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Brendan Allen is a professional mixed martial artist currently competing in the Middleweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. www.ufc.com/athlete/brendan-allen
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all right what's happening brother thanks for having my pleasure so jamie what
were you just
saying i i stopped you because it sounds so crazy trump said there's going to
be eight to nine title
fights at the white house usc event and that they're i guess in quotes withholding
okay first
of all there's only eight weight classes so how's there going to be nine title
fights
maybe a bmf maybe you have all of them i guess but that's kind of a crazy thing
we're gonna have
20 title fights all the title fights it's ever been um did he say any match-ups
no he didn't say
who he just said they're gonna i'll like i'll see if there's even like a tweet
about it but i just
thought i'm talking about it there's like a i don't know press conference or
something well if they don't
john jones at the white house i think it'd be a travesty for sure so you need
to do that they
have come on dana's like you can't count on them you can't fucking count on
them come on stop when
he wants to he's gonna make it happen at the white house come on john jones
versus let's see what does
say here donald trump predicts eight or nine champ championship fights uh okay
it would literally
have to be every weight class fighting for the title which would be nuts
everyone everyone's a
championship fight everyone's a legendary type of fighter yeah he's actually
holding back fights
right now for six months so he can do it in the 15th of june trump continued me
uh seemingly meaning
14th of june uh yeah uh arena's gonna be 5 000 or 6 000 seats right in the
front door of the white
house hundred thousand people in the back where they're putting up eight or ten
very big screens
what kind of fucking security are they gonna have for this gotta be insane yeah
are you trying to get on this i mean not really not really
i can't i can't imagine like you said the security the behind the scenes how
much stuff's really gonna
happen i'm just like uh a lot of weird pressure too because it's like all the
security and the
protocols all that extra shit in your mind before you have to go out there and
fight
yeah it just seems like a lot like a lot more than what it needs to be i'm sure
it's gonna be cool to
watch you know kind of like what was the uh the sphere yeah kind of cool to
watch like that but
also you're fighting outside yes that's what i like what are they gonna do put
a roof over it
like what happens if it's hot what if it's hot and muggy that's gonna affect
people yeah i've watched
them do outside fights in louisiana oh man oh god louisiana is the you can cut
that air there you
gotta see everyone slipping and sliding it's so humid that's terrible did you
ever see that king
of the cage fight that they did where it was raining i seen the highlight of it
but i never
watched the whole yeah it was called king of the cage wet and wild and it
rained out this was in the
day when we we used to have to uh put on fights at indian casinos i'm pretty
sure eddie bravo was
doing the commentary back then and um they it rained out and so they were like
what do you guys want to do
and uh everybody's like well we want to get paid so i guess we have to fight so
they fought in the
fucking rain i mean it was crazy because how you do that i don't remember what
the canvas was made
out of it might have been slick it might have been like a vinyl can it might
not have been like a
canvas like the ufc's canvas which is actual canvas it might have been like a
jujitsu mat type
situation that's what it was in louisiana with the humid so i can't imagine the
rain the rain's
gonna be crazy it was pouring down on people see if you can find some
highlights of king of the cage
wet and wild it's gotta be worse than blood on the canvas or blood on the vinyl
right it has to be it
has to be the worst it just doesn't stop just how bad are those fucking logos
do the logos get
problematic when they get wet on the canvas in the middle yeah in the middle of
the octagon i don't
like here it is yeah look at that look at that that is like that looks it's
hard to tell what it
actually is but it looks like like vinyl got rubber shoes on maybe yeah these
guys are fighting with
it helps a little you see this is back when there was like zero rules your man's
a poncho that's
hilarious look at these oh these guys are barefoot look at these guys sliding
around this is so crazy
they throw punches and slip it this is like a total like like winos in a
parking lot of a liquor store
imagine everyone didn't know it was raining like man you got rocked like 30
times no bro i didn't get
rocked it was wet right how do you judge like what shots do damage this is like
so silly oh look they
got a guy come out here with a thing to slide the water off the side yeah that's
not helping this is
so crazy they're doing this look at the fighters are helping that is the
fighters are moving towels
around that is so ridiculous you get an extra 30 seconds break if you wipe off
the canvas yeah right
that's funny that's funny yeah um so who knows what's gonna happen i guess they'll
probably have
to have some sort of a roof over it but what if it's like 98 degrees outside it's
gonna be crazy
it's june in baltimore or in maryland rather and you know dc yeah whatever that
is it's like dc is
it's not even a state dc gets hot it gets hot in the summer it's gonna be crazy
i always wonder
like how much behind the scenes work goes into like for the sphere for example
because obviously
they have everything else down to a science but maybe redo that that's gonna be
crazy
abu dhabi that's right we did a live one outdoor in abu dhabi i remember that
that was when um bj
fought frankie edgar wow yeah and anderson oh god
damian maya damian maya that's right that's right oh that's right that was that
was like
damian anderson and damian had real beef and so anderson was like yelling at
him in the first round
trying to kill him in the first round and then he kind of ran out of gas and so
he just kind of
coasted for the remainder of the fight and dana was really pissed because he
just coasted and won a
decision i could just put that back out there i guess but that wasn't good dude
by the way in abu
dhabi they had these bugs that were flying around the size of small birds it
was it was crazy i was
like this is because you know you're in the desert yeah it's very weird very
weird having an outdoor
fight in the desert it's like mosquitoes in louisiana man they come out of them
swamp water and i don't
know what they're doing but they're huge well back in the day they used to have
fights like that in
vegas they used to have boxing matches outside caesar's palace used to have
them outside yeah
see if you can find some of those uh i know i want to think like they had some
good fights outside
like some world championship fights that were outside caesar's palace i think
it'd be cool to
say you did but i don't think i want to do it at this level if something does
go wrong you're too
close you're too close brandon allen you're knocking at the door dude you're
right there you're right
it's crazy i just saw chamayev made a post today saying that he's he's only
going to do one more
at 85 and then he's going up what yeah my wife said he's going to go to 205
that's what he said
that's crazy she translated it for me it was in portuguese oh wow look at this
that's caesar's
spouse dang yeah that's crazy i never knew that never yeah wow they had big
fights there too
look at how big that is oh my god that's so crazy but again vegas outside must
be so hot
has to be that dry heat is something that's crazy imagine being all the way in
the back of that
thing you ain't seeing nothing they don't got no screen up for the tv or
nothing who is that right
there who was there oh tommy hearns fought there roberto duran tommy hearns roberto
duran was
outside dang that's crazy in 1984 wow that's way before my time i get way
before i guess that was
they probably didn't even have an arena back then that could keep those guys in
it i wonder when they
started putting arenas in vegas that's a good question it was probably it
probably started for
those big boxing matches yeah perplexity yeah as perplexity our sponsor when
did they start putting
an arena in vegas i'm gonna say 90
because i think vegas in the beginning was just all about gambling and if there
was a show it was at a
showroom in vegas like yeah you know if you went to see sinatra or something
like that it was probably
just a couple thousand people probably wasn't that big it's crazy to see like
how vegas is growing like
even like before my time i see pictures but even since like i fought amateur
worlds in vegas i wasn't
even old enough to go in the casino so they had to like walk me around in the
flamingo i believe
oh that's crazy you couldn't go in the casino do nothing if i walked on the
floor they were on me i'm
like bro i don't how old were you 18 oh wow 17 18 no 18 yeah 18 about 10 19 and
man they were on me
i'm talking about like they must have had a watch on me i stepped on the floor
just to go across to
get like uh to the drink machine well there was probably a big concern that if
you have underage
competitors and that they're wandering around the casino they could lose their
license yeah because
we stayed at the link it was brand new at the time and then we walked across to
flamingo we fought
there every every time until the finals the finals was in the ufc expo in the
middle of the expo
which was cool because they had like the hall of fame ceremony going on you
were there i've seen you
yeah yeah so it was cool but uh yeah it's crazy just to see it from there till
till now like how
much it's growing and change and wow it's pretty crazy like when did you first
start training how
old were you 13 and what did you start with jujitsu i didn't even like really
mean to to be honest
like i was playing football i love football and um my brother came home because
he switched schools
and his friend was like hey you want to do jujitsu and we was watching you know
ufc on the weekends
that was like randy couture chuck liddell trilogy yeah all those guys so we
watched them on the
weekends and um he asked so we went there and looked and i was still playing
football with football
season and um my dad's like you want to try it i was like i watched the class
and i was like dad
i want to do it and he's like okay we'll use the trial gi i was like dad i don't
want to borrow
can you can you buy me one my parents didn't have much money we were my dad was
just starting to do
okay for himself at that point he's like if i buy you this gi i promise you for
the rest of the year
you're coming three times a week at least i was like yes sir so i started and
never looked back
a couple months later my brother and my dad joined me and we did it all
together for a little while
then my brother found girls and he went his way so yeah it's been a long road
that's derailed a lot
of young prospects it definitely got him it definitely got him man that life
took him elsewhere and i don't
know luckily i stayed he would have been better than me though he was a lot
tougher and
yeah but it's a lot is he the older brother it's usually the younger brother
that winds up being the
real good fighter yeah because the young that's the thing that's the thing you
learn resilience you
learn how to be the nail yeah you know and the older brother oftentimes is too
comfortable being the
hammer yeah but my dad would put him in his place so luckily he was he was used
to being a little bit
you know my dad's a big man so um yeah man life is crazy so when did you start
striking
well my dad boxed when he was younger and his his grandfather taught him how to
box and he was like
uh he did something uh like one like a golden gloves in the military or
something back when they had like
the the boxing gloves that were made of like horse hair oh wow yeah so um he
taught my dad to box
and so my box my dad box in high school so he was kind of teaching me a little
stuff here and there
growing up but you know how it is man who listens to their father now i look
back and i'm like man i
wish i would have listened more and i say stuff that he was like what i tell
you 10 years ago you know
um but i started striking probably like 15 maybe 15 and a half somewhere around
there but it was all
grown men back then especially like where i came up at there's no like
beginners classes or anything like
that and these guys are 24 25 26 i mean there's been a couple of times man i
got hit and i thought
my jaw was broken i start crying i mean like smack and it was just like i
couldn't open my mouth and
that's the problem with a lot of boxing gyms in particular is that when new
guys come in they
just beat them up yeah they did they beat me up they don't they don't box you
like spar you rather
they fight you and they know how to fight and you don't know how to fight you
know one of my best
friends uh who was with me like i started with him was kurt haliba and him and
dustin poirier were the
two biggest where we were from at that time so i remember uh tim crater reached
out to kurt crazy tim
yeah and he was like uh hey why don't y'all come spar we got dustin i think
dustin was just about
to go to wc or he was he was right around there at that time so like let's go
kurt's like hey you
want to go yeah let's go so we go over there for sparring and i'm sparring this
guy man he had to be
like five foot one like he was tiny short and uh kurt goes with dustin and i'm
sitting here trying to
watch them go because i mean they're throwing they're fighting they're they're
not sparring and
this guy's hitting me i'm like get off me like trying to watch and the same day
like so we sparred
like i don't know four or five rounds it was nice and then uh and i'm only like
14 15 years old at this
time and then it was start on the ground in your guard and uh i go with dustin
because everyone
like said my jiu-jitsu was good it was for that time but i was still just a kid
dude he hit me so
hard when they said literally when they said go it was like boom right in my
mouth and i was like
well i guess this is what we're doing i hurried up and grabbed and tried to
sweep and all that kind
of stuff but man i never forget that moment to this day like last time i
trained with dustin i was
like hey remember that time you you beat me up like i'm not little no more you're
three weight
classes above yeah yeah so like i see all the guys like that there's one guy in
particular if i see
him i told everyone i'm whooping his ass one guy you don't want to name him his
name's jmart oh okay
great guy nice guy but training i never forget the day he hit me so hard and
thought my jaw was broke
i'm like and i was little like now i'm a grown man like it is so hard to find
like reasonable sparring
it's so hard to find people that are like willing to not hit you full blast and
like preserve each
other you know like hey we're all in this together you help me i help and if
you can get that my god
you progress so much faster yeah if you're in there just there's something to
be said for going through
the fire and understand what it's like to be in a war with guys but there's
something also to be said
for like learning how to recover and like having more training sessions and not
getting concussions
all the time yeah it's like sean jordan was the first to tell me that was like
uh he came and trained
and obviously you know sean's huge super athletic guy heavyweight you know and
i'm talking about i
watched him and this other big man they were sparring and it was literally like
touching each
other so i asked him after because everyone else is fighting and i'm like man
what how come you don't
spar so hard he looked at me and started laughing he's like rendon at this time
i think he was like
270 to somewhere around there and he's like i'm 270 pounds i fought some of the
biggest guys like
biggest names in the world at the time he's like i know how to fight if i if i
go full blast or he
goes full blast one of us is going to get hurt and then we're not going to
fight anymore like we're
not going to we're not going to make money for our family so i always i always
took that in and
obviously i'm not like a huge guy like they were but it's like even like when i
was training in
florida i knew when me and robocop go we're fighting like i know it that guy's
scary you know
both you both you guys like how the fuck are you making 185 pounds and you're
on a smaller side
in comparison to him yeah dude it's my weight cuts way harder than his is it
yeah he walks dude
surprisingly i asked him before because he has you know he has a great like
physique right
he's big guy when i see him i'm like bro how much you weigh he's like oh like
205 i said no way
no way he's like i'll step on the scale right now steps on the scale 206 i was
like no way
i've seen him a little bit bigger bird bones that doesn't even make any sense i
had no idea i thought
the same thing but me i step on the scale i mean right now i'm probably like 225
but i haven't done
nothing since i fought but i stay around 215 220 and i'm the runt of my family
so like my body wants
to get bigger but i'm like uh i got unfinished business here so yeah joe's joe's
a big 85er joe
peiffer oh yeah he's he has a hard cut he's huge he has a hard cut that's why i'm
like when he gets
yeah like how is that guy how is that guy 185 when i stand next to him i'm like
how same i can't
believe he walks around 205 because that doesn't even make sense that's what i've
seen him i hey
if it's a lie guys strike me down now because i think he rigged that scale he
must well we were
all using it he probably has heels on the ground there he was i was super
surprised my boy tuco was
with me we was all in the room i was like because i called him out on everyone
else wouldn't say him
i was like nah was it after training after training okay and both of you after
training yeah but and
it wasn't a hard day like that day was not a hard day like we weren't like
sweating it wasn't like a
five six pound practice day right it was a pretty chill day and even if it was
i'd still be surprised
if he was only 211 i'd be surprised dude but i know like when he had other
fights uh he was a little
bit bigger because he wanted to be i didn't understand but still that you know
but joe i think
well the ridder probably has to be the biggest 85er like he's enormous he was
he was bigger than i
expected and i seen him but i like in the gym i never went close to him because
i i rode with him like
one time in a in a quick thing it was like a minute long but like still i was
surprised when
when we stepped in there like we stood up to each other at face-offs and i was
like i was expecting
to be a little bit bigger i don't know maybe i make everyone bigger in my head
but he was really
long like even when we stood next to each other his hands felt like they
touched his knees i was like
all right it's gonna be interesting yeah i was surprised when i'm when i first
met him in the ufc
when he first came over i was like because i saw him fight and won and i knew
he fought it i believe
he fought at 205 and 85 over there right right and when i saw him i was like
how the fuck are you
making 185 pounds like you look like a light heavyweight this episode is
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were worried about that
when he came over because he never made a real true 85 because you know they
have the hydration
the hydration so he can weigh in at 204 but fully hydrated and they still know
how to finesse that
like i just learned like how they finesse that how they finesse that so they
drink a whole bunch of
water and then they go they don't pee they don't do nothing they drink that
water and then go cut the
weight it stays in their stomach so when they piss piss it out it's clear it's
all good so they they
test that hydration they test they're hydrated but they're really not oh they
already went and sweat
out a whole bunch so they drink it they just hold it that's all the guys do it
some guys mess it up but
that's majority how everyone does it and so they so you just drink a whole ton
of water and just hold
your piss as long as possible yeah they make sure like they probably drink like
two cups and then
they're just gonna hold and then they'll go cut for like an hour like sweat
sweat sweat sweat sweat
and then they say when they show up to the hydration that's i've heard that
from like four people that
have done it and they said yeah bro i learned from this guy and i learned from
this guy i was like wow
interesting yeah i knew there had to be some sort of a catch to it yeah and
they say it's a lot it's
more unhealthy than like cutting weight over here to like really make the
weight because i don't know
i'm not a scientist or a doctor but they they my friends that are into all that
stuff are like
explaining like how it works and i was like man that's crazy and but he was a
guy that never made a
true 186 so they were worried and then he did and i know like i know for a fact
he's come in i don't
know what he came in on my fight week but i think uh the one before that he he
came in monday i
believe it 210 210 the fight week so i was like shit i come in at 206 and i'm
stressing i'm like
ah 203 is like my number well i think that contributes to the fact that he
gases yeah i just i think it's
just too much of a strain and he's he's talked kind of vaguely not not real
clearly about problems
that he's had with his health and you know i i've got to think that has to do
with weight cuts yeah so
many guys have kidney problems for sure for sure and it's weird because like in
the fight with
him like i knew like in the first round to feel like obviously adrenaline is
flowing everything so
even everything's intensified right so i could feel how tight he was squeezing
i mean he was squeezing
like his legs everything he was trying to where i couldn't move so i just make
little adjustments and
make him move a little bit he'd punch very rarely but i was like there's
impossible it's impossible for
you to keep this up for 25 minutes it's impossible i know you're not going to
do it so just bide my time
um plus i didn't want to gas either because it was short for me short notice
five five rounds you know
it was a little worrisome but i knew he couldn't i knew he couldn't and um i
like we did a lot of
print for him specifically and we saw the russian that he fought and won and i
