JRE MMA Show #185 with Ethyn Ewing

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“>> Professor Faneser, is that your professor Faneser line?”

>> This is one of my designs, my professor Faneser line. >> Got the cross guard there. >> I like it, that's dope. >> We got a couple different symbols, something that I'm building up. I want to get out to the people.

>> It's a cool nickname. >> It's unique for sure. It came about a funny way, but I like it. The mantra that it brings to the fight game into who I am is perfect. >> Well, it's Faneser, and you fight with a lot of Faneser.

So we should start from your UFC debut, because that was when you really burst onto the scene. You fought this guy, Malcolm Wellmaker, who's a killer, vicious knockout puncher. And had a ton of hype behind him, because it was performance.

“Was it the contender series we had the big performance?”

>> I was all three of them, and the contender series you knocked that dude out, and then I don't remember who was second, but then it was Chris Moutino was the third one that he knocked out like that.

>> And you put on a showman, and nobody had heard of you. And that's one of the craziest things about this sport, is that there can be a guy like you that's learning and growing in the shadows. And then they get the call, and I think it was two days notice, so two days notice, you fought above your weight, because you're a band of weight normally, and you fought it further away. And dude, it wasn't just that you fought a guy who was his vicious striker, it was the calmness and the technique and the smoothness of it all, that was so impressive.

And I was like this guy is different, like the way you fight is very intelligent, and I love that. I love watching a guy who's just all technique and movement, and you're the epitome of that. >> I appreciate it, and it's something I pride myself on, that's I think maybe it's because I've dealt into more of a boxing realm with perfecting the striking and really focusing on that technical aspect that style. But yeah, to me to watch guys go in there and just roll it out and say, you know, let's see who can take more punches before the other guy drops is just silly to me.

“It's like you said, I like to fight with Fines, I like to hit and not get hit, and champions don't take return fires, so I hope to have a lot of longevity with this game, and yeah, that's why I fight that way.”

>> That is the formula for longevity. I was having a conversation with Fedor, the guy who's sitting next to us, who's one of the best pool players in the world, and he's getting, we've just got back from ways to well, so shout out to Brigham and all the people of ways to well for taking care of us. But he and I were talking about fighters and about it's very similar to I think everything, whether it's pool or golf or, and there's a people that really focus on technique and fundamentals and really objectively look at what they're doing and refine it.

And we were talking about guys who just stand in front of each other and blast each other. I'm like, look, the crowd will cheer. They will love to see you, but your career will be shorter. And the end will be bad. The end will be bad. And then you'll probably fight past the time where you should and no one's going to stop you. They're going to maybe, you have one or two close friends that'll tell you when you're going to hang them up, but a lot of coaches let guys fight way too long and I think the organization, let's guys fight way too long.

There's a few guys that in the past, at least, I've seen them on the lineup, you know, upcoming fight and like, oh god, and then I see who he's fighting and like, oh god, like I don't want to see this guy taking any more punishment.

I don't, you know, enough as enough and those styles of just face first, just attacking boy, the audience loves you, and that's a trap, right, that is a real trap.

Yeah, I mean, 100%. And I think that's it's almost a little frustrating that the like general public gives that kind of energy to that kind of a match. Sure, I get it's exciting. You want to see blood spill like people just really enjoy the chaos of all that and all the movement and the energy that goes into it, but yeah, you're, you're foregoing that whole technical aspect, like the perfection of controlling the dance from the beginning to the end and everything in between, you know, it's and it's almost just like a like an educated street brawler getting in there and just swinging and going crazy.

And to me, that's not what martial arts is. I mean, it literally is the the chase of perfection to it of, you know, like the hit and don't get hit, that is the art of boxing, but the art of striking and martial arts, you know, you want to be, yeah, near near perfect in the way you engage in this is land the damage and be able to cut those angles, move your head, pull out the distance and not take any of that and return.

Well, I mean, look, they are exciting. I love when guys fight like that because it's just crazy to watch, but I have to set aside the rational part of my brain.

This says this is not smart. It's not a good thing for them. Right. And this is there's no future in this. Eventually it's going to catch up to you. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, if I watch these guys, you know, get after like Romic Bouga versus his, uh, his opponent on the dainoic tini series this last Tuesday, I believe it was. Oh, that was crazy. Yeah, I mean, I've trained with Romina a little bit here and there. He's from the same area as me and, uh, Yeah, the guys, the guys, the guys very skillful about the end of the day. Both of those guys walked out of there. Just bust it up. I mean, they want straight to the hospital and it's fantastic to watch, but from a fighters perspective, at least for someone who's engaging in this on the same level as they are, yeah, I, uh,

“I don't know. That's why I like, you know, a little bit more of that precise style with the boxing specifically, I guess. I really drawn a lot of aspects from it.”

Oh, for sure. I mean, there's, there's an art to like a fighter that fights with style and a fighter that fights with finesse, like I always go to Izzy and his prime,

Addisonia in his prime when, when he was just styling on dudes. I mean, it was a beautiful thing to watch. It was, it was, it was like a dance. It was almost like he was coordinating them, right? You know, who's moving them into his strikes and everything was like faints. They're all like very specific to gauge reactions and he put it all into the computer and the next thing you know, he's tuning you up. Right. Yeah. I mean, uh, his dancing is way out. Yeah.

Into the octagon and then he dancing in there, you know. Yeah. It's, um, and I think the other thing that the general public does understand about this game is that it's a smartman's game.

Yes. It's not a tough man's game. Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you because I've seen a lot of your quotes online and I've seen you talk. You're obviously a thoughtful person.

“And I think you have to be to have that kind of a style because it does take a lot of thinking. It takes a lot of, like what you're doing in there by constantly overloaded overloading your opponent's nervous system with movement and, and, and, and”

constant counters and being like right out of range, but then right in range, and then right out of range. It's a lot of intelligence involved in that, right? And for someone like me who really loves the art of it, I love watching a guy like you fight because I really wish young fighters would emulate people like you. Young fighters would see a guy like that. Like that's what I want to fight like. I don't want to be this guy who goes in there and the end of my career my face is just a road map of scars and I got CTE,

but boy, people remember back in the day when I knocked that guy out or when we had this fight of the night and this episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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Joe Rogan.com is powered by Squarespace. It has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an AI enhanced website builder SEO optimization tools and seamless checkouts with mobile pay links head to Squarespace.com/Rogan for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use the offer code Rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Yeah, it's taken a lot of experience, a lot of growth, a lot of seeing different things because when I was a wrestler, it was the Iowa style of wrestling that I emulated and that I hope to emulate, which is just getting your face.

It's break you down, break your spirit, break you physically, just completely wipe you out with just outstanding pressure, you know. And I think I suffered with the finesse, with a little bit of the technicality of set things up and being smooth, because I was just clubbing on your head, snapping people down, going, going, going, and I refined that. I've pulled back from that almost too much I would say to where if I'm striking with someone, I don't even want to engage in like a battle of physicality.

These guys try to push and move and get up, and I'm like, you know, I'll sit and I'll dance and I'll roll up and I'll shut them down real quick and I'm steering them off and I'm doing really quick and they try to get physical where they're really trying to make it, you know, a high pace and and just more physical, I don't want to engage with that at all. I want to steer from beginning to the end, I want to keep my heart rate as low as possible. I want to land shots and then I want to be back to sitting and like you said, covering a distance, controlling everything,

where I can sit, I can take my breath, and I can see what's coming next, and then I can move accordingly, and so, you know, after being out for a little bit of time, I'm now even elevated another, yeah, to another greater extent in my own mind that I'm now starting to combine the two things to where before I would say I shy away from it, you know, I'm a tough guy, if we want to get physical and if it needs to go to that, I'm there all day, you know, don't get me wrong with that.

or someone gets me with something, if it doesn't look perfect, I'm not sitting there thinking, oh, I need to look perfect and avoid these things, now I'm just sending it in, getting after it. So, yeah, it's an every evolving game, and I'm just getting better all the time with everything, so you'll never see me go in there and brawl anybody, but you'll see less hesitation, you'll see more precise shots, and then all the other finesse will always be there. Well, it is a constant work in progress, right? And I think that's one of the more interesting things about MMA is that you see a fighter when they first start fighting in the UFC, and then you see as fights go on, they get more fights, they get more confidence, they get more experience, and they also get significantly better, you know, it's kind of rare that you see athletes in a sport, generally speaking, when they get to a certain professional level, they're kind of already at their peak, and they might get a little better,

but in MMA in particular, you see dramatic improvement in fighters over the course of four or five years, especially if they have good management and good training.

And one of the things that you're talking about is like letting your ego go in the gym, that is so important, it's so important to recognize that training is for learning, it's not, you're not trying to win every training session, not trying to win fights, you're trying to get better at winning actual fights, and sometimes getting better at winning actual fights is addressing

“whatever weird weaknesses or weird places where you're not as comfortable and getting comfortable there, and the best way to do that is just force yourself in those situations.”

Yeah, 100% it's hard to do though, because guys want to be dominant, they want to, you know, you don't want to lose a training session, you don't want to give, you know, this guy that you're sparring with, the impression that he can kick your ass, so you want to get it back on them, but sometimes it's smart to not.

Yeah, 100% I mean, I'm, I'm over there, there were told our brothers are chained over there at CSW with Eric Boston right now, and yeah, those guys are phenomenal.

Yeah, they're the best in the world, what they do, they're so fun to watch, those guys could put you Jitsu on the map. Oh yeah, because the retool brothers, like when they do Jitsu, it is like this chaotic, exciting, like very kinetic, very technical path to your neck. Right, you know, that's what it is, it's just this constant path to your neck. Yeah, and they got these monkey arm that it can just wrap around your neck and get that dark stroke from anywhere, man, it's ridiculous. Long arms are awesome, long arms are insane.

Such an advantage, like hydrogress you had that, a lot of guys have that, a lot of like the best dark skies,

harm's on has that, right? Those long arm guys, fuck man. Yeah, and then like you said, like their, their ability to, they, they almost like enforce the chaos because that's where they, they thrive at. Yes, all that scramble situation, they're, they're running and doing crazy jumps, like crazy sweeps set ups.

“What's a cater tie? I think, when he ran and he bounced off the cage, or the ropes, he runs back in and double eggs.”

Yeah, like like a WWE match, you know, like they're like thriving off of that chaotic energy grumble. Yeah, they, they're so good in scramble, you know, and it's really interesting watching, is it tie that's doing one Fc that is a doing MMA fights man? They're both fighting now, and that's, it's going to be exciting to have those guys enter into the UFC someday, hopefully they will. Yeah, because for sure, that they're, they're just freak athletes, and all it's something that they've been around since they were super, super young.

And, uh, yeah, I mean, even, even they're striking, you know, it's not super technical quite yet, they're very brand new in it, but they're just, they got long reach, they're very methodical, they're athletic, they understand distances, from the jiu-jitsu world of setting up takedowns, and, you know, closing that distance. So, but yeah, what I was saying is like going with that kind of a guy, it's like the last thing I want to do is engage in like a grappling position with them in the jiu-jitsu,

or in the MMA. And, uh, but it's like, yeah, the more I do that, I'm only going to get better. I do it that kind of stuff, you know, 100% of the ego, engage full head on into what you're bad at,

“that's the only way to get good at anything. And the great thing about those guys is they're totally natural,”

and in the jiu-jitsu world, that's rare, right? That's really rare. Jiu-jitsu take dirty sport, man. Yeah. Or, you know, I mean, is it dirty if everyone's doing it? No, let me say it this way, it's an enhanced sport, right? For the most part, the elite guys are on some

So, I mean, it's kind of legal. Like, Abu Dhabi doesn't test. A lot of places don't test. Right. So, it's like, and you see these guys, there's no way. Some of them. And, you know, kudos to guys like Gordon, a Gordon Ryan who talks very openly about it. He's like, everybody's on performance enhancing drugs. Why would not be on performance enhancing drugs? Right. My goal is to be the absolute best that I could be period. Right.

You know, and the idea that the only reason why he's so good is because of steroids is also equally ridiculous. Because when he was younger and when he was much smaller, he was winning tournaments, left him right, and beating world champions. Right. And he was totally natural. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's no way you can say someone like Gordon Ryan isn't the highest prowess of skill set for Jiu-jitsu, you know, like his technical technicality and his abilities.

They are unquestionable. Yeah. I mean, what are you going to do? If everybody else is on that level, you're now at a deficit if you're not taking it. So, there's a few guys that don't. And, and maybe, I don't know. Obviously, there's maybe some strength skills or strength

“deficit there, but that's, that's why, again, going back to my style and what I like to do”

with, like, the technicality and having that ability, there's, there's, there's just so many aspects to everything, but if you're that much more technical than someone, then that can negate size to some extent, that can negate strength to some extent. Like there's, there's a lot of equalizers. There are now, you know, on the opposite end, someone who's got that one hit or quit or they

could be less technical, but they're always dangerous. If they hit you one time and you go to sleep,

then all stands there for give and they could have got beat up for two rounds straight and they knock you out. That's all the crowd remembers. So, there's a lot that goes into it, but if you're that much more, you know, skilled in your technicality, that's, that's, you're going to, to me, that's the best you can do. That's, that's really what you're chasing for sure. The really dangerous guys of the guys who have that one hit or quit or power, and then they get real technical. Yeah,

those are the scary guys. Oh, for sure. I mean, you know, that's, then now you have it all. Yeah.

“That's that. But it's a particle. Often not the case though. That's what's interesting. It's power”

can be a curse. As can talent. Talent can be a curse too, because you don't work as hard, because you fuck everybody up in the gym, and so you don't show up for practice sometimes. You still fuck these guys up. They're just not on your level physically or for whatever reason. Yeah.

And then there's guys that have that power that always just rely on that power and never really

develop the fundamentals. And so like Deontay Wilder is a great example of that. Deontay Wilder, who I think is the greatest one punch knockout artist in the history of the Heavyweight Division. Now that's what I'm talking about. Woo, and not a big guy. Yeah. But his power is nuts. And Teddy Atlas has the greatest definition of the description of it. He said, it's the greater racer. Any mistakes he makes, one shot, a racism all. Yeah. It's so true. 100%. Yeah, it's, uh, I agree. I mean,

but could you imagine if Deontay could move like Tyson Fury, right? If Deontay could box like Tyson Fury. Yeah. We'll also with that crazy insane power. Yeah, that's, it's game over forever. That's game over for everybody. We'll see you later that guy. Yeah. On a single person, you know. This episode is brought to you by Bluetooth. Man, let's talk about Bluetooth. They're early the number one brand for better sex. But what they're doing with Bluetooth Gold is completely

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are intended for a United States audience. Yeah, if he could move like us. I mean, it's a tall fucking order because no one can move like usic other than music. But imagine if he can move like usic. Right. You know, I mean, and has that crazy stop bang. Right. One shot you're in another fucking dimension. Yeah. And that's, you know, there's, and then that's, that's obviously like at a personal level. Like, some people are blessed with that talent. Like you said, where his skills say,

athleticism. Well, the power things just, it seems like it's a gift. Yeah. No, it is. I mean,

connect to the muscle head differently. It's like a longer short once and then you either have

“like that real explosive power, but then your cardio suffers. Whatever it is, he's going into it.”

