JRE MMA Show #184 with Aljamain Sterling

>> The show, Rogan, experience.

“>> Train my day, Joe Rogan, podcast, my night, all day.”

[MUSIC] >> I'm where, what's with the goalkeeper? Let's call him. >> The old man. >> Give me smile.

>> Oh, you got a top and bottom man. What did you do? >> It's amazing. >> [LAUGH]

>> I've always wanted to have money so I could get one of these.

When I was a kid to go in. >> That was that one of the ones you could take out? >> Or is it, okay, that's good. >> 'Cause that's such a commitment, you know. One day you got to go to the White House.

>> [LAUGH] >> You got diamonds and gold and your teeth, that's crazy. >> It might be a first time, you know? >> How does a fit, is like a retainer? >> Yeah, so they fit it, they mold it.

I got it done in Dallas, actually. And they just fit it molded to your teeth and then pop them in. >> It's almost like wearing a retainer. >> Texas loves grills. >> Yeah, they love grills.

>> We got down in ours. >> We got to get molded.

“>> You should, yeah, Paul Walsai is going to hook us up.”

>> Let's go, hang on. >> Yeah, I'm not sure. >> I remember, what was the one episode with Theo? And you asked about the headphones. He says something like, it's like, they're with the condom.

And she's just looking at you or I forget exactly how the joke goes. But it was funny, it's like one of Theo Vans, greatest moments where he says all these things. He's like, when I feel like saying it, I just write it down. I don't know if you saw this clip.

>> I mean, I'm sure I was there when it happened. But he says so many ridiculous things I can't remember. >> It just goes over here, I didn't see you put it on. >> I felt like, oh, my loan here. >> Yeah, it is weird.

>> Yeah. >> It's like when you put a condom on it and the other person is just still looking at their phones. >> And the person, I mean, is it one of the things you've got to tell them about it? >> Yeah.

>> Well, I'll just write it out and say it. >> There it is. >> Yeah, that's why we said the help was I just came to my head and like immediately. >> Yeah, sometimes I have them off, sometimes I have them on, but it's better to have them on.

>> It locks you in. >> It locks you in, you know? >> I feel that.

“>> Did you watch the UFC this past weekend, the Apex?”

>> I watched the main event coming, probably the main event. >> Southkill is legit. >> I wasn't too sure about them, but now I'm very sure. >> As a man who has one of the best back controls in the sport, you had to appreciate that back control.

>> Oh, it was amazing. He took them down, which I was kind of surprised I was like, why is he going for to take down? >> Crazy. >> Proving a point.

>> Prevent a point. >> Because it's stand up, it's so sick too. >> Yeah. >> Okay, it's so complete, man. >> And do that to Gambrot?

>> That's what I was going to say. >> He's a sick grappler in his own way. I thought he was going to get out that one moment where he had the leg hiked up, he had the ankle, and all he had to do was swim inside, when he kept it too long, a lot of them to hit the ground and he was able to readjust and lock it up that figured for and it was

over. >> Well, when he reached over and grabbed the far arm and used that to hang onto the back. >> Yes. >> That is slick. >> Yes.

>> That was slick. He was fucking slick, man, and just very high level. Everything was like an elevated level. I had a very high opinion of him before the fight, but now I'm like, oh, this dude could do it.

>> He could do it. >> He knows a ball. >> Yeah. >> That was really surprised with that. In fact, I didn't want so quick.

Oh, his fights have been in the first round.

>> In these scramble's, these scramble's from this position. Now generally in this position, it's so hard to keep back control, like right here, grabbing the arm and this adjustment, that's really skillful as a seat belt. Just the way he's able to adjust the gamma, I was trying everything, but once he gets in that position, it's over, you're back, you're back in his backpacking.

>> He's got a lot going on, man. He's first of all, real tall for the weight class. >> He was over six feet tall, long, excellent reach, excellent strike. The other thing that he did that was really slick, he pretended to get up off of his back. So gamma explodes and he exposes his neck, right there.

I started back then up just to touch, look at this, this is so slick, look, he's hanging on his back, they're struggling, and he said, let me just sit up and he'll sit up. Bam! >> Right there. >> That's so nasty.

>> This is slick as fuck, man. That's so slick, that's such a good sneaky move, because the guy's like, oh, now is my time that, you know, those moments where you feel like you could move, like he got, he just from space, like, I'm going to go and then plop. I'm, anytime I'm in training, someone has my back, I always try to make sure I'm always

aware of the choke.

Matt Sarah always says, always protect the choke first, and that's the main thing I always

try to focus on. Protect the choke first before you start doing anything else, that's crazy, because at the end of the day, he just takes that little split second to get under the neck and that can

>> Yeah, sometimes people just get, they get a little too urgent, you know, they get a little too, they just want to make something happen without just being safe all the time, always be safe. And that's the, in Gamera situation right there, that was the moment, because who knows, if he could have made it out of that position and survived all those choke attempts and

got to the next round, who knows, you know, if he got on top, who knows, and South killed, I mean, you presume he has great endurance, you presume, but we really don't know yet. >> We haven't noticed it. >> It's the wild unknown about him.

>> Yeah.

“>> That's how I'm just like, I don't know how good he actually is, but I could tell you what,”

first round he's a motherfucker.

>> He's a motherfucker. >> That guy is good. >> It's interesting like these guys that have the unknowns, you know, like some guys get really, like Tom Aspenal, becomes heavyweight champion in the world, and it's kind of an unknown whether he can fight in the fourth and fifth rounds, kind of crazy, right?

We just know he's a blitzer, we know he's big and fast, but we really rarely see him get out of the first round. >> Yeah. >> Kind of nuts. >> It's a gift in a curse.

>> Right. >> That's a good way to put it. As you get both your paychecks, you get done really, really early. >> But then if you get into the wrong one and the fight starts to get tough, you don't know if you can actually push that envelope, because that's different.

>> That is the most bullshit part of the UFC. You get both your paychecks. >> Fuck off. >> Fuck off with that, I hate it. That drives me nuts.

>> I know the boss, we could talk to him. He's at the moment. >> He's at the moment. >> He's at the moment. >> It should be, you get paid, you get paid.

It shouldn't be, first of all, if judges were perfect every time, maybe you could make an argument

“for that, but I still don't think you should make an argument for that, because I think”

guys fight as hard as they can to win. There's no one who's fighting harder because you think you're going to get a win bonus. You know, you're fighting as hard as you possibly can at the highest level. And so it's not incentivizing people to fight harder. You're just, you're giving too much of their career, too much of their future, too much

of their actual, how they're going to feed their family to the whims of people that sometimes get it wrong. >> 100%. I do remember one incident where I was situation, I should say, where I was going to fight harder.

And that was UFC 300 against Calvator with Dana, and now the bonus says we're going to be 300,000.

And I got super pumped up, and everyone always points it as they go, you got so excited

that you went there and you fall like that, I go, listen, it takes two to tango. If he wants to sit there and hold me, it's not much I could do, I can't really just fight. I thought about, I'm going to just go out there and just start swinging for the fences and take him down and maybe get a crazy finish and it didn't go that way, but I try. I thought about it.

Guys can't sleep each other out, too. Yeah. That's the thing, you know, when people want exciting fights, everybody wants exciting fights. And of course, of course, but there is a reality to skillful guys going after each other, and that sometimes they'll cancel each other out and make a boring fight.

Yeah. The shit happens. It really does, there's no rhyme or reason either, I mean, who was it, like Francis Lewis, Francis Lewis, Francis and Garno and Derek Lewis, oh my god. One of the worst fights of all time, but we all thought that was going to be just a quick

fight. We just get maddeness, maddeness, and guaranteed madness. Two of the biggest knockout artists in the history of the heavyweight division. An exact opposite, nothing happened, but it was hell. These fights happened, and then the fans get on you about him, like listen, you go take

a punch from that guy. That guy is going to say my consciousness to a whole different universe. Well, you had Francis coming off the loss to St. Bay, and I think he was a little rattled mentally, and then you had Derek who realizes, like, he's looking for his one big shot, and he's not willing to wait in and get clipped.

And so he's waiting to play the role of the counter striker, and then no one does nothing. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the home of my website, JoeRogan.com.

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a website or domain. Call us buzzer and Rose number units, worst fight in history. Arguably. I think it might be worse, because I think that was five rounds. We went through five rounds of that shit.

It was five rounds. That was worse. Jericho was in Francis and Ghana would have been the worst, because of expectations. But it was only three rounds. Yeah.

This was five rounds of what the fuck is going on. And it's not a knock on the fighters.

So the greatest. Five of, probably. Right. No, it's probably. It's probably.

“Two of the greatest drawways of all time.”

I mean, Rose number units when she knocked out John Whaley with that fucking headkick.

Holy shit. When she, when she starts Yohana, hit her with that left hook and took her out. Like, dude, Rose them. Beast man. She's a beast.

At one of the absolute most exciting fighters champions of all time. In those those those particular exchanges, like some of the fights that she's had, they've been amazing. Amazing fights. But that's just fight.

That fight sucked. Yeah. For whatever reason. It happens. Just happen sometime.

Can't explain it. But sometimes you just feel something when you're in there, you're just kind of like, "Well, I'm not going to go." And they're like, "Well, I'm not going to go if you're not going to go." They just, "Yeah."

I don't know what was going on in that fight, it was very strange.

But I also think there's a time when you've been in so many wars, you know, even if

you've had so many wars that your willingness to exchange is different, your drive to attack is different. It's not there anymore. Yeah. And especially people who fight in wars and Rose has been in some wars.

“And that's why I fight the way I fight now so differently because those wars that I had”

leading up to where I'm at, I mean, I had that barn burner with all these other guys on the way to the title and I had to change it up. Yeah. You gotta stay alive. You have to fight smart.

I'm joking. My fight's not barn burners like that. No. But they're different. Your fights are the best, you have the best back control I think I've ever seen in this

sport. When you get on someone's back, I'm like, "Oh, shit. This is getting crazy." Yeah. I didn't want to say I appreciate, because I do hear the episodes where you guys talk about

it. I'm like, "Yeah." Two of that. The sandhanging to fight is nuts. When you know how good sandhanging is, and you just got that back and that was 99, it

was so slick. You've done that to so many dudes too, and you could see, you know, obviously redemption

for you was the second purely on fight.

That was redemption. That was so good. Cool.

“I remember you came in right afterwards and was like, "Everybody's gotta shut the fuck up now."”

It was just supposed to say, like, "Oh, shit, I have a shit on the ground." Yeah, please. Yeah. You really showed everybody in that second fight. The first fight was just nonsense.

The first fight. That kind of a move to hit someone when they're down on one knee like that. Like, "What the fuck are you doing, man?" That was a rough time. Crazy.

And then you, having already had a bulging disc in your neck. Your neck was already fucked. It's also kind of crazy that you could compete at the level that you compete at with a fake disc in your neck. Yeah.

Do you ever think about that thing? Oh, 100%. I still have like nerve damage in my tricep from it. Like, if I do like a Pilate or just a plank, you'll see it just decide shaking. Shaking.

It's so bad. Even till this day. It's a lot better than what it was before, but this is what people don't understand and somebody's fighters us, like we go through a lot just to make it. And you're going to hear the other side of it.

Well, no one told you to do it. It's not even about that. It's just like we're trying our best to chase something great, something that's crazy in the sense of the word, right? And you put your body through hell to get there.

And I just, I know there's great fans out there who appreciate that. And there's the other ones who are more casual than they don't really understand. But I wish they took the time out. Just a train to do a week of training and understand what we put our body through. Day in at a high level against other high level guys.

Listen, you need the casuals. You need everybody to buy tickets. It's all great. Yeah. But the reality of the casuals, all you haters, you are doing yourself a disservice to.

You're saying ridiculous shit. You're acting like a fucking retard. What you really should do is do better in your own life. And you wouldn't be a hater because almost all haters are losers. 100% of them.

And the people they're hating on are doing way better than them. And there's legitimate criticism. But legitimate criticism can be handled respectfully. And the people that don't handle legitimate, people that don't dish out legitimate criticism respectfully is because they haven't been smacked.

Right? Yeah. Or they haven't been smacked by the guy they're talking shit about. Yeah. Or did they see him?

And then they changed their tune, real quick. Of course. That's so weird. People are so crazy. They talk about literal professional fighters and calm pussies.

I get shit. I got a lot of the ends. It's not delusional. We guys said I'll fold you and have like recently because I don't. But they're just trying to fuck with your head.

They don't even believe that. They're trying to get a rise out of Algemine Sterling. They can get a rise out of a UFC champion. You know, when they're 16 years old, jerkin' off, cheetos all over their fingers. You know, exciting that must be to have direct contact with you.

So I try not to engage as much as I used to.

“Because before I would, I think we talked about it before I would engage and go back and forth.”

And I kind of got him away from it. But the old version of me would like to just say, oh, kind of crazy shit. But I'm, you know, a little bit more mature now. There's no benefit in it and it weighs energy. It's the problem.

And then it also weighs, you, you get distracted. What do you say back? I can't see what this motherfucker is trying to do. I'm going to get him again. I do.

You saved a bunch of pictures of his family Instagram. Let me see you as a person in real life before he deletes it. Let me screen shot these. Yeah. There's people who are people.

Yeah. People are people, man. And I would have done the fuck in the same thing. If I was 15 years old and somebody gave me an Instagram account. And I could talk shit to whoever.

I would talk shit to everybody. [ Laughter ] Whoever was. I'm trying to think if I was like that. I don't know if I was ever like that.

It exists when you were a kid. The access didn't exist. If that access existed, I guarantee. If you and your friends like, bro, tricks talking shit with me. Yeah.

And you and Drake are going back. Well, you're like, fuck you pussy. Of course you would do it. Everybody would do it. I would do it 100%.

I guess it's just human nature.

“It's 100%, but I think that when you get to the level that you're at,”

a literal world champion and a professional fighter or the highest caliber, that's you do yourself a disservice. You do, like, I love Sean Strickland. He's crazy as fuck. But he gets in there with everybody all the time.

I love him. He gets in there all day long. Talk as shit with people. He gets in there. But it's somehow another doesn't distract him.

I wouldn't give him the same advice. Something's fucked up about his brain that like, for him to be in that kind of conflict all day, does it seem to bother him at all? I think it feels like fielism does, like,

want to keep going more, like, driving, Providence plays a recording of all the shit that all of his haters have said to him why he runs. I wouldn't do that. But you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Like, there's people that are wired different. And I think Sean is very, very much wired different. And whatever reason, you know? Yeah.

Sometimes I always, but I like it.

I like, he should have a segment like how Ray Longo has like the Ray Longo many. He should have like a strictly minute. Well, I was telling him, you know, we were talking when he was out here.

He went to waste a while as well.

“To get his shoulder worked on after the homesaw victory.”

And I was saying, you 100% could do a podcast. It would be hilarious. It would be great. You could have gas on. You could do whatever the fuck you want.

Like, you have a real future outside the sport. Like, once, and he's also very smart with his money. As crazy as that dude is, he saved a ton of money. He gives great investment advice on Twitter. Like, he gives investment advice.

Like, who the fuck is this? This is the same guy. He's telling you how to invest your money. You know, S&P and all this shit. Like, oh, what?

He's not as crazy as he comes off. He's a lot smarter than people give him credit for it. But he uses that as like, it tricks you. And it tricks you into thinking that he's like a silly person. Yeah.

You know what I mean? But he'll say whatever comes to mind. Yeah, that's him. What the fucker can fight. Yeah.

And I was here to the day. That's the thing. That dude can fight. Like, he can fight. And he fights in a weird way.

Like his very weird style. Like, nobody has that style. This episode is brought to you by Keytone IQ. I've tried a lot of supplements. But for years, I've been one thing that I've been obsessed with to keep my brain locked in.

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They're so confident in it that they even offer a 60 day money-back guarantee. So go ahead and take your shot. By the way, do you have a lighter? Yes. And of course.

What do you want some cigars? I got some. Oh, shit. How'd your main brings gifts? Let's go.

We bring gifts. These are fighters cigars, too. Fighters cigars? Yeah. I'm like, pardon me.

So it's different fighter lines. I know you got a foundation. Uh-huh. If I could ever open this. I think it's so cold now.

I need to use my fighting muscles. Fuck it out.

You might even get the beer close.

It's weird. I broke that. I broke that, too. What the fuck do you have? It's supposed to just pull open.

Should. I opened it this morning. That's weird. Did something happen to it? Got cold?

I got a knife in here somewhere.

“There's some big ass knives that used to be your jammy.”

Oh, yeah. Why? Oh, when the device president was here? I can always carry one. We can't get these open. Oh, bro.

This is like, chromatically sealed. There we go. There we go. So we got different ones. You got a judo brand there.

You got a funk master. Which one's there? I think that's the funk master. So I don't know if you like light or dark. I like them all.

This is you. We got a small giro. Come on. Triumph cigars.

Who's who's making these?

Where they're making them out of. So he gets them from different places. On the back of that, too. See. He gets them from different places.

Yeah, like Cuba. Really? Cuba. Cuba. Really?

I believe it's Cuba. Because Cuba and cigars are. Banned or hard? No, no. They're not really bad.

Pop the top.

“If you're, do you not smoke cigars on you?”

What are you doing? What are you doing? I don't know what to give that to them. Oh, shit. That's the clipper.

Well, this is high. This is a high level shit. Cleabri. Um, a lot of fake Cuban cigars. You got one?

No. And then foot retrop. There you go. So you got like maduros and different kinds. I'm like new into cigars.

These are the funk master. That might be dead. Here. I'm sorry. This one is good.