was like we had our game
playing before we watched it and then we watched it was like here we go yeah
that's why everyone
asked me like what's going to happen i'm going to break him he's he's tough he
is tough but you know
like well if he comes out with that mentality if he's trying to go full blast
100 in the first round
in a five round fight like we right exactly nobody could really do that yeah
and like i told the guys
like because obviously he trains where i was training and uh they all know they
all know me
you know so it's like if you think you're going to come out here and it and he
said in his interviews
like i'm a front runner i'm not good long but i approach a three-round fight
differently than i
approach a five-round fight so i was like all right we'll see and it kind of
backfired well it's a big
win for you thank you huge win you look fantastic in that fight thank you you
know it's like there's just
so many talented people in the division it's so hard to stand out and sometimes
you know you take a guy
like derritter who just got done stopping bo nickel and a lot of a lot of
momentum on his side he looks
real good you beat kevin holland submitted him looks real good and then you
came along and stole
that momentum yeah it was it was weird to be honest because like when he got
there i was like i want to
fight him just because like things of like he fought one of my friends which
now i guess they're best
friends but who was that uh on law and son okay he took both his titles from
him right so like
there was no animosity but it's like i want to test my you're a ground guy like
i'm a ground guy let's
let's see um and then it happened he got there to ufc and i was like i want to
fight him like i was
obviously i think at the time i was like 12 ranked somewhere around there but i
was like let him get
one two and obviously his name's gonna carry him you know so that came and i
never forget i was uh
leaving an lsu game i was uh in the parking lot my manager called and i was
like man can we just get a
fight please i've been asking for like three months like please i just want to
fight because
i'm very like i get in this mode to where i just want to fight and i don't i'll
just keep bugging
him bugging him like you want me to call mick you want you want me to call
hunter like and he was
like no no no no but anyway so i stayed on him he called me i was like uh hey
what about uh
uh uh the ridder he was like oh come on man he had just fought i think he beat
gerald
and um he was like i i think i can make this happen he texted me back a couple
minutes hey they're good
to go the next day they called back and they were like no they're not gonna get
the fight like they
don't want this fight it's it's not the right time i was like all right they're
like what about
fluffy i was like i asked for him two months ago so that's when i end up
fighting fluffy
and um it just so happened he fought the bone nickel got all that hype and
i don't know man again i was at an lsu practice and um they called me and they
were like hey uh
my manager called me and he was like um just want you to know fluffy's out i
threw your name in the
hat but you're not the front runner it's paulo costa he's he's the front runner
but i'm pushing
for you because i just saw paulo yesterday i don't know how he's gonna make 85
in four weeks
yeah he needs a lot of time to make weight there's no he's another guy yeah 85
do you think that it
could ever be possible for guys to just fight without cutting weight wouldn't
that be but wouldn't
that be better it would be nice just wouldn't it be better like overall for
everybody i think so
yeah for sure like here's like if everybody just was honest about what they
actually weigh
you know like fight let's find out what everybody actually weighs when you're
in shape like when
you're ready to fight and make a contract to fight at that weight because this
whole weight
cutting thing is just legalized cheating it's it's so hard and some guys are so
good at it you know
like how about perera dude i don't know how he made 85 he would weigh 226 when
he would fight for
the 185 pound title crazy doesn't even make any sense i don't get how you can
put on that much
weight the most i ever put on was his last fight i was 207 bro he gained 40
something pounds i don't
get it 40 pounds in a day blows my mind what does that feel like like what does
that do to your body
i always wonder that because like this one was this was tough for me one month
full diet like i don't
usually have like you know a couple cheats and ease into the diet like i'm
starting to do now because
i'm hoping to fight in march so i'm already going to start you know being
cleaner and stuff are you
concerned though that you could get another of those last minute calls like do
you think like that like
to not get too heavy because if somebody calls and says hey the big paramount
card somebody fell out
it's january can you fight i think where i'm at it would have to be like an
interim title or something
like that outside of that right now plus like the reason i i'm so big and i was
out like i had fractures
in my foot so i had to you know did you have fractures in your foot from the
fight or just you had
them before the fight oh god yeah which we didn't know i just knew it hurt like
and to be honest
with you like i had them before the fight before that but i didn't know like i
was just like man it
hurts like i thought it was just like a muscle so i just would roll it out
there gun it like you
know that's what i that's what i would do how many fractures they said they
they saw three but
they're small it was like different like rate where like the toe meets the base
of your foot
is it from elbows i don't know i don't it was on my lead foot too so i was like
i don't even know
like i don't teep a lot because i'm scared of like stuff like that yeah um yeah
but i fought with
crazy stuff man i tore my whole like acl in half uh calves everything when i
fought paul craig
did you really yeah when that niece that uh calf slicer uh-huh in half it just
blew your acl out
yes oh i didn't know so like in the second round when i go to throw the punch
uh i think it was
dominic cruz he was like oh they clipped each other and they showed the replay
and he hits my hand he
never hit like my face or anything but your knee just buckled yeah it gave and
you can see me reach
down to my knee in that moment oh wow it was crazy so afterwards we got that
but i was lucky like
when it healed it like um it fell to the bone like if they attach like up up
here mine just
reattached here so i just have a little bit more play and it's still attached
luckily really yeah
that's how you never got surgery never i was very lucky insane there's like
three different mris that
show like fine torn half rehealed so it was a partial tail no they told me it
was in half it cut in half
and then like fell and when it fell i got lucky and it fell on the bone just
lower at a lower point
and it healed on the bone and it fused to the bone itself what yes how long did
it take to do that
i don't know the doctor said it could it says it looked like it was torn maybe
like a slight tear
before and that one finished it and the last mri was probably four or five
months ago because i had
to get it for something else fused to the bone perfect you can see it clear as
day the doctor showed
me i was like that's pretty cool did you get stem cells or anything on it yeah
i did i did do a lot
of stem cells uh like to the ufc and stuff they sent me that that probably
helped it was going on
tijuana no they sent it to my doctor no they just oh you said oh they just sent
it it was nice and
they just sent a whole bunch like my doctor was like man look how much they
sent i was like i don't
know what it's supposed to look like fill it up let's go so we injected that
but yeah i fight with
all crazy stuff because it's like i don't know i don't know how to pull that's
the thing that
people need to realize that watch nobody fights at 100 or very few people very
very rarely and i just
don't know how to how to pull like i've never pulled from one knock on wood i
haven't pulled
on one fight in my career and i've been pretty pretty messed up i think my
worst was when i fought
em evolve to be honest physically i was like like as far as like how my body
was was pretty good but
i didn't realize like how much of a toll because i like have a thyroid problem
and i i went years without getting it checked and um for like a while i was
feeling like real
sluggish real tired um no sex drive nothing like i didn't want to get out of
bed and um my weight was
just steady growing up for the first time in my life at that point i hit 220
and i was like what is
going on like i'm still training i'm eating clean and uh anyway i went to a
specialist in florida
and they tested everything like t3 t4 and i never had t3 checked ever and it
was like seven times the
normal value whatever that was supposed to be i have it on a paper whatever
they gave me that and
they were like hey man i'm gonna let you know i was i was fighting in three
three or four weeks in
france and they were like hey this is gonna take a month and a half two months
to regulate and fully
settle out i was like i don't got that kind of time just give me enough to
where my where my weight
will come down because i wasn't losing anything they're like it's gonna do that
don't worry within
a week or two that's gonna happen i'm still pretty tired but i just kept
pushing we get to
we went to uh london first stayed there a week because it was cheaper for us
than going to france
because he had my friend had family there then we went to france and then um i
was still feeling
like tired i that was the first camp in my life i couldn't do more than two and
a half rounds
the whole camp really i i by singer was the only person that i had to train
with greg was hurt
um other guys were out so i had by singer every day i paid him to to train with
me every day
whenever i wanted sparring anything and um ask him i do good for the first
round halfway through the
second after that i was dead like dead and i'm still hitting my runs my lifts
every training session
like i'm doing everything normal but man it was terrible so the fight comes
and um they the the commission kind of like did super weird stuff like i made
weight and then like
oh you're getting drug tested i'm like okay no problem they're like no no you're
gonna get drug
tested now not the night of the fight like normal i was like what i was like i
literally just cut
weight like i don't gotta pee i'm just now drinking fluid they're like doesn't
matter you can go to your
room i was like all right i'll wait for a couple minutes i waited for like 10
minutes i was like
hey man i'm just gonna go to my room try to sleep and they were like uh no we
don't have enough people
you need to stay here i stayed there for two hours they did uh finally i peed
just barely peed and they
did two vials of blood and they they got mad because they did that one they
they put on and press
the gravity one and they couldn't get enough like and they were like because
you're dehydrated
exactly do you think they were fucking with you because you're fighting in france
against a french
guy it was me and moicano we were the us two and one other person american was
that when moicano was
fighting ben was and denis yes sir he he bitched about the same thing but
somehow we're fucking with
you guys them two were up sleeping in their room chilling oh but it's not an
excuse it does not
have to be excused that's so dirty it was it was it was frustrating but that's
why i like when i still
think he involves a cool guy you know like he's deserved his title shot i think
he's fully earned
it don't get me wrong but i i want to fight him again where it's like i sparred
him like a month
after that he was at the gym and i showed up at the gym and we sparred we had a
good time but um i
still think he's a nice guy i think he deserved a spot but i just want to fight
him where everything's
right equal and like you said we're not going to come in 100 he's not i'm not
fine i don't care if i
got a messed up hand foot whatever but just an equal plate like well it just
sounds like you were
compromised look a good example that was piotr yan in his first fight with marab
man he looked great
this week fuck what a master class he looked great i was so surprised when you're
gonna fight a guy
like marab like that is the master class but you put on a clinic i didn't
honestly like i didn't think
he was gonna be able to do that for five rounds i thought he'd have one maybe
maybe max two and i
thought marab was just gonna do what marab does i was so wrong bro his training
camp must have been
hell had to it had to be hell had to i mean he must have done some i mean it
looked like it i saw some
videos of it yeah he was doing some wild strength and conditioning and plyometrics
and he knew what
he was in for that's the thing if you're gonna fight a guy like marab it's like
you know what the
mountain is you ready to climb it for sure and the first time they fought
apparently he had a
fucked up right hand that's what he couldn't grapple with it and he couldn't
throw punches with it
so i re-watched the fight after he said that i was like oh he's barely using it
like barely using
his right sense right totally makes sense and then also psychologically if you
only got one hand
that everything now you have to think right you can't really throw combinations
you have to grab
well know how tough uriah faber is uriah faber when he fought mike brown he
broke both hands
both hands i remember that and he was throwing elbows both hands here's one of
my favorite fighters
i'll never he was a guy that i wanted to be just like i even you you could ask
my dad he'll laugh
to this day i was like dad i don't want to be like my dad's tall everyone's
tall i don't want to be
tall i want to be like him he was like what because that's the fight he was a
beast he was a beast back
in the day you know by the time he was fighting in the ufc i kind of think he
had had some of his best
fights already like the in the wec days dude amazing fights oh he was a killer
i still remember
the mike brown coming out party um jose aldo that was another example how tough
he is when he fought
jose aldo and jose aldo killed his leg dude killed his leg it is the worst
after fight leg i've ever
seen in my life other than austin hubbard you ever see austin hubbard he got
compartment syndrome and had
to have his whole leg sliced open what from the top to the bottom to alleviate
pressure and drain some
of the fluids no way it's the nastiest injury i've ever seen google uh excuse
me look up uh austin
hubbard uh images of uh i forget the fight oh there it is look at his leg that
that black thing that's
his leg open no yeah that's his tissue oh my days yeah yeah yeah yeah look at
that oh my gosh
how insane is that dude he trains in chicago with me oh when i ask him look at
that image how
how fucking insane is that image that's his tissue underneath there man oh my
look you have to like
mature content you have to click a link in instagram to be able to see it holy
cow how nuts is that man
that's gnarly so there's a drain that tube that you're seeing right there that
what that is attached
to is that drain that's letting liquid drip out of his leg so compartment
syndrome is so bad that
sometimes people when they don't get it treated they have to get their leg amputated
really oh yeah so
that was just from leg kicks from a fight just from leg kicks from a fight i'm
trying to remember who
he fought jesus can we find out uh who he fought
oh more than a year ago this picture was 325 weeks ago yeah but the fight was
more than a year ago
it was quite a while ago but what is it like like a big bruise or well it says
325 weeks ago
oh 300 yeah 325 weeks ago yeah um so it was quite a while ago but i see if who
you find out who he
fought boy it's just like your your leg just stays like bruised and swollen and
then you're like not
just bruised like your tissue breaks down it fills up with fluid and yeah and
then also what happens i
guess when you get that much damage in your tissue is like your whole body has
to process all all of
that so it's kyle propelik i don't remember that and so it's ufc vancouver
elevator passed out on an
elevator had to be rushed to the hospital that is crazy i never knew that yeah
see him at the gym all
the time so he's a nice guy so they had to cut his leg open to reduce the
pressure so that's what
that image is damn nuts that is crazy yeah that's nuts and then uriah's leg
honestly in the fight
looked worse than that i mean uriah might have had compartment syndrome and
didn't get it drained
because i know he spent a lot of time in hyperbaric chambers after the fight i
want to try that it's
great i want to try that it's really amazing if you have an aura ring and you
go into the hyperbaric
chamber it will tell you that you're recovered more really yeah than a normal
day yeah oh you have a
very high level of recovery today yeah i'm gonna try that for sure oh it's
legit yeah all my friends
have been like like jared gordon like got one for one of his fights and he's
telling me like how
different it makes him feel and stuff like for me as far as i go it's like i
just started like really
like using more supplements like i think the deal that thorn made with ufc
really helped me it's
like i started using there and what really helped us i was always scared to go
on creatine because like
growing up my dad would get so big and he would like back in the day they'd
have like all these
different things like oh if you use too much creatine it's bad for you bad for
your kidneys or whatever
uh turns out all that's bullshit exactly yeah and creatine is fantastic for and
that's that's been
like the main thing like i can really feel like how how different my body recovers
like how more
almost energized in a way you know i wake up and like when i go to lift and
stuff i feel like
way better so like what's even great for your mind creatine is fantastic just
for cognitive support i need
everything for that because i've been getting hit in the head since i was 13
years old so
you know yeah it don't sometimes it don't function properly you know i have to
it's funny me and my
wife were just joking the other day we were like uh i was like babe you do that
on purpose don't you
she's like what i was like you try to use memory against me you'll wait till i
forget something
then you'll be like oh remember you said this and i'm like i didn't say that i
have to die on that
hill because it's like i don't remember but i'll tell her that you know i'm
just like no i didn't
i know i didn't you know so but yeah the that that was a great relationship
that's helped like you
know ufc's done like a lot of like made a lot of good partnerships that's
helped like the athletes
but for me personally like the thorn relationship thorn makes great stuff yeah
and they're so tested
if you get in a hyperbaric chamber that'll it'll help your memory as well hyperbaric
chamber is
just good for overall recovery for everything there's even a study out of jerusalem
it shows
that lengthens telomeres they did this process where they had um you took 60
sessions of 90 minutes
over the course of 90 days so 60 hour and a half sessions over the course of 90
days and it showed
that length in people's telomeres that was really yeah that was equal to a 20
age difference so yeah 20
year age difference so it's like your telomeres as you get older that that's
like one of the clear
marks of biological aging is how long your telomeres are that's good to know
yeah it indicates you
know like as you get older they shrink and the only there's a few things that
they've shown that will
increase telomeres but nothing as dramatically that i've ever heard uh other
than hyperbaric chamber
that was probably the best one i've ever heard of yeah i man i've been like
trying to learn more
about recovery because i'm kind of like how old are you now i'll be 30 in a
couple weeks yeah
that's when you got to start thinking about it when you're 22 you're just a
wild man you wake up in
the morning with rock hard boners like everything's fine you just show up to
training you don't even
stretch now i'm like yeah wait a minute guys wait a minute the thing is even if
you're 22 you should
stretch that's just full ignorance god it's so there's so many guys that can't
i remember i was
talking to i don't want to say his name because he's a good guy but he's like a
world-class mma
fighter and i was trying to show him something we're talking about like guard
technique he's like
i can't and i'm not flexible i can't get my leg like that and they go what do
you mean not flex i
go why aren't you flexible he goes i'm not i don't stretch i go how do you not
stretch you're a
world-class fighter who tries to kick people in the head and you don't stretch
that's so crazy he's like
it's boring i'm like okay yeah a lot of things are boring like that that you
don't stretch is so crazy
because like anytime someone says i'm not flexible i'm like how do you know
right you know like you
don't know if you're flexible until you start stretching for a long time right
you can get
flexible it's like i don't have any cardio well you can get cardio that's a
choice
fucking work get do cardio and you'll have cardio this is crazy but you're
really flexible
yeah but it's like i'd never stopped but i started when i was little i i
developed flexibility while
my body was still maturing which is very fortunate because you're not like like
stiff yet it's like
you can get flexible but it's i'm 58 years old it's not easy to stay flexible i
just keep
fucking stretching i didn't know you was i'm old as shit dude i didn't know
that i thought you was
younger than that you older than my dad i'm old dude good shape though thank
you i keep up i'm scared
of death i'm not scared of death death is inevitable what i'm scared of is
being feeble like where you
can't do things anymore you can't go on a hike you can't use your body like i
work out just as hard
now as i did when i was 30 i make my wife always worried because i'm like uh i
don't know i don't
honestly know if i mean it or not i'm like uh i don't want to be 80 years old
like for instance
like you kind of not say things like that around ladies sometimes they don't
like she's like she's
like no don't say that i need you like we're a team and i'm like hey look what
i do for a living
look what i've done like my body's not like that like you know and like i don't
know maybe
i say that but then like i get out of working out for like i haven't worked out
