Fighting A Woman For $1M, Ukraine War & Gordon Ryan - Craig Jones

Craig Jones is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete, owner of B-Team and Founder of the Craig Jones Invitational. Craig has decided to go to the front lines of the Ukraine war, and since returning to America has entered an even more dangerous territory - combat tournament promotion. Today we find out which is more ruthless. Expect to learn the crazy, dangerous parts of the world Craig Jones has been living in recently, the reason Craig Jones is going to fight a woman in August, where you can get $1m dollars in cash from, why combat athletes are all so poor, what it feels like to fire a bazooka why Craig designed sunglasses with a tiny spoon on them and much more… 00:00 Why Craig is Hated by BJJ 06:20 Are Martial Arts Lame? 12:09 Craig’s NonProfit Tournament 22:08 Why Craig is Fighting a Female 27:41 Getting People to Compete 31:23 Gordon Ryan’s Influence on the Sport 37:09 Philosophy of Life-Changing Money 43:34 What it Takes to Be a BJJ Champion 51:15 Testing for Steroids in BJJ 56:35 From Competitor to Organiser 1:00:36 MMA Compared to BJJ 1:08:35 Being on the Frontline of War 1:16:45 Why Craig Visited Chernobyl 1:22:20 Joining Ukrainian Firearm Training 1:26:31 How Ukrainians Viewed Craig 1:34:37 Why Craig Finds Kazakhstan Interesting 1:41:04 What Motivates Craig? 1:48:18 Where Craig Wants to Go Next 1:52:26 The Next Leaders in BJJ 1:55:19 The Risks of Running the Tournament 2:01:21 Where to Find Craig - Get 30% discount on Create’s Creatine Gummies at https://trycreate.co/modernwisdom Get 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  I have to say, I'm not that interested in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as the sport itself. Kind of complex to work out what's going on. But I've been pretty captivated by what's happened over the last few months.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, full time trolling. That's my, that's my commitment at this point. You got, I mean, you're right. The sport is uninteresting, but it's full of weird characters I can provoke. And make it interesting on a surface level. Some of the strangest, most serious people in the world. They take what they do very seriously, but for me, it's a bit weird. It's a bit gay. It's a bit easy to poke fun at. So that's my target in life.

• 0:34Chris Williamson?

  Why do you think Brazilian Jiu Jitsu attracts such a particular subset of people?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a good question. I think some of the people were bullied. So it's like an empowerment thing. But then when you climb the ranks and get to the top, it's meant to kill your ego, but it gives you a bit of power. And then these guys take it very seriously. Obviously in the kimonos, they tie the belts, they've worked hard for it. So I love to provoke. Also, it looks weird and they're self-conscious about that. So me, I'd rather embrace that than push back on it.

• 1:06Chris Williamson?

  Right. Because there's no way that you can roll around with another man for up to 45 minutes and it not be a little bit like, what are we doing here?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. So it's like, everyone's not enjoyed that aspect of it, but me, I own it. I'm comfortable with it. You know, like we have to get used to having someone's balls in our face, you know, we're sweating each other's mouths. It is what it is. We should laugh at it.

• 1:28Chris Williamson?

  You're public enemy number one right now, kind of. What have you done for the people that don't know what's happening right now in the world of grappling? What have you done?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I have, I have a friend. I'll say a friend. It's anonymous source. Or maybe I made, made the money through other means. Obviously we've been going to Ukraine, we've gone to different countries where. Perhaps there's different sources of funding. I've been in Dubai, you know, like some go get a handbag. I come back with a few million, you know, um, and I've used this money to basically support the sport. So I've decided to throw a tournament where we're going to give away a million dollars to the two divisions, under eighty kilos, over eighty kilos. And that is a hundred times more than sort of the other event that people consider the Olympics of our sport. And I've decided to throw it the same weekend to sort of make the athletes choose.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Because it's a, what's, what's worth more, the prestige of a long running tournament? Or money? And I think it's money. And it seems to be proving that, proving that way, basically.

• 2:30Chris Williamson?

  Why is the sport of BJJ so poor? Why is everyone in it so broke?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I mean, for the same reason you don't watch it, I think, you know, like, I think most average fans rather watch MMA. It's a sport you only really watch if you participate in, whereas MMA is a sport that people enjoy to watch and have no interest in participating in it at all. So our audience is sort of capped. But the sport is, is growing. So there is some money in it. Like we make money off instructional seminars. Um, if you have some, some funny jokes on Instagram, you know, you can make some money too. So the money's there, the audience is there. Sometimes they'll sell ten to fifteen thousand seats at an arena. And obviously the streaming rights, so there is money there. It just in competition doesn't really funnel back to the athletes.

• 3:15Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  That's the question, right? They said that, uh, these events are non-profitable.

• 3:21Chris Williamson?

  Who's they?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Who's they? Tournament organizers for liability.

• 3:26Chris Williamson?

  Of which you are now.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I'm now, I've now become the sleazy.

• 3:28Chris Williamson?

  The cabal.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I've become the sleazy promoter. But my point will be to try and prove that you can do it and you can compensate the athletes. That'll be my point with this tournament.

• 3:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So what do the existing tournament runners say? Like daddy needs a new car or?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's it. So I don't know. I don't, I mean, I don't think they're taking the money. I think it's just, uh, they use it in places that we don't need fireworks, you know, like, uh, the over the top production, expensive arenas when we're not there yet, those sort of things like, uh, I mean, like to rent a place like T-Mobile, I believe. Two million dollars.

• 4:05Chris Williamson?

  Has someone done an event there? Is that where the next ADCC is?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  That's where the next ADCC is.

• 4:09Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  So we went and booked the old ADCC venue for basically the same weekend. They'll still have the opportunity to watch ADCC finals. It'll be Friday, Saturday. They'll be Saturday, Sunday. I wanted to do that for two reasons, so that the fans could watch the finals on Sunday. And so I could enjoy Las Vegas on Saturday night.

• 4:32Chris Williamson?

  So it's way less of an exciting conspiracy. If the main reason that the money can't get funneled down to athletes is that like entrepreneurial incompetence.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I would imagine so because it's like, I feel like if you can sell 15,000 seats, there should be some profit.

• 4:51Chris Williamson?

  What's the sort of ticket price?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, obviously resale has got nothing to do with them. But in terms of the value, some of the resales are $7,000. Perhaps maybe not anymore. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the sport. Like I work on a ton of things, you know, like, uh, one thing, for example, that you might be interested in is sunglasses. So we've re-engineered the sunglasses and I think you enjoy this, right? I want to see if you can notice there's an extra special feature.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Have you ever been in a situation where you've desired both sunglasses and a tiny spoon at the same time?

• 5:38Chris Williamson?

  Where's the tiny spoon?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  On the end.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  So obviously me as an athlete, very important to monitor my sugar content. So when I have a coffee, I want to put in a micro dose of sugar straight into my coffee. And that spoon is the perfect tool to do that.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  So these are the sort of ideas that I utilize to get funding for these events, you know?

• 6:05Chris Williamson?

  You're obscene. You're like a menace. You're a menace to everything.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Shout out to Oscar and Frank. Obviously, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying to disrupt everything, you know? Jiu Jitsu sunglasses, whatever I can, you know?

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  Why? So just going back to the sort of state of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, you don't need to be a fan of it to know that it's very popular. You know, it is kind of the bedrock that underlies much of UFC and much of UFC success, like wrestling, striking, BJJ, or like ground game grappling stuff. Is, given that BJJ, I think, is the final, maybe wrestling as well, but it doesn't have quite the same heritage from a martial arts perspective. When you think martial arts, you're probably thinking like karate, maybe some sort of kickboxing style thing and BJJ. Given that BJJ is probably the most prominent, popular one of that, is it kind of making all martial arts seem a bit lame?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I think so. I think martial arts are kind of lame. You know what I mean? Like, they just are lame, but they are fun, you know? So like, I think Jiu Jitsu has become a little more cool recently. It's a very cool sport. Luckily, we've stolen some celebrities that enjoy participating in the sport, you know what I mean? That helps us a ton. And when we can get super fights with UFC guys, that really helps us. But I think Jiu Jitsu is cool because it's a hobby you can do where you're not going to take brain damage. And I think that's the most fun about it. That's why a lot of like business execs, CEOs, obviously anonymous rich sources of funding enjoy the sport because they don't want to take head trauma, but they like some form of combat.

• 7:38Chris Williamson?

  I still need to be able to function mentally, but I don't want to feel like a pussy.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, they want the, they want to get some aggression out with our real long-term consequences, I guess, to the brain.

• 7:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, just go back to explaining to me of for people that don't know, the sort of Mentality that is attracted to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, especially in the upper echelons of the sport.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Ah, so I mean, the biggest determining factor for success would probably be some level of autism. That's very important for a singular focus in this sport. Usually we can correlate social skills with your abilities in the sport. The higher those social skills are, it diminishes really your ability to physically perform in Jiu Jitsu. That's wasted in this sport. That's what you'd see if you were to talk to most people on the Jiu Jitsu mats. But then really, the great equalizer would be steroids. If you give these guys steroids, because we don't test, don't have money under the test, that actually gives these people with poor social skills a lot of confidence. And those are really the people that run the sport.

• 8:41Chris Williamson?

  If you could give them a steroid that also allowed them to maintain eye contact, do you think that that would decrease their ability in the sport massively?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that's why I regret the sunglasses being clear. Like, it would be good if they couldn't show that they were hiding of the contact, you know? So that's a future endeavor.

• 8:59Chris Williamson?

  It definitely seems to be, when you look from the outside, I've spent, what, ninety minutes on Christmas Day watching your guys' vlog around Japan.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:07Chris Williamson?

  Which I thought was fantastic. That was so much fun.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I know your favorite part.

• 9:11Chris Williamson?

  Which bit?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  The vending machine.

• 9:13Chris Williamson?

  The vending machine, do you want to explain to people what you did, what you found in Japan?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that's what I like to do when I'm traveling around. If I hear about something a bit weird, I'm going to investigate. I consider that a bit of journalistic integrity, you know? And really, a personal interest this one was. Japan, there was always the thing that people sold used underwear in vending machines. I personally sold used underwear on OnlyFans, but in terms of using the vending machine to distribute those, I think that's probably a much more efficient system. And they had variations of those underwear. I can't remember actually what the variations were. One of them was period blood. That was the one I selected, but there were

• 9:49Chris Williamson?

  Obviously.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  varying ages of also those panties. And we found it in a basement of a five or six story sex store. So, I mean, I started at the top, I worked my way down, and we found it in the basement. I bought it thinking, I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't think it would smell like it smelled, and it's still lasting.

• 10:09Chris Williamson?

  Describe the smell.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Exactly as you anticipate, but a little bit stronger. But we opened it up outside. Like I immediately smelled the bowl and it was sealed in plastic and it still smelled terrible. It like opened like a, like there was a toy inside. And then when we went outside and we took it out of the plastic, it was, it had a radius around me. The smell radiated and the problem is there was a terrorist attack in Japan and there's not a lot of trashcans. So once I committed to opening this, it was very difficult to find. It took me 15 minutes to find somewhere to dispose of it. So I had to walk around Tokyo and like even my teammates were keeping a distance from me like that. That smelled so bad.

• 10:48Chris Williamson?

  So that would actually be a really great solution for any Brazilian jiu jitsu athlete who doesn't want to have to have any social contact or make eye contact with another person to kind of have this permanently on them at all times as a safety perimeter.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  That's true. That, it's actually a good idea. I think if you were a celebrity to see how committed the fans were to getting a photo with you.

• 11:10Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen, there's a special kind of anti mosquito um device and you kind of turn it on, it lights a tiny little blue flame and it makes this orb kind of like that. And you see these really committed mosquitoes and they'll fly toward it and they'll and they'll really struggle and then they get super close and then they die. That would kind of be the equivalent.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  That would work as well. That would work as well. I've always thought about this. This is probably a poor, a joke in very poor taste, right? It's like I travel around our train and people try to kill me at every gym I go to. And they really want to roll with me no matter what. So like some gyms I go to, I'll be like, guys, like, uh, I've got staff, ringworm, and they're still committed. And I've always thought, how committed are they? If I were to tell one of them I had HIV, would they still ask for the rounds? That's the ultimate test. I think that would achieve a similar thing.

• 11:59Chris Williamson?

  I subbed Craig Jones and got HIV in Thailand. Like you've got a great T-shirt.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've got something to remember the trip by, you know?

• 12:06Chris Williamson?

  Lasting memory.

• 12:09Chris Williamson?

  Going back to your new competition, why is it owned by a nonprofit?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Jiu Jitsu doesn't make a profit, so we figured, why not make it a nonprofit?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  We're gonna turn it into, I mean, we're using the money to donate to charity or charitable endeavors. We showed you before the show, a little video.

• 12:28Chris Williamson?

  We can put it up now.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Guys, I've got a huge surprise for you today. We've got the second best grappler in the whole world here. His name is Craig Jones.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Dad, you came back. Why did you leave me?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Obviously, very serious thing we're doing there, but yeah, travel show, traveling around, helping sort of underprivileged kids through jiu jitsu and stuff. Obviously, there's some jokes in there, but we are really doing something good with that.

• 13:30Chris Williamson?

  What are you, what are the causes that you're giving the money to?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Well, anything in sort of like, we gave some of the athletes the choice. Sophia Davies was one of the first athletes that signed and she wanted to donate a portion of the ticket sales to the people in Gaza. So we're like, yep, go for it. So like in terms of the tournament, we'll give some of them the choice, but also use it to fund some personal documentaries and stuff. Like obviously I've been traveling around to some crazy places and also want to do some good. We're just in the Philippines, we're able to help some of the kids eat Jollibee. They love Jollibee out there, like a fire. It's a crazy fast food place where they have both fried chicken and spaghetti on the same plate.

• 14:08Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic, actually.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  You'd think that'd be in America, that's, but I don't think it is.

• 14:13Chris Williamson?