Jamie smokes cigars? No. Yeah. Jamie's strictly blunt. But now he's got to stop.

Because it just won't be a failure. I can't do it here. He's got to cross state lines. He's got to go to Oklahoma and get high. Do you, do you actually?

I went once a day. Yeah, he takes a flight. Southwest Oklahoma. Get some bomb rips and hop back in the way. Back in the way.

This is good. This is very good. So the feedback on them has been great. They're good quality cigars. They're making from like people that make them.

And again, to make our own different like lines. Right. Pretty cool. I like them. Well, we used to perform in Miami.

There was a place that you could go. We could watch them hand roll cigars. And it selliest cigars. Like hand rolled. It was pretty dope.

You watched these ladies like roll everything out. Yeah, long knife. They slice it up. You rolled yourself? No.

No, no, no, no, no. They told us how to roll down in Miami. I don't want to ruin it. I don't want to do brain surgery myself. I want you this one.

Get an expert. Somebody's got to be good at this. You got a rum line, too, right? Is that it? Funk Harbor, run your neck?

Funk Harbor, baby. It's you. I got money now, Joe. You know, that's all pitch. I got money now.

I was supposed to bring my show up again. I don't know if you wanted it like signed or whatever. But. Sure. But we wanted to get shuttles and things like that.

Multiple metals. There's metals for, like, competitions for rums. Yeah, we got two double goals for this. We got two double goals for the silver.

“Tell me, can you get us some ice cubes and some glasses?”

Let's fucking party, I'll remain. Then we're going to go to the mothership. I love that name, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, we were trying to figure out what to call it.

We had a bunch of different, you know, myths. You sure that lady who ran the comedy store? Yeah. The painting up there. That's her.

She was the owner and founder of the comedy store. She's to say about the comedians. The inmates are running the asylum. So we were going to call it the asylum. But I thought that sounds corny.

A little corny. There's something about it. It's like a little like little. We're crazy. You know, and then I thought, well, what is this?

One of the things that Ron White, he was the first.

Ron White was the first guy to move here. And, you know, I knew Ron real well from LA. And Ron said, you know, I love it. It's in the middle of the country. You could fly out.

What's the matter? You want one, Jamie? It's got work to do. It won't get hammered with us. He was in the middle of the country.

He could fly out. It's only like three hours in New York, three hours in LA. It's perfect. And I was like, well, that would be like the mothership. And then you could fly out.

All your ships could fly to different parts of the company. And your base, the mothership would be the base. That's pretty cool. Plus, obviously, I'm an alien. That's what I thought it was.

Of course. Yeah, I mean, I'm obsessed for whatever reason. Which one? Darker light. What's the difference?

So this one's our limited edition. It's got the number one on it.

We're actually going through a rebrand right now. This one's aged two to five years. But they're all Jamaican origin. This one's aged under the tropical sun. On the age is the silver.

We'll bust out that age under the tropical sun. And this one we use an experiment cast. So the drink's really nice if you like bourbon. Oh, okay. It's a little bit, it's like, I don't want to say sweet.

But it's not as harsh when you drink it. Are you a rum guy? Is that your thing? Is that why you started a rum company? Yes.

You've always been a rum guy?

My appearance is from Jamaica. So my parents are from Italy. But I hate grapple. That's just nasty. Grapples not.

That's nasty. That's the nasty. I'm going to take the big one. All right. Cheers, sir.

What do you guys say? Salute. Salute. I think I said something else in Italy. I don't know.

I just got back. I was just there last week. Yeah. Two weeks ago. Yeah.

Two weeks ago. It's awesome. I love it there. We still haven't gone. We want to go so bad.

“Oh, bro, if you want to eat, that's the place.”

Pasta. I just hear every bike on the road. I was like, I would love to do that. Three pounds. I ate nothing but carbs.

I ate so much food. I ate two. I was hurting every night. I was like, I'm going to ignore my diet. Completely.

I worked out every day. What I was like, I'm going to ignore my diet. Completely. And just eat for pleasure. But it's not as bad though.

It's not as bad for you. The food is not as bad. But calories of calories, though. It's just the volume. I'm a glutton.

I ate two pizzas. I ate linguine with clams. I had barotta and tomatoes. And I also had something else. I have something.

Oh, a bunch of pieces of bread. I ate so much. And one setting that I got home that night. When we sat back. And I was like, I can't move.

I have eaten myself to a place where I'm like, you ever see when I was lions that eat too much? They just lions. Oh, no. That's how I felt. Jessie, those were my 135 days.

As soon as the fight started around going in.

“I remember one time I ran into you at the apex.”

And I was like, what do you weigh? And you said 176. I was like, that's crazy. Yeah. You got to lose 40 pounds.

That's crazy. The fascinating part is when I went up to 45. I got down. And I was lighter. And my natural walking around weight.

He's still eating the same way I always did.

And I was walking around about 168. Sometimes 66 to about 172. And I'm like, this is doesn't even make any sense. How much lighter I am from 135. Maybe it's just less anxiety about making the weight.

That too, your body didn't hold onto it as much. Yeah. So the body kind of just recognizes what's happening. Oh, this is a nicer wake-up. Yeah, you're helping now.

Yeah. Even though it's still a wake-up. I was going to say, but I just checked my weight last week. When I got, well, actually two days ago when I got back. Let me guess.

Yes. You're at least 170. I'm heavy on that. 175. North.

1878. That's when I checked. And I didn't look fat. I was like, this is crazy. It's happening again.

It's happening. That's people that don't understand it. Like I have to explain to my normie friends. But they're like, "Hose you lose all that weight." He doesn't have anything to lose.

I'm like, well, you're sucking your muscles dry. That's what's crazy. And your organs. That's what's really dark. Oh, it's dark, dude.

It's dark. It's the worst part about fighting. I still think same day waves. Well, same day waves would change a lot, but also guys would get really hurt,

because people are still going to lose the weight. They're still going to do it.

“But I think that's going to be like a phase.”

Like people are going to realize how stupid this is. And they go, "Oh, I actually feel better." She's competing at my weight. Perhaps. But I think you would have to have multiple weight classes at it.

Many weight classes at it. There's too many gaps that are too ridiculous. The 15 pound gap would be the most challenging from 55 to 70. What about 85 to 205?

And that's-- 85 to 205 is crazy. 20 pounds is crazy.

I always thought there should be it in between for that one.

100%. There should be every 10 pounds. Every 10 pounds is smart. You know, go 125, 35, 45, 55, 65, 60. It blow up in the ones that are like when you get to 70, make 75.

You know, 85 is already there, make a 95, make a 205. And then it gets weird with heavy weight. I think you might want to have like a bridge or weight, like a 220, 2205, and then giant fellas. And then after that it should be as big as the fucking you want to be.

Because that's the weird thing is like heavy legs limited. I remember Tim Silvia when Tim Silvia was-- He was a big fella. And he was cutting weight to make 265 hard core. He was barely making it.

He's gigantic.

And that was when he was fucking sick.

“And I remember watching him struggle to make the 265.”

I'm like, that's crazy. Why are you making the heavy weight to cut weight? That doesn't make any sense. It takes away from what heavy weight actually-- Yeah.

The biggest, baddest motherfucker alive. Yeah. You know, when Mike Tyson was fucking everybody up, he weighed 220. I don't want to say small. I mean, I say small.

For heavy weight. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter. Cain when Cain was fucking everybody up. He was 240.

He was like, too. Yeah. Faitor. Same thing. He was never real big.

Faitor was fairly small compared to a lot of other heavy weights. But then you got a guy like Rose Bellus dispended? Oh, that guy's crazy. He's huge. Seven feet tall.

Seven feet tall. He's gigantic. Huge. That guy's that range is nuts.

“He's like the modern day in the end of the thought.”

He's a Amazonian. He's giant, a literal giant. He's one of those guys where when I saw that fight that MVP did with him and Juni Dos Santos, I said, "Please don't do that fight." That fight's not right.

That's one of those fights, really. That fight's not right. Yeah. This is just too much of a changing in the guard. Yeah.

The guy who is coming off of karate combat first of all,

one thing of Juni was a wrestler. If Juni was a sick wrestler, and maybe he's going to take him down, ground a pound. This is kind of even though he's older. He's been knocked out a bunch of times.

He's still very dangerous. But Juni had seen his best days back when he knocked out Kane, which was like, "What year was that?" Oh, 2016, 2015. Wasn't he even?

I got signed in 2014. I don't remember Kane, not Kane. Yeah, it was the big Fox card. It was the first card I saw in the Fox. Because I remember they made Kane fight with a blown out knee.

Or they encouraged him. The fight with a blown out knee. Kane's knee was fucked before that fight. And Juni or caught him with that perfect right hand. Well, you took 2013.

Okay. That's his debut? Right. No, that's that fight. That's the fight where he knocked out Kane Velaskas.

Oh, that's the second one. What's the one where he beat Kane? It's right before that. No, right before that. He got signed in 2014.

Yeah, the Fox won 2011. Okay, so 15 years of wars. Yeah. 15 years of the steep Emiotic fight, which was horrible to watch. Right?

That was a brutal, brutal fight. And then you have the second Kane fight, which was horrible to watch.

“And then I think there was a third Kane fight, too.”

Yeah, with JDS. Yes. Which was also horrible to watch. Well, it's that tough fight back to back.

Bro, if you don't take Kane out in that first round, that's storm never ends.

Yeah. Never ends. You're like, "What a ride this storm out!" No. There was no ride in it.

Prime Kane was a mother fucker dude. I mean, when I've always been conflicted with him in DC, because it kind of reminded me of Marab and I, and I always said, like, if DC stayed at heavyweight, he could have arguably potentially have been the greatest heavyweight of all time. But I do know DC always says in the training room, Kane was the man.

Yeah. He was the guy. Yeah. He told me he always came beat his house. DC should have been a middleweight.

How about that? I don't know that guy's making middleweight. Discipline DC. He even is chicken. DC went to the Dagestav for three years.

He's not going to forget. Yeah. Forget three years. If he, if DC made a way, and he could have made middleweight, a lot of guys who are way leaner than him have made that way. So, I saw him at my UC debut.

You've seen 170, and Mandela Bay in the back room, cutting weight, doing the workouts. And he looked like he was dying just to make 205. True. So, I don't know how he would have done it. Well, he would have had a changes diet.

No more pop-as. Yeah. No more nothing. No more garbage. He would have, I love DC too.

He's my favorite person to do commentary with by far. He's the best. He's fun. That's such a good time. We have such a good time.

He's such a fun dude. Like genuinely happy fun dude. Look at him. That's 205 DC. So 205 DC though.

You're telling me that Alex Pereira, if he was built like that, couldn't lose 20 pounds, of course he could. Yeah. I don't know. Because he's not. Look, if you see the guys that fight at 85, like Joe Piper.

Joe Piper is a giant. Did you trick us? Trick us to placebo. He's a fucking giant. He's big.

He's gigantic. He looks like a heavyweight. But look at him. He's 85. What does that mean?

He's sucking it in.

He could have made middleweight.

If he had like the real, if he just had the drive and did it as a lifestyle change, and like did it over the course of like a year, and like really leaned himself out. Got on like a ketogenic diet, leaned himself out. But then how often would he be able to fight? Depends on how much he actually gets his body weight down to.

That's the thing. Like, do you see he's only like 5/11, 5/10? How tall is he? I'm going to give him 5/11. Maybe he's like mate.

I love him. Maybe he's like 5/11. But there's guys with his body that could have. But it's not like a thing where you can make the weight by just dehydrating yourself. No, he's too big.

But if he had with his frame, if he had slowly but surely leaned himself out and did it healthy, smart, over like the course of a year. He'd have to take some time off and really just dedicate himself to just getting lean. His gas tank would be better. Who's going to fuck with that guy in middleweight?

“Do you remember what he was doing at Dan Henderson?”

Do you remember that fight? Flip them like a burger. Bro, he threw him around like a rag doll and Dan Henderson's a monster. He's a monster. That guy's a beast.

He's such a tank. And DC just rag dolled him. Just rag dolled him. That was 2/5, right? I was in came up.

Henderson came up.

Yeah, you know, because when I would cut down and I wasn't always this big at 35.

But when I would cut down to 35, I would have to do it in stages. So I couldn't do a three month turnaround like I did for the one fight. How much time do you need? I need four months is ideal. That's crazy.

It's ideal. Because I could slowly get down and then I could start tripping away. But my normal walking weight. And then I get down from 70, whatever, to 70. Then I get the next week or the week following.

Down to 65. After that, I get down to 60. And that's like the optimal weight I want to be at. And then I get to 55. And this is like where I'm going to be when I'm stepping into the acting on.

So to do that over the periods of time, like you could do it really quick. Because I have the rest of the mentality. I can do it fast. But doesn't mean everything's going to be where it should be. And I also felt my cardio rounds four or five.

And comparison to doing rounds four or five in the training room. It's severely different. And my gas tank, you think I was more up. Right? And just for comparison, say, right?

And then I'll go into the fights and rounds four or five. I'm like, I got to serve something. Because I'm still in down. I can feel it. But I'm trying not to show it.

“Is there a difference between when you were allowed to use the IV and when they took the IVs away?”

I used IV once. Only once. And I was in like 2015. I thought it was stupid. And it's real forever to get it.

And I'm like, I could have been eating right now. And I'm the same weight that I was when I was just eight. I'm like, I would much rather just stuff my face. I think the idea is that it hydrates you more efficiently. Because instead of having to go through your stomach, it goes right into your veins.

And then it hydrates your muscles more efficiently. I didn't really feel like a performance difference between us. Interesting. But I'm different. Some people call me in anomaly and they say, you can't do what I do.

Drinking training camp and people think I'm crazy. Really? Yeah. I drink the night before the fight. What?

Yeah. I have one glass. Sometimes two. Really? Three is like we're getting crazy.

“The night before the fight after you've cut weight?”

Yeah. Why do you do that? I'm not John Jones. That guy is built. I'm built different, but he's built different than me.

Well, I think John is just so fucking talented. He's so fucking smart that he was able to get by and dominate at a world championship level by putting himself at a deficit like that. Whereas if John, you say that, but John's a different person. Like he wouldn't be the same guy.

He's wild. There's something about John that's one of the reasons why he's so good is that he's wild. He's intelligent and wild at the same time. And that's why you can't compare. It's like whatever makes you happy.

I remember Cal Diggs said something like he will eat ice cream. Not right before a match, but in his training. He said, because it makes him happy. I want to have a drink because throughout the training camp, I'm already going through this hard grind. After sparring and I feel like I hit a threshold where my conditioning is at a place where I wanted to be.

It's like a checkpoint. I'm like, okay, this is my checkpoint. I hit it. Can you ever want an oring or a loop strap for any of those things? Yeah, that thing stupid.

Well. That thing's attacking me every day because what it's saying is that the alcohol was affecting your sleep. It's not attacking me. I bet. To that shit off of it.

To the corners of it. Fuck you with your facts. That was serious facts and data. I remember I brought out Adrian Janis.

I brought him out twice the first time though.

It's for the Peotoyon rematch. And he stays at my house for about a week. We spar. I think it was a Thursday.

He's like a Johnny McGurries.

It's a pub. Okay. I'm on Long Island. It must be good. They got to now.

But I bring him over there.

“And the guy I talked to over there who I do with Richie.”

He's the man. He's good friends with Wyman and Valante from like the college days back at Hofstra. And he's a big enemy. So I love that. So instantly we kicked it off when I met him the first time.

So I bring him over there. And it's at the spa. I'm like, yeah, we're going to get some food. We go there. And he sees me and I order a drink.

And I was like, yeah, get one for him too. He's like, yeah, bro, what are you? What are you doing? I was like, no, no, this is normal. We're trust with you.

He's like, he looks at me. He's just like dumbfounded. He's like, you drink in training camp. Like it was the biggest like taboo thing on earth. I'm like, yeah, dude.

Like we just had some good rounds today. This is my reward. You deserve one too. Like you're in shape. I'm in shape.

Let's have one or two.

And I always get my tight chili wings over there.

And so whenever I go in Long Island, I'm finishing up a camp on the East Coast. I'm fighting home on the East Coast. Rishi Wowe's hit me up. He goes, we're going to do the ritual.

Get the tight chili ways. You get my IPAs. And yeah. But I like I said, everyone's different. Whatever makes you feel comfortable.

If you're going to do it, you can't, like for me, like having a drink tonight before the fight and people go, like, you're not where you're going to affect your performance. And I go, if I lose because of this one drink, I was supposed to win.

Point blank period. Okay, well, let me, let me push back on that. Imagine you're fighting a guy who you and him are like that. Neck and neck. Neck and neck.

Moser. Neck and neck. Yeah, right? Neck and neck. And the difference is whether or not you got that extra REM sleep tonight before,

where you could push when you lay off, when you lay back on the gas, when you really maybe could like if you were a little bit more rested, you could just one extra move, one extra transition, one extra guard pass,

one extra attempt at a submission, one extra thing that gets you the round. You know what I'm saying? I take my naps before the fight. I'd take my naps before the fight.

Retards that battery.

“Well, listen, Elia tomorrow, you should drink wine.”

At the weigh-ins. He was weighing in while he was cutting weight. He's drinking wine. Yeah, there's no perfect formula. I mean, it also, there's something

that he said for doing what makes you happy. Always. I think enthusiasm is a very important thing. Enthusiasm and joy is a very important thing. It's underrated.

Yeah. So my friend Dennis Buzuki, he just followed and I'll be in the card. Bad stoppage by the ref. And I like Jason Herzog, but bad stoppage, he said he's tapping the end-tap.

