JRE MMA Show #157 with Craig Jones

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Craig Jones

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Craig Jones is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, coach, and champion grappler. www.bteamjj.com

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I like the one ear to the side. That's professional. A lot of guys do that. Helps my hearing. It's fading in my old age. Do you have fucked up ears because of the cauliflower? Is it a fuck up hearing? Yeah, just one of them. I thought it was cold until the inner is started to swell and it was messed with my hearing and I was like, that's not cold anymore. Did you get it fixed? I just face it at the women I'm talking to. Did you get it fixed or do you? I would eventually drain down, but it's as good as it's gonna get, I think. Yeah I always wore ear guards I was always scared of the ears because it's just it there's a design like it helps capture sound and bring it into your ear. I didn't know the airpods were coming that through a curveball and how cold this was. Oh right can you have stuff them in there? I jammin' them but pop back out. Yeah you gotta wear it over the ears so let's talk about your tournament. The tournament or where did this come from first of all? Because you competed in Abu Dhabi. This is what I don't understand. You're gonna go head to head with ADCC, which is the biggest grappling organization in the world. By the way, that's Gordon Ryan's belt up there. If you wanna look at it. Go to Ryan, oh man, I might take that on with me. Yeah. I might take that on with me. Yeah. I can't get the money to buy it. Well, I mean, what started it? Well, obviously you can't win it. Tony, you put your own tournament on the UKAN win. And probably lose anyway. I mean, really, it's for the growth of the sport. We're getting some beef involved, some two-packed biggie Drake Kendrick energy to this, but really to compensate the athletes well and to raise some money for charity along the way. And who's funding this thing? That's one of those things, you know? You gal takes a trip to the UAE. She comes back with a handbag, you don't talk about it, you know? I've given you questions, you know? You brought with you a million dollars in cash, which I've never seen before. I've never seen a million dollars in one place. I've never even seen a million dollar check [2:07] Yeah, I guess tip it out Sure we don't spill any Ladies and gentlemen that is one million dollars in cash all stays That is so ridiculous. Look at that. That's so crazy. Wow. Whoever is running this really trusts you. They should. Those are loose. Like a lot of these are just fine around here. They have way too much faith in me. Yeah. A lot of faith in you. I mean, this was the proof. I had the idea I was like, I'll bring a prop million dollars on Joe Rogan, but people were, I was thinking then, they already don't believe I have the money. So if I pulled out a prop million and you were like, oh, that's fake money, then I'm like, oh, my turn, So I said to do some bad things for that. So how's one even get a million dollars out of a bank? [3:07] That's gotta be a pain in the ass, right? Yes, so my buddy that's helping me out with this, basically called his bank, he said, I need a million dollars on Thursday, they said, yo, that takes two to three weeks and he's like, get me the million on Thursday, or I'll find a bank that can. And that, I mean, that put the energy in them to get it. Here we are. So what does this guy do that he has all this loot? I really don't want to say. I'm going to keep it all directed. I mean, it's all above board legal, you know what I mean? But we're sort of keeping it mysterious. I want any negative energy towards the tournament coming my direction. Not the anonymous sugar daddy in the background. OK. So you don't want to say like what the business is or does the business profit off of this at all? Does this benefit the business to do this? What are you doing? I mean we're running as a non-profit So like obviously for people that want to support the sport of Jiu-Jitsu Like we're gonna donate basically all the ticket sales of this event towards different charities So we really want to do this as a non-profit because my thoughts were if Jiu-Jitsu doesn't make a profit [4:05] We might as well make a non-profit. Mm, okay. Well, Jiu-Jitsu make no profit? Like Abu Dhabi doesn't turn a profit, right? It's done primarily because of the shakes, love of the sport. Like the, yeah, it's like a passion project, but I mean, sort of my problem with the latest event is like we're selling so many tickets and they Their event is in T-Mobile T-Mobile is super expensive as far as I know I remember their event organized a posted the amount they paid for T-Mobile And it was basically two of these So I was just to rent out the venue just to rent out and then you were at the Thomas and Mac Yeah, so the previous event we're, they were at Thomas and Mac. So I just thought, hey, I might as well check how much Thomas and Mac cost. And it was a lot cheaper. So I might opinion we're really doing this because the prize money's been the same for so long. A lot of events don't pay a lot of money, but obviously ADCC is the biggest. biggest and this sells a lot of ticket sales but really they made a lateral move in the venue that didn't [5:07] really grow much in the way of seating and none of that money really how much is Thomas and Maxi? I think we'll have about 11,000 seats for this one and T-bombs was 18 I think 18 yeah so not massive difference and really ATCC prize money stayed the same. So their prize money you have to win four matches to get 10k not that I'd know because I could never fucking win it but we're gonna pay We're gonna do two divisions and pay a hundred times that amount of money to the division winners So 10k is the winner of ADCC and we're gonna pay 10,000 and one dollars to show up to that's ornament 10,000 and one throw an extra dollar That's for me personally. So anybody who competes gets $10,000. Really? So even if you just get smoked. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking of the other guys like me and these tournaments that don't make the final compensate everyone, you know? Well, that is nice, but ADCC's never made money, right? So for them, raising the money would just be losing more money. Yeah, I mean, but if, I mean, if you could sell 11,000 seats, [6:08] you know what I mean? Like, if you could sell streaming rights to an event, I feel like some of that should go back towards the athletes rather than just spending it all on production. Like, I, a lot of people talk about the cost of production and it's important to grow a sport, but I really feel like at least the athlete competition should go up a little bit. You know, like in terms of tickets sales, some of that should go back towards the athletes. Even if the ADCC is not making any money at all. But in terms of, they do make money, but it's where they spend it. They choose to spend it on production rather than the athletes. Right, but it's not profitable. Like, in terms of the organization itself is not really profitable, I don't believe. Well, I would imagine if they chose Thomas and Mack with streaming rights and the cost of the venue like that they've spent on T-Mobile, for sure they would have made a profit of this event. You could curtail production costs down. [7:02] Like, it's not gonna be that crazy if you choose the right venue. My opinion is grappling's amazing, but I don't think we're ready for team level. That's a massive, expensive venue. Right. Well, the Thomas and Mack was very impressive last year. It was very impressive. The whole overall production and just the scope of it and the amount of fans that came out to watch ADCC, it was pretty impressive. It's crazy, yeah it's crazy. I've never competed in that many in front of that many people. Four was awesome, it was awesome to go. That was basically my opinion. It's like, while we're making a lateral move in my opinion, one we could still keep the same venue. So what was the idea about going head to head with ADCC? If you want to grow the sport, wouldn't it be better to do it in an alternative weekend? That way the people that competed ADCC can also compete at your event? Well we kind of, I mean yeah, obviously athletes can't do both, but in terms of for the fans, the fans will be able to go to Alvin Friday Saturday, still see ADCC finals on Sunday. But in terms of doing it at the same week and we're really trying to make a stand that the athletes can unify in this sense and we can get compensated better. [8:10] Because again, not the athletes care where we compete. As the sport grows, grappling's growing, obviously, thanks to people like you, you've blown it up. Whenever you shout us out, our followers go up. So the mean, the events are getting more eyes on it. People are more ticket sales. Like we should get at least some token gesture of a payment increase. Well, I think the best case scenario out of this is that ADCC does ramp it up in that the sport does get more eyeballs because people are aware of this huge increase in pay. And then over, I always feel like competition is good. I just don't necessarily like the idea of going head to head because I feel like it just kind of messes with the athletes because you know, it puts them in a situation where they have to choose first of all between ADCC and the Craig Jones invitational. [9:02] And if they do that, ADCC is going to probably hold a grudge. I mean, hopefully not. Well, hopefully they're not. But likely they will. I mean, it doesn't make sense that they would. I mean, if you're kind of crippling their organization by taking the elite guys and offering them potential for like how many people are going to jump ship? Do you know? I mean, who will we go confirm already? We've got Fion Davies past champion. The Taker brothers were the first two with a Nikki Ryan. I'm gonna announce today Nikki Rods jumping across. We got Luke Rockhold in there. We threw him in because he's just he's honestly pretty impressive. He tapped me out in the gym. I was like fuck it. We're throwing man. In terms of the under we got Joseph Chen. So I mean a lot of people are gonna make the move. And what's interesting to me, I can't say any names particularly, but a lot of the old legends, obviously wanna be a part of this event. I think they believe, they wanna support the cause. You know what I mean? And you say make the athletes make a choice. I mean, really they should be able to make the choice if there's an event with such a huge amount of prize money on display. You know, the argument is prestige, first prize money in my argument is, [10:06] the prize money's there, that becomes the most prestigious event. Yeah, it does, it does ramp up the prestige, but will this happen again? Is this a one time thing or are you guys planning on doing multiple ones of these? Yeah, we wanna do it. We don't, 80 CC every two years, so most of the time the guys have to wait every two. We want to do it every year. Well, that would be good. Then there'd be a year where it's not in competition. We don't want to just kill another organization. And then I just disappear off into the sunset. Maybe sneak a couple million. But we want to do it every year for sure. The goal is really to raise money for charities and do some film projects around the world using Jiu-Jitsu really helping out some other privileged kids and stuff. Well, the whole idea of using it for charity is beautiful. That's amazing. But is this guy willing to fork up this kind of, like does he have a commitment to do this more than once? I mean, basically he says if, hey, we do a good job of this one, you can do it every year. He's super invested in, so what did you get to love that? And this guy's just throwing loot away. That's a crazy thing to commit to though. I mean, even no matter how rich you are. [11:06] I mean, because if you're giving away $3 million in prize money, is that what it is? Oh, two. I mean, so how's it go all together? We basically go to budget of $3 million. And we decided to give $2.3 million to the athletes. And the rest, we're going to spend on production. Obviously, we're going to have sponsors come in. we're going to work with the Ticula sponsors, but we're going again, the Ticot sales, that's going to charity. We're really allowing some of the athletes to choose. Like if we have an influential grappler and stuff, we're not really trying to leverage the money we have, we're saying, hey, if we get you on board, we're happy to donate a percentage of the Ticot sales to a charity of your choice. So we give them a bit of freedom in who they Well, that's nice. And if this does go well, like what's the, when you say go well, like what are the guidelines, what are we trying to achieve in terms of like going well to do this again? I mean, based on the investment and how much money we can raise for charity is really the goal there. Like if we can sell out Thomas and Mac and we can demonstrate that we can do this in [12:01] a cost effective way, we can bring in more more sponsors. Definitely gonna keep doing this every year. Well, like I said, I think competition is always great. And I think just more eyeballs and more people pay attention to it is great for the sport. Obviously, I love Jiu-Jitsu. And I think, you know, the athlete's getting paid a million dollars to win first place is fantastic. I mean, because, you know, we both know that most athletes don't make much money off of actual competition. The money that they do make, they usually make in seminars. Only fans. Yeah, holy, that's you. Yeah, that's a lot of underwear I had to sell, you know? Only fans and what else? I guess DVDs. Yeah, I mean, that's the number one revenue source athletes would be instructional. But again, that's like you can win the biggest tournaments in the world It doesn't necessarily translate to seminars doesn't translate to Instructionals really that's the sad thing. It's like you hold certain events so hard that you're like when I win that I'm gonna make it but then there'll be some also like me that never won but outsells you it doesn't make you know I mean, it's like it's not your life's not set if you win one of these events [13:08] But if you win a million as a graph you're pretty well set up especially if you're like a a grappa from a poor country Like a million U.S. and Brazil's gonna go a long long way and also it's it's just gonna elevate the whole profile of the sport Just people knowing that a million dollars is going towards the first place, craftwers. And then like, has UFC Fight Pass had a positive impact? Does that helped at all? For sure. I mean, obviously, it helps so much. Like, my dream's always taking on MMA guys. You know, like they got a cloud, they got the big name. So obviously, UFC Fight Pass helped that happen. But I mean, Tetchies put aacle of sort of professional super fight events. And what is like, like if you fight in UFC Fight Pass, like what is a big payday UFC Fight Pass? I know some of the athletes might get, I don't know how I should say it, Tetsuya will fight kill me, but I mean it's broad, like I could go from 10 to 6 big is really. And again, that's the thing, [14:05] when you compete for an event like a tournament, you might face four guys. Like for me personally, I might face four guys that I could have made much more money facing off in a super fight setting. So really like in terms of the investment, the commitment, the training, the time to prepare for potentially four opponents to win something like $10,000 when if I just had four superfights, it makes so much more money. Obviously, I didn't get the medal. And the amount of money that you're going to spend in camp anyway, just with nutrition, supplements, steroids, the damage to duty of audience. All the jazz, everything, everything. You mean you're spending $10,000 anyway. Your blood pressure goes up, your liver values go up, you push it to the out, you red line it for a thing like IDCC. Well, that is the craziest thing about the sport, is that steroids are openly tolerated. It's probably the only elite professional sport where particularly because of Gordon, because Gordon's been so open about steroids [15:01] that everyone knows that the athletes are on juice. Well, I'm sponsored by a local company called EverTight. And this is the sad thing, I tell people, hey, I'm on TRT and I'm sponsored by them. And no one believes me, they're like, you look so out of shape, there's no way he's just joking. And I'm like, no, believe me, I'm taking turns. Do you look like me? I mean, sometimes, yeah. So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say I'm the worst example of athlete. I don't stretch, don't do any recovery, I don't sleep properly. You don't stretch at all? No, I just go easy the first round. I feel like I'm pushing on my legs. I just hit my ability. I think if you get a bad injury, that's a sign. Maybe it's gonna hang it up, you know? So when you do a little bit of lifting, but man, fucking, I don't even track anything. I'll just be like, oh, that seems like enough lifting for today. Really? Yeah, that's it. Do you ever wonder like if you did like hire like a serious, like strength and conditioning coach and really get after it, it would make a difference in your performance? Maybe, but I