  Everyone wants to know where you got the money from. You keep on giving different answers to where you got the money from. Is the donor, is the, the, the job of that is just keep, keep source of money anonymous?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's like, obviously, there's gonna be a lot of speculation, that's fine. But the guy donating, uh, he wants to remain anonymous because people are gonna bombard him, asking him for money, asking him for different things, you know? He prefer to stay anonymous and it allows me to be a little mysterious with the source of money, you know? Like, obviously, I've been to Ukraine, it's a good joke, everyone thinks wasting American taxpayers over there. Maybe I went over there and found something, you know? I don't know.

• 14:55Chris Williamson?

  ADCC is the sort of incumbent prestigious competition that happens every two years.

• 15:03Chris Williamson?

  How did they fuck it so badly?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  How? I mean, I don't know, I think just like, I think most people's heart is always in the right place. You know what I mean? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I just think they wrongly assumed that they could maintain the same purse they've had since day one and continue it as the sport grew. And it's like, if we went from a basketball stadium with maybe one to 200 people there to now selling out 10,000 plus seat arenas to knowing the streaming rights for this event are obviously gonna be a large figure too. Like, it doesn't make sense to me how the grappling pay cannot change at least some token gesture amount. You know what I mean?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Like, it was 10K in 99, it's 10K in 2024, despite now it's a popular event, people flow in.

• 15:58Chris Williamson?

  That's the, who's purse? 10K?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  That's the prize money to win four matches at ADCC.

• 16:04Chris Williamson?

  And you get the same money to just show up and, and $1?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  $1, we threw $1 in on top. I contributed that dollar personally, but.

• 16:12Chris Williamson?

  So that's a total of what, like, there's 32 fighters?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  I threw $32 into the pool, you know?

• 16:17Chris Williamson?

  That's very charitable of you, very giving.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Generous and tax deductible.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  That's important for the nonprofit.

• 16:29Chris Williamson?

  So I watched one of the Tacketts do a video last night. And my housemate helped do some conditioning work for them. And he said that ever since he's known both of them, their only goal has been to go to ADCC. All I want to do, like, that's the dream. They grew up watching this, the videos. I think they've been training since they were four years old, or something insanely young. He then wins ADCC trials.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Galling event trials. He had to face some top level competition. Yeah.

• 17:03Chris Williamson?

  And then decides to abscond from ADCC to come and do your event instead.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  For the Craig Jones invitation. Oh, yeah. I mean, that just says, you know, like, again, people say ADCC is the Olympics of our sport. The Olympics, everyone around the world knows what an Olympic gold medal means. Olympics is universal around all countries of the world. A UFC title, I consider the same thing. ADCC, no one knows what ADCC is, has no intrinsic value unless you're already involved in the sport. So that's the way I see it is really the prestige isn't enough to keep guys like the Tacker Brothers in there when they could potentially win 100 times the prize money. And we're going to stream it free on YouTube. So in terms of how many eyes are going to be on it, going to be much more.

• 17:49Chris Williamson?

  Exposure, growth of platform. Do you think ADCC will ban anyone who doesn't compete there to come and compete at yours? Do you think that in future they're just not going to be allowed back or they won't get another invite?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I don't think so because I think that would just be a bad look. I think it would be bad. It wouldn't make business sense to do that. What I think, and I think he's, they've said this, is basically that if you won the trials or if you were an invitee and you elect to do my event, then you'll just have to win the trials again. Which guys like the Tacker Brothers don't care. They're young. They're like, oh, we'll give this a crack and ADCC will always be there. And they're like, they're happy to do the trials again. They're happy to own their place.

• 18:26Chris Williamson?

  And just wait another two years. Have you heard anything from inside of the ADCC camp about what the response has been like to you doing this?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  No, but I can't imagine it's positive, you know, but.

• 18:38Chris Williamson?

  It's a bad day when you wake up to that Instagram post.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  He's probably like, who the fuck gave this arse all some money? You know, I think that's probably

• 18:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Probably the energy.

• 18:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, it's it's nice that people who have insane ideas are usually limited by their resources. And then it's a big problem when they have enough money to be able to do what they want.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Chris Williamson?

  As is evident by.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  If you if you combine having nothing to lose with spending someone else's money.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Big things can happen.

• 19:11Chris Williamson?

  My god. Yeah. So what I found particularly interesting about that Tackett situation was it just shows how attractive, I mean, a million dollars is attractive to anybody, right? Like, it doesn't matter. But that to show the purse being bigger than to win four matches. And then, you know, a hundred times more to actually be able to win the whole thing. Is it a million dollars for under eighty five and over eighty five?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Under eighty kilos, over eighty kilos.

• 19:42Chris Williamson?

  Million, million?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yep. And then no second place. I'm punishing the only medal I could get. So the difference between

• 19:49Speaker 01

  the difference between first and second, nine hundred and ninety thousand. So like, I think that's cool. I'm also scared about.

• 19:54Chris Williamson?

  Nine hundred and eighty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. But I'm scared about the risk of injury because what guy with no money is gonna tap when it's a million on the line. So hopefully some of that ten K they spend on health insurance.

• 20:06Chris Williamson?

  Go to a new knee.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you'd lose it, I guess. I mean, someone would for a million. They lose it. They don't tap for less. Guys at ADCC don't tap for the potential to win ten K.

• 20:17Chris Williamson?

  How much is that driving, you know, money? We I see on UFC, the sort of older videos of the guys. Conor McGregor, like sixty Gs, baby, like all of that stuff. Just how much a fight is driven by money in that way? Because I think from the outside, you think professional athlete probably got sponsorships, probably got, you know, all of these different sources of income. And yet it's evident that money is a big source of stress for guys that are in the sport.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we would just want to have enough money to not worry about having to earn money. You know what I mean? Especially as athlete, athlete, you're like a stripper. You got a shelf life, you know, you better make the money where you can. That's the way I see it. So it's like, these guys want that opportunity.

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  The Red Rose would care to disagree about the shelf life of strippers.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  That's true. It's amazing what lighting can do. But yeah, I mean, they just wanna, I mean, jackets are pretty noble. Like when, when I spoke to them, it wasn't about their money. It was about their family money, basically giving back to their family for taking care of them for so long, which is pretty noble.

• 21:18Chris Williamson?

  What you really want to do is put two people into the same category together and then just have a cartel agreement to say, we'll just split it at the end. That's twice as much chance of being able to win.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm basically, there's only, I mean, if you're a blood relative, that's the only reason I'd allow you to, I think, split the money. But that match at the end better be real, because if anyone from, that are just friends make it to the final, like, and they-

• 21:46Chris Williamson?

  You considered that?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  For sure, I'm gonna warn them and I'm probably warning them right now. It's like, uh, this isn't 50K going to your account. If we send you a million, 500 moves and we hear about it, it's gonna be built into the contracts. That's like, that's really not good for the legitimacy of the event. So probably, I imagine legal consequences to that.

• 22:05Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  You've got to keep the event pure, which, I mean, obviously, it is about purely sport and not entertainment, which is why I've decided to participate in the event and rebuild the Battle of the Sexes and decide to take on a six foot, four, 250 pound, 11 time world champion female grappler of the sport.

• 22:27Chris Williamson?

  Who's that?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Gabby Garcia.

• 22:29Chris Williamson?

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• 23:32Chris Williamson?

  Modern wisdom. Can you explain for the people listening what the law and mythology and history is around you and Gabby Garcia?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  I mean, first and foremost, a lot of sexual tension.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  That would, I would say that's one of the main driving factors.

• 23:46Chris Williamson?

  Both directions?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Sometimes, depends what hour of the day it is, but definitely, yeah. I mean, she's just the most accomplished grappler, female grappler ever. I mean, maybe, really, if you combine sexes, maybe the most accomplished grappler ever. Me personally, just a dude that's never won anything. And I remember one event, a girl called her out, a floor grappling event at WNO. And she did some crazy interview after where she's like, anyone calls me out, I'll take that match. I was like, will you? Let's do it. And then we had this big build up. We had like an arm wrestling match. She won the arm wrestling match. And now, after two and a half years of foreplay, it's finally coming to fruition.

• 24:25Chris Williamson?

  How strong was she in the arm wrestling match?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Stronger than me.

• 24:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  That's for sure. So, I mean, we're gonna find out.

• 24:30Chris Williamson?

  And she is outside of your weight category. How much heavier is she than you?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  I mean, she's real particular about her weight, so I better be careful here. But let's just say that's a, that's a large, strong, muscular woman, you know? I'm gonna do this match. I mean, many guys would be, would pay to wrestle around with her, you know?

• 24:48Chris Williamson?

  You're doing it for free?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  I'll do it for noble purposes. I'll do it for charity.

• 24:54Chris Williamson?

  What is the rule set between you and Gabby?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  We're gonna do three five-minute rounds, one minute break in between. We changed the rules up for the event because we wanted to appeal to MMA audiences, because it's a broader portion of the general public. So it's like, we want to still keep the jiu-jitsu scoring kind of as it is, because grapplers don't like, especially when you're two months out, they don't like a big change. They don't want to have to prepare for something crazy. So we'll do basically. In Jiu Jitsu, you score points. So like, we'll have the judges on the side sort of score points along the traditional scoring systems. And if there's a four-point differential, we'll represent that as MMA scoring, like a 10-8. It's a close around 10-9. We can take a point easy. And we're going to put it in a structure inspired by Karate Combat. Karate Combat

• 25:42Speaker 01

  have a square pit. They call it the pit. We're inspired by this because a lot of problems with other tournaments is elevated platform, guys either crash off the stage, or it's actually pretty dangerous. Or if the mats are just on the ground, they crash into the judges table. Some people think that's cool. It's dangerous for the athletes. So the Karate Combat guys really came up with this angled wall. There's nowhere to go. There's very few refereeing sort of interactions. So we're inspired by that. And we spent a lot of money to set up a rectangular, like basically a much bigger version of that. So we don't want to have-

• 26:19Chris Williamson?

  You mean bigger, like more space?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Like rectangle and 30 by 40. And we're calling this the alley. Because first and foremost, I believe you only go into a back alley for two reasons, fighting or fucking, sometimes both.

• 26:33Chris Williamson?

  Just to loop back to Gabby Garcia for a second, is there an adjustment to your game plan that you need to do, given that this is a MF?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't train much now, so I don't anticipate me training too hard for this one.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Like, a lot of people out there really think like, oh, this big woman's going to take you out. And it's like, we'll see.

• 26:59Chris Williamson?

  I just, I have no idea about the capacity of a woman, a female BJJ fighter rated for strength, like if you make them the same size, make them similar sort of strength as a guy,

• 27:13Chris Williamson?

  does a Q-shaped pelvis mean that they can get into rubber guard more efficient? I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Like, are there things that girls can do structurally, biomechanically, that guys can't?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, now you're concerned me with the thoughts of what she can do, you know? Obviously, I have to subscribe to OnlyFans to really get into detail that. But she doesn't look too flexible. But we will find out. We will test her flexibility come August 16th, 17th.

• 27:41Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so you've got a huge, big rectangle alley.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  The back alley, yeah.

• 27:50Chris Williamson?

  You, rather than going for a trial style selection process, you just used your sort of editorial ability to try and get people like.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  To lure them in, yeah. I mean, we, first and foremost, no one believes anything I say. So we had to kind of really emphasize that it was real. It was very hard to convince people that this was really happening. And that's where the Tackets are good, because those are just good kids that really, like for them to be a part of it legitimized us the whole thing. You know, it's not, we didn't announce a celebrity first, we didn't announce like someone people.

• 28:24Chris Williamson?

  Like a Luke Rockhold or whatever.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, we saved Rockhold for a little, a little bit later. But yeah, I mean, right now we've got the Tackets, Nikki Ryan, Joseph Chen, Nikki Rod, we've got Luke Rockhold, William and Andrew Tackett. We've got Fion Davies, we're trying to work on a super fight for her. And that's it. But obviously, I'm talking to everyone. We're working on.

• 28:47Chris Williamson?

  What's your inbox like right now?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, it's sadly more male grapplers than usual, you know? But it's, it's busy, man. I've been on the phone nonstop, hey? Just haven't explained the rules, haven't approved that it's real. But I mean, it's funny, when you throw a million dollars on the table, some people that didn't like you are suddenly like, brother, Poha, let's talk.

• 29:14Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's a, it's interesting to think how big of a deal this is in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And I think this is what I meant before. The sport itself holds like limited interest to me. I once watched like some super fight match that lasted 45 minutes and one of the guys gave up at the end.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 29:37Chris Williamson?

  But everybody knows drama. Everyone can get into, oh, this is like an incumbent thing. And then there's a new thing and there's this. Game of rivalry and you need to make a value judgment, which where do I want to be? Do I want to be here? Do I want to be there? Like, that's something that anybody can understand. Like, that's a narrative out of the Kardashians or whatever. And that makes it, I think, more compelling and it creates characters and it creates intrigue.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's good. I mean, competition is good.

• 30:06Chris Williamson?

  It is even between competitions.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think it's really good. You know, it forces both events to have to do something more, contribute more. Obviously, we have to, we have a lot to prove for this. There's a lot on the line. If it turns into Fire Festival, I'm going into hiding in Kazakhstan or something, but.

• 30:22Chris Williamson?

  Isn't Billy McFarlane fighting at Karate Combat this week?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Is that this week in Austin, right?

• 30:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think the guy that founded Fire Festival, someone told me that.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  That's right. He's meant to have a fight.

• 30:34Chris Williamson?

  Is this true? Because someone told me this the other day and I was like, the guy that was in jail for Fire Festival is fighting at Karate Combat on Thursday in Austin.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  I mean, believe it or not, that's actually our event organizer. I should know.

• 30:45Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean? Billy, Billy, he's the guy that funded it. He's the dude with the million dollars.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Sure you do it at a discounted rate.

• 30:54Chris Williamson?

  As long as Blink 182 play.

• 30:58Chris Williamson?

  Would you let Gordon fight if he said that he wanted to come over?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I'd let anyone do it. Yeah, you know, obviously I got the custom gold Craig Jones Invitational ring. He'd have to guess, but for sure I'd let him in, you know?

• 31:08Chris Williamson?