But I remember his second container fight he's cutting weight,

and Maraba's having a party at his house in Vegas. That was a weird one. That tap was weird. He went from locking his hands to finding his leg and pushing off the leg, and he ruled it as a tap.

I just don't understand that tap. I go, I go Jason, I've trained with Jason. And I'm not attacking him because I don't want people to think, I don't like to attack people unless they really deserve it. But I go, if you're not sure, because he said he wasn't sure.

He said it looked like a tap. So I go, if you think it looked like it, you weren't sure. Why not just weight? Because if it was, he would do it again. But his immediate action after pushing off the leg was to grab between his leg,

where you kind of lock your hand from the head and arm pin. And the hardest time ever finishing dentists. And I'm a pretty good black belt in Jiu Jitsu. And that's a good position for me. And I have, I struggle.

I could count on my hands how many times I've probably finished him in that position. It's also, it's the classic defense. Yes.

“You grab the leg, and that's the best way to prevent the guy from putting”

all the pressure on the neck. Do you ever go to, do you know what the impeller is? And he Bravo calls the impeller to get out of that position. You, you slide the knee to the sternum. And you finish with the knee on the sternum for the bottom guy.

For the top guy. So when the guy is defending? Yes. Yeah. You go knee to sternum.

It's fucking brutal man. It's brutal. You're being attacked in two different fronts. Uh-huh. You're being crushed.

Your serums being crushed. And this defense does not work. It's good anymore. It still gives you a little bit that the grabbing the leg and looping over like that gives you a little bit. But there's something about that crushing on the sternum and along with the squeeze of the head and arm choke.

Yeah. It's nasty. The difference with that, I would imagine you, at least when I've tried it, I try to get it before they get on their side. Because once they're perpendicular with the ground, it's a little bit hard to get the exact course. Press your point of what you want.

And I go, I try this literally the very next day and I go, there's no way you could submit somebody, which you're asking the air. You're, you could be squeezing as hard as you want. But if you're asking the air and this guy is on the side, it's going to be really difficult to make somebody tapping that position. Very hard. Depending upon your squeeze ability, right?

That too. Did you see Amosov when Amosov finished that dude?

He's a nasty grappler. Brought.

And it's crazy because he lost the chasing Jackson.

And I'm not saying that as a, like, a slight... Bro, Jason. And but she's like, how good is Jason Jackson? Jason Jackson's real fucking good. And that's much of making brother.

He's not saying he'll good. He needs to be signed to the UFC 100, 100%. That guy's crack. And we took him out, man. He took him out.

He didn't just beat him. Yeah. I wish he got him to solve out. Cross promo. Wow.

I know that it's not kind of bad. No, it's not going to happen. But I wish Santa Claus was real.

“But I go, like, why don't we just find out who's making like boxing, you know?”

Where we could find out who's actually looking at this. How he finishes. DC and I were actually talking about this because he looked. He goes knee to the belly. See how he does that across.

Now, if you're grabbing the leg. So if he was grabbing his leg, you would go knee across the chest. And you put it right down on the sternum. But he did that to make sure he was flattened out. Yes.

To make sure that he couldn't go to the side. But this dude is just so good. Wicked. Joe's just like, like, I can't do anything about that. Of course he can fucking.

Of course he can break dance. But break dancing is a great base for jujitsu. We had a bunch of guys reaching Martinez and Geo Martinez. These guys that came into tenth planet. We went back in the early 2000s.

And we were all like, oh, shit, break dancing.

Like, we never even thought gymnastics.

Everybody knew. Like a guy who could do gymnastics. A guy who was like really good at tumbling. That kind of explosive ability and balancing control and body strength. Totally translate to jujitsu.

Yeah. But we didn't think about it. Like break dancing is kind of like a gymnastics.

“You know, these dudes are doing weird shit with it on one arm with their legs.”

Lotus position above their head and they're hopping around on one arm. That's crazy. It is. Because I try to do it. I'm like, yeah, I can't do that.

Eddie started doing break dancing practice as a part of like strength and conditioning training for jujitsu. He started trying break dancing move. Eddie's so open minded. He's always willing to like try something out.

Like thing about Eddie's classes too. If somebody finishes somebody with something, Eddie will stop the class. What did you do? And it's like, oh, I do this and I grab my foot here and he's like, okay. Everybody look at this.

Come over, come over. And he'll bring everybody over. He'll show it to us. Show us how he set it up. And he'll show him how he set it up.

And they go, who thinks you can get out of this? Who thinks they got to move to get out of this? And then they would all practice different ways to get out of this. And they go, well, what if a guy does this? What if a guy does that?

He'll break it down. Like, he is very, very like open to new moves. You know, it makes his classes very interesting in that regard. You guys still train? I don't.

I haven't trained in a while.

“I was training with Gabe Tuddle out here for a little bit.”

But my, my got one knee man that just keeps fucking up. And I do too many, I like to do too many things to want to go through another surgery or to deal with something. I just don't want to, it's like everybody I know that gets to my age. It still trains.

It gets a discreplacement. It gets another surgery. It gets another surgery. And then when you start getting like back surgeries or like mats. I just got a knee replacement recently.

You start getting to that range. It's like, hey, hey, hey, hey. This shit's forever. You got to walk around. You got to play with your kids.

You got to be able to go hiking. You got to be able to do things. And if you break your body down, especially through grappling. I still hit the bag.

I still, still train like kickboxing. I still do a lot of work now. I work out constantly. But every time I start doing jiu-jitsu again, my knee starts throbbing.

Yeah. That's this kind of similar to how. I quinceau. Yeah.

I always, I always go like,

I wonder how much more he had in his tank. But he can be a hell of a fight on no notice. Yeah. No notice. And the kb fans don't give him any credit for it.

They go, he was playing with him. I go really. Tell me one fighter who goes out there and tells you that they're just going to play with their opponent. Prime time Al was a beast.

Yeah. He was a beast. And he was tough as shit and game. Isn't he selling real estate now? Shut up.

How are you, Quinta? Yeah, he's doing really well, man. Good for him. Working together for a little bit. But then I got to the point when I was like, dude,

I just don't have the time. I got to make a decision. And that's when I started doing the wrong company and everything. You see how fast time gets absorbed with things. With everything.

Yeah. I wish I had multiple lives. So I could do multiple different things. Multiple different lives. You might be in another dimension.

Maybe. I would love to. But in this dimension, I have too many interests. I almost wish I didn't have as many things that I'd love to do. I could whittle him down to a few.

Yeah. I still want to, I want to learn how you do your spinning back kick. I don't mind. But I know you do years a little bit of a different way.

But it's, I like to spin.

I like to spin the wind.

“Listen, if it lands, they're out of torque.”

You get a spin. It's crazy. Come on. It's not good. What do you do different than the way I do it?

I don't know. I know you're supposed to step. Turn to heel. Look over the shoulder. You can jump as well.

You don't have to step. The whole thing is just getting it out in a straight line. Yeah. And the problem with most people that didn't train like in a classic, like one of those school is that they, it's a circle.

Circle can land. It can land. And it can be really powerful if it lands. But it's not going to be as powerful as the way I do it. The way I do it is a turn.

And then I always say spinning back kick when I do commentary, because everybody understands

that. But it's a turning side kick. Is the way we talked about it in Dark Window. It's a turning side kick. You like the side kick and drag.

Yeah. I'm getting maximum amount of energy. Maximum efficiency.

“It's the difference between throwing a punch like this.”

You can knock somebody out if you throw a punch like this. Like a crazy arm punch. And you could hurt them and knock them out. 100% of the time. And you could do that once and say, that's the way to throw a punch.

Or you could learn how to throw a punch. Tommy Hurn style. Will you fucking turn and your body into it? And you got all that torque and bang. It catches you on the end in a straight line.

Yeah. And Tommy would just starch people with that. Or deante wild. Straight. Straight down the pipe.

That's the difference between a turning side kick and when people spin in a circle. So when you spin in a circle, of course it's going to have power. You have giant legs. Your legs carry your body around all day long. You've got the you're pushing off the other leg.

You're spinning with all your torso. Yeah, it's going to have power. But it's not going to have as much power as the way I do it. The way I throw it when it lands. Everything's going in a straight line.

And I'm pushing off my back leg. And I'm getting all my abs and doing my hips into it. And it's just straight. And I know that if I hit you with that, you're going down. You're going to the hospital.

Like you're not going to make it, man. So you hit the bag and I was like, holy shit, that's a fucking kick and I have right there. There's only one video of me online fighting. It's from when I was 19. I was at the US Cup in Connecticut.

And I hit this dude with a spinning back kick and send him through the air. Send him flying through the air. And I knew the moment I hit him, like this fights over. I turned around and just walked off casually. Because I would like to do that.

Like fuck up his heads. But I knew that one move has too much power for your body to absorb. There's no way you can take it. It's just too much. It's like getting hit by a car.

That's nasty, man. It's a nasty kick. Like when John landed on Steepay. Yeah. Just just caved his body in.

Like Steepay's one of the toughest human beings that's ever walked the face of the earth. But he takes that to the body. Like that's, you're not going nowhere. You're not going nowhere.

And John so smart. Like John practiced that specific technique because he was going up to heavyweight. He was like, I need something. Because I can't knock eyes out with one punch at heavyweight. I can maybe kick him with, but what's the most powerful kick.

And he realized is this pinning back kick. So he just drilled it. So three days a week. That's all he would do is just drill a spinning back kick. This episode is sponsored by Better Help.

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And one thing about John Man, he's such a like, his IQ has always been through the roof.

His fighting IQ is crazy. He understands fighting.

“And I think that's what sets him apart from everybody else.”

He understands himself. Like if you look at him, he could go. I'm not probably going to knock anybody out of heavyweight with the way I punch. So develop something else and it worked. And that's just reality.

This is the reality of his frame. I mean, you know as what's the well as anybody. It's weird how some people can just punch. Like from the moment they get into the gym the first time they're hitting the pads. Like what the fuck?

It's a natural gift. Punching powers. A weird natural gift. Yeah. And either you have it or you don't.

And if you don't have it, you can only develop it so much. I'm still trying to figure out if I have it. It's physically just man. A lot of it is like the size of your hands. And my arms aren't that long.

Yeah. So some of it's like a topoia has like he's not as long as he's a topoia.

But I always like imitate the topoia and kind of regret it.

Little topoia. He's a pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. He's just fucking funny shit. Well, Connor's another example. Like big fist man.

Yeah. Look at that dude's fist or giant. That's a big thing. Yeah. He got a little, uh, these hands.

You got to do what you got to do? These hands are meant for grabbing things. Yeah. Well, they're really good at that. But that's the beautiful thing about MMA as opposed to boxing.

Like, there's a whole bunch of different ways to finish your fight. Yeah.

“What did you think about the fight with use of before the fight happened?”

Like, in terms of like, uh, I used to text you like, like, asking, like, you're opinion, like, What do you think, uh, you know? Um, so I was, I'm curious to know what your thoughts were before the fight. Obviously.

Um, because I know what I thought going into that. What did you think going into the fight? I thought it was going to probably be one of the hardest fights. For sure. We've trained together multiple times.

Back in 2017, we trained together a couple of times within the last two years.

And, uh, I always knew he moved well on the feet.

Lateral footwork. Great calf kicks. And I, I said to myself, if I get chopped down with a couple of these calf kicks early in the fight, it's going to be a rough night, especially if I can't move and do what I do, which is, I'm also good a lateral footwork.

And he has those nasty knees up the middle that are very quick to end the fight or put you in skates. And he could get you out of there, right? And, uh, he did submit me that one time. So I think that really gave him a lot of confidence coming into it. So those were my thoughts.

I was like, for me to win this, I got to stay on the outside and then put pressure on him when I could put pressure on him. Take away his calf kicks when I can.

“Um, I put him on the back foot, making it a little bit more difficult to land that calf kick with authority, right?”

So that was my two cents on that and I knew if I could take him down first, um, it should go my way. Well, it worked. Yeah. It was a little easier than I thought it would have been. But, um, I think you're a different beast.

Yeah. Thank you. I think you're a different beast. Yeah. That was tight.

Yeah, but you got out of it. And I think you're a different beast at 45. You know, I think you just have more resilience at 45 and more durable at 45. More energy, too. Yeah, that's where it comes from, right?

It's, again, I wish we could eliminate weight cutting completely from fighting. And I've had conversations with the UFC about doing it, but there's no real road map that makes sense.

I think once guys get it ingrained in their head that they're going to cut weight, they're just always going to cut weight.

They're going to even if there is weight classes, they're just going to fight dehydrated. They're going to figure out a way to be bigger. I mean, we did it for wrestling and we competed two hours later sometimes in an hour. But you're not getting punched and kicked in the head. That's the difference.

“That's why I feel if they did same day wins kind of like what you do for an amateur.”

You can get as big as you can get, which is going to be very little maybe five pounds. So I go same day wins. You're giving four hours. So this way they can eat and have a nice meal. And then it can still warm up and have enough time to prepare for the fight.

But I think for the fighters on safety, you almost have to protect them from that. And that's why they have the way in the day before for their own safety. Because there's guys that are just going to be stupid. And the fights are going to suffer. They're not going to be as good because you're going to be more depleted.

I just think there's going to be people that understand you can't cut 20 pounds. The day of the fight and go and compete. I think that's going to be the end of the end of the deal. Like, you're going to come to the realization like, hey, they'll just lose. And then it'll weed out the people that are doing that.

And then they'll go, okay, so I have to work. Right. I have to go up in the way class and this makes more sense for me. Wouldn't it be better if we look? We have random drug tests, right?

They just show how many times you've been randomly drug tested? What you saw to probably a lot. I know they have it on the website. You could check how many times people have been tested and whatnot. So it's just random.

Now imagine if they did random random weigh-ins. That would be cool. Yeah. But then the problem would be what happens the day of the fight. That's, you know, like, what do you, what if the guy doesn't make weight?

Yeah. What if you have a giant paper view or a giant numbered card? Is that dead? I don't know. You have a giant numbered card and the guy doesn't cut weight.

Or it doesn't, doesn't make weight. What do you do? You still have the fight? I mean, we had the fight now. Yeah.

But I mean, we'll change this. It would be different if you only had to cut a few pounds though. Like if it's, so if you did it that way, random weigh-ins and then weigh-in day of the fight. Even if a guy was heavy, like you weighed in, you know, 137 or whatever. You're like, well, you got to lose two pounds.

Anybody can lose two pounds. The day-up and it's not that big a deal. Yeah. If you're not cutting weight already. Yeah.

If you're not cutting weight already in your fully hydrated and you weigh in the scale,

Or just penalize them.

The same way we penalize them now.

Yeah. Guys, it's just going to take the penalty and fight bigger. But it's like you're ready for me. Like for me. If we did same day weigh-ins, I would have to fight a 155 pounds.

There's no way. Piles, possibly even 170 because that's the way class. 165 would be the sweet spot where it's like, this is nice. I don't have to cut. I'm probably going to fight guys more likely in my size.

I'm going to feel good. I'm going to have the energy to compete. I'm not dehydrating myself severely. Or a 155 where I could die a little bit. I could still get down.

I hold myself for a meal, step on the scale. I could have my meal. Now I feel good. I go compete. But I'm not dieting all the way down to 135 pounds.

145 pounds. So that's a 10 pound gap. You see I'm saying so.

“That's why I think the same day it makes sense because you're not as depleted.”

Where it wouldn't be as severe in comparison to what we're doing now. I think that would be smart. But I think the only way that's really going to happen is if you have more weight classes, like at least every 10 pounds, I mean look at boxing. Boxing is so many more weight classes than you have seen.

Like how many weight classes are there in boxing? Too many. There's a lot. There's like every three pounds sometimes. Well, the egg the lighter weights, right?

When you get down to like Adam weight and straw weight and fly weight, like their fly weights are fucking tiny. You know? Like their bandom weight is what? It's not 135. It's lower.

Yeah, it's like 126 or something. What's bandom weight? 118. That's crazy. Minimum weight.

That's crazy. Imagine telling the lady that in the bar. What do you do? Like fight. What weight do you fight that?

Minimum weight.

I never even heard of that.

Minimum weight is crazy. Yeah.

“But this is also why many pack yeah, I was able to go up and win world championships”

in eight different weight classes, which is fucking bananas. It's cool though. It's crazy. But so go back to that again, please. So look at the difference in the gaps when you get to the top.

You got 122 to 126, only four pounds. 130 and another six pounds, 35 and another five pounds. It's kind of random. More pounds to 40, seven pounds to welterweight, 47. That's another stupid thing that we do.

What we have. You have welterweight in boxing, which is existed since the beginning of time. And it's always been 147. Sugar, Ray Lanard, Tommy Hearns, all those people. Roberto Duran, 147.

Our welterweight, 170. Like it doesn't even make any sense. Yeah. Come up with another name. Yeah.

What's a welterweight? You just something somebody made up. It doesn't even make sense. I just think we're like the Americans versus the Europeans. We just want to go against a grain.

Like we have inches instead of centimeters. Like what we use in metrics and pounds versus kilos. Like we just, we just said, fuck everything you're doing. We're doing everything different. We're just going to challenge everything that you're doing.

There's a little of that, too.

“But I think they just wanted recognizable names when they came up with weight classes.”

Because remember there was only two at one point in time. Was it lightweight? I don't remember. But when Frank Shamrock was fighting in his day. It was like 200.

Yeah. He fought at 200. And then there was heavyweight. So yeah, I don't even know. I don't know what those weight classes.