like two months
months and i'm like i'm itching like a freaking fiend i'm like so when you say
i haven't worked
out you don't do anything for two months i haven't done anything i went in the
gym twice really i went
in the gym twice i did uh one run and one lift and then we found out my foot
had fractures and they
sent me this foot boot and then doctors like you don't have to wear that but
don't do anything that
puts a lot of pressure on your foot and then i've been traveling like at the
end of the year i travel
a lot going hunting and stuff and you know like like like your meat eater thing
like yeah i love
that kind of stuff so um i'm not on that big of a scale and that nice of like
animals i'm just like
just a simple white tail kind of guy but you know i love hunting white tails i
love it i got a little
property in illinois and oh that's great man yeah so i can't believe you could
take a whole couple of
months off with nothing just don't do nothing crazy right yeah i'm very blessed
like well it's probably
smart it's probably smart to do it's good and bad a few people do that it's
good and bad so like i only
do it this much at the end of the year because it's hunting season and holidays
my kids birthdays
and you know kind of my kids birthdays are right now or back to well shit i
guess all the time they're
back to back to back so it's like all right we'll do that we travel but it's
only end of the year
usually i'll take a couple weeks off maybe a month max depending on my injuries
after a fight
but then i'm back at it um but it's hard for me at home i'm a full-time dad and
a full-time husband at
home right now um got so many kids you know that i'm away for how many kids you
have i'm about to have
five wow yeah five and you're not even 30 yet yes sir i have two with my ex i'm
about to have two with
my current wife and she has a son from her previous so step wow yeah so and he's
14 my daughter's just
turned six and four my son's about to turn one and then we'll have another one
in about a month and a
half so you got a lot of work to do yeah but it's it's nice um it's hard right
now um you know kids
have schedules and now like my my little girls do jujitsu my stepson was
playing football for the first
time this year and he he's a basketball player because my wife was a pro
basketball player and
um so he's always got something going on but at my new house that i'm working
to build i have like
two gyms full gym so like i don't have to leave oh that's nice i can bring
people in to train i have
my full cage that i used to have for my promotion so well even if you only you
realize only i only have
40 minutes before i have to leave but i can get a half hour workout on real
quick and you can really
burn it out for a half an hour just to keep keep the machine oiled exactly but
you know the
argument about taking time off it does reset the brain like you know who used
to do that i know
he's not a fighter but ronnie coleman ronnie coleman is crazy as he used to
lift when he was mr olympia
and he was one of the heaviest lifters of all time i mean he would he's a freak
he's a freak ronnie
when he would like get done with mr olympia he would like i'm not doing shit he
wouldn't do anything
for a couple months like no training at all and they'd be like nothing at all
nope nothing nothing yeah
he goes i gotta reset gotta reset but imagine being so driven that you could
train the way
that guy trained and yet so wise that you're like i'll get it back let me just
like let me just chill
yeah let me just chill and it wasn't like it turned him into a lazy person like
that's what everyone's
afraid of oh i'm gonna lose this momentum i'm doing so good everything's going
so great i'm working so
hard i want to keep working hard because we've all had if you live a life you're
going to have ups and
you're going to have downs and like you were going through your thyroid issue
there's going to be
times where you don't have a lot of energy so when you're feeling good you want
to keep going right
right and this guy gets to mr olympia but he has the wisdom to go you know what
i can get that back
right now let's just not do and let this let this mind recover let this stress
just go away let it
slip out of my life that's what i try man uh i kind of learned like because i
always have traveled
for camp since i was probably three or four no as a pro or three and one as a
pro three or four fights
in as a pro i was i was traveling i was going to rufus sport for a long time i
stayed there for a long time
then i went to florida for a long time and now i'm not chicago and um always
what jimmy are now
uh valley flow oh okay and like war room with below yeah so and that's been a
great change yeah
man he's so good both the brother he got a little brother oh really he's a stud
he's a stud i believe
it if it comes out of that family yeah mondays is a beast he's a stud the
little brother is a stud he
helped me for marvin's fight i think and then nacho helped me a little bit for
this one this last one
how did you choose going to chicago i've known below since rufus sport and uh
obviously we stayed in
contact you know when we see each other it's like we never you know haven't
seen each other and he's
always told me like bro just come down just come check it out you don't have to
stay or nothing like
stay at my house but you don't have to move here or nothing just come check it
out so i watched his his
rise and what he does and his work ethic and his team and um after the fluffy
loss like i just i kind
of sat back had some conversations with people that are really close to me and
explain like what was
going on with me like mentally and where i felt and um i below was one of the
people i talked to and he's
like i know what the problem is and everyone that i talked to which wasn't a
lot they all said exactly
the same thing so i was like b can i come can i come what's the problem what
was the problem
complacency i know like who i can train with and not go hard i'm i'm the coach
of my own thing like
i'm running my like whole camp basically i go to oh you were running your whole
camp basically i'd be
like you're Wagner's for jiu-jitsu yeah i'd go to Wagner's for jiu-jitsu i'd go
i'd be at kill cliff
but i'd be in the corner doing my thing because we had the russian coach over
here teaching some crazy
stuff that don't make no sense what do you mean like they'd be teaching some
stuff off the wall that
would never work really yeah but the kid like the kid the russian kids like
they were in the classes like
they got young young guys like ansar nikita like um by sangor he wasn't even
there like those guys
they were like come over here let's do something else like they have like real
mma knowledge because
they fight and they've learned from you know all the guys from where they're
from but uh so who are
these russian coaches that it was just one man uh you don't have to say his
name yeah he was just
he's not there no more but um but he was a legit coach he never fought okay did
he fight in anything
kickboxing nope nothing i don't know if he even competed in wrestling to be
honest with you ever
i don't know okay is he like does he spar with people nope how old is he i
would say in his 30s i
would say what really yeah i would guess and he's a coach they but he's
coaching unorthodox stuff like
what kind of stuff like stuff against the wall but it was like for instance i
don't remember what
it was it was against the wall i was going with my friend aj aaron jeffries and
uh he it was some
takedown off the wall right aj couldn't get it i was like brothers and i don't
say it out loud because
i don't want no problems you know like right i'm gonna just go with the flow
and mind my business but
you know i've been doing it long enough to where it's like you realize this
move's probably not
going to work for my body type or my my game but i'll try it right and so
anyway he was doing it
and aj's like bro i don't get it i was like yeah because this shit ain't gonna
work bro he's like
what i was like it's not gonna work i'm telling you so he calls the coach over
and he was like how
can you do the guy looks at me he goes he's telling him then he looks at me go
stop it
me he's like yeah i was like bet he tries to do it i literally grab his wrist
grab his head
and throw him boom is he your size he's bigger than me oh wow throw him and so
it didn't work
no he's like let me try one more time let's go full speed i said that was full
speed do the exact
same thing but do it the other way now boom throw him again aj looks at me he
says the the coach says
something i was like then then i get agitated right then i'm like man that's
because this
shit ain't gonna work i told y'all y'all don't listen to me i just walked off
oh that's not good
you know so i just walk off and i was like how did this guy become a coach
there sticking around and
translating oh no you know oh there's those weird guys like that i'm not saying
that this guy's like
that but yeah there are some weird guys like that become parasitic you know
they're like friends with
the guy who's a really good fighter and then they're always there and then they
want to be a
part of the team somehow and then they start contributing or they start maybe
running conditioning
drills or something like why is this guy running conditioning drills that's
exactly how it went
oh that's the word exactly how it went literally there's weird parasitic
relationships in any elite
like thing whether it's sports i see it in comedy there's some comedians that
have weird parasitic
friends that wind up you know becoming a producer on their thing and there's
just some guy who just
just like like a lamprey clinging to the bottom of a shark it got weird for a
little while especially
at the end it did like when i was still there um with that whole thing because
even some of the
other coaches started to catch on because at kill cliff you know sometimes we
have a lot of guys fighting
like all over the place so coaches would be gone and right you try to you know
figure that situation
out so he'd step in and try to help and it just got weird but like again i'm i'm
not the kind of
person to really cause a conflict like i'd rather just like if like just for
instance if you're
causing something like some type of energy with me i'm gonna just move over
here and just stay out
your way you know the world needs more people like you well my younger self
would have i want a
conflict i'm gonna i'm gonna show you right of course but now as you got wiser
yeah and you realize
like what's the also you're an elite professional mixed martial arts fighter
you ain't got shit to
prove to somebody that's kind of how i feel now i see some of these younger
kids i feel so i see
some of these younger kids now and i'm just like i'm gonna just stay over here
it gets people hurt
it ruins your life and that's what it'd be for me i don't i don't want that to
happen because like
i have kids i have a wife i have a good life i live very nice like as far as
like my lifestyle
like i'm here with you right now you know also it's fucking pointless i've seen
bar fights or you
know just young guys and they just like see an opportunity they want to prove
something and i'm
like i just want to tell them like hey man one day you're going to be 35 you're
going to be looking
back on this day and maybe it's the day you got stabbed maybe it's the day you
got shot you know
maybe it's the day you got knocked the fuck out your head bounced off the
concrete and you'll never be
the same person again yeah like exactly what you said it's just not worth it
like you know kevin
james the the comedian yeah he's come to the gym oh that's that's awesome he
trains a lot good friend
of mine i've been friends of mine for 30 years when i first met him he told me
a story when he was
bouncing when he was bouncing in a bar in long island one of his friends there
was a bouncer and some
drunk kid was starting shit and he knocked this kid out and the kid fell down
and hit his head and died
and he wound up doing time he went to jail for manslaughter one of my best
friends got stabbed
in the face in new orleans because he was he didn't even know he was talking to
this dude's
chick and he didn't know right he didn't know like she didn't say nothing she
came up to him he was
just at the bar dude came and stabbed him in the face broke his jaw uh stabbed
him and ran he has a
he has a nice scar it's he's older now so it's kind of went away but like
through his beard
but uh wired his jaw shut he was messed up for a while you know in the face
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and someone trying to stab you in the face is easily trying to stab you in the
neck exactly yeah you just
got lucky so it's like i got lucky to hit that jaw not your fucking carotid
artery oh my god i watched
a video of these guys in london and they're yelling at each other and squaring
off each other back and
forth and back and forth and then finally they get out of it and one guy just
pulls out a fucking knife
and slices this dude's neck and this dude is just squirting out of his neck and
he tries to fight for
a second then he just gets woozy and and he's just squirting as he goes down i
don't know what happened
i'm assuming he died because i'm looking at the amount of blood loss if someone
didn't jump on that
and compress it and even if you did the carotid artery is like such a
significant amount of blood
that's going through there depending on i guess the damage dude i think i had
like so stupid i've
always heard the story obviously you know how stories are but i've heard from a
couple different
people i have like a great uncle somewhere along the line he passed out passed
away before i was alive
he was in a bar i know right where the place is everything's the building's
still there to this
day he was in the bar he was sitting down having some drinks with a friend don't
i don't know the
relationship between him and the guy the guy walked up behind him slit his
throat oh god he he missed
the carotid arteries both of them by like not even a quarter of an inch like
not even eighth of an inch
he missed both of them so it was just here oh he chased the guy out almost beat
him to death and
then almost died because he couldn't breathe like oh god but almost beat the
guy to death almost almost
died so two people almost died bro nightclubs are so bad i've never been a club
i hate like a group
of people i hate it i get very off setting there's too many people on coke
there's too many people
that are stupid there's too many people that want to like bro i fucking see red
and you know there's
too many dummies when i was a kid when i was 21 years old i was at a bar and i
watched this guy hit
a guy in a face with a heineken bottle out of no out of nowhere over nothing i
was standing by the bar
and there's these two guys they were as close as jamie is to me and they were
talking to each other
like loud voices but nothing crazy like no physical shit and this guy just
takes a heineken bottle off
the ball and smashes it on his face and there was blood everywhere this guy was
just just leaking all
over his face i was like that guy's face is destroyed for the rest of his life
over literally
nothing literally nothing it's crazy man it's just there's too many people out
there that are
fucking stupid man and you get sucked into their gravity you know you're like
the guys that like
they're like uh if they know who you are they'll be like oh you can fight i can
shoot i'm like all
all right so can i yeah congratulations let's not fight each other or shoot
each other that's my
hi my name is brendan that's my thing now i'm like bro i don't want to fight or
shoot you just
leave me alone and leave my family alone and we're good bro i don't i don't
want no problems with nobody
well the problem is there's too many people out there that haven't proven
themselves they don't
have a thing in their life that gives them a challenge all the time where they're
proving
themselves so every time they go out they're trying to prove themselves every
time they go out they're
trying to puff their chest out and be billy badass and it's it's so dangerous
and here's where you
don't see that trained fighters dude i used to bounce that a little like
something small and uh i needed
the money obviously and i will never forget man this little dude he had to be
like this tall short and
fat he was i don't know how tipsy he was i don't know right but all the guys
know that i was fighting i was
lfa at the time and um they're like they always told me hey man don't worry
about hitting nobody if
someone swings at you i got you or just hit them and say i did it and i was
like i'm good bro i'm
good i just don't get you in trouble yeah they were super cool right who knows
if that would have
really been how it went i don't know you know but anyway really fuck somebody
up and there was a
lawsuit i guarantee they dropped your name dude they there was a bartender
there he freaking i watched
it with my own two eyes in the front this dude and him got into it the guy
slipped because he pushed
him and he slipped it was a little wet dude he soccer kicked him so hard in the
face so hard i was
like he got arrested for that oh god you know but there but that little kid he
swung at me and i don't
even know if he hit me or hit my hand he hit something right and i'm laughing i'm
laughing i'm like
i couldn't believe it like he had that cocaine courage he must have i'm
laughing i'm literally
doing this and because i was going to stick him with the right but he was so
little like i was like
no way and how i saw the punch come i was like don't do it there are some
people out there that have
no idea how to fight and yet they still try to fight they have no weapon they
don't have a a good
punch they don't have a background of wrestling they don't have a damn thing
and yet they'll still
decide they want to fight someone and just hope in today's day and age how can
you hope that people
don't know how to fight i think if you run into 10 guys one of them can fight
today right it's probably
the most in human history in terms other than like spartan days most in human
history and even back
then how good was their technique exactly you know i'm saying it's crazy they
probably didn't even know
about calf kicks it's like my dad grew up boxing right so my dad he would
always tell me like growing
up he was a little bitch he was like i used to get my ass kicked until he had
he had to move in with
his grandfather his grandfather world war ii vet shot twice grew up boxing um
probably the most rugged
man that you'll ever meet i met him once before he passed away his voice was so
gruff like he's a
man's man you know like one of those doesn't say nothing really and uh so he
raised my dad
and he used to step outside like kind of mess with him box like he put him in
boxing but he knocked my
dad out one time my dad's like you know well man come on let's test it stepped
on his foot and
slept him and uh but anyway so like when he was in high school thing to do to
your kid
dude he said my dad said he didn't care about nothing my dad said he literally
watched his smash
his finger flat with a hammer the nerves flew out like they were still attached
they flew out
oh my hit his head on uh throwing uh barrels of hay in the loft smoked his head
on a railroad spike
that was in the wood uh cracked his skull he didn't know till two days later
they said if he
would have waited a couple like 12 more hours he would have been dead because
all the
swelling on his brain he had to cut his brain uh his skull off to let the fluid
come out oh god
crazy old just stubborn old man you know that's crazy dude your grandson though
sleeping like that
dude he said my dad said my dad said he he said we were messing around he's
like all right like
quit messing with me he always told him that leave me alone he kept on kept on
he stepped on his foot
and my dad said quit stepping he said that's all he remembers oh old school
trick slept in my dad
said when he woke up he had the worst like migraine and he was on the porch
drinking the thing
i think tea and he was like hey get your ass up and go clean the dog pen get to
work
those dudes who came up through world war ii were that's a different kind of
human being
yeah you know so it's like human being like that's that's just kind of like how
my dad was so like
when he got to high school like he wasn't the kind to go look for trouble but
he was the kind of person
like my dad told me as well like you stick up for the people that can't stick
up for themselves
yeah or if someone fucks with you like do what you got to do just don't like
nowadays he's like
don't put your hands like don't throw the punch of them first unless they get
an arm for each then
you throw a punch first don't ever let someone hit you like you too you could
just choke somebody
yeah now but it's like hurt him you could just put him to sleep and that's more
i'm a good hugger so
it's like i prefer that but my dad's like mean man like he's different like and
he like he was in
the military and he boxed when he was overseas for like 75 bucks because he'd
send all his money home
to us so it's like like i don't know like people don't know i'm raised man i
come from something
like that's what i feel like when i fight like i'm different like i i honestly
uh i was telling
myself that in the marvin fight in between rounds like going into the third
because my dad and my
brother were both there in attendance for the first time like my brother hadn't
been in any of my fights
since probably my second pro fight because of his injury and uh so like my i
watched my buddy costello
fight uh for the pfl belt and he said after the fight like he said word for
word he's like i was um
i was raised by a warrior he raised two warriors i'm a fucking warrior and he's
like that's that's what i
told myself and so like that stuck in my head till the fight like till my fight
so like in the third
round like everyone was like oh he falls off in the third and that was
something like my corner was
because that was my first time in chicago so like haracio looked at me in
between rounds and he was
like hey let's go like let's let's restart it he said something else and i was
like i'm good just get
out of the way like you know that's that it's kind of one of those moments
where it's like
you're living in the moment but i don't know well i think just having a coach
is really important
it's really important especially having an elite coach having a coach that's
really on top of it
you know yeah i guess a safe sayud uh you know farah zahabi duke rufus having