  What if he said that he had to fight you? Would you do it for a super fight? I mean, you've already got Gabby on the table.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I think I've got a bigger match, you know? We're doing something across in the mainstream, battle the sexist, you know?

• 31:20Chris Williamson?

  This is gender equality.

• 31:23Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about sort of Gordon's role as the figurehead for the sport because he is super dominant, you know, sort of the Lewis Hamilton a couple of years ago in F1 where kind of wasn't, didn't really seem like that much of a competition. Does this help to make it more interesting?

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Well, what I think is most funny about this, so Gordon unquestionably best grap in the world, had many health issues, disappeared. He comes and goes. He battles health issues, comes back, competes. Beats everyone, for sure beats everyone, but he's a controversial figure. Uh, just, I mean, he says crazy shit online, like he's got strong conservative uh political beliefs. But I mean, if you were to look at his Instagram, it's a Facebook dad Republican page. You know what I mean? That's the sort of stuff he's sharing nonstop. And he's, I would say money obsessed and uh I would say he's kind of um.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  I would say insecure, you know, I think anyone that takes offense to jokes that are like lighthearted. I find them a little insecure or like uh he bites, he bites all the time. And like you would understand this, Americans take the bait. We roast each other, like I've said worse things to my friends and relatives than I've said about Gordon Ryan. But these guys take the bait and that's the game for us, you know? We love throwing something out, someone overreacts. That's what I live for. That's, that's fun to me. So it's like Gordon, in terms of this tournament, this tournament is the ultimate bait. Because we're talking about free market competition. It's good, according to his political beliefs. We're talking about money, loves money, there's a hundred times more money in this.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  But he has to choose to stay with the old tournament or go to the tournament of somebody he hates.

• 33:15Chris Williamson?

  Does he hate you?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah, I think so.

• 33:18Chris Williamson?

  Do you hate him?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  I don't hate him. I love the, I love that he exists, you know? I love that he exists. It's entertainment, you know? I mean, we used to train together, we used to, I wouldn't say we were friends, like we would train together. We wouldn't hang out after training or anything. So I think it's like we're training partners, we're close friends.

• 33:38Chris Williamson?

  What, how much of jujitsu culture do you think is downstream from Gordon and John? And kind of that culture that they've created?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Massive influence, probably for the last seven, seven, eight years. Massive influence on the sport.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  And it's they really broke new barriers by making no gi more popular and more respected. Everyone used to do the gi and the gi guys used to win most of the no gi tournaments. And then Danaher's crew came along as kind of no gi only guys and started to win. And they started to use new techniques. So created a really cool story. John is like some serial killer that got away with it. He has an interesting, like, he wears rash cards all the time. He has a weird personality, you know, but it's like captivating.

• 34:27Chris Williamson?

  He's a philosophy professor originally or something, wasn't he?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. So he's got, I mean, obviously with all the university and college, he can teach well. He knows how to teach people, you know, and he under, he's coached GSB, so he's a good coach. So like you throw in all these factors and you create this empire that they have today. And like he even uses Japanese terminology, you know, it's like, whether it's intentional or not, it's really good marketing, really good marketing. So.

• 34:54Chris Williamson?

  Lends sort of credibility and mystique a little bit to what's going on.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he takes what people are already doing. He teaches in a really high level way, changes the name a little bit. Really good, really good marketing and obviously his students back up that with results.

• 35:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, if you didn't have a guy that was super dominant, it would just be a bloke using weird terms that weren't effective.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's the funny thing is like, he's like a character, he's like your cheesy martial arts character that you like. His personality should be that of a guy that's not a good coach. Cause most of the time, guys like that with that eccentric personality, he's got injuries, so he never competed, he can't train. Like guys that like that in martial arts typically raise a lot of red flags. But his students produce good results. So it becomes this conundrum of like.

• 35:39Chris Williamson?

  Like the legitimate Steven Seagal.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. He's, it's like, he has a Steven Seagal mythology about him, but the results back it up.

• 35:48Chris Williamson?

  What do you think Gordon will do? Because if you rip the ass out of everyone that's competitive at ADCC, the legitimacy of the ADCC competition then goes away. What's left to do?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  He will still do ADCC.

• 35:59Chris Williamson?

  Is that your, if you were to put money on the table, some of your big wads of cash?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not in my house anymore for the record. Um, yeah, he will still do ADCC. It's uh, it's funny. A lot of people like uh, have loyalty to what they have accomplishments in, you know, like when Nogi started booming, a lot of the gi guys were worried that their accomplishments were suddenly going to be forgotten now, because if you create a new event with a new name, more prestigious titles, potentially 20 years, people will be like, what the fuck's that? You know, like, so there's always going to be pushback when something new comes in and steals, well, not steals, but it just gives athletes the choice. So it's like, there's always going to be pushback. I mean, even Gordon's mom was in my inbox talking about how prestigious ADCC is. I know Gary Tonan's mom was commenting on some

• 36:47Speaker 01

  posts and I was just like, I personally think your tournament's in trouble if your mom's defending it. You know what I mean?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  I'd kill my mom if she was defending my tournament online. I'd be like, hey, fucking tone it down. I'm 32 years old.

• 37:04Chris Williamson?

  Can look after myself.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:06Chris Williamson?

  You know, um, yeah, it's, I think it's, it's created a really fascinating story between the decision of this lineage and it asks, genuinely does, you might have to ask John for the answer, but it asks a interesting sort of philosophical question around what does prestige and lineage actually mean? Like, what are people in this sport for when there is something very sort of real and tangible placed in front of them, which is like a seven figures of cash?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's life, it's life changing money. And like, one of Gordon's arguments was that like, he's like, million dollars, that's easy to make, you know, he's like, do some seminars, sell some instructionals. But the reality is, is like, I mean, if you come from Brazil, you do have a disadvantage in the markets in which we make the most money because you have a language barrier. Sometimes these guys have visa barriers, you know, like Gordon grew up in New Jersey, close to John Danaher. I'm not denying that he put in the work to get where he is, but that's lucky. That's lucky. For me, I grew up in Adelaide. I didn't even train with a black belt till purple belt. Like, I wasn't exposed. I just wasn't in the vicinity of a mind like John Danaher to shape me from a younger age.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  I had to work a lot of jobs, side hustles, so I wanted to get to where I am today. And if I think about the Brazilians in the sport, they can win ADCC. But if they can't utilize a marketable style and they can't express themselves well in interviews, the idea of them making a million dollars is going to be very difficult. And even if they grew up in sort of poorer areas, they're not going to have access to people to teach them business skills, marketing skills. Those things are much more difficult for them. And a million US dollars, going back to Brazil, is going to go a long way. It's going to change their family's lives. So it is a tangible, life-changing amount of money for them. For Gordon, a million really is probably a million.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Instructional sell, but the amount of people that do that, not many. So for him to criticize those guys for leaving the tournament that he's in, I think is kind of a bit unfair to those capitalists that need money.

• 39:17Chris Williamson?

  The issue that the Brazilians have with their communication barrier, their ability to use executive function is actually probably the same of a lot of the more autistic athletes that are from America.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 39:29Chris Williamson?

  That kind of levels the playing field in some way.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  That's true. And I think obviously COVID vaccine has swayed the level of autisms in countries. Like, that should be the argument there.

• 39:39Chris Williamson?

  Do you know if the uptake in Brazil was higher or lower than usual? Because.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I kept giving it to me, but I couldn't increase it. So I've capped out. That's why I'm retiring and gone into promoting, you know?

• 39:48Chris Williamson?

  Well, no, you're not. You're coming in. You're like some football manager that also wants to step, like play a coach, wants to step out onto the field of play against a woman.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you run the tournament, you give yourself a favorable match. I think that's only fair, you know? And really test the waters of equality. True equality is fighting a woman, I think. And that's why we call our foundation the Fair Fight Foundation. There's no fairer fight than that, I think.

• 40:14Chris Williamson?

  What nationality is Gabby?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Brazilian.

• 40:16Chris Williamson?

  Right. Okay. So this is a meeting of the.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Australia versus Brazil.

• 40:21Chris Williamson?

  Oh, fuck yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah, it's interesting to think about.

• 40:28Chris Williamson?

  How so many of the gains are accruing to just a couple of people at the very, very top of the sport, obviously Gordon being one of them.

• 40:36Chris Williamson?

  What, who else is, is there anyone else in the sport where you think, oh, they're pretty flush, they're having it good?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like PGA Finatics, our main source of income and a lot of guys on there make good money, you know, like myself included, but it would be, I don't know, I'm not that financially driven. So it's like, I mean, even accomplishment, like I pursued those accomplishments to get those gold medals, obviously didn't get them, but like, I'd rather have a legacy on the sport that I changed it for the better for all the athletes. And I think if there's more money on the table, the matches will be more exciting. The guys will have more money to prepare for these matches, will reach a higher level in the sport. So I think like, it's best for everyone. Some of the fans might complain that they bought tickets to one event and the athletes will be at the other. Again, our money from the tickets is predominantly going to charities.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  So it's like, if you've already got the flight, you've already got the hotel, you already got an ADCC ticket, keep the ADCC ticket, buy a ticket of ours, it's going to go to charity, you're going to be able to see the ADCC finals. If you wanted to watch both of our days, you could still watch the other tournament's finals. It's the best of both worlds. You're getting the biggest grappling weekend ever.

• 41:46Chris Williamson?

  What's the, so you've explained three, five minute rounds, is that all?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And the final be five fives.

• 41:52Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh. So literally like UFC style rules?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Trying to reflect, yeah.

• 41:55Chris Williamson?

  Uh, and how many, uh, rounds of fighting is there?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  So it'll be, it'll be like, uh, 16 people per division. So to win four, four matches to win.

• 42:08Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Two on the first day, two on the next day.

• 42:10Chris Williamson?

  Are you doing a super duper fight at the end and overall between?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Oh, with under and over?

• 42:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  I mean, that would be fun to do. I'm gonna be like, hey, I need another million.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  That's why I'm going out to Ukraine, hey?

• 42:26Chris Williamson?

  Right, get some more plutonium.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  They got some missiles again, we'll take it back to Iran.

• 42:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, fucking hell. Presumably this is a tested federation then. You're going to be making the sport clean, along with giving it some money.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I fully intend to test every athlete but myself.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  That's the fair, that's really fair. Gabby should be tested, not just for chemical enhancement, but just for pure human biology study. Something news going on.

• 42:55Chris Williamson?

  Like a specimen of some kind.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  We need to see what it is, identify it, replicate it.

• 43:00Chris Williamson?

  Create an army.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  She sells a lot of underwear, you know, like.

• 43:04Chris Williamson?

  Does she really?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:05Chris Williamson?

  I don't know much about her. Can you explain?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  I mean, she's just a giant, very attractive grappler that's for NMM and she's fought in Japan. She's had shows in Japan, often criticized because she fought an old grandmother in Japan, you know? And a lot of people saw that and they said, that poor grandmother's getting beaten up by a giant woman. And I said, hey, that could be me, you know? There lies opportunity where the people see issues.

• 43:33Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that the removal of steroids from the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, for the people that don't know, BJJ, is there any test in BJJ Federation?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  IBJF does some testing, yeah.

• 43:45Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  I'm not too familiar with it though.

• 43:48Chris Williamson?

  Um, would, would the removal of steroids make BJJ more or less interesting?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know. I mean, Pride was, Pride Fighting Championships was interesting. Spectacle in Japan, there was no testing there. Uh, I think the testing, all it does is give you legitimate big sponsors, you know?

• 44:09Chris Williamson?

  Because there's certain brands that don't want to be associated with the sport where everyone's on drugs.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. For me personally, I do have a local Texas TRT sponsorship. Sadly, when I post about it, no one believes I'm actually on steroids. That's the funny thing. No one believes anything I say.

• 44:25Chris Williamson?

  You think that's like a sort of skinny fat build curse?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're just like, this guy, if he's on steroids, they're not working, you know?

• 44:31Chris Williamson?

  They must be duds, get your money back.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Look at my blood pressure, brother, they're working.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Someone's having it.

• 44:38Chris Williamson?

  What was that thing? Where were you? Were you in Tokyo? Or you were doing some sort of test and I think you got one of the things that you won that weekend was highest blood pressure.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Highest blood pressure, yeah. So I mean, depends. I do have high blood pressure. I should get that fixed. Rogan was actually concerned about my blood pressure, which is concern made me more concerned. But yeah, I mean, the doctors take, obviously, so your blood pressure could be high sometimes before a match because you're a bit stressed out, a bit nervous. So like, sometimes it's higher. Mine's probably too high. I should fix that, but.

• 45:07Chris Williamson?

  Well, as a man with a famously short gas tank, what does it take to become a winner in this sport, given that you have your sort of parameters of limitation?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, yeah, I mean, the gas tank is an issue, you know, but it's not an issue where there's enough financial compensation to fix it, I would argue, you know, maybe a million dollars on the line. I do some cardio work.

• 45:29Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  But generally speaking, man, I barely lift weights. These days I barely have time to train. I don't take it too serious at all, you know?

• 45:37Chris Williamson?

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• 46:20Chris Williamson?

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• 46:43Chris Williamson?

  A check out. That being said, you've had a pretty good run recently. You and Phil Rowe had a pretty cool fight. So you do something else relatively spectacular recently, like trying to break down what it is that what makes you even this close to the second best guy in the world? Like, what is it about your particular approach?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I don't know. A bit. There's a bit of luck involved, you know, strategy. I think it's a game of strategy, you know, like, I don't think, I think you have the right strategy, you have the right skill set, and you pick the right opponents, and you pick the right rule sets. There's always a path to victory that doesn't involve working harder. And I think if you leverage your name at the top of the sport to make the rule set that most appeals to you, based on who the opponent is, to have that leverage is a huge factor in your success rate of the sport. So it allows me to work less and still have better results.

• 47:38Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that what that's interesting that BJJ seems to be a sport filled with people that are at least a little bit cerebral, that are interested in cognitive tasks and coming up with interesting strategies. I've seen some of the breakdowns on YouTube. It's like a unbelievable level of

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Autism?