mean, like, I mean, if those are millions, I was gonna lie, maybe, but that's a little funny. But it's your whole life. [16:05] I mean, you're a professional jujitsu guy. I mean, I love the technique and the strategy aspect of it. You know, like sometimes when I've lifted or taken more steroids than usual, it's like I'm starting to overly rely on my strength. I love what I love about jujitsu is laying traps, tricking people, making make people feel silly. That's the part I like. Right. Rather than just, I want to look jacks just for me. No feeling for a notch. But don't you think even with the laying traps and just overall your ability to move would be enhanced? It's true, but if I mean if I look too jack and I want to buy the instruction, I said, black, come, fuck and do it, that guy, though. I've got to look like a weathered man man out there. Wow, that's a crazy approach. We got another announcement here today. The biggest super fight in grappling history. We signed it actually. I signed this maybe an hour and a half ago. So I got the contract data. But busted out. Uh oh. [17:00] The biggest super fighting grappling history, really? Yeah, it might be one of the biggest events in... What is the biggest so far? So far, it's probably Gordon and Galval. Yeah, it terms of Val. Hodja Bisesha. Yeah. But now we're talking the most decorated female athlete of all time. Gabi Garcia has put pen to paper to face me on my own event. So we're talking 10-11 time world champion four-time ADCC champion. You have been joking around about this forever. This is actually going to happen. A hundred percent going to happen. We booked that. We signed this contract earlier. So like, I mean, I had to do a lot of things to get it done, you know? What'd you have to do? I had to talk to Gabby a lot. I had to go over there and give her a backdrop. You have to dance with her. I mean, this getting this done, like, she's like a heavy one, staying producing, you know? But I'll do it for the fans. But we got that booked. [18:06] So I mean, she I'll take her on. Wow. I feel good. I probably want to train for I'll be planning this damn event. Say you won't train. I will train that hard I'm happy she's doing it that way. Oh, it took a long time. We've been talking about this for two and a half years Filsing a range marriage or something. I know I was always thinking that it was just. I know we're gonna get, we're gonna get rid of this sexual tension somehow, you know? So we're gonna throw it down. There's one way. Yeah. I mean, that's in the contract if I lose, I have to do some things. Oh no. Maybe sell that on your only fans, but. Oh. Good luck. Good luck. Um, so when this all goes down, are you gonna stream it live and how are you gonna do that? Free on YouTube. Really? Yeah, we wanna put it free on YouTube. Cause like everything I wanna do about this event is to grow the sport. So like, do you just excorings confusing? It's hard to keep up. Some events don't even know the run scoring. And to be honest, I compete in events where I don't even know the rules. You know, I'm just hoping for the best, but this one we're going to do for the lead-up matches, the non-finals, qualifying matches, [19:08] three by five-minute rounds, and we're going to have the judges score according to your traditional judicia. You know, like if you get a good position, it might be a... if there's a four-point discrepancy, something like that. Are you using a specific rule set or are you guys making your own? Making our own one. We want to make it our own one. We want to make it our own completely. So we want to take what you do to guys already know. So we'll have three judges use some sort of pre-existing points system to understand, but we'll have the judges translate into a 10 point mark system. So the MMA fans will understand. So say if there's a, after round one, the guy finishes on the other guys back. The rest stops up. We get out. We have a minute break. That's a strong position. We'll score that at 10-8th. And we'll do open scoring. So, Jiu-Jitsu guys are used to knowing the score as the match progresses. They don't like the surprises. Like MMA, it's the surprise at the end. Jiu-Jitsu guys, they don't want things to be two different. So, we're basically keeping it very similar to what they already already understand while trying to introduce it in a way that's friendly to fans that you [20:06] knew. Because fans that you know what the fuck's happening. And the guy you see he won the round tonight. I wish that MMA had opened scoring because it would expose a lot of really bad scoring. You know where you're at. Yeah. Because there's so many times where it's just not. And the argument against it I think is silly because the argument against it is that the person would coast if they were ahead, but my feeling is that would make the person who's behind really get after it because they know they're behind. You know, and then in fights where you know a guy's ahead and the guy's getting tooled up, that's already the case. There's no, you know, like if like, Adesanya is fighting somebody and he's just dominating the fight. We all know that. We all know that. And the only thing that could fuck him is a bad judge. Some crazy judge. Yeah. And we've seen that. We've seen like two scores that are like, that's right. And then one score, one judge is like, what the fuck was that guy watching? That's the guy we're going to hire for out of that. That guy's going gonna be cheap. Why? That guy's gonna be dangerous. [21:06] Why 10-8? Like, well, I don't even like 10-8 for MMA. I think it sucks. I mean, just for a way that we can grow, like we can have it easy to digest. I mean, I guess MMA is still pretty confusing, but we want MMA fans, we want to steal MMA fans. Like, that's probably my whole strategy. I'll take on guys in the UFC because I know that drug tests that I'm not and I'll be like and they're famous It's like a perfect match up But we want to do that because we want to steal their fans and we're also changing It's very fucking expensive actually every jujitsu event is basically on an elevated stage or just on mats And we have this problem where there's all these weird resets like guys might fall off the stage Yeah, the crashing of the table. That's crazy. So inspired by Karate Combat, we're going to do a rectangular mat space with that angled wall. Because there's nowhere to run. And we're going to call this rectangular mat space the alley. You basically only hit the back alley to fight or fuck. But isn't the angled wall a bit of a problem? [22:03] Like I saw your match with Phil Bro. Yeah. And the angled wall like all of a sudden he's fucked because you're just gonna go down Like it's not like a wall like a wall. I don't like the cage in MMA I've said multiple times. I really think they should be fighting in a basketball court Just make it all matted up have a long red line We're gonna bring it big 30 by 40. It's gonna be massive. That is big. So we heard the possible call up but we threw some angles on the end. Well, punishes them. We wanna punish guys for backing up. Okay. So like again, like you said with the caves, they back up but they remain vertical and guys are so like you can use that angle to not get taken down. But if you back up, if you're running away we want it to be detrimental to you while not having any referee interruption. So if I'm like you said, I see one of the first round 10, 8, I'm coasting, I'm backing up. That guy can chase me and there's nowhere I can go. And if I back up, it's detrimental to me. I want to ask you a specific question about the Philip Rhoffite because he posted his arm down to like against the angle. And I was like, well, you're kind of fucked if you're doing that. [23:06] And then you threw up the triangle and you trapped him. But like, did you train for that? So this is this setup. And this is in karate combat, which is by the way in Austin this Thursday. I'm gonna go down and check that out. Oh, that's a good show. So like this. Like when he posted his arm down, I'm like, oh no, that's honestly, here's the funny thing about it is As in the promoter said to me goes bro, we've got to sell the angled wall for grappling He's like, can you try to submit him off the wall and I was like, fuck yeah, I'll do that But I was like I was like, I got no plans of that They asked you to do it. Oh, they said they said that'd be cool if you could have an overhook, and we can put weight on that hand, they can't lift it off the ground, so we can shoot a triangle pretty easy. So, as soon as I saw him, I've got an overhook here, we've got the Russian tire. As soon as I see him put that right hand on the floor, I was like, we can do something flying. And flying shit, but you throw an angle in there. I'll give it a crack [24:08] Well, especially with everything padded up like that on the walls. Yeah But man me and Phil were laughing before this match like we would you I had a couple beers before this I thought we're just gonna have a good time You got a couple beers before the match. Yeah, Phil said he was gonna drink it to kill a shot to sell the match, but then I saw him put water in his cup. I was like, I'll be a misled here. And then we went out there and I didn't even know the time of the match. There was eight minutes. Then the guys got 12 minute match on my, oh fuck. And then his coach started cornering serious. I was like, what have I got myself into? I was like, better give it a crowd though. We're You really had a couple of beers? Yeah, I do do sometimes, you know. Do you really? Take the edge off, yeah. Does it fuck with your performance at all? You know what? I never know what helps my performance or makes it worse. You know, I never have like... Taking the edge off might help. I think so because I do a long training camp. Sometimes I'm like thinking every day, putting pressure on myself. But like, I finished that match and because I hit a flying thing we just got hammered that now. I was [25:05] celebrating and then the next time I was like, I have to face Lovato next week. I thought, what have I done? So it's like sometimes I guess the John Jones approach, you know, having some fun the week before it takes the edge off. Relaxes me. Ilya Tuporia does that too. He gets drunk on Thursday night when he weighs in on Friday. That's why I don't like what he did to my man, but I respect the drinking of the wine for sure. Yeah. That fight, I wanted to talk to you about that too. I wanted to talk to you about just the Volkanowski fight in training him in general. Like, did you try, did you try in any way to discourage him from taking the market share fight on 10 days notice? Sure. Now, I mean, I'm not involved in that process at all. You know, like, I got the code that was happening. Like, he called me, I mean, I was jet-like at the time. I just got into Austin for a day and I get a call at 4M from Vogue. He's like, I think I have a Maca-Chef booked in two. Were you apprehensive about him taking that fight on such short notice? [26:08] I mean, I wouldn't say apprehensive. I like believing him fully. I knew it would be a very difficult challenge. I didn't know what sort of shape he was into the time I didn't see him for a while. But like I believe in him that he can do it. And it's like I'm going to just do everything I can to get him ready for that moment. And yeah, I mean it is the risk of the game, you know, especially you take a short notice fight like that. He had been training at all. I honestly don't know. I don't think he, like he wasn't in the same shape he was for the previous match. I've filed a previous match. I was down in Wollongong with his team freestyle for like six to eight weeks, helping him prepare for that one. But I mean, this one, yeah, such a one, I don't know. Well, that made it such a huge difference the six to eight weeks, just the fact that he was able to survive on the ground the way he was. And not just that, but just not just survive, but be completely safe. He was never even close to being threatened [27:02] with a submission, you know, and the fact that he was like laughing and all of them punching him from behind and... It's crazy, yeah. I mean, I can't take too much credit for that. The guy just is an animal. He's an animal. Yeah, he's just a monster. So hard to hold down, even for me to hold down. I don't get it. I'm like, fuck, you 145. This shouldn't be the case, Well, also he used to weigh 214 pounds and you still got those fucking tendons from being a big gorilla. That's true. Yeah, the rugby day is that's crazy. I mean, I trained when I trained at his gym, one of the rugby plays come in actually and I was just fucking around rolling with him and he put me in a chin strap and I was stuck. I was like, fuck, thank God these guys might grill money and other sports. I have to do this shit. Yeah, it's a hard sport that Americans don't necessarily appreciate. They don't understand. Like, those are guys that could compete in the NFL. They said they're playing rugby because they live in a different country. But it's... When Volkanovsky fought the first time and he was perfectly prepared, it was an amazing fight. I thought he won. [28:00] I thought it was very close, but I thought he won. I think round two was the difference and I could see round two going either way, but I thought it was very close, but I thought he won. I gave, I think round two was the difference. And I could see round two going either way, but I gave it to Volk. But I was like, when, when they announced it, the rematch, part of me was like, ooh, that's great fight. But the other part of me was like, eee, this is the number one, in my opinion, this is the fight for number one pound for pound, right? I believe Volk won the first fight, although very close. It's, I don't think it's a robbery, but it's very close. And I think that puts him as the number one pound for pound fighter in the world. And then he loses the fight to Islam. He gets caught with that head kick and then he gets knocked out by Toporia. Now he's not even in the conversation anymore. So this is a short amount of time, you know, and then everything kind of falls apart. And I think it wouldn't have fallen apart if not for the rematch. It wasn't for the reason. If he just waited for Tupuria, I think I gotta think that head kick has a factor. I mean, to get brained like that with a shin to the dome, which is the worst way to get knocked [29:01] out, you know, it's so much power in legs. I mean, your legs are carrying your legs are carrying your body around all day. I don't think people that have never been kicked understand how much more power is in a leg. Yeah, I wouldn't know. You get head kicked like that and then you fight the guy who's obviously the most dangerous boxer in the division in the next fight and get KO'd. I mean, yeah, it's crazy. I don't know the, I've had a couple of concussions from grappling like accidents, but I don't, yeah, accidents. Always that one, you know, I'm going crazy, but I don't know really the effects of that. It's so hard to judge like it's like, I don't know what testing they can do, but it's like, they can't do much unfortunately they do they're there are some tests but the reality is every time you get knocked out it's easier for that person to get knocked out again and psychology I think for the opponents like for me coaching valks like there were matches where like even with the fights when like say well take out him in the sub and it's like when he keeps doing [30:01] these impossible things you believe in the the myth of yoga more and more, and how the fight is due to, they go, we couldn't submit him, look how deep we'll take it. Well, it's his heart is just unstoppable. But I think when a guy gets clipped like that, everyone else goes, they suddenly have a bit more self-believe. So I think it's like two factors. Yeah, I think you're probably right. but I think Toporia thought he was going to do that to him anyway, but I was just loved to have seen him fully recover from that. Like when Manipack-yau got knocked out by Marquez, Freddie Roach wouldn't let him do anything for a year. He's like, you're going to take one year off. He's like, this is the only way you have to, and Freddie Roach who has trauma-induced Parkinson's from his boxing career. He's well aware of the impact of brain damage. And you know, it's so tricky because I'm just such a huge valk fan. I just look, I wish I had his ear. I don't know if you would have listened to me, but if I had his ear. I think that's what makes those guys special those that they don't, they're like it's the self belief. 