It's a gift. I mean, can you develop it to some extent? Yeah, of course. Now,

the other thing with with punching with with striking is it's not always like power that knocks people out.

It's the shot that you don't see coming that knocks you out. Sure. You know? Yeah. And so it, you know, then you can kind of equalize on on that playing field. I suppose to some extent if you're getting people guessing, you're getting people fainting, you're hitting them with shots that they're not seeing, then you're going to get similar, you know, knock out finishes like that. There's a lot of guys that knock a lot of people out that don't have one punch power. For sure,

Max Hollow is a great example of that. Like, Max has never even though he has not guys out with one shot, it's generally like after a bunch of damage. Right. But I mean, Max talked about it pretty openly about guys like Connor and Jose Aldo, and he's like, they just get tired quicker, because of the speed and power. They're so explosive. It's so much energy to try to close the distance that quick and land those big nuclear bomb shots. But you only have a few of those in a whole fight.

Yeah. I feel like Max's perspective on those two guys may be construed just because of, I mean, he thought Connor the first time I guess when Connor was in his prime, you know, when he's

“coming up almost before his prime, it was on that ride. There were both kids, I think Max was”

20 at the top. Yeah. He was, I think he was like the youngest UFC fighter at that time or something. He was a different human back then. For sure. But I just think, so like, because Connor's cardio is something that I have noticed, it wasn't it wasn't super poor like initially. When he was

fighting at 145, I mean, to me, he never like Chad Mendes, they had a lot of grappling exchanges,

Chad took him down, Chad hit him a shot, you know, Connor just stayed nice, calm, cool and collected. And he got back to the striking where he could do that. But to me, he never was like gased out. But then he watched the second D is fight. And he's running around the cage for five rounds. Now he's gone up on a weight class. So then it goes back to, you know, what's his, what's his training regiment look like? He's not cutting as much weight. So he doesn't have to be as much as discipline.

His diet changes. There's a lot of aspects. So like, I don't know. The, the Connor one was was weird to me just because I saw, I saw a change in it. When he was 145, he didn't have poor cardio as soon as he left that weight class. His cardio waned. And then Josie, although, I mean,

that guy was undefeated for what? 10 years with champion for 10 years and you never saw him get tired.

And I never saw him get tired. Yeah, Max fought him at a certain point when he's a little bit older this and that. So I don't know. Maybe that's just Max's perspective on that. I'm not saying Max is incorrect and what he's saying. But I don't know. There's, to me, there's just, I haven't pinpointed exactly what's the right and wrong way to do everything, just because there's so many variables, especially in MMA. I mean, we are kind of discussing a little bit earlier is

it's not just solely that you have a good cardio that allows you to continue to perform in that fight. There's another aspect of how a calm, cool, and collective you can be because like we were talking hitting the mids and something. If you're real tense and you're just trying to kill him, yeah, you're going to burn yourself out. But if you're fast and snappy, you're producing just as much if not more power and now you're being more efficient with it, you know? And so, I don't know. The

“cardio one is a, is a, is a funky one and combat sports to me. It really is, but I think if you look”

at Josie Aldo, Josie Aldo when he was on top, when he was the king, he was wrecking everybody. And he was the hammer most of the time, and he was so athletic and so fast and had some of the best leg kicks we had ever seen. Like the Yerai Favourite, how fucking tough is the Yerai Favourite? Yeah, because like that guy, many, many, many humans would have been stopped a long time ago, just from those leg kicks and Yerai just kept trying to the very last second. But even though he was

way behind the scorecards, never folded up his tent, he was still trying. But Aldo wasn't the nail. You know what I'm saying? Like there was, there was very few moments in a fight where someone had really started overwhelming him. And one of the things that Max has always been so good at is knowing when to hit the gas and knowing when to just slowly ramp up the pressure and you see guys start to fade and Max is a cardio fucking machine. I mean, super disciplined guy. And

great camp, those guys in Hawaii really prepare him well. He is always like 100, like the fight with Gachi, fighting in the fifth round of a fucking crazy chaotic war, just the same exact pace he was fighting in the first round. Right. So it's the experience of knowing what your body can do when you

start to fade a little bit. You see the mouth being open a little bit more, you see the movement looks a little swapier. Oh, 100%. Yeah. No one went to rest as a big aspect of that as well.

“Because you go and you, I mean, that's why a lot of the training you do is that short bursts,”

you know, you hit like your sprints. You know, you might maybe hit the straight away on the track

and then you jog and maintain because in a fight you're never completely resting. You're always moving a

little bit. So yeah, I mean, that's a huge thing to experience. I think his style and just what he's created, like you said in his campus is a high output, high volume individual. So, you know, his body's probably become used to that and that's how he performs now. Yeah, I was shocked that Connor wanted to fight him in his first fight back after years off. I mean, five years is a long time to not fight. And then to come back and fight a guy like Max, who's been constantly fighting.

Yeah. The best guys in the world and knowing that Max is a guy who never fades and he's in very different, I mean, the only guys who really got him out of there is Ilya and, you know, Ilya caught Max, when Max went down from 55 down to 45, which I think was a mistake. He was so big. He got so big to get up to 55 to fight Justin and he did it over a long period of time. I put a lot of mass on and then you essentially, you're starving yourself to get down to 45 again. Your body's going to be

weak, no matter what you do. It's not like he was when he was fighting in 45. He maintained a lower weight class, new exactly when to cut and would make it no problem each time. That last cut to 45 was a nightmare. It was a horror show. And so when he got in there with Ilya and then you're fighting El Matador, that mother fucker, you want to talk about technique, technique and it's strike this smoothness and efficiency and the one punch go night night power. I mean, that guy has

it above it. What the fuck did that to Charles Olivera the way that guy did? I mean, that's nuts. He's got, and up at a 55 when Olivera is a big 55 too. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he moved it up to 55. There's some big dogs right there. Big, especially when you look in him and Justin, when him and Justin were like, "Face an office." I'm like, "That's a way bigger dude." Like Justin's bigger than me and Ilya's smaller than me. When I stand next to two of them, I'm like, this is

crazy that Ilya has the kind of power that he's just wrecking guys even that are way bigger than him.

Right. Yeah. I mean, his skill set is amazing. Combined with the power that's, that's someone

he's talking about, has his skill set and the punching power, you know, and encompass his business. Yeah, he's he's got it all. I mean, and the thing with him too is he's just so, he's so

“calm, cool and collected. I think that's also something. I mean, I do a lot of like comparison”

from, from Moittie boxing to the MMA world because, you know, I'm in MMA, so I understand that there's so many different aspects to it where like someone could take you down and that's going to affect your, your striking skill set. You know, if you got someone who's real dope wrestler and you're way better striker, if you're sitting there and worried about them taking you down and smother new, your striking goes out the window a little bit because now you have a whole

different set of weapons that you're worrying about and you can get caught easier. Yeah, especially if you're like just loading up on them, yeah, you're gonna get ducked under and double-aged and and then taking down and that's, that's a whole thing, but I forgot where you even started to the strength of that, but yeah, I mean, I think it's, his, his, his collecting is too, but I was, I was saying there's comparison saw these and that's where like boxing you see

these guys, they might have a couple more rounds, but they come out and like the first round maybe the second round is a feeling out round. You know, it's, it's a slow buildup where they're they're collecting data, they're setting traps, they're, they're doing a lot of that and you see that MMA, it's just not at the same level. Obviously there's a, there's a greater skill set, there's more weapons to worry about. It is different, but I don't know, obviously I'm reaching

for peak perfection with everything, so if we're coming and we're looking at distance control,

“I think the box is doing better, you know, if we're looking at setting up faints and working”

off a job especially, I think that's, I think that's the most frustrating thing when I watch

MMA or UFC fights and the watch the majority of the guys never, never ever use a jab and it's always

just as big overhand right, I'm like, like, what are you doing? Like you have two hands, like that's crazy. You have the jab, set it up. Now, I'm not saying that's everybody, but I see, I see many people doing that, but that, going back to Tuporia, that's one thing that he does so well is his shorter guy, he sits back on that back foot, he's throwing that jab, he's understanding your distance control so he can get in and then that's where he's got that power and he lets that go.

You two fractured orbitals, you know, they had to stop the fight in between rounds.

Yeah. And he took big punches from a guy who's got fucking rocks in his hands. Yeah. I mean, Justin can crack. Well, they call him what, the most violent, the most violent

“in the game and I think that stands true. Yeah, that's, that's a hard one to bounce back from.”

It's going to take extra time of him really letting all his injuries heal and be fully recovered before he even thinks about sparring again, you know, every touch in the face again. Yeah, I don't know where he's at now, you know, but I know that he's still recovering and it'll be a while. I mean, the fight was in June. We're doing this right now. It's August 30th. Was the 30th or 31st. 31st. So, you know, he's had a couple of months,

but, you know, that, he probably needs like six months before he's even sparring again. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's going to take some time. It's going to take some time. And the thing that I really hate to see is when you got, you have undefeated individuals like that who have gone undefeated their whole career feel invincible. And then it sometimes that one takes them off their pedestal, you know, like Josie, all those a great example of that of,

I mean, and he came back and he fought tough, but he just never was the same. Right. He was never that

untouchable. You know, there's probably many people that I can touch back on, but,

“yeah, hope, I think hopefully that's, that's the main thing that he's going to need is that”

that mental, indestructibility and to come back and just be like, I'm the same person, that one fight doesn't change anything, and I'm ready to go do it again. Well, he's a very mentally strong guy. I think he will bounce back in that regard. It's just, there's also the just the reality of how much damage, and only he knows how much damage he actually took in that fight. How that affects him as well, because you know as well as anybody that there's only a few of those kind of fights that you

could have in your career. And you got to be very careful how you recover from those. And a lot of

fighters, a lot of great fighters, have made a mistake of coming back too soon, Vulcanovsky's

one that I point to all the time, who's arguably the greatest featherweight of all time. He is one of the most masterful fighters in the game. He took a short, short notice fight with Islam in the rematch and got head kicked, and then I think it was only four months later that he was fighting Ilya. And that is crazy. That's a crazy thing to do. He took a full head kick, shin to the dome, gets KO'd, and then four months later he's fighting the fucking scariest

challenger that he's ever had a face. Right. Yeah. 100%. You can't rush back into those things. I mean especially when you're that cemented, you don't really need a rush back into it. Right. Now you have your legacy behind you. Well you shouldn't even take him that fight with Islam.

“There's no way you should take a world championship fight when you're hanging out with your buddy's”

drink beer, you know, eating fish and chips or whatever the fuck it was doing. And then hunting with Volk over there, you know. He's having a good time, but he wasn't in training. He says there's no way he was in training. He didn't look like he was in training physically, like his body didn't look the same. Right. He didn't all you looked out of shape, but he definitely looked smoother and less ripped than he usually does. There's a,

there's a difference to be in a two or three month fight camp of day and day out two, three practices a day, the diet set, the mentality of set versus I'm just training on outside of that. When you came in on two days notice the fight wellmaker, were you in training at all? Like, what was your scenario? I was doing a food eating championship training. It was killing double double of three by three. Now, but with that one, I was fortunate because I stay strict pretty

much year round. So I had found fun January at the beginning of the year. And then I was supposed to fight multiple times. And I just had, I had two or three opponents pulled out. And then I fought November 7th for the title fight for the A1 combat, which was Lydia the Weekend before. So fortunately, I did it. I was even though people were falling out. I kept to the course. I staged strong. I stayed in a fight camp mentality. That,

November 7th, fight ended up happening. So I had a strong two months. Now, still, even that one week difference of going to be in a fight camp. And then I have a couple of drinks at the casino. I'm eating food. And I thought to myself, because January was, it was a similar thing where they said, February, Australia, get ready, get your passport. Let's look into this, blah blah blah. You know, I had, I had a nice knockout finish there. But then, yeah, it's just that one week of being

off of eating whatever I wanted to and just kind of doing whatever I ran once. I showed up disparaging and light touch barred. I got into one other practice, because in my mind, I was like, I need to be somewhat ready for this. I can have a week. I've been if I camp all year long. I can

to feed in Malcolm Wellmaker. You want it. And then, of course, I'm going to can't say no to that one.

So did you fought the weekend before the Wellmaker fight? I fought November 7th. Yeah. Wow, that's actually good. It was you didn't get hurt. Yeah, well, it was, I meant it 30 seconds. Knocked him out on the first round. So it was, to me, it's just the stars aligned. I mean, don't you think it's also good that you just had the experience like seven days prior to the whole thing, getting in the cage, cage shots, you just fought. So it's much more comfortable for you than

if you had like Connor taking five years off. Is it lead as Connor is double champ, one of the greatest of all time for that. Even the guy like that, you take five years off and you could see like what it did to him. It's like, it fucked with his head. Oh, yeah. You could, you could see it. There wasn't

the same Connor energy going into it. Of course, I always want a quick turnaround, like after I fight,

just for that very reason. I, I, I, I, I cut the weight. I know what that's like. I warmed up in the back with all the anticipation, you know, that energy flowing through my body. I walked out in front of the crowd. They announced my name. I got there. I, I actually fought someone. So yeah, if you have that, go on for you, then that's, yeah, that's way way better for sure. Yeah, the more active you could be the more comfortable you could be with the experience as long as you're not getting hurt. He has a

stat that I was reading about Izzy. And people forget about this when he was the champion. He defended his title a lot, man. He was the guy that then go, hey, we need someone to headline this card.

