JRE MMA Show #183 with Rico Verhoeven

>> The Joe Rogan experience. >> Train my day Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[MUSIC] >> Good to see you, champ. >> Yes sir. >> We were just trying to figure out how long it's been. >> What was the last one we did together? I think it was 2017, almost 10 years.

>> Yeah. >> Or maybe might have been 16 years. >> Yeah, I think. >> Yes, it was. >> Was it really? >> No. >> No, number 71. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that's the day that's it. >> He's got her. >> Maybe we just got part of the head a little bit.

>> A little bit. >> Well, listen man.

I want to tell you that that fight with Usik was one of the craziest things

that I've ever seen in my life.

“Never in my life that I think a guy who would go straight from kickboxing.”

Did you have any professional boxing matches? >> One. >> One. >> One professional. >> I've been boxing for 15 years. >> Of course. >> But also, you're arguably the greatest kick boxer of all time. >> Thank you, thank you for sharing that.

>> And you have a fight with arguably the greatest boxer in the heavyweight division ever. He's in the conversation. >> 100%. >> 100% in the conversation of the greatest boxer in the heavyweight division ever. And you won 10 fucking rounds man. >> Yes, I'm so close to that. >> Yeah.

>> I mean, I don't give a fuck what those judges were saying. Those judges are trying to say it was close. Like it was almost like you were up. I think one of them had you up by one round.

“And what the other ones had a draw. >> Yeah, I think that's.”

>> That's a crime. If that went to score cards and somehow know that you lost that decision, that would have been a crime. >> I know. >> I know, and I got to be honest, I think. Like we were just straight jumping into it.

>> And like, I think that's the hard part of it. I don't like losing, but if it happens, it happens. But I think that's the part that makes it even harder that I've felt so ingest. >> It felt ingest, the stoppage felt ingest. It didn't seem like it made sense.

>> No, but look for a way to stop the fight. >> Exactly, but next to that, like you say this as a combat sports, commentator for years and you bring in this sport for so many years, and all other professional boxers and commentators etc. They all see the fight a certain way.

Like you saw it, like how I experienced it. And then when we look at the score cards, we get like a totally different fight. Like what is going on that and that is for me where the toughness is of the whole experience. >> Right, it's very difficult to accept. And if you had lost by decision, it would have been insanity.

And we've seen those insane decisions before, and I never know what's going on.

You know, I don't want to think it's corruption, but it's almost worse if it's incompetence. If you have someone who's judging a fight, which is like the most pivotal fight arguably of your career, you think about how long you've been raining as the heavyweight champion of kickboxing, for like a decade, which is crazy at the highest level, especially at the heavyweight division. It is so hard to stay at the top.

Nobody does. Everybody's like, even in the UFC, it's like one, two fights, and then they fall off. Yeah, if you'd be the heavyweight champion and have fucking wars, like Jamal Benzadeek, that fight, like some of these fights even had wars, and to come out on top every single fucking time. And then you have this enormous fight, and you have terrible judging, terrible judging.

And it's like, it's almost worse if it's incompetence because if you've got these people that don't know what they're watching, and they're calling, like their eyes, their decision makes a difference, but whether it's a W or an L, and it doesn't make any sense. It's not fair, it's not right.

“I think at this point in time, they should really seriously consider having alternative scoring.”

I think there should be more, one of the things I like about glory is that glory has more than three judges. What do they have? 4 or 5? 5, I was 5. I think 5 is the right number. I think three is two few. Yeah. Because you could have two people fucking up, and one person gets it right, and then, but if you have two more judges, the odds are they're going to get it right too.

Usually, the people that fucking up, it's the minority. Yeah, but if you ask me, like, next to us as athletes, putting our health on the line, which makes it very, very hard thing to cope with, but also for the people watching the fight. Right. It's like you said, it feels ingest, and I definitely feel like, especially in the time that we're in now,

Even there, when something happens, the referee is still a person.

He can make a mistake. He can look at the foul, and he like, I saw it this way. But now what they're doing, they're looking at the far, they're looking at the cameras. Right. And multiple people are looking at it, and like, hey, we can interpret it. The rules like this, because this happened, we can see this, and this is wrong.

So even it's going to be a cart, or it's going to be a penalty, or whatever. Because this is what's happening, but within this situation, it's just like if you ask me, and it's still possible, it's human being, the referee made a mistake, and that is possible, but there should be people or a situation where it's like, hey, sorry, Reft, but you made a mistake. This wasn't the right call, so we can overturn it in a second.

“The only thing that's really hard to do with that subjectively is fight stoppages.”

Because sometimes, at least in MMA, a referee sees things in a fighter that you might not see things watching on television, or sitting at my seat as a commentator, a referee will see a guy's eyes roll back in his head. He'll see something that I don't see, and I'll go, oh, I thought that was a little quick, but they're right on top of it. They see certain things that you might not be able to do. Yeah, but that's the thing, I appealed it, I appealed it.

And everything, we appealed up on, we got, they said, like, you guys were right. We got stopped after the bell. Yes. Right after the stoppages, the doctor came, I wasn't disorientated, I didn't have no concussion or whatever symptoms. So everything, everything we got, they're like, no, you're right, you're right, you're right.

But they never overturned.

They never overturned. They're nothing. Also, how would they overturn it? Would they go to the judge's scorecards? And if they did go to the judge's scorecards, what would it be a majority draw?

Because if you are down, or you're even on both cards, and then up on one, and then did they count the knockdowns in the final round? Because if they did, you might have lost that fight, which is even crazier. Yeah. But then you have something like, hey, guys, let's look at the scoring cards again.

And other people, other judges look at the scorecards, and look at the fight, and score it again. Because, well, here's what you're saying. Here's what you know, it's crazy.

Here's what you know, it's crazy.

It's the most competitive fight of U.S. clearer as a heavyweight champion. Yeah. And they're not even talking at all about a rematch. No. It's kind of, this episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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And that's going to crazy the same Deonte Wilder, which all love to Deonte. Yeah. But Deonte is not Deonte Wilder of 2019. No. He's a different guy now.

That's a good thing that you just brought that up. Because before it is fight, you heard the whole conversation. Okay, we're going to do Rico after that. I'm going to fight the winner of Dubois Wardley. And after that, I want to fight Tyson Fury again.

Right. The other two. Yeah. Not in the conversation anymore. Yeah.

So without taking too much credit for it, I think like with this fight, he saw like, Hmm, this was a little harder than I expected. Yeah. So let's take a different route. And for me, I don't want to rematch just to have the rematch.

I would like the rematch because it makes sense. There's a story within this rematch. It's huge. And it's something that it is unfinished business. Yes.

And it's a rocky store. It's a live rocky store.

“100% and that's why for me, where I'm looking at now, I'm like in the fall of my,”

or maybe in the winter of my career as an athlete. And I just want to do big fights. That makes sense. And then you're like, oh, this is what I want to say. Well, not only that, as a promoter, what makes more sense than that fight.

Yeah. The deante wilder fight again. I'll respect the deante. I love that guy. It's one of the greatest knockout.

100% in the history that we have.

No. He's not the same guy. For whatever reason. It happens to everybody, right? I think he's 40 now, right?

Yeah. It happens to everybody.

“You just got off of a crazy performance.”

Yeah. And the whole world got to see it. If any fight warrants a rematch, it's that fight. Yeah. That fucking rematch would be gigantic.

It would be so huge. It's the ultimate rocky story. You, I was watching that fight on the edge of my seat. Oh, I love it. The fight starts.

I'm like, how's this going to go down? And how's this going to go down?

I'm like, whoa, first of all, I'm like, holy shit.

Rico's fucking huge. He realized how big you are. And you know, Oosek is a cruiserweight. He's a cruiserweight to put on words. He could still make cruiser.

If he wanted to want to get really lean, he could still make cruiser. You're way better bigger than him. I'm like, that's a giant factor. And then it's your experience. Your world championship level experience.

You've been in so many big fights. It looks so calm and so relaxed and so in the moment. And I was like, holy shit, he might pull it off. And then he got into like the third, fourth and fifth round. I'm like, I don't see this changing.

But this is crazy. I'm like, this is up. If you hear the commentators, they were like, okay, Rico's moving a lot. And he's fainting and he's doing this and he's doing that. But how long can he keep this up?

Well, they don't know about your cardio. Exactly. It was what there was one commentator that also accommodated for glory. Well, Alster. Alster was there.

Yeah, he was also there. He was also there. But the commentator for glory that he knew like that cardio wise. I live in the gym. That's what you know as well.

Like, I love this.

So I don't, I'm never going to lose on cardio because then I lose for myself.

So you're in anomalies in terms of like 260 pound men. Yeah. There's very few guys that are as big as you that push a pace like you did. So I wasn't. When they were saying that, I was like, you guys don't understand what you're saying here.

It's going to be able to do this all night long. Yeah. And you know, credit to Usik for finally catching you and rocking you. But the fight was stopped too quickly. It just was.

Just 100%. And you were still okay. You got in a world championship fight that's that close. If it's just not even really that close. You were that far ahead.

You got to give someone a chance. But let's let's reverse it. Let's reverse it. What if he was in this position? There's no way they would stop that fight.

No way. Look, it's either incompetence or corruption. And I tend to think corruption. Yeah.

“I think these guys want to keep judging fights.”

And they want the favor of the promoters. And the money isn't Usik. Usik is a huge name. He's a he's their big star in the Great Division. They don't want like a guy coming in from different sports.

And one professional. Exactly. Making the biggest upset in boxing history. That would be. Yeah.

It was really almost was the biggest upset in boxing history. I mean, it was crazy. It was really crazy to watch man. But you were the perfect guy to do it because of the pace thing. Because of the fact that you are so big.

And you can push that insane pace and keep it up. For example. And also game plan wise. Mm-hmm. We were so smart on the game plan.

We did something that he has not seen before. That he has not experienced before. Even though he fought the best boxes in the world. But all the boxes. What they were trying to do is I'll box.

That if you were to boxes. We're trying to outbox a cruiserweight. How in the hell are you going to do that? He's lighter. He's smaller.

And he's faster. So how are you going to know? Super tech. Exactly. So how are you going to outbox him?

Did you say he's just going to have a super strong game plan. And that's what we had.

So what when you looked at it when you first got the offer.

First of all, how far out did you get the offer? How far out away from the fight? How much time and check prepare? Well, did you know the story? How I got into this whole thing?

No. Okay. No. This is a crazy story. Okay.

Let me tell you. So it all started with Canelo Crawford fight. And Jason State them is a good friend of mine. And I saw he was in Vegas for that fight. So I texted him.

He was like, yo, you're there for that fight. Oh my god. Yeah, this is going to be great. So we went back and forth. It's like, yeah, probably.

So he told me the brother.

“You need to be in boxing because he was at my at the tournament.”

I wanted to aid my tournament a few years ago. And so he comes to my fights. And he's like, oh, you got to be. You got to be in here. You got to kill these guys.

I said, yeah, yeah. I think I could do pretty good. He's like, you know what? I'm going to throw it out there. And let's see what happens.

Okay. So that was, let me see. There was Vegas time during the day. So Amsterdam time.

So the next morning, I'm on the treadmill. I'm running the phone ring. Jason. So yo, bro, I'm on the treadmill. Let me call you back.

Listen, I put your name out there. I showed your videos. And there go crazy. They want you. So I jumped up.

I was like, what do you mean? They said, they want to do something. They're going to call you. I gave them your contact. Okay.

So that's how it started. A few days later, they called me. Rico, we want you to fight. Blah, blah, blah. We love what you do.

And we want you to fight Anthony Joshua. So I'm like, okay. Let's go. I'm ready for this opportunity. But I was on the set of roadhouse too.

So there was like, oh, shit. Now we got to combine everything. I'm trying to come in. Like during, yeah, during takes. And like, okay, we do some padwork.

And then finally, we were supposed to fight in February.

“So I think the deal came around October, October, November.”

So I had like around 10, 10 good weeks to train. And then finally, I finished off the movie in December. And he, but in between, Joshua got the offer to fight Jake Paul for a crazy amount of money. She was like, of course, right. I'm going to do that.

And after that, I'm going to do the Rico fight. Perfect. Okay. He does the Jake Paul fight. Well, that went like a loud wind.

And then they reached out, like, can we push the fight a little bit instead of February to March? Like, I'm good. The more time I get, the better. Right. So to train through to transition into boxing.

So that happened. And then the end of the, like, two weeks later, that tragic accident happens. So that was, you know, we're talking about Anthony Josh. Yeah. You know, Africa, terrible car accident.

Yeah, terrible as friends. Yeah. Terrible. So that derailed that whole situation. But I had a whole training plan schedule.

I was going to Spain to train there for a month. But I didn't know what was going to happen. So I just did what I had to do. And I just continued training. So I wasn't Spain training training training.

And then at the end of that training camp, they, we were talking about it. And they said, like, yeah, we don't think. And also with, with this manager Eddie Hurn, like, I don't know if he's going to be back soon. So what do you want to do?

You want to wait? Or you want to fight? Like, I'm already training. So I would like to fight somebody. But we don't know what makes sense.

No, let's think about it. So we thought about it. We thought about it. They thought about it. This episode is brought to you by square space.