100%. That's what makes you a champion. You cannot become a Volkanowski [31:06] without this unstoppable belief in yourself. Me and him are the complete opposite. Hey, if someone was like, bro, you're probably gonna lose. I'm like, yeah, you make a good point. I'm like, how much do they pay me? We're a complete opposite. And he takes everything super serious, sporting everything. I mean, the thing about your joking around and being silly about it all is like, you are, but your technique is very, very good. Obviously, you are obviously or one of the elite guys in the world when it comes to technique. So it's not, you are serious. Yeah, I mean personality type, you know? Yeah. But I guess we have the Australian bond. He has faith in me, more faith in me than the guy that gave me this, I think. They both probably shouldn't know. What is a walk up to now? I think he's talking about... I think he's in Thailand training at Bangtow with his... So, folks, wrestling coach Frank Hickman, they have a gym in Thailand, so he's out in Bangtow again in some workin'. I wanna get him a grappling match. I said to him, I said man, like if we're gonna take some time away [32:06] cause of the concussions, let's get you a grappling match. And my thought was, how cool would it be to see him and Ortega have a grappling match? Oh my God, that would be incredible. I would just love to see it in that setting cause Ortega obviously struggles to submit him in MMA. Grapping match right with no gloves to yeah, that would be very interesting or take us very good on the ground He's very sneaky too Yeah, so yeah, he's super slick. He pull he catch some crazy shit out there He losing a fight like two three rounds get one look at a guillotine. Mm-hmm. It's crazy No, and his guillotine is fucking death. I mean when Volcanowski got out of that the mounted guillotine his face looked like like a grape and just would not tap would not tap I had no idea how he got out but I told everyone I was like yeah obviously that's me by the DVD and then support his traveling coach I take credit for that he's an animal 99.9% of the world were tapped he's like that in the gym I remember I'll choke him in the gym [33:01] sometimes and he'll go from putting his chin in To taking it out as your grips in there like he'll try and switch it from like I guess like the front choke to the to the Blive vessels he just changes how you choke him and can survive down there. Wow. I don't know how he does it. He should teach me that shit I think it's just his brain to yeah, too tough. Yeah, he's a fucking animal And so does he have a plan to come back? Does he... I don't know what's going on. I imagine it's probably Holloway vs. Toporia. I think that's gonna happen. And then I think I hope personally we get Volks of Grappin' Match. Maybe we get him at this event. I'm hoping we get him, we get some MMA guys at this event. Is he thinking about doing something like that? He has been playing You have to hold a lot of time, right? When is this? This is August 16, 17th. Yeah, so not much time, but I mean, if he's in shape, his training is out of Bangtown, Thailand, get some rounds in. I think it's fine, especially against another MMA guy. They both have the same type of training. You know, it's not like, he's taking on a pure grappler that's only grappling. So do you have a budget to do super fights as well? Actually, yeah. So we're going to start taking sponsors to try and get more super fights. [34:06] And I'm in talks with some legends of the game right now. Like some guys that you'd be shocked. Can you say it, me up. I wouldn't say any names, but potentially, I'll tell you your name. I'm in the age of prime. One of them has a Mexican sound in last name, but I'll talk to you about that. Okay. All that one. Yeah, all the legends. They want so many people in a commada or a time for this. I think they just know, especially when I explain the rules, explain that it's in that. Allie's like the sunken floor. You know, they like that format. Obviously, you throw a million dollars on the Instagram, you get some messages. You know what I mean, you get some, hey brother, what's going on, you know? Yeah, I think people are gonna be shocked at how good Luke Rockhold is. Yeah, he, man, he's so tough. He's very good on the ground. I remember when he got widened down and mounted him and widened him, we could not get up. I was like, this is, his ground game is very underrated because he's just known as an MMA guy. And he's gonna come train with us. He's gonna come to beat him five weeks. [35:05] So he's gonna prepare with us for this event. So we'll watch him and Nicky wrote, kill each other every day. I'll love the watch that shit. Wow. Yeah, I always wondered how he would have done if he had gone straight grappling. Cause the people that I know that trained with him said, dude, I think, he'd look at the guys he's training with, good beabin' Islam, came for Lascaz, DC, all those guys. It's like, people think it's like, it's like an amazing isolation, like those skills weren't translate, they translate, especially with athletes like that. Especially in such a grappling-dominated camp. He's gonna surprise some for. What you're looking for is like, $1 million for first place, $10,000 for second place. I'm like, who's tapping? Right, for $1 million. Yeah, I think what we're going to do, I haven't finalized this yet, but I think if you're in a submission in the round ends, we keep going. Get out of this arm bar to join the team. Look at that one. I don't get any money out of that. [36:06] How bad was his arm fucked up after that? That arm bar was so tight? Well, that was the funny thing, right? Is that what's the prize of EBI? Well, he had some, if I had submitted him, I would have won 15K. And I think he had only had two submissions in regulation. So he was, he only made 10k so I like we could have made a business still there for a very long time just let it go but man I he's on popped on the day said it was fine next week I shot we both competing in another event again and there was like three four locker rooms and I'll I would just travel by myself I wouldn't even have a coach I just post an Instagram story who can corner me for this event like the one one against Gordon had Denny Prokobos and he was saying 10th planet stuff to me and I didn't even know what language he was speaking in the corner. All right. So I was cracking control. Yeah. He sang do these things. I'm like, what's happening, bro? And then I shopped to this next event, yeah, Kassai grappling in New York. [37:05] And of all the locker rooms, I know how guys and I'm just like this a bit weird, like how this guy known by last week, then he choked me and now it's just me in a locker room with him, I was very awkward but then broke the ice and came in the train the next week. And you were with them for a long time, you were with them for like what, five years? With Danahe? Two years. Two years. So what did start before Puerto Rico? Yes, yeah, I lived in New York for, oh, I mean, man, my memory's hazy, but we did Puerto, we survived Puerto Rico for six months, and before that was, I would come and go from New York. I'll split with a team two and a half years, but yeah, things get weird out there in the jungle, you know? Yeah, nips down style. Well, everyone's confused as to what happened with you guys. That's what like there's no real version of the truth. We got a book deal. We got a movie deal coming out. And now I'm gonna exploit that story to the bitter hands. You have a book deal for real? No, I'm checked. But I could. The story's weird enough, you know. But what happened with you guys? I mean, there's so many things we really can't discuss, you know? A lot of problems, obviously, a lot of problems. [38:06] Obviously, two brothers split up. It was gonna be some serious issues there. Mm-hmm. But yeah, it's not really my place to say, but hopefully one day it comes out. I think it'll be an interesting story. Who knows, this shit might kick things off. It might be well both three again. So when you left, like how did you leave to start your own place when you guys started B team was at the plan all along? Now, I honestly never even wanted to start a gym. I'd already told the guys like at Danahuzz that I was like, Hey, I'm gonna this be my last at ECC. And then I just want to travel around, see the world, visit interesting destinations, teach seminars, like I felt like I'd already built a brand. But then when the team split, I felt like I sort of wanted to help them kickstart something. So we came here, we started the B team. I've been with the B team two or three years, but I'm not there too much anymore. You know, I helped kickstart out. We got the gym. The guys haven't. You know? So like I like traveling around. [39:01] So are you basically semi-retired? For sure, yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously, when you put on, like, if you put on an event that pisses off every other promotion in the sport, it's going to probably be hard to get matches in the future. So I'll probably compete for my own show and that's it. That's the plan we want to keep doing these shows. Well, I think you're going to piss off ADCC for sure by going head to head with them, but I don't think it would piss off fight pass or a fire pass number one. Do you think? Well, I mean, if whoever is streaming ADCCs, obviously, not going to be happy as I was more competition. But again, I still think long-term, this story is going to grow this. What? Yeah. It's interesting story. It's fine. Let's see. Let's see what happens. It'd either be the best event ever or the five festival. I'm hoping for the the former Festival are you are you Besides the Gabby Garcia thing which is you know no disrespect kind of a gimmick fight. Yeah for sure. Yeah Um, are you Done competing oh, we do another match. That's Gabby Gabby will be one day if someone's down [40:03] I'll do a match on the other day as well. We'll see, but I also want to leave it open because I am talking to some crazy big names, and I'm like, man, if we can put that together, like I'm going to try and save some space, but like, obviously, I have to run this thing. But what you can tell me some of those names on the air? It's everyone you can possibly think of. I'll tell you how to do that. This is a potential matchup that I'm working on. That's insane. It'll be the craziest shit ever. Really? Crazy, yeah. You wanna tell me now what cut it out? Yeah, can we do that? Yeah, yeah. I'm working a holy shit. Sorry folks, you can't know. Damn, that would be insane. That would be insane. Wow, is the former, is he training? Training, yep. People have said, man, he feels good. It'd be like obviously crazy inspiration story. I'd love it. Wow. Yeah. That's insane. That's insane. And then it's like Abu Dhabi for a lot of people [41:01] is the Olympics of grappling. And one of the things is it's every two years i mean i remember when john jacke uh... one obeldaabee you know i just started i think this is like what year was this when he started training when he uh... fought obeldaabee early two thousand from it to have a i think i was like a blue belt at the time and when john jacke went over there we're we're just so John Jock went over there we were just so proud that he went over there and he had this advantage over a lot of the key guys and that he only has one hand and so he never relied on grabbing collars. Everything was over hooks and under hooks and he had sort of already developed a no-gee game that he was applying to the key. You know obviously he could do all the key techniques as well but he was more of a no-gey game that he was applying to the G. You know, obviously he could do all the G techniques as well, but he was more of a no-gey guy in the beginning. And it was so interesting watching that style, you know, watching no-gey, which is, if Abu Dhabi didn't do that, and if they didn't have this prestigious event and make it no-gey, I think the sport would have really [42:02] struggled because it's so hard for people to appreciate what's going on with the key. It's very slow and when you see a guy getting choked by a collar it's just... It looks silly, but yeah, but yeah, oh man, I'm so happy I would be able to be exists. I think the inspiration of me to do ADCC was Stuart Cooper's Highlight Rills. Like when I was coming up, like, 2009, 2011, Cimbraleo, Anjagav Alz runs, like that, inspired me. Losing in the game more than No Gilson inspired me to chase the No Gil Dreams. But like, I'm following in Eddie Bravas for steps, you know, we both did ADCC, couldn't win it. We have our own invitational. But yeah, I, thankful have a career as big as it is without ADCC. But do you feel any loyalty to ADCC? Like you're kind of fucking them, right? I mean, I feel loyalty to the athletes. I think like for what we do and how much, how much bigger the sport is now we should be compensated better, you know? Like, and that's sort of why I've taken a massive risk in doing this. [43:01] I appreciate what you're saying, but if ADC is not turning a profit, like the idea of composing the athletes more, I mean, they have essentially made stars out of so many of these athletes, and by because of that, by the fact of that, they've profited. But therein was the argument, and the argument is that I believe an event of that magnitude should turn a profit. I'm going to do it myself and see. Obviously, I could be wrong, but based on the production and the things we've paid for thus far, I don't see how you couldn't run it in a profitable way. Obviously, we're giving away 100 times as much for two divisions. But, man, if they had even upped it to 20k, you know what I mean? Let some token gesture, like if we're going from a basketball court with a hundred people in there to selling out team mobile. Like if there's room for a fireworks show, if there's room for dramas, I feel like there should be some room in the budget for the athlete pay. [44:01] To the crease. No that's a good argument and hopefully by forcing by this you guys will like inspire them. And the argument is about making stars like it's true it's true it's true obviously get a huge platform but you could win and not become a star. You know if I know plenty of guys well not plenty of guys but I know a few people that have won ADCC but really like. No one knows who they are. Yeah that, that's crazy for me. It's all go to the seminon, it'll sell out just because of just fucking gay jokes and stupid jokes all the time. And I'll see real champions that can't sell out a seminon. So if we can make an event that those champions can make some real money and I'd be super happy. Well, I think you're also your popularity is increased because people know that you coach Volkanovsky and you work with MMA athletes before. Do you plan on still doing that? For sure, yeah, for sure. Love Volkanovsky always be there for him anytime. I mean, obviously MMA's got a lot of crazy individuals in there, but like to give up the time to work with the correct athletes, [45:00] I will always have time for some of the real good guys out there like obviously easy awesome I'd always make time for Izzy Jack Della from Perth Like guys like that just super cool guys. I'd always find time to help him. Yeah Jack Della What a big when he got over Gilbert Man, I still moves off him. I remember when he went in the contender series He hit like a monkey comey reversal in the first round of the contender series fight And I was blown away by his grappling and I've been watching it since and he's reverse with Gilbert Burns. It's crazy. I've trained with him and I'm just like I still move from him. Like he's man. He's so good at grappling. Yeah, he's a very good at striking too. He's in my opinion, he's like one of the best in the sport at mixing up shots from the body to the head. Because so many fighters for whatever reason are head hunters. And because you can not go out with one shot, but Jack is so good at mixing shots up to the body and to the head. He just breaks guys down. Yeah, it's amazing, scary guy. I was lucky actually, because before the Tuporiify, we were able to sort of link up. [46:00] So it was like he came out to Willem Gong and trained, Izzy came out at the same time so I got to watch Jack Deller and Izzy mixed it up and then trained with folks and for me even as MMA fan it's like I have to pinch myself sometimes and be like wow that's amazing. He's just like putting on this thing when I'm talking to these guys about superfights it's the dream as just a grappling fan I'm just thinking oh what could we do who could we convince into this event? You know, like just from a pure fan perspective, it is pretty fun No, I'm sure it's it's gonna be interesting to see whether or not this can work Because a lot of people have like looked at the UFC model and said hey athletes should be getting paid more money And so they put on these events and none of them are profitable I mean maybe Bellator was and they sold Bellator and then there's the PFL. I don't know how they do financially, but they have the same sort of similar thing. They have a tournament. At the end of the tournament, the guy wins a million dollars. But my point is, right, is like, if you're an Olympic champion or if you're a UFC champion, it has so much prestige that every single person in the world knows what it is. It has this intrinsic value. Yeah. If you say you're an IBGF champion or an ADCC champion, [47:08] a very small percentage of population know that. So it's like, that's a case in point we've put on a tournament with much more money. Everyone jumpships, because they know that's money whereas obviously Olympic gold medal, that's timeless. That's crosses all sports, you know, that crosses into culture. How many guys are jumping ship? I mean, I'll tell you afterwards, but... So is it public that they're jumping ship or are they not talking about it? Well, we got 16 spots spots in under and over and I'm navigating through who wants to be in there. You know, 16 spots spots each so 32 total. So I'm trying to navigate to the best guys we can get and it's like everyone wants in, you know? Really, so no one's worried