Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete!

24:19Or sometimes vice versa, sometimes they'd add a terrible game, but the team would want and everyone would be really happy and I'd be like, I had a bad game and I couldn't, I couldn't ever shake that. I'd always like, I always liked control. Control, yeah. Being in charge of like my own thing, that MMA in particular is very much that. It's like, if you're not putting the work in, like you will get exposed, you will get your ego checked, literally on a daily basis, if you're not doing what you need to do. And I love that, like it gives you a sense of like accountability for, Just yet every day habits, like you thought process, what you're putting in your body, how much recovery you're getting, how many reps are you doing in the gym, everything, like everything is accounted for publicly.

25:04Quite like that, quite a lot of that, actually. Your mother in this picture, where does she fit into this picture you've painted for me? Who is she? First of all, she is the nicest woman that has ever walked the face of the earth. I think she is such a lovely person, yeah, there is literally... You know what someone says? The term, oh, she's not got, oh, they've not got a bad bone in the body. That literally applies to my mum, but as far as, so my last fight that I had, which is in Manchester, my whole town, that was the first fight that my mum's ever been to. And I'm already like, no more in the world, I'm like, but yeah, mum, you've lived it this long.

25:39But yeah, she is, she just stays away from the MMA side of things. She is just a mum, which is great. That's amazing. She is really, really lovely person. Why was that the first fight she'd ever come to? Because it's scary. And I... You didn't want her to come, or...? No, it's not that I didn't want her to. I was... It's never been like her thing. So I would never like be like, oh, Mum, can you please come? Because I know it's... I know, like, first hand, even from, like, teammates fighting. How scary it is for me to be an attendant. So I would never like drag along someone who loves me because it's her endess to be honest with you.

26:17Like it's such an unpredictable sport that you just never know. So I think my mom came because I was like, look mom, I don't want to tell you to come on, not come, but this is probably the only time I'm ever going to fight a man just to like, I don't know how many fights I've got left. And I'm under the notion that I would rather retire a little bit too early than a little bit too late because I've seen the way people get late in the career. And I don't want to be like that. So I'm not saying I'm going to retire anytime soon, but I'm just saying like most of my fights are in the US now. And I don't think you'll ever have a chance to see me fight live again.

26:55So I think you should come to this one. And she came and apparently she enjoyed it. As you're talking about the role that martial arts has played in your life, it got me thinking about about young men in general because young men in general seem to be really struggling at the moment when we look at a lot of the statistics around like suicide ideation and purposelessness and it made me, as you're speaking, I was like, damn, I need to do martial arts. So if there is young men listening to this that are struggling in their lives in any way, what advice would you give them in terms of martial arts or those early life decisions or even later life decisions about, you know, something that they can do to find that sense of purpose that you so clearly found.

27:39I mean, let me first of all start by saying I would be completely lost without it. I think everybody should do it honestly because I think that it puts your ego in check massively because you constantly, like every time you step onto a mat to train, you're getting a, you're getting hit in the face with reality constantly. And if you haven't been like for me, it's like you're getting hit in the face with reality and if you're not consistent that reality will hit you harder and harder each time. So it creates a sense of like purpose in your life. You're almost like, it's not fear, but it's like you don't want to miss because you don't want to get hit with the reality.

28:22You don't want to be inconsistent with your training because you don't want to be hit harder by the reality next time. If that makes sense, it makes perfect sense. I just think that it gives you just a massive structure in your life. Not Not only that, not to mention the stuff like, look, I'm not going to sit here and talk about crime rates or anything like that because I don't know the statistics. But I know that in this country especially crime is pretty high right now. So my friend who's come with me is upstairs, Charlie. He does my social media and he's also a close friend of mine as well.

28:55and he's assimilates to me, he's 32. And he's literally just started training because I literally said to him, like Charlie, I say this to everybody who's not involved in martial arts. If you need to, and I'm not saying you need to be a world champion, you need to train every, but you need to have a general idea of how to defend yourself if it ever happens. Like you don't need to be good, you don't need to have a fight, you don't need to be prepared to fight someone in a ring and a cage or whatever. But I think everybody should be comfortable with a general idea of how to defend the self if they need to.

29:30It whether that be, if you're on a house, if you have children, if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever, if you have somebody who you might need to protect, who can't protect the self or something that you might need to protect, you need to have some kind of idea on how to protect that. In that, that's my opinion. Because fighting's a scary thing are the best it's like, I'm the number one heavyweight in the world right now, and I'm scared to fight somebody. So, like, I wouldn't like to be completely clueless, because it must be so scary, and I think that it would be, I would recommend it to anybody of any age to do some kind of martial arts.