someone who's like
really on it really watching you really knows what you need really knows when
you need to back off
because the fact that you did so well and that you were coaching yourself is
kind of
fucking crazy well when i say i had coaches yeah exactly but i didn't have a
main coach yes
sir exactly that's the difference so for people that don't know okay if you
listen to this and
you're just interested in mma generally there's a striking coach usually they
have some sort of a
muay thai or kickboxing background you generally have wrestling coaches you
generally have jiu-jitsu
coaches and if you're a really good gym you got one guy who knows how to put it
all together right
those are the maestros those are the guys who are like conducting the entire
orchestra and they know
you and if a good guy knowing his fighter is like an artist and i think you can
only have a certain
amount of people that you're working really closely with because it's a very
involved and intensive job
like eric nixick like that's a guy he gets down into the nitty-gritty of every
fucking thing you
guys are he's watching you he knows what you need he knows what you don't need
you know it's like
it's also you got a guy who could just push it off to him he knows what to do
he's going to give you
game plans in between rounds okay this is working but we need more of this he
does this all the time
when he does the reason why he's getting away with it is because of that get it
in your head go out
there when i hear guys and the guys losing and they get no technical advice and
and they start getting
go fuck him up you gotta fuck him up you gotta put hands on him like and i'm
like oh my god tell him
what to do he knows how to fight get on top tell him get on top tell him what
to do stand up and i
get it you only have a minute i get it and i get it everybody's panicking if
things are going wrong i
get it but my god it's been having a good coach having like a farasa hobby type
dude in your corner
who just really understands what you need to do so fucking important it's been
one of the best changes
that i have because i ain't gonna lie i'm not the easiest person to deal with
like i like to be very
in control of things that i can control and i know myself like i i've done a
lot i've been around a
lot so i like i know like hey man like i'm feeling it today like my body's kind
of done no no no go go
go 100 you know do you monitor all your shit do you monitor your resting heart
rate uh yeah now i
don't usually have my whoop on because yeah i used to have the aura but it hurt
like i couldn't train
with it so right but uh i know i just took it off because i was training jujitsu
or there's a little
bit of a problem when you lift weights too exactly yeah i pinch my finger so
bad well have you ever
seen sheathing injuries you ever seen those what is it where it rips the skin
of your finger off the
first time i ever saw one i never saw in person but the first time i ever saw
one it was somebody uh
who did jujitsu and they did jujitsu with a ring on like a wedding ring and
just
fucking mangled their finger well it's called sheathing because it pulls all
your skin off the bone
like a sheath you would stick a knife yeah i didn't know that's what it was
called that's what
it's called it's like a sheathing yeah here's some some of these injuries i saw
it like bro look at
that dude oh the first time i ever seen it was someone in a gi a gi it got
caught in the gi oh my
god like you said took the skin off yeah he had the red ring and he had i think
he made the grip on
the on the sleeve and when the guy pulled it like took it like caught that like
fat that little muscle
whatever right there ripped his fucking skin off the whole skin i've never seen
that dude it was
so nasty like you said i was like oh my god so now i am a hundred percent sure
that i don't wear my
wedding ring that's why it's tattooed on my finger because when i go to camp i
don't i don't wear a
wedding ring she knows when i get to camp i take it off i put it in my truck
when camp is over and i get
home from the fight i put it back on i don't have mine on now because i just
came from the gym but i used to
have a silicone one what not used to i have a silicone one that i use all the
time that uh i can work out
with it i could do anything with it oh interesting yeah what is that company
ridge is that what it is
no that's the wallet company is that what it is they're making all kinds of
stuff but there's luggage
and it's a good one it's there's there's um it looks like an aura ring too but
it's it's made out of
silicone so even if you catch it on something it's no big deal but even that i
forget which which
coach it was i forget which coach it's like like an elite jiu-jitsu coach he
goes i refuse to let a
guy even train with that he goes i've seen too many injuries too many injuries
where your finger just
gets mangled by having that stupid thing on there that's nasty that's like groovering
groove that's
it yeah i feel like that with those are legit knee injuries and like dislocations
oh dude you know what
creeps me the most is broken shins when i see that that shin check when the
shin snaps like ah yeah
there's ever a fight that i think a guy should have pulled out that didn't and
i if i was his
friend i would have told him you cannot fight it's connor when he fought dustin
the second fight with
dustin excuse me the third fight with dustin when his shin snapped in half yeah
you know they knew that
he had some sort of a hairline fracture on the really yeah i never knew that he
already had mris and
everything they knew something was really wrong with it yeah screw that no yeah
and he didn't even
it didn't even like go shin to knee or anything like that like it usually snaps
that's how compromised
it was if you watch that fight there is one time where uh dustin checks it and
he checks the kick and
he looked at him he pointed at him like i know that hurt you bitch like he like
got in his head and that
was also after dustin had just k-o'd him in the last fight so this was the
third fight yeah and it was
weird man because in the first fight it was like nice guy connor it was like
nice guy connor even
after the fight like after the fight he was being cool he got k-o'd his leg up
fucked up with those calf kicks and after the fight he was so respectful i'm
like look connor turned
a corner not the third one not the third one bro your girl's in me dms
oh bro it's so funny but it's like i know where dustin he comes from like a
same vibe that i come from
and like same things would probably bother him so when he said that you could
see dustin like even
though he just whooped him he was like like you know crazy thing to say why you're
lying there with
a broken leg for sure you know a guy could just keep it well though yeah you
know who took it the
best that i've seen personally tyrone spong when he when he snapped his in half
he's just sitting
there we talk about this too i'm like bro how'd you sit there just like
he's like to be honest i think he said like to be honest i was a little in
shock at first
and then i was like what am i gonna do it is what it is yeah like what am i
gonna do like it sucks
that's wise yeah he was a g and that is that was uh against gokansaki too yeah
that was a kickboxing
fight yeah i remember rare in a kickboxing fight isn't it interesting it's way
more common in an mma
fight i've only seen it a couple of times in kick but i've seen it god thank
god thank because of
instagram luckily i get to see every fucking horrific injury that's ever
happened i've seen
it seems like i never saw it until one who was the first time was it cory hill
i think it was cory
hill was the first guy who broke his and cory was like a real tall thin guy i
believe he fought at 145
and he was something crazy like 6 3 at 145 yep it was real tall and skinny and
who did he fight
jamie will find he passed away right yes he did unfortunately he fought louisiana
a good big
because i remember when he passed away they were doing some stuff for him there
so that was um
also the referee didn't notice it dale
it just says dale h on the thing
oh bro that gets me so during the fight the referee didn't notice it so they
kept
fighting and i put my headsets down and i got up and i was screaming stop the
fight stop the fight the
referee didn't notice it he didn't notice that the guy's leg broke so they were
still scrapping on the
ground i i hope that was the end because i did not notice that his leg is
literally in a it's just a
bad uh angle you know you're in the wrong place at the wrong time well looking
at where the referee's
standing there's actually kind of no excuse is this a lot of there it is it
falls back look yeah
it's lit
the fight is all over cory hill
dang
you saw instantly on your monitor i saw it instantly in the cage
i wasn't watching the monitor i don't even think we had monitors back then i
was just about to ask that
question i don't think we had monitors back then we didn't have monitors for a
while
the monitors are my idea really i was like we have to have monitors i want to
see monitors i want
to see replays i want to see yeah it was early early in the ufc i was like we
need monitors
you know and also the judges should get fucking monitors too yeah now it's it's
nice i'll sit
behind you sometimes now that i'm thinking that maybe i'm wrong maybe we did
have monitors maybe i was
asking for other things because maybe i was asking for monitors for the judges
like when did they start
having monitors in the ufc i don't know but i always try to watch the actual
fight i want to see the
actual fight yeah okay i mean i like you get a better view of the cage is there
but i mean
fuck man you're five feet away from the best fights on earth you want to see it
see it i don't
want to be on tv watching tv that's crazy yeah you got the best seat in the
house oh it's the craziest
seat ever so when did they start doing it 2011 is that for judges yeah that was
definitely my idea
or well there was other people that had that same idea but i'm like you need to
do this this is
because there were some of them that were so bad some some calls that were so
bad it's like there's
no way these guys are seeing everything you know if there's a pillar here and a
guy lands an elbow
and you're judging and you don't see it like what do you do what do you say
that might have been the
most pivotal moment in the fight like what are you doing you have to see it you
know the judging thing
is crazy man because so much there's about there's judges that don't even train
they've never trained
mma they don't they don't have any jujitsu skill they don't know what's going
on in the middle of a
fight once this lady leaned over to my friend who was also worked for one of
the commissions said
what is he doing no way it was an americana it was like a normal move it was
like what is he doing
that's crazy it was either americana or kimura i'm not sure if i remember he's
trying to bite him
what i don't know but imagine this is a person that's in charge so the the
really horrible thing
about it about a bad decision it's not just that you get a loss on your record
but you get half your
paycheck which i think is really up i think that needs to stop i think you
should have a designated
amount that you're fighting for and if you want to have a stoppage bonus or you
want to you know give
someone some some sort of a bonus for an excellent performance that's great
that incentivizes them to
try harder to stop somebody but a a bad decision that can cost you half your
purse is crazy it's crazy
you know i had a i'm getting older you know so i try to be have a little bit
more wisdom so after
like i lost the fluffy i i was like i went back and watched the fight like six
times and i'm like
i really don't see how how i lost on on it on the decision like i can see like
your point if you use this
frame of mind but based on the unified rules at the time how so i did i reached
out to like a lot of
people that i knew that are like in the high up in commissions and like i had
really deep talks with
them about it like explain my perspective listen to theirs the rules and
literally it came down to
it's your interpretation it's your interpretation of the rules and it was like
it came down to is his
effective grappling even if they're holding they're still you know whatever
does it outweigh me almost
knocking you out and me putting a cut all the way to your skull on your face
and you holding me which one outweighs what that's how i explained it to him
and they were like oh but
he just had more time i said and look don't get me wrong i love fluffy i think
he's a great human
being i really do i've known him we fought twice already and um he's beat me
both times both decisions
you know and um but i don't think i lost the last one i still stay i'll still
die on that hill well
it was a very good fight it was a very close fight i see what you're saying
though and it was one of
the things that we brought up during this past uh fight with murab and piotr
jan and i'm like if
you're looking at it in terms of just damage piotr jan is clearly doing more
damage right he's
hitting murab with shots that rock him he kicks him in the body he's got him
screaming there was never a
moment where murab did that to piotr even when he hit him with good shots piotr
was firing back
right damage is huge it's what the sport is really about the sport is really
about either damage or
coming really close to putting someone out like submitting them and it's just
that's what the
sport's about and when it's just holding when a guy holds and doesn't do
anything with it it's like
that it's look it's an effective strategy and if you're fighting a guy who
could fuck you up standing
and that's all you could do to survive i understand like i have no problem with
boring fights i really
don't and i know the cat the fans like fucking separate them you know fucking
separate them i have
no problem with boring fights because i think if you can let a guy just hold on
to you that is a part
of the game yeah if a guy takes you down and holds you down i think you should
be there a rounds only
five minutes i don't believe in stand-ups and i know that sounds crazy but even
if it's boring as
shit and sometimes i'm happy when they stand people up i really am but if it
was my rules if i could
make the rules i'd be like never stand a person up unless there's a violation
of the rules right
never stand a person up because it's part of the sport if it's boring it's
boring you know we talked
about it after the fight like after the fight like i went in the back and i was
frustrated at my at
myself really to be honest i was super frustrated at myself well first it was i
was like fuck they
just let him hold the whole time like in the third i literally almost knocked
him out like i'm talking
shit right and uh uh robbie looks at me robbie lawler and he goes you should
just got up then i went
you're right yeah you're right that's you're right that's some robbie lawler
you know right there
and that's and from there i was like all right yeah but then i found out after
like one of fluffy's
coaches is um he used to be in the commission like so he knows that they
explained his pedigree or
whatever and he's very very very knowledgeable about what the rules are and all
these things so
they he strategizes i guess certain things around that um so he strategizes
certain things around
the rules yeah that's what that's what i heard that's what they told me and i've
been a lot of
guys do that he canceled like he was in the commission like part of it like i
guess work for
them and he's like he pulled out of working there because he wanted to be for
fluffy more which is
admirable but like he didn't want to have like a conflict conflict yeah so i
thought that was pretty
cool but like i will say like what fluffy did really good that i was prepared
for like wrestling like
crazy but i wrestle with guys that are like folk style wrestlers what he does
very well is he don't
shoot normal shots he doesn't he doesn't shoot like a double or a single he
shoots like it looks
like it's going to be a double but he's only at your hips he's just trying to
get your hips
then he's circling right away if he can or putting you to the cage and working
his sequences from there
but he has a very awkward shots they're so weird like i could see them and i
was like oh i'm about
to stuff it but i'm the kind of guy like you got to touch me and then i'm gonna
go i'm not just gonna
react that way you can set it up for something else right but as soon as he
touches me like in
the second he was i didn't know how uh but i watched it back um i went to like
catch a wizard
and next thing you know my feet came out from under me because we were both
circling so hard i was
trying to get the wizard and he was trying to go to my back and my feet came
out from under me i just
landed like on my shoulder and i'm like in the fight i'm like what the fuck
just happened there's no
way this is where my head's at i'm like no fucking way he just did this i'm
like what the
fuck just happened and my corner's yelling me his corner's yelling and i'm
still in my head like
what the fuck like what just dude it took me like probably a minute and a half
to to like transfer
into something else and then i was like uh he's not doing nothing so i'll just
get him next round
which terrible frame of mindset we've worked on and then the third uh but yeah
man i was like still
like after the fight i was like yo i asked my boy i was like how do you get me
down there like
he went for a guillotine i said i didn't go for no goddamn guillotine till the
third and then i
swept him with it and stood back up i was like i didn't do that i swear but um
yeah man but like
i said he's got a clever style he's a savage he's a savage he's a savage he and
he also has a crazy
gas tank man he melts guys that guy melts guys the delize thing when he grabbed
his neck and just
like like a bouncer at a nightclub just dragged him back to finish him that was
crazy yeah man i
that's one thing i wish i would have gave like put more output like because i
wasn't everyone's like
you're tired i was like bro i was having a full conversation like this in
between rounds right
after if i wasn't tired i was just complacent like i was like oh like i'm
already gonna because i beat
malcoon like that because all he did was hold literally just held and i'm
hitting him bang bang bang
how am i supposed to improve my position you're literally just holding you're
not even moving at
all you're not lifting your weight you're not doing nothing right so i won that
fight because
i did more damage and i had fight ending intentions i felt i had that with
fluffy so in the third i was
like i'm elbowing him and he's gushing blood and i'm looking at the ref like yo
he's just holding i
try to get up he's just he just picks my ankle and i go back down i elbow him
some more try to get back
up he got on top for like a minute but he didn't do nothing really anyway that's
where my frame of
mindset was at and it was just terrible you know looking back but um i would
love a third you know
well it'll probably happen it'll probably happen somewhere down the line
because it would be a great
fight yeah that's where well that's where the kind of the hold up is i guess
right now of like
obviously you know how politics work in this game but it's like the top five is
the champion
drickus uh no i'm sorry champion drickus imevolve uh sean strickland fluffy me
and it's like
all right sean they just announced sean and and fluffy and imevolve yep that's
cool and then
imevolve's waiting they've all they both said they're they're gonna wait for
that one
so it's just me and drickus and then right behind me is izzy who knows when is
he's gonna fight or if
he's gonna fight or right so it's like we're eating on drickus and drickus
always has a lot to say when
i'm losing but when i'm winning he don't really have enough to say and then
like i just saw an interview
like the other day and it was like uh he was like yeah i'd love to to to beat
his head in or something
about you yeah about me and i'm like well you have the opportunity to do so and
it only makes sense
unless you want to wait forever so i wonder um what he does after that hamzat
fight because when a guy
dominates you like that where it's so clear it's just like one of those gaps
that it looks like oh
you're never gonna bridge that gap and that grappling gap and it's never gonna
that i don't know if you
agree but that should never happen at that level it will never does happen at
that level that's the
reality except islam and jack de la maddalena that's another similar situation
yeah very similar
situation but i think there's there's guys that you get in there with and you
know if you're used to
a like b-caliber guy or you know a high high level guy right but there's there's
only a few real a's
and like hamzat is a real a yeah like he's good at he's a savage i talked to dc
about him and dc said
dude when that guy grabbed me and he goes we were wearing street clothes and
everything like that he
goes i realized like oh my i'm gonna have to wrestle wrestle to keep this guy
off me he was like he was
he's fucking strong yeah and it's also because first of all how the fuck did
that guy make 170
i don't know but i don't understand how he talks about going up to 205 because
like you said you got
guys like perera and don't get me wrong i know they're stylistically different
but i think he could
do it i think he could do it i think he could do it if he takes the time and
puts weight on yeah if
he puts weight on i think he has a high chance because he's tall you know he's
tall and it's also
the thing is it's like these gaps in wrestling you know these gaps in grappling
when a guy's a really
good grappler and then you're taking on a guy like trickus he's really a striker
right who's a good
he's a good grappler a good jiu-jitsu guy but there's levels you know and the
kind of guy like
like hamza like man you got to be a fucking olympic caliber wrestler to scrap
with that guy
yeah it's like i i tell people like i'm not gonna go out there and straight
beat chamayev in pure
wrestling like it's not gonna happen i'm not stupid i'm not stupid but it's mma
could i take him down i
mean yeah i could but there's other ways to approach the fight that i think i i
have the upper hand like
you see how other people have approached him and done well with him but it's
like um you also have
very good submissions too you have you have a real solid jiu-jitsu game and you
could strike
you know you're you you've got a very complete package and i think you know the