“And Izzy would step in. All right. And I think he fought three time. He defended the world title three”

times in one year, which is crazy. Because I don't think the middleweight title since he's gone

has even been can, like how many middleweight fights have there even been for the title since he's been gone. There's only been a few fights. I think there's only been shot in and and drickest shot in drickest to drickest in hamsa and that shot in hamsa. I mean, it might literally be like maybe five fights since he's lost the title. And fuck he defended it more than anybody. Right. Yeah, which is crazy. He defended three times in one year. Yeah. And then you have

this, you know, huge span of time in between defenses. But then there's a question of like, what is this, when does it become a benefit? And when does it become a detriment? Like when when you're fighting too many times a year, like the marob doves willy fight. One of the things that a lot of people talked about after pure beyond beat of the rematch was, what about the strength of schedule? I mean, marob was fighting constantly. He was fighting. He fought so often and for so many

years that you got to think that at a certain point in time, maybe he's doing himself a disservice by being so active. Yeah, I mean, for sure. I don't know. I mean, that's it's something

“you got to feel off for yourself. You know, it's it's something that you have to know and your”

heart of hearts and nobody else can tell you that your coach can't be like, no, you're training really well these days. You're super sharp this and that. Like if something's off realistically, you should be perfect going into your fight, especially at a world championship caliber. I mean, I keep making these comparisons, but it's another thing that I go back to with the boxing world is these guys look at it as a business. Look at Floyd Mayweather. Like everything was like

he made sure that the the cage was his side. He picked the gloves. It was certain people had certain times. And there's there's something to be said about that, but it's a business mindset. It's a very smart approach to it. You know, I'm fighting when I'm ready. I'm not fighting injured, which is which is more of the main thing. It's like people go in there with injuries and, you know, get her or lose even. And so that's that could be detrimental on your record. I think that I'm a may guys

are a little bit more on the the tough side instead of the the business side of things where they'll

“they'll fight anyone any time, which I mean, that's how you got to be, but that's how you build your”

team around you. You have a team that tells you, hey, you know, this time isn't necessarily the best to go into it and this and that. And just being a little bit smarter about your schedule. It's like, yeah, us fighters are going to sit there and go all fight anyone any given time. It doesn't matter, but yeah, this is a business is not just fighting like getting in that cage solely. It's a lot of aspects that go into it. Don't think it's way more difficult to go into a fight perfect in MMA than

it is in boxing though. And boxing seems like it's much easier to avoid injuries. For sure, there's there's there's differences. I just I reflect back to that. I like the way that they conduct themselves. I think it's and there's a lot that's to be said to that because it's it's a longer

I I was before this April fight. I was the first round of the day of sparring. I was just going

“light with Calvin Bisping for a lit a one second and we moved around and he's a heavyweight. We moved”

around. He took me took we tried to take me down. I stuff that he took me down and I kind of just sat with it because I didn't want to get caught. And he, you know, knee tweaking positions or anything because he just so much heavier than I am. And I sat to a butterfly, which is typically how I do that elevate the hips immediately and try to make a scramble and my my my my niscus just popped instantly, right then and there first round of the day barely barely had done anything barely started and it

wasn't even like a crazy position, but yeah, now it's sustained injury. Now, I don't go against

heavyweight anymore because you should be never be doing that. It's due to the abandonment. You should

not be sparring with that. Well, that's why I go the first day. I'm not the first day with the first round. I'm just trying to warm up. There's a lot of things to be said. I grow and I and I

“learn and I get smarter every time. I think you should not be far with guys that are reasonably”

close to your weight period. Ten, ten pounds is probably a maximum above you. You know, you shouldn't be going with anybody more than that. Yeah, I get smarter with these things. Yeah, I do a dump things and I figure for that for the most of my history, I've had to learn the hard way with things. So I'm getting better at it. I'm getting smarter. But like I said, it was just a freak thing. It wasn't like we were going crazy hard or anything. Like it just was the first round. I just trying to move

and then some little thing about it. It wasn't a full, full tear. But it happened back in

like February. I was right before that. That April 1. So leading up to the Estabunk fight, it's like I didn't grapple until the last maybe, maybe month of it. Maybe. Oh, so it was a long time before that. It was all the way up to it. I mean, that's that's what happened was the April fight, which was the Estabunk fight. Wow. So yeah, it's it's very difficult to avoid everything. You know, like there's a lot of different things that won't even seem like a detrimental

position. But yeah, you got grappling, which can tweak all sorts of different parts of the body. A simple cut from from striking can happen very easily. So for sure, it's it's much more abundant in the MMA world because there are more weapons. There's a lot of variations of things to watch out for.

But that being said, I like to carry, like I said, this is a smart man's game. I like to carry

a level of business wise and and smart wise to this. And that's so though though the exact functions may differ. It's it's the mindset that I like to carry from it. Right. It's well, what you said is perfect that it's a long business. Boxes have been around for a long time. And they really lead trainers, the really lead coaches. They know how to prepare their fighters. And they know what fights to take and when to take them. Right. And unfortunately, with the UFC,

like sometimes you get a call like the Malcolm Wellmaker fight. You know? And you're like, oh, shit, it would be nice to get two months to prepare for Malcolm. But I have two days. Right. And I just fought, fuck it, roll the dice. And you also were coming out of nowhere. And I don't think a lot of people had time to prepare for you. Because as good as you are, when you fought Wellmaker, when you fought, how do you say his name? Estevon. What is this? Rafael Estevon. restaurant Estevon.

He was also undefeated and super skillful. He was a really good fighter and still is. But to have those two performances in a row, the way you looked. You looked at your guy like if you were 20 years ago, you would have been a fucking alien. Like no one had seen anybody like you before.

“That's how much this sport has grown just in 20 years. You go back to like the ultimate”

fighter season one. There was fucking nobody like you. Nobody like you back then. Right. You know, really wasn't until Anderson burst onto the scene shortly after that that we really got to see that kind of elite level striking. Yeah. I mean, yeah, talk about alien for that time. That was interesting. So that's one of the top to ever do it. There's there's no question. Oh my god, people forget because maybe they see his later fights in his career.

But you go back and watch him when he was in his prime. I remember when he fought Chris Leban and Chris Leban is a murderous puncher. Like one of the hardest punches that's ever fought in the UFC. He's one of those guys that's got that fucking God-given crack. Right. And he's just such a warrior. I mean, wades into the storm, you know. But that style is tailor-made for him. And when I was looking at the odds, a friend of mine was there. I go bet the house on the Brazilian. I go bet the house.

I go listen to me. This is a mother fucker dude. Just wait. Because that's when he really came into his own over in cage rage. Right. When he, that's when he really became Anderson Silva.

Yeah. The Tony Fricklin. Yeah. What was the, it was like an upk it like a crescent

upk it was that pride or was that the cage rage? Here's on the bottom. He whipped his leg over the top.

“It wasn't like a straight upk it. He kind of like brought it over. Oh, I don't remember that one.”

Yeah, I don't recall either. Who was he fighting? I don't know. I'm not, I'm not good at names. So, in pride, it was, who's he fighting here, Jimmy? You should know, Connie. Oh, you should know, Connie. This was rumble on the rock. This was BJ Pence promotion. Look at that. Oh. Yeah. He's just doing things. I like. Yeah. No one ever thought of that time. He gets that right leg loose. Ties his hands up. Wow. That's crazy. And O'Combie was a beast. And they fought again in the UFC later and he,

he KO'd O'Combie. Yeah. Stuff like that. The elbow you're talking about. Yeah. Just like just

that pioneer for it. You know, he's not like he's watching film. He's not sitting on YouTube.

Watching people do these things prior. He's the one that's coming up with it. This is the crazy elbow. You know, the, the funny story about this elbow, he was training that and his coach told him stop doing that. You're not going to do that. Yeah. And so he made his wife hold pillows at home. And he was, he was practicing it at all. He was how it are holding pillow. And he was just working on the mechanics of that elbow. It's like he wanted to prove his coach wrong. Right.

And he wanted to get the knockout with that, that technique. And let him hold it. He did it. Well, he had some great fights over there. Particularly the, um, the Lea Murray fight. Did you ever see that fight? Probably, I've probably been Murray is right. He's the the British dude that became a bank robber. It was the bank robber Craig. Biggest heist in UK history. Yeah. Yeah. And that was about due to that. Oh, he was about the time. Everybody was scared of that. Yeah.

Well, that guy could crack. He's another guy had crazy power. Yeah. And just a vicious dude. Just an absolutely vicious guy. That's the thing. The legitimate criminal. Yeah. Exactly. He had that like the whole aura and persona to him. Yeah. He's a little gangster. Yeah. That brand has a little bit more of like this, you know, I don't want to say fear. But like, oh, yeah. Who's the guy, you know? The fucking guy was in the Lea fighter. And he was also a Lea criminal.

He's multi-talented. I mean, that's something in a movie. Like a guy, like, who's a top tier criminal who also competes and wins in the UFC. Right. Yeah. And one by triangle. The beat, oh, Jorge Rivera by triangle. Yeah. And it's crazy. Yeah. No. And you have Anderson coming in and just delicious. Yeah. He's rectum. And he rectum with technique. And there was a lot of it was leg kicks. Yeah. He just Anderson's more time was at such a different level. It was so artistic.

Yeah. I think that's the perfect word to describe that was artistic because it's just beautiful. The way he said things up. I mean, he made a lead guy's look very brand new in the cage. Yeah. I didn't see very many close fights with them until later his career. Yeah. It's a

later in his career thing. And I always say that with fighters, you really have to look at them

when they were at their highest RPM. Whatever. You generally, it's only a few years. Right. But that few years. Like judges them by that. Judges them by those performances when they were just

“on fire. Yeah. And I tell people you have to always go back and watch those Anderson fights”

when he front kick vetoing the face. Right. First time anybody had ever won by knockout with a front kick to the face in the UFC. Now people do it all the time. Right. But I didn't even think that was a good option. Like there's a video of and I grew up kicking. There's a video of me and Eddie Bravo. We're working with those Bob one of those Bob dummies. And he's like, what do you think about a front kick to the face? I'm like, eh, it's better the body. I mean, you could land it to the face,

but you know, I don't really see very many guys do it. It's much more wrong. Yeah. It's perfect. Just watch the Anderson self-affight. And everybody does it now. So many guys get knockouts with the front kick to the face. Because you don't see it coming when it comes straight up the middle. Right. If everything's coming around and also something comes straight up the middle and catches the bottom of your chin. For sure. I like, um, I like that side kick to the body,

to the liver, though, not heal on the liver. I think that's more of a natural motion, but I have been working with the front kicks. I like them a lot, uh, especially with that with the weight on the back leg a little bit. And especially with these calf kicks, people are really trying to bear down and throw the calf kick hard. That's, that's, uh, what was going to be my technique in my last one was when that, when that calf kick comes off, they're very beginning

“because that's what footier does. This comes out. He controlled, looks for his distance and he”

bases down. He throws that calf kick almost every single time against every opponent. And I was like, you know, especially because I was playing on going there one hand in and I was like, oh, so I'm just going to pull this front leg up front kick to the face and it's going to land it's going to be beautiful. But yeah, I started to work that, like, you, you put that weight on that back leg. This one comes up fast. And with the one I like better, especially with the boxing

people think your face is in range forward, you just pull back and throw that one straight up the

middle and you talking about front leg from the back leg on this on the second one. You're kind of

basing out here and you're stepping back onto to the back leg and when they open up like they're going to throw something lean back and throw it up the middle. And so you're changing the distance there. People don't expect it. For the calf kick, you're just light on the front leg and you're throwing it off the front leg. Are you sliding forward? Are you just picking it up and stabbing? I just pick it up and stab it because they got to close a little bit of distance to get that calf.

“That one's, um, you know, the kick is a longer range, but that one you have to come a little bit”

closer for me to throw it appropriately. Some people smack it with the foot or whatever it is. I don't like that. I like that Dutch style almost like a soccer kick. You're raising it straight up and that shin bone is touching that soft calf. And so to do it that way, I get a little bit of closer with distance, but then that's where, you know, you set it up and all the other stuff be a little safer doing it that way. Yeah, the calf kick is interesting because a lot of

guys are kind of just going straight up. All right. You know, like, you ever see Yuki Yosa fight? He's one of my favorite times to watch fight. That's, that's probably like the perfect example of dawn. Yeah. A very deliberate and technical calf kick is how he does it. He destroys people's legs, destroys them. And he's kicking up, he's kicking up all the time and there's no pivot and it's so fast. It's so fast and there's no tell and he's throwing it in every combination. So he's hitting you with a

jab, he's inside, low kicking you, the left hook, he's outside, low kicking you. It's like, yeah, he's smack you from all the different levels. It's constantly and taking out your base every time. Every time you're close enough, he's taking out your base, every time, every time, every time, every time from all angles. I love watching this guy fight. He does that cool thing too. Like, what he just did, check out that. Watch it. They gave him a trouble for that because you

know what's supposed to do that in kickboxing. See, he doesn't. He hooks the guys leg. Yeah. So he throws like a half-speed kick. Show that back up again. So you can see that. He throws like a half-speed kick, holds it and then trips him. My dad was actually just talking about that with me. That's that's a very clean technique. True. But he is such a wild guy to watch because of the damage that he does to guys legs. So this is what I love about the artistic aspect of it and the

“technical aspect when people figure out, okay, what do you do when you're fighting a guy like this?”

Well, Jonathan Hagrid, he figured it out. It's constant switch dances, constant knees to the body,

moving, jabbing, constant movement. You never let him get set up for those. You know,

he took a lot of leg kicks in that. But he landed way more than he took and he won the decision against Joseph. It was a big win. But it was also like a blueprint. Like, if people got to see that fight, they see it. See if you can find that fight. Jonathan Hagrid and Yuki Joseph. He did a really good job of picking that front leg up. Mm-hmm. And that's going back to him and May is something that it's still developing. But I don't see a lot of guys

defend the calf kick. I see a lot of guys willingly eat them. Yes. And like you do that with the shin guards on. You could probably spar all day and take calf kicks. You know? Sort of. If they're landing clean, like really clean, yeah, you're going to feel it. Yeah. But for the most part, you pick the leg up. You pull it back a little bit. It doesn't land super flush. You could take it with shin guards on. You take, you take one good one with no shin guards on. It's a completely different

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superpower.com/rogan to save $50 on your membership. Yeah. So look how Jonathan is never stationary.

Constantly switching stances. Look, I mean, literally constantly and constant movement. And then when you're thinking about the legs, the jab, the step forward knee, everything is constant movement. There's never a chance for Jose to set up and nice spinning back here to the body there. That's so close, too. Oh, he's, he's wicked man. This dude's wicked. But how could he figure it him out? I mean, look at that. Outside low kick on a hop. I mean, in constant stance switches

and that switch knee to the body, look, Jose's looking for those, man. If you, you can only take so many of them for this guy, too. He's got fucking stones for shins. Yeah. Yeah, you got no nerve endings. It's anything below the knees. It's really incredible, man. Watching this fight is a real

“masterclass in striking. And this is one thing that I always give credit to one for. I think one has”

the absolute best strikers when it comes to just pure striking. Right. And the exciting guys that

I fucking love watching that guy fight. Oh, it's like Jesus Christ. He's good. And one of the

guys that he trains with just fought in the PFL, Mega Met Off. Did you see that fight? No. I forget how to say his name. It's like, I think it's Abu or I forget his name. But he put on a masterclass in striking and he looked just like, like, uh, Azadul Imam Ghazalia. Like the way he was fighting. Like that style, long tall striker. And these Dagestan guys, man. You got Dagestan's got Elite Moitai, too.

“That's what's crazy. Yeah, that's the dude. Um, I'm Roo. I'm Roo Mega Met Off. Well, speaking of that,”

show me a little bit of that because this cat, he fights just like Azadulah, like very similar. And I know they're from the same place. You talk about artistic. That's like Zabi. Yeah,

Shari Pau is another one. Yes. Yeah, and he was kind of the first of those guys that you go,

oh, I think of these guys as wrestlers. Yeah. But look at this guy. He's throwing 360 roundhouse kicks and wheel kicks. He's doing like, yeah, I don't know, not kung fu, but one of those practices before he was ever asked us. Yes. Yeah, it was like sand shoe or something. But you watch this cat fight. He fights just like Azadulah. He's got that long reach, slick striking, wicked kicks. He throws a lot of high kicks. And that dude, Alvarez, he's finding was tough. It's shit, dude. Because he, he took a lot

before he finally wilted. You can see his hurt from the lake. He's already before that. He's getting destroyed.

