Kamaru Usman on the Pressures of Being a Champ | Joe Rogan

It's good. It's stressful, but it's good. Well, I mean, it has to be stressful. You're the king of the hill. Yes. Yes. And there's a lot of things they don't tell you. Dude, I remember Matt Hughes, when he lost to BJ Penn, I was interviewing him in the Octagon. He said something like really honest and very shocking. He said, honestly, he goes, it's a relief. He goes like being a champ and the stress of it all. He goes, I feel relieved to have been lost. First of all, to lose. It's very like the fact that he had the balls to say that, like just admit it, like, hey, it's a relief. Like, you know, he just choked me out, but I'm happy. I'm happy it happened. It is for guys like that, that have reached that status. It is the Anderson Silva, the George St. Pierre, those guys, it is a relief because, you know, and I'm just, I'm starting to see a little bit why, because as soon as I walk out of there, defending your title, as soon as you just beat this kid up, fans can't wait to say, oh no, this is the guy that's gonna beat you. That's the guy that's gonna beat you. So there's really no come down, you know, let me take a vacation, let me do this. No, because fans are on it. They want a guy to step in there with you tomorrow to beat you. That's always gonna happen though, isn't it? Yeah, you know, but- With everybody, anybody who's a champ. Yeah, but that's, now imagine doing that five, six, seven times over and over, like these guys, George St. Pierre for decades, have done. It just gets overwhelming because it's like, nothing's ever good enough for you guys. You know, I can't go out there, put on a flawless performance win and just have you guys say, you know what, he's the best. No, it's like, you were good, but yeah, this guy's gonna beat you. This guy, this guy's good enough to beat you. Well, there's always gonna be a certain percentage of people that are not happy with anything. I saw a lot of people that are tweeting, talking shit about Connor, after he just won Flawless Victory, 42nd knockout with Donald Cerrone, and they were like, that doesn't prove shit. He's gonna fall apart if he fights anybody good. As soon as he gets in there with a wrestler, this and that, blah, blah, blah. It's like, some people are just negative. Absolutely. You can't fix them. You just gotta accept them the way they are. Just like, eh. I know, and it's one of the advice that Rashad gave me early on is make friends with this. Make friends with, because you get worked up before a fight. So he's like, no, make friends with that feeling, because that's a good feeling. Or you're backstage before your fight, you're super nervous, you wanna take a shit. You wanna pee, you pee like 50 times. You're barely drinking water, but somehow there's some kind of pee coming out. And he's like, no, make friends with that feeling. The moment you accept that feeling, it's not that big of a burden anymore. Rashad's a wise man. A super wise man. That's a very wise piece of advice, because you can really change your perception based on how you approach something and just decide it. This is a part of the process. This is what's up. It's how it works. It's big for me right now. It's very, very big for me, because I'm a creature of a routine. I love having a routine. And it's a fine line between routine and obsessive compulsive. It's a very, very fine line. And it started on for me early on. When I started to succeed in wrestling, I was like, okay, this is my routine. I'm looking at the, okay, I'm 10 matches out. So that means I need to get up and I need to warm up. My warm up was the same. Okay, I'm gonna jog back and forth twice before I skip back and forth twice, before I do my lunges back and forth twice, before I do my stance in motion back and forth twice. Like, it was that routine. I had to do it at that time. I know I'm going to the restroom. I need to pee before I go for this match. But I'm gonna go into the same bathroom. I'm gonna go into the same stall. I'm gonna pee and I'm gonna come out and use the same sink to wash my hand. Get one or two paper towels, throw it away, go back out. Like, it got to a point where it's like, that's my routine. And then I go out there and I perform and I win. I'm like, yeah, that's why I'm performing. So it's like OCD. It becomes, there's a fine line. So I had to realize that that's a fine line because it's not necessarily OCD because when it becomes obsessive compulsive is when, for me, it's when you feel like you can't succeed unless you do those things. So it's like, dang, I forgot to do that. Well, oh, I'm gonna lose, I'm gonna lose. No, I had to learn how to control it early because that's my routine. But even if I didn't do that, I didn't have enough time to do that because sometimes you don't have enough time to do it. Something goes out of whack, matches end early, but then you don't have enough time to get your routine in. So it's like, I had to be able to adjust my mind. Okay, we still go out there and perform. We still go out there, especially in the fight game. You go out, there's two quick knockouts, boom, boom, boom. You thinking you've got 30 minutes to warm up? It's like, no, you got to come in back. You got ten minutes? It's like, oh shh, I got ten minutes. I can't get my whole routine in. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't get my whole routine in. I can't. I can't get my whole routine in. Are we really still there? I can. Are we still trying? Oh, gosh, what now? We justj. Were we? We're trying. I want this guy to Dev job.