• 47:59Chris Williamson?

  That is being applied to the question in hand. Why is everyone else not doing that?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  I mean, good questions. A lot of people are scared to market themselves, scared to put themselves out there, you know? So like, I just think like, you just like, people talk about that, like, oh, I don't like doing social media and stuff. And it's like, I mean, no one does. You have to roll the dice sometimes. It's not going to always come up good, you know, like, I've thrown some jokes out there that have fucking missed heart.

• 48:25Chris Williamson?

  Swing and miss.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  But they they forget them. If they like it, they forget the misses. They remember the hits, you know, hopefully. So people just got to put themselves out there more to market themselves in jujitsu. The bigger following you have, the more leverage you have with promoters. And none of us are in exclusive contracts with any organizations. So you can massively pit them against each other to really leverage your participation in their events.

• 48:49Chris Williamson?

  Is this invitational just a one off at the moment? Have you got plans to bring it back next year? Do you is he just going to wait and see what the like, post Keitel pillow talk feels like?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, true. I mean, let's see. Obviously, if the event goes very poorly, there might be a sex tape with my opponent released at a later date to really recoup some of that money. But that's how committed I am to the event, you know? I would do that. I'm serious. I'll do that. We've already filmed it. But yeah, the plan is to do it every year. We want to do it every year.

• 49:17Chris Williamson?

  Wow. So it would be twice as frequently as ADCC as well. I wonder, just thinking about that sort of from a game theory perspective, I wonder whether doing it every year would encourage athletes to do CJI, ADCC, CJI, ADCC. I wonder whether they would do it that way or whether it's just this is lots of bites at the apple of winning a million bucks.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I think that would be, I think.

• 49:40Chris Williamson?

  It's going to offset it so much because of the amount of money.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  And we're going to learn so much about this, right? So like, if I compete on an event, they don't tell me how many people watch it. The, uh, and obviously.

• 49:52Chris Williamson?

  The pay per views have sold online or whatever.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  They don't tell me how many new subscribers they get. Like, this is all privileged information. I understand from a business perspective, but they're not giving me certain tools of leverage. Like, I don't get to find out my metrics to further negotiate my position in the sport. That's one of the reasons I want to do it free on YouTube is we're going to see.

• 50:10Chris Williamson?

  Transparency.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we want, we're going to see how many people are watching. You know, like for ADCC would have to be the most viewed grappling event. But I don't even believe the information is shared with the promoters of ADCC. That's all privileged information for the people that bought the streaming rights. So for me personally, obviously, it's going to be inflated because it's free. And we're going to involve some MMA fighters, some marquee super fights. So it's going to be enhanced, but we're really going to see how many people watch grappling. And I think it's a significant amount of money, given the amount of people that are traveling from around the world to Vegas to watch the tournament. And I want to have that information. And also YouTube's going to show you the peaks and valleys. So.

• 50:53Chris Williamson?

  Who are the interesting fights? Who are the boring fights?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  We will know that metrics of information. I think it's going to translate athlete wise, pretty similar to instructional sales. I do think there's going to, there's a little bit of a correlation between how many instructional you sell and how many fans want to watch you compete.

• 51:10Chris Williamson?

  Because you can just drive traffic.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  So I really wanna, I'm really fascinated. I think that information's awesome. When you said about drug testing, I kinda wanted to do it from a research perspective. I didn't wanna punish them, but I would love to know. Everyone says that it's the sport where everyone's juiced out of their minds. It'd be great to have anonymous drug testing where we see what they're taking.

• 51:27Chris Williamson?

  To just aggregate.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, just from like, that's, are we gonna?

• 51:31Chris Williamson?

  The average testosterone level is fifteen hundred.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we would have anonymous names, but it's like, who had the highest? You know what I mean? Like what's happening?

• 51:36Chris Williamson?

  Athlete B was the one that came in with a two thousand two hundred testosterone level.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think they're pumping crazy amounts.

• 51:43Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me, talk to me about that. Talk to me just like, how aggressive do you think the use is of PEDs in BJJ?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  I think it's pretty aggressive. I think, um, again, there's not great financial conversation from the events, but like in terms of instructional sales, telling seminars and just they want the medals. They want the, they want the clout from the medals. So there's no drug testing. Generally, people are gonna take some. I myself put out my stack. Obviously, I'm sponsored by a steroid, uh, or TRT anti-aging clinic in, uh, in Texas, but.

• 52:15Chris Williamson?

  In testosterone.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I put my stack out because I also, like, just saying no doesn't really work with drugs. You know, it's like, you just say no, kids take it anyway. I'd rather at least to the next generation, let them know what I'm taking so that they don't, they don't imagine it's up here. And they don't take dangerous amounts. I at least wanna be like.

• 52:35Chris Williamson?

  Is it a relatively sort of therapeutic dose that you take?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so two hundred or two fifty a week. We get spicy with some anemia for matches coming up and then real load those stacker, but that's, that's really it. And I wanna, I don't want the kids or the next generation to speculate. I don't want them to think my, I'm taking a gram a week or something. I think it's good to let them know what I'm taking so they can see, hey, well, he was.

• 52:59Chris Williamson?

  I could be the second best in the world.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  I could be the second best in the world on this fucking shitty little stack, you know? So I think it's like a harm reduction strategy rather than a just say no.

• 53:08Chris Williamson?

  Have you got any idea how much further people push the drug?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I've been, I've been around athletes that pump some crazy levels, you know, like you got the ultimate bro science guys. Like I remember one famous athlete, um, had, and it, I mean, it's more than who you think, you know? Well, I know one famous athlete had some health issues and when the doctor said, hey, what are you taking? They didn't know what they're taking, but their bro science that was administering it to them said, hey, I just look at this person every day. I know what they need. And I'm just like. That's wild.

• 53:42Chris Williamson?

  That's like some voodoo doctor, like telekinesis.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, like holds the stack back from him, doesn't tell him what's given him. It's like, uh, so there's a lot of crazy shit out there. When it's shrouded in secrecy and they're gonna do it anyway, they're left to find idiots to administer it, you know? So it's almost like, uh.

• 54:00Chris Williamson?

  It's very much the Wild West. There's kind of, I guess this is like the meeting of the sort of more old school martial arts side stuff, which is this mystique and kind of magic and secret moves and stuff with a new world of evidence-based something. But, you know, the mystique and the magic is supposed to stay within the art form of the sport. And the evidence-based stuff is supposed to stay within the blood work and the testing and the pharmaceuticals. Like you don't get it the other way around.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm all for full transparency, you know, like I'm almost, I'm honest about every single thing I do, almost too honest. But because some of it comes across as a joke, most people just don't believe me. But like most of the stuff I put out there is true.

• 54:42Chris Williamson?

  What, have there been any spicy substances that you've heard about fighters using before matches? Given that anything's on the table, maybe I need to smoke weed before I go out there. I don't think that ketamine would be a particularly useful.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Nose beers give you a little perk up, you know?

• 54:58Chris Williamson?

  Is it, is cocaine a performance enhancer when it comes to the sport of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  I think it's a bit of a wake up, you know, like a strong shot of coffee, you know? I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a simile. If you take too much, you're gonna probably get sowed and maybe that's why I have a bad guess. I don't know. But, uh, yeah, I mean, people take crazy shit. Everyone has different stuff they take. I've been around guys who took magic mushrooms before the match and shit and I'm just like, what are you doing? You know, like just people will do anything to get an edge.

• 55:26Chris Williamson?

  Are you worried about, I, I appreciate what you said, you know, you put your puny, wimpy little stack out there as like, you know, you don't need to sort of go too hard and heavy, but you know, downstream from you and a lot of the other guys in the sport are young kids. You know, like one of the Tackett brothers started when he was four years old. If you think.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Steroids or Jiu-Jitsu now? That's why you're so good, the bastard.

• 55:53Chris Williamson?

  Um, yeah. Are you worried about sort of influence on the new generation? Whether it be nose beers or keep jujitsu gay or the steroids?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Like, do you feel? Yeah, the nose beer is not good, hey? Cause you know what's funny is I make jokes about that, like, uh, and, uh, the kids do the sign.

• 56:10Chris Williamson?

  I saw you next to a kid at the UFC thing.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  I know. The problem is I tried to stop doing it, but it's the parents that want it, you know? And like, we even gave it a bad name. I was calling it the white powder, like white powder, you know, the, but yeah, I don't know. It's not great, you know, but like, uh, I guess it starts the conversation, but I always say your kids shouldn't be looking up to me, you know? I didn't win anything, fucking sent him in the right direction, you know?

• 56:34Chris Williamson?

  Do you feel or do you think that you're going to feel a bit of a different kind of responsibility now being a event organizer? In some regard, is, does that come with any change in the way that you need to operate yourself?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  I mean, that's a good question. I think basically running a nonprofit probably influences that a little bit, but, uh, well, I'm not really, I'm not really running them. The, just helping run the, the tournament, but, uh, yeah, I mean, for sure. But I've already had these conversations with sponsors, you know, where sponsors have said to back down on certain things and I've turned the money away. You know, like even with my instructional titles, I keep a controversial title because I'd rather be authentic. I'd rather have a smaller, more dedicated audience than a broader.

• 57:17Chris Williamson?

  What is some of the names of the instructional you've released?

• 57:20Speaker 01

  All right. So this one was spicy, actually. So there's a move in jujitsu called a false reap. It's a false rape. It's a type of way to enter a leg lock. Reaping in the IBJF is an illegal move. It's something where you bring your leg across the knee and it could potentially injure someone's knee. However, in the IBJF, a lot of people, because they want to win, they'll do anything to win. They'll try to force the guy to make it look like they're doing an illegal move. And it's sort of, they were reaped, but falsely. But I brought out an instructional on the false rape and I called it false reap accusations. But it was really a strong, uh, it was an instructional about the rape.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  I remember Fanatics called me and they said, bro, can we change the title on this one, please? And I said, what about false reap allegations? But I mean, it fits in with IBJF like, uh, DQ narrative. And I just thought it'd be funny. But we tell you gotta take a risk, you know, like someone's got a dog.

• 58:23Chris Williamson?

  What was that one that he did about balls, something to do with balls?

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Oh, balls to the wall. Yeah. Cause when you, when you defend it against wall wrestling, you're really slamming your balls. Well, I'm on TRD, mine are pretty small. So they're not hitting the wall, but generally speaking, a clean athlete is gonna have some big balls.

• 58:41Chris Williamson?

  What have you learned since being around the UFC at the top flight over the last few months?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously just the level of professionalism of the athletes, the teams. Volkanovski is unique just cause like he's almost like a character that's too good to be true. Like it's like you meet celebrities and sometimes you're disappointed by who they are as people. Volkanovski is such a good person. He makes me disappointed in who I am as a person. You know, he's just like, who he portrays himself as is exactly who he is. I guess that's probably true of me actually. So people won't be disappointed. But yeah, being around those guys, you realize again, the financial conversation is much greater at the highest level. So we're gonna have much more professional teams. Like obviously most of those guys have managers. Most Jiu Jitsu guys don't have managers because you call them up, you'd be like, hey, how'd you like 10% of a hundred dollars? You know, you're not getting a manager in Jiu Jitsu.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  So they have the whole team, striking coach, wrestling coach, grappling coach. They just have an orchestrated, coordinated effort towards one individual winning this next.

• 59:43Chris Williamson?

  Nutrition, conditioning, mindset, breath work, all this stuff.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, all the things I thought too. Yeah. So I mean, it is good to see what can be done at that level. And Volkanovski takes it so serious.

• 1:00:01Chris Williamson?

  What do you think of him as an athlete?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Oh, incredible. Incredible. It's gonna be interesting to see what he does next. I want him to have a grappling match. I think we'll probably try and get him a grappling match on our event, but.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  It might clash with something else that I can't say, but um not him fighting, but I want to see him take a grappling match because I grapple with him and he's like, he's a tough round. So like my dream would be to see him perform in a grappling competition. If he has to wait it out for a Taporia rematch or something like that, or if he wants to wait it out because he was knocked out for whatever reason, I think grappling match, keep his mind occupied.

• 1:00:35Chris Williamson?

  That's a good question. How well are you, person who focuses on BJJ or, or you know, Chen or like one of the rods or whatever, how well would they be able to hold their own against some of the best UFC fighters just in grappling? Like, how good are um mixed martial artists?

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  At grappling?

• 1:00:58Chris Williamson?

  At just grappling? Yes.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  I mean, they're, they're really good. Like, I put Luke Rockhold in the tournament because he's really good. Like, I trained with him. That's like elite level grappler. And he, it hits a few things there. Obviously, former UFC champion, he's got a good following, he's a fun guy, and he could surprise some people. Like, I wouldn't put a UFC fighter in the tournament unless I believe they had a chance to do something. And that's why I think Luke Rockhold's fascinating because people are going to be like, oh, he's not going to do anything. And it's like, I've trained with him. He's, he could shock some people, you know? In terms of MMA though, MMA is so brutal. And it's like, it, it's sort of, if you've never gone to an event live and sat close to the action, I think most people don't realize

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  how brutal and savage it is. Oftentimes, a guy gets knocked out, the camera's on the winner. Camera's not on the guy slumped in the corner. Like, I was there when Bryce Mitchell got knocked out uh by Josh Hammer. He's unconscious for a long, long, long time. You know, it's like, it's, it's kind of traumatic and it's really traumatic for the coaches too. Like, again, these guys are your friends. So it's like, I don't go lightly into joining a guy's camp, you know, because it's like. That is your.

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  Putting some of your heart into this guy's wellbeing.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's brutal. It's brutal. It's an unforgiving world and it's like, it's traumatic for the fighters. It's traumatic for his friends and family, his coaches. Like, it's not just about winning or losing. It's about their health, wellbeing, psychological wellbeing. So it's like, it is a big thing to corner a guy. I didn't learn that until I did Ultimate Fighter. The first time I cornered an MMA fight was on Ultimate Fighter. And we're talking about guys that are so broke. They got no money. They're not in the UFC and they're fighting. They're putting it all on the line, their health on the line for really not much money. And that was really, you feel like, obviously, one of my grapplers loses, that sucks. But generally speaking, he's not hurt.