“That's kind of vicious. Being a long guy like that is just so much more beneficial. That's why”

everybody thinks he's all these big muscle heads. Like like the OG UFC that's that's the fire build. The guy on top of the world. Yes. It's like it's the tall, long like skinny guy that can strike. Well, like that's the perfect like MMA build. Yeah, because they can strike you from six inches away from where you can strike them. That's a crazy advantage. That's a factor that was with Ty on Thursday, whatever it was. And he's like, I want to say he said 78 inch reach. Wow. He's like, he's like, I have

a 78 inch reach. He's like, so I can touch you guys from this and that. Any south bomb blah, blah, blah, but I'm like, well, yeah, like that's like a light heavyweight reach. Yeah, it's like, well, no, dude, they both of those guys have crazy long. Yeah, it's three days. Real long arms, real long legs. Perfect for triangles, perfect for for any kind of dars, right, guillotine, anything, real niggas, re-niggas, re-niggas with an

arm in. And then he fights up all like this and it's like, you could touch from a million miles away.

“That's what me, I'm the opposite. My whole style is all the way out or all the way in. I got to”

get in and get to work in there, you know. And there's something to be said about that too, because those two styles can't sleep each other out. If you have a long guy, he's not going to fight as well on the inside. It's not saying that he can't, especially with the moi type, the way they clench is actually very efficient. And with the boxing stuff opening stuff up and being able to get your your longer limbs in there is is perfectly viable as well. It's just, you got to play off of

your of, you know, your god-given talents and your assets. And so the shorter guy is going to negate the long guy by getting inside. And at the long guy can maintain the distance and keep them there than he's going to win that. Yeah, there's benefits to all body types. It's just knowing what to do with that body type. Look, Mike Tyson is arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time. He's in the in the conversation with Ali and Joe Lewis. And it's just a few guys that you could

like put into that category as the greatest heavyweight of all time. And I think Mike Tyson certainly in his prime was right there. Yeah, you know. Lennox Lewis, you got to put Lennox Lewis in that conversation. Even prime time Larry Holmes, you got to put him in that conversation. Right. But Mike Tyson was 5/11, you know, as a heavyweight. That's crazy. And he was only like 2015-20 in his prime. But that bombing and weaving and constant movement. He would just overwhelm guys. You see the tall guys

putting their hands out. They just, they were just dealing with this fucking Wolverine that was running towards them. Yeah. And I had just seen something from him or rather quote. And he, he said, it wasn't my physicality. That was my greatest asset. It was my elusiveness. It was that I was so elusive that I could get in. And I could get to work, you know. Yeah. And a lot of people, unless you're like a real practitioner or, you know, a student of the sport, they don't see that.

They just see, they just see the bombs coming in. And they attribute that to, he's got a bunch of power, he's a monster. But there's just so much more intricate, you know. It's like you said about Anderson. Like this is an art form. This is, it's a game of, of said things up. It's a chess match, you know. Everybody looks at it like it's checkers. But it's, there's so many more moves that could be made. And that need to be made to be the best at this. And you really want to be appreciated by the

cheers of the casuals. The, the real feeling, the good feeling that fighters get is when someone is a true student of the game who really understands what they, like I love when you're doing this.

“I love that thing you do when you do. There's, though, that's what the guys want to hear. They want to”

hear like, from their fellow fighters. Like, if, you know, like, when an elite fighter goes up to another elite fighter is like, bro, I fucking love what you're doing. You could see that like, thank you. Like, it's like, it hits different. It means more. When, when you know that a guy is really

operating at a very high level. Right. Yeah. Because of the rest of the people have never stepped

room into even a gym to spar or like, go a couple rounds of grappling. You know, so it's, they don't know what they're seeing. They have no understanding. Sometimes they think when the guy is missing, it's because he sucks. You know what, is funny is that even I have had that realization because I growing up. He was like, me and my pops watching you see. And to me, you know, that was, that was my thing. But I would always sit there and go, well, why doesn't this guy do this?

It's right there. Just do that. It's right there. It's like, dude, you're not standing in a cage. Just surrounded by thousands of people. You don't have the same fatigue. You don't know injuries. You're going into it with it. You don't know what you practice leading up to it. That you're even having capacity to think about and to act on. It's like, there's just so many things. So like, I watched stuff now. And I'm so much better at that because I'm sitting there going,

he could do that. But I don't know what he's seeing. You know, I don't know what's going on in his mind. So, right. Yeah. There's, there's different levels to it. Yeah. For sure. It's, I mean, it's a very complex game. It really is. I want to ask you a question. Do you think that it was a benefit for you to lose your first two fights? Do you think there's maybe something to that? Because we were talking about your first two opponents in the UFC being undefeated until they

fought you, they had never experienced loss as a professional before. And then they get on this

crazy big hype thing. And there's something about being undefeated as well, especially when your guy like well-makers, not just on the feet of a knockout artist, like people get really, really jazzed up and excited about that. Do you think that maybe having that bad feeling of loss early in your career maybe grounded you more? Yeah. Certainly. I went six and a no on to feet as an amateur. But I can tell you at that time, I was not living a fighter's lifestyle

to the fullest. At that time, I would let go to practice in the morning and then I had to go to work at night or whatever. But I was like, man, fighting is the best. You just go wake up, practice once. You get to kick it the whole rest of the day. You get to go fight and make all this money and live your dream. That's all it takes. This is cool. And I went at all these amateur

“scene fights, which that's what the amateurs are for for learning and getting experience. But”

yeah, it really showed me that there was change that needed to be made in what I did with fighting and what I did outside of fighting and outside of fighting was arguably more important. You know, there was a lot that I needed to change a lot that I needed to refocus on and make right by and it wasn't until I did those things that I saw this drastic change. You know, it wasn't until I that I erased all the negatives and then filled it with all the positives that I may

will be on a 10 fight win streak doing what I'm doing now because who knows. I mean, maybe maybe I would have changed that, but I don't think it would have been as drastic if I hadn't experienced those two losses the way I did. So before those two losses, your first two professional fights, were you kind of fucking off? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, what were we doing? Just everything, I mean, direct party and smart gun drink in being a delinquate being not the best partner.

How old are you back then? I came back from college in 2017. I tore my mind in this case in a dual me and then my coach was same me, my right name, different name. Coach is an asshole about it. I snapcrackle popped all the way through the rest of the season. What was it? Coach was an asshole about it. What would you do? You didn't want to be dis important, like completely. He just ran much on me suck it up. Like, what a great coach.

“And yeah, exactly. That's why I didn't go back. I mean, it was a lot of things. I was in Bristol,”

Tennessee. So it's like, there's not a whole lot to do out there coming from SoCal. So that was a culture shock. I was on my own for the very first time. And then yeah, I got hurt. So then I started,

I don't know, everybody else is out there party and stuff. I never party. I grew up very religious.

I was very strict. I all throughout high school. I didn't, I didn't touch anything. I didn't look anything. I didn't want it to partake in anything. I just wrestled. That was my only drug was wrestling back then. You know, like, that's all I did. And I had a lot of success then. And it wasn't until I deviated from that course. And I started finding fun or enjoyment or just maybe just trying to

wrestling thing of it. It might not have been the biggest thing to people. But for me, like,

that was my first time experiencing where I had just placed like 8th of California State. I was

fit at the National Tournament. I was just doing everything right. You know, I had one of the US open for my age division. And then I go to this and I'm on my own for the first time and I have all this adversity and I just like, I don't know. I just felt like, like, why is this happening to me? You know, I felt like I had been abandoned at that point. And maybe maybe other people would have recovered from it better, but that was the first time experience for me. So, but yeah, I was barely 19 years old

around that time. I think I probably started fighting around, and the amateurs around 20. So I was I was really to the young, but so that's when you started partnering. I was, as soon as I tore up in his case, I finished out the wrestling season. And then I remember, like, even school, like, slouched off like I did. Well, I wasn't really caring about school too much. I didn't really

“even try too hard. And then I went, I remember that day, as soon as the last final was done,”

we all went to my buddy's house. And that's the first time I ever got drunk, like ever. And so

it's not to say that those things are like the end of the world if you're controlling them, but I certainly wasn't. You know, I had like a lot of compounding things being first time. And that carried over. It was like that all the way up until, yeah, it was after that second loss. I was probably still not doing what I needed to be doing to be a disciplined athlete. I was respectable, just like, you know, good person really. I wasn't, I wasn't being a good person.

And yeah, there was, there was a lot of change, a lot of growth. You know, I had a lot of people guide me back into that. And as soon as I made those changes, yeah, now I'm here, haven't been able to live and experience it, because that's the best teacher out of all of them. You know, you can go and watch a YouTube video and how to do something, right? Like fix a car. Oh, I know exactly where the alternator is. I know where this, this pump is. I know how this

connects to this. Then the second you open it up. It's like, okay, well, I didn't know I needed this tool. Wow, this is really way harder to pull off. And it's the experience. It's the hardship and experience that teaches you things. So, 100%. If I had gone through that, who knows where I'd be, and what I'd be doing right now? When you hurt your knee in college, it was at the first time you'd ever done where you had an injury where it completely compromised your ability to perform,

where you realized, like, oh, like, my body's very vulnerable. So, I had actually spraying my ankle. It was, it's called the OC duals. It's like the number one and number two in Orange County face off. And I had tore up my ankle pretty good. And that was going into league and then CIF and all that stuff. And I had almost worried that I wouldn't be able to wrestle, which is a big thing. Luckily, I was able to wrestle on that. But yes, I guess the Maniscus

was probably the first time where it really took me out of my game like that. And to me, it was more of, I don't know if it was a vulnerability of the body. I had come to terms with that. I understood that. I don't know. I maybe I thought there was a higher power like protecting me. And at that moment, like I was no longer protected. And I had been abandoned. And that's kind of what got to me. Honestly, as I thought, like, God had a band of me essentially at that time. Really? You didn't think

maybe God, did you even consider that it was a challenge? I can look back on it and say,

“with certainty that is. And that's you were young. I was young. And that's, that's why I said,”

I clouded my mind with a bunch of other things and said a focus on it and thinking about it. Clearly, I just just moved farther away from the issue. So like at that time, that's what I thought. Now being a mature man, having grown my relationship with God, having red and studied and understanding that, like I said, that those hardships are what build this is that that's what tests our faith and what really brings us closer to God. Now I see that it wasn't as big as I

had made it, you know. But I learned and maybe falling farther down the path taught me even more. Yeah, I think it does. I think failing is actually a very good teacher. I really do. I think in all aspects of your life. And especially when you're a young person, you have this idea of who you are, having that get knocked down, we have to rebuild. It's very important. Because once you rebuild and you realize, like, okay, now I know what I'm capable of, now I know that there's, this is,

“there's going to be ups and downs, but I must maintain the path. Right. Did you have to get your”

knee fixed? Did you have to do anything to it? Yeah, they did a scope on it. So they,

they shaved the part that I was hanging away, which to me, I wish I had never done, because that

with a right leg going over, that it was my lateral, when this gets outside, it rolls over and it catches. So then I got to bring my legs straight and pop it back into place. And it's gotten better. You know, I get through it quicker these days, but they tell you to not even get that surgery,

you know. Well, so my, my second professional fight where I got ankle locked, I got, uh,

“I think it was like an outside rep, and I went to sit up to grab it and he had the position locked”

and my knee just, but like eight times in my ear, real bad. And it was in the same exact spot that lateral, when his kiss, the outer, which, uh, I don't know what, what other leg of it is on that outside there, but to me, it was like exactly where the, the meniscus on the right leg had happened, but I grabbed up or set up. I grabbed his arms. I kept trying to fight through it, and then he switched it over to the, to the heel hook on the other side of my ankle pop twice as I rolled and I finally

tapped then. But I didn't, I didn't even get an MRI on that one. I tried to. It took so long that I was doing the knees over toes and strengthened him and I was starting to move on it that by the time they're like, okay, we can get your MRI and a week of like, do you know, I'm already moving and

exercising and doing stuff on this. Like, I was cool, but yeah, I never did anything with that,

and that knees really never given me any issues. And then the one I got the scope on,

“still bothers me to today. Yeah, they don't recommend that anymore because they did a study of”

people that have had meniscus surgery versus not having meniscus surgery and just rehabilitation, and it shows that rehabilitation seems to be the better path. Yeah. I mean, especially for like, I have one that's been scoped and they bothers me all the time. That's the one I got shot up today. Okay. It always bothers me. It's like there's a missing padding on one side of it. It's missing, but I had a bucket handle tear and in jujitsu, it would lock and my leg would be stuff like stiff

and I could push it back into place. It was excruciating. It was like stuck locked out. Yeah, yeah. It would go back eventually, but it would take sometimes to take a day before and it would swell up, you know, but if I, first of all, this was a long time ago. Unfortunately, there was no stem cells available back then. Right. I would have 100% just done stem cells and now I would have done the knees over toe stuff and a lot of cycling like stationary box bike cycling at not high resistance.

This is a fairly low resistance. It's just repetitive motion. It's really good for getting the blood flow to the knees and really good for strengthening up the tendons and the ligaments and everything, but without load, you know, it's just, you do it like a very low resistance and just for a long time. Right. And that's really good for your knees. So yeah, I mean, there's, there's so many things.

“Like, I think even like lake extensions would probably be like a good little exercise for the knees.”

I mean, it's pretty deliberate spot. I think, you know, like backpacking. I think like a controlled version of that because there's a lot of times you're, you know, you're dropping down like pretty heavily. This and that, which is probably not the best you've been doing. Yeah. But if you were doing it, like, because that's kind of the knees over toes is he's doing some similar motions. If you had some, maybe not as much weight, some weight on your back, you could slowly kind of find that

and then have a soft landing. Like, I don't know, I was backpacking recently and I was just thinking about this like, like, a controlled setting, like an gym, like on a machine that I'm like, maybe not as much as like a steep incline or d-cline. Like something like that would be really good. And then the range of motion stuff is I've had, you know, with my injury and stuff and time to step away. I've had like a lot of opportunity to think and I feel like I've, I've grown tremendously and it's like,

yeah, all the little tiny things, like the knees, like they're fine. Like, I do it. I really don't have an issue too much. Like, maybe if I get into that position, it'll do it. But it's like, you know, what happens when I do get into like a position, let's say a leglock position, for example, or like a straight knee bar, and you know, what if my flexibility is an issue there, or just simply like a wizard position where the knees get popped up, like, just any. There's

a million and one positions that the knees could be compromised there. And so yeah, it's going

back doing a lot of range of motion stuff. A lot of strength in any of the knees. Do you do polyquen step downs? Do you know those? No. Charles polyquen, if you see you find polyquen, it's very simple. You're essentially doing it either. You're doing it from an incline board with like a little bit of elevation, or you're just doing it from a straight up step. And what you're doing is you're just lowering yourself down. So one foot is above on the

step and the other foot, your lower like that. Like there, there you go. He's doing it on plates. Very simple, very simple. I mean, you're literally only going like 10 inches, but you're going up and down like that. And it's just controlling the body weight like that for nominal for knee strength thing. And for knee stability, it's excellent. It's one of the best exercises. You're doing

I, I'm not doing it like really any exercises, weight and like, man, I do a little things,

“but first straight the conditioning after boxing, but I stay away from the weights.”