about the repercussions or the blowback from ADCC? Now, because I think they see it as well, I could get the money to show. [48:01] Like I mean, so the TACA brothers, local Texas guys, some of the nicest kids ever, you know, and they were the first ones to reach out to me. They wanted the trials. It's been 80 CCs been their dream their entire life and they just hit me up because no one believes anything I say unfortunately. It's like you make too many jokes every once in a while. He's full of shit. But these guys were like, man, is this real? And I was like, yeah, it's real. And they're like, well, even if I have to deal with the consequences, even if I have to go back and win the trials to qualify again, I want to show the million to take, and then I don't even talk about themselves. I want to take care of my family. And I'm like, wow, that's a super cool motivation to do this. They're willing to risk it because they'll fight their way back in. Well, we'll see. But I think best case scenario is that ADCC recognizes that there's competition and they have to raise up the amount of money to get the athletes. Maybe it'll just elevate the profile of the sport enough so that's profitable still. Yeah, it's a good experiment. [49:00] Press stage versus... But why do it the same weekend as them? Well, the athletes to make a stand, you know, are they together? Or, you know, what is the motivation here for these guys? Yeah, for the money's the motivation. Money is a shot. It's sort of making a stand, but it's making a stand. Money is more important in this organization that's propped up the sport for 20 plus years. Well, there's other athletes that say a million dollars is easy to make. You know, yeah, you mean that? It's easy for Gordon. I mean, Gordon makes a lot of money. I mean, Gordon makes a lot of money through the structural notes. Oh, it's just from dominating for all these years. But again, like a million for most guys, like I mean, you grow up in Brazil. You know, you like millions, not easy to make by any means like especially like the instructional market is predominantly English speaking people They're the ones that are gonna pay the highest price so it's like us that speak English Have a huge advantage in that area like even me personally just for having an accent. I'm a little Americans like wow He's fucking smarter. That's why we use people like you for infomercials. Yeah, exactly. They take it I mean little mop John Denny you throw a kiwi accent on it. Yeah [50:07] He's obviously smart guy, but that adds points for sure. Are you still close to him? Do you talk to him? No, we don't talk. So he's upset about this. I don't know. I've run into him a few times with shake hands, but you know he's general demeanor. You don't really know, like, you know? Yeah. I look back See, there's nothing I've come in. But I held him hard a few buddies in New York, you know, some missing women. But we had a tight bond. He's a unique character. I mean, he seems like a guy from a fucking movie. Like, he doesn't even seem like a real guy. You know, some professor of philosophy, a Columbia, who becomes obsessed with Jiu-Jitsu, sleeps on the mats, teaches everybody, and forces everybody to train 365 days a year. Yeah, that's an interesting fellow. What was it like doing that, like the 365 days a year? I mean, I wouldn't do it. You know, I would be like, well, it's taking a day off. Let me have a day to relax. I wouldn't necessarily do it. [51:00] I mean, it was a lot of training though. He can't like, he wanted it to be your life, you know, like, and obviously it should be, but a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure to be a part of that team. Did you talk to him about the philosophy behind those decisions? I mean, we had a lot of discussions, I think, like we were actually really close because I'm from, like he's New Zealand, I'm a straight, I'm from his part of the world. So a lot of the time Australians visit, he actually has a tight connection with them because we have a lot of things we can relate on. So we, I mean, we talk all the time. I'd probably, unfortunately, probably me and Nicky Ryan were two of the ones he was closest to before the team split. Hmm. And when you guys were training there, how beneficial is it having a guy like him around? Super beneficial and also not just because of who he is and how smart he is, but like he basically approached it like an MMA coach. You know, like MMA coach is always watching. He's always guiding your training. Most you do to coaches are participating. They teach you a few moves. They roll with everyone. So to have a guy that approaches it like an MMA coach where he approaches it with that level of professionalism [52:06] Watching making adjustments. I think even something as simple as that is a huge benefit Yeah, I think so too also a guy who's Physically impaired where he can't compete, but he has so much passion for it that he pours it all into the athletes Yeah, and I think what made him so brilliant as well is obviously his college and university. He knows how to study, he knows how to take notes on everything, he knows how to teach. You put him in Hens or Gracie's in New York for 20 years when it was the hub of MMA and grappling. Guys like Hodja Gracie are passing through all the time. He's basically in this position where he can just watch, train with all these guys, pick up all these details and have it locked and loaded, read it, and teach in a perfect way. Like obviously his game's heavily inspired by Marcelo Garcia. You know that he just takes the really useful things and can articulate it in a way that's [53:03] better than most of the people in the sport before. So I think there's all these factors that have made him who he is and why he's so successful. How much of a factor is this, the constant training, the training of 365 days? You're like, how do you balance the burnout with the discipline? Like, how do you, like, because I think inspiration is almost enthusiasm and inspiration are almost, I think discipline is more important for sure, but there are factors that can't be ignored because when an athlete loses inspiration and loses enthusiasm, they just don't have the mental drive to push through like very difficult situations. You know what I'm saying? Like you just lose the steam, you lose the engine. I mean I don't think you should do 365 a year. You know like I think you should peak for events, have a period of time afterwards where you slow down. [54:00] And then when you're not preparing for an event, you're studying technique. When you get closer to an event, you're studying technique, when you get closer to an event, you're refining those particular techniques and skills for that particular event's rule set or opponent or whatever, and we should like go up and down and like, I like it when you have an event, whether you win or lose, you don't train too much after and you have this period where you miss training, and you're like pulled back into it. So I do, and I think, I mean, even like, obviously Gordon's had four sprages with healthy issues, but like as long as I've known him, and we trained together, like there would be time periods where he wouldn't be at training for a week or two. You know, so it's like, I think it's like a myth we should all strive for, but everyone should be entitled to some time off. Did you ever talk to John about that? I mean, I would just take a day off every week, but luckily, I think he had some love for the Australians. Let me get away with some things. He wouldn't let other people do. So I mean, I would be chilling, you know? Does he enforce that? Like the 365 days a week? I mean, I don't know if there's a real strong enforcement, but there's like a unspoken, he'd better be there, you know, like, but I don't who knows what it's like now obviously he's moved to Austin. My memory is probably phasier, [55:08] pretty forgot some things but yeah obviously I'm super appreciative that I had. It was a part of that team but I mean I was with like Lockling, I'm lucky. I moved to Melbourne, it was with Lockling Jarls for a few years, I had a massive splash at ADCC 2019 and then I was with John. So like I've been around some good coaches, you know, so I think I like your position to spite coming from Australia. Not as lucky as others. Like it would have been amazing to be like a Nicky Ryan born right next to New York and go to train with someone with the people in that team or have that coaches. But again, like we're all not that lucky. I didn't even train with a black belt. I was already a purple belt. So it's like we were really yeah We were one exposed cuz I'm from Australia I probably came up with a time period in my city that was more like an older time in the US where black belts were like whoa Never met one. What year did you start training? Oh Probably [56:00] 17 years ago now and even back then there weren't many black belts around? No, when I started training, I just trained with my cousin and he was like a four-stripe white belt. There was like two people on the mats. There was nothing I trained twice a week. I didn't train properly for a long time. You trained twice a week? Yeah, I was just like, I didn't even think, I didn't even know then I was just flipping burgers at Burger King basically. Then I did a psychology degree, just a bachelor's, some bouts. Like I had to work jobs, study end-duty, so these are souls today that get it just trained. I'm so envious of them, you know? Like it's just the sport, again, the sport's growing that much with the sponsorship deals and stuff. So back then, how did you learn technique? Man, I had Eddie, like he's the funny thing. I had Eddie Brava's Monster in the Rubbergaard book. That came to me at a very influential time where I read the chapter about weed. I was like, fuck it, maybe I should start smoking weed. So like, I was like, thinking I'm going to learn some techniques and then I'm smoking weed all the time. [57:06] Yeah, that doesn't work for everybody. It's interesting the wheat thing, because some people think it makes you lazy. And I think you're just lazy. I think if we'd make you lazy, you're lazy. I just, I don't, I don't, it makes me think about the consequence. Like the idea of paranoia, like people talk about weed paranoia, I think it's like a hyper awareness. And you know, Eddie once said this to me, like if your life is shit and you smoke weed, it's gonna feel terrible. But if your life is great and you smoke weed, you're gonna feel good. Like if you got all, you don't have any problems in your life, you know, if you're doing things you're dealing with, if you've dealt with your problems and you're just than weed's good for you. But weed has never made me lazy. It's the opposite. I smoke weed. I always feel like, don't be lazy. Good, good, good, good things to do. You don't want these things fucking with you. You don't want these things hanging over your head. Like that hyper awareness, it's like part of my work ethic. You know, like the like oversight. [58:00] Like someone is looking over me all the time, making sure I can't lie to myself or to other people. Like I have to do the things I'm actually supposed to do. That's my feeling about it. Well, I mean, I read his book and I was like 17 smoking bongs driving a training in the car, having pre-workout getting ready to go to war, you know, like that's basically, they have floats that out on me. But it was good. I think roll it, like rolling high keeps you fluent, keeps you, I wouldn't do all the time. Sometimes I meet guys that are so high that I've just smashed them for a round but they don't want to think but they're so fascinated by that, like the perceptions of sometimes. I think that's possible, true. That's too. But I've always felt like I was like 10%'s, it was quite a few things. You could try a couple beers. I'm scared. Beers don't help me. Like, when I play pool, if I play pool high, I play way better. If I play pool drunk, I'm not good. Oh, really? Yeah, I think with me, alcohol just makes me not pay attention to shit. Alcohol for me is like, ah! I'm not, I'm not a focused person if I'm drinking. I need that for sport that gives me a false sense of confidence. [59:05] You know, that's useful. Maybe one or two beers with drunk. Have you ever competed drunk? I've felt it for sure, you know? Cigina, be actually usually a focused soda or something. So if a fan sees, I'm not soda water man. And you've done that many times were you just to take the edge off? Five, six times. I mean, I was, I had a couple drinks before the lavado match because we had the hell ahead bottle back there. I was like, hey, come on, tell us some sponsorship money, you know? I picked that up, but sadly not. Well, isn't how we're headed home by Dana? Doesn't Dana? Yeah, that was the thing. I was sneak us a bottle back in, put it in the vlog. Um, when you were training and you were learning from books, like, did you have any videos that you studied? Was it like, how did you learn techniques other than just books? I mean, we, I'm trying to make books I had, man. I had like a PJ Penn's book, Eddie Bravis book, like the actual textbooks. [1:00:01] And then I started buying the instruction. I was like I had Caraporation as judo for MMA. I had Ryan Hulls. He really changed the game with instruction was in the early days. So like stealing Liz moves and then I learned about the world of torrent sites and I started illegally acquiring every instruction I could and then we try to self-learn on the mats studying these and then drilling the moves. That's really so I was really self-taught up until Purple Bell, really just focused on using instructions. And then where'd you go for Purple Bell? Then I moved to Melbourne with Lockland Jaws, and basically it was like two and a half years then, two and a half years with John. That's a crazy little amount of time. Yeah, I didn't expect, that's the thing a lot of people obviously they just notice when you achieve something You know, I mean so like I trained by myself a long time before I was able to join any big teams What do you think attributed to your success? I think I mean, I honestly I don't know I put in the work in the early days for sure and then studying studying studying and then just being at the forefront of [1:01:03] the leg lock sort of song you know like I got in the right time. I saw techniques in the G like the Birren Bolo that were just a new technique that would wipe the floor with experience black belts. You could use it on people you had no business beating. Those are the techniques I wanted and I saw the Danahau guys use heel hooks and I was like man if I as a purple belt can submit some black belts I might as fuck it and that's that's the way I gotta go and so how did you wind up training with John and the Well, I mean I would Joe's obviously Australia's far away hard for us to me to keep doing that 16 hour journey back and forth I wanted to stay in America, so I just started doing my camp set That was the best place to do it. It was like a hundred people in the room doing nogy. Obviously it had that DDS squad there that was awesome Dana her focus at that time that really weren't too many places in the world that would take nogy is seriously as those guys How bad was the staff infections going around down there? I got staff every month every month there I'm remember how the fuck is that possible? [1:02:05] I go, I got it under my eye one time and the guy was the doctor was like, well, that's your eye fucked. I was like, oh, it's reassuring. Hey, thank you. But yeah, every month I was on, I remember I used to go trips to Mexico to get some medicine. So I'd go down there by a bunch of doxy cycling, by like 90 tablets of it. I just sit on it, keep tagging them. Used to buy my steroids down in Mexico too. But isn't that, that's probably what fuck Gordon stomach up. The steroids? No, I mean the, the, the, and I don't think the steroids. Yeah, probably, probably everything. Who knows, yeah. The, the anybody, it's definitely not good for you. But when you're on antibiotics, he was on antibiotics for a year straight. Which first of all is crazy because the amount of discipline it takes to train that much while you're on antibiotics. Where people don't know, antibiotics wreck your cardio. Just wreck your physical strength, wreck your vitality. I got staff once and I remember it took antibiotics and I don't think I'd ever taken antibiotics [1:03:00] before while I was training. And when I was recovering from staff, I was like like this is nuts. I feel like I'm 50%. You're at 50%. Like when Luke Rock called beat Chris Wydeman he was on antibiotics. I mean I've taken a lot during matches. I've taken a lot I've been on it all the time. You know lost to matches. You're talking Rex you though right? Yeah I'd bad stuff in my leg like even during that Phillip Brod match. I remember I submitted him and then he had stuff a few days later, I was like, cut you to aesmate. But that was bad when the ductile had to cut that open and like squeeze it out, that was horrible. But I think the more you take anybody to less affect they have on you. So now I get stuff, shower straight off to it. Just regular soap? Right, yeah, I think we have some branded soap in there, but like I think it's just important. Like I mean, we're doing with some people that don't even have a shower. That's