I used to watch, but I didn't know shit. I just watched. I think it should just be the number you weigh. It should be fighting the World Champion at 170 pounds. That's what it should be.

Like wrestling doesn't have names for the weight classes. No. You just have weight. We don't have weight. That's what it should be.

Like this is stupid. The fuck is a wealth of weight. What the fuck is a straw weight? What's an atom weight? You know, shut up.

What's a fly weight? Fuck off. You know, you don't weigh with a fly weight. Is this stupid? Fly weight's a dumb name.

On the 125 pound champion of the world. Minimal weight is a ridiculous name. Ridiculous. Nobody wants to be minimum weight. I'd rather fight fat.

Minimal weight.

I've never even knew that was a thing until it just now.

Yeah, that's probably tiny little dudes. There's a few dudes that fight in Adam weight in one F.C. in their kickboxing division that are wild men. It's incredible to watch. They're so fast.

It's like they're defying space and time. You know, and they're super skillful. Yeah. There's the one guy I saw the Japanese fighter. No, not Japanese fighter.

The guy doing a Moitai. Well, there's a Japanese fighter. The guy in Ryzen, who fought patchy mix. Oh, yeah, dude. The fuck was that.

That dude was a beast. I was like, this guy's been hiding over here the whole time. And the world doesn't know who this man is. This guy is a savage. Yeah, he let patchy on fire.

He's not a striker, but he's competent enough.

Yeah. But that was like, he exposed like everything. Every floor that he has as a stand-up guy. He took full advantage of it. I was like, dude, this guy is fighting like he's in the Matrix right now.

There's a bunch of those guys that exist out there in the world now. You know, it's a different world that we live in. The Daggers standing guy, I think. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them.

There's the guy fights in the PFL.

“And he fights exactly like the guy who I think might be the best striker in the world.”

Who's just a moly tie guy. I was a doula among guys that live. I think that's the guy. Yeah. I can't say that.

Bro. I can't say that. It's a tough one to say. That guy's nasty. But this guy mega met off.

Did you see the PFL? I didn't get to watch it last weekend. He fought in the PFL. And he fights just like, e-mongas that live. And they're both from Daggers down.

So, guaranteed these guys are training together. That was the one last weekend, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. We had one guy on that card.

His name is Leyvon. He's nasty from Osetia. They call his regions. Hmm. But he's a nasty striker.

There's so many of those guys right now that are coming up that no one knows. And their world class. They're elite world class fighters. And no one knows who they are. It's kind of crazy.

Yeah. The amount of world championship caliber potential world championship caliber fighters out there. Never been higher. Imagine talking shit to that guy. [laughs]

So, all because you didn't know who he was. He was just like, ah! It's a problem out there in the world right now. There's so many guys who could fight as opposed to this. Just be nice.

Just be nice. Just be nice. Don't talk shit. Yeah. Don't talk shit.

Everything would be okay. Yeah. I mean, how hard is it? So tell me what you think about this weekend. His long versus Ian Gary.

So, what's fascinating about this matchup is how well Ian Gary can control the range.

“I think he's going to be much bigger than Islam in a sense of height.”

Reach advantage. In terms of size, I didn't ever thought Ian was the biggest wealth weight. I still don't think he is. Why can't he be? He's so tall.

He can't be thick. No. But in a sense, even when you're talking just from a weight standpoint from what he was walking around at, and if I got what he told me he walked around at, but it wasn't cutting a whole lot of weight. No.

I want to say on the top of my head maybe 10 pounds. Which is why he's so healthy. Yeah. He has such energy. So I go, you're cutting just this and you're going out there and doing this to these guys.

Who are, you know, essentially bigger heavier guys. But he's got the speed advantage. The thing about Islam, he's such a complete fighter. He could do everything. But this will be the first time he's got a test with a guy who's a long man.

And can't he get inside, take him down. I don't think he's going to stand up and strike with him. He can. But I just don't think that's the path to victory against a guy like you. I don't think he has any plans standing up and strike with them other than as a means to an end.

Yeah. And his grappling is so high level. His Islam's grappling right now is at the top of the food chain.

I always want to grapple with those guys.

Just to see where I'm at. You should go over there. I remember when Alfa could be. And I might have been like the only guy who was able to like escape certain positions multiple times, where most guys they kind of just could see the feet and they just fold.

And we were talking at there as he goes like,

“I think you would actually do really well grappling with him.”

I'm like, probably try to get me killed right now. He trying to get me killed by the bear. But whenever he said that kind of stuck with me, I'm like, man, I just from my own like experience. Not like a ego thing or anything like that. Just be cool to see.

And I would like for them to put it on me. Just so I can see like where I'm at. See from how my strength measures up with theirs, positionally. I cue knowing when to transition to certain spots. Of course, the way it's going to play a big advantage.

But it's still cool. Could I grapple with bigger guys? I've grappled with Wyman. And I always tell Chris, like, I wish we were the same size because you would have been my main training partner, bro. You know, because you know, it would have been cool.

Like kind of coming up that way. But you know, obviously Marabas and my guy, I was my guy. Dennis, we're having Marabas a training partner. Must have been an awesome advantage. Oh, it was the greatest.

This is like, there's no, there's no replicating that. And I see guys outside of like they'll watch and they'll think like, you know, he's kind of like all over the place. He's not really. And then they'll go in there with it.

Oh, yeah. It feels a little different now. That you've been in there with the guy. It's, it's a whole different beast to watch from the outside. You're like, what is he actually good at?

But it's just like the chaos that he brings always constantly challenging your nervous system.

Uh, reactant to his faints, his movement. He's just, he's just always giving you something to think about.

Just saying like, you want to use your faints to challenge the nervous system.

Get guys to react. Because eventually you start to slow.

“Like, you know, beginning work, we're quick twitchy, right?”

We can react to everything. We're super sharp. As time starts to go on, those reaction times starts to go a little bit slower. You don't react as fast or as quickly. And things that we're landing, we're landing are now landing.

For our house talks about that a lot. Yeah. I think that's where George got it. Yes. For us, very smart dude.

So very smart dude when it comes to like strategy and understanding. Like what's going on with fighters and why the reacting to certain things. And what to do and how to counter. It's not a guess work. It's like a very, a really intelligent, structured system of what to do.

Yeah. You have to be like that. Yeah. I think some guys, they train and then go and fight. Without any goal in mind.

And I try to preach this because I used to coach at long goes a lot. Before you know, running a lot of my own practices, training camps and stuff like that. So I took over the role of, you know what, we're going to add these two MMA classes in. And when we come in, we're going to work on specific things for my fight. And anybody who has a fight and if I'm not fighting, we're going to focus on you guys.

And even if I have a fight, we'll also work in positions that you guys need to work on.

“And I always try to explain to guys like, when you're coming in, you should have a mission.”

Don't just waste an hour, hour and a half of training. Just to say I trained.

That's cool if you don't have a fight, but you should always be looking for something to get better at.

Something that you can improve at when you're sparring. Hey, you're not just going in to have a sparring. There should be an intent. Your sparring partner should be looking to give you a look for the fight. And you shouldn't be looking to be a complete asshole and kill your sparring partner.

Because I know why I want to spar with you, right? They're doing you a favor. And you need the favor from them to get where you want to be to make sure all the things that you're drilling on the pads, drilling what your partner's one-on-one. And then we go into sparring and put it in together, pull it from 100% and pull it down to like 70.

This way you can work in real time. I call it guided discovery. I learned this at SUNY Cortland when I was studying to be a PE major. I guided discovery. Yeah.

So you're working on certain things and say we're doing wrestling. And you're learning the position.

I show you a high crotch.

You grab the tricep or you post it. You shoot the high crotch, which means your head is on the outside. And I attack the leg. Two hands are now locked on that outside leg. My head is on the outside. And I'm in a strong position in my posture straight.

And now you're learning defense. Okay. So from a defense position, a guy shoots this shot. Super clean, super perfect. What are my choices that I can make?

What are the options? I could turn the head to the inside, stuff the head. I could push the head further to the outside and stuff the head to the outside, where his head already is. And look to cut the corner.

Or I could use my stuff the head and use my wiser or tightways. Plug in the hips, stuff in the head, and rotating my hips. And if he puts me down to the mat, what is my responses from that? So then you're chaining everything together. You kind of got a system of my responses.

So I'm not just doing stuff based on instinct. Instinct is good.

“But you should also have instinctual habits.”

And then you find tuna to know, this is my line of defense. If he goes here and I fill him going this way, I go this way. And if he's starting to turn the other way, then I know I need to do this and turn his head the other way. Put my pressure on my weight in another position so that I can now create this space. So I can escape and get my leg out.

And a lot of guys, they're not trained like that. They're going, they're sparring, they're just throwing a bunch of punches. Maybe they're throwing set combos that they head on the pads. But how are you setting it up? Are you fainting, moving him towards the cage?

Looking for the gap where the octagon kind of changes. Where it's no longer like a flat surface and it's cutting out an angle where you take away a little real estate. And then you're trapping them. Where there's not a lot of room for them to get back from. But now you can set up your strikes and know where you're trying to go.

But if I'm cutting him off and he constantly does this and he maybe juke steps me and goes back the other direction. And I'm starting my combination now he's gone. So it's like, how do you set up all these things that you know exactly where you want to go? Because he's going to have an option in the fight in real time. But in training is where you should be working out the kinks and understanding this.

And I truly feel this is one of the things I don't so well early on in my career. And why I was teaching class because I felt like the guys needed it. I was taking these guys down at will. There was no resistance. I'm like, I'm good, but how good am I actually because these guys just don't know.

They don't have the information. Okay, let's level them up. Now these guys are leveled up. It makes it harder for me. Now I have to improve what I'm doing.

And I have to bring a different approach. Okay, he knows how to do this now. So when I do this, I can't just get an easy take that way. I'm just going to sit until his butt. He's now challenging me with the wizards.

Stuffed my head breaking my posture.

I'm on the ground. Maybe I'm on both knees.

How do I read just post my hand?

Get height again attacking the legs, taking them back the other way. Or coming through the middle through the crotch. And finishing a take down like what we call some people call it. I ran in or we call it all American finish. But there's just so many little nuances.

And I feel in MMA that people are still training just to train. And I think that's the difference between understanding your timing. You know the same moves. But if I know how to react faster than you. I'm going to win that position or the situation every single time.

Unless you throw caution to the wind and it's just some random walk-art that I just get caught by. Which if I'm aware, the chance of that should be very, very low. Well, that's the benefit of teaching the people that you're training with everything you know.

“That way, you must come up with a new solution.”

Not in your forcing it. Not in your forcing it. What do you hold that? What do you hold that? Not everything.

Get close. But that's also world champion mindset versus someone who's just a fighter who fights and does well and is a good fighter. But there's so many times where I watch guys fight and I watch exchanges and they're waiting towards each other and throw them bombs at each other. And one guy wins and one guy loses. But I'm like, this is not the ultimate way to do this.

This is a, you can do it. You can be a battering ram and a blunt force object and you can get it done.

You know, like we've seen so many fights that have just been insane first round wars.

And then we see in guys that just are slick and they're moving around and switching stances and doing wild shit that you don't expect and overwhelming the other guy's nervous system and and not getting hit and doing things we like, oh my god, that's so sweet. That's so smooth. And those are the guys that are going to excel and those are the guys that are going to really take it to the next level. Yeah. And I think when you're talking about all these guys, like the caucus guys, the Dagestanity guys,

these so many guys that are coming up right now that are so fucking high level.

“Like you can't have any flaws in your game anymore.”

You can't just be a guy who wades at someone and tries to throw bombs and hopes they land. Maybe that works and a regional scene. Maybe that works with training partners that are a lower level than you. But you're going to get pissed up if you fight someone who's really good. But there's levels and levels and levels and levels are changing all the time.

The levels are moving up all the time. If you just go back to the ultimate fight or season one, that's 2005. That's not that long ago in regular sports. 2005 boxers look pretty similar to 2026 boxers. Yeah.

Pretty fucking similar at the World Championship level. And I'm a main man. There's no comparison. It's nuts. Night and day.

Night and day. And these guys are getting better all the time. I see guys coming off the contender series. I'm like, okay, this guy looks like a world champion. Like right now.

It's crazy. That Ethan Ewing kid. That guy comes out of nowhere. Matrix. And he's fighting so smooth and so slick and so intelligent.

And the footwork and the faints and the movement and knowing what to do at any given time. And you're like these guys are just so good now. They're so good. I was bummed down when he got hurt for that fight with a fair. Yeah.

That was a bummer. If I didn't have a tough fight though, but I was curious to see how that one was going to go. In to me is the dark horse in that division. Yeah. Easily.

Yeah. The wellmaker fight was a big wake up called a people. And then he fought that Brazilian cat and just lit him on fire. To win the feet of guys back to back. And it's the way he did it too, man.

It was so slick. And you realize like, there are levels. And these guys coming up right now. They're already at a level that's above and beyond world championship level of 15 years ago. Yeah.

It's crazy. We fight in the UFC. And you know, 20 years ago, you would have said he was the goat. But what's fascinating is like, from a striking standpoint, you could see that and look at a guy and go, this guy is the real deal. But then you kind of wonder like, well, what happens later in the rounds if a guy does take him down and how can he adjust two of those takedowns.

In terms of a cardio standpoint, lack the gas that build up.

“Can he turn it around and still be as efficient as effective?”

Right. So many like variables when it comes to things like that. And when people are game planning and approaching fights, those are the things I like to think about.

First round, everyone is dangerous.

Everyone is so skilled. But it's like, okay, if I can get out of the first round, what does the fight start to look like? How do I paint the picture? If it goes in this direction, he's able to get off a couple of these things. And I'm beating up a little bit.

What are my, what are my fallback defenses to try to turn the tide a little bit? And get it back to going where the ball's now back in my court. Well, that was why I was so interested in seeing what happens in the con of a Gregor max hallway fight. Which was crazy.

But take that away. I was interested because I was like, if Connor can't take him out quickly, max hallway does not get tired. He does not get tired, and he's so accustomed to that five round pace. He understands when to hit the gas, when to back off.

He knows when to move, and he's always moving inside.

It's like, you want to talk about getting overwhelmed. Like, max hallway overwhelms people with pressure, pace, and faints and skill. Yeah. And he's not going anywhere. You guarantee he's going to be fighting in the fourth round, just like he was fighting in the first round.

He's not going to fade. Yeah. One of the worst matchups for Connor, if he couldn't take him out of the first round. I was hoping we got to see you more.

“I think the world was hoping to see you.”

We hope we got to see anything. We didn't see anything. But it's crazy because he threw that same kick in the back room. But this time he runs out of me, throws it in lands, and it's like, oh, go ahead. Well, he threw that kick when you're hitting a pad is very different than when you're kicking the air.

You never throw that kick in the air. You throw that kick jumping in the air. The amount of torque that is on your supporting leg is bananas. You're just hoping and praying that your knee stays together. Look, if you throw a jumping side kick, that's a different thing.

You're landing on the ground, you're landing in a linear way. Right?

When you're rotating and kicking and flying through the air at the same time, and you're opponent adjusts.

So you're trying to like change the arc. And in midair, try to catch him as he's circling off. It's the worst kick to jump and throw. So I guess I've doing that. Would jump and round out kicks?

Jump and round out kicks are great if you're close enough to land them. Yeah. If you're close enough to land them. Who's that guy that landed at on bonfeme? No, not on bonfeme.

On James Vick in karate combat. Did you see that? He throws that jumping switch kick. Yes. Yes.

Gabriel, the turn. What is his name? Alves. Rafael Alves. That was close.

“It was one of the worst chaos I've ever seen in my life.”

But why is James Vick still fighting? He likes fighting, I guess. Oh, he's only 37. I'm 37. My bad bro.

He's out a lot of chaos. My bad cause, unfortunately. And this dude, he hit him with this jumping just right before that. Well, he looks like a tank compared him. Well, it's just the height.

His speed is crazy. James Vick is tall and very skillful too. But it's just this kick would have knocked him out at any point in his career. Any point is career. And any human being.

Look, this is too much. There's the amount of force that he lands when he lands this kick. When he throws that, he throws the jumping roundhouse kick. Touches him with the right leg and then comes up top with the left. And just clean across the chin.

They do have some good stuff at karate combat. Yeah, man. Well, Rob Ellis was fighting there right before that, Jimmy. I think I had a little further ahead. Go to like right below it before where the Brazilian flag is.

Rob has combined fights in karate combat. It was like what? Less than two minutes. I know. There it is.

There it is. So let's watch that again. Back it up again. So watch how he throws it. Boom.

I mean, it is clean, shin to the jaw. I mean, there's no. Why do you point at him? I don't know. Let's touch it.

And now he's bowing in print. Well, I mean, he realized after it was over our serious. It was. So watch this. Touches him with the right and then the left comes.

I mean, it's literally perfect. That probably would have killed him at any point in the time in his career. And when James has been in the amount of wars that he's been in. And he ahead has to cam this is the worst. Oh, he was.

He could have died. That was one of those ones where he could have died.

“Because I think he was in the intensive care for quite a while after this fight.”

Really. Yeah, he was hospitalized for quite a while after this fight. And I think it was pretty pretty serious. That sucks. It was a bad head kick.

That was a bad one. It's a rough sport. It's a rough sport. And there's times fighting. You don't play.

There's times where guys get KO didn't their never the same again.

You know, like Terry Edm when Edson Barbosa hit him with that wheel kick. Yeah. Terry Edm was a real contender before that fight. And we never really saw him after that. And never really achieved those levels again.

I don't even fight after that. Maybe once. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know.