But it's not even for the weight, sometimes you do it on a treadmill. You do on a treadmill,

just basically keep the treadmill off and just with your own resistance, you put your step backwards.

Okay. So you put your back to the screen and hold onto the bars and you're basically just pushing with your legs, going backwards. And it's really good for strengthening your knees and also for blood flow. That's a knees-over-tose guy thing. Okay. Is his page is phenomenal. That guy is- Look at the, yeah, the 24-hour fitness and burn out their treadmill. Yeah, yeah, you can do that or you could use a sled. You know, we do it with a sled here. You know, you put the sled,

you put like a waist strap and you just back up and pull the sled. It doesn't have to be a lot of weight. It's not a weight thing. Right. It's really just a circulation thing and a strengthening thing. He has another one that you get the band around your back and then you're kind of, oh, you did it. You're essentially like leaned over and then straightening the leg. It's got- you're like in a lunge, I guess actually. In a lunge, the knee goes over the toes. You have

the resistance on the back and then you're pushing and essentially doing the same thing is probably walking back with the sled. Band is attached in the front or in the front. Attached in the front. Oh, I see. This is pulling you forward. Okay. And you're your lunge over the knee, the knee over the toe and then you're extending that leg and it's just hitting that knee perfectly. It's very similar to the one you're talking about, I'm sure. Yeah, because someone at the time you spend pushing

forward and not a lot of people spend much time pushing backwards. Pushing backwards is really

“important. It's really important to just to overall knee strength. Right. I think the side”

side stuff, too, is like, I was almost like, let me get in the sand. And I do a lot of like working out in the sand just for the boxing, for the footwork and being able to sand the stance. But like that little like side explosion stuff, when probably start strengthening those muscles on the side and the legaments go on that way. And then I'm trying to think like, how do you get that motion? I mean, you could get a band and probably like do kind of like a lateral extension or

pull it up into your like an inward extension. You know, he's to do a lot of weird shape with bands BJP. Oh, yeah. He's a lot of weird shit in his prime. It's like flexibility stuff and developing strength from weird positions with bands. Yeah, I see, uh, I don't know if BJ was was a part of that program, but like the Raphael, the San Jose, the fascist kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, how far old Los Angeles was training with Nick Curson? Nick Curson was a student of Marmarinovich.

Okay. And Marmarinovich is the guy who trained BJP, right? It was like in his prime. When he really got super serious about cardio, but it's very controversial approach. The Marinovich's approach was you already know how to fight. So forget about fight training. We're just going to give you the most fucking insane gas tank you've ever had and that way you'll be able to execute everything you want. And so the primary focus was just plyometrics and their conditioning program

and it was hell, right? And BJ did not like going through it, but when he went through it, he was

like unstoppable because he just never gasped, right? And it's, that's the interesting thing about

conditioning in general is we have these ideas of what the threshold is, like what a human body's capable of doing for five minutes, for three rounds or five rounds, like in terms of what kind of pace that you could put up. And then you have certain guys that come along that sort of redefine what the threshold is like Marab. Marab comes along and here you got some guy whose gas tank is fucking superhuman and he makes the best fighters in the world just wilt under that

this constant pressure being taken down and his strength and his skills are wrestler, it's just this constant attack, constant constant constant constant, and you wonder like okay what how long did it take to build up that reserve? How long did it take to build up that gas tank? That's not something you can achieve and just one camp. That's something that takes literally years to develop.

“Oh for sure. That's why I mean like I said going back to wrestling my my what I would say”

my super power my most utilized skill set was my my cardio my gas tank you know and I don't know I it is anabolic versus anorobic like the striking versus the grappling cardio. I think there's something to be said about that wrestling cardio like just that like strict you're just grinding

it out 24/7 you know you're always colliding your muscles are always tensed up. I think there's

something to be said about that that if you had great wrestling cardio you could do almost anything or yeah it builds up a foundation that's kind of unstoppable right if you can maintain that kind of

toughness it comes from wrestling right there's some like when a guy has like an elite wrestling

background and the interest in the UFC I always say they have an advantage they have an advantage

over everybody else because whether or not you choose to put yourself or you get coached by someone to put you through hell and camp with wrestling you don't have a choice like everyone's going through hell right there's no one is get there's no easy path to get on the fucking wrestling team anywhere

“in the country right you have to wrestle fair your position yeah it's little you got you got a battle”

for that that's bought you know and then the practice is once or twice a day of just purely grinding it out standing a wrestling stance alone is extremely tough to do now you're doing it at elevated pace now you're doing it with something snapping on your head now you're doing it it's like and then you go on you you do live wrestling and then finish it up with sprints yeah to me

to me there's nothing that beats that like and and I think the the style of it is like go go go

like even jiu-jitsu your finding places to rest you know you can go on in the garden and you can rest in certain entanglements striking is all about being able to have an explosive motion and then find your way to to be defensive to slow down what they're doing you're either you're getting in stuff in it you're a little distance where you can be a little bit relaxed because they can't reach you or you know you're you're moving off making the miss where there's no resistance

there you know just with wrestling you don't have any of that there's there's no chance for a break especially if you got someone like Marab who's just on you 24/7 and so to me that's you know

“back to the cardio thing we talked about earlier I don't know I think if you got yeah elite”

wrestling cardio then you could do all the rest of it you'd be able to strike you'd be able to do the jiu-jitsu and take on my hands like you can hang for that duration of time with great cardio it's also if you can figure out how to be a great wrestler you can kind of figure out anything it's just a matter of taking that same focus that turned you into a great wrestler and applying it to whatever it is MMA whatever whatever else you're trying to do is if you're willing to go through

what it took to become a great wrestler that's an extraordinary human that's very few people ever reach a very high level of wrestling it's just too fucking hard and it's the best foundation for combat sports for sure for MMA because if you could take your guy down and he can't take you down that's unmassive advantage right massive you dictate where the fight takes place and if you develop elite striking on top of that it's a perfect combination for sure I mean anybody asking me

personally I would say get a wrestling background get some boxing you can figure out the rest of it you can figure out how to check kicks block kicks you can you can do the rest of it but if you have those two fundamental core bases yeah you're you're pretty good against most people I would say they're too but I would say another thing is and this is very controversial if I was teaching a young kid I would say get into point karate learn point karate because if you could

learn how to move the way those guys move the things that those guys when you see like Michael Venom page just stump people they're just stumped like I don't have any like Kevin Holland who is fights everybody he's fucking competitive with everybody he fights with MVP he was just stumped like what am I going to what the fuck am I doing I can't even touch this guy right

that is a giant skill set and I always said before MVP came out to the scene I'm like one of

these guys one of these really elite point fighter guys is going to come in start fucking everybody up because you can't hit them yeah yeah and that goes back I can't be like wonder boy I'm both the prime examples of a karate style individual yes and they're really long so you know they can utilize that a little bit to their advantage with that that lunchy in and out but to be honest yeah that's something that like I've wanted to delve into a little bit more

of myself because I like I can though kicks really well honestly I have I have good flexibility I have the ability to throw them with it with speed with power but having something like that where you can do it nice and fast and snappy those little side kicks and and the way that they throw the kicks is great because I mean the only other relation I would have to that is the the Savot style I like the way the Savot style guys throw their kicks I'm not very familiar with

“Savot the only thing that I don't utilize myself is a lot of the toe stuff because I'm not”

wearing shoes they can show you the body they're they're like stabbing you with their toes right everything like they'll even they're even kicking like your leg well you know yosa does that yeah he stabs guys that much it was toes it's like the ball of his foot right but like it's going in with a toes man yeah there's a lot of like slow-mo videos of him stabbing guys in the liver with his fucking toes you know who else is conditioning their toes yeah well that's the

thing is you better have some you're probably have many multiple breaks on each toe he knows to that yeah yeah because it's just that's why we were talking about the front kick to the body is good if you do it like a traditional moitai where you're going up and out

this kind of shovel up toes into the body kick nowadays and MMA world that's what I see

more so I mean Connor Connor utilized the heck out of that most guys bring the toes up it's and you better be very precise with that because all it takes is one elbow blocking down here your toes out yeah and I see Rodriguez's toes after he fought fluffy yeah just see that picture she didn't pull that picture up it was off Gregory Rodriguez his Instagram page after beat fluffy uh you know the photo you haven't seen it I haven't seen that oh you're going to cringe

it's like oh like a John Jones break where the worse the bones are sticking out but it's it's holacious you look at what happened to his toes dude that one like that takes it out of you

you start smashing your toes like that and you got to continue fighting oh yeah or you got to

“continue to fight camp with like broken toes yeah yeah that's what one of my wrestling camps I was”

chasing my brother in the front yard the day before and his heel came back and my pinky toe was like this straight sideways went to the defiantly doctor yeah I have a picture just like that actually with my fingers my toes don't on west side oh look at that geez oh yeah that's that's terrible those feet have seen some elbows on right it's got a big old bunions everything on there oh yeah yeah that's that's uh he didn't and really good fashion too yeah there's a guy that's just

I don't understand how he makes 185 right I don't understand that whenever I interview him I'm like you're 220 pounds or yeah how are you you're at least to and shredded and I I mean it's like I guess the bigger guys have a little bit more to lose it's they probably probably do but all that muscle you have water to lose for sure right if you're shredded I mean that's one thing to be said but especially like heavy weights like the Alex put at it I'm sure he

he gets a little bit looser goes up to 220 and then but that's but it's still 40 pounds I mean that's a lot of weight yeah it's a lot of weight to lose and but but I don't know I mean look at Aljo cut into 135 yeah he's like 175 pounds yeah you know I mean I think but he doesn't do it anymore and he feels way better at 45 for sure and he had to move up because of that I think a lot of

“the band-to-weight's get up to relatively that weight I think everybody I think that's why”

I've started seeing people try to comment the the whole weight bully thing they've said it to me on Instagram this and that they saw one of my training pictures or I was a little loose and uh they're like the funniest comment was someone was like like higher a nutritionist ASAP like and I was just cracking up at that why these guys are roasting me but um yeah I think everybody cuts relatively the same amount of weight like how big do you get like what's the heaviest you get in

between 135 no that's what you waste on when you're picking up what's the heaviest you've ever won 75 is probably give or take maybe like 178 if I'm just full of food eaten and being a delinquent but yeah I get out there pretty big so who when you're in camp like the week before what do you like to be at I've had all my cuts right around 150 I don't really get much lower than that that's not too bad it's not the end of the world I mean I won 49 and what 48

145 would be beautiful if I could just do 10 being no problem but this last time we did 11 and one night and it was smooth sailing you know I just keep that's another thing you experience it more you get better and better at it and uh I've gotten a wiser that the this honor doesn't have to be a

“million in 10 degrees you know like the the USC portable son is I think like max out at 150”

it said mm and I could send that for 22 instead of red lights on the part of the ones probably is right probably is I don't recall but I'm sure it is but that with the emergency blankets and then cool and off in between that's something that I had to get wiser too as well you know like because everybody tries to tell you you're already there you're already sweating like don't don't lose the heat and it's like no I do this isn't a sprint this isn't marathon we're taking

this nice and easy so like this last time I was taking all my gear off put an ice on the body

cool on the body temperature back now which is is arguably the most important aspect of the whole

weight cut is the body temperature versus the dehydration because the body gets dehydrated and it has more of a capacity to deal with that then it does to overheat if you overheat you're done for like that's it is what it is so is the overheating does that drain you more in terms of like your ability to recover for the next day like so when you're cutting weight if you're doing it like 180 or something like that something high and is it that like because it does wear you out obviously

if you're doing multiple ones of those if you're trying to make weight and then you have to fight

the next day you went through a lot physically right as opposed to what you're doing if you got it at 150 it's not bad it's just just sucks a little yeah because I've done both like and that's your don't a sauna suit on as well you know the sweet sweat the sauna suit and then you get in that that portable sauna but it's like before I was I was doing that with the pair of I don't know like a spandex you know like top and bottom and then a jacket and then sweats and then a big jacket

and then I'm getting in the 180 190 degree 24 hours on it and sitting there for 15 minutes like it's like dude yeah I felt there's there's been weight cuts where I just feel like a terrible trotche I look terrible you know and then I have some of these more recent ones where I I lower the temperature down I extend the duration of of how long the the weight cut is itself and there's there's a major difference in it for sure that's really good advice works more than my harder

oh it did you you've trained for two months over just pushing your body to the absolute limit you're going to go fight somebody for 15 minutes you know possibly 25 minutes you're there's all this hard stuff already happening you know that that part should not be hard that should

“be that it's it's going to be hard but you should make it as easy as possible that should be the”

mindset to it yeah make sense it makes a lot of sense did you see the Moses I taught my fight this weekend I don't think so do you know he is right now no okay he up until this fight was probably the most promising prospect in the heavyweight division in more than a decade he is a young guy he's only 21 years old and people were talking about him being able to break Mike Tyson's record of being the youngest ever heavyweight champion so he missed that mark and then he finally got

a title fight this weekend look phenomenal for the first few rounds he yes and he's fine there's big Croatian cat I forget his name yeah uh Philip her grows a Vix and he stopped not at that first yeah at the beginning he was tuned this guy up I mean he's so fast and solely but

he had never been into deep water before every one of his fights he'd been a little stop people

and he hadn't had any like real good decision wins where he fought a bit and he's not the biggest heavyweight but he's wicked fast I mean just wicked fast and beautiful technique but as the fight went on he started to fade and in the eighth you could see him like really slowing down and just really trying to take this due out but couldn't and thought he could it was empty in the gas tank instead of boxing him and just outpointing him and being skillful he

just was inexperienced and he emptied the gas tank and then Philip came back when he had he finished him yeah well he finished him in a weird way well he is the mama's exhaustion yeah he just stumbled on over him yeah because they're both exhausted because it was a war there's a nice right hand and he's stung him there what did you see there's a little like table talk where they're sitting across from each other and he's all like it's not about you know like how many

times you can get hit or you can hit somebody it's about how many times you can get hit and keep coming forward yeah and then that voice this is like that's a stupidest thing I've ever heard he's like why would you base your fighting style off like how many times you can get hit and then low and behold