thing about his
grappling is that like you have that hole if you have that hole he's gonna find
that hole and he's
gonna smother you for sure and your fucksville that's what freaks that's what
like makes no sense
to me with the jerk is fight right like you're the champion of the world he
took you down no problem
man i totally understand i get taken down a lot you know but um i mean i know
our styles are different
but you didn't try to hip bump you didn't try to hip escape you didn't try to
scoop the leg and lift
and elevate you didn't try to do nothing he didn't literally he didn't try to
do nothing he literally
waited for him to establish his position he'd roll side to side maybe one hip
bump around when he did
chemaev did great knee sliced or just stepped over past and went crucifix do
you how many times
he put in the crucifix by the way that was crazy it was crazy i only had to be
like once around because
he wasn't getting out it was i mean how many times did he put him into crucifix
in a world championship
fight has there ever been a fight where a champion has been put in a crucifix
that many times
insane it was over and over and over again we were like how is he doing this
again this is so crazy
and that that kind of blew my mind but so that's what it's like i just think
chemaev's gap is just
so good and i think also with a guy like drick is and you would be the guy to
speak to this when you're
down and you you realize okay it's the first round he's taking me down he's on
top of me let me just
conserve my energy there's a five-round world championship fight i'm gonna
knock this
motherfucker out he's gonna get tired doing this he always gets tired but you
know the difference with um
hamza in this fight is he trained with sam kalavita do you know that guy okay i
just
already hired someone good yeah kalavita is a real elite strength and
conditioning coach and uh legendary
guy and he runs this it's called he just calls it the garage okay it's in
orange county california
and it's just a fucking garage and not even a big one just a small two-car
garage with no cars in it
and it's all just machines and equipment and he's got armand sarukian training
down there tj dillashaw
when he was in his prime he was training down there the reason why tj's
conditioning was that such
a high level when he was in his prime was he was training with that guy he has
everybody that
i know that's trained with him is like bro this guy puts you through hell hell
this is uh that's tj when he's training there and again this is like if you see
there sam if you see
it like and when you listen to the guy talk just extremely fucking
knowledgeable but he gets you to
the point it's called the train it's uh if you look at it online training lab
on instagram t-r-e-i-g-n
lab uh ing lab training but training is t-r-e-i-g-n like train mma i i i know
that name the training
lab because i was like what a weird way that's it so you see aaron pico's there
with them there's
hamzat so i mean he's got so many elite guys that are training inside of that
gym there's one enchilada
i wonder how they how they work that and obviously they have their coaches and
stuff dealing with it
but like how they operate well i think the issue with hamzat was over training
um so one of the
things about hamzat is uh he's apparently you can't kick him out of the fucking
gym he he won't stop
training and you gotta you gotta literally like stop him from training he's a
maniac and when he got
covet that's what really fucked him up so he got covet and you would think oh
healthy guy like that who
gets covet that ain't gonna be shit for him this silly motherfucker was
training like an animal two
hour sessions with covet so then you know he's never getting better so instead
of like saying hey
this cold is not getting better it's like don't be pussy i kill everyone he
shows up again training
again two and a half hours sick as a fucking dog coughing and then he broke his
immune system down
to a point where they had to fucking hospitalize him yeah i remember just from
training while he had
covet that's all it was he just refused to stop training and look if you i don't
care what it is
the flu whatever you have you're you're trying to train two and a half hour
days when you have a
serious lung infection you're gonna die there's dc and dc told me he did one
session with him
this is recently on the bike what's that resistance oh yeah yeah he uses uh
elastic bands along with a
a fucking uh a rogue echo bike yeah so those rogue echo bikes they suck enough
and to have resistance
bands while you're doing it too that's crazy yeah now sam's an animal and again
super knowledgeable
like knows like what your recovery should be where your resting heart rate
should be and also super
knowledgeable in terms of like supplements diet and all that stuff he he comes
from the um the
endurance cycling world which is like so cycling you would imagine like tour de
france tiles style
cycling this is probably the most endurance dependent sport on planet earth
because it goes for so long
like you have to be you have to really understand how to peak in order to
compete at a real insane
endurance event like that so he's got this knowledge from that sport that he's
transferred
over to mma but everybody i know that's trained with him has said like man it
just changed
everything changed my whole game because now all of a sudden you've got an
incredible gas tank
yeah he's doing he's doing good like i said he looked good but i think that was
a factor
though in that fight for sure there's no fade in that fight whereas you saw
like
the usman fight there was a fade in the third round usman won that
fucking third round yeah and after that third round he was like
fuck i wish this was a five-round fight yeah but it's like also like usman made
him have output
yeah he didn't really have to he had one explosion to take him down
mm-hmm but usman can fucking wrestle that's the difference yeah like he was in
there with
a guy who's real strong even though he's a weight class below him like it was
usman that had been
competing at 170 and hamzat had already committed to 85 he's a bigger guy but
usman can really
wrestle and that's the difference it's not like a guy that doesn't know what to
do and
you take him down your rag dom usman's like okay you got me down but this is a
long ass fight
and i'm gonna get back up and we're gonna figure this out and in the third
round he was figuring it
out and he was he started tuning them up he was landing good shots yeah they i
have a friend that
trained with tremaya of like he goes and helps and he's told me he's like man
his wrestling's really
good i was like how good he was like it's good i was like he whooped you he was
like no if i if
he whooped me why would they bring me in if i if he whoops me i was like touche
good one but you
know he is still gonna watch that you gotta watch to see what does he consider
whoop yeah let me watch
show me the video let me see it yeah let me see what they got let me go in the
room i want to see
in the room but i like his demeanor too like that the the the conversation he
had with like ian gary
like he's similar to me like well i don't understand that because i i had heard
there's another angle
that shows that ian like slapped him on the back pretty hard yeah oh he did
yeah but ian's that guy
he's like he's trying to get a rise out of you that way when you do get a rise
he's like like a big
brother you know like nitpicking he's that guy he wants you to get a rise out
of you so then he could
be like what are you doing i i didn't mean that he's like that's why i don't
really like that's why
that's why i don't like ian at all that's because he's you guys were at the
same gym for a while yeah
and he's and but like i don't know like i know like other things and like
things that happen he's
just that guy like he's talked to me through another person like we're out of
me and my boy
are at a fight and he's talking to me through his phone bro shut up take your
stop letting your wife
tell you what to do bro shut up you know but like yeah he he walks over there
and he says something
dude he hits him hard on the back and chemias just looks at him and then he he
did what he did back
or whatever and shoved him whatever the case however that you saw the
confrontation from there
but yeah he did he hit him and he told him he was like you like you hit me i'm
gonna fuck you up
like if you hit me like that again he tried to like big brother him like
because the clip that
everybody saw was after he slapped him on the back it looked like chamayev just
got really aggressive
with no reason there's the other angle like keeps hitting him then shakes him
as he walks away yeah
and then he's talking a little yeah oh we're fine he's not gonna do so it's a
little weirdly
aggressive it ain't that's passive aggressive it's a little weird he taps him
it was like a little
like grab his clothes and shove him a little bit yeah it wasn't like a guy that's
hey brother all
right exactly and that's what he said he's like good luck to you yeah i have to
give it to him like
some things chamayev says or like he fought my boy g and he talked to him in
the hallway i didn't
really like that but hey y'all two are gonna fight y'all are grown men do what
y'all want some things
he might say or do i don't like or agree with but hey as long as it's not to me
we're good but that
like and other things he does i fully agree with i i stand behind as a man i
stand behind him but one
of the things i like about chamayev like after he fought gilbert gilbert and
him went to war and
then he was like you're my brother now you know you know what i mean he was
like he was really cool with
them yeah you know there's a young kid ansar um that trains a kill cliff and he
is so much
like demeanor wise from what i see of chamayev he's so much like that dude i'm
telling you this
kid's like 18 years old and he is a stud he's 18 he fought for me on my
promotion his i think his
debut dude he goes and gets in the guy's face the guy's coming down at weight
class he's going up
a weight ansar's going up a weight class dude he don't care matter of fact he's
in uh that
streamers video neon or whatever they post about it he's the one like throwing
rdr around him
really yeah 18 year old kid dude he gives everybody problems gilbert uh wow was
throwing rdr around
isn't it wild when there's like some weird young phenom that is just so much
better than they're
supposed to be when they're young dude it's real odd when there's you're around
those guys there's
three there's three or four of them that dude i i miss them a lot like when i'm
not like when i when
i left florida one they are such loyal humans like you barely find that
nowadays as you know like you
don't you don't find too many loyal guys and when they say like my brother they
don't care if you're
white black indian uh what your ethnicity is what's your religion they don't
care they care about you
and dude when when i got into it with marvin at the at the casino ansar wasn't
even old enough to get
in so he was like brother if i would have been there i hate him no problem then
there but there's like
nikita uh umran john which is uh ansar's best friend there's like islam there's
a couple of them
uh that's alayev there's like three to five and i'm telling you these guys
especially like umran john
there he is
whoa that's a hell of a shot oh my goodness dude he is so good oh my goodness
look how smooth
he took that dude's back he just he just fought a couple weeks ago he knocked
some dude out in the
first round that was so smooth man oh my goodness oh he is on that back so
quick and so good
you know there's a one thing that these guys have in common is they're all from
a hard part of the
world a rough part of the world him and his best friend uh umran john they they
left home at like
i think he was 17 18 years old they just left home we asked him like hey bro
why'd you leave home
how'd you leave home like how'd you get here they both said the same thing they
said look at he's out
he's out referee he's a savage he trains a hundred percent he don't know
anything other than a hundred
percent every day who multiple times but we asked him like bro how old is he
now i think he's 18 19
max wow dude he's a savage he looks good he's very good he looks good there's
another one if you're
that good at 18 my goodness he's gonna be a stud what's he gonna be like when
he's 30 dude i tell
him all the time like man if you just learn how to just take a breath and just
be a little bit
patient in certain positions because that'll come exactly but man he's he he's
fighting good guys
already like they all they all want to fight him uman john uman john was
fighting like one or two
weight classes up and he had a draw with a guy and he thought it was like you
would think he lost the
love of his life he had a draw because he was two weight classes up and uh like
bro why don't you
fight at your weight class brother i just smash i want to fight everyone
everyone and they can't get
fights they can barely ever get fights so it's hard for phenoms to get fights
the amateurs and in the
lower uh organizations a lot of people don't realize that it's really hard yeah
they come to
me to match them and you you got to pay the other guy more to fight because
like they they already
know like what it is and yeah it was hard it was very hard and so what weight
is he at now i think
he's at 45 45 that's that's his last one right there i think no no that's not
another big takedown
bro look at the dude's hair he's fighting that's what he does to everyone oh my
goodness that is a
crazy takedown he's so exciting i can't believe dudes are still holding on to
guillotines when people
get into side control how many times they want watch ovin saint prue fight you
know it's it's crazy how
many people still do that they still keep that guillotine while guys inside
control yeah that is
a death sentence like and some people don't cash in on it but it's all if you
just cinch those hands
together he can't get that ham out that's it yeah turn on your side that's it
it's it's almost like
giving up your neck exactly if someone like gave up their back everybody like
what are you doing
that's like what you're doing if you're holding on to a guillotine and the guy's
in side control
it literally is like giving up your back and exposing your neck it's kind of
crazy it is but i
see these kids like this and i'm just like i used to be that kid but these guys
are even better you
know what i mean like it's scary how evolution is but like i said man i asked
these kids i was
like man why'd you leave home how'd you leave home how'd you get here him and
his best friend left
together their story both same thing different times like brother we just left
one day our parents
we told our parents we were going to the store never came back what you know
and just moved to america
yeah like they somehow got here and they've been here and dude they work during
the day they move
stuff like they work for moving company and then they train so they train in
the morning they go they
train train then they go work all night all through the night moving stuff try
whatever they have to
do whatever their work is but i'm most of the time i see them moving stuff and
then they come back
train the next day and they do this every single day working their ass off man
it's super impressive and
it's super motivating too but it's it just lets you know like like for me i
used to be that young cat
like everyone was 24 25 i'm 17 18 yeah and i'm doing what i'm doing and now i
see these kids and i'm
like damn so that's what it was like when the older guys are looking at me but
these guys are better
forget when they get like complacent in their career and they become like a
journeyman and they forget
what it's like to be young and hungry and then they'll train with someone and
that'll either make them
retire or it'll reinvigorate them it's it's awesome because if you're around
like people that are that
driven it becomes contagious it really does especially if you know that a guy
is working
all day and training that hard like you got no excuses right and it's also
there's like a when
you're around people like that there's a an energy it's it catches you it moves
you in its wake
it does you're right 100 because like i get my modes where i don't want to do
nothing i'm just like
man screw this i've done this long enough like whatever but then i go i go back
and like say
today for instance i went and trained with nikki rod they whooped my ass i ain't
gonna lie to you
they whooped my ass and i told them after i was like it should be illegal that
y'all just whooped me
that bad and uh they're like yeah but you ain't done nothing and you know you
don't do pure jiu-jitsu
anymore like we're the best in the world like some of the best in the world at
pure jiu-jitsu it's true i
was like yeah but still i shouldn't be getting walk like that and uh but it
just makes me hungry
that's almost everybody i love it man he's so big he's such a freak dude i told
him today i was
like how are you this big and move like this this is illegal dude gordon told
me there was a position
once they were doing where they were um working from the back and uh gordon had
his back and nikki
flipped over the top of him and wound up behind gordon and gordon turns to john
donnaher and goes
what the am i supposed to do with that like what do i do if that happens it's
like well donnaher was
like well nobody could do that other than nikki dude that's how crazy that is
he's so sick you know
how nuts that is do a backflip from your knees i couldn't and go over the top
of someone who's got
your back i can't even separate the hands somehow or another he separated the
hands and flipped over him
and gordon was like okay because gordon would be the first to tell you even
though he's the best in
the world and the best ever at nogi jiu-jitsu he's not an explosive guy yeah he's
not he was like
i'm not a good athlete he's intelligent though super super intelligent smart
yeah he's super
intelligent super smart i've listened to some of his like instructionals before
and like uh i know
he did one at rufus for a long time ago and the guys told me after because i
was obviously at home
and they're like bro he he was in a wheelchair because i guess he had a surgery
at the time and
he was in a chair and his lady was teaching like she was teaching for him and
he was walking through
every single position they they all everyone said that was the best uh seminar
they ever been to he
didn't he didn't get down there and teach one move that's incredible that's
incredible i was like that's
impressive well you if you could do a seminar from a wheelchair jesus christ
dude impressive you know
wagner says the same thing he's like bro he's the best guy i've ever trained
with learned from
anything he's he's amazing so i've heard it from a lot i've heard a lot of
other guy though that's
365 days a year of training he goes period there's no days off fuck your christmas
fuck your birthday there's no days off which is so crazy yeah i think of but
the way they put it
and the way donna put it is like if you are training 200 days a year that is a
lot but you
will not be able to beat a guy who's training 365 days a year because he has 165
more training sessions a
year so over the course of two years now he has you know 300 plus then 400 it
keeps going and going so
over the course of five years like he's trained so much more than you it's true
and it's not just
training it's like when they're not physically training they're going over tape
all day right
like which is like it's hard to do that and to keep your mind focused on that
they're writing
things down they're going over positions it's not just all hard physical work
it's intelligent it's a lot
of breaking things down a lot of like the finer points of technique and
positioning it's it's funny
you say that because it's like for me like when we were talking earlier about
how like time off it
reinvigorates your mind it's like that's what it does for me like i i probably
do a hundred reps
in a day of like things that i've screwed up on like throwing a jab wrong or
leaving my hand down or
like in my head my mental reps and then somehow when i do go train again it's
just so weird like
it's my body just automatically does it like say i throw the jab and i just
bring it back to my chest
i don't want it there i want it on my chin i throw i do so many mental reps of
this for like a week or
two weeks or however long i'm out by the time i spar again i'm not doing it no
more like i do so
many mental reps focus on such little details but then outside of that i really
take my time i try to
take my time away from fighting like when i'm not training for the most part
like especially like the
month after the fight i don't want to hear about fighting i don't want to talk
about fighting
that's why i stay away from like most people that don't know me i don't want to
talk because
anytime they see me oh what do you think about this fight what's next i don't
know man you just
want to let your i just want to motivation exactly i just want to be with my
family i want to be a
normal person because one day fighting is not going to be there for me it's
always been there for me
since i was 13 when i had anxiety about something stress heartbreak whatever it
is it's always been
there for me and that's when i always grew but it's not the end is a lot closer
than the beginning
right you know that's where i'm at in my life and i know that so i'm trying to
make the most of it and
try but you think about like high end you got 10 years if that's really
possible maybe it's not
usually and usually the last few are rough because the last few years like anderson
after broke his
leg right right so i say there's like two anderson's there's anderson pre-wideman
and post-wideman for
sure there's the knockout or wideman caught him at the left hook and then there's
the leg break in
the rematch and then from then he's never been anderson again correct and i
think the injury
has a lot to do with it but it's also father time i don't think we got anderson
in the ufc till he was
34 it was a while because he was already big on the other huge bro that was one
of them fights where
um people didn't really know anderson that well and he was fighting chris lieben
and the odds were
anderson was the favorite but not by enough and i was telling my friend like
bet the house
on the brazilian i go bet the house yeah because he was coming off of that
remember cage rage yeah so
