Khalil Rountree is Moving to Thailand to Train | Joe Rogan

So when you decide to move, are you taking anybody with you? You go solo? Mmm, I'm gonna start off going solo. I would like to get, you know, my brother to come visit. I'd like to get my mom to come out. Really awesome out there. Yeah, yeah. And just cheap and just kind of simple living. My mom, I don't think she's ever left the country. So I think it'd be really cool for her to go out there. But at the moment, I'm just really like, this place is great for my career right now. Great for my training. So I just want to get there ASAP and get back to work. Sorry, how do you account for jet lag? Like, do you just like, do you give yourself enough time to adjust to the time difference? You know what? The whole time I was there, I would, my sleep schedule was off. I never adjusted. So I was going to bed maybe 2 30 a.m. every morning. And like, get up, run at five and then, you know, get tired later. Get tired later. Yeah, it's weird, right? The schedule is all off. And then when I came back, it took me like a week or two to adjust. So I was disappointed how stupid my body was. Hey, dummy, go to bed now. I'm telling you, just go to bed now. Like I didn't know my body had such a rigid schedule. When you jacked that thing sideways and you're on the other side of the planet, your body just really doesn't know what the fuck is going on. Seriously. I've been stuck in that plane for so long. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you're too big for them little seats too. So when you do that, if say if you have a fight in Vegas, you're going to go from Thailand to Vegas, do you show up two weeks early? Yeah. Well, this is my first time flying back to the States after being in Thailand. And I flew a week early. No, I flew two weeks early. One week I stayed in Vegas and then fight week stayed in Atlanta. And I think that was perfect timing. Oh, that's good. So I could get a little difference in time between those two. Weather too, man. It's so hot. It's like you're going outside and it's humid and hot. So between every round, it feels like, you know, like the third round of a fight. If we're going into the championship rounds, I've never been there, but I'd imagine that it'd feel very shitty. And that's how it feels every round in Thailand. It's just like you're covered in sweat, hot, thick. Yeah, that was probably like my fifth round or something like that. And we do it. I was dead by this point. Shout out to the editor for making me not look as tired as I was. Yeah. So we're looking at folks for the people who are just listening. It's a bunch of videos of you training strength, conditioning, pummeling up against the wall. So you're getting everything down there. Yeah. And that's Joseph Henley right there. He was on the on the ultimate fighter. I forgot what season they called him Leonidas. He's a black belt out there and he helped me out a lot, man. There's you run into so many different people. And he's like, yeah, like black belt, any type of grappling you want, any positions you want to work, like we'll go over it. We'll create a system, whatever. So he was really big help in this preparation for this fight. Yeah. A bunch of free spirits live in there, right? So many. Yeah. So many. But everybody's down there with a goal. They want to get in shape. They want to get healthy or spiritual path, whatever it may be. There's something romantic about the expat living in Thailand, having a good time, you know, something romantic about that. It's interesting. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. I mean, that whole culture, man. I mean, the Thai and Muay Thai culture. What a phenomenon. If you look at combat sports and then this one that it's so tied into these stadiums, it's so tied into gambling and betting. It's so kids get indoctrinated into it at a very young age. Super young, super young. There's guys at the gym that I was at. Little kids, they'd come right after school and they go to Muay Thai training and they're training just like the older guys. And then they go right back to like home eat dinner. But that's just their lifestyle. So it starts as a kid. It's like go to school, Muay Thai, go to sleep. And then as an adult, it's like Muay Thai, feed your family, Muay Thai, feed your family. These guys live at the gym. Jesus. They live at the gym and they go home maybe two days after a fight just to take care of their families and then come right back to the gym and get ready for the next fight. Now of course at Tiger Muay Thai, everybody knows various people in different organizations, UFC, Bellator, what have you, 1FC. But what about those guys that are fighting in those little small Thai gyms and stadiums? How much access do they have to grappling? Are they satisfied to just do Muay Thai or is there at all like a movement in Thailand to start doing MMA? Especially at Tiger, a lot of those guys are coming over to the MMA and learning jiu-jitsu and wrestling. One of the guys I was learning to clinch from, he's got probably 300 fights, 300 Muay Thai fights and he started training MMA and taking MMA fights. So they're definitely opening their mind to it and hopping in there. And there's access. And Bangkok, it's a little different because that's very like stadium based, high level Muay Thai. And they're not too focused on MMA, there are a couple of MMA gyms but if you want to do that, if you want to get the best of both worlds, it's in a Tim Phuket at Tiger. So is there any MMA at all in Bangkok? They got a couple places but nothing with like pro fighters or any high level fighters. But they do have maybe three or four MMA gyms there with just guys stopping in or guys who practice a little bit of everything. I'm always really interested in countries that figure something out better than everybody else. When it comes to leg kicking, nobody figured it out any better than the Thai. It's like no one argues that. No, seriously. And they're shins man. I think they're just, that's done for, they don't even feel the front of their legs anymore because they can kick anything and they're getting kicks checked. There's guys that, Joe, they'll fight one night at the stadium, go five rounds and then sleep and maybe the next day go fight like another small event or a smaller event. Sometime even in the same night. And it's like, man, aren't you like your shins don't hurt, your elbows don't hurt nothing and these guys, they're just like, they're bulletproof. They're used to this man. It's crazy. Wow. And their first time in my life, I go into a locker room and the red and blue corner is both in the same room, probably as big as the studio. And they're all getting their hands wrapped together, getting massaged out together, everything. No weird energy in the room. Like in the UFC, they separate us. We have to kind of be separate, whatever purposes, but like in Thailand, they're just like hanging out in the same room, talking whatever, and then they just go fight right after. It's so weird. Like the piece, it's so weird, man. It was the first time I experienced that and I was like, maybe I can start lighting it up a little bit. Like it's only a fight. And that's kind of something I had to tell myself for this one. I had to like really fall back and rely on my training because I was really nervous. I was nervous to start to try the new stuff that I learned out. I never threw many like kicks in any of my fights. I never really did that stance. Everything that I did was pretty much brand new. And I was really nervous. I was like, what if it doesn't work? You know, like so many different, so many different feelings. And for this one, the only thing I can tell myself is like rely on your training. 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