“you know like this comes across that's why you know I talk about technicality and finesse and”

skill set and it's a game of hit don't get hit but dude you could just have someone who's just so tough and just so willing that this is a perfect scenario that that's that's why there

is so many aspects to this fight camp well it was really fun because he was basically quoting Rocky

yeah yeah you really did grow up you need about how hard you hit it's about how hard you can get it right and keep moving forward exactly and he you know and and he pulled a rock him literally did exactly when he said he was going to do but it's all these things it's like youth and hubris and thinking you're the greatest of all time and and looked like the greatest what could pull up a Moses I taught my highlight real because if you look at his highlight really

like this guy's the second coming like he this guy is something really special man when you watch how he fights I mean his his hand speed is knocked out power and for a young guy you know this this guy think he was 20 and you look at his highlight really like oh my god the sky's the limit for this kid he's just putting everybody out but you know he wasn't really being tested you know

“and then he finally I think was it Derek Chessora who do you fight before this fight he finally”

beat a top level guy but and he took him out and so but you know was a guy who's a real veteran

everybody out but you know this is like one of the things about any combat sport is you have to

“know when to hit the gas when not to and you have to have those experiences of these long”

grueling fights and he really didn't have that yet so his first experience with a yeah dillian

white that's who it was and his long his first experience with a real it no it was it was Chessora I think because I think it was dillian white first and then Chessora was the next fight afterwards and I'm right about that it was just his chaos on this video what is it bulb is record who is his last fight before her go bitch but I mean I still think he's got potential to be a world champion for sure I mean the kids only 21 years old dillian white right there that's

it was it wasn't direct Chessora it was dillian white um and Germaine Franklin was right after that so every fight has been TKO TKO TKO TKO TKO I mean if you watch his fights I mean there are fucking stunning performances but wasn't really being tested in that way with a really big durable heavyweight who could take a shot who you know has a ton of experience and you know now he goes first loss but he'll be back yeah it's only 21 well that's you know on the

“that's that's how they do in boxing and they feed these guys build them up and then when”

they're solidified now now you fight somebody who's substantial you know um and that's you know I've done a lot of comparisons but that's to me where them and hey guys are just more down to go and do their thing they'll fight anybody any given time it's a pretty quick decision though or is that by necessity because the UFC you know they call you up and say hey uh in four weeks

do you want to fight for the world title I know you've never fought in the UFC before

but that's in boxing that's unheard of that would never take place but in the UFC if you're a pretty good fighter and you're doing well and you win a bunch of championships and other organizations and all of a sudden this opportunity arises we've had guys with their first fight in the UFC fight for the world title that is true I mean that's what you get when you have like a melting pot of things though because those guys are like well established in their own

personal careers they're wrestling or kickboxing or whatever it is for rising yeah it's not like you're pulling out like the local kid and telling him let's go fight for a world title I mean but they would put all pull out the local kid and fight a guy was 10 15 fights in the UFC pressure does happen that happens all the time well that's what I'm saying is like I think that the boxers would be more hesitant to take something like that like you're saying

but the MMA guys are always down to do that kind of stuff well the boxers though it's a

different culture I suppose it is but it's also the fact that no one gives a shit who the promoter is in boxing no if someone's going to watch Javonte Davis fight they don't say well who's performing this? Is this for Bob Arum? Is this for Golden Boy? It's like no one cares all right it's just who are the fighters with the UFC is a very different animal so if you get a call for the UFC like oh my god we're in the big leagues right and that's different 100% yeah they have all sorts of different

promotions and different people you can fight for in boxing but you see is is the pinnacle it's yeah you get the call from the UFC that's where you want to go so there's there's a whole lot of differences to it I just think whatever it is that yeah the MMA guys are more willing to step in on the short notice and put their careers at risk and put their opportunities to to continue fight streaks or whatever at a risk so that's that's how I see it that's what I picked up from those two

different things yeah it's definitely a different culture right it's a culture of accepting those risks and also of probably people that are just they're much more willing to take a chance

“with the teams yeah exactly that's what I think like that's us a little bit more wild to be fighting”

MMA anyway yeah yeah that's it's a little bit more wild for sure and that's that's a little bit more of a business I would say in my opinion the boxing the boxing is yeah which we got a lot of like very smart people involved in boxing they're like managers and trainers they're like really working to build a guy and turn them into a prospect turn them into a contender yeah and then turn them into a champion and the UFC only have the one organization doing that because they're

managing all the way classes and all the prospects and they're picking and choosing not only that they schedule fight they schedule fights around cards right they don't schedule

whatever canales ready to fight that's when the card takes place yeah right so Canelo Alvarez

“wants to fight September 12 okay great so September 12 let's put together a fight card”

around Canelo Alvarez right with the UFC is like the UFC's coming to Salt Lake City October 3rd who's there right who wants to fight right we're gonna have a fight who's gonna be on the fight who's gonna be on the card and then you put the card together it's so it's a different animal yeah now they're they're different for sure I mean I try to draw wisdom from all all aspects of everything so I'm constantly delving until the different realms myself do you read a lot are you

a guy who do you like read any things on on psychology or on warrior tactics you ever get into like book of five rings or any of that shit for sure I'm reading a it's called Hogga Curry right now

and it's essentially it's a it's a single individual yamamoto it's like tune to niche here something

I forget his name exactly but he served for like the the raining leader at the time his leader passed away he wanted to commit sepacoo because he was of that that mentality that warrior mentality but his leader had had commanded like that no one was allowed to do that this and that but he's taking a lot of story lines inspirations from all these samurai because it's going into a time period where the samurai weren't in necessity anymore and so

the ideology the lifestyle what it meant to to live that bushido lifestyle had changed the different a little bit and their purpose was different and my boxing coach gave it to me actually when I was kind of in this limbo state of like it's essentially saying how should a warrior live outside of the fight you know like what is he need to be doing on a daily basis and but then it's it's I like the real life like story line because now you're getting a bunch of

different perspectives from all these people that were samurai all were warriors who lived that who you know fought in battle and now you get to see like a lot of different things like

“someone says you should do this and someone says no don't do that and to me I like that because”

I get to kind of delve through all the mindsets and then apply what works best to me you know but I love I love reading all that stuff I'm not been so good at staying off the phone

and and you know I watch a lot of YouTube which is it's always fighting or some kind of

good channel or hiking or camping or hunting or spirit fishing or something but yeah I'm trying to get way better at that trying to stay out the screens like I want to be more interactive with the world around me learning things constantly and so picking up a book and reading it is a long a long diet set of goals that I have is continuously be doing that yeah I think there's benefits to a lot of stuff on YouTube

I think YouTube is not social media and I think I learn a lot on YouTube and I just get it's for me I like to wind down on YouTube just watch some ancient history thing or watch a professional pool match or something like that it's just wind down time but it doesn't feel like I'm wasting time or as if I'm looking at Instagram or Twitter or whatever it feels like I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing that's not beneficial oh 100% that's

to me as I'm building up my platform I want not I understand it as a business and so I understand there's something necessity for me to be into it producing content not necessarily taking any content but yeah 100% it's it's something that has affected our culture and a large way it's all the the what's it called like the short term like media you know where you're clicking through it it's just it's killing our attention spans it's just

like you know your dopamine is is firing at all times going crazy it's just you're getting your focus yeah you're getting this like that's where that's where I love the YouTube but I almost have to recognize that just because I'm watching a spear fishing video doesn't mean I'm getting in the water and going in spear fishing because sometimes I feel like I get my

“fix a little bit by doing that but then I have to remind myself it's like life is lived”

and your actions and and your experiences so sitting and watching the the TV screen somebody else experience that you know you you get the inside scoop you get to kind of be there under the water watch what's going on but you're not actually living it so I like it I love I love to to learn from that social media yeah it's it sucks it's it's happen everybody and it's certainly on a part of the warrior lifestyle yeah as you're talking about it's for sure I'm right because then

like you want to think about like your your meditative aspects of like how often are you delving deep into your own brain and just figuring out things about yourself and asking those questions and pushing beyond and when you got a phone screen stealing all your attention how are you ever doing that right yeah absolutely you're not you know if you're you're spending so much

it's been some time since I've been back in the water I had a buddy that we used to go all the time

and then you move it to Washington and I don't know where are you guys spear fishing we know local like uh there's a credit all-mar beach and then there's a smaller kind of hit beach that you walk down and it's got plenty of structure and all sorts of fish out there lagoon has got the kelp forest so I just been going shore diving and going over there grabbing lobster when it's lobster season grabbing down to the honey holes and just grabbing it with their hands so

this it's all the shore stuff right now I haven't been off a boat it's for my friends that have been hunting that they say they love it because they say it's like hunting underwater right but it's not really like fishing it's called spear but it feels like you're hunting it's it's

yeah it's yeah you're in the action you know you get to pick and choose which fish you're

gonna take which one to let to let go and yeah you're also I like it because I like the primitive aspects like we talked about like a little bit of bow hunting before I'm really enthralled with the bow hunting stuff over the rifle hunt because you can say that like three four sometimes guys are shooting about like a five hundred yards with this big old rifle and you're just smack it something it's like that didn't even like ever know you were there you know you're just like

propped up and there's a place for it I suppose but having a bow and have to get up 30 ish yards give a take and having to make sure they're not catching your scent and having to perform the stock I like the primitive stuff I like it I like something that involves a skill set instead of just like a technological prowess no I agree with you obviously I 'm a big bow hunter I don't think there's anything wrong with rifle hunting and it's definitely

“the best way to acquire meat if you're just going on a meat hunt and you just want to get your meat”

for the next few months a rifle's a way to go but if you want a real challenge there's something that's way more special about a bow hunt it's more difficult it requires more practice requires more of you like I went out of pig hunt about a year or so ago with a friend of mine in California where we had how to successful elk hunt and then we went pig hunting and I hadn't shot a rifle in two years a year and a half two years not one shot with a rifle ace this pig at like

90 yards like it was nothing boom dropped him it strikes like that was so easy all you have to do is get the crosshairs on them don't flinch squeeze the trigger slowly make sure you're in a good position and know how to shoot a rifle and once you know how to shoot a rifle I mean I'm not taking thousand yard shots but you know how to shoot a rifle it's pretty easy if I was bow hunting I wouldn't even imagine if I hadn't shot a bow in a year and a half of you in thinking about shooting

something with a bow not a chance and hell I wouldn't even think about it for like months I would say I need to practice I need to hit targets all the time I need to make sure my shot is at I knew get my technique down I'd want to film myself make sure I'm not doing the stupid like let me

look at my form why why's my elbow to the right it should be above I would I would never imagine

rifles ways here but the feeling of taking an animal down with a bow is a completely different feeling it's so much harder to do it's so much more exciting and if you fail it doesn't you know I many a hunt where you seven days nothing happens okay that's just part of the thing but at least you know we're out here getting after it and trying and you succeed or you fail but at least you're in nature and the experience of it is still really fun even if you're totally unsuccessful yeah not for sharing

“I mean that's why with the spear fishing stuff like these freedivers that can hold their breath up to”

four or five minutes you know and they're diving forty fifty sixty seventy feet some of these guys out there in the middle of the blue water and they're going down to shipwrecks or whatever structure is down there and they're shooting these big olfish it's like yeah there's like there has to be a skill set to that it's something you had to work for to achieve you know yeah it's something you had to build up to so yeah I love all that stuff I haven't been like bow hunt I haven't even

been rifle hunt it's something that I really want to get into I like all that outdoor stuff I'm we can help you we can help you get into that yeah that's what I'll connect to with some people I love all that you know I like to back back I just did uh Mount Whitney last year in August and I just love being out there in nature so you know being able to engage in it that way too is like you said the excitement the the build up the work you have to put into it the knowledge you

“have to acquire the people you have to bump into the meals are a lot different too when you”

need a meal that you prepared yourself that you've went and hunted it's just a completely different feeling oh for sure and you're living in California now and California is a giant pig population there's a lot of pig hunting to be had in California pretty much all year round yeah yeah because

those guys out because I know they're just destroying animal like you know like habitat and

“eating all the food and destroying the geography oh this is they are so millions of them here in Texas”

literally millions yeah they they breed like no other too you know they just multiply three times a year they have litter sometimes well at least twice a year um I have some friends mine and I we have a hunting lease out here and as you're walking through like the woods you hear them they sound like demons yeah you hear like fighting with each other in the bushes and shit you're like what the fuck am I getting into right they sound like monsters man and they're everywhere yeah like you go to

every one of these ranchers out here is infested with pigs yeah they're just destroying they have to hunt them they bring in people to hunt them a friend of mine is a huge ranch and out near Fort Worth and he brought in a bunch of Navy seals to kill pigs and they set it up like an operation they literally decided to use it for training yeah and so they you know

“and you can blow them up with like thermite you can do all kinds of not thermite with that shit that”

they use ten right that's it thank you yeah oh that's crazy they're always it's like

ridiculous yeah but they can you could basically do whatever you want to them because they they're just encouraging people they're saying listen other than like declaring war on the pigs and bringing in the military and literally going through every state and trying to kill them like we've got an economic war with these pigs destroying people's crops right i mean literally billions of dollars were the damage every year they're doing to these farms yeah and they just keep is more of

them every year more memory they're not gonna stop fucking yeah it's gonna keep it's gonna keep three times a year just gonna keep reproducing and it's you know really been a few hundred years since they've been introduced to this country and yeah boy they're in every state now yeah I mean and what are you gonna do I just let them continue around there and every state they look New York state and post like that they have wild pigs how many states have a wild pig population

let's put that into perplexity and see what they say are a high sponsor i i'm a guess let me say thirty i say thirty states have a wild pig population that's my guess thirty out of fifty

am i close yeah how many thirty five figure first states with documented

feral swine presence i like that term feral swine presence it's not necessarily me that every one of these states is a large self-sustaining population thirty five states population established numbers could be lower some states of only have occasional sightings small localized groups well it really depends on where they have farms states with farms have the real problem so in the southwest especially Texas Oklahoma Louisiana Florida Georgia

Arkansas Mississippi Alabama South Carolina yeah wild it's it's such a crazy animal too because they're you know they're so smart they're so smart and they're very durable right yeah some of them get gigantic like thousand pounds right i mean you're seeing that really see I used to think that too those are not really the wild pigs with those are is domestic pigs that got loose any know the thing about domestic pigs when they get loose they kind of become wild they're

their nose lengthens their their their fur gets like thicker and yeah bushier and their their talents or their their rather tusks rather actually grow which is nuts yeah they actually met a

“morphus that's I mean that's what like a feral pig is right mm-hmm was a domesticated animal that”

became wild the opposite it was a wild animal that they took and domesticated but then when you let them loose in the wild then they become wild again okay that's was weird it's like they originally were wild animals essentially like crazy transformation yeah I'll cover hair big tusks and stuff and then like the pigs you see in the farm like same animal yeah but what's nuts is it happens quick apparently this the metamorphosis starts to take place look this up see how long it takes

before pigs start transform I think it's like six weeks or something crazy I get starts to begin yeah or six weeks where they have to feed themselves with their to forge for themselves they're like all right I guess I'm wild yeah and then they just start to transform it's a very weird animal I don't know of any other animal that will last perplexity that I don't know if it's any other animal that does that domestic pig become feral and behavior within weeks to months of escaping

becoming wary of people nocturnal mobile and able to forge this five without care but it does not literally turn to wild boar in one lifetime pup but it does have physical changes what is the physical change uh oh exactly different skull is overstated adult pigs can become tougher

common when the animals survive and breed pass on advantageous variants over successive

leaders evidence on feralization emphasize that these changes are shaped by both environments and multi-generational selection not an instant biological reversal not instant but they do physically change I don't think this is totally accurate but if you see the biggest pig that they ever