crazy. Yeah, someone that I have a quick rinse get out of there. I would see guys do that when they would just go home sweaty. I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. Like, you're allowing that stuff to breed on your skin. While you're in your car, it's hot out. [1:04:08] That was Puerto Rico. We had no showers at the gym. Oh, God. So we'd have a 60 minute drive home off to each class without having a shower. Oh, that's insane. Look over the car, Fabric smell. But was the Puerto Rico gym, wasn't that exposed to sunlight at least? Wasn't the mat exposed to sunlight? Not enough, but you know what? Cause I get in the ocean every day, I think maybe that helped a lot. Oh, that probably helps a lot. A lot of sunshine down there too. Yeah, that probably helps a lot. Sunlight on the mats apparently is a great thing. Like if you could open up garage doors and have sunlight on the mats, apparently that kills a lot of things. Yeah, for sure. I also think sometimes like the overtrain. Like your immune system's just down because maybe you're stressed for sleeping. Yeah for sure. You're really stressed about a match. A lot of people get stuff right on a match because they push the training up. You do the anxiety of the match. They're thinking about it misses with their sleep and then they're just vulnerable to it. When you were training, did you ever monitor your heart rate, check your heart rate in the morning, make sure you're not overtraining. You know what I thought about doing that, [1:05:06] stuff to H-I-V stuff. That's what I thought about. I looked up one of the machines at the time and I was like, fuck, that's expensive, eh? I mean, now I don't want to do anything. I get my blood pressure checked, it's concerning, you know? I almost failed the last two medicals because the Possumance digits. It's not a man. Why would your blood pressure be so high? Good question. I probably too much caffeine Think that's it. I don't know. We should find out but I'm busy traveling all the time. I should look into it. You don't know what's wrong No, freak me out my blood pressure was high now you're freaking me out We'll test it out I mean, I just feel like I've got a survive for for this shit. I understand, but you're relying on your body. That's your business. Your business is your body. I just thought it's a faulty test. You know what I'm like? Faulty test for blood pressure? I think those things are 100%. I'm like, the boss have still there, get a bigger bitch. I don't think they're ever wrong with blood pressure. I was making jokes with the doctor last time I competed in Dubai and I was making jokes [1:06:08] with him and he was just like not laughing at all. He's like not having it a day. The Mexican doctor for Cradi come by, loved it, but not the Dubai guy. Oh, that's funny. I faced that. You know the guy in the UFC that finished Kevin Lee real quick? He knocked him down, the knocked him down, guillotine them in a minute. Oh the last guy. Yeah, his last fight. I was the last name. Renat. Renat. Look how remember his name. Right. He was crazy though, man. He did not want to tap. Adam Buggetrag put him in a triangle. He went to say that. There it is. Renat, how to say that? Fuck a red-off. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. [1:07:00] Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck the the the the way in when I have to do the way in did they get angry with you does anyone know no luckily no one's got an angry at me but it's always a mistake I fucked up a few times it's hard those words are sometimes your mouth just doesn't work right you know it just doesn't come out right I fucked up Umar Nermagomedov's name once when I was after his fight I was like god damn it yeah it just came out like remember I, I got it in sight now. It's hard. Some of them, Zabit was the hardest. Magomed Sharapov. Zabit Magomed Sharapov. That was the guy that I've been fuck, man. I was just really bummed out when he stepped out, when he just decided enough's enough. I think he's a doctor now. Really? I think so. Find out what he's doing. He's a beat Magomed Sharapov. That guy was fucking good man. He did some cool shit. Ooh, he did some wild shit. He was so interesting because he was from Dagestan but he fought like a, you know, like almost like a karate fighter. Yeah, crazy kicks. Yeah, wild kicks man and he could do anything. I mean, crazy trips too. He would do that trip. Oh yeah, [1:08:06] that he sort of led the way with that. Now, folks does a lot of guys try to do that one. Yeah, he was very good at that one particular trip. He's just so clever. So clever and creative and such an interesting fighter to watch. I was a bummed out man like really bummed out when that guy retired. I was like, shit. That's why I love traveling around finding these guys like these mysterious guys like I was in Japan I could have dinner with Gankie Suda. I love that dude. That's the coolest guy ever. Gankie Suda was like a politician now And then he's done it. Oh remember when you used to carry around that flag with all the all the we are all I'm we are all one. What a beautiful guy. So cool man. Like when a fight and then hold this up like we are all one. And then he just retired to pursue becoming a pop star and now he's a politician. He was a pop star? Yeah he owns restaurants. Yeah. Have you seen his dancing videos? No. What's a cool one? Imagine a guy who fights that could probably dance like a motherfucker. [1:09:00] Crazy dancing. G Daisy Dancing, Gengkisudo 1, I forget the name of a crate. Like dancing montage singing does it all. No shit. Wow. I'm not surprised. He's a creative guy. He was creative as a fighter too. Very interesting fighter to watch. He retired and like, he became a pop star to grow in popularity. Like even fighting wasn't his focus. He just wanted to leverage fighting and becoming a pop star to help him get into politics to help people. He really just wants to help people. So those were side gigs to get him to wear his today where he can use his political influence to help people in Japan. Wow. That is amazing. Does he look at him? Is this him dancing? Oh yeah. I guess get first pitch with all his dudes behind them. Oh, a terrible pitch. Yeah, software. Wow. That's pretty cool. He had some crazy, man. He back in that West Side grappling tournament, he liked was hitting some moves back then. [1:10:00] Oh, yeah, man. Innovative today. Yeah, wild, explosive, interesting guy. Just very interesting. I mean, that's the kind of thing about the sport that's so cool is that you get these human beings that are just exceptional human beings that decide to challenge themselves. And one of the most difficult things a person can do. Just like Volcanoesky, like you do a very interesting guy. Because like it takes extreme character and will and discipline to become Alexander Volkhenowski the greatest featherweight of all time. I mean it takes a lot to be that person. And you learn a lot just by being around those people. You learn about human potential. I mean I even learn grappling from these guys. You know people think I show up and I'm just helping them. Those guys are so talented. Like I still shit from them as well. You know just people think I show up and I'm just helping them. Like, those guys are so talented. Like, I still shit from them as well. You know, just, I don't know how they do it. Oh, Vox does it all. But if you learn from Vox. I mean, just the way, like, I really still a lot from MMA fighters and how they turtle and get up from that. Mm. A lot of rappers keeps getting up and they like what is happening? Like Derek Lewis? Yeah, they just get up. I love that. [1:11:05] I stole that for an instructioner name, just stand up. And I was like, Derek Lewis inspired. No, you did do that, right? You did make a whole instructional about getting up. Yeah. Is it because some guys get just too captured with the idea of engaging and grappling and not getting up? Yeah, well well like if a guy gets his Godpastage, you just look to get God back, whereas sometimes it's good to expose your back and just stand up and reset. Whereas like a lot of you just took guys are so scared to expose their back, they refuse to ever do it. So it's like when an MMA guy does it, they don't know how to deal with it. And it's good at dealing with it. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Because you don't think about it. Yeah. Well, it's always like when you have new variables, new variables, new variables into any sort of fighting discipline. Like, oh, this is a new thing that I didn't consider. Yeah, I love that. That's why I love that. You just can be more complicated. MMA is a bit more simple. So it's like, [1:12:02] we can make all these instructions and you did so about all these weird positions like octopus, garden stuff, because you can be endlessly creative, right? And MMA, the consequences are so strong. Right. Right. It's a much simpler game. It doesn't mean it's easier. There's just less things you can do. Well, that's what's interesting is that guys in MMA in general aren't as good at submissions because they have all these other disciplines to consider. It's like when I went from Taikwondo to kickboxing, one of the things that I realized, oh, when people are punching you in the face, there's a lot of stuff you can't do. But if people aren't punching you in the face, damn you get good at kicking. And so these guys who are used to getting punched in the face, there's stuff that they don't have the dexterity, they don't have the ability to do, and I don't know if you develop that, to the same extent. Like when you see guys like Wonder Boy, who started out with Karate, like that guy can do stuff with his legs that the average person can't do, you know, or Yaya, Yaya Rodriguez. [1:13:02] This one's crazy. Oh my god, that guy. He's on my favorite guy's to watch, because this fucking kicks are crazy. They just come from everywhere. Who's he fighting next? That's a good question. Did he just fight? Was Otagra's last fight? I believe was that his last fight? Let's say it pull up, yeah, yeah, Rodriguez. But was just fine at what yaya yaya Rodriguez's next fight is. I don't know if they've announced it. I haven't heard anything. Yeah, it's funny when you're in the, when you, friends with a bunch of them, they fight it sometimes they let you know they'll fight. It's not been announced. You'll have fuck up, I'd better not say. Right. Better not drop the news, get in trouble. Yeah, that happens all the time. Yeah, I fuck up Nothing booked. Was it a Tiger's last one? Yes. Yeah. So he lost our Tiger. And before that Volcanowski, Volcanowski beat his ass. That was a prime Volcanowski display. Yeah, that was crazy. That man, yeah, he's just, he's just so strong. [1:14:02] He's like a maller. Yeah, muscle in the clinch. And we worked on a bunch of stuff because of how dangerous your A is guard is. Like he's got a dangerous guard and we had to overcome the fact that like, if you leave space against him, he throws elbows that cut you. So we had to navigate those areas and really it was good. Like a training box for a guy like, yeah, he is awesome because when he's on bottom there's like a big contingent of Mexican MMA fighters have really dangerous guards. Diego Lopez trains out, I think he's from Manaus originally but he trains a bunch of guys there and just aggressive bottom game where if you leave space sectoral bows and if you're close they're trying to set up high guards and submissions so it's like we really had to prepare for how dangerous he is there. He's one of the front runners in my opinion Diego look first of all how the fuck does that guy make 145? Shredded yet. He's just new. Everyone. Hey, he's so dangerous man. You know who do you fight super sedic? You said you stopped him in the first round? Yeah, but before that fight I was telling everybody I was like I think this guy's the guy. I think he's the next guy to emerge. [1:15:06] I wonder who he's booked against. I remember his first fight was like short notice against Mozvar. Yeah, he was. I thought he won. It was very close and Mozvar is undefeated in one of the best guys in the division. But Diego's scary. It's not just that he's good, he's fucking scary. He's intense. From every guy, like submissions, not getting. Submissions, knockouts, and his fucking standup is horrific. Yeah, yeah, you're just climb out Everest. Jesus Christ, yeah, you're. That's the most recent thing I could stop. Fucking relax, bro. He's so tough. He doesn't even look like he's fucking wearing anything. He's got warm. He's got bed watching. Look at he's got a fucking giant pack on, walking around, rocking. That's a good way to develop some cardio. I'll tell you that. It looks fine, but I definitely want someone else to hold the bag, hey. No, that's how you get the cardio. You have to carry the bag on your back. That's all I do. He can't. He can't. Looks fun. I hope you have the mountain, those guys. Yeah, the Sherpas, yeah, but I think he's trying to get fit. [1:16:06] I think that's the whole idea. But I think it's interesting when a guy like that is just so good at one area, which is kicking and very good off his back submission, but then struggles in a couple other areas. He's almost there. He's like right there at the tipi top, but not quite at the level of the guys that are beating him. Just, but like remember when he lost to Frankie, came back from that and just become a much better fighter, much better fighter. Just people can't even out a couple of times. He almost reinvented himself, like surprised people, you know? That happens so often. Like people counted out Max Holloway. You know, Max Holloway, the last fight with Volk, Volk dominated and Max just said, hey, that was his night. He had a great night. And that is a fact of fighting too. Like sometimes a guy will clip you in the first round and you're kind of not the same. And he, but if you didn't clip you, maybe you would have won. Like maybe, you know, maybe if you like, just engage, you max all the way, gets caught with that jump spinning back kick to the nose [1:17:06] at the end of the first try. Shattered his nose. That's a big factor. Big factor. Doesn't land that. Who knows? Fight was a fucking amazing fight still, even with that shattered nose. Crazy. I was watching that. I was into bio-affercurity combat and I was watching staff at the buffet at the hotel. I was like, everyone will go on crazy. I'll put the laptop down, eat normal, and we're gonna have to ask the fucking craziest fight ever. It was the craziest fight ever. And the last 10 seconds when Max points to the floor, a fight that he's winning four rounds to one, crazy to just call the guy out. We're gonna do that in jiu-jitsu, like give each other a leg, let's fucking go. I don't think that's the same. We just both get broken. Well that's an interesting thing about the EBI rules. How do you like those rules? The rules where, when it goes to overtime, you start either on a person's back or you start from what they call spiderweb, which is psychotrolic, trying to get an arm. I mean, I like anything creative like that that's gonna force people to train those different areas. But the majority of the sport, [1:18:06] especially old school guys don't like it, it's very difficult to get them to compete under those roles. Me personally, I like any role set I can be the guy in. So I had Philippe Penematch and the USC Fire Pass guys were like, oh, what role set should we do? And I was like, I think rules have strategically Against particular opponents, but you know like I like Kyle Bams have planted guy one of the best over tongue guys in the world Like if if I had a match with him I'd be like, huh? We'll just do a regular rules match, you know, right? So like it's it's sort of strategy base Right based on the opponent's strengths like even Niki wrote against Gordon like they went to OT Mm-hmm, and it was fucking close, you know, and it's like that is very stressful. It's exciting. It's exciting. But if guys get submitted in those areas, sometimes people don't consider it real even though it is, you know, they're like lots of overtime victory. You didn't really submit it, but you did. Right. When Nikki grabbed that foot. Yeah, just fucking ripped that eye. I mean, how bad is his leg fucked up still? [1:19:06] You gotta think like that's doing some damage. I just think like what was hilarious about that is like he was meant, got his meant to face Vinnie Magalesh and no disrespect to Vinnie Vittys just had a later stage of his career, right? Vinnie when he was young was a monster. It was incredible. And then it's like two days before they flipped the script and you got Niki wrote. And you know what I mean? And I just can just pitch a him just getting his foot broken, being like, what the fuck are you? What the fuck just happened? You know? When I watched it, I was like, Jesus Christ, that is a lot of Niki is such a gorilla. It was loud. It was loud. You heard this now, Bay. Sometimes though you get popped and it's so fast that it's the damage is already done and you're just like, well it's already injured, let's keep it on, you know? Right. But it's not obviously some of the submissions are holding tension points slowly breaking, but the ones that are quick. Sometimes guys don't tap because it's like you didn't even have time to process it. Well, what about the one with you and