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“And then we were talking about, Hey, what about what about?”

Does that make sense? Was it your idea? Yeah, it was our idea. I like, yeah, that makes sense. Why not?

Because he's the tough dog. He's like, under speed. You keep boxing champion versus the undisputed boxing champion. Like, there's a story there. Yeah.

It's like, let's just throw it out there. Let's see what they say. Okay. Pick up the phone and call them. Yo, guys.

Yeah. We have an idea. So I pitched them the whole idea. Undisputed versus undisputed. Silence.

Go, my God. What did I just do? [ Laughter ]

Then the first thing I hear back, we love it.

Whoa. I said, okay. What does that mean? Yeah. We can love it.

What does that mean? So that is said, you know what? We're going to talk to Usik's team and we're going to come back to you. So like, and then in two weeks, they went to Usik. Usik loved the idea as well.

So again, big shout out to him for taking that fight as well, because he had hundreds of options. And he took this fight outside the box. So I love it. Also to his excellency, Turkey, Lashak, for setting this whole thing up. Oh, he has set up so much fight.

Yeah. So he's so important to break out. Super much respect for both of them. And thank for also the Jason, of course. We're just setting this whole thing up.

I'm getting Jason. Yeah, getting me into the conversation. And then like, so that was after two weeks. And then at two weeks later, we were on a face time call for like a minute. And yeah, after that, they got it done.

And then afterwards, they said, like, oh, it's going to be a title fight. And then the whole world went crazy, of course.

“Like, oh, my god, how is this guy going to go for a world title fight?”

It doesn't make any sense. I was just like, let's go.

Well, you know, it's not like you didn't have a lifetime of striking.

It's only the differences removing the kicks. That's what the thing is. Like, the boxing fans, the straight-up boxing fans, they're not too much into MMA. And they're definitely not into kickboxing. So they had no clue.

Right. They had no clue of like, right. Right. Who is this guy? What did he do?

“And that's why I know, so the WBC, they also had their Moitai department.”

So for them, it made sense. Like, hey, we go with his credentials and what he did into in kickboxing. It makes sense to make it a world championship fight. But we just have to tell the people. Well, you know, it drives me nuts as a fan of combat sports.

It's also a giant fan of kickboxing. Yeah. Kickboxing does not get the love that it deserves in America. It doesn't make any sense. Because in MMA, the casual fans love stand up and fights go to the ground.

They boo. So it makes no sense to me how you have boxing huge MMA huge kickboxing. Almost non-existent in America. There's no big kickboxing leagues. No, my baby.

Because they, they want to see, yeah, their own people win maybe? No. No, it just hasn't been promoted, right? It doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense.

Because their own people don't win in MMA. I mean, there's very few American champions. There's Justin Gachy and Sean Strickland. And they have, at least, they're really competitive. And he keeps boxing there.

Right. That's true. But we don't care. Honestly, in MMA, no. I mean, Alx Pereira was the biggest star in the sport.

It's always good. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But Brazilian doesn't speak English at all.

It only speaks Portuguese. And whatever other languages, tribal languages. And so then you have Islamacachev was fighting next weekend. Huge star. Yeah.

You know, from Dagestan. It's that no one in America. All they care are you, the baddest motherfucker on earth. Yeah. That's all they care.

And I really genuinely believe that if someone came along, like, I really wish Zufa would do it. Yeah. Because they're doing it with boxing. They should do it with kickboxing.

Yeah. Because kickboxing or more time, whichever they decide, you know, I think is the most exciting stand-up sport in the world. I don't think it's even close. I love glory.

I fucking watch it all the time. I watch all the events. Yeah. It's so exciting, man. It's so fun.

And the fights are so chaotic. And if you're a fan of brutal, brutal and technical at the same time.

I mean, some of the most amazing fights.

“I mean, that's how I knew about Paris because I was such a huge fan of glory.”

Yeah. When it came over to the UFC, I was like, everyone's fucked. I'm like, you don't understand. Everyone's fucked. This guy's different, man.

Yeah, he is. He's different. But it was because I knew him so much from kickboxing. And he was so exciting in kickboxing. Like kickboxing should be huge in America.

It should be. It should be. It really should be. Yeah, 100%. 100%.

And it's a part of MMA. So I think a lot of-- A giant part of MMA. The most exciting part of MMA is the kickboxing for sure. Yeah.

100%. 100%. It makes no sense. It's a, it is an untapped market. There's somebody figured it out and dove in and made it.

It would be gigantic. Yeah. It would have to be like the UFC though because you have to have the kind of publicity machine, the kind of media machine that the UFC has to build up the stories and show these guys and show like all the champions.

100%.

“And but I think that's in every big fight and every big organization is where”

the strength is this is the storytelling. Yes. That is where I think where and also if you ask me like when I was in glory, where it lacked on on experience like the storytelling. Right.

This guy come from what is his background and like you want to get to know the person instead of just like the guy that throws punches and kicks. Exactly. The UFC doesn't awesome job with that. They have a whole series called Embedded.

So like next week when the uh, Ian Gary is going to catch up fight takes place. Yeah. We're going to have one on Monday. So you get up a Monday morning. It'll be there on on YouTube and everybody will watch it.

And they're like oh shit. You watch that one and you watch the one on Tuesday. Yeah. You see them training, see him eating, see him in a sauna, cutting weight. Yeah.

You see him doing all their press stuff. You see him. And you get hyped man. You get hyped. But you get drawn into like oh, yeah.

This is the guy. Exactly. Behind the fighter. Exactly. I think that's so much more interesting.

And then they have the countdown show, which is an hour. Yeah. The countdown shows like highly produced and all this different stuff. So the interviews and conversations with their family. Yeah.

It's fucking amazing. And it just gets you so jazzed up for the fight. If the UFC did something like that with kickboxing, I think it would be gigantic. You know, they tried glory in America for a while. It was doing pretty good on Spike TV, remember?

Yeah. They had the last man standing tournament in Los Angeles. Yeah. I went to that. It was awesome.

It's just, it just never fucking caught on.

No. It was, it was hard.

It's only then after the last few years.

We were just in Europe. More in the Netherlands. That's where we, yeah. One is doing a good job with kickboxing. One FC, and I don't know.

You don't know them? No. Yeah. I know about them. I don't know what to do.

No, I don't know what to do. I don't know if they're interested in it. In the lighter weight divisions, because they get a lot of guys from Thailand and a lot of guys from Japan. Yeah.

With this, they're more Asian-based, right? Yeah. Yes. More Asian-based. But they have a lot of stand-up fights now.

A lot of, like, either. They have more tie with MMA gloves on. Yeah. In a cage, brutal. And then they're also having kickboxing in a cage.

Yeah. And kickboxing in a ring. They mix it up between things. Okay. That's great.

Yeah. I personally think the ring is better. I really do.

“Because I think that there's a lot of weird stuff with the cage.”

Especially with MMA. I don't like it. Because you could use it to get back up. Yeah. You could get your back against it and pull yourself back up.

He could also use it to take people down. Yeah. It's harder to take people down with the ring. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But that's why it's good for me now. Yeah. I know there's some talk about you fighting Derek Lewis. Yeah.

I remember that. And then you got this, the offer to box. And there's so much money. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah. That's where it started. Yeah. So we were in talks.

Because I was a free agent. I vacated the belt. How many MMA fights have you? At least one. One.

“I did some grappling with years ago, but I just have one.”

I wonder if a professional MMA fight. So after that, I vacating my belt. I was a free agent. Something like, OK, let's. Yeah.

Our toes in different water. Let's see. Yeah. Let's see what's on the landscape now. Why did you decide to vacate the belt?

Because you had done everything you needed to do it all. You cleaned out the division. I did it all. So I was like, I wanted it to make sense.

And first, we talked within the organization.

I'm like, hey, I'm looking to do big stuff. Different stuff. So like, crossover offense. Because that was getting more and more. Talks about like the big crossover offense.

And I think, yeah. In my opinion, I am one of the baddest men on the planet. So it made sense to do it. But then, yeah, within the organization management. Wrong management.

Like, we just didn't get it. We just didn't get to a place where it works out. So I was like, OK, let me just leave it then. So I left it. And then we talked with USC to see, yeah, what was going on there.

But then, yeah, I got the other offer and it made more sense. Now, was the other offer a one contract fight, a one fight contract. So you're free. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. So, and that's why. How many compensation at all about a rematch? Yeah, right away. His excellency came into the ring.

And he said, you're going to fight this guy again.

That's the first thing he said.

But cover you. I also came into the ring. I g'd cover you out. The WBC interim champion. And now, the champion.

Because Eusek vacated the belt as well. So he also wanted his shot. So there was like a lot of talk. Like at that moment, I was there. But it was just like, I don't know.

I was chaos. Yeah, chaos. And for me, I was just like, wow, they just fucked it. Yeah, they just really just happened. And it took, it took me like at least six weeks before I watched the fight back for the very first time after the fight.

Wow. Because it, it still arts. So, so yeah. So now I'm like a free agent and we get so many.

“What is it like watching it and watching the fight get stopped after the belt?”

It still arts. It still arts. Wow. What did you want me to do? You want me to move around?

Did you want me to? To punch back over there. For me, like, you know, I've been in trouble multiple times within my world title kickboxing fights. And I was behind multiple times. And I still came out on top.

So, there was, for me, there's no conversation in like, okay, could he continue? Is he going to continue? I never stopped. They don't know you. Exactly.

The conditioning thing. Like, your conditioning is so good. You bounce back so quick. And there's been so many times where guys try to empty the tank to put you out. Yeah.

And you're not going nowhere. And it was just a few seconds and a referee shouldn't know that. So, next to that, like, with all the experience you know that I have within the combat sports. Like, it's just a few seconds. Let it go.

And let me, at least, give me the opportunity and give the fans the opportunity to see that 12 from.

So, all the events are excited.

Yeah. Oh, my God. But also, looking now, looking back at it because there was also open scoring. And I love open scoring because within that gives you the right position and gives the fighters the position.

“Like, okay, where are we standing within this fight?”

But now looking back at the fight after eight rounds. Because after every four rounds, we hear what scoring is after eight rounds. My trainer, Peter Fury says, okay, we got to really start winning these rounds now. I was like, I was like, am I hearing this right? I feel like, I'm already wearing these rounds.

He said, no, we're equal. We're equal on the scorecards after eight rounds. So, I was like, okay, so in the ninth round, I started the commentator. So, like, what? Yeah, exactly.

But then I suddenly started pushing even more. But I was pushing already. But if you know, you're like eight or seven rounds head. And you feel like you're getting tired at the last two or three rounds. Just move around.

Yeah.

Tip tap and maybe you lose it.

Maybe it's a draw or whatever. And then still you win, because you were like five rounds ahead. Then it doesn't make any sense. But now we have to keep pushing. And then, oh, it's like walking straight into the upper corner.

Like, oh, it still gets me. Oh, I'm going to look back at it. It's like, oh, and then the last part. That's what I find so hard. And I feel like I need to work on that as a human being for myself as a person.

I can only look at that. At that one mistake, I felt I made at the end. Because I gave them the opportunity to pull this card. That's what. That's how it feels for me.

Mistake being that you pushed too hard. Yeah, yeah, the mistake like there was one mistake that I made running into that upper card. Like walking straight into swinging. And we sat in the in the in the whole prep. I tried that a few times like, oh, that's dangerous.

Don't do that with too sick and still for whatever reason. I did that at that exact moment.

“And that that's what frustrates me if I look back at it.”

Because I'm only I'm not looking at what he did well because that upper card. Because that upper card was amazing. I'm just looking at what I what I'm responsible for. And I'm responsible for myself. And I gave them now this opportunity by making that mistake.

And that's like, oh, so hard to get over that for myself. But I need to work on that because I had the same with the jump open. So deep fight with the eye. Everybody's like, oh, we go. You showed them.

You never giving up. But I know I got that. I know I got that from the inside.

But I never have to show that because the skill set is so, so big that I don't get in.

I don't get in trouble. So I don't have to show that I can continue and never giving up. But I can only look at that. Oh, that one mistake. Why did I do that?

Then I get the eye. You're so stupid. So I can only create that. Yeah. It's like I fucking punch as hard.

Yeah. And he's a big fella. Yeah, he's a big guy. Jemal Benzadek is huge, powerful. So that's that's hard for me.

But I got to work on that for myself. Yeah, but that's also why you're great. Yeah.

“I mean, you have to, you have to hate mistakes.”

Hate them. Yeah. Like they're poison. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You should've seen me after the fight. Like I was like a big baby. I was crying in my hotel room.

Like a big, big baby. Like, oh my God, we're so close. It's like shocking the world. And now this happened. It was like, oh, it hurts so bad.

I can still remember it. It's a certain extent, but at least you could laugh out at a little bit now. Yeah. I can only imagine.

But to me watching it as a fan of yours, I was like, oh my God, he's going to fucking pull it off. Yeah. I was on the edge of my seat. And when we're going into the 9th and 10th Browns,

I was like, I don't see how upset can win. No. And then when they started talking about the scorecards, I was like, what the fuck are they watching? This is crazy.

They're looking at a different fight. But that's so bad for me. Either corrupt or incompetent. Yeah. Either corrupt or incompetent.

