore in judo.

• 2:29:22John Danaher?

  Interestingly, if you look at the case of judo, if you look at the world rankings of athletes, when they went through one of the most significant rule changes in judo history, where they banned any form of grabbing the legs. The ranking of athletes didn't change much.

• 2:29:43Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that tells you that they're.

• 2:29:45John Danaher?

  There's a reason why those guys are at the top.

• 2:29:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and it doesn't have to do that they're specific to a rule set.

• 2:29:51John Danaher?

  Yeah, think about that in terms of, imagine for example, in mixed martial arts, if they just said, hey, starting next week, instead of having three, five minute rounds, it's going to be 15 minutes straight. That would massively change the preparation of the athletes. It's a different game at that point, and judo literally was a different game before 2010 and after 2010. And yet, the international rankings didn't really change that much. The countries that were dominant before remained dominant. The athletes that remained before largely remained the same. You would think with such a massive change, all the rankings would have been thrown upside down, but they weren't.

• 2:30:33John Danaher?

  And again, it goes back to this idea that there's a reason why the guys at the top are at the top.

• 2:30:40Lex Fridman?

  And now for something completely different, we talked about aliens earlier. So George brought up Babazah. I will likely probably talk to Babazah on this podcast. And then, and then John had a skeptical look on his face about about aliens. So let me ask John and Gordon, do you think there's intelligent alien civilizations out there in the universe outside of our own?

• 2:31:07John Danaher?

  The universe is unimaginably large. The idea that we are the only life forms in a cosmos as large as this is.

• 2:31:18John Danaher?

  I think naive and foolish. Um. There's a very high likelihood that if life could evolve on this planet, that it could have done so on many, many other planets around the uh around the cosmos. I think anyone who puts even a moment's thought into this would realize that there's almost certainly other forms of life out there. The real question with regards to the alien community is um have they got here and are they circling our planet in um little silver sauces and making observations and periodically stealing people for experimentation purposes.

• 2:31:55Lex Fridman?

  Doesn't have to be silver sauces, it could be different other color sauces.

• 2:31:59John Danaher?

  Um, and that question, I'm, I'm, I'm not at all convinced, no, I, I don't think. Recently, um, Navy footage has come out showing some very interesting phenomena. If you talk to almost any experienced pilot, they will tell you they've seen things in the upper atmosphere that are very difficult to explain. Uh, I'll be the first one to agree with you on this. There are some things out there that are extremely difficult to explain.

• 2:32:25Lex Fridman?

  Like literally UFOs, unidentified.

• 2:32:27John Danaher?

  Yeah, I mean, we just don't know what they are. But to go from the idea that there's things out there that we don't understand to there's like little creatures running around and um and that these somehow exist, uh, I just reserve judgment. I just say I'm, I'm agnostic about these things. I think it's possible, but um all the evidence that I've been showing so far was insufficient to come to any kind of definite conclusions. Until aliens land in Central Park on Tuesday afternoon at three P M. And get out with little alien ray guns and start shooting people, I don't believe in many of the stories that get told.

• 2:33:07Lex Fridman?

  Well, what about if it's not little aliens with ray guns, but something very different, very, very difficult to detect for us humans, us very human centered creatures?

• 2:33:15John Danaher?

  At that point, it's a, it's a fascinating idea and it's certainly possible, but show me the evidence.

• 2:33:22Lex Fridman?

  All right. What about you, Gordon? Do you, do you look at the cosmos and ponder the stars often?

• 2:33:29Speaker 03

  I think it's fair points John raised. Something really interesting I saw the other day was someone posted like if an alien civilization 65 million light years away somehow managed to look at Earth, they would theoretically see the dinosaurs because they're 65 million light years away. So like imagine us looking at galaxies that are 100 million light years away. That's 100 million years ago. You have no idea what it looks like now. So that's what's super interesting to me about it.