30:08So there's a couple of things you said there, which I'm most certainly going to ask you about. The first thing you said was about how martial arts brings the consequence of like a lack of discipline up close but also increases the consequence. I was thinking as you're saying that, I was thinking, oh my god, this is so true because if I, if I'm a 18 year old guy and I'm sat at this on the sofa at home doing nothing with my life, the consequence of that is quite hard to see in the short term. But what you're saying is by doing martial arts, the consequence becomes weekly and becomes, you're going to get you fucking nose broken.

30:40So that's motivating to get your life together. And the other thing you said is I'm the number one in the world. And even I'm scared to fight somebody. Yeah. Who? Yeah. Everybody. I don't want to fight anybody. I mean, I want to fight professionally. I love doing that. But I mean, as far as like a confrontation with somebody, that's the last thing I'm trying to do. I don't want to do that with anybody. So you weren't saying that you were scared to fight particularly in a person? Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. I'm scared to fight everybody. Yeah. And I think that that for professional combat athletes, across the board whether that's boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, MMA, whatever you're into.

31:20I think that's like a very, very taboo subject. He's like fear because everybody wants to be this like big, like I'm a frigging six foot five hundred and fifteen kilo guy would like cauliflower ears and everything like tattoos the whole lot. It's pretty difficult to sit here and say like I'm scared to fight anybody and like have that and be literally the number one everywhere in the world, but kind of the realisation of the fear that I've got. Now that I understand fear and what it is and what it does for me, it just fuels me so much to do what I do. In MMA, we have terms like a gym warrior, people call it, like someone who spars in the gym really, really well, and then they get under the lights and they don't fight anywhere near what they do in the gym.

32:10Now generally speaking, that is because they don't understand fear properly. And I think I've got in a place where I completely understand that fear fuels me in a way that nothing else can fuel me and I'm completely comfortable with it. I'm super intrigued by this. So I want to talk about this. This idea of fear, but also the journey that you've been on with fear. So have you always been fearful to fall? Yes. Yeah, and I think that if you not you're either lying to yourself. Are you a complete idiot? Yeah, I think I think If you are gonna sit in an arena and the arena is packed to the rims with 20 plus thousand people And there's another guy over the other side of the arena Waiting to fight you's train for the last ten weeks and you've got to meet them in the center of the octagon With millions of people watching around the world and know that you can get separate from your own consciousness and you're not scared, you're either lying to yourself or you're just a complete idiot.

33:09We give Mum watching for the fear. Yeah,

33:16I mean, I see you guys do the walkouts, and I'm just like, wow, yeah, it's crazy. It's hard to ever comment on someone being good or bad at something that it takes that much courage to do, that I've clearly not demonstrated in my entire life, so fear. So you've always been scared to, you've always had fear when faced with an opponent, but you also alluded to the fact that there's work that you've done to overcome that fear, or to put it into perspective, I guess. Yeah. What's that work? The gym warrior and the guy who's under the lights is coming to you different people. And I've seen it a lot over the years.

33:52I've seen it so much. Still see it now, still see it all the time. See, when you train, this is my personal opinion. This is not facts, but this is my personal opinion. I would say the training aspect is probably around 80 % physical and 20 % mental, the training aspect. On the fight night, when you are in that arena and you are, you have got them bright lights beaming down on you and you can hear the crowd going crazy and you know that there's millions of people watching you. You've got them tiny gloves on. There's another massive guy sort of crossing you with a shirt off. I believe it completely flips and becomes about 80 plus percent mental.

34:32I remember somebody, I actually can't remember who it was, it might have even been on a podcast or something saying, look, we spend all this time preparing physically because to be an MFI you have to dedicate a lot of time and I mean a lot of time to prepare physically. So that can be you know, I train around about between three and five hours a day, possibly on the physical training and that's not to mention the stretching, the eating, the sleeping, the physio, the solenoids, all the other stuff that comes with it coming a good athlete. I'm probably dedicating a solid, most of the 24 hours a day, if you're going to count sleep in as well, which I believe is a part of being an professional athlete, is dedicated to me becoming the best version an athlete in myself as possible.