If I look at it now. And for us talking about it. And for you being so long into combat sports, and being accommodated and doing it yourself. Wouldn't it be something?

Wouldn't you be maybe a spokesman or a car? Could you be a part of a way how we can make this whole judging thing? And this whole transparency better? Well, I think one way to do it is to have more judges like glory does. I think five is probably the right number.

And I think another thing to do is maybe have a bunch of people online that are recognized experts.

people that really understand the sport.

Yeah. And maybe they get an app. Maybe there's like a special app that those guys can judge on. Yeah. So you have a collective expert opinion.

Yeah. And you get to look at that as well. Yeah. But that's what we had now. Like if you look the professionals, the trainers, the commentators.

They also, the fight a certain way. But the judges saw something totally. They were looking at a different fight for some kind of reason. That's crazy. A problem like we talked about.

It's either incompetence or its corruption.

“And I think it might be a little bit of both.”

Yeah. And I think maybe the corruption isn't even caught just. But it's like they know who the promoter wants to win.

They want usic to win because music is where you can get the next Tyson Fury fight or the Anthony Josh.

Well, not Anthony Joshua. But whoever he would decide to fight. Yeah. You know, again. And now it's going to be Deonte Wilder, which nobody's caught on.

I don't know. I don't know if he's going to happen. Where is that scene? Signed. Can you please find out if the Anthony Joshua or excuse me the.

I'll just say, wow, they're. Alexander Usic fight is signed because people were talking about that being. I think they were saying like December or something. They were trying for at least I know this. Yeah.

That's what they were trying for. But for me, like that's why I for now. It's not officially signed yet. Okay. Let's lead to his excellence.

Yeah. Turkey, I'll shake. This is the fight. But here's the question. Does Usic want that fight?

That's the question. No.

“I don't think it's really tough fight like that fight.”

And then, you know, they ask you to do it again. And it's your last time out. I mean, this is he's called. This is his last fight. Yeah.

If this is last fight and he almost lost to you. And he has the potential of losing again. He didn't have to entice him. They didn't have to fuck him. Yeah.

So you pull out that paper. That he's like shrink. Be back. - Oh, okay, if I lose it, yeah, it's what it is.

- Exactly, just, never do it so good for me now,

to be in this position. I'm a free agent, we got off from the biggest organizations. - Across the world, like, after this fight, and I'm just like taking my time. - What are you looking at?

- They're giving you that's exciting. - Can you talk about them? - No, really. - No. - No, no, no, no. - No, no, no. - No, no, no, no. - Yeah, no, no.

- I know a lot of people talked about you possibly boxing Francis in Gano, or having an MMA fight with Francis in Gano. - Was that on the table? - Yeah, and also, to be honest,

like two weeks before the Usec fight, there was the MVP card, but then they approached me like weeks before MVP to MMA versus Francis. And then I was also like right on the edge of like closing the deal with Usec.

And so I had the two options on the table, and yeah, to be honest, like the other the MMA deal, like they kept on like stacking up, stacking up, like, we got like, okay, more than we give you the. Okay, but what if we give you the,

okay, let me look at this option again. (laughing) So, but then, yeah, I just looked myself in the mirror like I respect his excellency, and Jason gave his word, and his excellency gave his word that they were gonna do it.

And if I look at myself, I'm looking at a legacy, and that Francis in Gano fight is still gonna be there after the Usec fight, but how crazy is that? As a kickboxer coming in, fighting for a world championship with him boxing and potentially winning,

because that's how I only have one plan, and that's winning. So, that's how I went into that fight, and we saw how that went, and that was, - Did you succeed in kicking him? - No, not really, not at all.

- No. - Didn't win, she could just a few low kicks. (laughing) Because that is definitely not gonna make it to the end. - No, but that was so funny,

because everybody's like, we go, you have to think kickboxing for so long. Like what happens if you had kick him like, just don't you have that feeling like, like, guys, like, I've been boxing,

next to doing kickboxing, like for him. 15 years or something, I've been working with Peter Fury for so long, and I'm used to this,

“but I don't know for, I think that's what made me”

such a good kickboxer as well, that I was into boxing. But there's a giant difference between working with a kickboxer, and even being a kickboxer, and fighting arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time. - 100% - 100% - 100%

but the crazy thing was, I think, I think it was around five or six. It was jamming me, I was just ticking it away, and I was like, pump, pump, pump. I'm like talking to myself in the fight,

I'm like, am I out jamming the jam?

This is crazy, and I'm just right out here during my turn to Dennis. We go, just keep doing what you're doing, you're winning this fight, let's go, let's go, let's go. Because he also didn't want me to take too many risks, right?

- Right. - Okay, you won this round, and then continue for them,

“'cause that's how they were experiencing,”

the fight and the rounds on the side.

- Well, let me ask you this, when you first started

formulating a game plan, did you watch a bunch, I'm sure you're already a fan of Usuk's, watch his five percent, but did you rewatch him and try to find patterns? How did you formulate this game plan?

- Oh, of course, with my trainer, Peter Fury, with the East, yeah, he's crazy, he's the very, very, very bet best at what he does. And we were just analyzing these fights. Like, so first he already had the thing in his mind,

and he asked me, like, what do you see all these boxes do, and what they shouldn't be doing, and what do you think they should do? So, look at it, look at it, look at it, look at it, and I think it basically started

with if somebody is a South Pole, why would you stay right in front of them? That's one thing, and because you cannot go if somebody's Orthodox, you move to the right, but you cannot move to the right with a South Pole,

because you walk straight into a left hand. So, why is nobody moving to the left? Because then, as soon as you move to the left, you're walking away from, that's strong arm.

“And that's what we were saying, exactly.”

Which is crazy. It's just so many people are so stuck in their patterns, the way they like to move, they like to move to their right. That's what they like, they feel good, they want to move to their right and throw a right hand,

but you're running into that power hand, it's crazy. It's not just that, too. It's also the size difference, like that was one thing. It's like you were so big in that ring, that you were smothering him, and you all top of him,

and you were throwing those shots in tight. They were the combination of those two, getting him out of that position took away so many, so many of his tools. And then, like you said, smothering and getting into him

and using my size, because if you ask me, like all the guys he thought are way, they're my size. They're way bigger than him, but because of the way, they thought they couldn't use their size on him, but the way I did it, I could.

I said, if you really did a lot, he used his size a lot, and he's a different kind of big though. He's big and long, where you're fucking thick. It's a different thing, you're very lean and huge. It's a different, it's like the mass of you

when you were on top of them pushing them. You could see that I was a factor, it was recognizing it. But it's so hard, like if you look at that fight that you just mentioned, is how are you gonna get, he tried to use his size,

but how are you gonna get close to him, walking straight into it? Because then he's just gonna keep moving. Right. Keep moving because he's so fast on his feet.

But that's what we try to do. We try to be fast on our feet and move to the side and then get into it and then get close. Because then as soon as you, he's the software, you keep moving this way

and just keep getting closer. Somewhere, you're gonna be there. You're gonna reach him. But it takes some time and I didn't think, if you look at the heavy weights,

what they all wanna do is they wanna pop, they wanna hit, maybe boom, boom, one, two.

First is the very of arguably one of the best

to have ever done it. And then especially in a cruise await, how are you gonna hit him in step A? Right. It's gonna be at least step B, C or D

when you're gonna hit him. You gotta have multiple plans. Like for me, I was just throwing throw throw throw throw. I don't know, I was the first time I was gonna hit him was maybe even punch six or whatever.

Because then this is gonna be closer. So I didn't even think about trying to knock his head up. That's what I said.

“I said I'm gonna do that's what I'm gonna do.”

And knock his head off. Of course, I'm gonna tell him that. 'Cause that, this is definitely not what we're gonna do. I was just gonna get close and keep working volume. Keep working volume.

And then finding when you're there, that's the moment you're gonna put in some power. But that's like maybe punch seven or eight.

But the first three, four, you're not even gonna hit this.

You're just hitting air because he's too fast. Right. He's like a giant Loma Chanko. Exactly. But that's how we thought about it.

Don't try and hit him in the first two or three punches. Throw them so he has something to look at and something to think about.

you smother him, boom, punch him in the body.

“What heavyweight boxes have you worked with over the years?”

All the top fighters. Of course, that's how I got with PDFU. I started with Tyson Fury. I trained with, I just probably out because he was also in that camp back then.

UE Fury, Peter Sun, I think he's also been going up and down because of his health. But he's definitely one of the best. And he, if we're gonna see more of him. Because yeah, he's such a good competitor.

Such a good boxer as well. Great skill set. So there's been a bunch of fighters that we're working with. That's so massive. 'Cause you know, sharing all that gym time

with elite guys like Tyson Fury. You know, in Kobe up though, I haven't that kind of experience in the gym. Must have also been a huge confidence. 100%.

100%.

“Especially now in these, this is the whole last thing.”

He's trying to get like a good, softball fighters. Oh my God, that's the hardest thing. The hardest thing. And then we had one big guy. And we had one smaller guy.

It was so hard. And then mixing that up. So we started off with first, first six with the big guy. Moses Jolly.

And an amazing boxer, but he's big.

He's big. He's not a new sick. He's like twice as big as he's sick. But he's a softball. So he has that power.

And we could really compete. And then after that, we jumped in with James Branch. And he's like 90, 90 kilo, softball. So he's like, 35.

So, and that changed within sparring. So the first six with one. And then six with the other. Oh my God. That was, it was next level.

It was like six months of pure hard work. Wow. But it was so cool. It was so cool.

And it just opened up my mind to a whole different, to a whole different world.

And it's for being in combat sports since I was six. And after all these years saying like, okay, this kick boxing chapter within the book is I think that's done. Let's start a new chapter. Well there's no big kick boxing fight that can compare with what you just did.

No, exactly. How old are you now? 38? 37. 37.

So at that age, like you've got to look at what you've already accomplished. And kick boxing, there's no fight that everyone's calling out for like, oh, you know, it's not like butterhars in the prime. No. He's not like one big fight.

No. So that was like, hey, and especially with the whole crossover fights, being at the biggest attention right now.

“I was like, hey, I think this is something we got to look at.”

So after the fight is done, Turkey Allsheet comes into the ring, says you guys are going to fight again and it's been a couple of months now. So what has happened, what did you talk to anybody? Has your management talked to you? Yeah, they talked to everybody because it's been crazy.

Like all the biggest organizations reached out, hey, we were looking at this fight, we're looking at that fight, right? But what about what makes, what makes sense for us? And that's where I'm looking at now because like I said, I mean, I believe I'm in the winter of my career.

So I'm just looking at big fights. Do you have a time when you want to get out? No, no, it's not set in stone, but let's let's see, let's see. But like I said, I feel like I'm so excited. I'm so happy and I'm so grateful to be in this position right now.

So let's make history. Yeah, I mean, they fucked you over, but you did win. You got a big win out of it in that and you performed way better than anybody expected. And then there's also this element where people rooting for you because they do deal, thank you got fucked over.

Yeah, 100%. Thank you. We're getting fucked over in the scoring and you got fucked over with the stoppage. And so it's very marketable. So what my question though, what I'm asking is, is anybody talked about the rematch other

than that one time? I knew it was going to come. I'm like, that's what I wanted to know. Oh, it's not good about the rematch. That is the fight.

That is one of the biggest fights in heavyweight boxing right now 100%. If not, though, it's got to be other than Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua was going to be big for England, right?

Two of the all-time greats in England.

“Two of the greatest British heavyweight champions ever.”

A little bit late, but it's a little late. Especially after Anthony Joshua's last fight. That was a scary one. That was like, whoa, they have both of them. Yes.

Both of the fights. They did. Yes. Yeah. It's not, they're not the same guys.

No.

But still, there's a super excited example of legends and it's a fight that finally

I made. Other than that, the fight is a rematch. Yeah. UNUSIC is a fight. That's the fight in the heavyweight division now.

There's no one else out there that's like, you know, there's Moses. I Thomas, who people don't really know about enough. Not yet, yeah. But he says the future. 100%.

Oh, that guy's good. Dynamite. Dynamite. Dynamite. Yeah.

So good. And he's so slick in how he moves in and out. Yeah. Oh. Now, that's the next generation.

Yeah. He's the future. Yeah. I mean, he's like our generations Mike Tyson. Yeah.

Well, you watch him. He's 21 years old. He's coming up. You're like, oh, yeah. But other than, I mean, but he doesn't have an experience yet.

And doesn't have enough name yet for what he really is of what his potential is. Not yet. If one day will happen, but for you, and for Ulsik, that, and for heavyweight boxing, that's the fight. Yeah.

100%. What shows the promoter? Yeah. Maybe we'll get Dana White to get Zufa involved. That would be crazy.

I don't know.

“What is there is some sort of a deal that Ulsik has with anybody?”

And don't think so because I believe that is one of the reasons, as well, why he fakeated those belts because he doesn't want to deal with anybody else. No, because when you have those belts, you get forced into fights. Right. And like, OK, your mandatory to fight this guy.

And that was the, I think for him, the position that he was in fighting me, he could like, that was a voluntary defense. And he decided, like, hey, I would love to do this on my terms versus another guy. And I think they looked at it like, this may be going to be an easier fight.