• 2:34:00Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the, the expanse is huge and so much cool stuff could be going out there. And the scary thing of course is if they haven't visited us yet, the, there has to be a good reason for it. And the, the set of scary reasons of all the fact that they maybe once you get sufficiently advanced in your development, you destroy yourself naturally as humans seem to be approaching now. We more and more have the tools to destroy ourselves completely in terms of our weapon systems.

• 2:34:32Lex Fridman?

  And we're developing them more and more and they're becoming better and better. And then we're starting to get angrier and angrier on Twitter and Instagram at each other.

• 2:34:41John Danaher?

  Those are good points you're raising.

• 2:34:44Speaker 02

  Estrella has taught us that everything that lives one day will die. So we will, we will perish.

• 2:34:50Lex Fridman?

  One day, yeah.

• 2:34:51Speaker 02

  We will.

• 2:34:51John Danaher?

  There's also just the, the sheer difficulty of, of, of travel through space, like space is an unimaginably inhospitable environment. And to the best of our knowledge,

• 2:35:08John Danaher?

  this, even the theoretical speeds that we can attain in space, even if we could. Travel at the speed of light. We're not even remotely close to that. Still, the distances that need to be traveled to get to even relatively close solar systems are very, very long. If you look at astronauts who have spent significant amounts of time in space just orbiting the Earth, it has severe health effects on them. We're just not built for space. We're supposed to be in a gravitational environment.

• 2:35:40Lex Fridman?

  By we, you're referring to your biological meat bag that's containing the essence of the mind that is John Donahue. Maybe we can transfer the mind alone. So the bag, the meat, the meat bag is not designed for space, but maybe the

• 2:35:54John Danaher?

  But again, this is all

• 2:35:55Lex Fridman?

  Contents of the mind is

• 2:35:58John Danaher?

  It's possible, but

• 2:35:59Lex Fridman?

  What do you think of

• 2:36:00John Danaher?

  There's some concrete evidence

• 2:36:01Lex Fridman?

  You folks who like difficult things.

• 2:36:05Lex Fridman?

  What do you think about Elon Musk wanting to colonize Mars?

• 2:36:10Lex Fridman?

  Is this something you find interesting or a

• 2:36:16Lex Fridman?

  amos pursuit?

• 2:36:18Speaker 02

  I think it's a must or a salvation. We need to leave at some point the planet because historically in the past, we know that we've been bombarded by asteroid, volcano. There are crazy things happen here. It's very unstable. You know, if you look at it through a lifetime of a human being, it's nothing. But just look 12,000 years ago, what happened? You know, so there is cataclysm that happen all the time. It's very unstable. So if we want to survive as a species, I think it's, we need to get out, to be able to get out and spread our seed.

• 2:36:52Lex Fridman?

  So these are the early steps on a, on a really long journey. But is there something about like,

• 2:36:59Lex Fridman?

  you know, we don't get that exploration from most of modern society, you know, the kind of exploring that people did throughout the centuries of, you know, coming to the North America, just throughout. We were shrouded in physical uncertainty of what's out there. And now we get to do the same kind of exploration with Mars. Is there, so I mean, is there any aspect of you that wants to travel out to space, that wants to travel to Mars? There, you know, the goal is to allow civilians to travel. Perhaps in our lifetime, meaning affordably, you can do so now unaffordably.

• 2:37:35Speaker 03

  Traveling to space and traveling to Mars are two different things. I think I would like to travel into space. I don't know if I would like to travel all the way to Mars.

• 2:37:44Lex Fridman?

  Because of the risks involved?

• 2:37:46Speaker 03

  Just because.

• 2:37:48Lex Fridman?

  Boring? Is there some part of you that enjoys?

• 2:37:51Speaker 03

  I think that if I was like towards the end of my life, I would like to travel to Mars.

• 2:37:54Lex Fridman?

  Because it would be nice to die on Mars.

• 2:37:56Speaker 03

  Just for the experience, yeah. But if I go to Mars, I'm not coming back. Like, that's it.