Not sure. But that fight essentially ended his career. Because it was so. I mean, and again, that's one of those kicks that the wheel kick has so much torque. Brown.

I remember my fight with Marlon and. I thought I was going to be one of those guys. I was so. Like, I don't say paranoid, but nervous concern. And I think that's a good thing.

And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing.

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And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing.

“And that's the shitty part about this gig.”

Right? You need the money. I'm living in New York at the time. So long Allen's fucking expensive. And I'm subbing as a teacher.

I'm coaching, wrestling. And when the training camp came up, I was fighting. Brett Johns undefeated. 3-0 to UFC.

Just came up for the 30-second cast.

Slicer submission over Joe Soto. Mind you, Joe Soto, submit to me. Pryth. I think five times in five minutes. So I'm looking at this guy like, this guy is a wizard.

You don't agree? Right. This is my perception of him going into this fight. And I tell the guys, and I'm going to spar these last three, four weeks. I'm going to, I'm going to just circle.

And I'm going to wrestle. Was like, you guys try to hit me, but just know, I don't want to get hit in the head. But try to hit me. I still want to have like my awareness. But the whole, that whole last three, four weeks.

“Everything was just grappling before that, striking, hitting pads, cardio.”

And I was like, I'm going to just use my footwork and whatever I could do. And thankfully we're doing a lot of time between the Marlin fight and that fight was April. December 9th, 2017, so it was four months, just about, yeah. Which was scary. It was scary.

They offered me to fight. I was like, I don't know if I'm supposed to be doing this right now, but I kind of need the money. So, well, you needed the money, but if I could give an advice to like Volcanovsky, I would

have said, first of all, I would have said, never take a fight with Islam, a coach, every

one, 11 days. No, that's just crazy. No, especially when you're not training at all, you're just kind of chilling. And you take a fight with one of the best pound for pound fighters, not the best on the planet.

And you get head kicked. And then to fight Ilya, just a few months after that, it's kind of crazy. Yeah. And he was looking good in that first round, until Ilya does what he does, traps you against that black line against the cage and he puts those combinations on you and puts the lights

up. And yeah, I agree, he should have taken more time, 100%. He would have been okay with taking more time. You've got to take more time. You have to.

You just have to realize that as tough as you are, your body is a machine. And if the machine's broken, it's got to be repaired. And it's going to take time to repair. It's not as simple as, like, go to the shop, you get a new carburetor, you're good to go.

You've got to give your body time to heal. And with the head, it's hard, because you don't know. Yeah. So it's the wild card and everyone is different. And I kind of wonder if that's something to do if, like, the way people grow up, if

maybe they drop during the head a couple of times when they're kids, or football, play football in high school, get KO to a few times doing that, you know, you get KO to a few times doing stupid shit with your friends and then you get older and you're trying to compete and you realize I can't take a shot, as much as I thought I could have, and you see a guy like Diego Lopez and you're like, dude, he's, his, his chin is granite, bro.

It's like, what can you hit him with that can actually put him down? It's crazy. Well, if he continues getting hit, there'll be a time. Why? Let's remember Chuck LaDelle.

Chuck LaDelle in the early days was Bulletproof. He was Bulletproof. He was just weighed at guys, bite down his mouth, piece, each shot to the head and take guys out. And he didn't give a fuck.

He did full confidence in his chin and would force guys at these chaotic wars. And then it goes away and then one day you get hit and it just goes, left hand broken in hand from Rich Franklin, that hit Chuck. Well, yeah. He broke Rich's arm.

Yeah. And then yeah. I think broken hand. He hit him. Is that what he knocked him out with?

The broken arm?

“From what I remember, that's what he hit him with that left hand and put him out and I was like,”

I was, he was done at that point, his chin was done. I mean, after rampage came out, KODum, that was kind of, that was the big one. That was an accident. That was an nasty one. Yeah.

I always wanted to be like the mini rampage, but I was like, but I'm not not getting

anybody out. So it's, sorry to do the rampage, with a chain and the wolf, oh, oh, I always wanted to do that. And rampage did it all natural, whereas everybody else was doing juice, especially in pride.

Everyone was a juice monster and pride. Yeah. You know? It's a different time back then.

“He still has the craziest slam KO of all time of all time.”

A Rona, right? Yep. A Rona didn't let go of the triangle. Yeah. And he takes him over the top as hell, like a pillow and slams him down.

Oh my God. That was another one.

A Rona was never the same again after that fight.

What about cyborg? And that knee from MVP. That was the craziest. We can dented his cranium, crushed his skull, literally crushed his skull, broke his skull open.

So this is gonna sound like a joke, but I go like, what do you do, plunge it to pull the back? You got to get constructed. You ever see what they did do it? Not all these plates in his head.

Yeah, he had all sorts of screws and plates and everything. The pieces head back together again, because his skull structure has been compromised. What does it do to your brain? Your brain is now squished. Not good.

I mean, he said after the fight. I'll be back, but everybody's like, no, you won't. That's what it looked like. I mean, that is literally crazy. Can't bro.

I saw a moi tie fight recently online where a guy did that to a dude with an elbow and it caved his head in and you see like this giant hole in his forehead where his head's dented in. And the referee is like, stop the fight, he's like, why are you stopping the fight?

“He's like, bro, you need to see what you look like.”

You don't see what I'm seeing. Yeah, your head's dented. Your head's broken. Like you have a broken head.

It's amazing how few times that's happened.

If you think about it, yeah, this is it. This is the, look at that. Oh, that might be worse than the other one. I just write up there. If you back it up, you can see the elbow to do lands right there.

Boom. That was it. And then he looks at it. I mean, he's like, hey, and then the referee gets a look at it, and the referee gets a look at it.

As soon as the referee sees it, it almost doesn't even want to hit him again. He's like, fuck. Yeah, I mean, the referee stops, he's like, hold on a second. Let me get a look at you. It's like, you should stop.

No. My friends. Brains in the doctor. So what's going on here? Tomahawked him.

That was what was so impressive about Zainukov, Chanko, and his, um, John Pork. Yeah. Why didn't he call that? I have no idea. Chanko, they call him Chanko, because that's his town.

That's the town we grew up in. Okay. Yeah. That dude's elbows were so slick. He's, he's, he's fun to watch.

He's slick. His elbows in the clinch and in tight, you know, because he's a really tight world champion. And, you know, that was his original discipline, which is interesting. When you see these guys who start off as strikers, and then they get to Dagestan training room, would, could be, been Islam and all the guys, and they, they learn the wrestling.

But they start off with just this elite level of striking. Yeah. Now the guy wasn't bad. He gave back some, some resilience, but yeah, he dropped him. Remember?

Yeah. Oh, no, that was his first fight. Yeah. No, he didn't drop him. That was his first fight in the contender series.

He got dropped. He's, uh, he's a dangerous guy, man, super dangerous. Chanko's fucking, he's for real, man. And so high level with the striking, his striking is just so elite, especially those elbows in tight, man, elbows are nasty.

I, I'm like Chowson, and I can't let you get close, I can't let you get close. Cause now, you don't bother doing it to me, bro, that's, that's, I ain't trying to look like that. Yeah. I want to continue my acting career, and, you know, I got a whole lot of things I want

to do, but it's going to be a little tough if you get a couple of those. Yeah. Well, elbows are, it's kind of funny that your gloves protect your hands, but not your elbows. Or knees, or your knees, or your shins. It's kind of nuts that we have the padded thing, is the thing that's the least likely

to hurt you. If you really think about it, it's a crazy sport. It is the craziest. I love it and hate it sometimes. How much longer you think you're going to do it?

You're 37 now.

“Yeah, you must be thinking, you must be thinking, how much more am I going to do this”

for? Yeah, you know, I'm just taking it one fight at a time. I would like to end my career with the UFC, you know, hopefully, I've been in an option that you might not. I don't know.

You know, you never know what's going to happen.

So many comes up with a big number. No, and I've been that, like you just never know, like, I know I sometimes piss off the breasts from time to time. Do you? I guess I've been told this how, that I sometimes I don't say the right things.

And what are you saying? I was very honest with you. I was very honest with you. So sometimes I just tell how I really feel about certain things. And people, these media outlets, they know what they're doing.

They're asking me these questions because they know I'm going to tell them the clickbait clips that they want, who are you talking about specifically, which, which one? The media outlets that fuck with you all of them. They're all trying to give you a second. They all, all of them.

They ask these questions.

many times. It's a legitimate argument. It is. The reason when I, when I talk about it, I am, and maybe because I'm not the crazy guy

like a Sean Strickland, because Strickland has talked about it, and he's always been,

he's known as the crazy guy. But when he talks about it, he makes it a very logical understanding bit where I go, how can he's not getting, maybe he is, maybe I just don't know, 'cause I don't ask. I'm like, for some reason when I say it, I feel like I'm a little bit more scrutinized.

“So what does the UFC get upset at you, do they say that they're upset at you?”

You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. I feel like this is a real issue, it's going to get in trouble with a-- No, I think we haven't read my relationship. You look, when Eveleweve and Alexander Hernandez, when they fight, yeah, it's very soon. Folkanovsky is defending his title against finally Eveleweve, like who?

That fucking guy's been waiting forever. Yeah. Ever. So I don't really know who's the clear cut guy for me to face unless his Loro Murphy. I was told he was hurt.

I think he's booked. I heard Loroan's got a fight. I heard he was hurt. Oh, really? Yeah.

Maybe he had a fight schedule, and it doesn't anymore. Yeah. But I thought he has a fight coming up.

Yeah, I was told he was hurt, so he's going to be out for a couple months.

I don't know how long. I don't know how serious of an injury. But everybody else is booked, and who did he just lose to? Loro. Most are.

Which was crazy. I thought that fight should have been scored a draw. Did it? Did it? With the point deduction.

Should have been scored a draw. What was the point deduction for? I think it was a low blow.

“But they gave him, they gave him four rounds.”

They gave him four rounds. They gave him four rounds. I'd have to watch it again. I didn't think it was a bad decision when I saw it. That was a good idea.

There was a competitive fight. Most are didn't decide to wrestle him until round the end of round three. Right. And he just goes to show. He could have taken him down any time he wanted him.

He wanted to show him striking. He does have striking. But because of that, he made it more controversial to the overall fan base because he decided to use his wrestling a lot later on in the fight. Yeah, but I think he needed to show that he's not boring in order to get a shot at

the title. And now he's got a shot at the title. But the standard fight between rounds one and two was still like, there's nothing happening. I thought it was pretty good.

I thought it was a chess match. It was a chess match. I think it was opening up Lorone to shots that I don't think he expected were coming at him because I think he probably anticipated shot. Takedowns.

Takedowntumps. And said, most far was getting off on him. Yeah. It's strike. He can.

But it's like you. It's like why do it when you're better at grappling if you can get a hold of them? Why do it? Why role the dice? And you know when people say like a lot of people were upset when Marabbe shook his

shot. And they were saying, like, that was boring. That was just like a lesson. This is the sport we're watching. If a guy like Marabbe can take you down and give you no keys for five rounds and you

“can't do shit and you lose your title, that's how it goes.”

You can't say that's boring. And he should fight differently because Sean's got to come up with a solution. He's got to figure out how to deal with that. Sounds mixed. It's about the story.

Yep. How'd you do against this guy? Excellent. I'm not gonna try versus the e-ingering. Same thing.

How'd you do with this guy? Connor McGregor versus Coby. No, my God. Maddoff. Same thing about the storyline.

Yeah. Connor was protected his whole UFC run. Now he's fighting a good high level grapple, probably arguably arguably the best grapple or from the top position, clinch position. Never.

Ever. And it's the storyline. Can Connor McGregor overcome this? Can he land a perfect shot? It's what gets you to buy into it.

But if you're going to be pissed that the machine is going to come in and your guy can't land the perfect punch, who's fall is that? But this is why you're watching. You're not tuning in to watch a slaughtering of the lambs. You want to watch a competitive fight.

You just want to watch one side of fights. I don't know. Like, what do you want? Yeah. I mean, it was one side in that he was able to take him down at Will.

But the also the problem was Sean fought that fight with a fucked up hip and really probably should have been fighting. Like, he had a tear in his hip. Yeah. Well, we all have stuff.

Of course. I went to the fight with Sean, injured coming into the fight. He gets injured during the training camp and then he uses that. I had a busted rib. I go, bro, we all have stuff.

But you were in a better position to win this fight than I was coming into the fight. The same thing. When did he turn hardest hit? I don't know. But then they fought again.

And it was worse. It was worse.

Well, Marab was like super confident coming in the second fight that he was going to

take him down and then also he had that championship level confidence. Oh, of course. That level up. Did that level up? Yeah.

So it's like it's not not because Sean is not not going to fans.

No one's coming into this. I was talking to the guys that waste a while, they're like, it's fascinating how many of you guys are so beatin' up. I'm going to list of my injuries and everything I got going on, like I got to MRI for this.

I got MRI for this. This hurting. That's been bothering me for two years. This has been still ongoing.

And I still go fight and you would never think it.

But that's just what it is. We got to do it. We got to do it. We're never going to be 100% going into it. 100%.

Like all sports. Guys have fought in World Championships with blown out knees and one, you know? I mean, when Alex Pereira beat Yuri Prahaska, he had a fucked up knee in the first fight. Yeah.

“And that's why when you see him get on top of him when he's finishing him, he rolls”

over like rolls instead of stepping up and standing over. He rolled off of him because his knee was blown out. So open. Yeah. That was crazy.

But that was on Yuri. That was such a blunder, such a blunt, well, that's Yuri's craziness where it's not good. You know, some of Yuri's craziness is great, like when he fought Jamal, I felt for him so bad.

I did too. I was just like, as I'd like to say, I want to have the win, but I felt for him like damn, bro, you made the biggest mistake that you could have possibly made in a situation like that. And he only thing you can hit you with.

Fuck it. He lends it. That's the only thing you can do with. He doesn't have a right leg. His right leg is completely gone, but he could still throw that left hook.

You know? That's his best punch. Lightning.

I always tell people the way he leaves that that he just leaves out that lead

hand and he's measuring stiff jab and he's stepping back and he takes that sidestep pivot that else stepping to boom, it's just he's clean with that. That division is on fire right now. How about Navajo Sterling? How about to say what?

What happens with those two guys? Ooh, I know. Right. The same camp, no? I know.

He just be beloved. What happens? And he stopped them. That was perfect. I know.

Watching that was extraordinary. I was like, this kid is something. He's something, man. That right hand was. Whew.

The distance he covered to land that right hand too. And Yon's got a chin made out of iron. To take Yon out like that and drop him like that, very, very, very impressive. It's 43 now. Yeah.

“So it's also, I'm not taking anything away from him, but it's like, I think that's how”

old Glover was when he beat him. Really? Glover was like 42 when he won the title. Fuck. He was in his 40s.

It's doable. It's doable. It's doable. It's doable. Yeah.

It's not normal. I mean, Glover was the boogey man for six years before he could ever get to the UFC. Everybody had talked about Glover, like he was scary, but he was trapped in Brazil. He couldn't visa issues, he couldn't get a visa to come to America and fight. And during those six years, he might have been the best light heavyweight on the planet.

Yeah, I remember you talk, because when he got signed, he got signed pretty. What is, like, late 20s, maybe 30s? I think he was in his 30s. Yeah. And I didn't know about until he came over and made that debut.

And was it against Fabio, Maldonato, I think, maybe? Mm-hmm. But yeah. So sometimes it just goes like that. But unlike Prairie, he came over so late, started so late, I should say.

And for him to do what he has done as such a short amount of time, he's like unreal. Unreal. Yeah. Pretty extraordinary. How impressed were you with cereal gone though?

Very. How many heavyweights can move like that do? Zero. And that's the whole thing with the aspirin, I'll fight that I was saying. I was like, dude, this guy played basketball, it's a different type of athleticism.

Quick twitch muscles. It goes out of pivot, fake hit his jooks, and it's like plyometrics, giant man plyometrics. Yeah. Yeah. And he's great at just holding the range outside of the eye pokes, but great at holding

range.

Also, the dude never gets hit.

Yeah. Most of the last time we saw, I mean, think about, gone is fighting in the heavyweight division. He's fighting guys like Ty to evasa. He's fighting, you know, these elite guys, these big heavyweights.

You never see him get cracked. Even against in Ghana. I'd say even against in Ghana. He didn't get cracked. I mean, that's kind of crazy that he's so good at avoiding getting hit.

He's probably like the least hit clean heavyweight in the division. I think that fight with John Jones made people think less of him than what he actually is.

“It's just that's how good John Jones is.”

That's how good John Jones is. He did. He did that. Yeah. Especially if John gets a hold of your neck, he's going to finish it.

The way he did it, you know, taking him down like that in the first round and guillotine in him in phenomenal. But it's just, you have to deal with that speed and that movement standing up before you could ever get that to happen. And John figured it out.

But I think serialist tightened up his take down defense considerably since that fight. Yeah. Because I think you realize like, this is the big hole in his game. I know he brought in a lot of real big wrestlers. But when it comes to kickboxing, when it comes to Moitai, he's so hard to fuck with.

He's nasty. Light on his feet.

He does a weird thing to from his side.

Yeah. That front kick. I'd be watching that twisting front kick from the front leg. It's the way he stands. He stands almost like this bladed, but it's like not really bladed, but it is.

And it allows him to have that dexterity and the flexibility way he could just look like he's doing a front kick piece. Arturo is a. It's a twisting kick. Yeah.

So he can talk one dough called a twisting kick. And that's what it's like. It's from this position. You throw it out like that with the ball of the foot. Yeah.