So this is nice to do that didn't go the way he's planned, but, but still, I think that's where where his mind is at now, like he's like, I just want to do what I want to do, which makes so much sense after what he has accomplished as well. After what he has accomplished, he should be able to call his own shots. Yeah, I want him to make the most money possible because he is a legend.

But that's this, but this is the fight, this is the problem is, it might be too hard.

Yeah, it might be too hard. It might be one of those ones, which is why he may be, you know, no disrespect to Deontay, but he might be looking at Deontay thinking Deontay is a little softer. Yeah, we're going to ride into the sunset. Yeah, but it's also spectacular knockout.

Yeah, but it's also then, like you said, it's not going to be the big money grab that, because if you ask me, we're going to pay for that. No, exactly, they're not going to be paid that crazy money for it. It's not a big paper view fight, that's the thing. It's like, people will watch it just because he's in all time great in any time

Lucic fights, people are going to watch. And Deontay still, he's still the greatest one punch knockout artist in the history for it.

“Yeah, you should never know what's going to happen when you fight.”

He'll lose his power, his power is fucking crazy. Yeah, he's geeky. He finished you in the tenth. Yeah, one shot. Yeah, coming out of nowhere, or tease on the top of the head and put him out. I was like, that is nuts. Yeah, he's just a level of power. Different level of power, but again, 40 years old, it's twilight of his career.

And this hasn't looked good in the last few years. But for Lucic to want that fight, signals to me that he just, you know, wants just go out with one more payday, and that's it. And I don't know if that was his choice that fight, maybe that's just the internet talking. Yeah. Maybe that's Deontay Wilders team, what's that fight?

I don't know. I don't know either, but like I said, I got I got all the options. They gave me all the options. Like, you want to find this guy you want to find there? So if they talked to you about MMA as well, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm keeping the options open, but I'm leaning towards box. Yeah, because I've been in the boxing game now and I've enjoyed it so much.

And that's like for me, like I just said, like I came from kickboxing from being six years old and doing it for over 30 years and then now getting really into boxing.

I was always boxing, but I was boxing to kickbox.

It's totally different game. I had to we wire everything that that was in there. So now that I did it and I performed the way that I performed. I was like, yeah, this was fun. This episode is sponsored by better help. You've probably heard about better help before, but maybe you haven't heard from those

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H-E-L-P.com/j-r-e. I really enjoyed that. Also, that is the glory division, no pun intended of the heavyweight division, is the heavyweight division, or of boxing rather, is the heavyweight division.

The heavyweight division is where the real money is at always.

That is the baddest. It's always been that way. And for you, after that performance, I got to think there's a lot of options for you. Yeah. Like I said, they threw us so many stuff at us, but we're like, hey, we take our time,

look at the different options, and of course, still is excellency, has our first preference because they gave us the opportunity. Right. Yeah. We wanted to fight in front of the pyramids.

That's crazy. It's insane. Outside. It was insane, Joe. It's like, let me tell you another story.

So that happened also while I was in this camp. It's not a nice thing to say, but my mother passed away during the moment I was in camp. I was in the 40s fight. And well, that happened, it was hard. And then we had to clean out her house.

And then finally doing that and cleaning everything and then we come by a bunch of pictures. And yeah, you can see it on my Instagram. And then I see the pictures of my mother, 30 years prior being in front of the pyramids.

“It's like, wow, why do I see these pictures now, knowing that?”

This fight is in front of the pyramids. It was mind blowing. So for me, it was like full circle going back. I like literally made the same pictures my mother made, 30 years prior before the fight in front of the swings in front of the pyramids.

And that was like a goosebumps. So for me, having that whole experience being in front of the pyramids, doing that, was like full circle. And you can say come up with that idea to have you guys fight in front of the pyramids. Well, the way to look at that, yeah, that's crazy.

That really is crazy, wow. Wow, that really is wild. So when did they come up with the idea of having a heavyweight title fight in front of the pyramids?

Yeah, so the communication is always like, really straightforward, and they don't say too much.

So the way it began, like the first thing I got was just like what's that picture? We're thinking about this location. That was the first thing. Because the first was on the picture, I opened it, it's a pyramids, nice. And then after that, I looked at it.

We're thinking about this location, like, okay, but how are you going to do that? Like, to me, it didn't make too much sense. And then afterwards, it said like, they said me, if you're like, yeah, we're going to do it here. It's going to be outside.

And it's like, oh my god, it's going to be outside in front of the pyramids. It's like my blowing, and that was also a thing. That's what I said. It was like the rumble in the jungle, right, but then with that being said, what people thought, like, what is this guy talking about?

Is he putting himself in the same category as Ali and forming a way of what is it? Oh, that's not what I'm saying. I mean, about the location.

I've never put myself in that.

Everybody knows me like, I'm super almost, I'll never, we would say something like that.

“But that's what I meant, like, it was something like the rumble in the jungle because we're”

talking about the location. Right. The location was a part of the experience.

It was insane. You know, like, and then for me, they asked me, like, we go, can we ask you to do like a certain choreography? Okay, I don't want to do too much. I want to focus on fighting, oozing.

It's okay.

“The only thing you've got to do is like punch the ground, and then the ground is going”

to crack open, and then we're going to like, for the first time, that evening boom, we're

going to turn on the pyramids. That's cool. That sounds good. I'll do that. Well, I did that, but it, so I punched the ground, I turned around.

And for the first time, we see like the ground crack and open, and then the lights shine onto the pyramids. Wow. Wow. It was a goosebump moment.

Was that your first time being at the pyramids?

Yeah.

“Yes, so that's why it is the whole picture, and it's whole thing was for me, it was like a”

full circle, like, wow, it was such a special moment, such a special event, and then, okay, then I turn around, then my whole theme song comes up, you know, you know how I run to the tutoring, but that wasn't like a real catwalk, and during the day already went to see like what they expected from me, and like how I'm going to, and there was like some small steps, like down, like five or six.

And then in my song, boom, I do my thing, and I run to the ring, but I was like walking straight on to these steps. I'm like, I'm not going to take these steps fast, I'm like, no, fucking, I'll just jump down. I just decided that at the moment, and then I landed, it was like, oh, this was high,

and I just kept on running, it's like, just think about like, maybe I just like, bring my ankle and something like jumping from the crazy, and he's like, yeah, oh my god, it was so funny because afterwards, the camera man, you woke up to me, it's like, I almost missed you, you were jumping down, it's like, I was looking at you looking at you, like, well, you were gone, that was why, yeah, it was, it was, it was outside, and it was, the

“temperature was actually was pretty good, what was the temperature, I think it was like”

20, 20 degrees, so that's Celsius, what is that, it's like 70 something? Yeah, sure, yeah, it was really in that, in the real mid-part, yeah, what's that, James? I mean, 100, you know, is boiling, and 220 was boiling for Fahrenheit, but like zero, I'm 30, I don't know, yeah, just put it in the, yeah, I'm just on the screen, I can't. What is 20 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit?

68, oh, perfect, so that was nice, so you're like, oh, I run, I don't, I don't, I just just, I don't know, wow, no, it was so cool, did it feel any different than any other fight you've had before, no, no, we've had so much, what is, how many kickboxing fights have you had? 75, something? 75, that's crazy, yeah, that's crazy, yeah, that's a giant, huge advantage of having so much combat sports experience.

Yeah, but, but where everybody was leaning towards was like, this guy has one professional boxing fight, what is he doing there, it doesn't make any sense, like guys, I've been in and around the ring for quite a while, I have a bunch of friends of mine that are just boxing fans, yeah, and they were talking on kinds of shit, like, you know, oh, so, that's so many apologies, I have so many, I'm so, I'm so, many famous boxers, I have like, I didn't

know what you were capable of, but dad, this was crazy, and I got to thank you, appreciate that. Quite honestly, I didn't know what you're going to be capable of either, because I knew you, as a kickboxer, were one of the greatest of all time, but as a boxer, I hadn't seen, I'm like, you take you away one of his biggest weapons, which is the low kicks,

me, your low kicks are phenomenal, you have a tree trunk leg, you know, so it's like, that's a giant weapon that's removed from them, like, we'll see, he's also fighting one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest boxer of all time, and the heavyweight division, but to have that kind of a performance, and to do it the way you did it, it's like, man, it was, it was amazing to watch, it was as a personal, it's watching combat sports, it was

one of the most exciting things I've ever watched. Yeah, thank you so much, I appreciate that, but for me, I think what worked in my advantage to most was if you look at kickboxing, and it's logical, like, physically, is like you're so square on, and everybody thought that was what I was going to do, but I was boxing

always to kickbox, so I'd be pretty furious, been telling me to do, get more on the side,

for years, but how, as a kickboxer, I'm not going to be more on the side, you can't, I'm not going to kick my leg off, because I can't block anymore, so I was constantly trying to find the balance within that, and now Peter was super happy, because now, finally,

to the side, more to the side, because you're too square on it, so I needed the six months,

and so much hard work, we had to put into that. Did you find yourself, like, having to correct it mentally, or did it get to a point where it was instinctive, the stance and the positioning? We had to, I had to, definitely, correct, and they had to tell me, but were you correcting in the fight?

And the fight was, it was, it was, you got it, we got it down, but within the whole prep, so you really do need the six months for the prep, 100% so for me, this whole experience of getting into boxing, it was perfect, it was perfect, for everybody around it, it was

really terrible, of course, where Anthony Joshua went through and everything, so the most

horrific thing ever, but for me, getting into the transition to boxing, I needed that

“time to get it, like, a clean transition, and that's why I was super happy with the six”

months and the change of fights, I still, I believe, like the Anthony Joshua fight, still a big fight, that we could do, but, yeah, getting the opportunity to fight for a boxing heavyweight title is another level big, of course. Oh, yeah, it's gigantic, and then also, I've got to think that from that experience, you're even better now.

How do you present it? You have to be better, you just were in there with the best guy ever. Yeah, 100%, but the funny thing is, like, that's why I made the meme of Jim Carrey, like, and everybody was like, he's moving pretty straight, what is he doing, but we knew that that thing would work for the first music, and what we got so many more tools in the toolbox

“that we can pull out, because in another fight, first is a different fighter, we're going”

to show a whole different we go again, but if we're going to fight us again, it's going to be slightly different, but it's still, like, basically, the strategy works. Well, you gave him so many things to think about constantly, yeah, there was no time to set.

There was always chaos, there was always hands moving, there was always your body's moving,

you're moving forward, you're shuffling around, it was so much activity that his mind has to constantly process all the time. But normally, that is what he does, and that's if you look at the whole heavyweight division all the previous fights, he was in control, he was showing them so much if you have something to look at the whole time, he's like, it keeps you, it gets your mind out of what you

want to do, because you're constantly anticipating what you're opponent is doing. So that's, yeah, what we try to do, we try to take that from him. What were you doing for conditioning, like, I just want to know what your conditioning is like in general, because you are such a big guy, and to be that big and have that kind of cardio is very extraordinary.

Do I agree, do I agree, maybe partially, I agree with that, because to be honest, at the

“top, Joe, everybody works hard, that's what I do, I just work incredibly hard.”

But I believe that mentally, when you get tired or when your body gives signals of starting feeling to feel tired, how do you cope with that in your mind, that's where I think the biggest difference is, because if, at the moment, I feel I'm getting tired, then I know my opponent is feeling fucked, because I know how hard I work to be fit and to do everything possible to be in the best shape ever, because if you look at training schedules

or whatever from my schedule versus another guy's schedule, I find it hard to believe that I'm training so much harder than all the other top guys, yeah, that's my opinion, I find that hard to believe. So for me, it's just like a mental thing, as soon as I start feeling it, I'm like, okay, not if I start.

Well, there's certain, certain people have genetics that lean towards better cardio and conditioning. And then the UFC came for last guys was famed for that as a monster. He just had insane cardio for a heavyweight, but for you, what I'm getting at, how much time are you spending on strength and conditioning versus skill work?

is based on endurance, so even the power, I don't have to do 300 pounds.

I don't care, I know I'm already big, and I know I'm not the hardest puncher within the game. I don't have to be the hardest puncher in the game. But as soon as I hit, I'm still a heavyweight, still like 260 pounds behind it. So when I hit you, you're going to feel it.

So that's how we approach it. I don't, yeah, just lean into what works for you, I'm not the strongest puncher. I also don't believe I'm the most skillful, but I'm definitely the hardest worker.

“And that's what we try to emphasize, like, just keep working, keep working hard.”

So we, yeah, the pace is high, we can show a lot, we can do a lot. Do you have a guy that's just a strength and conditioning guy that, so what kind of work were you doing? What kind of things are you doing?

Do you want to know it all, right?

Yeah. I do a full body, full body workout three times a week. And just a lot of reps. A lot of reps. So this is more strength than conditioning, or is it both at the same time?

It's both at the same time. It's both at the same time. Because what we do is we have, for example, we do chest, and I do like 20 reps just the beginning, 20 reps, and we get to another exercise. And then again, I do 20 reps, so we do 40 reps each.

And those reps are going to go up, the closer we get to the fight. But the rest between the exercise is just 30 seconds. And then we change, exercise, and we go to a different muscle group, and then we go back to chest. And then again, we do 20, 20, 30 seconds.

Okay, we go to a different muscle, and then again, 30 seconds.