Vinny? Where you broke his leg. That was disgusting. Yeah, that still hones me. [1:20:05] Hey, but yeah, I don't know what he did. How the fuck did he keep going? Why did he keep going? But that's just, you gotta be careful what shit talk he say. Like, I try to be careful with what I say. I'm never gonna be like leg locks don't work. Cause he got put in a leg lock in 20 seconds and it's like, now you committed to the bit, you know? Was he saying leg locks don't work? Yeah, his leg locks don't work. And then his leg exploded, and I'm like, that's such a crazy thing to say, leg locks don't work. It's because he had matches with Gary and Gordon, and they got some pops on him, but he hadn't submitted. So maybe they laid the groundwork for me, but I think it spiro fracture of his fibula. Oh, he's got ankle, yeah, disturbing. Oh. That was where I was like, well, I wouldn't let that happen for a million. I don't know how much child sun and pain you even, it must be more than me. I just think it's as pride, you know, just didn't want to out. Yeah, the fact that he kept going after the leg snapped, that was loud. [1:21:02] That was, yeah, that was that. That was yeah that was that and the second one I saw the bone poking into the skin like if I'd kept going it would have probably like he's whatever bone fragment. I would have come out yeah. I was nervous I was like bro just gotta wait for over time like you just didn't want to tap but then the ref caught it because his leg was dangling. I did it I was the first who hooked and then the second one I baited him where I pretend like I was going for his other leg so he gave me the bad one again but He was laughing as he was like fuck I couldn't have you broke break both my legs That's my multi-part. Oh My god, so you knew it was already broken you well he so My foot hit the ground at the exact second his leg snapped enough So for a second like I felt a little bit of crunching, but I didn't hear it. Everyone else in the room heard it. And then he gets out of it and I was just like, well, this is fucking guys flexible way. And then he says to me, he goes, I think he broke my leg. Oh, no, he said it in the [1:22:01] middle of the man. Yeah, we stopped talking and I'm just like, what's happening here? Right, how strange. And I was like, well, you want to keep going? All right. And he gave, like I ended up back with the same leg. Oh, good. And it was just no resistance. His ankle just did a full, just kept on. See if you can find that, Jamie. That's this light right away? You making me do this. Yeah, very pleased tap. You give him a trauma. I remember watching it with this look on my face. Oh, don't fucking. I just felt bad for him, cause he's a fucking good guy. And I was just like, man, did you not tap cause you Honestly, I don't know, but he came back and competed against Mason Fowler like maybe four, five months later. That's crazy. And it's just like, you're getting some mileage on the body there bro, it's like, yeah, is it worth it? I mean, better than the Tibia, I guess. [1:23:02] The fibula, I cracked my fibula before. It's not as bad, it's a small bone. You know, and they can just let it fix. You know, let it heal up once they screw it together. Oh, and let it break, I'm like, uh-oh. It's a truck, yeah. The noise is bad. I've broken a few legs and I'm just like, right. So here it is. Is this before? The's the first ones with the brakes at the start of match. So he's legs already broken here. So you go to like 20 seconds. Yeah, that right there. So we hit like a 50-50 in there, and you hear it. You might wanna hear that knee down and pull this leg out. See, he's actually in a little bit deep. Ah! Oh, dude! Yeah, so look at this. Oh dude, you hear it. Look at his foot. Look where his foot is. And then he tries to get me. Oh my. I let go of it because I was like. I do not know how he got out of the hotel. He can't let his leg break and then me just out. For the rubber guard, I guess we got rubber knee. [1:24:01] He's huge here too. That was one of Craig's best positions and he got to it with it. Dude, the sound is so awful. The sound of broken bones, I've never, I've never get it like Chris Wideman when he fought Uriah Hall. Oh, that's nice. It was like full power and Uriah checked it and he's seen snap. He hear the snap and he sees his leg bend over like, oh. that's where it's like, it's crazy how people react to that shit where Conor McGregor is still just talking shit. That's fucking hilarious to me. I'm just like, he's such a psychopath. He never missed a moment. He didn't even have the pain killing whistle yet, but he was ready for some shit again. Did you see him partying like a night or two ago? You reckon real? I mean, it doesn't mean he's drinking. He's vibing. He's having his wife. He's got a shirt off because he's having a good time. I mean, it looked like he wasn't sober, but he could just be a fucking maniac. It's wine games though, maybe. It could be that. Yeah. That's why I do with Lovato. I was kept talking about [1:25:00] how his potty know the time and I was, But I was like, maybe it's gonna mess with, you know what I mean? Right, right, right. Here's Connor, and he's kissing his wife. He's throwing, he took a shirt off. He's getting crazy. But I mean, he could just be enthusiastic. I don't know. I don't know. It looks a little fucked up. Listen, I saw a roadhouse, you ain't that good actor. No. Shane Gillis has an amazing bit about roadhouse. You have to see it. Oh really? It's so fucking funny. He's a legend day. I want to get him involved in this. I want to get some comedians coming to him, just shit talking, the grappling gloves, you know? Oh, that's funny. And hilarious. We'd have who know some grappling. Joey Diaz. Joey Diaz would be amazing. Surprising if he's on paper, I'd be thinking of be fucking... Oh, he wouldn't do interviews, I don't think. He wouldn't be good at that, but he'd be good at, like, commentary. Get him in the booth. Yeah, just get him talking shit. Yeah. I'll get people's names up. I'll get him to corner me against Gabby. He might do it. You never know. I ordered hegan in the Alba Dhabi. Oh, you did 2003. He didn't have anybody with him. Oh, it's a Joe Hogan [1:26:08] He said you think that just tell me when the time because like hegan, you know, had been training that much Wasn't the best of shape just let me know what time it was just yelling out with the time as yeah That's what I say sometimes I was about to have a like if I'm the slide. let me know the time yeah let me know if you think I'm burning too much gas or I'm too relaxed and I'm like that's that's the key here right right haven't Joey Diaz in your corner would be fucking hysterical Alex Jones won't do it but I'm like oh that's a tough guy to get involved with the charities yeah foundation with my business partner Seth our foundation is called the Fair Fight Foundation and I'm just like it's probably not good to start it with fighting a woman, but it's a bold man. Well, it's a fair fight though, she's so big. I mean, she might not weigh you by, what do you walk around at? 205, she got a few pounds for me for sure. At least 40. Last night, we were video calling each other and we were both taking Aniv I popped a 50 and she popped a 25 us that you need both not to be me pussy [1:27:12] Like took some screenshots hey, I don't know if I'll release that's hilarious. I'm yeah, I should talk I should talk to get the contracts on you know, you should have joy deas do commentary for that fight That would be the perfect fight for him to do commentary for yeah, just comment Yeah, cuz Joey does do just two. He knows a little bit. He definitely knows positions and he talks so much shit. He's just so hilarious. I'm gonna take it serious, but I am gonna come out in a what tank top smug and a cigarette probably, you know? I'll put it on the corner of the mat and see if I'm gonna finish it before it finishes, you know? Ah Wow. Yeah, well having something like that would definitely be an added element of fun some fun the tournament Sirius obviously guys are going to kill each other and then a bit of a bit of entertainment, you know a bit of a Battle of the sexes I guess you could say Definitely that sort of A battle of the enhanced sexes [1:28:03] Yeah, who's more enhanced though? Yeah, she is. Yeah, for sure. I got to know her stack. I wish what I wanted to do was run an event where we drug tested, but it was anonymous. And just for my own personal enjoyment, I just find out. I want to see who's the levels are. Who took the most of anything, you know? Right. See if there's any hollow testing in there or something? It would be fun to see, like, because Jiu-Jitsu is an open steroid using event. Have you heard of the enhanced games? Oh, yeah, yeah. I was reading about that. I'm having those guys on. So the enhanced games is this, they're going to allow all the athletes to take performance enhancing drugs. And the idea is like, we should have athletes perform to the best way, I mean, I'm putting words in their mouth, but that's scientifically possible. And the best way scientifically possible is like, like here's a, for instance, like this Ryan Garcia fight, you know, Ryan Garcia, he beats Devin Haney, spectacular fashion, looks amazing, pops for Austrian, very low doses of Austrian, which are not going to affect him in terms of performance [1:29:07] enhancing ability during the fight itself. I don't know how we took it or what he took it. I know people have got an Osterine accident like Shogoshan O'Malley got it through tainted supplements. They proved it. It's more than once that's happened. Yo-L. Yeah, I sued. Yo-L. Yeah. He won. Yeah, which is, if you would think anybody would not be fucking natural, that guy. How does he still look like he does? He's the Cuban fucking athlete program. That's how. He's grappling. He's taking a grappling match in Britain against a grappler, Owen Livecy. So we'll see if we have a grappling takes it it's a good question to very good question anything you know i was one of the very best cuban wrestlers ever mean he's a fucking tank yes so what silver medal at the limps at a site that they're right yeah yeah i mean he's a monster man and and physically he's just such an imposing force [1:30:02] like luke rock hold said that it hurt and what would a Robert Whitaker said the same thing He said it hurts when you hit him So he's made out of metal probably hurts when he kisses you as well every knocks you out. Yeah, that was rough That's a rough way to go. Well, you know Luke likes to talk shit and you talk shit to that guy. I know you I like he did this also dancing for the press conference was the best too, picking women out of the crowd. You wanted to take your misses, you'd be like, fuck it and sit back down. I know, exactly. That guy's such a fucking animal. I mean, I really wish he got into MMA earlier in his career. It would have been amazing to see because I think when he entered the UFC, he was in his late 30s. Yeah, how? He's like, he's up in now. He's 46 now. He still looks amazing. That's Randy Ketu. Yeah, but like he doesn't look 46. Like Randy looked like a strong 46 year old. I need that human stack. Yeah, what his stack is not, I mean, I've told this story before for people who have heard it. I'm sorry, but one of the things that happened to Yoel when he got injured, he fought in the UFC and then they brought him to a doctor. He had an orbital fracture and [1:31:06] Some other issues they brought him to the doctor and the doctor said to the UFC said where did you get this guy? And they and he's like yeah, he's amazing right? He goes no you understand it because I've never seen a human being like this before the tendons in his eyes are Three times larger than a normal person. He said his orbital bow and his already healing So this guy's a freak how do I get to that level? three times larger than a normal person. He said his orbital bow and his already healing. So this guy's a freak. How do I get to that level? I think you gotta be born in Cuba. And that's the genetics I'm messing around. And the shitty convicts genetics from Australia. What? I think it's, I just wonder what they do in Cuba for their athletes. Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, without casting any aspersions in terms of performance enhancing supplements. Does anyone want me to find out? Yeah. Go there. Ask them. I don't know. I don't know what they did. But I mean, the guy's like Wolverine. But he's also a genetic specimen. I mean, there's only so much you could do with steroids. I mean, that guy... [1:32:01] I know. I've tried. You don't even live weights, which is so crazy. You're taking steroids without lifting weights. From time to time, you know, just a good lifting program. If you pull up here and there. Yeah, I don't think steroids are going to help you recover and train. Yeah, it definitely helped your well-being, I think. Yeah. Well, if you're training 365, that's the argument, right? If you're training 365 days a year, that's also the argument for like, Tour de France. You know, I've heard it argued from people that really, or experts that you're actually healthier to take steroids and perform sedancing drugs to do Tour de France, then you are without it. Because your body just can't recover without it. It's just so grueling, it's such a brutal race. It's a reason why so many of them are blood doping, so many of them are taking EPO into testosterone. I always wanted to try EPO. Actually, like, some people criticize me for saying I take steroids in YouTube, but the way I look at it is the kids, the next generation, they're gonna take it anyway. I at least wanna put out my exact stack and I just wanna send it out as almost like, [1:33:07] it's like drugs, just say no, doesn't work. It's like, I wanna let them know I'm taking a safe amount of deducted guidance and that it's not a mystery where they think in like I have to take one gram a week and all this stuff to compete at a high level. So it's like a middle ground. Obviously get criticized for it, but it's like the other option is they don't know what a high-level athlete's second and they fucking ruin their body taking crazy dosages. Well, it would be interesting, like, what would Jiu Jitsu look like if steroids weren't legal? I mean, one of the things we found out when you saw it came into the UFC, even though there was previous drug testing, it was really only during the weigh-ins. Which is kind of just an intelligence test. It's all it is. When you look at Alster over him versus Brock Lesnar, the idea that either one of those motherfuckers is clean is crazy talk. That's crazy talk, especially Alster. Alster was, he fought, when he fought 205, when he fought, like back when he fought Chuck LaDelle, 205, and then look at him at 265. He gained 60 pounds and he looks like a fucking superhero. [1:34:07] Uber him, like those days, like when he won the K1 Grand Prix and when he won the beat rock, I had a heart and stuff. Oh my God. I love it when they said the old days what that was an intelligence test because many guys still failed that intelligence test. Well you know what it is? You know how it is, Like you're in gyms, you have gym bros that are coaching you. They don't really know what the fuck they're talking about, but they say a lot of good big words. And you go, I know that I was out of the past to test. And you rely on these meat heads to try to pass the test. You need a big to con day on the line. Well, there's people that have everyone's clean. I think there's probably some really, there's so much money involved in MMA now. There's probably some really sophisticated scientists that are working with elite athletes and they're developing protocols that are either undetectable or they have a short lasting, [1:35:01] which is probably why you saw it wakes you up at six o'clock in the morning. The know, the idea is like to catch you while it's still in your system. If you have short acting stuff that's... Yeah, look, a test propy and I do something like the water nice. Yeah. Like, weren't they doing that in baseball? They were taking like testosterone gummies and the idea is that they metabolize so quickly that you get their effect of them, but then they're out of your system by the time you get tested. I tried those, it tasted like shit, you know? Well, I don't know if they didn't think, but I mean, it's fucking gummy with testosterone and how could it taste good? Throw it out of the tongue. What is a daze like? Just bad, hey. Like chemical? Yeah, like it's just there a while. I remember I was trying to get legal steroids in Australia when I was coming up And I just couldn't do it. They just my doctor gave me the testosterone coming so I was like fuck this shit It's like I felt like I wouldn't work in Australia was what are the laws like? I mean here any I think any GP can prescribe testoster in Australia You have to be like an endocrinologist. They they added a layer to it and there it's hard to [1:36:05] To see an endocrinologist. It's gonna give testosterone to a young healthy dude. Guys back there would do sort of crazy shit. They're not sleep for a couple days. They beat off a bunch of times trying to crash the levels. Go to the blood check. Dr. Zagato, your test is low. Yeah. Well, another thing, the problem with the test being low. This is what they found when they they did it they had