“shot that was a wild pig I think it's called hogzilla have you ever seen that picture I think so yeah it”

looks like a domestic pig it looks like someone was feeding that thing a lot and then it got out and became a wild pig right I don't know how big that was there's a photo of it but it's one of those prospective shots where the guys like behind it stand off our body yeah yeah make it look 10 times larger yeah but it looks crazy there's one of them were one of them is hanging from a tractor and I don't give a fuck how close you are that thing I think it's giant yeah how big

it's hogzilla that's like some of the gators or the crocodiles I mean that they're finding it in like african stuff yeah the pictures say next to those things and they're like do you plus feet long you know like ridiculous yeah crocodiles get big I think the biggest ones

“they've gotten are like close to 20 see that's the one thing about spear fishing is you know the”

sharks are there you know you ever see them I've not seen I've seen leopard sharks but that's not

been crazy I'm never seen a great one if you do that be the last time you go spear fishing

I want to say no but I don't know I don't think after one of the nose yeah if it's like getting crazy it's probably like I don't cool on that but they they have uh they have all sorts of different things like this one of the guardians okay that guy's definitely behind that thing but that fucker looks like he's got tusks well that went to the left the giant at 36 don't yeah you know that went yeah this did this one was maybe 1200 pounds it was originally thought

up to be a hoax there's a documentary about it it's back in 2004 and five though hmm what's that one and the upper left that dude resting his arm is that a real picture let's take a little kid though the upper one but the upper left the kid way too close for that guy yeah that one's closer than the guy the guy's behind it but that kid even though without looking oh he's not resting his arm he's resting his arm yeah it is same that's a fat fucker though look at the size of that thing

that looks more like a domestic pig though like that one right there that's a good example go back up a little so I could make it small yeah look at his snap it's actually kind of long they're also still behind the two yeah hard to tell far but why do people do that it's a big look man I know but it's big okay that one says 36 don't let's be in English yeah it's the mirror that's crazy that's a big pig but it's not like what is the biggest reported wild pig

“that was shot in Texas let's last that I think that's a poor note turn that off it's on AMD b”

at the other white meat like it's a shot in Texas yes what is the biggest wild hog that was shot in Texas let's guess I'm a guess like 500 pounds that's my guess that's just a guess though no official largest ever shot most credible 790 pound bore holy shit captured not shot near dillian in command she county January 2015 wait on certified mill skills that's fucking crazy big 790's nuts that's so big oh you imagine millions of 790 pound wild pigs running through this

country yeah that would not be not ideal yeah so never never been hunting I have shots and birds

with the pelican or something that's about it but you want to I would love to yeah what would you want to go hunting for do you have a thing in your mind that you think would be um I think something like a like a deer is probably like a good start and starting point do you know how to shoot a bow which wanted to use a rifle I haven't shot compound to often I shoot a recurve uh stuff and something I'm uh super practice with but I'm pretty good with that I want to artry competition

pretty recently and did pretty good with this did you really with a compound bow with the recurve a recobo um don't hunt with that yeah it's too frisky you're not gonna that would be you got to get real good you'd have to yeah a lot of practice a lot of hunts and a lot of experience how far are you from San Diego uh hour two hours if there's traffic there's a really good artry shop in

shops in the country okay yeah if you want to get a compound bow and want to get someone to

“really uh make sure that size correctly they did draw length is correct and everything like that”

yeah performance archery why are you showing the map yeah just go back to the yeah it's in I've been there before with John Dudley it's a great place like really elite 4.6 stars on Google yeah it's it's uh you want to go to a really good place so they make sure they set you up correct like that's a big thing with bows it's like you know I couldn't shoot John Jones bow you know he's really tall I'm short the length would be different right my where my peeps I would be different it has to

all be measured out to your size and everyone's different so it's you'd have to really make sure that your bow is set up for you correctly and it's just like martial arts in that you want to learn correctly first you don't want to unlearn it and try to learn something the right way because

you're always going to fall back on the way you got comfortable with doing it the first time right

so that's a good thing to do right yeah I've a my shot at compound bow here there but I like all this stuff I'm really like I said I'm uh big into continuing to learn lots of different skills especially in that realm and yeah I'm all about it do you think do you think of that as a way to like just advance your your mental function in just in all of life that will help your fighting like the more different things you learn the more different things you do that you can

like take things from that and apply it to fighting um oh do you just do it because you enjoy it I have to say I do it because I enjoy it um it's probably not directly related to fighting but more of the self-reliance and the self-preservants like to me like I'm like I'll make my own like kind of soul series and my leather holsters and doing all that kind of stuff is a good start might I have this old truck that I want to tear apart and and learn how to work on it from

the ground up being able to hunt and provide like just I'm always thinking like when she hits

the fan I bet are we ready for it you know and so being a martial artist being a warrior encompasses a lot of aspects you know hand-to-hand combat is only one of those things there's a lot

“of different aspects to self-preservants so I think about it a little bit that way um I do it because”

it's fun and it's it's just exciting to learn a new skill and then have an end product something that you'd made yourself yeah for sure I mean it's it's always a good idea to be self-reliant and also like if you have a garden that's another great thing like you have a place where you can grow your own food yeah so you're not getting any pesticides or herbicides or bullshit on your food 100% I mean the the angle for me is to have probably would not be the only property because

my wife just loves something California so much but uh Wyoming Montana Idol go get a couple acres up there move the family maybe some close friends and just have have our own little self-reliant thing up there with some some crop some wildlife the ability to hunt up there on our land a lot of the stuff I'm seeing out there they have stocked lakes and the rivers out fish as well so something like

that is really good about a possible catastrophe it's always on my mind now I just I want to get

away from them the hustle and bustle everything just be out there in nature is really kind of the hopes for that and are you stuck in California because of your wife and what you do outside of MMA or have you ever thought about moving to a different place to train well training is kind of the the main thing that keeps me there honestly my my team is there all my coaches are there of course I can bounce around and with Jimmy you have I'm all over the place I train at the Dent Training

Center and your land I train at CSW Fullerton with Eric Paulson and then yeah he's doing your

“dad train with Eric he did that's how I got over there in the first place because Ben was Ben was”

running the fight practice at CSW then bro Eric's an OG he's he's a slow G he's a he's such a cool guy Eric Paulson was I remember back in the day when he had like a crazy ponytail and in the days where you could grab hair yeah well that's why that's why I cut it off it was Sean Cherokee raised he was fighting hand bare knuckle and how we kept grabbing his ponytail and and holding it there and that's the only reason why and I think right after that fight he went and chopped it off

and that's Sean here from that point I know it's nice to be good looking long flowy locks but that shit is especially back in those days when you could grab hair you remember Hoyce Gracie versus

mean to me cut the hair man cut it or braid it especially if it's the old UFC days we can actually grab it yeah yeah you know people complain all the time about guys grabbing their shorts

and it does happen all the time grab guys grab shorts I'm always like why are you wearing shorts

right I don't know if you wear shorts do you wear spandex you wear shorts spandex yeah yeah why are you wearing shorts why are you wearing anything someone can grab and especially like everybody likes the loose like like the high slate cut shorts nowadays so I mean so easy to grab on to yeah yeah I just don't understand it here it is yeah it's crazy yeah oh yeah man this is bare knuckle headbutts hey you think you could kick it with a nut it's not enough back there oh

“but wrestlers were a flocking nightmare when you could headbutt if you go go back and remember like”

the mark Coleman days he would get in your guard and headbutt the shit out of you right yeah and what do you how are you getting off of the off your back against high level wrestler like that I know it's crazy it's hair like it's a wrist lock I know it's crazy you had his hair and then uh I don't know if Eric escapes or if the time goes up but Eric ends up finishing him got you got your hand in it cut here what is this a floor time count you had to get up if you're on the

ground for too long is that what it is that's dumb you see that's crazy I wonder it's like how much time oh it's counting down yeah what happens if it gets up here it's about to do they stand them up wow you got a minute on the ground crazy yeah my Eric Paul's in such a legend of the game oh yeah he is there's not a day that I go in there and learn submission flows from him that I'm not just like

“blown away that's crazy I forgot they did that interesting well I think back then in the early days”

of fighting there was a lot of promoters that were trying a bunch of different tactics to try to make the fights more interesting right that would be the only reason like I don't want you to sit later anymore get up and start going crazy yeah I hate stand ups I hate them yeah I hate them with all my heart I don't think in a five minute round you should every stood up there's a there's a lot that could go on there I mean especially if you're holding position you're regaining like

your your breath a little bit you're setting up a pass or something you know it doesn't always

look apparent to the crowd or to the rest if you could hold them down like who cares you could hold the gap against the cage right okay and all you have to do is like land a few knees and a few punches occasionally and they'll let you stay in that position I'm like they're breaking that up even more

“more I don't think you should break up anything I think it should be reserved for fouls I think”

if someone commits a foul then you stand them up and then you assess whether or not someone gets a point taken away or whether or not that person needs time but if if it's a place where you don't want to be and they guys putting you in a place where you don't want to be he's winning that exchange right if a guy can hold you down you can't get up if you don't like it and you can't get up then he's winning right yeah the we lose as an audience the audience loses ten minute limit for

ground time well fight with this this is WCC yeah yeah yeah what was it called world combat championships is that the one where Hanzo yes Hanzo Gracie fought Ben Spikers do you remember that one oh dude this is one of the reasons why elbows to the back of the head are illegal because Hanzo this guy was calling Hanzo there's you dog look at that Hanzo was in his hotel room and this guy was calling him every fucking ten minutes like to

try to wake him up and the Hanzo had to take the phone and shove it in a drawer like he was fucking with them constantly and Hanzo got his back and elbowed the fucking shit out of them from rear mount so this isn't the same fight yeah we're here oh here it is this that's it so this Hanzo gets his back and here it is look at these elbows dude just for roaches elbows so this dude was a judo champion I was gonna say why would you wear a gig against it again

so Hanzo doesn't have a gig on and then Hanzo steps off and it gets on his neck oh shit yeah oh that was crossing the line yeah after he just elbowed the shit out of him see that you know it's funny is like the 12 to 6 rule everybody fantasizes about like how how much better that is and sure you got some cutting but your your force that you can deliver in my perspective straight down with an elbow like that is so much more absolute madness than you do on this yes this was only you know

why it was outlawed right why big John McCarthy is got a great story about this when the ESPN people

or the athletic commission people rather were first deciding whether or not they were going to

sanction MMA they had seen these ESPN karate breaking demonstrations like two in the morning

that should be illegal people could die that's literally what they thought was the most powerful

“strike was the 12 to 6 elbow yeah so you couldn't even do a 12 to 6 elbow standing”

which is crazy right you couldn't Tomahawk so you couldn't come down with a Tomahawk 12-6 yeah it had to be at a slight angle it had to be some kind of angle which is the fucking dumbest thing ever chop him in this by far across like it's rotating your shoulders to do it like a punch yeah so the most power yeah for sure yeah you might get more cutting and it it's available if a guy's doing this you know the guy's covering up like that and you

go straight down for sure but to eliminate it as an option the only reason why was this so the WCC had two different brackets grapplers bracket strikers bracket grapplers could be on the ground for up to 10 minutes strikers only had two minutes and so the missions were illegal what is the strikers fight yeah so it said and then the idea was the winner of both brackets would fight at the end oh that's so crazy yeah don't only made it that one tournament that's so crazy what

year was that the 95 45 95 okay so this is right after the UFC burst onto the scene that's uh UFC was 93 yeah just says they were trying to be different than the UFC with different rules yeah they're doing something like that again where it's like striking only having a word I don't know if you go back to the ground they stand you back up or something where is this I don't know I saw it on Instagram I mean what is one of C's doing it the right way where they just

have striking fights yeah they have MMA fights and striking fights right did I been trying to talk Dana and to doing that for years you know because I know they got into zoo for boxing which is great you know I'm like why not like when people boo when things go to the ground how about have striking fights just out but hit in his mind kickboxing in America has a stink on it from the P.K.A. karate days you know which just wasn't that good they weren't allowed to leg kick it was

all above the waist and you know there was great fighters back then like Rick Rufus and a few guys that were like really elite but for the most part the skill level wasn't that high and

people never really got into P.K.A. karate they never really got into kick it never really became

“the kind of success that boxing was and so I think in his mind that's how people look at kickboxing”

right I think it's the most it has the most possibility in terms of like a sport that is not being taken advantage of like that it has the most potential by far I mean like you say you look at the one championship guys that are over there kickboxing won't die and they're they're even doing hybrid fights for that D.J. versus Rotten. Yeah there's a bunch of that ball craze in yeah I don't know I mean that's getting pretty good traction over there so it is I heard you know they

they they have some difficulties and I hope they do really well the world needs more organizations the MMA world needs a bunch of options right and you know this PFL merger where PFL has merged with what does it look D.J. Paul's production company MVP yeah that's great we need more that Netflix is involved fantastic need more you need more more options more fights and it's just going to make more MMA fans right just for me when you see a guy like that cat that I was telling

about mega met-off who fought for PFL like more people need to know about these guys like there's so many guys out there that are fucking killers man now that the town pool is so deep like outside of the UFC it's extremely deep you got people out of coming out of Russia these resilience like people all over the world that nobody's ever heard of just because they haven't been on that big stage quite yet so exactly I think I think would be really cool that we did like a champion versus champion

kind of fights yeah the UFC would never do that why would if their guys win fuck you it's nuts

the the benefit of it for the UFC is like it's so outweighed by the negatives right especially since they're number one yeah and they're not number one like a little bit you know like for the casual MMA is UFC you know it's like cute tips it's not a cotton swab it's a fucking cute tip yeah from a business perspective I understand it I think as a fighter it would be cool to challenge yourself once you once you get to that pinnacle if you have title defenses

and you're kind of taking everybody out it's like hey I really want to be the best in the world

“let me fight yeah all the top guys in the world so it may never happen but the only way it could”

happen if something like MVP got to a level of prominence in the public eye where they developed a roster of champions that was equal to the UFC then it would make sense then no one's losing yeah yeah cause then it brings in all the crowds from everywhere everybody gets and you do a co-promotion feel like a gigantic super fight like you know the UFC's version of Floyd May weather versus

let's make this happen everyone's gonna get rich let's go yeah I'm not for sure yeah it has to be

something like that caliber like it has to be a Connor McGregor level champion where that you know people are coming from all over anywhere to sign on to to buy the fight at home or to show up in person and I think you'd have to have to have two level two guys of that level to bring some of that traction to do you think Connor fights again I don't know it sounds like you he sounds like he's going to I think he does I think he does the one more and then he's done with it yeah I hope you know