“So the pace is incredibly high, and I think that whole training takes maybe 35, 40 minutes,”

max. Yeah, that's got to be a giant factor, because I don't know how many people are doing that that way. You know, a lot of guys are doing strength, and or conditioning, they're running, they're hitting the back, they're doing different things.

Hey, but for me, I'm not focusing on, when I'm focusing on strength, I don't want to be big. I feel like I'm already pretty big, and the more muscles I have, I have to just carry them with me, and all those muscles, they want, and they need oxygen. So then my heart is going to be pumping just to get that oxygen there. No, I just focus on that.

Boom, and then I start with 20, and then I get to 22, and then I get to 24, and then with the same exact weight, so you get so much stronger at the same time, you get so much fit there. Right. And that combination, just, I don't know, it's just, it's just been working for us throughout

the years.

“So are you using apps and heart rate monitors and things on those lines?”

Yeah, yeah, I'm using hard rate monitors, the running in different different ways, we do the interval running, we do the endurance running, sometimes it just run for an hour. And then you do the interval running. Is this mostly treadmill work? Yeah, because my body's been through a lot.

So running on the concrete, running outside is just rough on the knees. No, it's, I don't believe it's smart. I have this special treadmill, which I can take some of my own weight off, so I have this big balloon around me. Oh, okay.

I know what you're talking about. I've seen those before. Yeah. So I got that, since I had the ACL surgery on the knee, and ever since it's been using it, I love it.

I love it. So I can do the running experience, and because I love running, because it's so hard. So heavy on the body, and mentally, it's so hard, but then I don't have to full force on my joints. Right, right, right, it's just like, yeah, it's not good.

Well, I mean, you gotta think of all those years of leg kicks. That kicks, and oh my God.

First of all, when I got the ACL, I was like, oh my God.

How long ago did that happen? Three years ago? Three years ago? Yeah. I thought I was done.

So much pain. I was like, why I'm getting close to the end of my career. Now this happens, like, and then getting back from that within six months, that was like, because I had a bucket handle, Maniskus, and at the ACL, I had exactly the same thing.

Yeah. It was terrible. Did they remove the Maniskus? No. They just stitched it up.

They just stitched it back.

Yeah. You're not allowed to put too much pressure on it. Right. Oh, my God.

“They used to think that you should cut the Maniskus out.”

Now they've done studies, and they find that there's no benefit to that. That's because it's humanistic. Yeah. Right. Between the bones.

Right. It's just bone on bone. Exactly. Exactly. They said it's personally with me being so heavy and so big, and like, uh, and with the

10 years, you're going to have trouble if we're going to take it out. Yeah. I have trouble on my left leg because of that very reason. We took a big piece of it out when I had the bucket handle tear, and it just, that that area hurts all the time.

Yeah. It is what it is. They do cadaver graphs. We'll take a cadaver Maniskus and put it in place. Yeah.

They take a piece of Maniskus out of a dead guy.

But it doesn't always work, and, you know, you really have to be young for it to work

more effectively. I guess they say that, but that also could be dependent upon what you're doing with it. Like, are you using peptides, or using stem cells, or using hyperbaric chamber, or using red light therapy, or using all the different modalities that can help you heal quicker? Yeah.

But yeah, they do. I know I've got to do it. You definitely use everything because you have an age of the days since, as you get the last shows. I used everything.

I don't know how you're doing, but after the show, you got to give me the recipe. Well, I probably do a lot of the things you do because I know you do coal plunge every day. I love it. I do that every morning, um, and I do a lot of sauna work, but I do a lot of red light therapy.

I do that at least four or five times a week. I try to do it. I've done, uh, I have a hyperbaric chamber. I do that a lot. Yeah.

I try to do that as many days a week. I've done that two days in a row now. I'll do it three, four days a week. If when I'm really feeling better, it's what I'm doing it three or four days a week. I just constantly training.

Like you have to, yeah. Can't get out of shape. But you do it all right? You do. Yeah.

You can get out of shape. You can't get back in shape. But if you stay in shape, it's remarkable how much you can keep it going. Well, you look at Bernard Hopkins. I mean, he was performing at a world class world championship level at 50 years old.

That was a boxer. They're just nuts. That's insane. And it's just because of his discipline.

You know, never got fat, never got out of shape, always stayed in the gym, never ate bad

food. Definitely.

“It keeps you just in balance because that's what I believe why just training in general”

for everybody is so good because that's me time. Yep. That's the time that you're working on what is good for you and for your mental health. You're not thinking about, hey, I'm at work. I'm making money to provide for the family or I'm doing grocery for this.

No, I'm in the gym and I'm working on me. I can turn your phone off. Yep. This is a music and just like work on your body and your mental health. It's so good.

And the effects of it afterwards, the alleviation of anxiety and pressure and just how good you feel, the endorphins, I just wish people that don't do it could understand that because so many people, they just have an aversion to the hard work. They have an aversion to like getting there. They just like, oh, I don't want to do it.

I don't want to do it. But if you just do it, you'll feel so much better and then everybody wants to talk about discipline. A discipline is very important.

It's the most important thing probably, but almost equally important is momentum.

And once you have a few good days in a row, the discipline is not as hard anymore. No, but now you have momentum. Yeah, 100% you're right, but the thing is what happens, same with the co-plunch that we do multiple times a week or almost every day, is like some days, the same is going to work or whatever.

You just wake up and you just do not feel like doing it. Yeah. And the discipline comes in like, I don't do not feel like doing it, but I am going to do it because if I can do it on the days and I do not feel like doing it, every other day is going to be easy.

Yes. And that's the, for me, what I felt like, like I was just sharing with you, like, what

“I find so hard, for example, with the losing and the mistakes that I made, that's what”

I've been doing, like, to be honest, my whole life, that's what I'm trying to work on now is like everything that happened in my life, like, spend some crazy, like my mother passed away within this preparation and I do not take the time to, to really take that, to take it and take it in, like, what just happened? And I had the same thing with my father, it was like, right before the Bencidic fight.

And I just take it and I continue because what I do, I take it and it's a certain emotional pain. And I use that to put it in physical pain so I can use it as fuel for what I do in the ring

But I feel like personally in relationships and just in general, in just living, I think

that's not the way to cope with it. So that's what I'm trying to do. So it's very difficult to be balanced if you also want to be excellent.

“If you want to be the best, you know, if you want to be and accomplish what you've accomplished,”

you have to be obsessed and if you have to be obsessed, it's almost impossible to be balanced. It's almost impossible to have a balanced life and also be obsessed on a goal. No, 100%, but I don't feel like it's so much about the balance, but it's just not the way to cope with life in general, next to being an athlete and being a fighter, which is a big part of what you do, but just like in general, like, okay, how do you cope with things?

Especially now with this, for example, with this loss, is like, how do I find a way to give this loss and a way of like, okay, that I can work with it without feeling frustrated or like, oh, I got robbed or whatever, so I feel like that's getting better. So I watch my mom funeral back, like, I think, like, four or five weeks ago for the very first time.

So, she passed away in February, that's when I watched her back for the first time, just

to take it all in again. And again, I went all the way through it and I'm like, okay, I need to do that more to get, I don't know if it's balanced or just, I don't know, just to get, like, a way of feeling like, yeah, I can take that emotion in them because now I just, every time I'm pushing that emotion away and just use it as fuel to be a fighter and be the best version of me

with the ring. But, like, as a person, I don't feel like it's a healthy way to just, like, keep pushing everything. No, certainly pushing it down. Well, it's great that you recognize that, though, and that will definitely help you

as you transition from being a fighter to being a retired fighter and doing whatever else you want to do, we have so much time left in your life to do anything. Yeah, 100% recognizing that that is an issue is huge for your ability to move on to do other things. Yeah, 100%.

That's a giant struggle for a lot of fighters, the struggle, especially fighters that have competed at your level, the glory, the excitement, the chaos of it all is so huge, that to step away from that, it's very, very difficult for a lot of guys.

“Yeah, that's why I'm so happy, and I also believe that what gave me this is that I found”

my new passion within acting, but, so being on sets with Jake Dylan Hall, with Dave with Dista, with Elvis Hodge, and those guys being so excellent at what they're doing as actors, and they're just talking with them about this, I think, that also gave me more and more that realization of, hey, instead of just pushing it away, I can use those emotions and that feeling to be an actor at a certain point.

So, and I always said, "Oh, I just kept pushing it away, I don't want to feel it, as soon

as I feel it, I turn it into physical pain, so I know I get a better version of me within the ring." I hear what you're saying, but if you want to get into acting, it's good to feel, because as soon as you feel, it's even better, it's going to transition even better on camera, because then we see that you're feeling something, and if it comes out of your own experience,

it's even better. It hurts still, but you can turn it into something positive, and that's where I'm really happy about, like, after being a fighter, I really found my new passion within acting, because it's so much fun. That's true.

It's fun being on set, and being great at something else. That's great that you found something else you're excited about. That's really important, very important. So how many movies have you done?

“I did a few, did a few, I think, like, a handful, I think the most recognizable things I”

did was, then a thief's, Pantera, then a thief's too. Nice. With Gerard and Oshay Jackson Jr., and the last one, Roadhouse. So I know, of course, I've been talking with Jason for quite some time now, to do something together.

So we're looking at different options, like, hey, we could do this, but he's, like, he has

movie, and I want you to be this type of character, because I don't want you to die,

“and I want you to do this, I want you to do that.”

So it's, yeah, for him being, yeah, so experience within that world, I just-- Well, also, he's coming as an athlete as well. Exactly. He was a world-class diver, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So he's an, he's a martial arts fanatic. He loves it. Yeah. He loves it.

Yeah.

So that's, yeah, that's amazing.

So, and, yeah, telling him that, like, hey, I love to act. So he comes to my fight, I've seen him on set, like, hey, I just look at what he does, and how he does it, it's, yeah, it's out of this world, it's the next level. Well, that's so good that you have something really excited about as you retire, like, transitioning into that, and that you already have some of success with that.

Yeah, 100% huge. 100% huge. That's nice too. Another one, like, right, huge success in WWE went on to do that, and now he's done a ton of movies. Yeah.

And he's really good. Yeah, he's really good. He's a good actor. Yeah, it's not just like, oh, he's an athlete that they tried to do some acting. No, he's, he's a really good actor, and he showed so many different sides of himself.

He was great in there. Was it the class onion? Was that what it was called? Yeah. Yeah.

What is that?

Yeah, knives out, knives out, glass onion, right?

That's what it was called. He was great in that. Yeah. He's great. He's, again, it's like, you see these big guys, and you say, oh, they're big, and they're

just going to play a brute, but no, it's like, he's a human. Yeah. Human beings have depth. Yeah. You could do a lot of different things.

Exactly. So. He's got a, he's losing weight now, just like, show, he's like, yeah, but he's, he looks amazing. Yeah.

He's still too, I mean, like, oh, he's so small. It's too 40. Yeah. Now he's huge. And he's a great shape.

He's a great, I mean, he's the nicest guy as well. Oh, that's cool. He's the nicest guy. So we had, now, we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun.

So it was such an honor to be there, I'll set with them, and such a big production. It's like, wow, he's looking at it. So how do you balance that out? Like now that you, like, as you've said, you're in the winter of your career, would you accept a movie role right now?

“If you knew that a big fight could potentially happen, so you have to be careful right”

now. Yeah. For me, it's like, I'm focused on finishing that, and as soon as I, then I have a movie, and like, okay, but then I'm not going to do a fight. That's, it's going to be hard.

So, and especially, uh, within the other one, I didn't really get the option, because I was on roadhouse, and then I got the answer in Joshua fight, but back then, I was just, the kickboxer. Right. The kickboxer will champion, but that didn't really say too much.

So I was in the underdog position, I was in the passenger seat. Now I show what I can do, so now I got a little more, like, you know, guys, I got a movie, so can we push the fight a little bit further, so I have the time to get ready for it. Right. So that's better now.

But for me, I would never blend those two together, and we're like, hey, okay, let me finish

this movie real quick, and that gets traded to a fight camp, that's going to be like a two, two, and a half months. I need a good, like, clean four months to get ready for a fight of this magnitude. Right. So, um, when you're talking about these different conversations that people have with you,

is the door completely closed to the UFC, because I know that they did contact you, and you were talking, they were talking about you fighting, and that they were going to try to do that Derek Lewis fight, and I was excited about that. Yeah. But the money was nowhere near.

I'm sure the money... Exactly.

“So, I believe that the gap is even bigger now, sure.”

So I think that's where that's where the actual problem is, just to be completely transparent. So for me, it doesn't make any sense to go around the bush or go backwards now, essentially. Yeah, if they would want to do something, it really has to make sense, but, yeah, we all know that, yeah, that's not really like how the UFC works. Right.

So, I don't believe that that is an option. Well, it's an option, because our heavyweight division is so, um, have you ever worked with Tom Aspmo? Of course. He's a very good friend of mine.

Oh, really? Oh, no. I've been retrained. I've seen a video of you guys doing that. Yeah, we've trained so much already for, like, I think, close to 10 years.

Man, he got a bad deal. He got really fucked over, um, for that fight. You know, the way people got upset at him for stopping the fight with those eyepokes, to me that drove me crazy, like, what do you expect the guy to do? He's defending the heavyweight title, it get poked in the eyes and he can't fucking see.