• 2:38:00Speaker 02

  One-way ticket. With the technology we have now, maybe in the future, maybe our, the children of our children will, will be able to, to experience that, to go to, to

• 2:38:11Lex Fridman?

  Well, the, the

• 2:38:12Speaker 02

  Weekend on Mars.

• 2:38:14Lex Fridman?

  Uh, well, the, the whole design of the starship that SpaceX is working on is supposed to come back. It's supposed to be reusable, so it's not, it's not a one-way ticket. That's the whole point. It's always going back and forth, back and forth.

• 2:38:28Speaker 03

  What's the timeframe between two planets, like to travel from?

• 2:38:32Lex Fridman?

  I think the current thing, you'd be stuck on Mars for two years.

• 2:38:36Speaker 03

  But how long does it take to get from Earth to Mars?

• 2:38:38Lex Fridman?

  Oh, it's pretty, I'm not exactly sure, but it's pretty quick.

• 2:38:42Speaker 03

  It's pretty quick.

• 2:38:43Lex Fridman?

  Like, uh, I don't know, on the scale of months, not scale of years.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  You might not be healthy when you come back, you know? All the astronauts, they experience health issues, you know? They lose a lot of muscle mass, bone density, so.

• 2:38:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:55Speaker 02

  I don't think the technology is good right now. I mean.

• 2:38:58Lex Fridman?

  Let's say that.

• 2:38:58Speaker 02

  If it is, I would love to be doing it for a weekend. If it's safe, I would love to be the first one to, to.

• 2:39:05Lex Fridman?

  Or a professional fighter who sacrifices body for something. So there's some sacrifice we do in life, right?

• 2:39:12Speaker 02

  I would don't want to be the first. I wouldn't want to, I leave the other one, but when I know it's, it's safe, okay, count me in.

• 2:39:18Lex Fridman?

  So one of the things that people say, and this is something I wonder about, is it's like having children or something. Once you see, once you're out in space and you look out and you see Earth, you look back at Earth, that's an experience that's unlike anything else. Like, you can't replicate it here, um, is, is to look back at that, like, blue dot. And that

• 2:39:38Speaker 03

  It's nerve-wracking.

• 2:39:40Speaker 03

  You see like Earth disappear into the distance.

• 2:39:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah, disappear into the distance. And then you get to actually stand on Mars and see and just to look, you're standing on the ground and you're looking out and you see the planet from when you came and where you might not be coming back. But there's a challenge to the whole thing, whereas the risk is tremendous. And I don't know, I find that risk really compelling for some reason, but that could be just the exploration. I guess that's a genetic thing, too. How much do you want to explore?

• 2:40:12John Danaher?

  There's a sense, though, in which even in the best case scenario where they did get the technology to whisk you to Mars in a fairly short period of time, it's kind of an inauthentic sense of exploration, because your participation in it is no more exciting than your participation in an airline flight to a foreign country. You're basically, you didn't have anything to do with the creation of the vessel. You're not in command of the vessel. You're not in any way, shape or form important to the mission. You're just a person sitting in a passenger seat and you get off in a destination the same way you would if you flew to Singapore or London or some place like that.

• 2:40:53Lex Fridman?

  Well, there's a hierarchy of there's a leadership and then there's a bunch of people and they all have roles. You don't get to go to Mars without having some skills set to contribute.

• 2:41:01John Danaher?

  You made it sound like space tourism where you just pay a ticket.

• 2:41:05Lex Fridman?

  I don't, I think it's a long time before you have space tourism to Mars where you have nothing to contribute. Like you will have to contribute.

• 2:41:13John Danaher?

  So what do you do? You go through like a training program?

• 2:41:14Lex Fridman?

  Training program and then there's, there's technical things you'd be contributing. So they would bring people, you know, in terms of agriculture, I don't know.

• 2:41:23John Danaher?

  Okay, so this is, this is better. This sounds like they're actual, they're more like explorers. Like if you talked before about explorers in human history where Magellan sets off on his boat and every person on the boat had a specific function. They were, they were all into the mission in a very authentic fashion. If they weren't on the boat, the performance of the crew would somehow suffer. So this sounds much better.

