Joe Rogan on Cody Garbrandt's Coaching

He's a beast, but again, America, a guy could go to Walmart, nobody knows who the fuck he is. You can wander around. He's one of the best heavyweight kickboxes of all time. Literally nobody knows who he is. It's strange, you know? Without question. Yeah. Now, when you were training with Cody, when you were over at Team Alpha Male, what is the coaching like? Like, how are they doing rounds with him? Well, he was doing his sparring separately. They brought me and Eddie up just to spar with him. Who is that? Like, who is coaching him? Danny and... Danny Castillo? Danny Castillo and Chris Holsworth, yeah. So they were essentially his coaches? Yeah, they were coaching him. Okay. And so when you were working with him, were they saying, hey, we want to really work on certain things, or were they just letting you do your thing? Were they asking you to... I was being, you know, I go up there and like I said, I go grapple. So I was trying to be a good, give him good looks, give him the switches, that TJ shoulder move type thing. Did you practice that stuff, or did you... No, I just been one of those guys, like when Kiren, ever since I started with Kiren, I've had to help somebody give him looks. I've been that guy and I've been good at it. Right, but did you practice TJ's looks, or did you just kind of know how to do it? I always switch regardless. That is one of my favorite things to do, just offensively and defensively. I love switching. Did you have a traditional martial arts background? Did you start out with traditional martial arts? I started with Muay Thai. Started with Muay Thai. Yeah, I started with Muay Thai, yeah. Yeah, the best guys, you know, it's interesting now, the switching thing has become almost like a standard thing. Like with TJ, you never know what he's doing. I mean, he doesn't have like a revert back to stance. He might stand southpaw, he might stand orthodox, and he can do both equally well. Yeah. Well, I'm naturally either right with my left hand, naturally, but I stand orthologues. I serve orthologues, I skate orthologues. Well, there's a lot of people, I mean, that was what Eddie Futch used to, or Emmanuel Stewart, rather, used to teach guys to do that. He would take a guy who's right handed and make him fight southpaw. It's like, you want that lead hand to be your most coordinated hand. Yeah, but we have we have pad sessions that I'll just stand southpaw the whole time, and I have no problem with it. I, in fact, love sparring southpaw, and I love just switching. Do you feel like your straight left hand has as much power as your straight right hand? Sometimes even more. Really? Sometimes even more, yeah. Yeah, I feel like I have power with both hands almost equally. Just depends on the angle and where I'm catching. Sometimes I also try to catch people. At the same time, as they're trying to get away from my right hand, I'll switch stances and aggressively switch into that left hand and make it a power hand. And they think they're getting away from my power hand, but really, they're walking into it, and I make them switch into it. Oh, yeah. Now, so when you were working with Cody, did they have any requests? Did they say, hey, this is what Cody's trying to work on? You know, just really, I was just switching a lot, trying to give him that switch hook that he got caught with last time, and just trying to just be a good team and give him head kicks and that kind of movement. And he was doing fairly well, blocking kicks, coming back, and trying to wrestle more. But because I think they were talking about that was one thing that he lacked in the first fight, not wrestling him enough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what happened Saturday was definitely not the game plan. You know, you could see it's, it was, it wasn't anything like he sparred, and it wasn't anything like he trained. I think emotion absolutely took over. So what was their game plan? I think just piece him up, get him, you know, catch him like the first round, but actually finish the fight. I think that would have been more the, obviously kick him a lot, and just get him to walk into something, try to wrestle him a little bit in there too. I think, I think TJ came out really smart as well, though. Well, TJ throws himself into the fire too. He's not, he does not play a safe game. Yeah. Oh, he did. He did it on Saturday. And I think that, I think that he was probably a little surprised by how, just by how unsafe Cody was so early. Like, I mean, that exchange at the end, I mean, it's Cody, I mean, TJ is just blocking and looking and Cody is just going for broke. Right. Everything he's throwing. Yeah. Yeah. And we, when we were watching the replays, you could clearly see that Cody's path was wider and there's more strain and then TJ was more loose and he got there quicker, you know, and the knockdown, the first knockdown when he tagged him with the right hand, that was really where it came from. They're both throwing at the same time, but TJ was also doing a better job of getting his head off line. And the thing is like TJ's relationship with Dwayne Ludwig is very unusual. It's like, those guys are like glue. I mean, they're, they're stuck together. Yeah. And Dwayne is a maniac. You know, Dwayne. Oh, I know Dwayne. I've known Dwayne a long time. We are friends. And when we coached against each other, the ultimate fighter, he literally in the parking room reminded me that he had the fastest knockout in UFC history because he was fucking pissed. Like he, he, he's just one of those guys that who's pissed about what? Just because we were trying to, he had a training practice that he invited all the Henry's guys to, but Henry couldn't come. And I was like, well, I'm going to have Johnson on come in and Joe can't come. And he's like, Hey, listen, I'm going to whip my dick out right now. I'm going to remind you, I've got the fastest knockout in UFC history. So you better calm down boy. And I'm like, well, okay. But so he's very emotional. He's very focused and he's very dedicated to TJ. So I'm agreeing with you on that, but he will go zero like that. Oh yeah. Dwayne's crazy as fuck. I know very, very, very well. But what I'm saying is that Dwayne is obsessed with, with