And he's the East and the nicest guy. He's the nicest guy.

And he works incredibly hard, and he would never, never even, because I understand where

it comes from from the people to a certain extent, because they feel like, hey, God was doing so good in the beginning of the fight. But it was just to be getting off the fight, it was just like the first round or whatever. So it's possible that, hey, because of some ring rust, you had to get into it and then the fight ain't over till it's over, right?

So you can have an opinion about that the first round I know he'd get an eye poke off. Now he's going to stop because he knew he was behind or whatever. He would never, never, in whatever world do that, because he has, no, if I don't have that, the eye poke is, no, he was knuckle deep in his eyes, it was like gone. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, Cyril gone has a history of doing that.

He's done that. And definitely, I truly be because I know Cyril as well, he's also a very nice guy. And I do not believe he's doing that intentionally to fuck with people or whatever. It's just a bad instinct that keeps happening. Yeah, maybe it's a habit you're doing this, you're running right into eyeballs.

It's just, they, they need to stop doing it. You know, I mean, there's, there's, there's a bunch of different conversations about how to stop it. Yeah. One of them has changed the gloves.

You don't need open fingers like that.

They don't have, you don't need that for grappling.

“No, they could cover the tip of it like a mitten, you know?”

And there's, there's a way to do that where it would probably eliminate a lot of the eye pokes. Another one is, this is a guy named Trevor Whitman, from OnExports, he's just engaged to each trainer who's, makes a much better glove. Okay.

And his glove, your hand is in this position all the time. Instead of the UFC glove, UFC glove, your hands like this, he just pulled it down to tighten up the fist. And this, it, with Trevor's gloves, it's curved like this. That's what you do this.

So you would, like, win more tie fighters like, Serogon, they, they frame off like that all the, right? You know that. Yeah. So when you have those UFC gloves, you're framing off like this.

Yeah. And that's when you're running into eye pokes. You know, so they try to tell you, keep your fingers up, which is great, but sometimes it doesn't work that way. Exactly.

You're leaning away. Yeah. You know, I don't think Serogon's a dirty fighter. I just think he's trying to finish fights. Like Alex Pereira thought he was dirty for hitting him in the back of the head.

And I watched the fight over again to watch it. And what I saw is Alex is moving Serogon's trying to hit him. And sometimes when that happens, some of the shots are going to hurt him. Yeah. Yeah.

But what? What is it? The referee that he's who, like, say, like, hey, stop it. Yes. Yeah.

We're fighting. So you've got to fight forever. You've got to fight forever. It's hard because you're also like, you, he might not have the best position to see it because it's chaos.

And also like, if you're trying to hit like a guy right here and then his head moves

“and then you hit the back of the head, who's fault is that?”

Is that your fault? You're supposed to pull back. You're in the middle of a shot. It's very difficult to stop. Yeah.

It's hard to say. But when you look at his performance in that fight against Alaprera, it was fucking extraordinary. Yeah. He's, we were, is a group chat.

I have a few friends of mine, Dean Thomas and Matt Serra and John Rollo. We do a podcast together. And we're just talking about it how basketball is a phenomenal base for some of these guys because Serra gone, I'm going to show you, I'll send you this video. I'll send it to Jamie, Serra gone, can't fucking move, man.

And some of the, the light, light feed as well. And he's 250 pounds, but it's the way he moves is so extraordinary. And I think some of that is because of basketball because, yeah, well, no, it's not that one. It's a brand new video.

He's playing against the NBA center here. Oh, man. There's multiple videos of it then because he's, I mean, he's pretty sick, but that's one of them. That was with him.

We did a little moving, moving around together on Dennis Leafs, too. Oh, okay. He was in there. We were in the scene together. So that was fun.

It's just having a guy. It's such a nice guy. He's like so light. So light. He moves around.

And so hard to hit, man, he doesn't, he's never been in trouble.

In the fight. I mean, he got finished by John Jones, but that was a submission. Yeah. And Francis and Gano just beat him by grappling. Yeah.

But he's never been like rocked or staggered. He hardly did it. No, because he's moved, man. It's so extraordinary.

“Especially for a big guy, but that's why I believe, but Tom has that as well.”

Yes. He has that move. He's like his blitz is extraordinary. Yes. His ability to cover distances and say, yeah, and he's got one punch knockout power.

That's so explosive. Like boom, he can, that's, I believe he can, he can be a good boxer, but he can also be a good kickbox. And he's a good MMA fighter. Yeah.

He's so all around because when he comes to kick, when he came to kickbox, wow.

So I just hate that fans reacted the way they reacted. And it's the casual one. Just the shitheads.

“You know, I, for me, I was like, God, he got to give the guy some grace.”

He got his eye poked out. I mean, he literally was knuckle deep in his eyes to, for him, to, for anyone to think that he should be fighting with one eye like that. Who cares? He should be fighting.

That's what we can do. Insane. He got fouled. It's not because of a punch. It's not because of he got kicked or an elbow.

It's a foul. And so no, the fight should have been stopped the way it was and that's, that everybody should understand that. It's not his fault. It was his opponents fault.

But how he got to this was like, because of the whole deal, he has, like, how much sense does it make for me to, to get into the UFC? Because Connor got like a great deal now for his last fight. No, for you. My boxing makes the most sense, especially at this point in your life financially.

And, you know, for, for Tom, I mean, he, look, he has potential career in boxing as well. And now that Eddie Hurn is managing him, which is very exciting. Because, you know, Matt Roomb being behind him is going to have a gigantic hype machine, gigantic promotion. Look, I think it's huge.

And that they're at odds with the UFC, like, for me, I care about the fighters making the most money possible. Exactly. And that's how he's going to make the most money possible. Yeah.

“What I, like you said, that's what I believe, like all the fighters deserve, the fighters”

that, that bring in the viewers that are exciting. Yeah. They should earn a little bit more, right? That is, everything should be a balance. A hundred percent.

And that's, I mean, this is where Turkey Alshake has really ramped up the game, really raise the bar. Yeah. Because, he's getting guys to fight, they didn't want to fight each other. No, exactly.

And he's like, how about this amount? Exactly. Okay. Okay. That's how we, we got the biggest fight, but next to that, with him giving media opportunities,

well, what he does is he thinks outside of the box. And that's what I love so much about what, what he does. Because we had to also the differences in the guy who ties a few refight. And that was also like crazy, right? I don't know about that.

Zero professional boxing matches for Francis. Exactly. Right. The season was also a little bit controversial, very controversial. Very controversial.

I don't know. But that's why I like what he does. He thinks outside of the box, like, hey, I like this idea. Yeah, let's just try. This Crawford versus Canelo Alvarez, that's way outside of the box.

Yeah. You got to guy moving up two weight class? Yeah. Defighted all time great. I mean, there was, and a lot of people thought Canelo's too big.

Canelo's too big. Wow.

That was an amazing fight.

Oh my God. The parents Crawford is one of the greatest of all time. Wonderful, he is so smooth, it's so good. When he was just pop, pop, pop, pop, rip. Yeah.

Yeah. Doing that to. Canelo. Wow. Oh my goodness.

Yeah. Amazing to watch. To watch a guy that's that skillful and have those skills in, you know, move up multiple weight class. Yeah.

Incredible. And pulled off against a Crawford Canelo. And everybody said, like, oh, he's not going to, he's not going to have a shop because Canelo's going to be too big. As soon as he, as he, as he, he's going to get rocked, then he's like, no, I think

that was, that was incredible.

And they were all at the fight, it's very much by the way. Yeah. That was also, the parents are also very smart and parents prepared for that fight for like a year and put on some weight, but not too much, you know, just a lot of weight lifted, but just enough, but just, also, he was healthier because he didn't have

to cut so much weight. No. That's a thing to take into consideration, you got a guy who's cutting all that weight to make all the different weight classes that he was championed all the way up to 154.

And also, he doesn't have to cut weight. Well, guess what? He's probably walking around 176, 177 anyway. Yeah. So it was probably a better performance for him when physically he probably felt

much better. Yeah. And he's also used to faster guys and he's so light on his feet at 100%. I don't understand. That's so exciting.

“So that's what, yeah, what he does, he makes the fights that otherwise would have”

been made. Right. And I think I was expecting for that so much and I'm thankful for that as well. So let's see what he's going to pull out of the head this time for. Well, I mean, for sure now, people are going to be excited about you fighting again.

And it's even more marketable by far than the first fight was.

I just hope it's a rematch. I really do, because I think that's the just fight to have. Yeah. That's the correct fight to have a rematch. Trying to fight is that close and ends that controversially.

The right thing to do is to have a rematch.

Yeah. And then in a different, like I said, in a different environment, in different situations. Yeah. Vegas or Madison Square Garden. Oh.

Yeah. I got to be honest, Joe. They're both still on the bucket list. Yeah. I thought in New York, but it was like in the, I don't know, in the ball room, something.

I don't know.

“I remember what it was, but I think that they could 2,000, 2,000, 2,000, 2,000 was out there.”

So yeah, Madison Square Garden and Vegas are still on the bucket list. Look, Vegas is great, but Madison Square Garden is iconic. Yeah. There's something about being in that building. Every time we have fights, we do a UFC in that building.

It's like, wow, we're in the garden. Like, that is a special place. Yeah.

So many things that happened there.

Colors and basketball. Absolutely. Yeah. So many concerts. They fight so many everything.

It's just, and it's also in New York City. And as much as New York City's crazy, and it's like, it's beep, beep, and Hong Kong, and fucking you. Yeah. It's still New York, Motherfucking City, and to have a great world championship fight

in New York City is something special. There's something you feel different when they say, live from Madison Square Garden. Yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah.

You know, when you're in the room, when we have fights there, it being in the room feels different. Yeah. That's also one of the things that he did a fight on Times Square. I know.

Who thinks of that? I know. And the thing is, for him, I believe that, whenever he, when you hear something, he's like, nah, that's not possible. I think that's the right trigger.

He does exactly the trigger. He needs. Okay. I'll make it possible. I'll make it happen.

There's a state with the pyramids, and then with the Times Square, he's like, nah, I don't think that's going to happen. Well, they have a bottomless bank account. Yeah. That's the thing.

It's like, they make things positive. They just throw so much money at guys, like, and that is exciting. I mean, that's something that Boxing has needed, because it took so long to get Floyd Mayweather to fight many pack-out. Yeah.

The gigantic fight that took forever, and arguably, Benny, was past his prime when they wound up actually fighting, which pissed a lot of people off. If they had been around back then, if Turkey all has shaken up and around back then, they in re-oxys and has been around back then, they probably would have made that happen when they're in their prime.

I do.

“That's what Boxing needs, that's what MMA needs, that's what everybody needs.”

The UFC does that in MMA, they kind of force guys to fight. You can't get away from it. No. Only the payday is different. Yes.

But, you know, at the highest levels, guys like Connor, they're making similar money, but it's just that needs to change in terms of if it has to be like, it has to be enticing enough that you're going to get the best athletes that realize, like, hey, I don't have to go into basketball. I don't have to go out.

What I really like is fighting. Yeah. And there's enough money in fighting now. Yeah. That's the percentage.

Like everything else. Like we just talked about, we started off with the King of Whole Cake Boxing, there's no money to be made. Right. That is the problem.

So, well, I mean, how many people can you figure that out? Because, you know, they're dedicated to entering into the MMA space now and they just merged with the PFL. Yeah. Well, I think it's very exciting.

“Because I think competition is good, competition is great, and the more competition”

the better and definitely better for the fighters to have options. 100%. And they've got guys over there in the PFL now. Now, that are a fucking world class man. They've got some world class fighters.

So it's exciting. It's exciting to have. It's just, they just need to get bigger in terms of the public's recognition. Exactly. So right now, everybody thinks of UFC being MMA, UFC that's like PFL for the average

casuals. Like, who's that? Yeah, exactly. What do they do? Right.

Right. I think, to be honest, Joe, if we look at 10 years ago, combat sports is at a tall time. Hi, boxing, MMA, kick boxing. I think he's like, "Bright, go through the roof." Yeah.

Everything is bigger now. I think we're in a very blessed position.

Well, 20 years ago, nobody even knew what MMA was, 21 years ago was the first ultimate

fighter. Season 1, 2005. Yeah. And that was really when MMA kind of made it onto the map in terms of the general public understanding of the ultimate fighter and that Stefan Bonner Forest Griffin fight.

But you could see a world where kick boxing could enter into that 10 years from now being the same similar category. And I think it should be. I really do. That is just because of the modern day world, because of social media.

And so many different people coming into the sport. And people can say to have an opinion about it.

But they bring in a lot of new eyes to the sport.

Yeah, it's for it. So boxing too. A lot of new eyes.

“So I think, could you imagine if an organization got behind a guy like Ramon Decker's”

and showed him to the American public when he was in his prime? People like Paul, he shit, who is this guy? His fucking monster, there's animal. This technical animal, you know? Yeah.

