TJ Dillashaw on College Wrestling: Cain Velasquez Scared Me! | Joe Rogan

A skill for skill, ability for ability, I think he, if he's not the best of all time, it's him and Fedor. You know, and then you always have to mention Verdun, because even though Stipe knocked Verdun out in the first round, Verdun has submitted the best of the best. He submitted Minataro, he submitted Fedor, he submitted Kane. I mean, what the fuck? I mean, that guy is just, Verdun's record. If you just look at who he's fought, he's the best. In my opinion. And for how long he's been around. But when did he beat those guys? When did he beat those guys? Did he beat those, like when he beat Fedor? Fedor was as close to his prime as you can get. When, you know, like it's hard to say, like the Brett Rodgers fight, a lot of people were saying he wasn't as focused for the Brett Rodgers fight, but he still knocked him out with one punch. Remember that crazy fucking KO? Anytime. You gotta be ready for Fedor one punch. But Verdun handled him, you know, on the ground and submitted him. I would have loved to have seen what it was like in pride if he could fight him when Fedor was at his peak, like back when he beat Minataro. But Verdun, you know, he's overlooked in that argument of who's the best. And in terms of like accomplishments as a UFC fighter, well, it's Stipe because Stipe is the only guy to defend the title four times. And it really kind of bums me out that he's out of the conversation right now. You don't hear about a Stipe fight. He's like a two, which I feel like he should get more attention for this. He's just a normal guy. Like he has a full time job or is a firefighter. Like I feel like more people should resonate with him because of that. Yeah, but they don't. I don't. He's a fucking great guy. It's kind of be an asshole to get attention these days. I don't know. I mean, I feel like if he had beaten DC and you know, I mean, beat Francis, that was a big fight because Francis came into that fight with a lot of hype and over him knock out. Yeah. Stipe fought like a fucking champion. He really fought like a champion. And he showed Francis and look, Francis fought after that. He was not the same thing. When he fought after that, he fought Derrick Lewis. You could see he was in a throne. He was still fucked up from that last fight and he admitted it to his credit. You know, he bounced back with the Curtis blades fight and looked fantastic. Which is a big one from cause blades is an awesome wrestler. Exactly. Clay blade is a very athletic wrestler. He's huge. Yeah. He's big. He's fast. He's powerful. And you know, and that's twice Francis has beaten him. Twice. He stopped him. That was his first UFC fight. He stopped him then and he stopped him in this one as well. So coming into this fight with Kane, you know, there's, there's a lot of questions. We haven't seen Kane in two years. Yeah. Right. It's been about two years. Yeah. It may be longer. Let's say when was the last time Kane Velasquez fought? Yeah, I think you might be right. I think it might be three years. It's been a while. It's crazy. I know. But when, when he was at the top of the food chain, when Kane was at the top, he would put a fucking storm on these people. That was just like a hundred year storm that would never end. It's like, how is this guy have this kind of endurance? And to see Verdu to do with that, to him in Mexico city was crazy. I thought it was going to be the other way around. Yeah, it was crazy. Just see Kane tired. Yeah. So here we go. 2016. Yep. July 9th. So two and a half years. Yeah. And that was Travis Brown, which is just a phenomenal beating. And that was UFC 200. Yeah. And they did the Junior dos Santos one. And the fight before that was a year. Mm-hmm. You know, so he's like, it's not like he's been active. Well, yeah. In 2013, look at those gaps. Yep. Yep. Dang. Two year gaps. Yep. Two year gaps. One year, two year again. That's rough, man. Yeah, it is. It is rough. Especially when this is your job and how you get paid. Fuck yeah. Right? Yeah. Lucky's a heavyweight and they get taken care of a little more, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, I wonder how, how much you could fix all that stuff that's going on in the spine. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's got ACL or something like that. You know that you can come back from that. That's 100% possible. But back stuff is weird. It seems like once things start going, it's like a car. Once a ball joint blows out and the axle starts grinding, you're like, oh, Jesus. It's like a bunch of shit's going to go wrong. Something that that's like your core. Yeah. But at his best, man, he was fucking terrifying. Yeah. Because it's just, I never saw it heavyweight with that kind of endurance. I remember being so scared of came Velasquez when I was like, I think I talked with this last time on your podcast when I was a kid wrestling in college, because I was like this tiny ass little white boy wrestler and came to walk around with justice, singlet straps on and shorts. And he had brown pride, brown pride tattooed across his chest. He's just huge heavyweight wrestling D one for ASU. I was just like so scared of that guy's like, Dan, look at that guy, man. Walking around like one or probably ripped my head off as brown pride tattooed on his chest. Just wearing justice, singlet straps. Just huge. It's funny. Yeah. Well, you know, him and DC having that kind of a relationship is such a unique situation for the two fighters that they have, you know, another elite guy that's their size and they just smash each other left and right and work with each other. That's what I try to create wherever I go. And that's what we're doing in Southern California. I know one or two, let a Aaron Pico's cub Swanson's. We're trying to build a room of smaller guys that we can, but we're a lot, we don't want to kill each other. Right. And that's something that we, I've always had to control myself. I've always gone really hard and something I've had to learn to control. But having that room full of killers so that when we go to wrestling practice, like you don't know if you're going to have a good practice. You might be getting beat up on that day. You know, when you go home and be all pissed off like, shit, I had a bad practice. I got taken down with this, but that's what makes you better for the next practice. If you just go to practice and beat up on everyone every day, you're never going to know what you need to change or what you need to get better at. So I think that's why Kane and DC have gotten so good, so quick at MMA that each other to build off of, you know, and see if we can survive it. If you survive it. Yeah. And that, you know, like the knock on AKA, some people said they trained too hard because they're always injured, but look at the amount of champions they produced. Yes. Look at the amount of fucking killers that come out of there. Luke Rockhold, DC, Kane, Khabib. I mean, get the fuck out of here. That place is a den of assassins. Yeah. If you could survive it, right? Yeah. That's perfect. I mean, yeah. I mean, that's the only way, man. I mean, look, it's not good to spar full clip, like old school lions den days, where they used to beat the shit out of each other or the Militich days. I mean, nobody knew anything back then. They didn't know the consequences. They didn't know what it's like.