• 1:02:55Chris Williamson?

  Walk it up.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're out of there. So like, it's such an investment of energy and really emotion because you're so invested, not just in them winning for their own financial wellbeing, but just for their health. You're like, man, I've got to take this serious.

• 1:03:08Chris Williamson?

  What is sitting in the corner of a UFC fight, watching Volk and some guy like, are you ready? Are you ready? Like, what's that moment like as you sort of watch them walk together?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there's so much anxiety, so much anxiety going in. And it's like, I'm the grappling coach, I'm the striking coach, but, so like, I'm keeping time, I'm holding the bucket when they're on the feet, you know, so, but like, I don't, I don't fully understand. I know what they've spoken about strategy wise for the stand up portion. So I'm sort of like trying to see, but I don't know a lot about striking at all. So I'm really trying to listen to them, see what they're saying, see what they're feeling. But it's, yeah, it's, it's real scary. And Volk's like, I was with Volk's where I was like, he just kept doing things people didn't think he could do. You know what I mean? It's like shocking, you know, like what he did to Holloway in the third fight, getting out of Ortega submissions and stuff like that. So that you build him up yourself as this invincible figure, but no one's invincible.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  You're in the game long enough, you're going to get cracked, you know, like very few make it out retired at the right time. And I'm not saying Volks should retire, but I'm saying guys like Khabib got out before that happened to him. And you never know when it's going to happen. But if you're in there long enough, it will happen. So it's like, it's both traumatic to see as a friend, but also it's like, it shocks you. You're like, oh, this guy was invincible.

• 1:04:30Chris Williamson?

  I don't think about that. I never thought about the, you know, you think about how traumatic it is for the fighter. You realize that the friends and family are invested in that way. But I never thought about the corner man and what they need to do. They need to go away and have a week of emotional reflection.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Imagine if you gave the wrong advice. Or imagine if you missed something, you didn't, the guy hit him with something like you didn't expect, you know, like when I was preparing Volks for Islam, I was like, looking for everything on the ground. Cause it's like, that guy's like a mythical figure in terms of wrestling and grappling. So it's like, you don't want to leave sort of no stone unturned. So a lot of pressure.

• 1:05:06Chris Williamson?

  There's a bunch of compilations on YouTube of bad corner advice from UFC. I think a video got released pretty recently that I watched, maybe like five things. One of them where your, your four rounds up, you can coast in this round. It's like, no, you won't. You were like three down.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  You know, that's the thing. So the corner man, the UFC come to you before and they're like, who's wearing the mic? No one wants to wear the mic. You know what I mean? Cause it's like, hey, if you say something stupid, you're fucked.

• 1:05:37Chris Williamson?

  Immortalized on the internet.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  You're like, hey, bro, you've got two rounds to go, but it's already, you know what I mean? Like it's the last round. It's like, fuck, you don't want to, you don't want to.

• 1:05:44Chris Williamson?

  Be that guy?

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  They always want to give the mic to the guy that goes in the cage, but most of the time a lot of guys will be like, no, fuck, give it to this guy.

• 1:05:51Chris Williamson?

  Right. Yeah. The guy that's not speaking as much. I'm interested. And you get to choose that. You get to choose who has the mic.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  The staff try to force you to give it to the right guy. Cause they kind of know who's the head coach.

• 1:06:01Chris Williamson?

  And what, yeah, what's going on?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  But like you try to give it to like me or the wrestling coaches. Now, you know what I mean?

• 1:06:06Chris Williamson?

  Someone who's basically just holding the bucket.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're just back there like.

• 1:06:09Chris Williamson?

  Wow. What about? Dana White as an operator, as a now co-promoter, federation owner.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel like I've got big shoes to fill, but my hairline's on its way, you know?

• 1:06:25Chris Williamson?

  You need to get Gary Brecker on that, he'll fix it.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  That's, that's the plan, man. I wanted to go to do the oil wrestling world championships in Turkey and do a hair transplant at the same time. I was like, fuck, that's the full Turkish.

• 1:06:35Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned this before we got started. What, what is this Turkish oil wrestling?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  They just oil each other up and they take any grip they can. A finger slips in the ass, it slips in. It's a good handle.

• 1:06:47Chris Williamson?

  Is this?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Allegedly.

• 1:06:49Chris Williamson?

  Is this a, a well-known sport or is?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't remember the actual Turkish name, but I think it's the oldest consecutively ran sporting event in the world.

• 1:06:59Chris Williamson?

  yearly, annual?

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Annual, yeah, annual.

• 1:07:01Chris Williamson?

  What, what's got more prize money? But yeah, very good. What's got more prize money, ADCC or Turkish oil wrestling?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  I'm a good question. We'd have to find it out. I think there's more to lose in Turkish oil wrestling, to be honest. I don't know how you prepare, prepare for that.

• 1:07:18Chris Williamson?

  Lots of the like pelvic floor exercises?

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots of kegels. That's what Gabby said, she was preparing for me with some strong kegel routines.

• 1:07:25Chris Williamson?

  Okay, right. Like a, a special kind of finger snap?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, hold it.

• 1:07:29Chris Williamson?

  Movement?

• 1:07:32Chris Williamson?

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• 1:08:35Chris Williamson?

  The last few months, we've been chatting and I've been saying, yeah, man, where are you at? Like, let's catch up and blah, blah. And I think you were in town for two days and then left.

• 1:08:45Chris Williamson?

  Where have you been over the last four months?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Where have I been? I've been to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Poland, Ukraine, Mexico, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, UAE. I think that's it.

• 1:09:11Chris Williamson?

  Where do you want to start?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I guess probably most interesting place for Ukraine. So I sort of set up a seminar out there to raise money for the soldiers because the soldiers do get weapons. They do get support. The US has provided weapons. Europe has provided weapons as well. But a lot of the basic equipment, they kind of have to self fund. You know, like even like to get to the front line is a treacherous road. And that's just Soviet construction, you know? So even if they want to get away from the front line for their break period, like driving the cars. Well, we drove to the front line, man, potholes everywhere, destroyed cars everywhere, just from the roads alone. So even to get the cars to be able to come and go from the front, getting to the front line is hard.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  They have to purchase most of their own military equipment, especially if they want good equipment. And you would want good equipment with what's at stake there. So I really wanted to go out there, support those guys and really see kind of what was going on out there. And the seminar blew up, probably bad choice of words, but yeah, we had 250 people at the seminar. So it was like widely supported. It was awesome. And we donated all the money to Ukrainian soldiers. And then one of the guys, Roman, I remember he commented on the seminar poster and he said, obviously seminar for the soldiers is great, but what about the guys on the front line? And I was like, I'll come to the front line. I'll come to the front line with you. And he said, I can't promise we'll survive, but we'll have a good time. And that's exactly the sort of thing I live for.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  That's where, that's where basically we ended up. I don't know if I can say the name of the village, but it was a village that Russians had taken and Ukraine has liberated, taken back. Obviously very, very damaged and we got to go, I think, seven kilometers from the Russian offensive. So it's pretty close. Kiev has Patriot defense missiles. So you are somewhat safe. Obviously it's a war zone, but city life goes on, has to go on, you know? So I got, man, I got so many trolls messaging me after this Ukraine stuff, like saying, oh, look, you're out there drinking beers and shit. And it's like, yeah, I mean, like.

• 1:11:17Chris Williamson?

  Well, they were suggesting that there isn't actually a kinetic war going on.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's like, guys, it's, it's the front line. You know what I mean? Obviously that's where the heaviest shit's going to be happening. There's impacts all across Ukraine, but really the front lines where the actions are. Russia has missiles that can reach far. They have planes that can reach far. But again, the target is gaining land, progressing into Ukraine.

• 1:11:41Chris Williamson?

  What was that like? Well, talk to me about the atmosphere on the ground in Ukraine.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  I mean, the craziest thing to me was, and it's like, if you think about it, it makes sense that life goes on, you know? But really it's the attitude that the Ukrainians have towards the situation. So it's like, the first night I landed, so we, you can't obviously fly in, airspace is dangerous there. So we took the car ride and got to the hotel. I slept through it, but like 44 missiles or no, 31 missiles were shot at Kiev. And it had been 44 days since it had been such a big attack. So I woke up, people messaged me like, yo, cows, I fuck, I slept through it. I had the earplugs in. But that's when I realized the scope of it. Another serious thing was when a missile was shot down, so a hypersonic missile was shot down. And this was

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  so close to the hotel I was at that the whole building shook. And I thought that was a missile landing, but that was it being shot down. They took me to the missile site after where part of it had landed in the ground. I was just like, even that just part of the missile did so much damage to the land there. But what's crazy to me is the guy, life goes on, you know, like sometimes, like after that, the building shook. People are still trying to go in the gym and work out. They're just like, oh, fuck it. That's like, that's, that's life out here, you know? We're not going to let. We're not gonna let Putin change how we live our lives. And like even in the villages and stuff like there's shelling going on, there's old guys out there still gardening and stuff. It's that, it's that energy that's like so like crazy.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Like I saw when I was there, one of those missiles damaged a coffee shop window was like completely blown out. The lady's still in there serving coffee, just like bull or moves like that. But I mean, it's intense. You got the air siren app, you hear the air sirens go. And it's like, there's a plane in the sky heading your direction. Missiles are being loaded to launch. There's kamikaze drones coming your way. And you're like, do you go to the bunker or do you not go to the bunker?

• 1:13:37Chris Williamson?

  And did you go to the bunker?

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  No, I was, it was mostly out of laziness. But yeah, I didn't go. I figured, hey, fuck it, if it happens, it happens. But I, I wanted to do what they did. Like those guys were like, we're not changing our lives because of, that's exactly what Putin, I say Putin, not all of Russia, but I say Putin. That's what they want. They want people to, to live in fear. They wanted to affect their daily lives. And that's their goal is to not let it affect them, even if there are consequences.

• 1:14:06Chris Williamson?

  I think when you see archive footage of London during the blitz and keep calm and carry on stiff upper lip stuff. You almost think about that as being a mentality of a bygone era. That, you know, this was when humans were almost built differently. Mad, it was, you know, eighty years ago. And yet it seems that during a war zone, that same mentality just continues even now, twenty twenty four.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it has to, you just, it has to reemerge, you know, like. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of like really a World War Two feel, feel over there, like it's doing trench warfare. You know, it's like, I think of Americans in the Middle East and stuff. It's not trench warfare, you know, you got a rich superpower against sort of poor terrorist groups. Whereas over there, like I look at Ukraine situation, it's crazy to me. Like it's a country of forty million versus a country of a hundred and fifty million. It's like a, it's a crazy thing to think about. Like, and when it happened in Ukraine. Men weren't allowed to leave. You're not allowed to leave. Some men died trying to leave, trying to swim across rivers to get out of there, to get to Europe, you know?

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  And then Roman, the guy that took me to the front line, he had lived in France. He has a wife and kid in France. But he felt such a strong sense to really defend his country. That he didn't have to go back. He volunteered to go back and he hadn't lived in Ukraine for eight years. But I remember he said to me, he goes, home is where people miss you. He's like, my wife and kid is here. My mother and brother is in Ukraine. So he volunteered to go back. So you hear these stories like this and you're like, just super inspiring stuff.

• 1:15:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, how does that make you feel to be around people that are like that?

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  I mean, it obviously makes what you feel what you do in life is pretty fucking trivial, you know, like.

• 1:15:59Chris Williamson?

  The bravery of taking on ADCC.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, taking out a tournament, you know? Uh, but yeah, obviously, I mean, people can say what they will about the war and the politics of it, but they shouldn't confuse that with the warrior involved and guys like that are super inspiring. And I followed him. So he had fifteen, he only gets thirty days off a year. But he went back to Marseille and that's where he lives with his wife. And I literally just left there. I spent a few days with him there. So I got to see what his regular life that he left was. And it's mind blowing. Jiu Jitsu Black Belt. He used to compete. He's, uh, he owns a pizza shop there. He's got like an idyllic life. And he left all that to go defend his people over there. And it's just like, guys like that, you know, like you think, fuck, that's, that's heavy.

• 1:16:44Chris Williamson?

  Wow. You went to Chernobyl as well?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Chernobyl, yeah. So I've always wanted to go to Chernobyl. I guess, like you said, a bit of dark tourism we were talking about before. Fascinating place, but Russia had invaded via Belarus and came through Chernobyl. And there was actually some fighting that occurred.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  In Chernobyl, which is obviously, that's dangerous.

• 1:17:04Chris Williamson?

  Fucking highly irresponsible by everybody.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  The shit's blowing up over there, you know, like, and I'm pretty sure that was one of the moments that was one of the heaviest things that's happened in the two years of this war. And that was when basically bipartisan support in America, and they were like, yo, if any radiation leaks and crosses into the EU, like you're gonna feel the full brunt of NATO. So that was one of the heaviest, like, don't fuck around with Chernobyl. But there's a ton of mines around Chernobyl, like Russia came through and were pushed back out of Chernobyl. So Ukraine controls it, but Russia left a ton of mines. It's very close to Belarus, so it's you're actually pretty close, it's on the border. So you're close to where they had previously invaded from. But I still wanted to go there. I thought, let's try, let's try.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  So first was a guy I met at the seminar was a special forces guy and his unit controlled Chernobyl. But you have to clear four military checkpoints to get to Chernobyl. This guy cleared two of those points. And then the third one, the guy was very angry that we were trying to go there. Cause it's like, it's dangerous, it's a liability. If like a fucking Australian gets killed out there, that's, that's not good.

• 1:18:13Chris Williamson?

  Did you have your video guy with you as well?

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had the video guy with me. So it's like, we're trying to clear through, it's not, it's not looking good. This guy like wanted to arrest us, it was that serious. So we had to fail a Chernobyl mission, we left. However, another, again, top secret opportunity presented itself. And we were able to bypass all of the security checkpoints and get into Chernobyl. And it was funny because the same guy that was angry had to let us through this time. And I was like.