• 2:41:45Lex Fridman?

  And just with like with Magellan, I think most of the crew died.

• 2:41:49John Danaher?

  A significant number died, yeah.

• 2:41:53Lex Fridman?

  And from, yeah, from bacteria, I mean, from things that are unexpected and so on. And if we discover life on Mars, I mean, who knows what that entails? Because that's like a manned mission to Mars would likely be very driven by the research to do all the kind of exploration required to find life.

• 2:42:13John Danaher?

  Now, from Mr. Musk's point of view as a developer, presumably, there has to be some kind of financial incentive here, too. Is there some kind of financial benefit to Mars missions? Is presumably, there wouldn't be that many people on Earth that could afford a ticket to pay for the kind of research and development that would require this? Is there some kind of mining on Mars of minerals that would be useful?

• 2:42:42Lex Fridman?

  I think there's a lot of answers to this, but the only honest answer is the one that looks back into human history, where we did a lot of things just because we could. A lot of hard things just because we could, and that led to a lot of innovation that ultimately made our life better. So this is more, this is why you have NASA, this is why you have government organizations. Like, what's the purpose of NASA? NASA would answer that by saying, okay, well, we're helping launch satellites up there. They'll have a bunch of answers, but the reality is, the programs were funded in large part by our desire to explore the unknown. And there's some aspect to which we have to all invest into that, because historically

• 2:43:24Lex Fridman?

  speaking, that has produced a lot of cool things along the way that were totally unexpected.

• 2:43:29John Danaher?

  But NASA is funded by public funding, the taxpayer. How is Mr. Musk going to fund this?

• 2:43:37Lex Fridman?

  Well, currently, most of the funding with SpaceX is NASA giving money to, so they're making a competition. Who can, who can get our satellites? We need to go to, you know, with the space station to resupply the space station, or we need to launch satellites up. Who's going to carry those quote-unquote payloads? They just need, so NASA's paying whoever the heck wants to get kilograms of thing up into space.

• 2:44:09John Danaher?

  Why did, this is NASA's specialty. Why did they just give up on that?

• 2:44:13Lex Fridman?

  Well, they, they realized, well, Mr. Musk came along, and then Bezos and others, that said, we could do it for one-tenth the price.

• 2:44:22Lex Fridman?

  So why did the, why should the taxpayers pay for the, why don't you NASA do what you do well? Which is like test out cutting edge stuff, make sure they're safe. And now that we've developed a car, let us, let us UPS and FedEx take care of doing this at scale, doing it cheaper, doing it better. I mean, that's the argument. And NASA took, what they realized is it took way, way too long to do stuff. When you're investing millions, perhaps billions of dollars into a project, the bureaucracy builds up and the conservatism builds up to where you're, I mean, you really have to test everything out. So projects take years.

• 2:45:03Lex Fridman?

  And then you have somebody like Elon Musk coming along and says, well, let's do launches every, every week. And as opposed to just throwing away the rocket, we'll reuse the rocket. That was one of the sort of cutting edge inventions. It's a dumb, obvious idea. Like Elon says, why do you throw away the plane? It's the equivalent as if you flew a plane every time you threw it away. Why are we every time throwing away the plane?

• 2:45:27John Danaher?

  But NASA's tried that kind of thing with the space shuttle since the 1970s.

• 2:45:31Lex Fridman?

  Yes, well, they did that with the space shuttle, but not, not at the scale here that, it was the space shuttle was seen as this like majestic, amazing thing that requires a huge amount of investment. With Elon Musk is like, no, every basic rocket should be reusable. Cut, cut cost, cut cost.

• 2:45:50Speaker 02

  Do you, do you think like the more technology we have, the more advanced we become, the more specialized we need to be? Like, is that for that reason that now they, there is different branch? Like you just explained now, now there's other specializes in this, but they left, you know, other branch?