You're standing completely sideways and your left, your front leg comes up and it twists and goes like that. And that's what he's doing to the body. He's throwing a twisting front kick to the body. It's nasty.

See if he can find it in here.

Well, that's his round kick.

But it's, it's off of his front leg. He throws it off the front leg. And he throws it completely sideways. And when you get to moving, he's gone. Yeah.

And then. And also, you might try to like over emphasize those movements. And he counters catching you coming in because he's faster than you. And that's what he did to Alex. He caught him with that.

He caught him with a jab.

“I mean, that's what he really rocked him with.”

It was a right jab. Alex was big. That's huge. It's freaking ass. I was like, yo, this is like distracting bro.

You got to fucking but dunk it, dunk it, this fucking block, blocking my vision of the screen right now. Alex. So it was the worst matchup for Alex to step into heavyweight. A guy who is bigger than him naturally moves faster than him and lighter on his feet

and is also an elite striker, a world championship caliper striker at a heavyweight level. Because like, you know, Alex has been 185. He's a thinner guy. And he definitely put on mass to get up to 250. But that's not necessarily where he was naturally where a serial gun has a natural

frame to be a 248. And he's more stationary.

The stationary guys never do so well against the guys who can move very well.

It's just, right, hard for you to chase him down and track him down to learn the perfect punch. Had a hard time landing his calf kicks, which slows fights down for him and allows him to land that big, chama left hook. I don't even if they were to have a rematch.

I don't know what he would have to work on to make that adjustment. That's just a hard fight for him. It's always going to be a hard fight for him because serial gun so agile. He's so hard here. Yeah.

He's never in front of you. Unless you caught him, like, maybe through those high kicks right in the beginning, you could have caught him, but something like that rocked him. And that would have been a different story. But he didn't, you know, and Serals, like, he's a great blocking shit, too.

And if you get to him, his reflexes are excellent. Yeah. And it's just that movement and speed is extraordinary. It would have been very interesting to see what happens if the aspirin all fight didn't end the way it ended.

That was a hard break here. I got a lot of flag for that because people were saying I should have taken inside. Because I got a foul, too. And I'm like, I'm not not taking inside. What I'm saying is the only person that knows how bad he truly, like, was hurt is going

to be aspirin all. Yes. You know, so if he's saying it, I take it at face value. It is what it is. I can't go and say, I'm in your eyeballs.

I've seen guys get poked all the time and they continue. Yeah. We've seen it all the time. But not all eye pokes are created equal. No.

All of them, three studious fingers up in there is. No. Yeah, it was bad terrible. Terrifying. I can only take away he says.

I was like, but again, it's really up to him. Can he have said, if he was winning the fight, my pushback was devil's advocate.

“If he was winning the fight and having his way, would he have said, you know what?”

I'm going to suck it up and try to fight through this even though I still can't see. You never know. If he was having, I don't think he should. And I agree. Wow.

I think he was, he made 100% the right call because look, he didn't lose that fight. It was a foul. Although controversial, he doesn't get knocked out. He doesn't get head kicked. He doesn't get flying in the face.

If you can't see out of one of your eyes, there's all sorts of shit that's coming from this direction that you're just not going to see coming. And in wild exchanges where your peripheral would catch it and you would duck under, you're not going to be able to see it. Yeah.

And you're going to get rocked. You're thinking now, oh my god, I can't see out of one of my eyes. Fuck that. Yeah. He did the right thing.

And I think, you know, he should have got more support. He should have got more support from everybody for that, for everybody. From everybody. Yeah. I mean, I tried to give him as much support as I could.

I think he got fouled and they did the right thing.

“And I think you got to take one point away every fucking time someone touches an eye.”

One point every time and they won't do it anymore. It looks like he's doing better now. I'm hoping he gets to compete again this year. And two fucking eye surgeries, man. So that, remember when you got knocked out by them all in the rise, in the back of your head,

you're like, oh, shit, I can't get hit. How about him? Two eyeball surgeries. And now every time a thing becomes towards his eye, he's thinking about his eyes losing

Look at Michael Bisping. He doesn't have an eye.

He has one eye that's missing, right?

So you've got to think that, am I going to not be, I'm going to look at my kids through one blurry eye for the rest of my life? And it's fucked. That's fucked, you know, it's, so for being the position that he's in right now is kind of terrible.

“I want to talk about the Islam fights for this weekend, for 330, can we take a piss break?”

Yeah. Take a piss break. We'll be right back. And we're back. Jamie, pull up that card, the one this weekend, so we take a look at it.

Yeah. What do you think about the EM Gary Islam fight? If you had a predict, if I had to predict on the UFC desk and they put you on the spot. Okay. Islam markets have did a really good job, neutralizing JDM's boxing, didn't really give

them an opportunity to do anything. He chopped his legs away with the, the calf kicks, control them in a clinch, to take downs were relatively easy. He didn't even really have to set it up with like hands. He kind of just shot and just took him down and will.

In Gary now, on the other hand, he's done a good job of showing take down resilience. We saw that with Bilal Muhammad, is Bilal Muhammad, market chef? No. No. No.

But it definitely showed something. He did a good job with Shaft Card as well. Who's a bigger guy was able to defend a bunch of times. I forgot if it was Shaft Card who had his back, but he was able to defend. Shaft Card's the guy who beat him, so Shaft Card is the one lost that he has.

And it was the grappling that Shaft Card got him with, but he also blew out Shaft Card's knee.

“That's why Shaft Card has had all these surgeries and oblique kick.”

That kick is so nasty. That's the one thing that I wonder, like should we not have that? You don't like any, you don't really like that one. You can't, I mean, you can defend it by not getting hit by it.

But the problem is, if you get hit by it, like, Khalil Roundtree and Modestus Bukakis, when

he went, turned his knee sideways, he stomped that thing, stomped it. And that's, that's a career changer, like it could be a career ender, Bukakis came back. But this is two years now, right? For Shaft Card that he's been out, he said multiple surgeries. He had it done and then it blew out again and how to get it done again.

Yeah, I just don't know, the range, the reach of anage, I think Ian does a great job of using his lateral for work. It's not the fastest guy. No. But what he is, he's imposing.

He knows how to cut you off, but South Paul stands, I think causes some problems for a lot of people. He's only lost what, one time to the, to the, to the, age you're on over more tunes with the heck, it knocked out a punch. Was it a punch?

Yeah, he got punched.

“Well, that was a heck, but either way, I think Ian's going to have to look to something”

like that, see if there's maybe some of those old tendencies that that punch was able to land. That was also such a younger version of Islam, I just don't see him making those mistakes again. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

How does Ian win? I'm going to have to point fight and sit on the outside and not to get tired going backwards to the whole time. Right. And he got tired doing that against Carlos Prothas.

So this is a tough one for, for Gary, can he get the upset, of course, is fighting. We just saw this with Gachi in, uh, Tuporia, um, but I would say Islam has the one shore cut way to win, push him against the cage, take him down. And even if he parses him against the cage, I'm curious to know, if, if the curious to see if Gary can do damage in the clinch.

Whenever I'm in the clinch with somebody, I always tell the guys, look for your knuckles

and hit the eyeball, hit the nose, hit the soft spots that's going to make this guy uncomfortable in the clinch. Not looking for his foot sweeps where he's comfortable, just resting on you, um, looking to set up his take down his next transition, uh, and I learned this from Bryan Careway. My first pro laws in the UFC, after being five, you know, we clinch.

I take him down, but in the clinch, while I'm going for the single leg, I have his leg up in the air, he's leaning over my back and he's taking his knuckles and he's just hitting me the eye. So I'll let my whole eye. I was like, what the fuck is he hitting me with?

And I go back and I wash the tape and I get to see and I learn that. So I always, like, show it, like, share these little tricks and stuff with guys when I'm teaching them. So if Gary could land some good damage in those positions, kind of deterred Islam a little bit or make him a little bit more sloppy on his finishes, it could cause some chaotic

scramble where he could potentially get to a good position and maybe we see Islam on his back again, kind of like what happened with Volk and when he was there with Volk it did not look good. Right. And of course, his round five.

So it got to be. There was also a fight where the time was all fucked up and he didn't have as much time to rehydrate. Oh, yeah. They did say something like that.

It was not, he was compromised to that fight because he didn't have as much time to rehydrate because they're fighting in Australia and then we're trying to fight on U.S. time. This one is the one that I'm really excited about too, because Jillian is so fucking good on the ground, top position, even off of her back, McKenzie Dern is great off of her back.

On the feet, she's more reckless.

Like she's throwing caution to the wind because she doesn't care. She's not afraid to get her pretty face messed up. She's going to go in there and go after you. She's just attacking. Yeah.

Jillian on the other hand, not as physical on the feet, not a big puncher, not a big kicker. She sets everything up, looking for the take down or the cleanse to take you down and get to the back. But when she gets there and she gets you down, she, her ground-up pound, it's nasty.

“The question is, is she going to be able to do it to a world champion like McKenzie Dern?”

To a good position, like some of those other girls, she gets to the back mount or full mount and she's able to land these solid elbows, beat them up in that position. McKenzie is a Jiu-Jitsu world champion. Exactly. It's a different world.

That's the most interesting. It's going to be interesting. I'm going to go to the other, rest of the card, go back to it because I'm interested to see how Abdul Malik recovers from his last fight against bogari, bogari is a monster too.

There's, that's a guy in the 185 found division that's a real fucking problem. Yeah. He's a world-class striker. He has a victory over Pereira and glory. Yeah.

That's the guy. Yeah. One victory. He got starched in the rematch. But the thing with Malik, he was trying to go for the take-downs, but the setups were like,

in my opinion, from a rest standpoint.

“So I may be a little bit unfair with this criticism, but I just didn't think they were”

that good. And he was also dealing with striking that was like way above and beyond him. Yeah.

And that was part of the problem is that in the transitions, like trying to get close to him,

you're dealing with a guy who's gigantic. He's one of the tall guys in the division. He's so fucking big for 185, so long in Saltall and on top of it, world-class striker. And he's coming into his own as an MMA guy in part of the reason is because he's down there in Connecticut with with Glover and with Alex and he's doing camps with those guys.

So like his grappling's now on point, much more confident on the feet, much more stable. But before that, I thought Mancer was a real potential world champion. Yes. But it's just so crazy. You can see somebody in one fight and I see him in the next one.

You're just like, all right. It was a bad loss, too. It was a bad one. It wasn't good. It was a lot of like, you can see we can find that if I like kicks, the jabs, he got beat up.

So the thing was the amount of damage that he took because he's so tough, the amount of damage he took for the stop the fight was pretty extraordinary. There was a lot of damage. I was hoping he could get the fight down at least once, right. Yeah, he couldn't, it was, it was a tough, this is a lot of guys at 185 that are a

fucking problem, man. A lot of guys at 85 that are real problem. But we need that in those visions, because those visions have been so thin for so long. Like there's a couple of guys, right? But now you're starting to see more, like even like the lowway classes, a guy who's

unranked like an Ethan Ewing, right? Right. And you're like, I'm excited about this vision because I want to see how far he could go.

“You got a guy like me and so on and I can't say to you the guy's name Abdul?”

No. That's me. Bull Gary. You got these two guys coming up. How about Gautier?

How about that motherfucker? Yeah. He puts guys into orbit. He put our guy as he did as the last one. Yeah.

Those tough ones. Is it tough one? Yeah. This is the fight. I mean, Mansour is so tough that he was able to keep this fight going where a lot

of guys would have got taken out early. But he's, yeah, the elbows and the clinch, everything. He's just getting destroyed. You see how he's even trapping the wrists and then stepping in with the punches or stepping in with the elbows, clean right hand, elbow.

It's just Mansour is so tough. He's so tough. He's just absorbing so much punishment. And finally, they stop it. But before he stops it, before him, he's like, get out of here.

Before the stoppage. I think that was the end of a round. I don't even know if that was the end of the round. That wasn't the actual stoppage. So if you keep going in the fight, it gets even worse.

I mean, the thing about stand up is when you're dealing with a guy who is a world championship kickboxer and you can't take him down and he's got really good take down defense and he's got a reach advantage. It's like everything possible that's terrible about what could happen is going on. Oh, that split right hand.

Oh my goodness. Oh my God, it's surprisingly just a place plan after that. Well, he's so tough, man.

But the problem is you get so many holes punched in your card in one fight.

And one fight. Whereas if you got hit with one shot, one big shot is bad. You can take it out, but it's not as bad as a prolonged beating over three rounds. I always say, I call him Dings. There are different things.

So many Dings you can have in your career. Yeah, this is the final bot.

His top as he is and he's so tough.

But the problem is that's a kind of fight where in boxing, you wouldn't have, if you were

a manager and he was your guy, you would not have had him fight him at this stage of his career. No, this is not a fight for you right now. We've got to really get our striking better. We've got to, there's growth to be had before you fight that guy.

Because you've got to know that.

“And I think sometimes fighters, we could be so egotistical, that where I could beat anybody.”

But sometimes it's nice to be like, you know what, I could beat him, but just not right now. Let me beat somebody else. We'll get there when we get there. But it takes you off seat does not give you that opportunity.

The UFC is like, here's the wolves. You can't say no, though. You can't. You can't. You're a long, fucking time, you say no, and a lot of guys know that.

And they also know some guys have taken advantage of those opportunities. Those short notice, John Jones. Yeah. John Jones got, I mean, what was the fight with Shogun? It was very short notice.

After he just beat in, oh man, who did he beat? He beat everybody, but who did he beat? Rashad Evans had just gotten hurt, and then he stepped in and took that one right for the title. Exactly.

And that's when him and Rashad were training partners. And that shows the wildness of John. He's fighting Shogun, who's a legend, who's the light-heavyweight champion, opens with a flying knee. Yeah.

And to want to do, and beat some down, beat some down, and wins the title. He has to be studied. Listen man, he should be coaching for sure, definitely should be, I mean, he is now with Gabel. Yeah.

Gabel Steveson is, he's a real fucking problem. But the other thing is this, you can show all the technique in the world.

And I always say it comes back down to what do you do when you're in there under

those bright lights. And that's the most important thing. And if you can't dial it in, it's a scary place to be, because I can't make you confident. You could be as confident as you want when you talk at me, but only you truly know what's really going on between those areas.

You know, so that's where it gets like tricky. It does. It gets very tricky. And it's complicated. And I mean, there's only so much a mental coach can teach you on how to handle those

situations.

“They can give you some tools, but either, I mean, I think it's something that's born out”

of your life. You like mental coaches? Excuse me? You like mental coaches? I think there's nothing wrong with tightening up every single aspect of your game.

However, I don't think they could fix a leaky boat. Yeah. I think you said, like, you don't like mental coaches. I think it's a chicken armor. I think it's a chicken armor.

If I know you have a mental coach, you're coming for that eyes. Okay. But what if you found out that Al-Shandrae Pantoja had a mental coach as savage as that dude is good for him. I might be like, okay, he's not fighting me.

Right, but you know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying. But you know what I'm saying? Imagine if you you found out Pure Yon had a mental coach. That's cool.

But you know what I'm saying? Like if a guy is elite already and already a dog and you give him just some different things to concentrate on, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

“What I think is if you need it, it shows me that there's an issue and sometimes that”

issue can never be fixed.

There's some guys that when the going gets tough, they find a way out. That's where I'm getting it. I agree with you. If you need it, it's not the wrong with it. But I also know that there's a place in there that if I could get the right key to unlock

that door, it's going to be bad. Yeah. It's going to be bad. You're right. It's going to be.

Yeah. I think you're right. I think you're right. And I don't know. I mean Sean Brady had a mental coach.

And you know, there's moments where Sean Brady is a mother fucker, right? Like the walking buckly fight like holy shit dude, that Leon Edwards. Oh my god, extraordinary. But then Morales, but the problem is Morales is a fucking light heavyweight. He's huge, gigantic.

You want to talk about the one guy that is like the poster boy for cut and weight. It's Morales. He's so big for 170. It doesn't even make sense. Yeah.

You see him in the octagon, you're like, that's a light heavyweight, right? The very least, a very big metal weight. Yeah, for sure. He's a big dude. And he's Walter Wade.

And he's seen him in Brady and there's like, this is not the same weight class. It seemed like it wasn't. He got a big back, but I'm looking at him like it. Look what Brady did to a former world champion in Leon Edwards, who's a good grappler. I mean, Leon took down Camaro Usman, Leon can grapple.

And Sean Brady's on another level when it comes to that.

“And what he did to Buckley was just bananas.”

He looked like he was in a training room. Right? When he was on top of him, it was like he was like, working a heavy back drill. It was crazy. Yeah.

I got no fear whatsoever of getting shook off. It's like, there is not a chance in hell. You're getting me off of you. So I'm just going to work my cardio and beat your ass. Which is fascinating because he's so strong and explosive.

You would think you'd be able to get up. 223. Pro. He's a weighing in for the as the back up for this fight. And so he's cutting weight.

Oh, that's 223 is heavyweight. He's a heavyweight. He's down to 193 now. Yeah, but that's probably after training. Yeah.

That's not a wiggle. That's not a wiggle. He's really over 200. I guarantee you. No, I see him in prison.

He's a big motherfucker. He's a normal. He's making one 70. And his power is fucking extraordinary.

“He has to cut 20 or more pounds this week.”

Yeah. But listen, he can do it. He's young. He started out, he was a wrestler. That's his original discipline.

Really? Yeah. He knows how to cut weight. I didn't know that. Wrestling in judo.

I believe. Find his Wikipedia. He can grapple man. That's the thing. You don't see it from him.