he was coming off of uh the lee murray fight he was coming up who did he fight
over there as well he
fought uh jorge rivera that was a big fight there was a tony frickland one
where he did that crazy
step in elbow oh yeah that's all the highlight of that i didn't know that was
the name but i know
the elbow you're talking about that elbow do you know he had a practice with
his wife because uh his
coach wouldn't let him try it really his coach was like stop doing that you're
not gonna do that he
goes i'm gonna hit him with this he's like no you're not gonna do that stop
training that so we didn't
want to train that so he told his wife to hold a pillow so his wife was holding
a pillow at home and
he was going like this over and over again he was just practicing no way he
wanted to do some
on box shit what a great story to have that was anderson like people didn't
people saw him in his
prime for sure obviously because he's one of the greatest of all time but for
sure they didn't see
that transition to him becoming in his prime and that was in cage rage because
he had some really
good fights in in pride but then when he went to cage rage like something
flipped man you know how it
has like olivera when it happened to him after he had his kid you know
something flips sometimes when a
fighter just locks in and then they become who they really are yeah who
everyone around them knows
in the gym but no one else has seen it it's uh it's weird like i always say
that about myself like
i still haven't i'm still not the guy that everyone knows in the gym i show a
little bit more every
time but i'm not even that that guy well maybe this changing of environment and
coaching will allow you to
hit that spot the coaching like you were talking about earlier right it has
been the hardest thing
for me to let go like of control and give it to someone else but it took it was
kind of one of
those things i met haracio and mike and i have obviously a lot of trust and a
lot of faith in
bala i've known him for a long time and i see what he's done but i met these
guys and max too um i met him
for five days when i was with bala and uh to watch sit back and watch them also
have my own
interactions with them it just felt like you know one of those things you just
feel like your friends
instantly like you've known each other forever and that's kind of what that
connection was with them
so honestly it was a little bit easier than normal to let go of like
um the control of like controlling what i'm going to do when i'm going to do it
the strategy did you
think about other camps as well did you think about i didn't think i was going
to leave to be honest
with you i didn't think i was going to leave florida i was just going there to
help my friend and just
kind of see what i could do different like what i could change in my own in my
own thing um but then
obviously uh my goal after being there because he was getting ready for jack uh
bala was so i watched
everything i helped him for a few days and then i went back i fought marvin and
i was at um i did two or
three weeks with uh chicago two weeks i did two weeks excuse me i did two weeks
and then um
i did like four or five in florida so i was like okay next time i'm just going
to do split it four
and four you know spend my time mix and match because it was great time like
for me then i fought the
ritter he was there and i was like i don't know it didn't sit well with me how
all that stuff went
like how he got there and everything and everyone was like oh why is he
fighting him their teammates
and i told everyone from the beginning like you can ask gilbert burns because
he said it on his
little podcast thing he did i always said i'm not going to train with him i'm
going to fight him one day
i'm good no animosity i just don't need no more friends like i just don't right
um i have enough
guys the guys that i know that i'm friends with joe pifer rod gregory rodriguez
uh by singor
those are guys that are gonna be at the top or at the top that we have
agreements only for a belt i'll
fight anyone on this planet for about anyone and i expect the same in return
because it could change my
their lives or my own you know yeah so um they know that about me but no matter
what the time
frame is if you say yes to me or you say my name we're gonna fight that's it
like that's how that's
how i feel but those guys are the guys that i have with and now they're all
coming to the top so it's
like you know someday it's it's probably gonna happen so it's like dana hates
hearing that kind of
yeah like guys won't fight friends yeah but i'll fight for a belt though anyone
on the whole planet
godzilla i'll fight for the whole but i don't care and ganu i'll fight him for
about i don't care
like you know what i mean like it could change my whole life like my family's
sure yeah so like
i'm very realistic because obviously even if you love to do this at this level
it's about the money
too like you know it's financial freedom making intelligent choices because one
slip up could set
you back two years yeah i'm learning that yeah i learned that the hard way well
that's also important
to learn right it's also important to have those setbacks those setbacks are
some of the most
important growth points in your career in anybody's career if you do it right
like those set those
setbacks are when you feel that ugliness and then you really have to assess
what could i've done
differently right what am i doing wrong what's my is there something about my
mindset or something
about my diet is there something about my recovery am i doing too much of this
or too little of that
you have to have that pain if everything is just going great the thing going
into the fight was
aspinall's every fight other than the curtis blades fight was a one-round fight
it was him blowing guys
out and so no one really knew what was going to happen if we got into round
three round four round
five and so that question's always hovering over the head when a guy like you
who's been in those wars and
been in the trenches you've already had that's a blessing it really is a
blessing because it gives
you not just the motivation to return better than you were before like look at
bo nickel after he lost
right he loses to de ritter comes back and smokes adolfo vera look like a
different guy looks like a
different guy why because of that there's a blessing in losing there's a
blessing in failure there really is
because if you can swallow it it will give you a furnace inside you to come
back stronger if you
can swallow it but some guys can't swallow it they choke on it and they cry and
and maybe their
confidence gets shattered and they're never the same again or maybe they go why
am i doing this i
could be a carpenter i always wanted to play drums i've thought of that i
thought of that but i don't
want to go back to being a carpenter i'm good with that a guy like tom aspinall
when he gets to
a fight with a guy like gangana or a guy who's going to be there those
questions and i'm not
saying that he wouldn't succeed i'm not saying he wouldn't win but those
questions might be in your
head because you haven't been in those high profile wars before where you came
up short yeah you know
i still get those questions i question i i'm such a perfectionist and i know
nothing will ever be
perfect but i want as close to it as i can get that still great mindset i find
something i will always
find something to be negative but what's helped me is i had a sports
psychiatrist for a while he was
great um and i learned a lot with him and for me it's it's been about like i'm
very like open with
people that i care about and i know care solely about me they're not worried
about if i win or lose
or you know all that stuff the fame they're not worried about that they care
about me as a person
and that was something that was great with below and haracio and all the guys
in chicago mike max
you know we talk regularly how are you man how's the family everything good how's
you how but i'm
very open with them leading up to the fight like there's a clip from behind the
scenes of the last
fight where i'm i'm open and they catch it like this is me being vulnerable of
who i am i was too
manly or whatever or trying to suppress it before where it just grew into
something bigger and i would
mentally shut down um malcoon was the worst fight for me for that i was shaking
in the bed the night
before like i thought like i was freezing but i wasn't i was so nervous of like
i can't lose to
this guy he's not on my level and then i go out there and perform not that well
so your mind was
fucking you yeah because i find one negative thing and i just focus and i make
it huge i think it's
good sometimes i think it's good sometimes but it's it's like almost like you
have to be critical but
yet also confident right and i would take my confidence away by by focusing on
it but being
able to talk about it like again they have that moment i have it on my
instagram that they made a
clip or whatever for me and um it was it's just literally it was two nights
before the fight three
nights before the fight and we're talking and i'm telling him he could get me
down he could he could
finish me but if he finishes me on the ground he's got to be just that good but
i'm nervous man i'm
nervous that i'm not going to go out here and perform to what i know that i can
do that's to
me that's the worst i don't mind losing to someone that's better than me i can
take it i haven't
found that man yet but i know it's going to happen but to lose to someone truly
better than me i can
accept it but to lose to myself oh man to look in the mirror it eats me alive i
think those things
that can creep into your head before a fight where i don't want to lose i don't
want to disappoint
people i don't want to do this then that is a really bad time to have those
thoughts it's not
a bad time to have those thoughts when you're working on stuff it's not a bad
time to have
those thoughts like if you're really trying to motivate yourself to get up in
the morning and run
or whatever it is like to really get after it in strength conditioning but when
you're fighting like
you have to have a strategy of how to squash those thoughts when they come up
and it can i mean it's
not just fighting anybody who's listening to this anything in life that you
have to do that's really
difficult and scares you you gotta know how to squash negative thoughts before
they burn your house
down like when you see the fire stop that bitch out quick stomp it out quick
and then make sure that
you're starting to really only focus on positive things and never let it get it
because those little
creepy demon thoughts they'll get in and then they start running around they
start running around they
start screaming and taking over your brain you're like get out of my head get
out of my head but
they're already in there you let them in you let them in and sometimes they
have to burn your house
down before you realize what the what the danger is of them getting inside your
head right and so
then the next time you've got to come up with a strategy to squash it before it
gets too crazy
we did a lot of like uh at the beginning of like sports psychiatrists like that
was one thing right
like i would suppress it right away and suppress it and try to creep back
through and i'd suppress it again
but then it just gets bigger and stronger to where it can just come out and you
don't know when it's
going to come out it could be the night of the fight it could be the day before
the fight could be
in the fight you know so it's like that taking it in whatever that emotion is
for you dissecting it
like literally get to the root of why you think this like oh i think he can
knock me out if i dissect it
well yeah he's knocked a lot of guys out but anyone can knock anyone out right
anyone can so what are you
nervous of you've done this like for me over 30 times like what are you worried
about you fought on the
biggest level you've main evented you're you're ranked in the world you fought
some of the best in
the world like what are you worried about you let a demon sneak into your brain
yeah you know
and once i dissect it i've worked on it like that so well and being open and
honest with my coaches
and like the people that i care about they care about me has been such a great
like thing for me
i'm kind of the guy like sometimes like just i've learned about myself is just
like just let me talk
sometimes i'm not a big talker but just let me talk if you don't even say
nothing but damn that's
all right bro that's why tuco they who always see me with normally he's always
with me bro he's the
best at just like listening to me like it's not very often but when i do want
to talk like i'm like
bro like he'll ask me what's wrong but i don't think you want to hear it today
like i'm good he'll ask
me that a couple times eventually i'll just let it out and then i'm good i'm
good like like it's
almost like you have to tell somebody what what's going on inside your head and
if you keep it inside
your head there's the wings the wings are coming demons flying monkeys throwing
fire bombs inside
your head launching wizard of oz launching them bro so it's like that's been
great for me that's really
helped in it i i you know i've had a couple younger kids that like have asked
me oh how's that and i
turned them on to my guy that i used to use what did you do with the
psychiatrist like how did what
were the sessions like we would talk about things like this he'd have worksheets
and stuff like this
but you know what really really sunk in so first we worked on like learning to
catch emotions he
called it something but learning to catch different emotions before they grow
so you can stop the fire
yeah exactly before it burns your house down so like recognizing first is
recognizing anything you
have to recognize if you recognize it 30 minutes the first time all right let's
try for 25
the next time don't let it like you thought on it for 30 minutes and you're
like what am i thinking
about this right let's do 25 so keep until you can get it like right away then
we dissect it and then
we move on about our day things that helped me at the beginning were like um
does it help you
talking with a different person like another person about this rather than just
bouncing it off your own
head yes for sure something about talking to another person makes it real yeah
and it just like
gets it out like i'm holding it in holding it in holding it in as soon as i
talk it's like it's
literally like leaving my body like the stress just kind of like and sometimes
they have like good
things to say like things like like that my sports psychiatrist was the one
that told me those
things like bro you've done this how many times you fought these guys like did
he ever work with
fighters before uh he was working with a small team in new orleans and now he
like he's got other
guys in the ufc now because they would ask me and i turn him on and he's he's
great his name's
eric he's he's really great he's from new orleans because i would think if a
guy was like a sports
psychiatrist like tennis it's like some things would carry over but it's a very
different thing
and he trained as well he grew up wrestling and stuff perfect guy then exactly
and it just it just uh
it worked out great man i learned a lot like i kind of figured out what worked
for me so i was like
all right and i get so busy but um another thing he gave me was uh you read it
the day like after you
weigh in you read it and then you finish like it has a part where it says read
up to this point
and then you read this the rest of the section uh the date of the fight and it's
i forget the
author i have it in my phone somewhere uh that he sent me a long time ago and i
would read it before
every fight everyone like the apex when we was in the apex all the time we i'd
weigh in and we had
to wait that like two hours till like we could face off if you weigh in first
and i'd sit there
and i'd read it and it was like an author and he talks a lot about like
different sports and like
like one of his main basic things is like hope the word uh hope hold on
possibilities exist like
don't ever think it's over it's done don't ever say i have to do something i
want to do something i
don't have to the moment you start putting i have to is the moment you start
like he says like put like
change you hit the emergency stop button the emergency brake on your car like
you got to let
it off you're not performing at your best with all those things so like stuff
like that really like
sets in and i try to remind myself so like reminding myself of those things
talking about it is really
like what helps me this book is it a book it's like a little uh pamphlet pamphlet
yeah kind of
do you know who wrote it uh it's in my phone i could find it well just like so
other people can
look at it because it sounds pretty powerful it was great man and if it helped
you there's there's a
lot of like hokey sort of self-help stuff online you know be a fucking man go
out and get it done and
there's you there's a wolf inside of you and all that kooky shit but the
reality is there's a lot
of wisdom out there too there's a lot of like you could read meditations by marcus
aurelius and
literally learn how to live a better life like there's a lot of stuff out there
that's very beneficial so
when someone like yourself has something that really helped them i think it's
probably good to
put it out there so other people could get it you know it's so crazy now i'm
looking through like
the documents and stuff that he sent me like mindfulness was the word i was
looking for when you catch
it like mindfulness like stuff like that but it's funny mindfulness is one of
them co-opted words
it's been co-opted like gratitude and spirituality it's one of them words that
like too many kooky
people use yeah exactly the first time he told me i was like bro don't tell me
where i think this is
some crazy shit bro i'm not that kind of guy you know don't you hit me with no
mindfulness
yeah man but look i'm literally going through right here right and he would
send me stuff right
before a fight or like so look at quotes he'd send me uh youtube links look at
the second one from the
top uh uh who is it with me who is it uh david goggins oh that's hilarious he
sent me that like stuff
like oh man stuff like this goggins is a perfect example that he says things
all the time that i think of
jocko when i'm when i'm working out and i'm really tired i think of this one jocko
video
where it's called good have you ever seen that video no you want to get fired
up yeah i want to
see it can we play that we get fired up this is one of my all-time favorite
videos you know jocko
right jocko yeah yeah yeah so jocko you know was a navy seal and uh was he's
got a book called uh
extreme ownership one and it's just the way he thinks the way he carries
himself is it's so it's
so beneficial if you can adopt this that there's sometimes where i'm training
where i'm really
really tired and i want to quit i think of jocko and i go good you're tired
that means you're going
to get stronger listen to this this is one of my direct subordinates one of my
guys that worked for me
he would he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem some
issue that was going on
and he'd say boss we got this and that and the other thing and i'd look at him
and i'd say good
and finally one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having some
problem and
he said i already know what you're going to say
i said well what am i going to say he said you're going to say good
he said that's what you always say when something is wrong and going bad you
always just look at me
and say good and i said well yeah when things are going bad there's going to be
some good that's
going to come from it didn't get the new high-speed gear we wanted good didn't
get promoted
good more time to get better oh mission got canceled good we can focus on the
other one didn't get funded
didn't get the job you wanted got injured sprained my ankle got tapped out good
got beat good
unexpected problems good we have the opportunity to figure out a solution
that's it when things are going bad
don't get all bummed out don't get startled don't get frustrated
if you can say the word good guess what it means you're still alive it means
you're still breathing
well now you still got some fight left in you so get up dust off reload recalibrate
re-engage and go out on the attack
oh yeah that's a good one that's a good one play that one when you're in the
fucking dressing room
this is what it is getting ready i don't know if it's so these are the things
he sends you yeah
okay so um it's called how sports psychology can help you do your best when it
means the most
unedited copy who's the author um so let's say oh rob gilbert rob gilbert phd
montclair state
university montclair new jersey okay it's pretty cool um god i'll ask you to
send me that yeah
of course i love shit like that it's like there's little things like that you
can carry in your
toolbox and they can help you and not just if you're a professional fighter but
in basically everything
in life it's been um it really helped change how's belal doing who fucking gets
poked in the eye more
than that guy jesus christ that guy's had i think he's had something insane
like nine eye surgeries i
know he's had three of the hard ones like of the the he literally he told me
the story he had to drive
home six hours his his uh excuse me his wife came and got him and brought him
home but this is a while
back uh he had to drive six hours with his head like that because something
with the pressure
you can't sit straight up with it it's it's crazy he explained it to me but it's
like it blows my mind
i couldn't believe he got poked again by in gear i couldn't believe it the
moment he got poked i'm
like i can't believe this is happening i can't believe it's happening dude i
thought the same thing
oh my god look at that look at that finger in his deep in his fucking eyeball
that is so crazy
yeah that's so crazy so he's had major surgeries on his eyes yep and then ian poked
him like right
away i was like this is crazy i've i don't know how you feel but i feel like it
should be an instant
one point deduction at least every time at least i like what talan aspinall
said he was like no you
poke me in my eye you want me to continue okay no problem i get to poke him in
his eye right i was
like a lot of people are talking shit about tom but he apparently still can't
see yeah like his eyes
still fucked up like no one knows here's the thing the eye the other eye got
hurt as well but not as
