Joe Rogan Talks to Henry Cejudo About Retiring as 2 Division Champ

How are you sir? I'm doing good Joe. Good to see you man. What does it feel like? What does it feel like having stepped back? You step away, you get to look at it from a fresh perspective. What does this feel like? It feels good man. It feels, I think the biggest thing with me Joe is there's satisfaction in my life. You know what I'm saying? I've done so much in the sport and I can compare myself a little bit to Daniel. You know if Daniel would have beat Stipe Miocic and he would have retired on top, you can almost say retired at the two division world champ. And I don't feel like I have that chip on my shoulder. As a wrestler I retired from the Olympics at a very young age. You know I decided to come back three years later but you know what I mean? It was already done. You know what I mean? I retired at the age of 21. And then now at the age of 33 I'm truly calling it quits unless there's a couple fights that if I do come back. I like that word unless. I like that word. Yeah and as you know and a little bit it's before it was about the money a little bit with the UFC and obviously you know everybody does have a price but I think there's a fight that I would really like in the UFC and that would be against Alexander Volkonosky. Really? Yeah. At 35. At 45. If they were to give me an opportunity to go up and obviously be compensated then that would be a fight that would really that would really wake me up in the morning. Be like hey man this is this is a challenge. It's a whole new mountain. A chance to be a three division world champion. A chance to be a three division world champion. As you know a lot of people have counted me out against Demetrius, against TJ, against Marlin. Maybe it was you too Joe. No no no no. And I think that's what I love about it. You can't find any evidence of me counting you out sir. Never. So I loved that. I loved challenges since I was a kid I knew I was special. And these are the things. What is it that you knew? What separates you? Oh my god I think it's a couple things if I was to explain it to you. What's made me successful and I've seen it. Being at the Olympic Training Center as a high school kid and living out there for four years and that's actually where I met Daniel. I was a six year old kid when I first met these guys and I was able to analyze a lot of the greats like Steven Abbess, Daniel Kormie, a lot of the Olympic team. And what I've learned now at the age of 33 I learned that there's been two things that have separated me from the rest of the pack. It's two things what I call heart and ability. And I was actually able to tell this story to Chhatri the founder and CEO of 1FC. And so it's two things I call it heart and ability. What is your heart? Your heart is your passion, your will, your desire. Your determination. Your heart is something that you want to suffer for in order to obtain. Now the next one is ability. Ability is a gift that you have since it's a coordination. It's something that you've wrapped over time when you become a master at it. And what happens a lot of time, I always tell people it's good to question one or the other. It's good to question the mind. I'm sorry, I'm sorry the heart or the ability because to be the 1% of the 1% is like both of these things have to match. What happens is a lot of people have heart but their ability is like way down here. Their ability doesn't match their heart or their ability is up here and they're just a little lazy and can't really put the, because there is a separation between mind and body. And your job is to connect them both. And I'm going to use an example with Marla Marais. You saw me getting my ass kicked. You saw me getting leg kicked from the first to all the way to the second round. But I knew that I had to connect and make that transition. That was a combination of combining the heart and the ability. So I was able to kind of, so what separated me, I'd say that I think is being gifted through the ability and then just having a passion or will that's just second to none. There's a lot of other factors though, isn't there? There's like, not just ability, it's also, you have to be coached by someone who really knows what they're doing. There's so many guys out there that are really tough and they have will and they work out hard and they're in shape, but they just make technical mistakes and they've never corrected those mistakes. Yeah. Well, I think that also goes back on the ability. I would put that into the ability portion. The reason why is because you got to put yourself in the right situations. Like I didn't start winning until I let go of my coaches. The first time I lost to Demetrius Johnson, it was, man, it was hard. And this sounds, this is something very crazy and cynical, but it was kind of hard to blame myself. Even though I was training because I knew coming from the Olympic sport that I had a coach that could take me to the top and there was no ifs or what's, like I knew he knew the recipe and it may will still a fairly new, and it's still a fairly new sport. So I knew that I had to find the professors. I knew that I had to find the scientists and all this together in order for me to become that perfect storm. So that's exactly what we did, putting the science, the recovery, find the right coaches, listening to my ability, understanding my biomechanics. Like it was a mixture of all these things that's made, that's separated me from the first time I fought Demetrius to just being a legend killer, man, to beating all these guys that they said that, you know, Demetrius Johnson, TJ, you know, Marlon Mariahs, Dominant Cruz, man, that's a hell of a list, Joe. It's a hell of a list. You know, it's a hell of a list, man. That's one of the reasons why it bums me out that you retired. Like I have conflicting feelings. One, I'm happy. I'm happy you retired young and healthy and you could do anything you want, man. I really believe a guy who can accomplish what you accomplished inside the Octagon and also winning an Olympic gold medalist, you're winning an Olympic gold medal in wrestling at 21 years old, retiring from the sport, then getting into MMA, becoming a two division world champion in MMA and then stepping away while you're still healthy and at the peak of your abilities. Part of me loves that. I love the fact that you did what you wanted to do and then you step away. But part of me looks back at like, say, when you fought Benavides or say when you fought Demetrius the first time and then looks at you now, like you're a completely different animal. Nobody had been able to shut down Dominant Cruz's footwork game, but you came in and just chopped the shit out of his legs just right off the bat. Whatever advantage we thought that he would have with his footwork and movement was actually becoming a disadvantage because you were using that against him. You found the angles and you found the perfect times to attack his legs and then you put him away, which is also something no one's ever done before except Uriah caught him in his submission and finished him. But no one's ever put him away the way you did.