Which is crazy. I see his videos. Yeah. Not the one where he's dressed up as a girl. I think that's a tradition down there.

Yeah. No, I know. They get silly. I know. There's a little.

No, I know. They get silly. I know. The traditional thing they do down there. I don't understand it.

But I don't have it.

I've never seen Cheetos doing judo since he was five years old.

Yeah. See, there you go. I want to see him in his long. His mother was what? Third, Dan, judo, Black Belt.

Yeah. He's 42. Wow. He switched to wrestling when he was 10. Yeah.

Really? Why don't you have a little mama? So he's got a background in grappling. Yeah. That's where he started out.

But the thing is that dude's got lightning in his hands. I want to see him in his long. I want to see him in Carlos' protest. That's where I want to see. Fuck.

Yes. I want to see his protest is the truth. I just don't want to do it. It scares the fuck out of me. I don't want to buy you knocking each other off yet.

I understand what you're saying. That's what it gets hard. Right. Because that's 100% a great world championship fight. And we'll see what happens.

Listen, if Islam may retire, I can feel him. He may retire. He's done a lot. He's competed in two different weight classes in one world championships in two different weight classes.

If he beats Ian, if he submits Ian and says, I've had enough, I'm going to do it could be did in a month of coach now. I could see that. And then I could see Morales and protest for the fucking undisputed title. Yeah.

That's the way to go. protest gives the fuck out of me, dude. Because to me, he's the scariest because he does weird shit in there where he sets you up with stuff, like he does that set up where he fakes a punch and dives in with that left knee to the body, nasty.

And his punching power is fucking crazy, man.

Always hands it down here, hands on there and haven't fun, haven't fun, relaxing.

Like when JDM took him down, he's like, why are we wrestling, my friend? People don't want to see wrestling come on, let me up. But JDM's the box is, I thought it was going to be more competitive. JDM's pretty complete, you know, JDM supposedly in the Islam fight had a really bad back.

It was pretty fucked up and really struggled with wrestling, getting ready for that fight. That's the word. And even if he didn't, there's levels and Islam's level is the highest level. The highest level, when it comes to grappling, there's no one higher in that division than Islam.

Fucking his squeeze is extraordinary, so I want to train with those guys, yeah, give me a week, one two weeks and forget. Send them the daggers that, two, three years for a good, I'll be good with that. Would you want to go down there and train with those guys? I would go down for a bit, why don't you go down?

I got this, I got the cigars, I got my training partners, I understand, but time is other essence, it's not much time left.

“If you want to find out, you have to be now.”

And no. You can't go down there when you're 40, or maybe I'm like mighty miles when I'm retired, but I go train everywhere. Or George, George St. Pierre does that. He's down here all the time, training with Gordon Ryan, that'd be fun, you know?

But George is like a real martial artist, you know what I mean?

Like never got out of shape, he's a man, he's the man.

And he's so cool, he plays chess at a really high level, I play chess. You play chess too? I play chess. You go out of 1,400, I'm out of 1,1350 to 1,1420 elo. Is that good?

It's supposed to be good. And for like, I'm not like a grandmaster, which is like 2,500 or some shit or 3,000. How often do you play every day?

But I play five minigames, because it's similar to like a fight.

Like you got to know and make your strategies, make your attacks. Some guys they play a 10 minigames. I'm like, bruh, I'm too busy to play 10 minigames. I got to, where did you learn? I started playing after COVID during COVID when Queen's Gambit came out.

And I used to think chess was like, oh, that's a gase, that's a gase thing. So we played chess as like a man and we played chess as a man as dumb as they ever heard. And then I realized, really quick, I was like, oh, this is, this is some high-level shit, this is not for stupid people, this is for intellects.

“Like you have to understand what you're actually doing, strategizing, setting people up,”

kind of like a fight. It's a fascinating game. George was playing James McCann, James McCann's hilarious comedian from Australia. And George and James is very smart and really good chess player. And George and him are going to war in the green room of the mothership.

And we were all like, oh, shit, yeah, they have bored. Yeah, man. Guys playing the mothership all the time, Brian Simpson and Tony Hinchcliff played all the time. Okay.

They get serious about chess.

Chances. Chances. Yeah, man. I don't play, but I'm scared. I'm scared to play.

Yeah. I said, Dick thing. That's the problem. It's because then you want to, you want to know the openings, you want to know the strategies, you want to know, okay, if I do this sacrifice in this so many, now did you learn by reading

books? Did you learn by watching videos, how'd you learn? I download the app during COVID and that was it, I was hooked. And so how did you learn how to move? The game, so the game, you could start like beginner level, it tells you what piece

is like, does what? Like the pornco, only go for it, can only capture sideways, the night can only do like this else-shaped thing, forward backwards. So you just learned from the app? Yeah.

Oh, wow. And then I started watching videos and then I was watching our long videos and tutorials, I was like, all right, the hooks are in. But we had Magnus Carlson on the podcast and Tony sat in with it because Tony plays. And it was like watching a guy and talking, watching his mind move and just talking to him about

how he does it and how he strategizes and, you know, he's the greatest of all time. Yeah. Like, explain the game to you, you just go, "Whoa, there's just so many, there's so many moves. There's so complex, there's so much going on. There's so many theories, steps in advance, you're playing.

It's cool. Yeah. It's cool. But it's something you play forever, too. Yeah.

Regardless of your physical ability, you don't have to ever worry about getting out of shape to play chess. Yeah. I have some of my friends at this time, and that's where they learned. That's where they learned how to play. And we would play from time to time.

But then I come to find out like, they were really good at the time because I wasn't really good. I thought it was good for I really wasn't, and it really quickly realized, "Oh, these guys are really, they're not that good." They're like, "Well, level."

“You know, as far as it's very intellectual game, that's why I really really enjoyed it.”

When I was playing pool in New York, there was this kid who was a young player. Like when he was really young, he was playing tournaments all over the place. He was like, "Really good." And there was a dude who got out of prison and learned how to play in his head in prison because they didn't have a board.

And so this kid and this old dude were sitting there playing chess in their head, and they would call out the moves, and they had the whole board mapped. I was fascinated. I was like, "This is crazy." That's crazy.

That's really hard to do. And you also have to agree where the pieces are. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm not thinking it.

You got to rely on, and this one guy had played so many times in prison in his head, that he could keep track of the entire board, and this kid was a wizard at it, and watched these two guys call out moves and just sit in their staring at each other, try to figure out who's winning. He was playing an invisible board.

This is crazy. Yeah, that's next level.

That was my first introduction to chess.

And I was like, "This is not span." You want to try this over? Sure. I'll try it. I still have some of this left though.

That's water. Yeah. I know. Agua. That's still chill too, so I like this one chilled.

You do have to do like a green tea shot, what's a green tea shot? It's like with bourbon, with whiskey, it's like a little salty. Yeah. They call it green tea. You see a lot of the girls they drink at the bars and stuff, so we did this with like a

we call it silver tea, it's a silver room. What does rum made with? Sugarcane, sugarcane, or molasses, I think the other ones, Agua Cole, but no matter where our people are in the world, they find a way to get fucked up. Yeah.

From the Pirates of the Caribbean. Is that what's wrong? No, no.

“But that's what the Pirates of the Drink.”

Well, why did the Pirates, why were they so into rum?

That's like rum is like a associate, they probably learn from the Caribbean, right? That's where the originated. Right?

“Yeah, you get it from sugarcane plants and the whole distillation process.”

This is like pasta, pasta, and cornstil for both of these, it's just as Jamaican blend. I'm mostly pirates did drink rum, but the stereotype is exaggerating, it's superplexed. During much of the 1600s, Caribbean pirates often drink wine and brandy more commonly. Rum became far more available in popular in the early 1700s as Caribbean sugar production

expanded. Oh, that makes sense. Yo ho ho and a bottle over rum. You know what? Sounds like we do the big players in the rum market like Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Malibu,

but when we go on vacation, we go to the Caribbean, we drink all the different runs from the islands.

And I always tell people like you have such a great time drinking rum, like why don't

we bring that here to our culture and make it more of an inclusive thing versus just only when I go on vacation, that's the only time it's really associated. And I go, I want to change that narrative and let people run this for year round. You could have sipping rum, you could have for Vegas pool parties, you could have it with a cigar, like there's so many different ways you can enjoy it.

It's not just for vacation time, it's, for me, I want this to be something that makes you feel like you're back on the island. And we want to make sure this was 100% Jamaican rum, didn't want to piss off my people and Jamaican because that's the one thing we're doing this.

“So I went through the whole process, like the branding, the labeling, my money invested”

in it. So it's like actually my company. But with that said, one of the things I spoke to some of the guys at the, at the distilleries, the one we went to mainly was Worthy Park. And they were saying the main thing you don't want to do is call something to make a rum

if it's not 100% Jamaican and I was like, I had a feeling but I want to make sure. So we didn't tow that line and piss anybody off. So it's been a, this has been a fun project and we've been having a good time just getting

some bigger distributed stuff, we should have kept one in California soon.

My guy Kevin Folkler from King C Food, he has a bunch of restaurants down in Cali and Vegas. He brought us in. But he's a long island guy. He heard me talking about it on the aerial show and reached out and I thought it was like a prank email.

I was like, let me just see where it goes and it turns and something, I was like, oh, this is actually a legit guy actually had a legit business and everything and it's been cool. So this has been fun. It's my passion project.

It's a smart thing to do to prepare for your retirement too, to have a real legitimate business going, like as you're still fighting. Yeah, it's not just my name on a label, like trying to do a quick money grab or anything like that. So that's awesome.

So where are you right now in terms of like your next fight, are you in a holding pattern? Yeah, everyone's got a fight. Larona's the only guy who would make the most sense in my opinion.

“But like I said, I heard he was hurt, I think Diego Lopez is supposed to have somebody”

fighting lightweight now. That's what I heard. I heard Diego was moving up, which makes sense because he's big. He's a big dude. He's big.

And after he beat Steve Garcia, which was a crazy fight, I got my thoughts on that. What's that? I got my thoughts on that. What do you thoughts on that? Think about it while you're lighting that scar.

Pause. So. Come for that ass. I'm coming on that ass. I'm coming for that.

I still get those messages till this day, bro. It's the funniest thing I was like, yeah, you just got done with a fight. What are you going to do? My adrenaline was through the roof. I'm going to cloud nine.

I just submitted the bookie man of the division.

Even back then, my managers, I heard talk that they thought he was going to be the first

chant for their management company. And I took that as Michael Jordan would say, I took that shit personal. You know. Right. And I was so glad I proved the point.

And yeah, I was just on a whole other level. But yeah, LaRona's out Garcia just lost. Arnold, I just had a great fight with Costa. He lost the jeans so before that. Most are invoke.

We know that. I fought. Most are already. And jeans still got a fight too now, right? It's supposed to be fighting.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

That's an interesting fight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That dude can kick.

I was going to say his kicks. This is a guy I don't want to fight. Is that motherfucker? Because I know what the kicks do. And I'm like, I don't want to be on the receiving end of that.

His kicks are crazy. Baseball basket is swinging to head. And he's so dex. He's got so much dex derity. He can whip those kicks around from anywhere.

He's so light on his feet, man.

Yeah. He's one of the best kickers in the sport. 100% 100%. People think I have like a kicking background like no, I just watch a lot of VHS tapes when I was a kid and played white tiger, white lion, and the whole that stuff from my brother's

growing up. Because I actually learned how to kick. Basically, we just really see what we did on the TV and just start imitating in. And we have these battles. Well, I'm a family of 20.

So I got a huge family. Wow. That's crazy. That's huge. Yeah.

All the boys. We went to war with each other. Did you just learn from watching movies? We learned from watching movies. We didn't do anything traditional like no martial arts traditional background.

“So when did you first get like some of teach you technically how to kick?”

I forget the guy's name. But when I was at Team Bomb Squad in New York when I was in college. And I was just starting off as an amateur in early pro. We had this Moitai guy come up, stoned something, I want to say, but that's the first. He was working with John Jones.

He was the first guy showing John the elbows, the knees, and stuff. And that's where I first started learning how to do traditional Moitai kicks. And I worked with this other guy named Primo Bellarose. He was really good for me to work with. Irish guy had a ton of Moitai fights and then when I came to Long Island, I didn't really

have like a, I still don't even have like a set Moitai instructor or anything like that. I just kind of know what I know from back then and I kind of just blended in where it makes sense. I'm trying to Vegas sometimes too. I've seen you.

I live there. You live there now. 100%? Yeah. Wow.

What made you decide to do that? Yeah.

My home's always going to be in New York.

But I live in Vegas now. It's the fight capitol of the world. Business for me over there. It's doing really, really well. And is it because you get more training partners, more coaching partners, more coaching.

More coaching. Ain't no way. He's still a syndicate? No, I was, morrow was a syndicate. Right.

I would go to syndicate. That's why I saw you training. Yeah. I don't know how to do it. That's why I started at XE.

That's why I trained with Ferris with Nixig. The training times were a little bit odd for me. It was like 330 pro classes and stuff like that. But I think this sport is still kind of backwards. People doing all these classes.

I think in the beginning is good.

“But I think eventually you have to get to that 101, Elia Taporia, I don't know, Mallie.”

I haven't received you at all, a mighty mouse. The way these guys are doing it. Tailored, structured training. Yeah. Like a boxing camp, right?

And even when I was back home in New York, that's basically how we essentially ran it. I was running all the stuff that we were doing and, you know, reigning those guys would come down and for sparring and I'd go to Saras for your BJJ, working a lot with Jason Rao, who's got his own school now too.

I don't know if you know him, but he's, he's like the boogeyman everyone talks about in the training room.

But for some reason, in competition, he's just never really showed what he can truly

do. So talented to walk you through everything and explain everything at a high level. But yeah, that's, that's kind of how I, I ran everything, but it's centered focus. And I felt like that's the best, our gym was on a run where everyone was killing the game.

So is it also because Morobs and Vegas that you wanted to go to Vegas? I went, I moved before him, really. And then he moved in and he found a house right next to me. Oh, that's perfect. That's amazing.

So literally like across the street from each other. Oh, that's amazing. That's pretty cool. Excellent. Great.

And where are you training? What gym are you training out there? The queue? I don't know that person. It's a brand new, before it's kind of like no meds land, we're training most of the classes

at the PI. But you can't charge anybody, right? You're using someone else's facility, so you can't be running a class and on top of that charging people and grab. So that whole thing.

So my coach Matais, he was eventually able to find a place. And now just about all the, the undergraduate now graduates, most of them are just about all assigned to the UFC now. So we have a, we have Deoni Barbosa, we have Jean Paul Lamposini.

I can never say his name.

Jean Paul, I just come JP.

“Jean Powell, I think he's supposed to be getting signed.”

Shane Collins just got signed. He had that debut against Atari, the Georgian, which was also a friend of mine who was kind of subwatching that fight because I was like, I don't want to see nobody get hurt. I don't want to see nobody lose. And I think Rob is now going to be shifting over to doing most of his care, he's still

going to be working with syndicate, but he's going to be doing most of his camp with us. And there's a feel that I'm sorry if I'm missing some of the people don't be mad at me. I'm sorry. I'm just a man. Don't worry.

And so you have Matais, not Matais from London. No. What's Matais' last name? Nakasheh Nakashi, he's from Novo and Yau, he grew up with all those guys, Henry Barrow, Johnny DeWardo, he's like, bro, you fight all my Brazilian friends, you beat all my

coaches. Because I beat Johnny DeWardo, I fought Henry Barrow at beat him and he's like, bro, I remember

I'm sorry. But it's a good gym. You know what it is? A lot of the drills that we do even in the classes is practical. We're not doing eight, ten punch combinations.

We're doing real-life practical stuff scenarios that happens in the fight, so I don't mind doing the classes with this. But I also like to do my one-on-one afterwards, especially when it's fight specific that we need to work on. Right.

And I think they do a good job. Now, you were saying you had thoughts on the Steve Garcia. Oh, low-pest fight. Again, another pause. I went up from my boys, one-four-four-five.

Yes, Steve Fort.

I always said Steve is the dark horse of the division.

He looks so good and early going. If you watch some of his other fights, the one fight, the few fights he lost where he was knocked out, was him just being more reckless than he probably should have been. Big frame for the way class has reaches fucking stupid, crazy long. Easy kicks, when he gets you on the ground, his ground of pound is ferocious, like

almost reckless to a point, right? And then he's fighting a super smart fight with Diego Lopez. Diego Lopez now comes out for round two. He flips the switch and says, "Fuck this technical shit and just pulls him into a barn fight."

And man, he clipped them and he's been knocked out before, right? So if there's any away, a guy who has a granite chin who could rely on it is a guy like Diego Lopez. And I even saw Diego Lopez at the PI and I told him he was like, "Congrats on the fight." So we had a little beef, but it was more so about who should have gotten a tie to shot.

I thought he was gifted a tie to shot. Okay, cool. The second one you mean? The first one. The first one.

I thought it should have been most hard. The second one was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. It was to make any sense. But congrats to him.

Do you think they gave him the second one as a gift because he fought short notice? Possibly. It kind of seems like it. This one don't like me.

“But my whole thing is that's why we kind of bumped heads.”

We did train together one time. We were friendly cordural and the whole nine and that kind of set a little riff in the relationship a little bit. We both fought a UC300. We took a bat, a picture in the back.

But that's what I said.

I was like, "I always speak my mind on things."

Sometimes it gets me in trouble and turns into a whole thing with his manager and myself and Twitter beef and all this whole thing. I thought the fight should have went to Mozart. Just being fair based on Merritt should have gotten it, tied up the division, jammed the fight site probably should have been different directions, right?