testosterone use exemptions in the UFC for a brief amount of time Few years and those are the V-torbal for years, you know and the problem is When a guy's done steroids this whole life has ended consistent is fucked up already So you go in there and they test your testosterone level and you're like wow your levels are super low Like you need testosterone like thank you But the reason why they're low is because you've been on steroids your whole life. Yeah, your body doesn't make it anymore. Yeah, I mean, you went, you look at V-Tor from the early days, like V-Tor in UFC 12 when he fought Scott Farozo and Trey Telegmin, he weighed like 200 pounds. You know. They used to call him V-Tor Gracie you right there Victor Gracie. I was training at school. Why'd they throw the C in there? [1:37:06] I don't know it was okay. Okay Victor. Yeah, it was I don't know I don't understand it I don't know why they did that and I know that I think they were threatening to sue him if you use the Gracie name I think Someone's detective of that shit. Yes. I think it was Orion. Orion was very Representing oning that. Yeah, would you get that? Some brand sanits me. I like it. Though it's dope shirt. I should remember the name. He was the fucking man, huh? What's its name? The shirt company? I feel bad for him. Oh, fuck it. People find it. Is it on the back? Anywhere? A little label? Can't say anything. Let's see a tag. Label us. What is it saying the bottom? What was it there? Is that the name? What do we got? What does the bottom say there? OG says Hiction. Hiction. Oh man, I feel bad for him. By the cool shot, onerin the OG. Yeah, it's pretty dope. He is the OG. He was the fucking man. Cool motherfucker. Yeah. Do you ever train with him? I've never tried with him. Never met him. Really? Interesting dude, man. Very [1:38:09] interesting dude. I got a chance to watch Colosseum. Remember when he fought Funaki? Was that his last one? Yes. Yeah. I got a chance to watch a footage of that with him in his house. Oh, the guy came to the gym, right? Was it the gym challenge? No, I didn't watch that. He didn't show me that. Someone's gonna have that. He's got it. We gotta get that. I know, I'm like, release that, bro. Why don't you release that? That was Yoji Angel, right? Yeah, yeah, he came to the challenge restaurant. He just beat the fuck out of them. And he goes, yeah. And he's like, if we are competing, when your tab is over, if we're fighting, when I'm done, I'm done. I decide. You just beat the fuck out of that dude. That's some scary shit. I feel sad for me and I go, Parkinson's, right? Who does? I believe Hicks and Dust. Does it really? [1:39:00] I believe so. No kidding. I didn't hear that. Yeah, I saw a cure, a greasy announcement something about it. See, I always wonder, because we talked about Freddie Roach. Like, that's trauma-induced Parkinson's. And, you know, Hickson didn't get hit a whole lot in his career, but he did get hit. You know, I always wonder. Yeah. Hickson graced you fight against Parkinson's. I'm not scared of death, but quitting is unacceptable. Rolling Stone magazine? Whoa! This is Rolling Stone? That's crazy. That is crazy that there's a Hicks and Gracie article in Rolling Stone. That's amazing. Wow. Fuck, man, Parkinson's. I hope we get a chronback. I hope so too. You might come back to grappling maybe. Well, I mean, his last fight in MMA just looked like he was just trying to pull guard and work off his back and it's just he just didn't look like he's prepared. I don't know a place he could do that. [1:40:01] Yeah. Do you think he would be willing to be? I mean, he was such an elite grappler. The Gary Tonin match. What a fucking match. That was holy shit, man. Crazy as shit ever. That was before Gary was training with the Donner or Desquad, right? Wasn't it? I mean, good question. If we saw the match, we'd see he was in the corner because there's definitely before the leg lock days. Yeah. This was a long time, Gary was dominating that fight until the very end. Back in those days was crazy. I still miss Eddie Cummings. I'm like, what happened to him? You know what I mean? Right, what did happen to him? That guy was good. I've tried to catch up with him a couple times in New York, like reach down. I I just want to have lunch with the guy I'm like, but he's like, he just left the grappling well, disbandaged. What is he doing? No, I don't think anyone knows. He came back, I saw you in a couple videos, he came back to Hanzo's and trained a couple times, but I think he doesn't like any meteor attention and like it's so cool to round on Instagram and he just vanished again. Really? Yeah. So crazy He was on a elite grappler too. Well, he was one of the very best of the leglock guys in the early days [1:41:06] He was scary. We'll copy him. He was scary scary. Did Super smart like a really intelligent guy and now yeah, he ended up with a Tavi of Odain, right? Mm-hmm Yeah, they started dating when she started training at at Hanzo's and I don't know what happened She can be I think she could be doing grappling a lot as well. Yeah, she had fucked up knees, man. Her knees were all blown out. I remember trying to tell her to get surgery. To fix him off. Eddie kept bragging, and brother not. I don't know, but she really, I think she had at least one with no ACL. Where that's crazy, yeah. Doesn't Nikki ever fucked up, Ne? Nikki Ryan? Nikki Ryan does. Man, Nikki Ryan gets injured every three minutes. You know what I mean? He's made a glass unfortunately. I came back trying within one round, injured him the other day. I'm just like, fuck, what, how does this happen? I felt bad. It's a bit of a weird scramble, but he just beat JT Taurus the like biggest win of his career. Yeah, he looked great in that. That was beautiful. Yeah, he was trying to real serious for that But doesn't he have like one ACL that's gone? Yeah, yeah, I remember [1:42:09] He tore his ACL and the doctors were like hey, we're gonna tempt surgery or you can do rehab only So he just did nothing and just kept training He didn't even rehab the thing I'm like bro do something. Yeah, he's wild That's not wise for the future though. No, I know. I mean, I think he had 95% of his meniscus removed in one of his legs. Oh, God damn it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure one surgeon was like, I want to do that. You're too young for it, buddy. Got it done. Well, you know, they do meniscus replacements. Oh, they do that. Yes, they do cadaver meniscus replacements, especially with young people, it's really effective. He's got some mileage in the body, so it's like his knees. God, I hope he does it. Because he can do it and it'll actually take. We got him in this, though. He's going after the million. Better be exciting. What a fucked up knee. There's always something fucked up with him, you know? [1:43:00] He's always injured in some way. Well, isn't that the case with so many elite combat sports athletes? It's very rare. Other than boxers, it's very rare. There's a story going around about this NBA player who got a menistka's from a donor. Is that mean it's a cadaver or was? Because they don't say cadaver at all in this. No, that's what they mean. They mean a donor. Yeah, I said, it's effective. It's possible. For I think there's an age where they don't recommend it anymore because of the lack of blood circulation. But I always wonder for who though, like when they say you know you can't do it after 40. But for who? Like for the regular person who is a 40-year-old, who doesn't work out and is not physically fit, or if you did that to say someone like Steve Amy Ochoch, could he get a meniscus replacement when he's constantly training? And how much does your age affect blood flow to that area? [1:44:04] What is the factor? It doesn't make sense. If you still have a great VO2 max, you're still very fit in your super healthy train all the time, you obviously have great circulation. Like I don't understand why at a certain age, they wouldn't recommend it. I wonder if it's based on averages. Like you take the average 50 year old guy and you give it to him and his knees still fucked up because his body didn't heal properly. But like with peptides, with all the things that are available today and stem cells, I wonder. Yeah, it's gonna be some things you do to stack the deck and you get favor for that fish. So once you remove your meniscus, I have a meniscus was scoped on my left knee and it's always gonna be fucked up There's always like something. Yeah, it's just grinding right well, it's it's not all of mine is gone It's only in a corner But I I suffered a what's called a insufficiency fracture where you're Because there's no meniscus I crash skiing and I cracked my bones together so hard, [1:45:06] that it cracked the top of my shin bone. Skating scares me. It's the snowboarding scene. That was my last time skiing. I got a concussion, I fucking bang my head off the ground, real hard. And I was skiing around this corner and this lady didn't know what she was doing. And she was like, Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr So I chose falling down and I fucking bang my head so hard. As my head banged, I'm like, oh, that one counts. I was like, that's a real hard. No, it would have been bad. It would have been bad because she wasn't very large and I was, No, Gabby, I wasn't going slow. I want to see her on the slopes. It would have been, yeah, bro, that's like a bowling ball. [1:46:03] Just fucking flying down the hill. I mean, all that weight, the momentum of all that weight. I imagine when you're really big, like my kids ski and they ski so easy, because they're light. And like, weee weee weee, but the heavier you are, like the more fucking momentum is coming down. Well, it's in the injury skiing side. Probably not. Yeah, my friend Shane Dorian, he blew his fucking knee out, snowboarding, he hit a tree, torched his knee, had to get it reconstructed and stem cells and all that jazz. He's good to go now, but it took a long time before it was good. And I was to imagine you're a professional, you're a professional surfer, one of the best in the world, big wave surfer. I mean, he's a fucking monster. Like, I would do everything to preserve my goddamn knees, but he loves snowboarding so much, he's still back at it. Like, you're insane, man. Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. You'd risk your career. Your career? Well, I think he's kind of, his career as a competition is kind of over. You know, he's just kind of a representative of a bunch of different brands. And I don't know if he competes. I mean, Kelly Slater still competes, which is crazy and still wins. [1:47:06] Kelly still trains, yeah. Yeah, still trains you get to. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose that's risky for yourself to go there too. Oh yeah, that's gotta be risky. It's gotta be risky for everything. Like I know guys who play musical instruments and they fucked up their hands and she just broke it up a finger. I'm like, yikes. You're like tattoo out of sedgings. It's like, maybe don't train. Yeah, I mean, if you break a hand, and that's the hand you play guitar with, and now you've got these fucking gnarly ass fingers, and you're still trying to move at the same speed. Yeah, I had some of my fingers. One time I got my thumb stuck up here in grappling, and another time, my finger got stuck on the ground and went straight up. I remember that. That was in Puerto Rico. All of the tas have broke my hand. And I went to the hospital in Puerto Rico. We go to the X-ray. I'm waiting around for hours. And the guys like, it's fun. No breaks, nothing. So I leave. And then I'm like, my hands fucked up. So I go back and end up getting the X-ray and I can see it's broken and I'll end up getting it treated. I just posted it on Instagram. I was like, any hand surgeons, what can I do for this? And we just spoke [1:48:09] about it on Instagram. What did he say to do? I just left it like this for a while. Didn't really. Didn't use it too much. So was it a fracture in the sense where they didn't have to bolt it together? Yeah, didn't have to. It's the same one when people punch a wolo something. Oh, okay. Like, yeah. The blind down here. So that one didn't need anything. But I mean, I just, I was, a lot of Puerto Rican stories like that where I was like, yeah, it's not broken. I can see it's broken. Not so good medicine over there? No, not at all. Yeah, no, that was a, that was a where I've gone to the doctor and they're like this is staff I need any products, but they don't want to be told Like by some fucking idiot that they're like diagnosing themselves giving themselves the treatment So they resisted I know resisted on you. Yeah, really I've had doctors not give me any what X and then it's going to Well, I tell you it's not stay there like now you're fine. Just put some cream on it boy. Oh [1:49:08] Boy, yeah, but I get it They probably have guys coming all the time to that block give me this give me this right But no one's coming in to get antibiotics for fun. Yeah, I mean that's not like painkillers. No, yeah, it's I guess I can control my bit, but yeah I just have to deal with like people coming in. Oh, my back. Yeah, my bag. Give me some xana I'm so much anxiety. I can't deal with people coming in. Oh, I hurt my back. Yeah, I'm not bad. Give me some xanax. Oh, I'm so much anxiety. I can't deal with this. They just freak out enough in the office. Maybe they'll give you something just to calm you down. That's a good play. Really depends on the doctor. Because some doctors are just a little loose with it. Yeah, sure. I feel like honestly, the more expensive the doctor, the better your chances. Oh yeah. Getting to what you want. Oh yeah, I would imagine. They probably have some sort of fucking deal too. Like, you know, my wife's mom was a nurse and she would explain to me how the whole pharmaceutical rep thing worked. And Brigham, Brigham from Wasteland, used to be a pharmaceutical rep. It's like, bro, like the relationship they have with doctors is like, it's so slippery. [1:50:05] I'll get them to prescribe. Yeah, it's so slippery because, you know, even if they're not paying you and they do pay people, but even if they're not, like, this is your friend. They show up, a, Brigham was like, I would show up with their kids softball games. I knew everybody's name. He'd become friendly. They want to prescribe your drugs. You're a good guy. That's wild. Yeah, it's fucking creepy. If I like us, the opioid epidemic and stuff like that, right? Oh, that's exactly it. Did you ever watch that Chopin killer on Netflix? I started by never finished it fucking lazy. Oh, it's so fucked up. How those people are not and jail is insane. Not only did they bullshit people and get people to prescribe these things, but they've ruined. Who knows how many lives? Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions dead from opioid overdoses, and then the amount of lives that are destroyed [1:51:01] because of those things. Families wrecked everything. And they tricked people. They tricked them into doing drugs that are destroyed because of those things. Families wrecked everything. And they tricked people. They tricked them into doing drugs that are gonna be... They just paid a fine, right, massive fine. That's enough? Yeah, but not enough. It's also, they part of the fine was that they were gonna avoid prosecution. Like if they paid, you know, X amount of billions of dollars, they would avoid prosecution. But I think then pain killer came out, the documentary came out, the Netflix series. And then they kind of withheld that. And I think one of the guys who was the main guy for the FDA that was responsible for green lighting, um, oxycontin and oxCodone. That guy, they found him. He was at like in a small town in New Hampshire. He's hiding away. He was hiding. Yeah, I mean, they paid him off. And this fucker was out there roaming around and then they found him and- He's like Epstein's girlfriend, hey. Except she's in jail somewhere. Yeah, they got her eventually. [1:52:01] Yeah, eventually she's gonna get out and she's gonna fuck go swimming and drown or something Yeah, Jerry, Jerry. I mean that'll be me after this tournament. I can't I do worry about that. I Mean it should be alright That's not comforting should be alright. Yeah, I mean it's just a bit of friendly competition It is that but it's also like you're specifically going head to head. Like if you had done it a month earlier or a month later, I don't think we'd have the same issues. I don't think we'd have the same impact on the sport though. We do. I think you would. We'll do it a month after as well. Well, cool out my buddy. We need another million brother. Let's go on again. But you want to do it once a year, right? You don't want to do it more than once a year. Yeah, I'm on the phone, don't stop. Hey, talking to people about this event and stuff. Got to explain everyone the rules set. Yeah. And becoming a promoter. I mean, do you have to hire a staff now? Do you have to hire all these coordination and stuff, but me I'm just talking to the athletes coming up with the roles sort of [1:53:07] So he does all the coordination like hiring the staff making sure the event is well run Yeah, because I would imagine if you've never run an event before like that's obviously you can't call Abu Dhabi and ask for tips You call it I should you call it Bravo. Yeah, I spoke that him. He loves it. That's like. Yeah, you're very excited about it. Little hat tip to him with the name as well. Yeah, I think the having something where there's more money involved is always good. It's just like the timing of it. It's like when to do it. I just if you'd asked me out, I said, hmm, I still gotta watch the finals, you know? Well, yeah, true. They still gotta watch the finals. They get to watch the finals, but you won't have the same people competing, because if they're gonna compete on Friday and Saturday, that precludes them from being able to compete in Abu Dhabi. If I mean, yeah, for sure. Do you want to go Maddo in 10k or the million? Right. That's the argument. That is the argument argument, right? And it's it's certainly look competition is almost always good. It even [1:54:06] when people don't like it, it forces them to up their game. And I think at the end of the day, it's going to be good for the athletes and good for the sport because it'll make people more and the beef, the beef will, you know, too packed biggie with I'm going down in Vegas like two packed it. Remember how both of those guys guys died though by the way. They died very badly. Yeah. All two-pock and biggie. Like it would have been better if two-pock and biggie just kind of worked it out. Like, I mean, even like Drake and Kendrick, but that was entertaining. But Drake's house got shot at, you know, like someone did a security guard get shot. I think he got shot. Yeah. And then we got some good music. Sort, I didn't know. Security got to take the hit. I mean, yeah, yeah, someone, she's the songs are good. I just find it foolish. The bave, mm-hmm. I'm not beef guy. I feel like those guys could have wrote banging songs. They both put out four songs each, you know? It's like, he's that creativity and just, [1:55:04] yeah, I guess he would be driven. I mean I get it I get it it's part of the culture I get it don't get me wrong like I like roast battles. Yeah do comedy. They should have done that. Yeah. So the paper viewers that would have been amazing. Yeah that would have that would have been amazing. Yeah. Rap battles are awesome. It's just, you know, it's another opportunity to write. It's another opportunity to create something. And it's high pressure. Yeah. So in that sense, this rivalry between ADCC and the CJAI, you know? Just wanna Australian idiot, that's the city, you know? Let's see what I'm gonna say. Yeah, versus a monarchy. A monarchy, yeah. But I mean, I still love AddyCC's love of like history, you know, I think you can wash that away. It's amazing. Yeah. Um, do you think you could ever compete for them again? I think that's over now. I mean, I wouldn't do a 10k. I don't know. I mean, who knows? [1:56:00] I'm, I'm, The doors open for anything. I don't take any of this stuff too seriously at all. You know what I mean? A lot of us just find on the internet. Like I don't really, you know, like, fucking around having a good time, you know, like, I'll do anything for the right price. So it's like, if the spectacles there, if people are interested in it. Right, so you would go back if they would have you back. I won and what I wanted from day one was just athletes across everything in Gigi to be compensated just a little bit more You know because again, we don't have the prestige So if they had ramped it up from 10 to 20 You would have done this wouldn't it really wow Boy, they're probably going fuck. Oh, yeah, I just that's that's really What sort of kicked it off? But also I wanted to do like this is opportunity to start up out non-profit and stuff. So it's like gives me opportunity to get back in other ways. So with your this attitude about not taking things so seriously, do you think you and Gordon would ever bury the hatchet? I mean for sure, but it takes a man to the MA who gets the bottom of it, you know? I think he needs it, you know what I mean? Don't you think though that for a guy to be as dominant as he is, you have to be that [1:57:08] guy. That's like Michael Jordan in his prime. They said if you beat him in a game of pool, you wouldn't talk to you for like two weeks. You just have to be kind of a psycho. I know, but you see, I guess you see the contrast in some areas. Like, in my opinion, Volkanovsky was that, GSP was that. But really nice guys. Yeah, and the survival was out. Again, I don't think Gordon's, I mean, it's hard to say what he is, you know? It's like, it's hard, I don't know, I'm that well, you know? I know what the image he puts out. I know a little bit of the stuff behind the scenes, but. But you trained with him for years, you gotta know them. Yeah, but you know what you do to guys of life? You like, fuck, get on the mat, so I don't wanna hang out with them afterwards. Fucking, weed us. Who wants to have a conversation with a jujitsu guy? Me. That's why you're here. Some of them. Some of them. Fucking, some of them are a bit odd, you know? You know, I'm part of it, but... I'd people would make the world go round though. [1:58:07] Oh yeah, I mean for sure, I'm not criticizing, I'm fucking weird, look at what I'm doing. You're weird, yeah. Definitely weird. But some people, I find it easy to talk to, I know, it's just for me as a guy who likes both of you guys. I don't like that you don't talk anymore. I don't like that you have this beef. I've asked Gordon to define it. He doesn't define it. It's very difficult. He doesn't say anything bad about you, but he doesn't define it. I mean, I just love fucking around. Like, Australia, we love attacking each other. Like, I say worse things to my friends than I say to Gordon. You're not a comedian. Listen, I'm a comedian. I know about that. So it's like, I to each other too. Some guys are so good to provoke you. Get a good fucking reaction out of them, you know? Well, with comedians, you know who you can hang out with by who can take shit. You know, because if someone makes fun of me, if it's funny, I laugh. But if you make fun of some people and they're like, hey, they're like, oh, you get you, softy. You just lost. Oh, you fucked up. You take yourself seriously. You gotta roll the punches. You just take what you do seriously, but you never take yourself seriously. [1:59:05] That's so silly. There's no benefit to that. Because then you don't get to enjoy the laughs when someone makes fun of you. Someone makes fun of you and it's rude. If you're watch Kill Tony. Yeah, yeah. When David Lucas and Tony Hinchkov go out each other, it is one of my favorite things in life. They're both so fucking ruthless and hilarious, but if David gets Tony, Tony laughs hard and if Tony gets David, David laughs hard. They laugh. They love each other. They're really good friends, but they're fucking ruthless when it comes to that shit, when they're roasting each other. But they're having a good time. Like if you roast someone and they get like actually upset as a comedian, all the other comedians will be like, oh look at you. You're upset at a joke. You fucking hypocrite. Like what's wrong with you? Well that's what I mean. Gordon says bro, you suck, you never want anything. I'm like, bro, I could just argue that. You know that? It's like, relax. Is that, like, what is the the beef though like it doesn't make sense? [2:00:05] I mean for me I'm just having a good time like it's like I'm in a sport of people that take themselves very seriously Right and it's this he takes himself very seriously. So it's just like I like so you like picking on him I like yeah, you know, I mean like I mean like what you say like a mediums, you know if someone's To get a tear of it sometimes, you know? Yeah. And it's good material. He's like, he's just walking good material, you know? It's like he's provoking me. How's that? Well, he was just post something that I'm like, I swear, I'm like, this guy's playing a fucking character. He's a genius, but it's real. And I'm like, he's baiting me. I gotta say something. Well, you something. Well you are probably the funniest guy in Jiu-Jitsu other than Eddie. Eddie's hilarious. Eddie loves the jugs too. He gets a sometimes I pass on him some deeper levels of the jugs and he gets the full story. Love that we go deep conspiracy on the Jiu-Jitsu jugs. Oh no Eddie's Eddie is fucking hilarious. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met. I'm so glad he's doing stand-up again too because I tried to talk to him and he'd do standup a long time ago, like back in 2001, [2:01:07] like dude, I'm telling you, just try, it'll suck it first, but just like, it sucked when I learned you did do. You suck it first, but you have the ability to do it. I've become, yeah. He took a long time off it, but when he was teaching, he would teach classes and especially seminars, he would have like material. Oh yeah. During seminars, it was hilarious. And then he's like, I think I'm gonna do comedy again. So teaching seminars. That's what I do instead. I'll say the same joke. And then I'll look over and I'll be like, fuck that guy, I was at another seminar. I said the same thing. I'm like, he knows. He knows my tricks. Yeah. Yeah, if they already know the jokes, it's like a little bit of an issue. And I'm like, fuck if I said this a few too many times now. Yeah. Switch topics. Yeah, you gotta make new stuff up. You gotta make up new stuff for seminars. When you go and do seminars, you find it, it's a lot of MMA fighters that are wanting to learn Jiu Jitsu, is it just Jiu Jitsu guys? Is it a mixture? I mean nowadays, man, it's such a variety of people. Sometimes even beginners, like white belts will show up [2:02:06] and they're just coming to hang out. I love doing seminars all around the world and just meeting the people that are doing the sport. And I keep met a really affordable price because I always remember when people would come to my city, sometimes the seminars were so expensive, I couldn't afford it. So I just insist we book a big venue, we keep the prices were so expensive I couldn't afford it. So I just insist we book a big venue we keep the prices low. And I just get to see who from that country is participating in the sport, you know? I just love it. Is that you enjoy that more than competing now? Just going around and doing seminars? I enjoy like all aspects of it. You know like obviously too many seminars exhausting. I've done like back to back to back to back. I like to see when I be 30 hours and then out of there, otherwise it's too much social interaction, you know? We probably also don't absorb anything after three hours. It's like, and I have to roll. Like I still run the gauntlet, I try to roll as many people as possible. That's a good hair raise. You fucking try to kill me. Yeah, I'm sure. Bro, you paid to come to you like me, what are you doing to me? Yeah, I like, so I'll be hung over, jet lags, and it'll be like, I'll be do, [2:03:06] I'll do like, sometimes one hour, one and a half hours straight, and you go every three minutes. Oh God. And I'm like, what are you doing to me, but it's fucking one hour in and you're trying to kill me. Yeah, after a while. Test your patience, that's like and stories so that Hickson would do a seminar and then take all the black belts there and just tap them one after another. I try to do fucked up shit to people though, you know, like just crazy stupid submissions, you know that keeps it entertaining for me. Crab walks, like the Boston crab? Yeah, the Boston crab. I love hitting a Boston crab, I'm like you will remember that forever. You see that one guy who did it never made? Yeah, he is. Yeah. One guy who did it in MMA? Yeah, he is. So crazy. Man, that would hurt. I've never been put in it. But yeah, what is it, is it a flexibility thing? Is it a spine thing? I think it'll break your spine. Yeah. I do it to people from Mount, I give them Mount and then I put my toes in the armpits, take them over the top, bust them, crabber. Yeah. that's the most enjoyable thing. The, yeah, here's the dude who did it in MMA. [2:04:08] How did he set it up? Jesus. He just climbed over the top. He got his legs. The other guy looks like he's fighting for his life and nothing's happening. Well, the other guy looks a little out of shape too. He's just a little nookies to the face. It's like he's already ready for it. It almost looks fake. I don't think it's fake. I think it's just a low level MMA show. Wow. That's crazy. Fuck that guy would never hear the end of that. I remember a guy used to train with, uh, he actually sponsors me and he had MMA fight and he tapped E1 for three rounds. And a minute to go. I think 30 seconds to go. He crossed his leg from back. Oh, no. And I fucking remind him of it to this day. It's been years. That is a crazy submission. That hurts, you know? Oh, it hurts like hell, but you got to imagine like if you're winning the fight, I've, I don't think I've ever seen an MMA fight where someone tapped [2:05:00] to that. I'll send it to you. But guys do it. Guys do it even Hicks and did it when Hicks and submitted Funakis crossed his legs. He guess he just rather have the squeeze and if the guy threatens it he'll let it go. Yeah. Sometimes I think it's about being relaxed. It's like if you're doing this they can catch it really tough and she angles her relax. Sometimes they slip off the top. Right. I think relaxing in those positions sometimes helps. We're also being hyper aware of when the guy lifts his leg up to try to lock it. But yeah, I've had it done to me before. It's fucking horrible. People try to do that to me at seminars like that. I try and play around and then catch me with some shit. I'm just like fucking relax guy. Fuckin'. You have to always be aware, right? Because you're dealing with people trying to get a reputation. You try to break my legs, everything. Have you ever tapped at seminars? Yeah, I tapped, but I'll give them a couple more so they don't believe it, you know? Their friends will believe they get me once, but not three times, you know? What do you mean? Like if a blue belt taps me to seminar, one time maybe people believe. So you love to tap your couple times? I'm gonna to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. [2:06:05] I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked to story farm. I'm fucked like, guys, I'm gonna give you positions, but like, if you get it, I'll tap, like, relax. I don't try to do it. Yeah, I got shit to do, like, don't roll my neck. Yeah, they try, yeah, some of guys try to kill you. Necks are a bad one too, man, when you get a hurt neck was like, oh, and your neck is gone. Like, that's a fucking creepy one. That's crazy, yeah. I think I just retire at that point, you know? Chris, why haven't got his dick replaced? Whoops, sorry Chris. I think he got his disc replaced as well. I think he got the same thing. And there's a few guys who've had disc replaced [2:07:00] in their back and in their neck. You know, they can do that titanium articulating disc now, like where it allows your neck to move pretty normally, but you know, like how long has that last? I just tap to everything and not putting much effort and I feel like he's my body safe. You know what I mean? Like if I'm training and the guys go and hide them, like, all right, he got it, right? Yeah, I'm like, let's just, that's smart. But that's an ego thing. You have a healthy ego. I'm just like, who cares? Like it's like, yeah, that's the point, you know? Well, it's definitely better than going out like, you know, Vinnie, Vinnie Magalais, letting your fucking leg get destroyed like that. If you can just relax like that and allow yourself to get tapped, you will save so many injuries. I control the security footage in the cameraman though so you know like I make the footage disappear if you get something. Oh in your gym? Yeah that's really a shame. Get delayed that. That's the problem right guys want to release footage. I want to sell it. Hey like if people come to the gym I'm like well let you tap me. Give me some money. Yeah you can take it home. Well, listen Craig, good luck on this. [2:08:06] I really hope it works out. I hope ADCC isn't too pissed at you. And I hope you've started a trend. And I hope this isn't gonna look at that. The bowl. It's 18 bowls. I hope it, 80 days, 20 hours, 58 minutes, and 47 seconds until it starts from right now. That's not reassuring, that's close. Yeah, it is. 80 days is not a long amount of time. But I hope it works out and I really hope that it elevates the sport. And at the very least it's getting some eyeballs on the sport. Get some new eyeballs for sure. Yeah, thanks for letting me talk about it. My pleasure. So tell everybody how to find you on Instagram and how to find the website for the event. Craig Jones, BGJ.com. We sell tickets to this, sorry, Craig Jones, BGJ for Instagram, UNLV.com is where tickets will be up on the 31st. So at the Thomas Mac website. Thomas Mac website and then Fairfive Foundation is the website with all the information that's [2:09:02] what we saw there. And CJA official is the Instagram page where it's meant to be professional, but it's gonna be mostly memes. Mostly memes? Mostly memes and jokes. Okay. We had a spelling around the poster we left it. I was like, fight, we fucked up, we'll commit to it. All right, beautiful. All right, man, well good luck and make sure you count all that before you leave. Yeah, so I'm just going to cut it out. Thank you, bye everybody.