TJ's performance and with TJ's improvement. When TJ first beat Henan Baral, Dwayne sat down with me we sat down and we had lunch together that day and he was just, and it was a fucking big underdog. I mean, Henan Baral was thought to be the best pound for pound fighter. If not, number one, certainly number two. That was insane. That was insane. When he did that, I was like, Jesus Christ. Also the way he did it, he came out so loose, like he was sparring. He came out like, you know, like they touch gloves, like he was going to do a spar session and it looked like a guy sparred with a fucking hundred rounds. It wasn't, there was no tension to him. It was very loose. He really loves that shit. He loves it. He's a, he's a rise to the occasion kind of guy TJ is. And that's one of the reasons why I think he really thrived off this rivalry with Cody. Whereas with Cody, especially because TJ won the first fight and won it by knockout, you know, Cody like had all this inner tension. Whereas TJ had this inner smile, like through the entire process. Definitely. I definitely agree with you. And I think Cody was definitely, it seemed like he was a little more emotional with the two. And one thing that I, and we were talking about emotions and fights and everything. And one thing that I always remember when I get emotional, like even it happens in sparring sessions and you know, it might happen in fights and stuff. And I always remember here and telling me, you want to be, that's your phone, bro. I know it can't be me. How dare you? How dare you shut that piece of shit. Now you got Siri going. You don't even know how to use a phone. You're one of those dudes. Oh, I know. You're one handed it like as if no one's going to notice. I am getting out of the way volume. It's still on. It's dead. I killed it. Go on Gaston. Anyways, I always remember. I always remember Karen telling me, cause I will get emotional at times and I will let my, my Peruvian machismo get in the way. And I was like, you know, especially it will happen a lot with Kevin, you know, like when Kevin first came to see us, Kevin Ross, Kevin first came to CSA. Man, those were, I would get beat up a lot. Call it tough love. I don't know what you want to call it, but I would, he would sweep me and beat me up and like, well, you want him to give it your best. And he made me better. He turned me into a training partner versus somebody he had to like, nobody, he didn't baby me at any moment. He, I built, you know, he built me into what I am saying. We became training partners. And, but one thing that I always remember from Karen is like, you don't want to be emotional. You want to be like an assassin, you know, you want to be, you want to go in there and be calculated. You want to be yourself. Cause that's when I fight the best without myself and now when I have no emotion involved. Do you have any sort of a pre-fight routine that you go through mentally in order to get yourself into a state of mind like that? You know, yeah. Recently since I, I lost a, I don't know if you watched my, my last year's fight, my second MMA fight with Belter. I got, I got, I got dropped. I got submitted. You got hit with a wheel kick. With a wheel kick. Yeah. And see it coming out. And then you got triangle. I was going through a lot of the time, I'm going through a divorce, you know, very emotional time of my life last year. And then I had to, you know, dig deep and rise to the occasion and you know, get out of that hole that I was in. So I started grounding my energy before fights. I was trying to like, trying to visualize and really see myself, you know, doing the things that I would do because that's, that's how I got a lot of my knockouts and, and, and lion fight. I could, it was a weird thing. I could like just like visualize and see it. Like when I knocked out Tyler toner, I saw that happening before the fight even. And I was like, it felt like a deja vu moment. Like, oh shit. Like I seen this happen. And I just like try to like get as calm as I possibly can. I just remind myself, there's another day in the office and like I've had almost 50 fights now. And I just know that is, you know, regardless of what happens, where I win or lose, I'm like, go out there and give it my best. But what I try to do is just try to like close my eyes and like, call it ground and grounding myself. I visualize like roots coming out of my feet and, and hands. And I really like ground myself and ground my energy into visualized roots. Yeah. Yeah. Like tree roots coming out of my hands and coming out of my feet. And like, like this last fight was crazy. Actually, I could visualize it like going all the way into the ring. And like once I walked in there, it just felt like home. Wow. Crazy. Yeah. And I don't think I told, I even told him that. Is this something that you read how to do or is this something that someone coached you how to do? Actually, my ex wife taught me how to do that. Funny enough. Yeah, she taught me how to do that. And I just like, I thought she's fucking bullshitting. Anyways, I tried it and you tried after you got divorced. Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, honey. Yeah. He got the roots and he got the. Yeah. She was right. I did. I texted her a while back and I was like, you were right. Like that shit works. That's in this crazy. I, you know, that along with some alpha brain, I go out there and I'm like, I'm ready to rock and roll. I feel at home. Now, what, what I was getting to was that, that relationship between a coach and athlete, when it works out great, it's so important. And when you don't have that, like, I mean, there's no disrespect for Denny Castillo and Chris holds work who are both very good fighters and I'm sure dedicated, but Dwayne is a different kind of thing. I mean, he obsesses on various techniques and improvements and footworks and how to change things and how to, how to set things up. He's, he's all day 24 seven. He never shuts off. And the kind of relationship that Dwayne has with TJ is so rare and so beneficial, but that the chronic relationship you guys have this kind of really tight bond between coach and fighter. If it's there's, you can win without it, but when you have it, it is just so powerful. It's so powerful.