bad but it looks way worse the finger goes way deeper in the other eye dude eye
pokes bro he went
straight three stooges boink and you know it's it's crazy that everyone that
talks the most
shit has never been poked in the eye not even a little bit like accidentally oh
it's horrible you
know it's like a a bolt of lightning in your brain and then you can't see and
if the idea that you can't
see and then you're supposed to fight a guy also you're you're fighting a guy
in ian gary who has a
fucking nasty left hand so if you get poked in your eyeball and you can't see
that punch cut
well he's got a nasty right hand too i mean ian gary can strike oh god that's
been all right there look at
that so look at the right one the one though the excuse me the left eye that's
deeper and that one
didn't get hurt as bad it's his right eye that really got hurt the left one is
like finger knuckle
deep in his eyeball man dude it's crazy you know like um balal is like one of
those guys you talk about
365 24 7 he's ready he's doing something always i'm i'm even like bro take a
break bro you've earned
a little break take a week off be with your with your family you know he won't
well at his stage
of his life it might be the only way to keep going because he's at like 38 now
right yeah something like
that it's like that's the same age as usman and uh you know you can still be a
world-class fighter
at that age you could clearly see that with camaro against joaquin buckley like
a lot of people counted
him out because joaquin buckley was fucking a lot of people yeah he was joaquin
buckley bro whoo that
guy's a problem he's a fucking problem i've known him for a minute man he's a
he's wild and fast and
he keeps getting better and he's really fucking he's really fucking intelligent
about how to land
shots he knows how to set things up likes to fight he loves to fight and he's
you know he's just just a
dog just in the fight man he's always dangerous that wonder boy fight you know
he's a little having a
little bit problem solving that distance in that range until he didn't until he
didn't man bro
bro that dude's got hammers in his fist yes so when watching kamaru just ragdoll
him like that i was
like god damn fuck yeah it looked like kamaru world champion level kamaru yeah
like a lot of
people have kind of counted him out because there's this narrative that he puts
out there openly about
his knees yeah oh he talked about on this podcast openly his knees are fucked
he's like i gotta go
go downstairs backwards sometimes yeah they hurt so much i heard he went and
did like a lot of stuff to
like redo them and now he says they're good but i don't i don't know i don't
know well uh i know he
went to colombia he went down to uh that uh bioaccelerator place in colombia i
don't know if he's been to
the place in tijuana that the ufc uses now the the cellular performance
institute but they're all very
similar we're being held back to such a ridiculous extent in this country by
the fda that you don't
realize how many people with neurological conditions how many people with
severe injuries how many people
could be helped by stem cells and there there's no evidence that they're
damaging people there's no
evidence i mean look anytime you have any invasive procedure anytime anytime
you have a surgery and
there's always some risk that something can go wrong there's always a risk in
any medical procedure
but there's no outstanding risks versus reward to stem cells on the contrary
the the the evidence is
outstanding results including like some of the things dr neil reardon has been
doing down in panama
with people that have like severe neurological problems guys that have had cte
like real real real bad
fucking other than just injuries and then even injuries like my mom had a
really bad knee and i sent her
down there and it got a lot better it sounded i sent down there twice a lot
better mel gibson his dad
couldn't walk he's he was like almost 90 he was like 80 years old and then um
he went down got his hips
done got his neil um neil did his shoulders his hips a bunch of other stuff and
and did mel as well
and he's just like no my dad was like up and walking around like five years
later still like like he was
10 years younger like he's a great actor by the way oh mel amazing he's the man
he's the man i love
that guy he's crazy too he's so interesting he's such a heat that guy's got
like a fucking tornado
going on in his brain all the time really oh yeah yeah i think that's why he's
such a good director
man did you ever see apocalypto yeah one of my favorites i fucking love that
movie same
it's such a good i love that movie too such a good movie man such a good movie
he plays some great
ones i mean he made a movie where nobody speaks english exactly and it's a
blockbuster and it's
amazing it's fucking incredible dude it's fucking i love that one but like i
like his old stuff too
like braveheart braveheart was amazing passion of the christ was really good
too man the patriot was
yeah dude he's fucking he's the real deal man mel gibson's the real deal what's
the one he
you're gonna think i'm crazy but uh i think it's think like a woman you ever
seen that one i did not
bro that is freaking hilarious what is it it's like um he gets trapped in like
he can like read a woman's
mind oh and so because like he's basically a guy he works he's a journalist or
like a publisher or
something like that and um he's very like a womanizer like he gets women and
just like whatever
and they always like talking about him behind his back like everyone else so
now like he's trying to
move up the ranks uh he's supposed to be next in line for a promotion well he's
he has his daughter
come in and she leaves that the the blow dryer and he trips on it and falls in
the uh the water gets
electrocuted and he wakes up and now he can hear all women's thoughts and it
like changes who he
is as a person that's it it's amazing oh like she gets his promotion so now he's
2000 bro great
funny as hell and hunt he's been great in a lot of he was he was great in that
conspiracy theory
movie what's that that was it julia roberts yeah he was a a wacky conspiracy
theorist guy
i don't think i've seen that one it's pretty good what's called conspiracy
theory oh is that what
it's called that's hilarious i've seen that and um i i think like a lot of the
things that he
talked about now it's like people openly discuss online you know because this
is all before the
internet what year was that the 97 yeah so there were no like conspiracy theory
websites back then
he has another lot he has another one where like his wife works his daughter i'm
sorry his daughter
works for this company she comes home and it's like this one of those rich
companies that like
hide stuff but you never can tell because you never have proof and she's
working in like a
secret department she comes home all frantic and uh the dude yells something
shoots her with a shotgun
right on the right on his front door boom kills her so obviously then he goes
and starts trying
to figure everything out and he starts figuring out like through the way what
the work was doing it was
like poisoning or something well anyway he finds the guy and ends up killing
him but he ends up dying
too because he got the poison from wherever he went in to the workspace like he
followed it he was doing
all kind of shit but it was super cool too what movie is that i don't know you
know that movie
where he shoots he shoots his daughter on the front step like that's one of the
that was one of the
the things that sold the movie like that was one of the previews well how about
lethal weapon first
time we ever saw anybody do a triangle in a movie true right yeah dude he's
that was crazy i like
his movies i'd love that scene like that scene i was like what is he doing i
didn't even know what
a triangle was back then because i think that was in the 80s i wasn't even
alive when was
when was when did lethal weapon one come out edge of darkness that's it
when i think it's like 87 or 88 yeah man so uh back then no one knew what a
fucking triangle was other than the gracies people in brazil knew brazil was so
far ahead of the curve
man they were having mma fights in the 30s dude i was uh i went there for my
boy tuco he fought in
the favela right and uh yeah look at this he was gary bucey who was fighting in
the end who was the
guy who was fighting in the end i don't remember i think it's gary bucey right
yeah it is gary bucey
you know he had a headache
movies in the 80s are so wild dude
we don't need to watch the whole thing let's just cut to the triangle this is
silly i thought so
that's not bad that's not bad that's pretty good i like that he got a good
angle oh that's not bad at all
that's tight he's cinching it up right there everybody at home was like what is
happening
another man put his legs around another man's head i remember when hoist gracie
did that to dan
severin everybody was like what's going on like what is happening and then all
of a sudden you see
dan severin tap and you're like what what what happened what did he do put him
to sleep
my friend would know better the lineage and stuff right that's where he's my he's
my intelligence
but um we went to brazil right for his fight he was fighting in the favela at
um josie aldo's gym
yeah it's like right on the edge of the favela it's nice though yeah andre pedinares
yeah he was
there he was super nice he's awesome he was super nice super hospitable pioneer
dude yes he was
fighting mma in early days really i didn't know that oh my god man yeah i just
know him we met a lot
of great guys but we uh we were there with daniel gracie and i think it's henzo's
mom and then his
dad like the whole lineage was there before he passed away he was there we went
over there we were
sitting on their couch chilling hanging out talking meeting all of them and
again i am absolutely god
awful with names but i knew like as soon as he come out of the stairs he was
going somewhere he had
nice jacket oh no he was doing an interview with um uh he was doing an
interview like a little podcast
or something it was all in portuguese i couldn't understand what they were
saying but they met him
super nice and then like i think like it was it wasn't too long after that he
passed away but like
that's like this one of the starts of gracie jiu-jitsu was it ilio was it carlos
who was it
i think it was carlos i think i don't it doesn't matter it was one of them
right i could figure it
out though okay but dude super nice like they were all explaining like the
lineage and i've i started
with what's that jamie oh sorry i started with like gracie jiu-jitsu so like i
used to know that
lineage fairly well but then you know how life is you just get away and kind of
forget you're not around
it as much but yeah well it's a crazy lineage i mean that one family's
responsible for changing
mixed martial arts dude they were telling us so many like cool stories like
things that i had heard
through the grapevine you know from other people when i was younger but they
confirmed it and like
they were even like asking like where the beef comes from in the family you
know like what started
that exactly what started because obviously he was in it he dude he well they
translated for us but he was
saying like how it all got started but beef between what parts of the family
two beefs that they have
uh no it was uh carlos and who's the one one of the brothers went out on their
own because he was
like i don't want nothing to do with this part of the family was it horian
maybe it was i know that
name they were saying they started the ufc yeah it might have been and horian
also trained mel gibson
okay for for this lethal weapon fight scene there he is horian gracie yeah horian
gracie
in playboy magazine challenged mike tyson to a no rules fight see i don't want
to sound stupid so i
don't like to say too many names but you're gonna make me call my friend and
ask him when we leave
here well ilio was his father you know hickson's obviously his brother hoist's
brother hoyler's his
brother i think hoyler and hoist are half brothers yes i knew that they were
they were saying that but
they were just kind of like going over like old times and stories and like they
were talking about
that because apparently like with they were saying like well daniel was saying
like within
the family because he's a gracie but i think he's he's like it was his mom or
something like that
was but so she's still a gracie but anyway or his no his cousin was a gracie so
technically like
he's not a real blood gracie i don't know they tried to explain it it's very
weird but anyway we
were there and they can't they don't talk about it like why there's a divide
between this side of the
family and this side and they they explained to like even when they were kids
like they would go
in and get into it like say you'd go in and you get in a fight in the street
just like maybe you're
12 years old it started they said like basically that young that like there was
a divide between
whatever one and this one and um because they would go get in a fight and he
would come back and rat on
them and he was like bro come on you know so it started as that young and he
said it was a lot
it wasn't even like oh it was just one time no like multiple times you know so
it was just
interesting to hear like these stories that these guys had of like when they
were young in the streets
like fighting in rio oh yeah i mean you know there's a video of hickson
fighting somebody on the beach
yeah they talk about it some luta libre guy he smacks him he talks about it
they were talking
about they're fighting in the sand scrapping on the beach daniel was there for
that daniel was there
he was the one that brought it up he was there right he said he they showed the
picture of it and
he was right in the back hickson has a little surfer shorts on yep he even daniel
explained how it
started i don't remember that exact details but dude it was like well they
would dojo storm each other
they would show up at places and challenge like luta libre gyms and luta libre
guys would show up at
the gracie dojo dude it was like yeah here it is look at hickson with them
beautiful colored shorts
on it just smacks him like come on baby it's on and the dude's like take your
shoes off come on let's go
like there hold my shoes
bro these were wild times yeah especially when you take into consideration hickson's
widely considered one
of the absolute greatest jiu-jitsu practitioners of all time you know and that
he was willing to have
these kind of fights on the beach in rio these no rules fights just surrounded
by dudes and man thongs
yeah i mean and not have any striking look see how hickson's wing and punches
these guys had no
striking at all it's really kind of crazy i mean not not ever saying there's
anything wrong with anything
that hickson ever did because he's like one of the greatest of all time but if
you look at the
difference between a guy that's just a pure grappler like hickson even when he
fought in pride remember
he'd come out this throw those little stomp kicks just try to get he's just
getting you to the ground
it's all getting you to the ground there's no one like that now no one has very
little stand up
there's no one who fights like that and it's crazy because there is like so
many stories about like
hoist wasn't even supposed to be the one to fight you know he wasn't even
supposed to be the one
yeah they're supposed to have the the the other one well hickson was always the
champion of the
family and hoist had always said that the hickson was 10 times better than him
yeah he said hickson
hickson tap me every day every day i go to the gym hickson tap me but it's just
like that's just
how it was but there was all there was a lot of rumors one of the rumors was
that so this is the
narrative hoist says it's because he's so beautiful it's like look at his face
of course they picked me
that's what he said on the podcast it was hilarious because he's so handsome
but but hickson's handsome
too so it didn't make any sense but it was i think it's because hoist could
show that it was the
technique because like hickson was shredded yeah he was pretty jacked too and
he looked like like a
world champion athlete whereas hoist looked like a 170 pound guy who was like
you know not that muscular
and it was just technique it was him using beautiful jiu-jitsu technique that
nobody knew what it was it was
it was like the best advertisement ever for jiu-jitsu when you see a 175 pound
guy tapping out dan severin
you know it was this huge wrestler and catch or chemo when he got him in that
arm bar like all the
shit that hoist did ken shamrock when he tapped him crazy to watch a guy that's
like so much smaller
than everybody else dominate everyone and everyone was afraid of him so it was
like the perfect thing
and the thought was okay well if he ever does lose we always have hickson right
and then but hickson went off
to japan and he did japan valley tudow and then he did pride and you know this
was always uh there was
talk at one point tom of hickson fighting fedor they were throwing money around
for hickson after he
fought in that coliseum show which i think was in 2000 when did he fight funaki
when did hickson fight
funaki i think it was the year 2000 and they were talking about hickson
fighting fedor they had made
him an offer japan for him to come off and he wanted to do it it never came i
wish you i wish you could
have heard like again because i'm so bad with names and my memory is not as
good as it used to be but if
it's one of my favorite memories from fighting 2000 yeah yeah yeah it's one of
my favorite memories
from fighting just sitting there and listening to these guys because the the
history was freaking
insane the stories were awesome like it was uh but like i said i'm terrible
with names so i'm very bad
with like uh look at that adre pedneris on that card versus get genki sudo sure
ended in a draw and
genki sudo was a bad motherfucker that's how good pedneris was i didn't know
that oh yeah pedneris
was legit man damn very legit very legit yeah and again great coach i didn't
know he fought in the
early early days you know i mean it was he might have even fought in extreme
combat did he fight in
extreme combat he might have like that was back in the day when mario sperry
first burst on the scene
he fought back then igor zinoviev all these dudes that everybody forgot about
they fought and uh that
was uh john peretti's card so john peretti who was the commentator for the
early days of the ufc
then john peretti went over and started his own organization for a while it's
crazy like
i think like sometimes well i know like i said i'm bad at names right but it's
like i went and fought
in seattle last year or this year i fought in seattle this year and uh they did
like there was
amanda nunez robbie lawler and there was one more that got inducted into the
hall of fame this year
and uh nobody could give like really any fights for whoever whoever the other
person was
and not many could give too much for robbie lawler i was like bro how have you
not heard
about robbie oh you mean they weren't clapping no like uh so here it is let me
just go over this
real quick pedneris his debut debut fight valley tudo japan that's what it was
he defeated uh rumino
sato and then uh pat meletic for the ufc welterweight title ufc 21 we lost in
the second round technical
knockout and then he fought khao uno he was a savage i remember that ended in a
draw so genki sudo and
khao uno two savages and both of those fights were draws and um the last one
with genki sudo was his last
mma fight so how many fights did he have overall four fights but shit they're
all good oh yeah yeah
he fought legit guys yeah he beat rumino sato you know rumino sato man was
fucking terrifying back then
ko soccer kick ko oh damn yeah but yeah it was like um it's just different man
that time frame is just
different you know well it is uh it's the birth of the sport and it's it's kind
of amazing to have been
there at the very beginning and to be able to watch it you know um when i when
i i first found out about
it i couldn't believe it was real i had a bunch of friends that told me about
it i think i i heard
about it from dudes at uh do you remember benny orquidez do you know who he was
no i don't know benny
the jet was a famous kickboxer now i'm really going back i feel like i know
that name he was uh one of
the best kickboxers of all time um and this was like way back in the day like
in the early 80s benny the
jet was the man in the late 70s and the early 80s and he had this gym in california
in van nuys california
called the jet center when i first moved out to california there's two places i
knew i really had
to go one was the comedy store and the other was the jet center and so i got a
i got to work out at
the jet center and benny was there and his cousin uh blinkie he was there and
blinkie rodriguez who was
another elite kickboxer uh who actually knocked out jean-yve terrio who's like
one of the best
kickboxers of all time so it was like this incredible gym but benny the jet orquidez
was
like he was early like a pint like like the bill superfoot wallace days like
back in those days
you know and um i forget what i was just saying what i lost my train of thought
what were we just
talking about before that man yeah you moved to la yeah yeah but i had a point
i had a point about
these uh early mma fighters oh you were saying it's the birth of this is the
birth of the sport so
watching that this this was this is what my point was watching that where there
was not even leg kicks
to watching all of a sudden you see rick rufus and he fought that dude from thailand
like one of the
most important fights in the history of martial arts because you get to see
that dude from thailand
just chop rick rufus's legs apart and then rick and duke both learned from that
and said okay we
got to incorporate that into our game duke becomes a world muay thai champion
after that which is like
it changed and then duke becomes one of the best mma coaches ever so it changes
the entire course of
the sport and when i got into it and started watching it in oh that's what it
was so the jet
center one of the guys from the jet center was like you got to see this thing
it's called the ufc this
is in 94 i was like what what is it it was a ufc two like i didn't even see ufc
one i saw ufc two
because that was the only one that was available on vhs so i watched ufc two
and i was like this is
crazy i'm like how is this guy doing this like this is and i was like oh my god
like how is everybody so