35:18Now, you dedicate it all that time to training physically. How much are you dedicating to mental, the mental aspects? And if you would ask molesfighters, especially at the top level, you're talking top 10 guys in the world, what do you think is the most important aspect? The physical side of the mental side? I will guarantee at least 50 % of them guys would say the mental side. Now if you compare in mental and physical, we're spending this much time on the physical side, but this much time on the mental side, next to nothing. And I I could see a massive discrepancy in that, and I wanted to bring the mental side up.

35:58So you're in the mental gym too? All the time. And what is that? A lot of visualisation. Okay, so you talked me through this. Give me as much detail as possible. Okay, okay. So I work with a hypnotherapist which thinks very important. Yep. I write stuff down. I have stuff where I can see it. I'll look at that a lot. But even stuff like, I'm just a massive daydreamer, massive daydreamer. And I can just see in my mind clearly. This is something that's programmed into me for years and years. It's almost like mental. So in MMA we have a term and I don't know if this goes across the board, but we call it drilling.

36:39So like if there's a technique, if you're practicing like a want to, and you're doing it repeatedly, you call it drilling. You drill in a one -two drill in his light repetition repetition. I like mentally drill situations so when you're talking about the workout, when I'm physically walking out, mentally I've walked out 10 ,000 times before I've actually physically walked out. So by the time I'm there physically, I've been there so many times mentally that it feels quite normal to me. And then I constantly tell myself that I've got to enjoy it because I'm completely aware now, especially. I'm closer to the end than I am at the beginning now.

37:18Definitely. I don't know when I'm going to retire. I have no plans to retire right now, but I'm definitely closer to the end than I am at the beginning. And the moments that we have, these walk out moments, these fear moments have been stood in the cage with another guy who's stood in the cage with me. And we know that once these officials get out the ring and they close that cage, we are going to fight and someone is going to win or someone's going to lose. like those are really special moments and you have to enjoy them because when I'm 60 years old and hopefully I've got grandkids and I can I want to be telling them about these special moments in that not wishing them away and really really enjoying them and that's something that mentally I try and practice being in the moment and enjoying it a lot and I feel like a lot of fighters they just they're just so stressed about the end result that they can't even focus on enjoying the self and the right now and I know for me personally, when I'm enjoying myself, that's when I do my best.

38:15So I want to enjoy myself. I want to talk to you about a few things you said there. You talked about visualization was what you mentioned first and writing things down. What kind of things do you write down? And like what's your whole process there? Because I'm sure there's people at home that would love to understand some of these practices so that they can implement them in their own life. And then also speak to the value that it's brought to your life doing these kind of things. You talk about visualization. People think about this like weird, woo, woo, kind of thing. Sitting there with crystals on you and weird music and meditations.

38:43It's not like that. It's as simple as getting a piece of paper writing down this week, I will do this and enjoy it. That's as simple as that. That's all I do. This year, I will win two fights. I will enjoy both of them and I will perform to my best. And just reading it every so often. And how often do you do that? Is it something you do at the start of the year? is it? Just like it's sporadically really, it's not something I'm not the kind of guy who goes right. The beginning of the year, this is my visualization board or anything like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that, that's just not what I do personally.

39:18I just write, when I feel like writing stuff, I write it and most of the time I've got it in my bedside table or I've got it somewhere that I can see it and I'll pick it up. I'll read it a few times, the same sentence, I'll put it down and I feel like it's in there. I wrote recently that things are working for me because I'm in a really weird situation with my career that I've never really been before where there's a lot of politics involved in my kind of next move. We don't join? Yeah, I think I said to you like off cameras like usually it's like right, get off of the fight, work towards the fight, fight, fight it's over a little bit of downtime.

39:56Another fight worked towards that fight over, blah, blah. Whereas now I'm just kind of like a little bit in limbo when I don't know what's happening and I'm just like, oh, usually I'm used to like having my life mapped out as to when I need to dedicate more time to this and how much yet what training partner's coming there and what I need to focus on. But now I'm just in a little bit limbo where I don't know really what's going on. And I wanted to really write down just to solidify that all this is happening because I think when when you are in those kind of situations, I know me personally, I start to like conspiring my own like that everyone's conspiring against me.

40:34Like, oh, this is not working out for me. And I start thinking negatively, but I think sometimes you just got to write down like, this is going to be all right. Like this is, there, whatever's happening right now, I don't know what it is. And I don't know. I can't fix it personally because nothing to do with me. But I know that it's going to work, it's going to end up all right and it's going to work out for me. So a couple of weeks ago, I remember We're just writing that down, putting it in the thing next to my bed. And sometimes when I'm waking up, I feel a little bit stressed, I'll just read it, put it away, and then that's it.

