Joe Rogan Talks Kevin Lee KO'ing Gregor Gillespie with Trainer Firas Zahabi

listen man kevin lee coming up to you worked out thank you by the way my pleasure she said i knew it you set us up together i knew it though when i was talking to him i knew he was like a little bit lost and trying to figure out his way and i said man you need a head coach and i'm like who fights like you george george st pere i mean not saying he's the same levels but it's george fights like that with wrestling and great striking and submissions he mixes it all up he's unpredictable in his attacks like they're very similar they're neither one of them are particularly long both guys are very physically strong i'm like come on man like this this is the guy he he has a great training team already he doesn't have somebody kind of put it all together yes and you know we're talking about styles and level he's he's a bit of a like his personality he's a wildcat like he's a he's a you know he's a he's a commando and me i'm the opposite i'm like calculated i'm a scalpel yeah he's a chainsaw together makes a great blend yes you need you need both a little bit of discipline a little bit of wellness yes there's a time and place for both yes so like his last fight i was happy he stayed disciplined very so very very much so and he could become a world champion if he's disciplined because george was very disciplined yes he didn't veer off the game plan at all and he got the job done with the kos i also told him all that shit that he does or he's getting moving up to the cage he's dancing around and going crazy i'm like abandon that shit i go come out like a fucking samurai man you got some serious work to do now that stuff is complicating your mind because then you have to think oh all i did if i lose right now i'm gonna look stupid of all that dancing and and there's all this pretending that you're not feeling the feeling that you're feeling right now you're feeling this incredible moment because you six months of preparation getting ready for this one moment here it is embrace what that is go zen man be empty and he was like that the whole training camp like he was very focused for this one you could tell yes and i was really happy because i like guys who come in the gym and work they don't skip practice and like if guys tell me i'm i'm i'm i'm not in today for whatever reason i let them okay you don't want to be in you don't want to be in like i'll tell them look i think you should be in but you don't want to come in what can i do right but he was very disciplined he came to all the practices and it worked out beautifully like exactly what does he know uh maybe late 20s no i'm not even sure i think he i want to say he's 26 mid-20s is kevin lee 27 27 what's his birthday september okay so he just turned 27 yeah yeah he's fucking not even in his prime you know and he's also experienced failure and experienced fights where he didn't live up to his potential and i think that ultimately will be a motivating force because we see what he can do when he's really focused that gregor gillespe is a dangerous fight man you know i mean people see that spectacular head kick knockout and they don't understand how good gregor gillespe is that kid is a savage and so when i found out that kevin was going to fight gregor in his fight back to 155 not a good comeback fight dangerous comeback fight yeah very high risk very high risk and also getting down to 155 what did you guys do differently to get him down to 155 easily this time um we kind of put our heads together you know uh dewy cooper his trainer is really great fantastic kick box amazing i mean i love working with him brilliant guy his brother keith we kind of like got our heads together and we're like look we gotta keep losing weight at this rate no matter what it takes and um if he if he protests like you know if he wants to like ease up we'll listen to it but he's gotta he's gotta bite the bullet at one point like we can't go fall behind this rate of losing weight we have to lose on a pound an hour every hour we have to lose one pound and uh like at a certain point now now it's a pound an hour you talking about for the weight cut weight cut yeah weight cut but what is he coming in at like what it's like when he the week of the fight on monday morning what is he weighing in at you got it on your phone yeah i would hear so he looked a little smaller but healthy yes didn't look sucked in he didn't look like he depleted himself did he do anything different in terms of like weight lifting or running extra running i wouldn't lift weights if i was him i don't want him to lift any weights because he's naturally like i like i like bulking and then cutting i don't like cutting cutting cutting but when he came to me it was six weeks before so we were in a cutting phase like i don't want him to bulk up because in six weeks you can't bulk and then cut he was he's already very naturally muscular he's very naturally strong naturally already so i had him doing road work road work not too much plyometric not like a little bit but i don't want to put any size on him because he's got enough size right so first thing is evaluation does he need muscle no he's plenty of muscle right does he need power plenty of power we need to we need to create endurance and discipline in him that's what i think was making the big difference and some technical issues and uh we cut the 24 hours before he was 174 174 so 20 pounds that's a lot it's a lot so there was a point where we had to hit after losing a preliminary weight we have to hit one pound an hour and he was good about it actually wasn't hard of a wake up he did it really well we're very disciplined i was with him the last 48 hours making sure he was doing everything the last few steps really well the rehydration process i was with him the whole time though what did he wake up about friday morning friday morning i'll tell you right now it's not great i mean okay so uh so one o'clock in the morning he was 164 one o'clock in the morning nine pounds ago five o'clock in the morning he was 163 that's when we start so i let him sleep for a couple hours four hours four hours of sleep wake up so you woke him up at five yeah the day of the weigh-ins the day of the weigh-in wow wake up wake up wake up time to make weight at 10 o'clock he was 155 oh wow so he went through from 5 a.m all the way to 10 yes and what is he doing during that time uh bath bath bath and then wrap him up in the towels let him sweat in the towels jesus christ and then no sauna no no sauna for this one how come uh some guys prefer bath it's direct heat what do you like i like both i i tell guys if you're not used to the sauna let's do bath like i always tell guys before your fight go once a week to the sauna like six weeks out because sauna takes practice some people sit in the sauna for 45 minutes and there's nothing like they have sauna world championships i don't know if you know that but like in like finland they have the world championships of sauna like some people stay in there for hours like you do you build a tolerance