• 1:18:40Chris Williamson?

  Money talk?

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  No money, no money involved, just like, uh, basically, I don't wanna say who did it, but like, obviously.

• 1:18:47Chris Williamson?

  The right connection.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Someone appreciated that I was there for charity and I was helping Ukrainians. And I was raising sort of the little following I have, sort of raising awareness about the issue because it kind of fallen out of the media cycle.

• 1:19:00Chris Williamson?

  Very much so.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  So he basically allowed me, this person allowed me to go to Chernobyl. We got to see it and it was crazy, obviously crazy. It's eerie, like.

• 1:19:08Chris Williamson?

  What are you able to see? Like, so you're driving up.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we got, we got to see, obviously, the reactor. We got to see, uh, the abandoned town. We really spent a lot of time in the abandoned town. We got to see the Ferris wheel, like that little theme park area and crazy. But it's just completely like, there was a lot of tourism there. Now there's not a lot of terrorism. What's eerie is there's a lot of bullet holes from the fighting that occurred there. So it was like-

• 1:19:33Chris Williamson?

  Over the last couple of years?

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was like Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, there was that map at Chernobyl, I forget the name of it, but like it's eerie to see that there was actually fighting going on. There's those bullet holes in the walls and stuff on top of-

• 1:19:45Chris Williamson?

  Like being loaded into a lobby with no other players?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, super strange, super strange. So we got to see all that. And then we got to see the giant, sort of like it was a radio signal blocker and they built this huge thing. I forget the name of it, but like during the Soviet Union days, that used to send out weird signals and would interrupt radio broadcasts and stuff. It's just like huge radio blocker that people didn't really know what.

• 1:20:08Chris Williamson?

  Made of like a mesh sort of satellites material? What is it?

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Just like, I'll show you pictures of it, just some metal, like massive, massive. And I think it was like a early missile detector and a ra- and a radio signal blocker, but it would send out this signal that would make noises on broadcast. And during the Soviet days, people had no idea. They thought it was like weather control or they thought it was mind control, like a lot of conspiracies around it. But we got to see that as well. So those are the main things we got to see in Chernobyl.

• 1:20:35Chris Williamson?

  Was there a, did you have a Geiger counter with you to work out, was the like-

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  No, no, and I mean, the radiation levels could have switched around because obviously it's fighting there. There's a part of the-

• 1:20:45Chris Williamson?

  It would have disrupted something maybe?

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's the Red Forest where Russia had come through and I don't know how much truth there is to this, but there was like, people said that there were trenches built there by Russians. So that would obviously, that's the most radio, one of the most radioactive zones there. So these guys-

• 1:21:02Chris Williamson?

  And they've kicked up all of the dirt?

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Dust, yeah, all the dirt and the radioactive dust and they've probably poisoned themselves with radiation. So like, they obviously didn't know, you'd hope they didn't know what was going on there.

• 1:21:13Chris Williamson?

  What was the reactor like? What was getting close to that like?

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  I mean, that's just fully sealed in.

• 1:21:18Chris Williamson?

  Big, big dome.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kind of looks like modern, it just looks like modern, like- Like they built a building around it, you know what I mean? But I was still there being like, fuck, I probably shouldn't be here just taking photos and shit. You know, I'm like, it's definitely illegal.

• 1:21:32Chris Williamson?

  I think that I I watched a YouTube video about the elephant's foot. Oh, which is the melted core of the old reactor. I don't know how much truth's in this, there may be something that's beaten it now, but that it's regarded as one of the most radioactive. Uh, chunks of material on the planet, like the way that that congeals, the way that it melted through the bottom. And then it is that it looks like an elephant's foot, this big sort of melted blob of just.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  I'd like to think that's what created my opponent coming up, Gabby Garcia, you know?

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  But even when we left, we had to go through the radiation, the old radiation sensor machines where we're like standing there and they scan you to see if there's any radiation on you. Who knows if they still work, but we got in there, you know?

• 1:22:15Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  And we made it out, but it was kind of surreal. We were like, oh, man, fucking Chernobyl.

• 1:22:20Chris Williamson?

  Did you get to fire some weapons? Did I see you with a bazooka in your hand or something?

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  We got to fire a bazooka, so obviously people were pissed about this. So like, it's fucking idiots down there wasting American taxpayer dollars, you know? But we just got to participate in the training, like the firing range training of what the troops were already doing that took us to the front line. So they just let us shoot a couple of missiles out of the bazooka, which was pretty fun. Shot the M sixty Rambo style. So it was, it was, it was pretty fun. Yeah, standing up, start laying down and then standing up, walking forward. That's fun. But really, like I should, the RPG I shot. And I was like, it's fucking pretty surreal, you know, like I just remember a lot of times in my life, I think, fuck, someone shouldn't have trusted me with this, you know, like.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  Like, uh, the guy that gave me the million dollars to bring on Rogan, I was just like, fuck, people will trust me way more than they should. Like the RPG, the guy's like, just make sure you don't fire it too low. It's gonna fucking blow yourself up. I'm like. Okay.

• 1:23:18Chris Williamson?

  Didn't think about that, but yeah. Everyone's tried to do the bazooka jump in Halo, so.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. Imagine how high you could have sent yourself then. What a way to go.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Pretty crazy though, firing the RPG. Pretty wild.

• 1:23:30Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just intense, you know? And you're just like.

• 1:23:34Chris Williamson?

  Just in case the blood pressure and heart rate went high enough already.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  And I think they do have a bit of a failure rate. So I think sometimes they fucking explode and shit, but it was fun. The guys, I mean, the guys took care of us. We had to shoot a bunch of shit. It was cool. I've met a ton of guys that were like, uh, talking about missions, showing us private footage of like battles, like their own GoPro footage. Which is crazy because I said about how the units lack funding. So obviously, like in jujitsu, we like funding. So what do you have to do? You have to create a social media presence to raise money.

• 1:24:06Chris Williamson?

  You're kidding me. These guys are making their own war footage.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're on their Telegram groups where they're showing personal combat footage. They're wearing GoPros. They're raising their profile. Obviously that helps for intimidated.

• 1:24:17Chris Williamson?

  Only guns.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they do. It's crazy, man. Like you meet these guys that are famous sort of soldiers. And the more famous they are, the more donations they can ask for, and that money can be used towards a battalion to better equipment.

• 1:24:29Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  And what's, what's crazy about the soldiers out there in the situation is like, uh, I think if there's something that means a lot to you or has grave consequences and your budget is constrained, creativity goes through the roof. You just have to. So in terms of drone technology, they've figured out ways to attach explosives to $500 FPV drones that can kill.

• 1:24:54Chris Williamson?

  Like a DJI, whatever.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  And they'll take out a Russian tank that's worth two to three million dollars.

• 1:24:59Chris Williamson?

  With something that explosive plus DJI drone was a grand, grand and a half.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I always thought drone technology for warfare would be heading in a direction of highly expensive. But Ukraine is the innovators in this and they're able to do so much. Fighting with the drones.

• 1:25:17Chris Williamson?

  Did you see, this was a while ago now, and it kind of shows how much out of sight, out of mind, the Ukraine conflict is now that you've got what's going on in Gaza. But I remember seeing a TikTok, they were, I think it was Ukraine, that were recruiting pretty hot female influencers to explain, now you're interested, to explain to normal citizens how to drive a Russian tank if you happen to come across one that was abandoned by the side of the street. Do you ever see these videos?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  I didn't see the.

• 1:25:48Chris Williamson?

  Oh dude, so fucking cool. So it's the classic, you know, like kind of high up selfie style video and, you know, the sort of overly positive demeanor that most influencers have, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And it's, you'd step one, turn the thing, step two, press the button, step three, and it's her, like just some dolly bird chick with a little bit of lip filler in a tank, like.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Well, it's Ukraine, it's usually a lot of lip filler, but.

• 1:26:12Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Each of the, yeah, that's crazy. I mean, the, using social media in war is huge over there to sway the opinion of the enemy.

• 1:26:21Chris Williamson?

  That's the frontline of the propaganda campaign.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of surreal, you know, but it plays a factor.

• 1:26:30Chris Williamson?

  How did, I know that you're not American, but you have probably been perceived as part of like this side of the world. How was America or you as a representative perceived, what were people warm toward you? Did they have issues?

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Super positive. But I mean, like, I went at a time when the US hadn't agreed to fund, to continue to fund Ukraine. So it had been like seven months since they had funded it. It was up in the air.

• 1:26:59Chris Williamson?

  Have they since agreed to give more money?

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  Since they've had like a bipartisan vote, they've decided to contribute more weapons to Ukraine. But I went there at a time when that was up in the air and people didn't really know what was going on. So at that time, even then, it was still very positive towards the US because they were like, no matter what happens in the upcoming election, we have faith that the US will support them. Cause like, I mean, something happened in the nineties with Bill Clinton. I think it was called the Budapest memorandum where.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Ukraine was left with a lot of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union ended. And Russia and the United States were very invested in getting those out of Ukraine. Nuclear dearmament program, basically. So there was a contract signed Budapest memorandum where they said, hey, if we get rid of those nukes, we promise to basically protect your border. So it's like, from Ukraine's perspective, they felt like the US has an obligation.

• 1:27:57Chris Williamson?

  You owe us.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you owe us. You agreed to do it. We gave up. No country with nuclear weapons gets invaded, you know? That's a strong, that's a strong defensive strategy. So Ukraine gave up the weapons, Russia crossed into their territory. And obviously, they didn't feel the full brunt of a military conflict with the US. And then, so they always had faith that the US would contribute.

• 1:28:20Chris Williamson?

  Honor that agreement.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, contribute. And luckily, since then, they have. And but that was a surreal moment to me because, again, you didn't know when those weapons were going to run out. I didn't realize how big Ukraine was, how big Kiev was, how beautiful Kiev as a city was. So like, when I went there, it's like, it's like you're in Europe, you know? Like Kiev's a beautiful city. So it's surreal.

• 1:28:39Chris Williamson?

  History.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's surreal to think that like, I was there and they were talking about, like, we felt what the Patriot air defense system did to Russian.

• 1:28:47Chris Williamson?

  What is, what is the Patriot air defense system?

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  It'll intercept or shoot missiles out of the sky so that they don't impact the city.

• 1:28:54Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  And they were provided by the, the US.

• 1:28:56Chris Williamson?

  It's like a pen that pops balloons type thing.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the technology on that's crazy because the hypersonic missile, I think it can hit from the, from the Black Sea. It'll hit Kiev in 30 seconds. That's how fast. So when they go off, you don't get an air siren alert. They just are shot down.

• 1:29:11Chris Williamson?

  It's gonna land.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Or impacted.

• 1:29:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  So when we were there, they hadn't been given weapons for a long time. So you had this sort of, how many are left to defend the city? And that was surreal to me when I left Ukraine, just thinking about all the people I'd met. Obviously, especially the troops on the front line. Cause you're like, these are great guys, you guys like everyone else, you know, like normal people defending their country. And if the US decided not to supply those weapons, what would happen? And even in Kyiv, it's a city, life goes on largely as normal. But if they ran out of air defense missiles, that would get absolutely destroyed, like places like Mariupol, Kherson now, Kharkiv now, Kharkiv's getting hit really bad now.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  So that is what was left on my mind leaving is how heavy, you know what I mean? How heavy what's happening there is and really again thankful that the US decided to

• 1:30:04Chris Williamson?

  Step up.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Keep contributing weapons.

• 1:30:06Chris Williamson?

  How do you feel in retrospect? You know, you've been there viscerally, you've made human connections with people on the front line. They looked after you, I'm sure you ate with them, the family, here's a photo of my kids, blah, blah. Are you, has this sort of impacted you emotionally?

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I feel, I mean, I feel a attachment to those guys, you know? I worry every day about what could potentially happen. I worry a little less with the support of weapons, you know? Cause it's like, you think like, if you think about the situation, it's like, they put it to me like this when they talk about having a peace agreement, right? It's like, have you watched 20 days of Mariupol?

• 1:30:42Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  So that won the Academy Award last year, basically tells what happened to Mariupol when the first 20 days of the full scale Russian invasion happened. And I mean, you see that video that the city's been destroyed. The filmmaker stayed behind and filmed from the hospital. You see kids die, like just bombing indiscriminately. So tragedies have happened in Ukraine. And a lot of other countries will say it's still expensive. Let Russia have the land, let Russia have what they want. But it's like, they put it as a perspective. If a third, if a different country invaded California, massacred, massacred a bunch of people.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Did war crimes for all intensive purposes. And then the rest of the world said, ah, let them keep California. Let's let this end. Let's let this war go. For Americans, they'd be like, we'll fight to the last guy. So for me, that's what I was thinking. I was like, wow, if the weapons run out, they're still gonna fight. They're gonna fight to the last guy.

• 1:31:38Chris Williamson?

  And shovels and pitchforks and whatever they get their hands on.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Cause of what they've been perceived. I mean, even there was one guy, Dimitri, and like the tension between Russia and Ukraine is long lasting. Because I remember he showed me a picture of like execution papers of when the Soviets executed his grandfather. So when Russian full scale invasion started, he got his AK and his fucking motorcycle helmet, went out to the streets. He's like, I'd rather be dead than live under Russia. So it's like, it's a very personal.

• 1:32:05Chris Williamson?

  Right. He's got heritage to his distaste.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's like, I would never let them. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's crazy.

• 1:32:13Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  So I don't know how that conflict is gonna end, you know, like, I mean, Ukraine deserve their, their land back. Russia deserves, Russia should have to be obligated to pay for the damages. I mean, how can you even pay for the emotional damages and the deaths and stuff? But I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know how that ends.

• 1:32:34Chris Williamson?

  It seems like, uh, just a war of numbers. And just continue to throw Russian bodies at Ukraine.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  And that's what they've done it forever, Russia, right? I think the official statistics they say is like half a million Russians dead in two years. And I know the soldiers, cause obviously a lot of soldiers have journals, they're journaling out there. So I know Ukrainian soldiers have told me about how they've found journals of dead Russians that have gone straight. They've been conscripted and ended up at the front line immediately. It's cannon fodder, you know? And that's like heavy to think about. They're just sending mass amounts in.