• 2:46:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's, there's greater and greater specialization as we build up more stuff, which is fascinating because.

• 2:46:12Speaker 02

  Is it making us more dumb in a way? Do you think like, like, like, I don't know, like you, you know, but I, I use a cell phone, but I don't know how to build it up from.

• 2:46:25Lex Fridman?

  I mean, it's that beta males building up this whole society because we're this collective intelligence. We rely on each other more and more. And it, I do also see sort of the rise of conspiracy theories and all those kinds of things because.

• 2:46:42Lex Fridman?

  Like I've been talking to a few folks about flat earth recently. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. There's a large community of people that believe the earth is flat. And that idea takes hold in this day and age of all the ideas. That's the one that takes hold for a large number of people. And I think that's a consequence is this kind of specialization where it's just huge amount of experts. But if you look out into our world and try to reason simply about our existence, we are losing the skills to do that because more and more people are specialized as opposed to general thinkers. We're like extremely good at specific things.

• 2:47:20Speaker 02

  Are we capable now to do a robot that is self-aware?

• 2:47:26Lex Fridman?

  That's one, the legged one.

• 2:47:28Speaker 02

  It's self-aware?

• 2:47:29Lex Fridman?

  It's not self-aware. It's been listening, but it's not self-aware currently.

• 2:47:33Speaker 02

  But do you think a human being is self-aware?

• 2:47:36Lex Fridman?

  That's a good question. I mean, I ask this question all the time. When the robots move, there's a sense of when they turn on, something entered that robot.

• 2:47:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:47:49Lex Fridman?

  And when it turns off, something left. If they move in a certain kind of way and if they're, if they surprise you, there's certain elements that enable us to see the magic in, in a living being. And some of them, I mean, we can, we can maybe list them, but it's the ability to surprise you. It's the ability to make mistakes and learn from them visibly. There's a bunch of things that you just, I don't know, it just feels like it has the magic of what is a living being. And which is what humans have. And I try to think about how do you replicate that into a machine?

• 2:48:30Speaker 02

  So when you turn it on enough, you feel like it dies every time and it reborn, right?

• 2:48:36Lex Fridman?

  So for most machines, we don't feel that way. We don't, when we unplug things, we don't feel that way. I don't know why we don't feel that way. That's an interesting question, but I think when.

• 2:48:49Lex Fridman?

  When the robot has certain qualities like memory, like ability to recognize you, yeah, you start to feel like you're turning off an organism. So, so whenever I have like the robots that recognize me and remember, this is important, that all the things we've experienced together, then it's like, holy shit. That's a, that's a living thing.

• 2:49:13Speaker 02

  But does he remember?

• 2:49:15Lex Fridman?

  It feels like a living thing.

• 2:49:16Speaker 02

  Does he remember your robot? Does he remember things that happened before you unplugged him? Is it like he's sleeping? Like, is he wake up or is he like dead?

• 2:49:27Lex Fridman?

  No, so right now.

• 2:49:28Speaker 02

  He start to zero everything?

• 2:49:29Lex Fridman?

  Uh, no, it doesn't start at zero. Remember, it remembers everything. That's the key.

• 2:49:32Speaker 02

  Every time you like you, you unplug, wow.

• 2:49:35Lex Fridman?

  It's storing, storing the memory, but the memories are basic. They're like, okay, we walked around the kitchen and then, um, you looked at me. I mean, the memories, it's like data. It's just, it's not like we've experienced, it's able to actually, uh, experience anything deep like we humans can. But just the fact of memory. It's like the toaster or the microwave. Don't, don't give a shit about me. They don't know me. They don't know me by name. They wouldn't recognize my face as being different from Gordon's. They wouldn't know the difference. And they wouldn't remember, the microwave currently doesn't remember, you know, the times I've been sad or happy, like what food I put into it. It doesn't remember this.

• 2:50:19Lex Fridman?