But I thought I told him congratulations. He fought a smart fight. He pulled them into your style of fight and that's how he got the job done. If he fought him on a technical standpoint like that, I think Diego would have probably ran away with it.

Not Diego Garcia. Garcia. Well, he just unfortunately went in when Lopez started chasing after him. He engaged in that kind of way. That's what he does.

If I'm fine, Diego, I'm not doing that shit. I'm sure I could take a punch. But that guy's got myths, there's one, and he knows he could rely on his chin. He's probably looking at me like, "I don't think this guy can knock me out." So I'm going to risk it, right?

Yeah. He's got a square jaw dude. You have to understand what you're getting into.

“That's what I was saying before about like, "Somebody's guys, you have to understand”

that I self," when you look at Diego, yeah, that's good. Diego looks like he's designed to take a shot. One of the mark hunt type chins designed to take a shot. So that's where I go, if I were to fight him, I know how I would approach the fight.

Obviously the path to least resistance for me is always going to be the ground, but he's

good on the ground. Very good. He almost got evil with. Remember? The knee bar, the triangle, arm bar.

Yeah, you could make an argument that he could have won that fight, because he was closer to finishing multiple times, and those should count. Those submission attempts, close submission attempts, should count in a big way. Just because a guy got out of it doesn't mean he was almost dead. That means a lot.

That means just as much as rocking a guy. It should. It should. But that's a bad aspect of judges, because it's very difficult to get to a position like that where you're almost submitting a guy multiple times.

Yeah. And those were very, and if you were looking at that in terms of a jujitsu perspective, like yeah, he's got the advantage, 100%. 100%.

“So that's why that would be a tough fight for me, but it's the, I want to fight the”

biggest names. And when the Eagles moved up, so Diego's 55 now, from what I understand, which makes sense, because he's fucking big. It was probably a real struggle for that dude to get down to 45, a real problem. Yeah.

But 55 is such a fucking line. And who? What did you think of the toporia gauge fight? I thought it was amazing, man. Like, for gauge you to come out, it kind of reminded me of the Tony Ferguson fight, right?

The bookie, man, he did what he needed to do had a perfect game plan. And what gauge you said was the most spot on thing, I was told it's one of my friends.

off a little like a little cocky or arrogant.

“I was like, I was like, as he's fucking shit.”

He's the champion of the world was trying to shit on him and gave him no chance to win the fight. If anyone relates to that, he's me. I understand exactly where he's coming from. Fuck.

Then fucking talk a shit, because if the other guy won, best believe he would have been his white rose, like he said he was going to do, he's had beef with his dad. Like, there's a lot of built-up animosity, whether it was fake, whatever it was there. So let him have his time in the sun or so. But with the fight, I thought he, the thing he said that made the most sense to me that

resonated was, um, he changed people's perception of the fighter, where before people were kind of going in there, hesitant, scared. And they kind of knew what they were walking into and it was going to be a bad night. And going in there and doing that to Ferguson, change Ferguson's career, going in there, doing this is to toporia, can't toporia bounce back and be the same guy and have that same

aura, same persona that people are going to step in the acting on with them and be a little hesitant to want to go in there with them because of what he's done in the past, but then also knowing that, oh, it's just like us, man, he puts his fucking pants on the same way we do one leg at a time unless he could jump and both on the same time.

“I think there's a physics element to it too.”

The reality of Gaci and toporia is that toporia is much smaller, yeah, he's a much smaller person. Look, he's got death in his hands, death, and a lot of people would have folded in that

second round, but Gaci is so fucking durable, and you can't make him quit, it's not,

he's not going to quit, you might beat him, he's been beat before, but it's not because he doesn't believe in himself and it's not because he can't endure, it's because he gets caught, you know, and you think about the way Eli put it on him in that second round, he emptied the gas tank, emptied the gas tank, and Gaci was still there, and that's the problem.

You cannot empty the gas tank on that guy, I think he tried, he got ahead of himself too. I felt like he was trying to put an exclamation point, bow tie, ribbon on the finish, where he could have submitted him, or maybe just go for the TKO, but instead he went for the Kabeeb like mounted triangle that he could be hit on Gaci, and he was in the same

position, was going for the same sequence, and I go, brother, this is either going to be really dope, or it's going to be the reason you lose, and he lost the position, Gaci gets back up, and man, just everything he did into your approach, if they had a rematch, maybe the fight goes different, maybe Tuporia, if he does, he takes him down and does what he's also really good at and submits him, or maybe he's more patient with his attack,

and does this head more kind of like an empty the gas tank in the second round when he has some hurt, it was just in the attitude, it was so crazy too, like when he got back to the corner, he's like, good body shot, he's like, like congratulating him, he's hitting him with a good liver shot, and he hit him, the fact that he didn't just go down and curl up in the ball and just say, all right, I'm just going to take my paycheck and go home,

nope, but it was his last chance at 37 to be a world champion, and he did it in the White House, which is crazy. So you're saying this chance, does it say it as a chance? You've already pulled it off

before, you 100% could be a world champion at 45, you know it, probably this amazing

ending for my career, I can even put it into words like what that would feel like. Like I get like goosebumps even like thinking and talking about it, because it's what you better and smarter than you've ever been before, yeah, all your experience, this is a law fight, it's a great example that you're at a world championship level at 45 for sure, 100% it's, it's a matter of whether or not you get that shot, and I think they

should hopefully, let's say I don't get booked because there's not a lot of options, but let's say they have their fight, hopefully it's an Abu Dhabi sooner rather than later,

“I think that's when it's supposed to be, right? Yeah, that's why I've heard, and hopefully”

I'm the next guy, because then it's okay to wait, I'd rather stay active, stay busy, make money, and the whole nine, because that's ultimately what comes out to you. So they haven't talked to you about any potential fights or offer to you anything, they float at names, Pico's now book was a law, oh yes, interesting, there's a valethoge, but with valethoge that's going so far back again for me, it's not a fight that makes a ton of

sense, but whatever these guys want to do where I've never said no, maybe it has a problem,

but ideally you'd like to fight for the title. Ideally I would like to fight for the title next, and I think that makes sense, especially you as a former World Champion at Pantam

This is a big fight, you can make two OGs of their way classes, everything I've done at

“the Bennetweight Division set the records, why not, you know, so, well, I mean, after Leron knocked”

out Pico, he was saying I'll see you next, and we thought that was going to be the case. And it changed. Yeah, so hopefully, hopefully it changes, but it's not Leron loses to Ebleweb, and then the whole thing is just upside down now, because Leron after he knocked out Pico looked like the man. I mean, it wasn't looking like the man before that, but well, Pico's bad mother fucker. Yeah, he didn't get like no fucks. I was like, dude, you got

to slow down. He's so reckless. I mean, it makes him so exciting, but listen, he adjusted in the pit bull fight, yeah, in perfect way. I mean, he looked like World Class in the pit in the pit bull fight. That left hooky has this beautiful. It's nasty. Oh, it's beautiful. It's perfect. Like they should study it. They should teach that left hook, the Aaron Pico left hook, him and Ilia. Ilia's left hook is fucking phenomenal. That left hook to the

body. Ilia just does such a good job. Once he gets going, and he hits a slim, and he's just like think, think, think, think. It's almost like Connor asks the way he just lines up his shots of vintage Connor, vintage Connor, like Eddie Alvarez Connor. Oh, my God. That was the matrix. Who's it? They did a side by side. Euron's medich with D-rock. Yeah, and it was a problem. I was like, there's no way this is like the same exact combination.

It was so successful the knee. Yeah, you were on smash the good bad. He's another motherfucker. He's another motherfucker. And another guy who was cut into much weight at 55. Yeah, at

“17, that's perfect for him. Because he's big man. He's so tall. I think all first rounds”

too. Uh-huh. Just starting guys. Serbia is a wild place too, man. They're wild people. Brother. Brother. It was hostile. They were nice to me, but my old baby friends. Oh,

there's still a lot of history that wasn't too long ago. And I always tell my friends

and like, you know, we are blessed to be in this country because the shit we bitch about and complain about these are luxuries, liberties, and freedoms that a lot of these countries do not have. Right. And all that takes is a short trip overseas. And you'll see, I can't wait to go back home and I'll kiss the ground. Hey, perfect. But we got a lot, you know, if you ever seen those Serbian basketball games, I heard about it. I didn't get to see him though. I heard

they were talking about, I think we were supposed to go to one or something like that. Like war. Like the chance in the audience, it's crazy. The flares and everything. Well, it's the chance. It's when they, they're chanting, it like Jesus. It's like daunting. It's, it's very different than anything you ever seen America. Yeah. It's like the, the first of all, their national pride. He'll give me some volume on this. Yeah, the flares, bro. Serbian basketball game. Yeah, they're

light in that place on fire. I mean, it might as well be a right. Now, this is actually basketball, like, yeah, we know it. Bro, basketball. Not that you're standing still. Good. No, no, not actually, the Dagestead is, but it's crazy. Like, listen to the crowd. Bro, they get into it. Look at that lady. I know.

Amazing. It's like war. I mean, the energy. The fucking crowd. It's, the energy is like,

the energy in American NBA game times 10. Shout out the next. It's crazy. It's crazy. How much? Like, look at all the movement in the crowd. I mean, these people are active. I mean, it's kind of nuts. Yeah, we don't. That's the one unfortunate thing. I feel like our sports isn't as like, um, like our fan base is besides New Yorkers, who will beat you up for being the rival team in the playoff finals. We're in the wrong jersey, but I take that shit off.

We don't really get like, like, we don't, not go right. Yeah, that's like, well, those people

“have been to war pretty different. Yeah. So different. Yeah. Yeah. But it makes you appreciate. That's why”

that's like, like, I go back to like, it makes me appreciate like what we have here. And in fact,

they we can achieve basically whatever it is that we want to. It's going to be not easy, but we can.

Yeah. We're going to, we can try. We have the option to try anything. Yeah. I mean, this is literally the land of opportunity. But when you see people that come from Serbia, we see people that come from Dagestan, we see people that come from these like war-torned Czechania. They're different because their their childhood was different. Like different mentality. Yeah. It's a different mentality. It's a warrior mentality. It's very different. Yeah. Like I've seen, I've learned a little bit

from a rob and going to Georgia, learning the history about them in Russia and the whole, the whole

coast of Kosovo and then going to Serbia and and seeing how it like the Serbs are coming up to my Albanian friends, introducing themselves basically. We're asking my friends where they're from. And then just straight up to saying Kosovo is Serbia. As an introduction, I will go, are we just trying to start a fight right now? Like, I don't understand. Can we just be like, can we just be cool? You're wearing your country? We're just except one another for what it is.

We're here for the fight. We're not here to fight. Just have, oh, before I forget this. So we were at

“a, after one of the, the nice, I think we went to one of the clubs on the water and we go out to”

this food spot to go get food, it's called good food or whatever. And we're there. We're with

some of the staff, the UFC staff. We're hanging out, these guys are always great. We're having a

good time, couple fighters. And I guess one of the guys came over and was talking to one of our friends. And he goes to him, like, our friend looks straight up, Dar thanian. Like, he looks like a straight up, Elyrian bloodline, like he looks straight up out, baby. And he asked him where he's from. He tells me, oh, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I think he says from Kosovo. And they start talking, but then sure enough, the guy, I guess starts reaching into his pocket. And he says whatever he

says, they don't speak servants, different languages. And we have a serving firm with us. And he translates for, he translates for him. And he tells him, he says, if you guys don't play around in 10 minutes, I'm going to blow this place up. Brother, what? I'm taking a piss break around the corner outside somewhere, because I'm like, been drinking all night. I got to find somewhere to go. I come back and they're explaining this to me. So we start telling the girls, he says,

when the guy starts going down the steps, he's like trying to talk to the guy, he keeps taking a step back. He says he starts sweating profusely. He's got his hand in his back pocket. And he moves, moves it to the front. And he's just like waving, whatever, saying whatever he's saying in Serbia and telling everybody they better leave. And he said he thought it was a gun.

“And then he asked our Serbian friend, he said, no, it was a grenade. I was like, what?”

He's just casually walking around with a fucking grenade. Are you kidding me? Just because they were all banging. Brother, this is, this is life for these guys. It's, and I know people are going to be, they're going to criticize. We're not all like, of course, not everyone is like that. But there's still some crazy people out there that still have this pent-up resentment and anger for everything because of the separation of the lands and all this. But this,

it's almost like the Israel Palestine thing. It's all the lands get divided from years ago.

And then you did this to me. But then you did this to me. But then you did this to me first.

But then you did this to me back then. And I'm like, where do we go back to? To BC? Like, where the fuck are we talking about? Can we draw a line in the sand and go, okay, this is where we all agree that this is where it should be. And just make everybody happy or

“somewhat happy so that we can go on with our lives in peace. You know what I mean?”

Is this the problem of the war? It's so recent for them. Yeah. Yeah. I was so, I was so like, broken up about it. It comes just like, I did not know it was like, this man. This is like, because you're from this country and this guy had a pleasant conversation with you. He's got a fucking grenade. He's got a fucking grenade. He's going, walk, I'm like, no, it's crazy. But yeah, don't take any fights over there.

That's Albanian. God bless America. Well, Dennis is Albanian. That's crazy.

And the chance he was getting, basically what they told me to translate to was,

kill Albanians. And I'm laughing, because I don't understand anything. I'm just laughing, because I'm like, yo, this is sick. You're the main event. This was like, me, fighting on Malian, the main event. The crowd was packed. They could not wait for Dennis to make that well, boo in. You had a chance, cause so of a Serbia, cause so of a Serbia. And, um, yeah, unfortunately, but I told Dennis, it was like, you handled it well. Like, you know, even in

hostile territory, you came in like a champ. You didn't piss anybody off. You're just doing what you normally do. You do your ego every fight. You're not looking to provoke anybody. And it was nice to see it, even after the fight, whatever the fucked up stoppage, he got a better reception on the way out. There was still some, like, angry fans like, well, luckily he didn't win. Yeah, I was like, oh, like, bro, you had one this fight here? I don't know, man, we had the

run. We had to blow up the hotel. Oh, my God. I mean, imagine you fight Euro's message over there and you beat him. Right, I don't even know if I'm supposed to say this, but his dad was told when he got to the, I guess, the hotel that he wasn't welcome here. He had to go all the way back to Albania. Really? He drove all the way down and had to drive all the way back. Wow, that's

God bless America. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, here's the thing like in America, like when Russians fight

in the UFC, everybody cheers. Oh, no, we got the biggest reception. But I mean, even now. Yeah, even now in the middle of the Ukraine war and all that shit, like when Russians fight over here, nobody cares. If you could fight, they'll cheer you. Yeah. But there's a few people at Yale, U.S.A. USA. And that's all good. Because it's just, it's not that bad. You know, it's just, they're

“cheering for the American, but they're not saying death to the Russian. You know what I mean?”

Yeah, we don't have a phrase. I'm a statement. Right. But would you fight in Russia right now? Um, imagine if you were fighting a Russian in Russia right now, how scared? I got to offer it a raft match in Russia. What's a raft match? Are you if? Oh, I thought you meant like raft, like you fight on a raft. No, no, that'd be crazy. Do you see Marab was a bar and we're going to grab the basically. Uh, he did a sport. He kicked off the raft and then he picked it up and slammed the

bit to the border. So you got offered one of those matches. Yeah. And it was my second one. The first one was with Benson Henderson. Uh, that was a fun match, more so for me, but um, yeah, but I was

“just like, it was a really good prospect 12 and old guy. I think he fights a PFL tough guy, but I'm like,”

dude, I'm leaving Albania. I just left Baku. I have no desire to go all the way back overseas again. I want to prepare for a fight. I want to sell some rum. I want to fucking sell some cigars, help my training partners. Like, and I got a wife. I got to make sure that um, you're home. Kind of home. Like give us some attention and some love. You know, some TLC. Well, it's also there's a reality of wrestling matches that you have the potential blown and knee out. That too.

That's real. So, you know, who's the Russian guy, Blue is knee out? I was a Georgian guy. Is that what? Yeah, the big, the big heavyweight guy. Yeah, the Georgian guy. It was like a silver medalist in the big city. I mean, you can, you can blow a knee out of these matches and then you're fucked. And all the injuries in MMA basically, what were you doing?

Ressons wrestling. Yeah, the culprit. Well, listen, how'd you mind? It's always good to have you on here, brother.

And good luck with the rom company. It's called Harbor. What is it called? The phone Harbor Room. And we actually got a community app now, too. It's called joinfundcarber.com. And what is the website? People want to go and see the rom? Well, if they want to join the community,

“it's joinfundcarber.com. If you want to purchase,fundcarberrun.com or from Carberspears.com,”

pretty easy. And we're looking for distributors, more distributors to keep growing this thing as best as we can. And the best thing about it is we're actually giving people an opportunity to help grow this thing from the ground up. We're two years in as of August 1st. And we double ourselves from from last year. So we're in a really, really good spot. So I'm excited about that. And anyone that's been following me from the beginning of my career that get an opportunity to

now take the ride with us. And we got perks and stuff like that all listed on the Republican campaign for the crowd. I'm so happy that you have something like this. It's really cool. It's good. It's smart, too. Yeah. So we're good to invest in something like that. Yeah. So far, so good. And good luck. And whatever happens in the future, because I really do hope you get another title shot. Oh my god. That'd be. It would be them. That's the right way. The right way is.

Yeah, because again, you're 37. This is this is the time.

Max, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, brother, Joe. We appreciate you too. Always good to see you, my friend.

All right. Bye, buddy.