• 1:33:12Chris Williamson?

  A human, human meat grinder.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. One, well, like Russia does have a, obviously a great technology, their military technology. They can build, create shells so fast to shell the cities, which is what's happening in Kharkiv. Kharkiv is just getting block by block bombed right now and it's irregular.

• 1:33:28Chris Williamson?

  It's factory to back end of a cannon to Kharkiv factory to, yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So quick. And like you said, politi, the, the news cycle has shifted towards, uh, sort of Palestine, Israel conflict, Gaza and stuff. So. It's largely getting forgotten, I would say.

• 1:33:46Chris Williamson?

  Funny, like the the mental RAM of the world only has sufficient disk space to be able to have one kinetic wall going on.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  And that's people, people begin messaging me, they're like, why are you so passionate about Ukraine? Like, because obviously people think it's so corrupt, they're like, are they paying you? And it's like, why don't you talk about Palestine? And I'm like, guys.

• 1:34:05Chris Williamson?

  They didn't fucking go to Gaza.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't go. And also, like, just because I'm raising money for cancer, the heart disease crew aren't gonna clinch me on the incident, you know what I mean? Like, we're trying to do what we can with the short time we have, you know, like. And it's easy, I can go to Ukraine, I can help, you know, I can support, I've made personal connections there. So it's like, I don't think it should be one or the other, you know what I mean? But like, it's kind of like, it's it's best not to spread yourself too thin on one political issue at a time. Because people only have the attention for.

• 1:34:37Chris Williamson?

  Where else did you fall in love with over your travels?

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Kazakhstan's cool, Kazakhstan's cool. I've been going to Kazakhstan since two thousand and sixteen. I actually did ADCC trials in Kazakhstan in two thousand and sixteen. Interesting place, interesting place.

• 1:34:52Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Obviously, again, you got something you can't talk about over there, but would be Bora. Bora obviously is fascinating. That's what you associate Kazakhstan with, unfortunately. What I feel bad for Kazakhstan is sometimes when there's a language barrier, jokes get misinterpreted. So for me, Bora was hilarious because the joke was on dumb westerners that thought that was really Kazakhstan. But he actually filmed it, those village scenes in Romania. So it's like, but obviously, things get misinterpreted. It gets lost on them, you know? And it would be annoying if you're a Kazakh, everyone's like, oh, Bora, Bora, you know? They took offence of that.

• 1:35:29Chris Williamson?

  They have a bad relationship with the Bora films?

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  Very bad. But the tourism board did lean into it recently. It took a long time, but they did lean into it and they were like, come to Kazakhstan, very nice, you know? So like, it took a long time, but they're leaning into it now. But we we went over there to film film some documentary stuff. We showed you the the cockpaw, the horse, sort of, we could put that up as well, but.

• 1:36:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Horse fighting, basically like it's like rugby. It's like rugby on horseback where you take a goat, they take a goat or a sheep, they cut its head and legs off. And they'll have up to a thousand guys on horses at a time where they'll lean down, they're gonna pick it up and throw it into an area to win money and local businessmen will put cash up to watch these guys fight it out.

• 1:36:38Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  And people get severely injured doing this.

• 1:36:41Chris Williamson?

  Poor people polo.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Poor people polo. So yeah, really, yeah. We went there and we wanted to film and we filmed. But it was tense because I was riding around on a little pony with a biggie small sweater on and some sunglasses, you know, it's like, and those guys are like, is he making boy? Most of them loved her. Some of them were like, hey, this is a Borat joke. I was like, fuck, I'm gonna die.

• 1:37:00Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  But it was fun. We only filmed for one day there. We had some difficulties, but what was funny was I had a, we had a stunt, like cockpiles are so dangerous. Like they kick each other, like if a horse falls over, they don't stop, like they'll trample a dude. It doesn't stop because you're taking a big prize pool, specially trained horses, specially trained riders.

• 1:37:24Chris Williamson?

  It's the C J I of.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  It's the C J I of fucking horse fighting, I guess.

• 1:37:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  But like we had a stunt man and his job was we were filming some scene where he was meant to take me. So it looked like I was riding on horseback into the pit. And we had a stunt double wear my outfit to go into the pit. But this guy, first of all, he missed his flight that day because he was drunk. He fell asleep at the airport.

• 1:37:47Chris Williamson?

  Good, very good.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  And then when we flew him in, instead of taking me to the edge, he took me right into the center of the pit. And I don't know how to ride a horse and he had the reins. So he's taken me dead center into the cockbar pit. And for a while I was chill. Some of the riders were angry because I was blocking them because he's holding my reins.

• 1:38:02Chris Williamson?

  Getting in the fucking way.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  I'm in the way and some of them get angry like, fuck, it's fucking guy out of it. Some people thought it was funny. But then someone picked up. The carcass and a whole mass of them came charging towards me and I was just like, fuck, I'm about to be trampled here. And obviously, if I don't have the reins of the horse, I didn't even know how to fucking ride a horse. I've never ridden a horse before, but I got out of there unscathed. I got hit a couple of times by people on horses, but we made it out. But basically, the drunk stunt man, it's a good story, but it was fucking dangerous.

• 1:38:31Chris Williamson?

  High risk scenario, like managed to survive the front lines of Ukraine, only to be trampled to death by a bunch of blokes trying to chase a goat head.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  It's been a dangerous year and it's probably only going to get more dangerous, I think. But Kazakhstan is awesome. Kazakhstan is actually going through like sort of a women's rights movement over there right now. It's big. I don't think it's been.

• 1:38:51Chris Williamson?

  Presumably championed by you.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Championed by me, yeah.

• 1:38:54Chris Williamson?

  And Gabby.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  And Gabby Garcia, I'll bring her out there, eh? But they had, they've had a couple of big sort of women's rights issues out there. There was a guy, Bishenbaya, a politician like.

• 1:39:02Chris Williamson?

  Heavily Muslim, that country?

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty heavily Muslim. Obviously, a country that was suppressed in their religious beliefs under the Soviet Union, but heading like a, back to their roots, basically, you know? So there was a politician there, Bishenbaya, who just straight up beat his wife to death and some of it was recorded on camera and he still pled not guilty and fought it in court. And it was like a crazy thing because everyone was like, is he gonna get off? Is he not gonna get off? They have weird laws there where it was like a wife could get two weeks in prison for provoking the husband, you know, like, there's a lot of, a lot, a lot of that going on, but.

• 1:39:38Chris Williamson?

  And medieval stuff.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was sort of, it was occurring when we were there. And actually, even the people that filmed that one day for us, uh, very good director over there. He made a film that was sort of a, a film about what's life's really like for some of the women in the smaller towns. And then it became like a horror movie. It was like, it was really well done, uh, called Duster. I, I don't think you can get it in the West yet. But the culmination of both those things, it was the highest grossing Kazakh film ever made in that big story at the time. Luckily, he just got sentenced and got a proper jail sentence, but it was kind of an issue where everyone was like, they might let this guy off.

• 1:40:18Chris Williamson?

  Was it an unspoken about sort of corner of the world that's got some pretty.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Chris Williamson?

  Egregious shit happening.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Well, there's some amazing stuff, like the scenery, the people, awesome. That was going on at the time. We kind of wanted to cover that, but. Very difficult to be a foreigner.

• 1:40:36Chris Williamson?

  On horseback.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, foreigner and cover anything like that. You know what I mean? Like as a foreigner.

• 1:40:40Chris Williamson?

  It's a very sensitive.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like mind your business and maybe rightfully, rightfully so. But luckily it went in the right direction. He was sentenced to a fair sort of amount. But that was heavy. We got out of there. We got out of there after that. Well, all right, we'll go to Ukraine. And then still heavy in Ukraine.

• 1:41:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, jeez.

• 1:41:04Chris Williamson?

  What's driving you to do these trips? Like what, uh, what's the underlying motivation that you have?

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I just have the ability and the connections. As weird as it is, jujitsu gives you connections all over the world. Oligarchs to tech guys, you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of, like obviously celebrities, a lot of people that I can kind of utilize jujitsu to get experiences that people might not normally get. So I love adventure. I love seeing the world. And if I can do some charity work along the way, that's awesome. And on top of that, create some content. So that's the goal with it. And that's what we're trying to do with that travel show. This is gonna be a lot of fun, but also try and touch on some serious stuff.

• 1:41:51Chris Williamson?

  I guess BJJ has, it's a kind of a bit of a rich people sport, at least from what I can see. That like maybe Brazil actually might be a good example where it's not, but certainly when I think about the people that I know, the people in Dubai that do it, the people in Austin that do it, it's like, it's like the Gulf of the combat world.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  For sure, yeah.

• 1:42:12Chris Williamson?

  You know what I mean? Like it's a very affluent, people are smart, or the business owners and CEOs. So yeah, you're right. It does, I guess, give you an unfair advantage and piece of access.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, get a slip in, slip out of some places. I remember like it saves you sometimes, right? So the soldiers were giving me, uh, I don't know what you call them. They're giving me things, gifts for coming to Ukraine. Some of those were heavy helmets of soldiers they killed from Russia. And they showed me the different styles of helmets. Some of those were from nineteen forty five, basically almost World War Two time, you know, like they get, some of the Russian soldiers had old helmets, some were modern. Russian military has from highest level to still where.

• 1:42:53Chris Williamson?

  They're just utilizing anything they can from the last century.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Anything. And one of the things, one of the guys gave me was a bayonet. So I got given two knives. The police chief of the entire country gave me a knife made out of a Russian tank. And this is a Russian tank that was on its way, it was in Ukraine territory. And they've destroyed it and someone's turned it into a knife. And he's like, tell the world, this is what we do to Russians in Ukraine. We turn them into knives. And I was like, whoa, heavy. And then another guy gave me a bayonet. And I was just like, the guy said, hey, don't cross into Europe with all of it.

• 1:43:30Chris Williamson?

  Wielding your bayonet.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was like, well, I don't want to throw it away. I'm like, the guy's giving me a personal gift. So as I start crossing into Europe through Poland, the bayonet's found. And because it's too long and too thick and it can attach to a gun, it's considered a Cold War weapon. So like it could, a cold weapon, I don't know, some, it was meant to be five years in prison for that. For carrying that. And I was like, fuck, I didn't know that. But luckily, like we've got out of that situation, it was a bit dicey for a sec. The police came, they had a fucking old camcorder out. I was like, oh shit, I might be going away for this. Should have left the bayonet behind.

• 1:44:08Chris Williamson?

  Did you, both of the knife and the bayonet, did you have to leave those in Europe or did you?

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  They kept the bayonet. I've still got the Russian tank knife. That's all right. The bayonet, I think it was mainly that it attaches to guns, like it attached to a rifle. And also there's a problem of guns in Ukraine making their way into Europe. And I guess weapons in general.

• 1:44:30Chris Williamson?

  And even though you can't fire a bayonet and it's a pretty primitive weapon, it's, it's part of the overall assembly that is.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  And that's the web I fell into.

• 1:44:41Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  That was like, we were stuck at the border for like nine, 10 hours.

• 1:44:45Chris Williamson?

  Trying to negotiate this bayonet problem.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  I had to call in all sorts of favors to be like, yo, this is like.

• 1:44:51Chris Williamson?

  Well, surely the police chief of Ukraine would be, hey, mate, come on.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Let him out, you know?

• 1:44:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, he's sound.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  I mean, all of those guys are heroes, like the police chief there, marshal. When Ukraine first got attacked, Crimea, I think back in 2014.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  This guy is like a hero over there. He's like defended the Dantesk airport and this was in the Don and I'm terrible with the names, but he defended this really pivotable airport. And he is like, they held on to it for so many days and wouldn't let Russia take this airport. And he was just telling me the story and he's just like, yeah, we just couldn't let them take it. And he shows me a picture and he's got shrapnel hanging out his head and a bullet hole in the side of his helmet. And he's like, yeah, we couldn't let him take the airport. That couldn't happen. I'm just like, fuck.

• 1:45:38Chris Williamson?

  Does it put into perspective, uh, people who take Brazilian jiu jitsu very seriously as something where they're going to war?

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure. That's why I drink a couple of beers before a match. I'm like, fuck, we're just having fun out here, you know? Just like, there's heavy shit going on. It's good perspective shifter to be able to go to these places, you know? Especially like B team men, like some of the guys I'm with, they don't even have passports. They don't want to leave America. I'm just like, man, take me to the crazy places.

• 1:46:04Chris Williamson?

  Sixty percent of Americans don't have a passport.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why. Some of that's obviously because they can't afford it. But some of us also have fucking no vacation time here, you know? But.

• 1:46:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think a big chunk of it is a lack of culture, at least from what I've seen outside of the, you know, like toffee, wanky fucking influencer friends that I've got. Like just the country's so big. You've got 50 countries attached to the same country where you can work anywhere, use the same currency, speak the same language, et cetera. Well, it's like saying, I've never traveled outside of Europe. Well, you can travel quite far within Europe and America is basically a collection of countries that happen to share a currency and a language.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm down to go anywhere. I'll go anywhere. I'll risk it all for a good story, you know? That's, uh, that's what I love.

• 1:46:53Chris Williamson?

  What was your time in Thailand like? You must have been out there before.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  There's something out there that pulls me each and every time, you know?

• 1:47:00Chris Williamson?

  Can you put your finger on it?

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  I have. They have to me. But yeah, I love Thailand. Thailand's good time. I just went to the Philippines. Philippines is surprisingly awesome.

• 1:47:10Chris Williamson?

  I've never been.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Manila. Like, I didn't know what to expect, you know? You visit some Asian cities. Some of them are super well developed. Some of them.

• 1:47:17Chris Williamson?

  Philippines Muslim as well, right?

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:47:20Chris Williamson?

  I might have got this wrong.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  No, but there is an island in the Philippines controlled by ISIS. I was trying to visit that while I was out there.

• 1:47:26Chris Williamson?

  Controlled by ISIS?

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  ISIS, ISIS Island. Yeah, they got an island.