“it's just that's what like you say guys stand it too long it's like and some of these guys that's”

all they know it's the only thing they've ever found success and or found the ability to put food on the table or provide for their families and so like what else do they know they they gave everything to fighting well Connor it's not bad but that's not Connor he's you know he went from such a high place to like do what he's doing now in the fighting world it's just like why even stepping and do that anymore I think it's just because he still can for a little bit more time I mean he's

37 38 now realistically he's got two years left maybe you know if everything if you really take care yourself and we both know as yeah part of the boat I don't think a little bit of partium gonna get back to that level of training like mindset do it though you know it's very difficult to know because he was capable of doing it at one point in his life and it doesn't mean that he can

“never do that again just because he's rich right and I think you could underestimate a man's character”

and say that he can't ever reach those heights again a guy like Connor's a special guy the special it takes a special type of person to put on the performance like he did against Eddie Alvarez like that it was he was in the fucking matrix man right to be there alive when he was doing that I was like good lord yeah that was special he's pulling it just Eddie's like right getting his nose but I know that countering instantaneous with perfect precision yeah he was on fire

it if he can reach that height as long as his body holds up but here's the quite the promise both of his ACLs been torn both of his meniscus has been blown out you know now with this the crazy one with that crazy jumping around house kick like who knows man right who knows what he could

still do there's I will never say never it's not that he couldn't do it right it's just that

will you do it will you put that time and effort to to recollect and to be of that sense of that machito like he used to be because like the way he used to talk and be philosophical and

“stoic about training the way he explained it and delved into it that's what that's what drew”

people to Connor before anything the way he talked about the warrior lifestyle and and he didn't care about anything else and he lost his mind to it those are the things that intrigued the people this real true warrior persona and that that was the biggest question what does last one everybody said oh do you think Connor's gonna do it do you think Connor and it was the same answer do I think he can do it for sure but the problem with that is Connor so good at talking

that he could convince you that he's doing he's doing anything you know so I'm like I'm not there just camp I'm not seeing what he's doing behind the scenes I really can't I really can't make that guess honestly yeah and much like you I want to believe you know you hear him talk

like I want to believe you want to see him pull it off first yeah we all did you know it's

it's it he was a very important part of fighting he was a really a special person that came along and brought a lot of attention to the sport that would not it wouldn't have been the same without him that whole era of time from ten years ago or whatever it was when he really burst more than that but I think he won it's what you really win his first title when was against Josie Aldo what year was that

end of 2015 it was December 2020 yeah so 11 years ago really when he became Connor you know that one punch knockout of Josie Aldo was really when he became that guy I mean he was huge before that but that was the one and then of course the Eddie Alvarez fight was another one I mean it's 10 years man that's a long time right a lot of booze a lot of party in a lot of fucking off you know a lot of luxury you know not waking up that's hard to hard to go around

also the difference is you said before between 45 and you know and going all the way up now he wants to fight at 70 you know yeah and he's also on that's a weight class of killers right there he's talking about Carlos Pratez and he's this and I'm like Maralus bro yeah yeah Maralus like a giant those guys are all huge you didn't get Gary you saw him sparring Connor and he's far bigger than Connor is yeah Connor's not Connor's not that giant horse of a guy from my understanding he

probably as heavy as he should be fighting at realistically when you think about those guys but then he's gonna cut the weight to do that like it's hard he's gonna do all that stuff well if he

“doesn't want to do that he really probably shouldn't be fighting I mean he the only thing with that is”

that he can kind of pick who it is he's fighting to an extent and so he can get away with the weight class thing a little bit he can you can do whatever the fucking wants but you know if I was in his mouth it's it's also at his age should he even be cutting that kind of weight anymore right maybe just pick the real fight is 170 with Michael Chandler like have that fight you want to have one more fight and go out you know that'd be beautiful for him yeah because Max is a tough

it's a tough match up for him it's tough if he doesn't get Max out of there in the first two rounds

and good luck with that like Max is gonna I mean Max's whole strategy goes we're gonna drown him yeah that's what his thoughts were yeah yeah that's a tough one Max is his tough as they come in and he's fighting the top of the top consistently so yeah he's only getting better he's only getting more experienced I think Michael Chandler would be great regardless I think it draws the

“crowd I think it brings the energy to it I think that's a good skill level for the whole ultimate”

fighter thing together and talked all the shit to each other it's like it's crazy that Chandler sat in the shelf for like two years waiting for that fight and my final is like all right I guess it's not happening right and he got fucked he did and a Chandler to me is like he's he's very

physically tough I just you know I don't think he is as skillful as Max or some of these other

guys so I think that's a great fight for Connor thing that's a good one for him to come back on yeah I mean Chandler's wild dog he is a wild dog but he relies on that too much is what I've seen it's like he comes out all crazy and it's just like dude like that's the same thing start with the job start oh and it's who am I to say it quite you know he's he's there doing his thing but from my perspective you know there's these to be a little bit more calculation there

well it's not gonna happen at this stage of his career but yeah if you go back and watch it's Eddie Alvarez fights back when he's fighting in Bellator those and that was for that's like a war back and forth you know like both of those guys hit the canvas like insane three or four times each you know those fights were insane yeah some of the like like for people that like you want

to see a great fight you probably never saw before if you only watch the UFC go back and watch

Michael Chandler versus Eddie Alvarez one and two those fights are nuts right yeah like I said it's just like a war or back and forth but that's that's also the bulls and Chandler is a very physical guy is very explosive and just think like back at his prime you know how much more explosive

“he was on which power yet on which energy was delivering to that fight so and that's that's why he was”

performing like that but like like a lot of fighters you know like the Roy Jones stuff is you can't always rely on that especially in later years like that's back to this you got to be thinking with with this especially as your body starts to get a little bit slower and not as explosive so I don't know he's he's over there getting after it I mean that gauge fight he was definitely not on a winning end of it but he stayed in it and and fought hard and then deported fight he's

had some great fights he's had some great fights for sure I mean he fight a guy like Ruffy Ruffy's just on a tear right now if you don't take him down to the ground there's not a lot of people that be him on a pure striking match right now anyway so so good yeah he's see that's another one that's another like individual that you look at it like a work of art you know someone who's really understands what it means to be a striker yeah and super creative like he does a lot of wild

stuff and sparring the some awesome sparring footage of him pulling off crescent kicks when he's like two inches from you yeah he's like back there yeah he's artistic I mean he's very creative when he's in there it's beautiful to watch he's got a great fight coming up who is he fighting why did I blank on it he's fighting someone oh armansar uke yeah yes armansar uke and they're fighting in LA that's a that's a good fight that's a really good fight and that's yeah that's that's the whole

thing with him he's got to like make sure he doesn't get taken down forget someone like armansar uke yeah that's a it's a tall task right there yeah absolutely that guy's one of the best wrestlers in the sport it's a rich interesting to see him stay relevant outside the UFC when the UFC has been offering fights it's great yeah very smart he's doing his thing he's doing his thing it's very smart what he's doing and you know getting into the RAF matches and doing a

bunch of different things on social media he just stays out there yeah he's hanging out with all the Twitch sameers stuff he needs money you know right he's good on that part that's weird it's weird

there it's like either have all the amenities to do so or like you have all the amenities so then you're you're a pussy you don't need to do it you're so just sit around but not him he's fucking shredded and he grew up rich yeah he's literally Bruce Wayne he's the UFC Bruce Wayne he's

Bruce Wayne I mean he's always got for a reason shit you know you ever watched his video series on

YouTube was training series uh watch about like the so they were like yeah so they're rolling to a town like a rose into L.A first thing he does is goes in rent in Lamborghini so when he shows up a training he's driving around a rented Lamborghini everywhere he's got that kind of scratch right and yet he's training like a fucking absolute animal and he's a great viter right I mean he has no flaws in his game no flaw in terms of heart he doesn't quit it's like that is first fight with

Islam was fucking chaos he gave Islam one of the toughest fights of his career right I think that's probably the closest man besides obviously Islam's loss yes he really got tested like that you know yeah absolutely and I was a short notice wasn't it for a carbon yes yeah so he's he's got all the scales he's he's he's a top contender for sure and when you think about uh roofy uh the the real problem that he had in the UFC was that one fight with Ben Moss underneath we're gonna take it down and

you know Ben Moss obviously very elite grappler so it'd be interesting to say right if you can avoid arm on that's that's the big question right there for sure uh I would think that that's what his camp is surrounded around is take down defense getting up off the bottom yeah blocking some uh chokes and being able to get back to the feet and that's the thing but that's you know for the

“MMA striker guys it's not like you have to be like the dopest wrestler like all around but you”

do need to be really good at defending take-downs yeah you do need to have one two three escapes off the bottom a sweep some kind of ability to stand up you know and then yeah get back to your feet and make this make this a close fight if you get stuck on the bottom then you're you're done for your screwed and I think for a lot of these guys that are elite strikers it takes that one fight where you do get dominated on the ground to really have a wake up call and uh

I think a good example of that might be serial gone when serial gone fought John Jones you know and also Francis Francis beat him up on the ground as well but the John Jones one was I think a real humbling wake up call because John essentially avoided getting hit completely took him down and strangled him real quick right and then he said they're like fuck and from that moment on that dude's been on a tear I mean and you you see how he performed on the White House lawn against

you know what we thought is arguably one of the greatest strikers it's ever fought in the UFC Alex Pereira and he certainly was at middleweight in light heavyweight but serial gone at heavyweight is something special man yeah there's a good example of a guy that you were talking about of hits and doesn't

get hit we've literally never seen him get rocked right well that's just crazy and he's he's got that

survived ish style I wouldn't say it's completely survived but he balances it's almost like that karate survived he moves really well in and out dude if you can do that at heavyweight you're that big and you can move like that yeah it's gonna be very difficult for a lot of those guys to track you absolutely and you know we were talking about like point fighting like how point fighting has like such a like I think it's a great skill to learn another great skill to learn is basketball and

“that's what serial gone did he played a lot of basketball and if you think about a big guy”

where you're constantly exploding and moving and all this different changing directions yeah that would definitely benefit you with footwork yeah there's all sorts of hand-eye coordination you got to be very quick and yeah be able to move your hands and your feet and success and so because look nobody know heavyweight's move like that guy right he's out well he's the gold standard

for like elite moving heavyweight in the UFC it's serial gone and then there there's no close second

like think who's the close second at heavyweight you gotta go back to it was like that Travis Brown when he was in his prime Travis Brown when he was in his prime was very light on his feet and moved very well but I think serial gone is like a new level a new level of like elite move mobile heavyweight who also has ridiculous knockout power yeah for sure I mean I would I would say the only person that rivals his speed and agility would be maybe like a

hook it I don't I haven't really seen a hook it's fast but I think he's got that kind of footwork speed that not at all like there's no comparison on on the skill levels of that movement and

“the striking he just has similar speed agility that's what hook it has is elite wrestling no yeah”

and water shit talking a lot of shit talking he gets people route up I don't know I think I think that's also something that Connor did really well is that you got these guys going into a fight going I cannot get beat by this guy he just said he said this and this and I have

Brazilian any five I don't know it starts with an R he's bottom before maybe as a second fight

I don't know I'm like it on his name but yeah I know who you're talking about I'm super easy he comes out he runs out off crazy like just everybody everybody he gets more all that if you have that added pressure it's a psychological effect and I think hook it does the same thing you know he takes people out of their comfort zone now everything's extra tense everything's guarded every you're not making any like you're not taking any chances or risks or stepping out of

“line you're just you're very very safe and secluded and fighting you know you have to be loose”

when you're fighting you can't be thinking that and you know we didn't sleep good the night before because you fucking hate this guy yeah and then you're like yeah we're out of pissed off all I want to do is take us head off you're not thinking about technique you're thinking about taking us at off that say it won't beg over hand it's like do what you fight angry then you're you had all this skill and your emotion it could take it like right out of you see that's another aspect of of this

striking game of this MMA game do you think that that should be taught more the the the the the the mental aspect of the game of just being able to stay in your own head and not get affected by these outside influences not get affected by and understand what these things are so when you encounter them you you know like you have a coach I think that could teach you not just how to fight but also how to maintain your peace of mind and how to maintain your focus and not get distracted

oh 100% I uh I don't know like everybody's individually you know it's hard to have a program because you have guys that go to like uh athletic therapist or whatever like a

“performance therapist and they say they do all that stuff I think a little bit is you're”

born with it you have the ability to control like emotions better than others some people go through again back to like just hard life experiences is is the best teacher so a lot of people learn that way um I don't know I don't know what it is for like each individual person me like the the third person I train with is my boxing coach Dale Roy Ball out of his we literally train out of his garage and his front yard you know and uh like we we talk spiritually beyond like

just boxing we talk about the world we we delve into the spirituality of the gospel and God and what that means to us um he's a big time re-curve guy that's who I went into my archery competition with he's a little big time leather working guy like um and so we we just say and talk about like what it means to be a warrior the the philosophy and the psychology behind that what it means to control your emotions when you're engaged with certain aspects uh and life how do you come out on the

other side of it like every day I mean oftentimes we just we stop and we're just sitting and talking

about things and you know my wife's always like you're just sitting there talking hanging out

with them like this is part of training behavior we talking psychology you know like something we got to spend extra time doing and uh but I do like I get there and we'll sit and talk for 30 minutes sometimes that's where we have a warm up I'm stretchin and we then we get into we start trapping hands like we're always just like adjusting and constantly talking about it um so that's a great reason to me that's that's fantastic like it's it makes fighting spiritual to me it makes it

like it takes it another level up you know and so then yeah I mean I got him we really connect on a lot of things Eric Paulson is an absolute legend of the game I have a lot of experience that I learned from him a lot of mindset he's he's the same way uh Ben Jones he's he's the guy that you want to go into battle with he's the one that you guys hear in the corner that's super loud he's the kind of guy that yeah he's he's he's putting you through the hardship mentally and physically

in the room and uh if you can endure that then you can go out and fight so I think there's different levels to it you got to get it in different ways but uh it's interpersonal you know and you got to you got to delve into that and it's got to be its own practice it's own training for the day so 100% I mean yeah if you get rolled up by the little thing and then you go out there and you try to go crazy you're just you're just like a kindergarten or this fight game you've lost everything

“and emotion can do that to you so yeah I mean you you have to be on top of that it's you know”

I say there's so many levels to this there's the cardio there's skill set there's being relaxed there's an emotional aspect that you have to think about like you know because everybody gets hit and like what's the natural reaction I want to get you right back but the the best fighter can get hit and just not even think about it not even get rolled up one heart you know their heart their heart be doesn't even go up one level boom the game plan stays the same

boom boom I'm intelligently blocking I'm doing my stuff I've I've never deviated for what I'm doing

and if you could do that it's beautiful you got it as an awesome mindset brother I can't would to see you inside there again and thank you much very much for being here was a lot of fun

future I'm sure I'll be calling one of your fights soon it's a alright beautiful bye everybody