  When I was being a fat ass or when I was being in good shape and all, just those memories are enough to make you feel when you turn a thing off. It's like, shit. That's a living, that's, that, that's a living thing disappearing. Of course, that's kind of an anthropomorphism we do to each other. But, uh, that's something, you know, that, that's some, that makes me believe it's possible to create, um, systems with which we can have a connection that are non-human, like similar to dogs and cats and so on. Just makes me, and that's what's interesting to me because ultimately I feel like they'll help us understand, um, ourselves. And maybe practice grappling moves. Anyway.

• 2:51:07Lex Fridman?

  Well, let me ask the advice question. Now that we're together, I've asked, I've spoken to John, I spoke to George. What advice would you give to young folks? Whether we're talking about sport, like excelling, becoming great at grappling, becoming great at fighting, becoming great at whatever sport they take on, or life in general? Whether they're maybe in high school or in college? What advice would you give them to excel at that thing they take on?

• 2:51:37Speaker 03

  I don't know if I'm qualified to answer this because I'm only 26, so.

• 2:51:42Lex Fridman?

  You're at the top.

• 2:51:43Speaker 03

  You said, you said giving advice to young people.

• 2:51:47Speaker 03

  For me, I think the two biggest things are find something that you're both talented in and you enjoy. I think that if you enjoy something, but you're terrible at it, it's going to be hard for you to be successful in life at that given, in that given area. And it's going to be hard to do something for long amounts of time. If you're talented at it, but you don't enjoy doing it. It's easy to come in and train hard for a month, or for two months, or for a year. You can be very talented at it, but if you come in, it's, but it's a different story to come in every day for five years in a row, for 10 years in a row, for 15 years in a row. So I think, I think finding something that you're both talented in

• 2:52:32Speaker 03

  and something you enjoy are probably the two biggest things for me.

• 2:52:36Lex Fridman?

  How do you find the joy in it? So you've been training insane amount, you know, a lot, you've been doing it for a long time. Is there, is there ways to rediscover the joy in it?

• 2:52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, for me initially, it was just learning new stuff. You know, you just come in as a white belt and every day you learn, you see a different move and you're like, oh man, that's, that's awesome.

• 2:52:58Speaker 03

  And then when I started to compete more seriously towards my professional career, it was the joy of doing camps and seeing the result of those camps and beating high level athletes. And then it got to a point where I'd beaten all the high level athletes already, so who am I gonna compete against? So now for me, the joy is just. Being the best athlete I can possibly be until I reach my prime, which I'm hoping is somewhere between thirty five and forty. So instead of competing against the other athletes, I'll be bored already because I already beat all the rest of the guys. But I know that I can be better in a year from now or two years from now than I am today. And that for me is exciting.

• 2:53:45Lex Fridman?

  By the way, is there some aspect of teaching that's exciting to you?

• 2:53:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:53:48Lex Fridman?

  Because you've become a better and better teacher over the years.

• 2:53:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I enjoy teaching. And I used to teach a lot before I met John. And then I met John and I was like, yeah, I just have no idea how to teach. So that's like a completely different element of the sport. You know, doing things and being good at doing things or being good at winning and actually being able to communicate those skills and knowledge to a vast amount of people is two completely different things.

• 2:54:19Lex Fridman?

  George, advice for young people like yourself?

• 2:54:23Speaker 02

  Well, first, I would, I would tell them, find what you want to become, what you want to do. And long term, use certain things, maybe sometime you don't love, but where you want to propel yourself in the future. Not what your parent, your friend wants you to become, what you, you, you want to become. So once you find it, you cannot doing it by yourself. Everything that is big achievement in life, we cannot doing it by ourselves. So what I would say is, second thing is, try to build up your team and try to build up your team to be able to achieve your goal of people that are competent

• 2:55:07Speaker 02

  and people that you trust. You need both competency and trust. I sell a lot of people sometime in business. For example, they hire people that they trust, but they turns out to be incompetent. So now you have to fire a friend or otherwise your business going down. The same problem if you do the opposite. You hire someone that is competent, but you cannot trust is gonna, is gonna screw you, you know? So it's very important to stay away from the negative. Build up your team, people you trust and that are competent. And I would say the third one is to work, to work hard, to sacrifice yourself. Yeah, you have to go through hell sometime, but you have to see the light at the end of it. You know, to keep your dream in mind is going to give you the motivation to go through the tough times.