Like, that's the thing. So where you come from too. Like, for people that don't know, kick boxing in Holland, that is the epicenter of world championship kickboxing. I mean, Rob came in, Ernesto Hughes, you, I mean, so Peter, oh my God, you could go on

and on and on and on and on, so many of the greatest kickboxers, of course, Ramon Decker's. But so many of the greatest kickboxers of all time came from Holland. 100%. You know, I mean, we mentioned Bauder Harvey, I mean, so many of these great Melvin Manhoofs. So many of these great guys.

100% came out of Holland. Yeah. It's kind of nuts if you really think about it. Yeah. Now we're such a small country, but everybody exchanges their intelligence with each other

“and I believe that because we're such a small country, that's what increases the level”

so much everybody trains also with each other. We go there, we go sparring with them, we go sparring with them, we go sparring with them. And then you learn this from that guy, you learn that from that guy. And if you do that, for example, in the US, you were a trade with somebody out from New York. You got to fly all the way there, you're not going to stay there too long.

I think it just takes too much time. And because in our country, we get just drive anywhere, but it's also one of the reasons why

the paper view never worked there, because if they wanted to visit an event, just drive

there. Like, I don't know, I'm going to stay home and pay for it. And if any sense, I'll just drive there and just go watch it live. Well, that's also one of the crowds with so huge. Yeah.

You guys got massive crowds. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. People don't know.

In America, they don't know how big kickboxing is in Holland. In the Netherlands. It's gigantic. Yeah. Yeah.

Like number two sport. That's crazy. There's soccer. Isn't that funny? Yeah.

Yeah. It's kind of crazy if you think about it. It's such a smug. How many people even live in Holland? Sixty, seventy million.

Yeah. That's nuts. It's a small country with the greatest kickboxers of all time. It's like, it's an anomaly. It's very weird.

Yeah. Very weird how it happened. Yeah.

“I think there's now for the last, I think after the last ten years, it's, we've been”

the, so good at keep boxing for the last twenty five years or even longer. But now since the last ten years, it's been recognized as well for the public.

You've always been good at it, but it's always been like, I don't know, a little bit

shady or whatever, and now since the last ten years, it's being a bother, like, put it on the map, just exploded and everybody just, yeah, went behind it, like, wow, this is cool. This is cool to watch. We're good at this. We're, we're, we're the best in the world at this port, are there gyms all over the

place in Holland? Yeah. It's, it was crazy. At a certain point, it was so crazy that every random guy could become a kickbox in teacher.

So now, because it, because it became so big and so public, they started to do it. Like, okay, you got, you got to get, like, a diploma and a certificate to become a kickbox trainer. You can't just random say, like, hey, I'm a kickbox trainer, you start kickboxing. It's just teaching people.

But at a certain point, that was, that was the case. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy. But it's so cool. So what happened?

How did Holland become so big in kickboxing? I think they, yeah, with rum on deckers and everything, they went to, yeah, to Thailand and just like, sucked all the information out of that and we had, yeah, fighters, trainers going there and they took, like, the more we tie of it and they took that to the Netherlands and then like exchange, like I said, because the country is so small, they exchange everything

with each other. Like, this guy learned that, that guy learned that and if you exchange that with each other, you just get better and you get smarter. But it also has to be something about the culture, maybe just mentality of the heart. Yeah.

We were very, very, very, very big people, very, very big people. But Rob can't, I'm being, excuse me, rum on deckers was not, no, he was not big. He was not big. Which was one of the most extraordinary parts of his career was that he was competing against

Ties.

But it, but it, but it, it, it was.

Yeah. Wow. That was, that was insane.

“That was, it was brutal, but his boxing, too, was a giant factor.”

So explosive. So explosive and his style was so aggressive. Yeah. He was like, just kept on going. He was feral.

Yeah. He was just like, people who haven't seen, please go to YouTube and watch Ramon Decker's highlights. Yeah. Whoo.

Yeah. Oh my God. Some of the highlights of his, his knockout highlights are like, holy shit, man. It's incredible. Everything was designed to kill you.

Yeah.

Every shot, every leg kick, every liver shot, every punch to the face, everything

was just with full speed ahead power, explosive, smash. Yeah. His ankle was so fucked up that his doctor told him, like, you can't keep kicking with that thing. Like, you're going to like, lose your ankle.

Yeah. Fuck it. Tape it up. I was still blasting. I was like a kid and I was washing these, these fights, like, oh my God, it was.

And then with him being so explosive and then kicking on a block, on a knee, or on an elbow. Yeah. Fuck. Just right into it. He's like, oh, I just bowed on, bowed on it.

Uh-huh. Oh, I just, I just, I look at that, just hurts. Just destroy his ankle. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, in this later fights, later in his years, like when he fought, um, twin Ludwig.

Did you have to have his ankle? Yeah. All over the fucking place. Big thing was like hanging on by a thread. But that's, well, what we were talking about like earlier, it's like, we as fighters,

putting our health on the line for entertainment. I mean, forever. Ever. He died young. Yeah.

He died young. But, okay, that happens. You do, you do that because you love to support. But then, yeah, everything needs to be transparent, and it needs to be safe. With the tragedy.

Yeah. It needs to be, it needs to be a better, money-wise, and with the judging. And everything just needs to be, yeah, needs to be right because what we do is out of this world. Yes.

And it's not just kickboxing. It's boxing. It's MMA. That's what it is. That's what we do.

That's what we do. The reason why it's so exciting. It's part of the reason why it's so exciting is we know how dangerous it is. Exactly.

“But that's why I feel like it has to be fair and it needs to be compensated the right”

way. Yeah. So, everybody's like, oh, he's making so much money yet, okay, but he can only, he can't do that till he's 65 or whatever. So, yeah.

Yeah. There's such a small window, which is one of the things that's so extraordinary about your career that you've managed to stay on top for so long. Because generally, when we look at world-class fighters, there's a rule that a lot of experts supposedly have said, is that it's about nine years.

Yeah. You can compete in your prime for nine years. You've shown yourself to be an exception to that rule, because you've been competing in your prime for a lot longer than that. Yeah.

And you're not dropping off at all. And you weren't dropping off. You're still dominating kickboxing when you side is step away. So it's like, even though you are an outlier and that you've been able to extend it longer than anybody, it's still, there's a window.

You're not going to be able to do this for your 50. No. You're not going to be able to do this for your 60. You have a small window where you can compete, and the people are paying to see you. They're not paying to see the promoter, they're not paying to see anything else.

They're not paying to hear the commentators, they're paying to see the fighters perform as a very highest level of the most exciting sport on earth. Yeah. But that's why I'm saying this because it's not as much for me anymore, because I'm close to being finished.

Right. Like we said, I'm in the winner of my career, but it's for the next generation. Yes. The next generation should be excited to get into combat sports and feel like, hey, I want to do this because I can and it is fair, it is transparent and I'm fighting, but I can

make a very good living out of this and I could build like generational wealth with it. Well, that's what's really good about this MVP, PFL merger, and having a bunch of hype on that. The more competition, the better the more eyes on the sport, the more people watch the sport, the more money will be in the sport.

And then the more the fighters will have options for who to fight for. Yeah. Yeah.

“I think that's the best thing, like you just said, like options.”

Yeah. No, it's phenomenal. If you have options, that's the best thing ever, right? Yeah. You got this, we got that, and it's not that you got to, like, play them out against each

other, but still, it is a good thing because if you just have one option, it's like, hey, take it or leave it. Exactly. This is what it is.

Reality is we could use one more, you know, not just MVP, but also another, I wish one was doing better. You know, if one was doing better and they were a viable option as well. Because I know some guys did go over there with great success, like mighty mouse when over there with great success, we need more.

We need more options for fighters, and, you know, it's, it's unusual in that in boxing, for

“instance, what's really important is the name of the fighters.”

That's what's important. You know, if Dmitri B.Vall is fighting, it's, people are going to, they don't give a fuck with a promoter. It's not. They want to see B.Vall fight.

Yeah. You know, if it's art or better, they want to see him fight. That's all. That's all they've got to give it shit about. MMA, it's UFC, and the, the exception to that was, of course, this last MVP card were

Ronda Rousey fought. Yeah. So everybody's like, oh my god, she's a legend, she's fighting, and that, and Francis and Ghana was on the card. Yeah.

So a lot of eyeballs got on that. So we need more of that, and more of that is good for everybody. Because like, built, like, we just talked about, built stories around those people. Yes. Who, who are those people next to be fighters?

Okay.

So, incredibly amazing, and what they do in the ring or in the, in the, in the, in the ring, or in the

of the Ghana, whatever. Okay. But who is the person behind? Right. Right.

Okay. Oh, he's a father. Oh, really? He has to, I never knew. Oh, he's a play child.

Yeah.

“So it gives, it gives us so much more depth.”

And I also believe that that makes them more human. Yes. So we're seeing their families, and they're not going to be. Everybody gets like closer to, wow. This guy could be my neighbor.

Right. Right. Because he also asks, oh, he brings his kids to school, and whatever. They're invested in him. Yeah.

Like you like him, you want to win. 100%. I mean, that's a big part of it. And that's something that they need to do. And I think you're right about glory.

They'd really never did that.

That was not really a part of the glory promotion. No. They were just like, put up fights, put the best for the best. This is it for me. I work here.

Yeah. Great. I love it. I'm a giant glory fan, man. Every time there's a card, I can't wait.

Like watching people like, "What are you watching?" I'm like, "Glorie's on." They're like, "What the fuck is Glorie?" Yeah. I don't hear about that.

It's like, even my friends in MMA don't understand. No. Wow. The real, the people, the traders and everybody, they, a lot of times, they get, like, the glory fighters in, to prepare their fighters, to get into USC.

Yeah. Yeah. For big fights or whatever. Because, like, hey, they know that their stand-up is illegal. Yeah.

Italy. I mean, and like I said, one FC has a lot of elite fighters. They're, they're, they're, they're, especially at the lighter way classes. There's a lot of real Jonathan Haggardy.

He, he just beat Yuki Yosa, who's another guy, who's got from Japan. He's a geocaching guy, who fucks up people's legs, and he's really good. And then this is guy from Dagestan, who might be the best striker alive. Ah, Azadulah, Imangazaleev. This dude, he's really tall and he fights at 135 pounds and he's fucking nasty, man.

He's so technical, undefeated and he's from Dagestan. There's so many savages that are coming out of Dagestan, just straight up killers, man. There's a dude who just won in the PFL, Imangazaleev, who just won in the PFL's past week and another guy.

He fights like Imangazaleev, real similar, both guys from Dagestan, similar styles, man. I love it. It's a question mark kicks and elite, stabbing front kicks, just real slick stand-up. But in one FC, they're having these guys fighting and, you know, it's really big in Asia, but it just has not caught on in America.

No, I think that's also where the problem is, I think with them, but also with glory,

they're just like, pouring in money, pouring in money at a certain moment. It's like, I was gonna understand, like, the one that's investing is like, how much money have we got to need to pour in this before it's gonna do something. You know, they asked me to be, they asked me to be a part of that at one point in time. They wanted me to be like the Dana White of Glory, I'm like, I don't have that kind of time.

I don't have that kind of time. Exactly, if you were gonna say, I don't have that type of money, I'm not gonna look at you like, come on. It's the time. It's gonna be the time.

Just so busy. You're so cool. You would have, I know how hard Dana works, Dana works all day every day. That guy is always doing something. He's always got deals going, he's always on the phone, he's always meetings and the headaches

and canceled fights and not trying to make things happen and promotions and press conferences and it's like, I don't want to change that one. I would never have asked something like that and you can't do that. To be a promoter is a full time job. It's a full time job.

Yeah. And Dana set the bar very, very high and he's the best ever, I think, he's the, I think he's the greatest promoter of all time and to me, for me to do that, like I can, there's no way.

“No, that's why it's so cool that he jumps into boxing now.”

Yeah. He's gonna give that. Yeah. Very strong.

You know, always nervous when a new guy steps into sport, but I think it's

only better. Professional. It's his reputation. Yeah. It's only, yeah, with money.

“You know, like, in the amount of money that thrown at the boxers that MMA guys are like,”

"Hey, what are you doing? What the fuck? Where's that money for us?" Yeah. It does still need to build up.

It's all good for everybody. The more money there is in the sport, the more attention, the more excitement, it's better for everybody. It's better for everybody. It's better for everybody.

It would be a world where MMA fighters, UFC fighters, would also be able to get it to Zufa. And, like, "Hey, you're a good box," and we see, like, maybe there's something impossible that they would do that. But right now, they're not concentrating on that.

They're just concentrating on that.

They first need to position themselves as, but, like, for the future.

It would be, but then, if you got a big star, like, say if you take a guy like Max Holloway or something like that, he decides he wants a box for a while, that means he's not going to be able to fight in MMA fights, so that would, like, cut off their own access to him as an MMA fighter and he's a huge star. Yeah, but maybe that he attracts different, different eyeballs, Tim, but to do it right,

you've got to do it, like, kind of, like, when Connor did it with Floyd, he took a whole year off. He was just boxing. Yeah. I mean, really, really concentrated on that.

You can't get, like, go back into MMA, because they had kind of messed him up. Yeah. It kind of messed him up. Again, he didn't have the same momentum, it wasn't the same amount of training, training lost with grappling, and especially with kickboxing.

“You know, like, all we are only doing boxing, that training lost, like, you have to recalibrate”

your whole break. Forever. Yeah. That was just exactly what I was just. Yeah.

