Cody Garbrandt's Comeback

What's your Rogan experience? Come back the way you did against a really fucking tough guy in a sunsow and get arguably the KO of the year. You gotta be feeling pretty fucking good. I feel great. Back from the brink. Back from the brink. I mean, that time in my life, that time frame period and going through that from on top of the world, world champion to three fight skid, honestly it feels like a lifetime ago. I feel like I'm just a different person where I was at from there. The things I'm just doing differently, thinking differently, how I was able to approach the game picking myself back up time and time again. Internet is a horrible place to get knocked out on. The internet is fucked. You got the trolls, this and that. But besides that point, just coming back to that and having a love for it. A lot of the times I got to the fight and not to make excuses, I was just, I didn't feel myself. And then training and leading up, I felt physically I'm always ready to fight. Flip the switch, I'm always physically ready to fight. I think mentally going into those fights, I was just out of body. I felt like I was going through the motions. My passion wasn't there. I wasn't waking up every day. What's your reason why? I was just trying to find that. I think the reason why I had so many people infiltrated in how I should train or how I should live or what I should do to get back there. And really it wasn't nothing that I needed to learn new. I didn't have to reinvent the wheel. I was just doing the slight edge theory, like getting out of your comfort zone. You're doing your sauna sessions, you're pushing yourself to go in there and just be uncomfortable. So I had to go out there and with that comeback, I moved to Jersey, the training camp out there. I split the line between. Yeah, I want to talk to you about that. I'm a big fan of Henry. Mark Henry's a bad motherfucker. He's great. I love, I enjoy him so much. His passion for, his love for it. He's so interesting too. His crazy codes and the fact that the dude makes pizza on the side. Dude, I was so nervous going out there because I heard of the codes and like, you know, I was with Lance. Lance kind of gave me a little insight on it, on everything. I'm like damn codes. And I just fight, dude. Like I don't have really said things. I kind of go off of my instincts and game plans and he was trying to, you know, brief me on it. When I got to the first two weeks, holy shit, we go down to his basement and he has like pizza scrolls from the pizzeria where we have off about 50 things that we're working on before camp. So what does he write him on boxes? Pizza boxes? Pizza scrolls like the, just basically white paper. He rolls down and it's tapes it there to the wall. You have like Cory's fight camp. You have, you know, Frankie's and all these codes and you know, he's working with 14 fighters that time he knows all the codes and all different kinds of fights too. Like he's got Zabit there. He's got Frankie. It's like all these different styles. Yeah, different styles. And we'll kind of, you know, what I like about that is he'll try things that Zabit does. Zabit does these crazy double jump scissor kicks and spinning. You know, the Russians are really good at spinning shit, you know, so we threw that into the, into the game and it's, it's, you know, it was nice to get that kind of stuff that Frankie's done and had success over the years. So we mesh that together. He got to know me really well. We worked extensively with Ricardo Almeida up there as well. But yeah, Coach Henry is just, there's nothing, he's obsessed with winning, but what I loved about him was the first thing that he said to me was that his job is he's competitive. He wants to win at all costs, but his job is to get us back to our family. And I watched your podcast with Andre Ward and he said the same thing about his trainer. And I, once he said that to me and I have a child now, my whole thought processes has changed, you know, and transitioned and they're like, I want to be able to be around for my son's life. I want to have, you know, speak to my grandchildren. I'm not drooling, you know, that's what I'm cutting at Coach Mark. I want you to draw when you're, you know, you're 50, 60 years old. And I kind of the style of that fight, I can punch and move. I don't have to brawl with these guys, you know, and just reiterating the defensive part of the technical offensive part with him is I could go in there and hit a six, seven punch combo. Dude, he would, he would care less. He's like, what did you do after you moved after your head was off, your hands was up. Like he's all about defense. You know, I think he just helped me out a lot with saying that, like getting me home to my family saved. Like that's what I want to do. It's such an important approach to be defensively sound. And yet there's so many fighters who don't think like that at all. They just think about offense. And if you, you know, it's really like in jujitsu, like Hicks and Gracie had a conversation with him once about jujitsu. And one of the things that he said is that the most important thing is defense. He said, because I'm always safe. This is what he said. He goes, I'm always safe. And he goes in every position. I'm always safe. Like he lets guys on his back with a fully locked in rear naked choke and he'll start rolling like that. He's always safe. So he now, and that's interesting. Also I read that about the Donna Hurd death squad, John Donna Hurd guys, like, you know, Gordon