• 1:47:29Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  Some parts of the Philippines are super dangerous, like people get kidnapped and stuff, but for the most part, I had a good time.

• 1:47:33Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  That's actually, I don't know if you saw the video where I had a bunch of ladyboys wake up my friend.

• 1:47:38Chris Williamson?

  I did.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  That's him out there.

• 1:47:40Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  So we, we're, we're in the Philippines and we're hanging out in one of the seedier areas and we just recruited a bunch of ladyboys to wake him up.

• 1:47:48Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  That's the punishment you get if you wanna go to bed early and not hang with the boys, you know?

• 1:47:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yep.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  No excuse.

• 1:47:54Chris Williamson?

  And how did, how did that go? How, where do you find that many ladyboys?

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  I'm on the pipe, but they came to me in the streets, you know?

• 1:48:00Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Me.

• 1:48:01Chris Williamson?

  This is just something that you exude? The smell of Japanese?

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that doesn't wash away.

• 1:48:06Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Doesn't wash away. Nah, I love hanging out with ladyboys. They're a good time, you know? One of the boys, drink a beers with them, have some good stories. They make your friends uncomfortable. Fucking love it.

• 1:48:17Chris Williamson?

  What do you want to do next? Where do you wanna go next?

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  After this, I go and.

• 1:48:21Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, you've got a fucking invitation. Have you not got, how long until the invitation? Six months? Five months?

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Oh, we put the calendar, we put the calendar up yesterday. Eighty days, eighty days until.

• 1:48:31Chris Williamson?

  Fuck.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  And before then, I gotta go back to Ukraine. So I'm going back to Ukraine to visit the city of Kherson. So I'll head back there.

• 1:48:39Chris Williamson?

  What, why?

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do a charity seminar for the police as a thank you for helping, probably helped me get out of jail or not. But as a thank you, just appreciation. And yeah, just go visit the guys again. I booked that before I booked the tournament. I probably would have shelved that for a while.

• 1:48:55Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  But summer is a pretty heavy time during the war, cause obviously winter, those roads like snowed in wet. It's hard for a lot of offense to come, you know, like things get bogged, it's tough for cars to move.

• 1:49:10Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Summer's pretty hot, things can move pretty quick. So go out and see the boys at least.

• 1:49:16Chris Williamson?

  With some nice weather.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  With some nice weather, yeah.

• 1:49:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, so what else have you, like, you've done Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Thailand, but you did a ton of other places in the middle. What were you doing that?

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  So when we were, we were planning to film in Kazakhstan and we had a break between the first day of shooting and the later days of shooting. So we're just like, I spent a lot of time in Kazakhstan and Almaty. So I was like, fuck it. Let's just pick a random country and head there. So we went to Uzbekistan and I showed up to a gym in Uzbekistan and just surprised them and trained with them. So I was like, we got time, let's do it.

• 1:49:49Chris Williamson?

  They're recognizing?

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, luckily, otherwise I would have fell flat, eh?

• 1:49:53Chris Williamson?

  Fuck this guy.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  Who's this fucking asshole dressed in short shorts?

• 1:49:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  It went well. Awesome. Yeah. Visiting, I just love trying to visit as many crazy places as possible.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  Jiu Jitsu's everywhere. It's like a virus. It's like herpes, you can't get rid of it.

• 1:50:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a, it's interesting to think just how much a sport like that. I remember I was on a, a wedding in Barcelona a few years ago and one of the guys who doesn't usually drink had had a particularly heavy day and evening. And I don't know whether you know, but Barcelona is the robbery capital of, of Europe.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:50:34Chris Williamson?

  It's super, super, super bad. And he wandered off from the guys later on in the evening, got this bus back from wherever we'd had the ceremony during the day. And he wanders into the train station, falls asleep in the train station and wakes up to find out that his phone, his wallet and his shoes had been taken from him.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Good shoes?

• 1:50:58Chris Williamson?

  Uh, well, wedding shoes. So not, not totally terrible. And he kind of has, he's a sort of a bearded CrossFit dude. So he's like, pretty well-known CrossFit coach, bearded guy. Uh, so it's now six in the morning and he's wandering the streets of Barcelona. Beard, wedding suit, but you know, the tie's down, the shirt's open, no shoes, no phone, no wallet. And he's going up to people in the street saying, please, can I borrow your phone? Which obviously, given the fact that it's the robbery capital of Europe, just looks like, like he is, yeah, he is one of the people that's then going to try and do it. And he said, uh, he ended up finding a like person that would give him his phone and then he rang, messaged someone on Instagram and managed to get them to let him into the

• 1:51:39Chris Williamson?

  Airbnb where he was staying. But he said, uh, if I was really, really stuck, I would have just found the nearest CrossFit gym and said, you know, look on Instagram, there's me. Yeah. It's kind of like a global passport thing. It's a distributed network of people who do the thing you do and. By proxy care for some reason like, oh, you do our thing. You've dedicated some years of your life to this thing. We will look after you.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  It's like a secret society, you know? It's like, it's a good, it's good to be famous in a niche sport. But everyone in the niche sport knows you, you know? Cause you don't have to deal with the, the issues of widespread fame.

• 1:52:16Chris Williamson?

  But that's interesting.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  A connection everywhere you go.

• 1:52:18Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, narrow but deep. Yeah.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  Narrow but deep, that's what we all crave.

• 1:52:24Chris Williamson?

  Uh, going back to the BJJ thing, you know, we've, it seems to me, total like bro science commentary here. But it seems that at least within the next sort of five years or so, we're going to see the phasing out of one generation of competitors and kind of probably the ascendancy uh, of a new generation. Who, if you were to throw a little bit of money, invest into a bunch of different fighters, young guys that are coming up. Who do you think is going to be the most dominant few fighters over the next few years?

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the young guys, they already do well in the lighter divisions. The heavier divisions, some of the old guys can linger around. Um, but the younger guys now, I mean, like Miki Avao, the Rotolo brothers, you know, like those guys are phenomenal. And then from guys that like, I mean, Dorian, he trains with us from time to time. But this guy's like a wrestling champion in America. He's super young, I think 18, 19, he's already like world class level. So at the smaller weights, those guys can already win like Cade Rotolo won ADCC. Super young, so it's like the next generation has already arrived, I think.

• 1:53:39Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Yeah, I, uh, I really enjoyed seeing behind the scenes of your Tokyo vlog. And what's it called? Not kimono, what's the fucking thing? What's the five?

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  The gi, the gi.

• 1:53:51Chris Williamson?

  No, the, what's the five person fight?

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  Oh, quintet, quintet.

• 1:53:56Chris Williamson?

  That's it, fucking kimono. Shut up. Actually, that's a question. Is uh, gi jujitsu dead now? Does no one care?

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  It's not dead. It just doesn't have the personalities that no gi does, you know? And uh, you can get a lot more, it's hard to get people to watch grappling that don't participate. It's harder to get them to watch gi.

• 1:54:17Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  I think it just reminds us of some traditional martial arts, you know, like it's like unattractive. It was cool in the eighties, you know, fucking Bruce Lee movies and shit, but it's harder now. I think it's a bit weirder to them, you know? So I think no gear is just a bit more easily digestible than the, than the gear game.

• 1:54:40Chris Williamson?

  Are you going to make the guys wear uniforms at CGI?

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  I'll let them wear whatever they want, as long as it covers enough skin, I think, you know?

• 1:54:48Chris Williamson?

  You can say that to Gabby.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  For me, I'll wear a banana hammock, some budgie smugglers against Gabby, I think. Come out smoking, try to finish it. I'll put the cigarette on the edge of the, of the mat space and try to finish it before that thing runs out of steam, you know?

• 1:55:04Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Well, that's also the same pace that your gas tank is moving down at, based on.

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  That's true. That is true. That is probably the timer I have.

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  It's either that or I put it out of my tongue, flick it out, I don't know.

• 1:55:16Chris Williamson?

  What are the, uh, that might turn wrong. What, what are the ways that things could go wrong between now and CGI? Like you must have considered that what could go right? We would get all of the people that we want and this would be fantastic and it'll make money and we can give it to charity. What are the ways that it could go wrong?

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it could go wrong in any way. You're trying to put on any sort of event can go wrong, you know? Any sort of difficulties, like we're going out of our way to build. Like we could just throw mats on the floor, but that's not the safest. That's not the best way to do things. So we're going to build something that is safe for the competitors to compete on. That adds layers of complexity on a short time zone as it is to put on an event. But the goal is going to be high, really try to spare no expense in making it the best athlete and fan experience possible. But I mean, any of those little things could go wrong. We've got a tight, a tight timeline, you know?

• 1:56:12Chris Williamson?

  And the media to get the lighting sorted, to tech everything out in terms of sound and broadcast and blah, blah.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, now you're making it worse.

• 1:56:19Chris Williamson?

  Sorry. Well, look, man, I need, you evidently need the, well, that's one thing, you know? People are looking at it and saying, God, where'd you get $2 million from? That's the prize money. What about the money to actually front the event?

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  I mean, we've got.

• 1:56:32Chris Williamson?

  Build your back alley.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  I mean, we've got. The budget was three million. So we've got money aside, we're doing production budgets now.

• 1:56:40Chris Williamson?

  Budget was three, but two of it's going to the fighters. Plus, there's a super fight, at least one.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:45Chris Williamson?

  Two. How much is Gabby getting paid? How much does she want?

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  She just gets the physical contact of me. That's more than money could buy.

• 1:56:54Chris Williamson?

  Some of your genetic material.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, money could buy it, but um, yeah, I mean, we're gonna make it work, sponsors, you know, like we do have more funding accessible if needed, but we've set it as our goal to do this on a certain budget.

• 1:57:10Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, if, and especially given that you're being largely transparent, apart from your anonymous Ukrainian funder.

• 1:57:19Chris Williamson?

  If you are relatively sort of open books about it and say, hey, guys, we managed to do this thing on, you know, three mil to put on an event like this, or five mil to put on an event like this, it's like pretty shoestring budget. That doesn't seem like an insane amount of money for the impact that it's had and for what it gives to the fighters and so on. Uh, I think it does throw into harsh light. Okay, so where does all of the money go in other competitions? Yeah.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  That's, and that's what we want to prove. We want to be fully transparent about everything. Like, I mean, even the venue, like we're using Thomas and Mac. I think that's, we rented it out two days. I think with loading days, we're still talking under $200,000, you know? So it's like, the venue itself is quite affordable for an event of this scope.

• 1:58:07Chris Williamson?

  Being run over weekend in Vegas, fully tech. Yeah, wow.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like, it's, I mean, that's my theory, is that we can do it for that budget.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  If it goes over, we have more money accessible.

• 1:58:21Chris Williamson?

  But it still leaves the question, where the fuck does all of the money go in the other competitions? Like, where is it?

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  And that's something that we won't have to answer. That's something if we do this correctly, I feel like other competitions will have to answer. And that's, that's kind of the goal here to say, hey, can we put on a spectacle that takes care of the athletes and is good for the fans to, you know?

• 1:58:43Chris Williamson?

  Do you have any aspirations for Fair Fight Foundation?

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  For sure. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of like what we're doing when we're traveling around doing charity work and stuff. We want to use some of that foundation money to keep jiu jitsu alive in these small countries. Cause like, I try to like, my position in the sport, I think most people like me don't go to poor countries. Like these countries don't have access to higher level jiu jitsu guys. So I love the idea that I can visit places and train with people where jiu jitsu guys wouldn't go. And that to me is really ultimately growing the sport. A true jiu jitsu missionary, you know, traveling to these weird places, leaving a few kids behind, you know, but spreading the sport nonetheless.

• 1:59:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, if you don't have Uber Exec and if you don't have a nice sort of at least four star resort available, yeah, you know, the guys that are the biggest in any industry aren't going to go there. The service isn't there.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  And that's, yeah, those are the places I want to hit. Craziest places. Inspired by Bourdain, obviously. I want to try to do what he did for street food for basically jiu jitsu, you know?

• 1:59:55Chris Williamson?

  Have you released or what's the release schedule for the content that you've captured from all of this stuff?

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Which we're aiming to utilize the event and the eyes on the event to coordinate, maybe show clips during the event, maybe even play it before the event. Like, we're hoping to utilize the event and the eyes on the event to grow that.

• 2:00:14Chris Williamson?

  Drive traffic. Would you, Netflix comes along and says, here we go.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Sell my soul for it for sure, you know? I've sold my soul for less.

• 2:00:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've bought someone's panties for less as well.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  That's true. Yeah.

• 2:00:29Chris Williamson?

  How are you operating B Team while you're?

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's like, I helped set it up for two years. It's kind of a self, it sort of runs itself.

• 2:00:37Chris Williamson?

  Takes over on its own.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, my, I started teaching the classes. I don't teach anymore. All the boys teach the classes. I'm mostly the merchandise clothing ideas guy, you know, that's my niche. But yeah, I mean.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  I'm not there too much, to be honest.

• 2:00:52Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Do you miss it when you're away?

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  I miss it. It's good to come back, good to leave too, but definitely good to come back. I love coming back, training with the guys and seeing where my levels are, seeing how much they've improved, making sure they're still okay.

• 2:01:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  I think they're happy to see me leave too. You know, I come in, I throw some shit talking around. They're like, all right.

• 2:01:10Chris Williamson?

  Sick of you now, mate.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  They miss me until they see me, then they're like, please fucking go back to a war zone.

• 2:01:15Chris Williamson?

  And keep them, please, god damn it. Dude, I'm really excited. I'm really excited to see what happens over the next couple of months. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with all of the updates and everything.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  My Instagram, Craig Jones BJJ, uh, CJI Official, Fair Fight Foundation website. Tickets will be on sale on UNLV, Thomas and Mack Event Centre page. I think that should be up on the 31st around then. But yeah, I mean, it's all, if you follow Jiu Jitsu, it's on the guys' social medias. It's blowing up.

• 2:01:45Chris Williamson?

  I can't wait, man. I'm really, I'm really, really happy to see, uh, to see you doing something cool. I think this is going to be an interesting few months.

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  If I survive.

• 2:01:52Chris Williamson?

  Appreciate you, man.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

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