• 2:55:52Speaker 02

  It's nothing easy to go work, work, work is nothing you can accomplish without hard work.

• 2:55:59Speaker 02

  The fourth one, I would say to invest on yourself constantly. If you do not invest on yourself, on whatever you are in, which business and sport, the game will catch up to you. For example, if you're, if you become champion at something and you stop improving, the other guys that are trying to be champion, they're going to catch up to you. So you need to invest on yourself and most people, most athletes, they make the mistake when they start to have money, they buy luxury stuff. And that's one thing I didn't do. When I start making money, I was investing on traveling to New York, training with John Gordon and the guys to learn what is new in the game of jiu jitsu. I used to go in Thailand, train Muay Thai,

• 2:56:45Speaker 02

  in Los Angeles to perfect my boxing skill. So instead of taking that money to buy me jewelry, cars and to do what a lot of guys do, because it's a mistake, I invested on myself because I know there were people coming, they don't want my place, so I want, I didn't want them to catch me. And the last one I would say, it seems weird, I would say, to give back. And it's not because I'm a nice guy. And it's not that, I don't say that to look good. I say that when you, you make it,

• 2:57:20Speaker 02

  it creates a person where you can help certain group of people. But when I say give back, not give back to everybody, to anybody, give back only to the, the cause that you want. I give back, not because I'm a nice guy, I'm kind of, it's kind of selfish. I only give back to the people that I want to give back. Because I give back to them and I know that if I'm more successful, I'm gonna be able to give back to people I love, to the cause that that that count for me. So it's it brings me more motivation because I don't compete for myself anymore. I compete to help people I love in a way. So when you you reach the top in your game, you need to find new motivation. If you're satisfied, is is the end of it.

• 2:58:06Speaker 02

  Your success will go down. So you need to to to find new motivation. What can motivate you? You know, what do you want? Oh, I want to help this or I need to to be successful. I want to, you know, you need to find reason who you what do you want to do with your success? So when I say give back, it's not because I'm not because I'm necessarily it's not to be to look like a nice guy. It's to keep your motivation, to be able to keep climbing the ladder even more.

• 2:58:33Lex Fridman?

  That's beautiful, George. John?

• 2:58:37John Danaher?

  First off, the two responses given so far covered, I think, the most important things al- already. Gordon talked about the the need for an underlying passion and enjoyment. If you don't have that, you're not going to have the longevity that is required. In order to build skills, which is ultimately everything's going to come down to your ability to build skills. You've got to have some kind of underlying passion and enjoyment, which will keep you in the game long enough to build world championship skills. It's going to take a minimum of five years and quite possibly considerably longer than that. George talked about the idea of community. You're not going to make it by yourself.

• 2:59:17John Danaher?

  So you've got to be able to build people around you and and build a trusting environment around you to develop those skills.

• 2:59:25John Danaher?

  What I would add to the the excellent points that both already raised. Alludes to what I said at the start of this podcast. You've got to be able to identify some kind of undervalued elements in whatever industry you're in and show the world what their true value is. In addition, you can't go through life doing the same things as everybody else and expecting to get different results. This is straightforwardly irrational and worse, it's even arrogant. It's essentially the statement that I'm going to do the same thing as everyone else, but I believe I'm different. And so they'll work for me, but they didn't work for everyone else. That's like saying, no, I'm special.

• 3:00:10John Danaher?

  No, you're not special. We're all pretty much the same. And in order to be special, you're going to have to exhibit skills that other people simply don't have. Thirdly, I would say if you want to become something truly impressive in life, you've got to be able to focus on one or two things that you do better than anyone else in your industry. You can't learn everything, but you can be take one or two skills. And the more innovative those skills are, the better. And you can truly excel at them. For example, at the peak of his career, no one in the world was better than George St. Pierre at integrating striking and takedowns.