vulnerable to this one guy like this is nuts so i was like i gotta train jujitsu
and watching all of
these people from that that era and watching the level of the competition at
that era and what the
fights looked like versus today there's not another sport on earth where you
could see a gigantic
difference between 1994 and 2025 like a gigantic difference where it's unrecognizable
the like that
kid that you were talking about before the 18 year old kid what's his name
again answer that
that guy would have been a world champion easy a world champion yeah like no
one would have
with him they would we would have said this is the greatest fighter that's ever
walked the face of
the planet and he's a kid that's on undercards of small regional shows now
right how crazy is that
so like when you're seeing these guys in the dana white contender series some
of these guys coming
up i'm watching them fight for their first fight in the contender series like
this guy looks like
he'd be fighting for the title like they're complete fighters they're fast they
have good
technique everything they're doing is smart it's like the level has changed so
much in such a short
period of time and i feel so lucky to be able to see the whole thing i saw the
whole thing like from
the ground floor to today it's crazy because you probably hear all the time
right like i was probably
watching fear factor before i knew it the ufc so when i saw the ufc i was like
dad look it's him he was
like he looks at me because obviously my dad's seen it before he's like yes son
he's been around a
while you know he's been in the ufc i don't even know if it was longer but i'm
sure it was yeah i
was i started working for the ufc in 97 so he was like he's always been there
so then obviously as i
get older i start seeing history and looking at old fights and older fights and
i see i noticed you
there the whole time and like me and my friend tuko had these conversations but
i was like bro joe's
a real one though he's he's been here the whole time like how awesome does it
have to be for like you
dana for t does and probably a few others too that nobody knows that have seen
this thing grow from
what it was to what it is today oh it's amazing it's gotta be it's amazing yeah
i feel so lucky
i'm so fortunate like it's one of the things i look forward to more than
anything in life
weekend i'm like oh boy here we go i get so excited i've been doing this
forever i still i
started ufc 12 in 1997 that was the first fight that i ever did uh backstage
interviews that's what
i did or post fight interviews too i think i started doing interviews backstage
and then i interviewed
guys after the fight was over that was you know early but how'd you how'd you
start there it was a
crazy fluke so uh i was already doing jujitsu i was at carlson gracie's this is
back before vitor
made his debut i was training at vitor's uh with vitor's gym with uh mario sperry
i took lessons
from mario sperry when i was a white belt it was awesome dude marillo bustamante
was there all the
time um there was a a ton of the the carlson gracie killers you know the two
bulldogs fighting each
other yeah and carlson was there every day so uh i got to train uh there when i
was on news radio
the sitcom i was so it was just like 1996 and um i just loved that there was it's
just before vitor
fought in the ufc so he while he was training at the gym with us he went and
fought this guy john hess
john hess was his big tall he fought in the ufc as well i believe i believe he
did john hess was his
he had a style called safta i forget what it was about but it was like back
then dudes would just
like make up their own style street fighting artistic finger-fucking you know
they would make
up some sort of a fucking acronym but uh vitor blitzed across the ring he was
19 years old and just lit
this guy up like a machine gun like got him down like put him out on the ground
like it was so crazy
and so fast the most ferocious display of ground and pound i had ever seen in
my life at the time
and i was like this is crazy and so just randomly they had a guy who was doing
the post-fight
interviews and they wanted to get a new guy and they were looking for people
and the guy
campbell mclaren who was the producer of the ufc happened to be friends with my
manager from the
comedy club days they campbell used to work at a comedy club with my manager
and they were just
shooting the shit over the phone he goes hey i'm looking for someone to do
interviews for the ufc um do you
you know anybody that'd be interested he was like joe was a huge fan he's like
joe watches every one of
them i i actually got direct tv just so i could watch the ufc because that's
when it was banned from
cable so i got my cable removed and i got direct tv put in my house just so i
could watch the ufc because
it was the only way you could catch it and then uh it was no money and i was
supposed to fly to new york
but then the last minute it got canceled they made it illegal in new york and
we had to fly to dothan
alabama on a fucking propeller plane i shared a propeller plane with randy couture
but randy didn't fight that but it was uh vitor made his debut against trey teligman
and everybody
thought he was a jujitsu guy because he was from carlson gracie he had a black
belt and he just came
out just throwing missiles just missiles so fast like nobody had seen anything
like that and he was
only like 200 pounds back then he was light and fast and strong as shit and
then he fought uh scott
ferrozo and took him out in the final so he won this heavyweight tournament and
that was uh 1997
that's crazy yeah that was the third person i was trying to think of when i was
in seattle so basically
what happened ufc was asking fighters hey were these these three guys they
weren't saying they
were getting inducted but obviously if you've been around it was vitor it was vitor
uh amanda nunez
and robbie lawler they weren't cheering for vitor no no they were asking the
fighters right they
were asking the fighters uh hey if do you know who these guys are if you do
what's your most memorable
moment of them what do you what was your favorite moment like anything like
that right because obviously
they put it on the montage when they announce it right and um they told me that
only me and two
other fighters on the entire card could give a fight from vitor i was like no
way i was like that
highlight that you're talking about when he sprints across even if you don't
know the person how do you
not see that highlight when he did that to vanderlei remember we did that's the
one i said that's what i
said that was my vanderlei was that one that was crazy but i think the scariest
vitor of all time
was trt vitor whoo trt vitor was the scariest fucking human being that ever
stepped into that cage
if they never banned trt i i think that guy would have been a terror for every
fucking human being
that weight that weighed 185 pounds for sure the way he wheel kicked luke rockhold
like what the
fuck are we looking at man he we never saw him throw a wheel kick in his whole
career
all of a sudden he's wheel kicking guys in the head he come into gym like
because obviously live
in florida he come in the gym and he is the nicest guy brother brother come
here come here very nice guy
let's talk about it hey i think uh i think you need to slow down a little bit
these hundred percent
every days no good brother he said why don't you come we can have some coffee
have a lunch and
let's talk about it i love the science behind the sport uh but super nice guy
right like those are
conversations that i had with him and uh if i see him great guy before this
never had a conversation
with him only watched him on tv you know but that was like the first
interaction i ever had with vitor
as a person i don't know if he knew who i was he just watched me spar and then
come to me after
that was it that's very nice of him yeah super nice guy real og like him that's
been again fighting
since 1997 1997 that's almost 30 years that's literally crazy dude it hurt my
heart when they
said that people didn't like couldn't like say fights for him couldn't even say
a highlight it's
hard you know these young guys a lot of them they're 25 years old 24 years old
they didn't watch this
joshua van 24 right like didn't watch the sport a lot before they were involved
in it and the the
fights that they've really seen a lot of have been the last few years yeah and
that's what josh van
well that's why i said his name he's young but he says the same thing because
they were like why
do you think pintoja's the goat he's like i know demetrius johnson is what
everyone says he was like
but i i never got to see him you know like i was i was too young that's crazy
too go watch it's online
yeah youtube's free bro you're the champ now joshua go back and watch mighty
mouse because that
motherfucker was extraordinary he was mighty mouse in his time was he was so
special when he fought that
that big brazilian kid and won uh-huh right he lost one and then he beat him
twice right the first
time in one championship and then he got KO'd and then KO'd him the exact same
way really wasn't me
yeah i didn't know it was the same way they both got KO'd with knees and both
got KO'd against the
cage with knees it was it was literally like almost the exact same except demetrius's
was more artistic
it was beautiful the flow where he was like chasing him he rocked him and then
he's chasing him down he's
like not yet there it is and he just launches and catches him with this you've
seen it right yeah
i seen it oh my god i didn't know it was the same way what is that dude's name
the duty KO'd
just andre i don't know search uh demetrius johnson flying knee KO one fc i bet
you'll find it
yeah adriano morais that's it that's it and morais is good dude he's really
good he's really big and
one fc's got that squirrely weight cutting jazz so this is uh the second fight
after morais had
KO'd him in the first fight and also this is a dj that's probably 35 years old
right right i mean and
after a long career in the ufc widely recognized as the greatest flyweight of
all time in the ufc
and to me like he just didn't get the love that he deserved when he was in his
prime because he was
125 pounds and for whatever reason i mean it's not like it's not even more
interesting to watch like
but people have this weird thing like a heavyweight could beat anywhere anyone
in the world 125 pound
guy i'll dump him on his head stop watch him fight okay right there boom back
it up back back it up a
second so you could see the sequence look right hand timing boom perfect the
timing is just so
beautiful that's so look that's fucking artistic man that is so artistic it's
perfect and to KO a guy
with the shit he KO'd you with in the first fight is wild dude i don't know
much about like demetrius
as a person but from what i've seen of him obviously because you see more now
that he's on like uh
doing his like streaming and stuff he is like he's the best he's the definition
of a martial
artist too he cares about the pureness of being a martial artist rather than
the views or the belt
or any of that so i respect that a lot talking stupid shit just to get
attention he hates people
that do that kind of stuff he hates disrespectful stuff he's such a nice guy
but also just so smart
about his approach to the sport just so clever inside the cage and also so
fucking fast man dude one time i grabbed him just just being silly at a ufc he
was in front of me and i
put my arms around him like from behind you know like saying hi to somebody
yeah and he turned around
he looked at me he goes he hit me with two knees to the body like just touched
me with it it was so
fast i was like dude that was so scary you hit me so fast i didn't even see
them coming it was like
they just like just just amazing like a cat and you know like you said he was
probably 35 or whatever
there he could still compete with the best in the world with the best no
problem yeah and juice free
too juice free with the best in the world and by the way over there i don't
know what kind of drug
tests they're doing but it's probably multiple choice
there's a lot of them organizations where you're like how hard are you testing
really
you know because like if you're not testing all throughout camp randomly you're
not really
testing you know because we have to remember that alistair over him when he
fought brock lesnar was
tested and that is the juiciest man that's ever walked the face of planet earth
the alistair over him that
fought brock lesnar is the juiciest guy i've ever seen fight it was horse meat
and i wish he could keep
juicing i do i think we would have seen we've seen a different result if you
you let alistair stay
juicy and stay 265 with world-class kickboxing skills and also he was so jacked
that he could kind of
hide from punches because when he would shell up especially in uh k1 when he
had those big gloves
bro when he would shell up so he's got biceps and shoulders and then traps
everything's all
protected and he's got that high guard he's coming in like this throwing bombs
and he looks like a
superhero he looks like a guy from a fucking comic book yeah let's just let
everyone juice if you want
to juice just everyone juice let's make it even playing field instead of let's
try to catch who's not
or let's catch who's juicing would you if they if they just open the gates okay
okay i'll start it
off by saying yes when i was younger i was like no i'd never juice i want to be
all natural to show
everything like to show i'm just that good then i was like as i got older and
seen it i was like nah
i would but that's like i remember i fought eric anders for lfa right and they
have pictures of him
on the scale the day of the fight 222 223 one of them two right i'm stepping in
i don't even really
cut i'm stepping in like 194 i'm young i don't cut really anything that time i
did cut a lot that
that was the first fight i cut a lot for because i was lifting like crazy and i
wasn't really doing
nothing else because i was in louisiana i used to train with rich clementi okay
yeah so you know
he's crazy as hell um so i was training there but i was lifting more than
anything but anyway i was
probably like 196 is 197 no more than 200 for sure no questions asked and uh
dude they they come in
the back at that night and they're like hey we're drug testing you i said what
he said yeah we're gonna
drug test you it's random i said well if it's random is he getting drug tested
too they're like
nah i said whoa so you're telling me the man who's weighing over 220 and just
weighed 185
exact yesterday is not getting tested but the guy who's only weighing like 14
whatever pounds more
is getting tested i pulled up my shirt i said does it look like i'm on fucking
steroids does it look like
it i said give me some credit bro if i was gonna take it i promise you i would
look like it
and they're like i'm sorry bro but this is it's just our job i was like all
right let's go get
it done but it's just how did you randomly test only a few people on a roster
that has to be like a
budget thing that has to be a budget thing texas commission that's great but
that must be like
they don't want to spend money on everybody i don't know if you test one guy on
the card you
should have to test everybody yeah i think it was a total of three or four guys
what they said
that they tested on the whole card if you're testing a guy you have to test his
opponent dude you
have to that's crazy i was i still to this day i laugh and i'm like come on bro
every time someone
asks me like everyone just takes you come on there's a few fights where they
stopped they
wouldn't let a guy fight because um they in the trt days they did test to see
what people's levels are
and one guy i don't want to say his name but one guy was so high that they
canceled the main event
really yeah they canceled the main event at the weigh-in yeah wow yeah i didn't
know that he was
so juicy they were worried that he was gonna die they were like you could like
your levels or whatever
you fucking did you should not be fighting with this level of testosterone in
your system also on trt
so it wasn't like this guy's just some genetic freak like y'all romero coming
out of cuban sports
program no it wasn't he's a special human too that's a special human yeah do
you ever heard of a guy um
clovis i think clovis hancock he died in the fight i think it was for legacy or
lfa i fought him
then his next fight he died in the cage and they brought him back whoa yeah cpr
it's it was all over
the internet i fought that dude i was like no way i saw that next day i seen it
like yeah they had to give
him cpr until the ambulance uh wow got him loaded up and taken to the hospital
so his heart just stopped
yeah wow never obviously never allowed to fight again but obviously yeah yeah
man crazy wanted to
oh my god he probably did bro he was funny guys just have that dog in them they
don't care cyborg
wanted to fight again after he got his skull crushed by mvp no way yeah he
thought he was going to fight
again after that so here it is dude can you imagine being in the audience
watching that they're doing
fucking cpr and dude oh my god that's so yeah yeah i remember he was the cut
man for that's so scary
yeah man it's it's uh crazy well thank god they have those emts on standby and
you know for sure
these organizations they do their very best to screen people and make sure that
they're as healthy as
possible the UFC does a real good job with that five minutes yeah dead for five
minutes for five the cut
man was the guy that was giving him cpr it wasn't even the emts oh my god thank
god the cut man knew
yeah cpr holy shit dude yeah it's crazy well you know reminds you this is not a
game it's for sure
it's a crazy ass fucking sport so what's next for you do you know do they have
you lined up for anything
uh no i've been pushing uh hopefully drickus hopefully march april at the
latest um so do you
need like that much time to prepare or is that like how you'd like to uh yeah i
just kind of also
i started training again today matter of fact um so training excited about
fighting you huh maybe
that'll get him excited about who knows that's a trap maybe that's a trap if i
was drickus i'm like
this motherfucker probably has a full six pack if he takes his shirt off he's
probably ripped six pack
of rolls he's ready to go he's just bullshitting saying he hasn't been training
to go to me into a
fight yeah man but i like so drickus is the guy that you're hoping for yes sir
uh and it makes sense
like it's it's just the right time like i said imov is going to wait for the
champion he earned his
spot they just announced fluffy and uh sean so what's left it's just me and him
and it's a good fight
too it'd be a great fight to watch and a good fight you know for for you
obviously fighting former
champion you know in his next and for drickus it's like that's a that's the
kind of fight you
need at this point you need to turn back the young lions i've been trying to
fight him since he got
into the ufc i just just felt like i still feel this way i feel like he's the
luckiest guy i've ever
seen like don't get me wrong he does have a couple fights now but before he got
the belt i always said
like he's the luckiest guy like marcus perez was beating his ass marcus perez
wanted to do something
crazy and went to throw a spinning elbow jerkers was throwing a body shot when
he was throwing the
spinning elbow and he hit him right in the mouth jerkers hit marcus right in
the mouth out i don't
think you can call that lucky i don't know uh i know what you're saying but he
finds a way to win
the dude's a dog he is a dog he finds a way to win you know i mean think about
some of them fights
that were just like like the audes on your fight like he just kept kept coming
and found a way to
win yeah the robert whittaker fight we took whittaker out in the first round
you can't there's no no no
i didn't that you're right i that one i don't see luck in that one there's a
lot i think that was a
great strategy he's a fucking animal dude yeah he i love that's honestly like
we can say whatever we
want about each other he can joke talk shit whatever the case but i love the
fight because i know he's
coming to fight like he's coming to kill for sure i love that i don't want a
guy that's i like i've had
them but i don't like the guys that just want to hug like he's trying to hurt
me i love that like that
nervousness brings out the best version of me because i'm nervous like who's
not nervous of another man
that's gonna he's trying to hurt me and his to me one of his best attributes is
exactly what you said
like he you describe it as he finds a way to win like that's a great way for me
i'm just like that
dude can dig deep same exact thing in the hamzat fight even in the hamzat fight
remember the third
the fifth round yep fifth round he's on top dropping bombs on hamzat at one
point in time it was a little
too late and he didn't get him out of there but he was not giving up yeah he
just was getting dominated
right difference for sure he was still trying to find a way to win but i love
that that that that
motivates me by itself like i love hearing that i want a guy that's going to
try to come kill me
because what's the worst is going to happen he knocks me out okay okay like
that's what we came
to do anyway any man could do it i've had i've been tko'd before like all right
cool but i can do it to
you too you know so that's what i love i love that aspect of the fight that's
my favorite thing that's
what motivates me about the fight more than the the number the danger yeah i
like that it's and i i
feel like i really truly haven't had that in a while like a true like some guys
look at it as
a sport and some guys really mean it like i'm trying to hurt you and i like
that like it brings
that out in me too because like i'm trying to hurt you all right you're gonna
try to hurt me i'm gonna
try to hurt you or you know i don't know but that's just how i look at the
fight and it really like
excites me like that's that demonic side of me coming out like let's see i'm
ready well i love hearing
that and i love the fight i hope you get it thank you and thanks for being here
man it was great
talking to you uh let everybody know how they can find you on social yeah uh on
instagram at bernan
allen 185 or b underscore allen 185 and uh that's that's really i'd be i'm just
kind of chill i'm low
key all right brother well hopefully next time i'll talk to you it's after a
victory yes sir thank you for
for having me my pleasure such a pleasure being here with all you guys thank
you so much my pleasure
all right bye everybody