That's why I experiment put it out there, but this is for some guys. It might take a good option, you know, and for some guys, especially after knee injuries, you know, we're boxing is not as hard on the knees. You know, you could say that, especially when it comes to grappling and leg kicks, especially like those guys that throw those side kicks to the knee. Oh, my God. There's calf kicks. Oh, I know. Crazy.

Oh, my God. Crazy. Oh, it's very, but that was after that. After we saw that within UFC, within MMA, it gave boxing to us as such, I knew that. Isn't it nuts that it took forever for the calf kick to be a potent weapon like that?

But it's so dangerous. It's also dangerous too, because if you hit the shin, it's like, oh, it's the last kick you throw, but if you do it right, yeah, if you do it right, like, Alex Pereira destroys people's legs, destroys them. I don't even know how it looks like he can put the foot with the side of it. Yes, it's not even really like a low kick or it's weird. He does it weird and he does it with no tell, no tell. No switching to the hips at all, it throws the leg out there and it only takes a couple.

Yeah, there's a couple and then your legs fucked and then she guy switches dances. Yes, that's over. That is over. That kid that I was talking about in Japan, Yuki Yosa, he's phenomenal at that, man. His calf kicks are insane.

He's just in every exchange, every exchange is kicking the calves inside and outside. He killed the shin guy, so it's just all just hard style inside outside and outside outside. What is your opinion on that, because me and my trainer we were debating the calf kick, because next to it being super effective, it's also a long, long-term injury when you get put out by calf kicks. Yes, because that injury stays there for quite a while. Oh, yeah, it's brutal, it's brutal.

“So do you think like it's a thing that should stare at each other?”

100%. It's effective, I mean, it's real. Listen, if you can knee bar a guy, you can heel hook a guy, you can rip his knee apart.

You've got to be able to calf kick, you know, it's a weapon, to take away that weapon when we know how effective it is, you got guys who are always used to standing heavy on that front leg.

Now, listen, they can't do that anymore. Look, Connor, perfect example, in the window between Connor taking time off, fighting Floyd Mayweather, getting fighting could be, and then getting back in MMA, then the calf kick came along. He never fought with his friends. There was no calf kicks before. Dustin Poirier destroyed his leg, and that first round, by the time the second round was rolling around in their second fight, he was already wobbling on that front leg.

Crazy. Crazy that it took so long for that one technique. Yeah, it's just the thing you see, and okay, that's effective, everybody started doing it. But again, dangerous, like you said, you go, I mean, this old Chris Wydeman broke his leg, you know, he threw a really hard low kick, and he caught the knee. You can't really do shin, right below the knee and snap his leg and half.

If it gets checked and you've hit it the wrong way, it's better to use a low part of yours and the high part of his, where it's thick. It's sense. Yeah. That's the hardest part. Yeah. But it's so effective. It has to stay. The thing to bothers me more than I have. Okay, I'm happy. Yeah, like, leave the side kicks to the knee, bother me more.

Did you ever see Khalil Roundtree in Modesto Spokoska? No, you ever see that? Oh, it's the worst one of all time.

Did you see the leg leg? It's hard sideways. He threw a side kick, caught him on a front leg, and just turned his whole leg sideways. He screamed and the fight was over. We had everything apart. Oh, yeah. I had surgery. I'd have surgery after the fight. His leg was destroyed. Yeah. When John Jones fought Teago Santos, I think it was Teago Santos. I think it was. Um, yeah, Teago Santos. He blew out both his legs. He had a knee surgery on both legs after the fight. It's both legs. That's crazy. Crazy.

'Cause just throwing those oblique kicks in the side kick to the knee. Yeah. Blue out both his knees. Yeah, that's, that's a kick I don't like. When Ian Garry fought Shofcott, Shofcott Rockmanoff, who's a top, Walter Wade Garry, one of the top contenders, he hit him with an oblique kick in his left knee, and his knees been fucked ever since.

Yeah. And he had to have surgery at a second surgery, and he's still out. Yeah, it's quite weird.

“That's what bothers me about that is that you might not ever recover.”

If your knee gets ripped to shreds, your meniscus gets torn apart, your ACL, MCL gets blown out. So, this is the, this is Cleo Round Tree. Watch this. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Watch it from this angle. Look how far. Oh, man. It screams horrible. Horrible. I wonder about that one. Look at that. Oh, look. Because I feel like that one maybe is too much. Yeah. Because it's just like, it's just, you're a career, and a career. Yeah. I mean, if we're, I don't know, I'm torn.

Because on one hand, it's like it doesn't happen that often, and you should be able to defend against it. And you know, knowing it exists, you have to be able to defend against it. But the thing is, one kick could change, and you're out for a year. Yeah. Like we said, a fighter really only has X amount of years to compete. So, it's one whole year gone from one kick is kind of crazy. Yeah. That's good. By the way, it's pretty extraordinary how you do that, how you know,

all those names, and fights from, I don't know how long ago. You're just like, you're just like, I don't remember a lot of other things. I remember it's really really good, but also kind of unreliable with some things. It's just focused on the things I care about, which a lot of it is combat sports. But the, the, the knee one, that's the only one that really bothers me. That and, um, I think knees to the head to a grounded opponent. I don't know. That's not, no, that's, you don't think

“they should be able to do that. No. I don't think you should be able to do that. You love it.”

It's a stop of somebody's head, but they're not allowed to do that. You can't stop. But you can, but they're like rising allowances. Yeah. Like back in the day, they did, they did that. Yep. We used to be able to stop and soccer kick. But, yeah, they think when a guy shoots on your legs and just curls up in a fetal position and just holds on, you shouldn't be able to do that. You should be able to knee that guy in the head, because he doesn't have to hold on to that.

If your knee is free and he could knee in the, you should, you should have to adjust. That should, that's a, it's too legitimate of a technique. Yeah. You know, it's, it's hard. Yes. Yeah. If somebody's on a ground, they're like, there's a problem also is the cage versus the ring. Because in a ring, soccer kicks make more sense and knees to the head make more sense, because you can move around and you can get away from it. Because you could go under the, the rope.

Like if a knees come into your head, there's movement. Where's the cage?

“Yeah. You should stop right there. Yeah. I think that that's another element of the fight.”

That's an unnecessary element. I think maybe even what karate combat's doing, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's way to do it. Those, those, yeah. Yeah. What is it?

It's basically, it's basically, it's basically, yeah. Yeah. It looks nice.

I think that might be the best way to do it. The only problem with that is when you get to the edge, you're stumbling, because you're, you're, you're, it's like half, you fall over it and yeah. But, but learn how to adjust to that. And that's better than a cage because a cage is just a fucking physical wall. Yeah. So the thing about the ramp, the ball, that shit doesn't help you get up at all. No. Like if somebody takes you down against that, that's, you're not, that doesn't help

you. No. We're a wall, fucking helps you. And there's guys that are doing workouts now, where they put their back up against a wall and they're doing kettle belt get ups, where they're, they're just to feel like, yes. They're lifting up heavy kettle belts and they're doing it in stages, getting up from the ground, just to emulate that position. But it's a, it's a, it's a, yeah. But that's why I feel like everything has, the ring has certain things,

right? If you like, if you do MMA in a ring, and somebody shoots or whatever, then maybe they go through the ropes, they shoot that. That's true, right? So that's, yeah. That's dangerous. But, and then we shoot boxing. Like when Bernard Hopkins fought Joe Smith, Jr., and he went through the ropes and fell and landed on his head. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. That's how the fight ended. It was like, there's, there's, but I think that was just shitty planning. I think they should have pads around

the ring, and they should, you know, case someone fall. You shouldn't just hope they don't fall, have some, or have a larger apron, too. Yeah. That's, you could, you could fix a lot with a much

a cage, the problem is, in most people's eyes, UFC equals cage, like you fight in a cage. And

the mindset of it is pretty cool. Yeah. Because you get locked up. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. You're not going nowhere. Yeah. So something to be said for that. Yeah. So it has something, but, you know, I hear what you're saying, but it's like we just talked about everything has, yeah. He's, he's pros and it's cons. Everything has its pros and it's cons, and everything is exciting, and it's own way. Like boxing on its own. Like there's elements of boxing that you would

not see if they were allowed to do leg kicks and elbows and all that. So there's something beautiful about just pure elite boxing on the person. And there's something pure about elite kick boxing, and then there's something pure about elite more time. Yeah. And then there's something pure about MMA about watching it all together. And then you, and jujitsu as well. See that's the other thing. The UFC's doing UFC Brazilian jujitsu. So they have these big UFC jujitsu matches.

Oh really? Yeah. So like, good boxing. Yeah. Let's try. It's right there. It's right there, guys. I keep sending Dana White fights. I send a fight. Because I'm trying to get him to do this. I'm like,

“you should get involved with that. I think he's too busy. Yeah. He's too busy. He's also got that”

slap fight shit. So he's doing that. Yeah. Like fun. I don't know if I get it. It's fun to watch, but it's like, oh, I got it. It's fun. Like why do you stand there? Just take a punch. I just like try to move around and just see if it's like, you know, you just stand there with your hands behind your back holding onto a thing. Just take it on the face. Like yeah, you're pretty, you're pretty, you're pretty big animal if you do that. You're a, yeah. Now that that's why,

for me, that like now experiencing boxing, I really, I can really genuinely say that I see boxing as an art. Oh, for sure. And keep boxing has spent my life. It's brought me everything. So it's, it's so much fun, but it's more intense. It's more brutal. And it's quick. It's like the pace is so fast. And in the, I challenge your fights with just five rounds. Right. So if you lose one round, you're like, oh, and now it's like, like I said, it's, it's an art. 12 rounds. And I saw the,

the bevel, but it'd be a fight. And then for the first, so many rounds, but it'd be it for so much better.

And then later in the rounds, and then bevel still got the, got the win. Like, wow, how cool is that? Right. Well, the, if you look at the fight, you think, oh, this is not going to go well. And then then he's just, just, and it changes. So it's like I said, I really feel like boxing is so much of an art. And he have 12 rounds to paint your masterpiece. Yes. So I know. It's, uh, and if you appreciate that art form, she really understand it and appreciate it. It's beautiful to

watch. Like it's beautiful to watch, like Floyd when he was in his prime. 100%. We're barely would get hit. It's to, and Floyd unlike anybody else was standing right in front of everybody. He was barely getting hit. He was standing right there. Yeah. He wasn't running away and moving around.

“He was right in front of guys. They couldn't hit him. Strordener. And that's what I, what I also”

liked, uh, or still like about Canelo, because after death fight, you saw the whole transition Canelo made. And he took, so I think, I, I truly believe that he took so much from that fight with, uh, with Maywether, because then he started playing it himself. Unquestionably. But, but, he basically, oh, I love that. Yes, unquestionable. Yeah, his head movement got much better after death fight. I mean, that's the thing that happens when you fight the elite. You get

Daniel Cuomo, he always says, you get the rub. Like you fight an elite guy. When loser draw,

you get the rub. You're like, you have some of it, rub's off on you. Yeah, exactly. So that's why I'm excited to see you fight again, too. I'm, I'm, I'm so excited to, to compete again. But, let's, let's see who it's going to be. Well, let's hope this podcast gets the wheels turning. We, we've planted some seats. Yeah, maybe his exit. He will, we'll hear this and he'll decide that it's time to go. And I'm, I'm calling you right after your Joe. It happened thanks. We did it.

That would be, make me very happy if we somehow or another motivated them to get back to the negotiation table. Because I mean, just, but just, let's, let's make an agreement. Now, let's just make sure you're going to be there then. What was the last conversation you guys had about it? Uh, I think week, week ago, week and a half ago. But this was more, more of a general conversation. Hey, we're looking at, yeah, what's next? So, what did you say to them? Did you say,

“rematch? Of course. And what did they say? Like, yeah, but, yeah, you need to, you need two parties”

for that? Is it, I know, make it happen. Yeah. So, you got to roll up to Uzik's house with the

gold. That's maybe the, my name, my face on it. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna put it in first. I think that's

the fight. And I hope you get it. I really do. But, either way, your performance was extraordinary

“and you've had a fucking incredible career, man. You should be proud. Yeah, I really see you with an incredible”

career in kickboxing. Greatest heavyweight kickbox of all time. Thank you so much. You really appreciate that.

And it's not just for me being here, sitting here now because I've been seeing you and hearing

“you talk about it for, yeah, for years already. So, like I said, it really, really, really means”

the world coming from you because you're an expert. You look at everything. You see everything. The different organizations show you know where to place certain guys and from history and from now.

“So, uh, music world. Thank you so much. My pleasure, brother. It's honor. An honor to have you.”

And again, thank you so much again for being here. So, it's been a while, but we're back. Well, I had to reach out after the fight. I was like, oh my god, we gotta do this. We gotta talk. Wonderful. So, I was like, holy shit, man. I reached out immediately. Yeah. It's like, how the fuck you had it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw the episode you guys did about it. You were talking about it. I was like, oh my god. I know.

It was incredible, but this is brother. Congratulations on everything and I really, really,

really hope you get that rematch. Good to see you, brother. Good to see you too, sir. Thank you very much, man. Thanks, sir. Thank you, everybody. [Music]