• 3:00:54John Danaher?

  No one in the world was better at integrating grappling and striking on the ground. He had two things that he could confidently say he was the best in the world at. Was he the best at every MMA skill? Nope. But he was absolutely the best at those two skills. And those two skills were skills which he used throughout his career to win the vast majority of his matches. Gordon Ryan, at the onset of his career, could confidently say, there's no one in the world better than me at leg locks. He could also say, there's no one better in the world than me at late-stage defence. To submission holes across the board. As he went through his career, he started adding more and more elements.

• 3:01:37John Danaher?

  It's gotten to an extraordinary degree now where you could absolutely say he's the best at guard passing, the best at guard retention, the less this keeps going on. And that goes back to what Gordon said earlier about keeping things interesting over time. Because we're always introducing new skill sets. The day you start saying, I'm satisfied with my skill set is the day you get bored. And boredom to an athlete is a precursor to death by boredom. As long as you're still growing in those directions, you'll stay in the game for very long periods of time. So the main thing I would add to these statements by Gordon and George is this idea of finding something

• 3:02:21John Danaher?

  which is currently undervalued and showing the world what its true value is. Understanding that you can't just use the same training methodologies as everyone else and somehow expect to be different from everyone else. You've got to, almost every great rise in human civilization, whether it be groups of people or individuals, required some kind of innovation. You've got to look for that new angle. Okay, George St Pierre found it with shootboxing early on in his career. Gordon Ryan found it with leg locks early on in his career. And they branched out from that, from that angle. Add to this the idea that you want to become the absolute best in the world in your industry

• 3:03:05John Danaher?

  in one or two things that make a difference. Find out what they are and focus on those things and you'll go far.

• 3:03:14Lex Fridman?

  John, Gordon, George, this is an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for your extremely valuable time. George, as somebody who's become famous in part by commenting on people's performance, how do you think we did? How would you evaluate our performance today?

• 3:03:34Speaker 02

  I'm not impressed by you.

• 3:03:37Lex Fridman?

  Thank you, John.

• 3:03:39Speaker 02

  Loved it. I've learned all the time. I've talked to you guys. I'm, it's, it's great. I loved it. I was very stimulated and really enjoyed it.

• 3:03:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's, it was, it was something I really was looking forward to. I was hoping that we'd get together. It's so rare that at the same time in history, there will be some of the greats together. And the fact that you guys would be willing to come together and talk like this. This is awesome. And then Gordon, he would even wear a cowboy hat. I mean, this is just historic. This is like Churchill getting together with whoever, you know?

• 3:04:11Speaker 03

  This is great and all, but the next one is just gonna be us just quizzing John on which animals would win in fights.

• 3:04:16Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 3:04:17Speaker 03

  For the whole three hours.

• 3:04:18Lex Fridman?

  It'll be just, so we'll invite Joe and it'll just be, we'll, we'll make it a systematic.

• 3:04:23Speaker 03

  It'll be a debate between Joe and John on which animal would win.

• 3:04:26Speaker 02

  John and I, we have a thing that we send each other footage all the time of animal fight where we are very intrigued about animal fight.

• 3:04:37Speaker 03

  I guess it's like, I guess it's like 3:30 a.m. on Instagram. He's like, check this out.

• 3:04:42Speaker 02

  Like a rhino taking a, like a pig, like, like, like, literally like.

• 3:04:47Lex Fridman?

  It's not always fair.

• 3:04:48Speaker 02

  No, no, it's not ever, but interesting stuff. If people would see what we send, the stuff that we.

• 3:04:55Lex Fridman?

  They would judge you harshly.

• 3:04:58Lex Fridman?

  All right. All right. Thanks so much, guys. This was awesome. Thanks for listening to this conversation with George St. Pierre, John Donahue, and Gordon Ryan. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi. There's nothing outside yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.