Ryan and all those guys, they'll start in really bad positions all the time. They train constantly in bad positions. So they're always defensively sound. And that makes sense with striking as well. So many guys are so concerned with offense and you know, you've had so many spectacular knockouts like the Thomas, homemade a fight that it's just like, you probably just want to blast guys. True. I get, I gotta like pull the reins back. Sometimes I'm like, dude, I'm so amped up. Just get in there and get the fight, you know, like forget the walk out fit the, you know, yeah, I'm going to, I want to get the first blow. I want to get that exchange. And then that's when the fight unravel. Sometimes I think I get so amped up that, you know, taking it back, you know, doing that kind of having defensively sound, it sets up your offense. And my uncle was training me my whole entire life. And this is what he said, your offense sets up your defense and vice versa. But okay, like my offense was so good. And then you get to this point where you people are breaking down your footages and your films and you know, your speed and power, you know, you have to have that, you have to be defensively sound if you're so offensive. I'm a forward fighter. I can fight going back. A lot of fighters can't go. I can feel like I'm fight positional. Like you said about Danner's guys, Chris Holdsworth has adapted into a phenomenal coach. You know, he's my right hand guy from martial arts to the tee. And he makes us start in horrible positions like that when we're dog dead, tired, and then get up and we're shadow sparring each other and then going back to the ground, like really fight simulated things to where you're feeling uncomfortable in those positions. Like, yeah, I can go in there and knee wrestle all day during jiu-jitsu. I didn't get tapped on it and tap anybody out safe, but I didn't put myself in those positions when the fight really happens. You have to see off, you know, your grit. You got to be able to fight off the hands, fight off the body, try and go fight out those bad positions so you're comfortable with whatever the fight goes. And I feel like that's where I'm at now. I have transitioned into that fighter. I was so green when I got to alpha male and a lot of my speed and power catapulted me to the top where I have to kind of draw back a little bit and do the correctional errors. Not reinvent things, not do things, but the defensive part of things like, you know, I was up in training in Jersey and I knew I had the good head slips and movements, but some of the slips coaches watching me, I would get caught on the, you know, at the first or second, I usually would get hit with a fourth punch, you know, like a combo puncher. So I would slip, slip, and then I would slip down this way and I would get hit with the jab. Every time, it's like, dude, just bring your hand up a little bit when you're slipping to the right and moving to the right. And I, you know, I say, how do you feel after sparring? I'm like, dude, I feel great. I don't have a headache. I'm not getting my ass kicked. Like I'm not getting hit really. Like my defense has gotten so solid working with him and just constantly and Chris is the same way. My coaches out in Alpha Male are the same with hands up, hands up, hands up. But I was at that point in my life, I was just so aggressive and angry and just. We had so much success attacking that way. At doing that. But this last fight, I was honestly, Joe, when I was, you know, doing those feints on the Sun Sound and coach Henry said, Hey, don't feel like these feints aren't going to work. Like he's defensively sound. He's a great fighter at that respect. Keep doing these feints. They will work. I'm fainting this guy, dude. I'm fainting. I'm fainting. He's not really biting. He's not really coming in. But I kept on the feints and we ended up, you know, I started catching him with some some shots that I saw in his eyes were hurting him. And then fainted did the Tyson to his overhand, right, dropped them. And I knew once I had that range and the power and speed in his timing that he would come in with something. So, you know, the KO, the way you did it, we dropped your hands and looked this side and waited for him to move. Oh, my God. That was like one of the best walk off KOs ever. I felt great because the first round I kind of had myself to the cage and coach and he if I kick my ass being on the cage, like get off the cage, get to the, you know, movement more movement fighters, you know, he made me and I know my back is in this cage, but I saw in the round was ending. But I saw a sunset like, oh, here's my opening. I saw that in the first round and the second round was staying off. I was moving. I was switched stances. But towards the end of that, I heard the clappers. I'm like, I'm back in Swell. Let him come in. I kind of lean towards and he kind of like fainted on it. And then he chased me down. I level change. I kept my eye on him and he threw the hook because he was going southpaw. And I knew like I had my hand on the cage and know where my distance was. He was coming with a kick after I could lean back. I just had my range of my timing. And once I threw it, man, I knew when I felt from the hip, it was it was over. And that guy is so fucking durable. That's the thing. This guy is so tough and so so durable for you to catch him and KO him like this. Yeah, that had to feel so good. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. 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