41:01So any moment, maybe today, maybe now, maybe your phone upstairs could have a text message on it from Dana White saying, we're good to go. Yeah, pretty much. I am now like training. I mean, I'm always training anyway. Training's a massive part of my life, but I could get a text at any moment, tell it to me I'm going to fight in six weeks, and that would be amazing. And it would be the biggest fight of all time. Yeah, but I don't think that's gonna happen because they are giving it that It's the definitely in my opinion. There's a few massive fights to be made at the moment you never make But I think as far as thirst from fans.

41:34Mm -hmm. This is the one that people want to see the most When I say that doesn't make you nervous Everything I just said and when I said it was the biggest fight of all time Because I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I want to do. Yeah. That's what I want to be involved with Yeah, that's that's why we do this thing. We don't like I have had a lot of fights that nobody cared about. You know, a lot of daylight. I've had a lot of fights, but I think people don't realize like they see me and other guys at the top of their division. You know, we're traveling the world, we're making money, we're winning titles, we're doing all this because the honestly, Well, most of my fights, there was a hundred people there and I came away with a hundred quid cash and nobody gave us shit either way.

42:22That's the realization of it. MMA is such a tough sport too. A lot of kids, not a lot of kids, but a lot of parents, if I meet a parent on the street is kids involved in MMA or whatever. A lot of the time we'll say, like, what advice have you got for there? And in all honesty, a lot of the time I'm like, have a backup plan because it's so difficult to make any money or any, like I was saying I'm going to an event tomorrow actually. It's a local show. I was a amateur champion on the show. It's a great show, do you know what I mean? There'll be a couple of thousand people there tomorrow. And there's got a big fight card like, there's maybe 25's on.

43:05So these 45 years fighting tomorrow night, I'm going to it. And I was chatting to my friend last night actually, he said, oh, is there anyone decent on the couch? Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of guys on and he said, oh, will anybody go to the U .S. and we just got chatting about that and how that looks and how it looks to get in the U .S. And I said, to want to be honest with you, if one person out of the 40 can buy a house from MMA. I would be very surprised. And that's one in 40 decent level. Like, it's just so hard to make a living out of MMA. There is absolutely no career path to doing it really, especially in this country like it's getting tougher and tougher.

43:47And I'm trying to, I'm trying to raise as much awareness about MMA as possible. I want kids to be able to look at guys like me and other guys and be like, If he's making a career out of it, I can. But it is so hard in this country, that's why I'm doing as much as I can to try and get this thing as mainstream as possible. I mean, even in the UK, if I think there's been what, hundreds of thousands of kids, that probably practiced MMA over the last couple of years and how many of them really get to the point where they could buy a house from it. You can name them like you, you, Connor McGregor, you and Gary, Paddy Pimlett.

44:27Leon Edwards, you know, they're quite... I mean, there's definitely guys who have made a lot of money out of it and have a good living, but honestly, like, I've been around gyms all my life and I would say 95 % of people have never made more than 5 grams for a fight. How much were you getting paid throughout your amateur career? Because you were an amateur fighter up until the point where you basically ran out of people you could fight. I think you had nine amateur fights, right? No, nine. Other times, quite a lot. I would always recommend getting as much as much experiences you can't have an amateur before you move on to Pro, but yeah, so as an amateur, I was obviously getting ticket money.

45:04So I'd sell the way it works when I was fighting as an amateur, at least it was like, if you would sell a ticket for 30 quid, you would get a fiver of it. So the promoters would work off that like a little percentage thing going. So if those nine amateur fights, how much do you think you... All together. I was maybe making between 50 and 100 quid fight. Okay, so that's nearly a grand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anything grand on that. And then you went, you had a professional run as well. Is it seven fights as a professional? MMA? Before I got to, I have no idea. Before I got to the UFC, you published, yeah, maybe seven.

45:38Yeah. But it's done is seven. So I remember my first pro fight, I got 200 quid. Okay, so you doubled doubled it. It's matching it. I was absolutely, it's matching it then. So, so that's yeah, another, so you probably made two grand or something there. And then the UFC see pays much better. Much better, much better. Which is when you can start to make a living from it. Yeah, I mean, they start off pretty good. The thing, I'm really lucky in the fact that I've got a fan -friendly style. So people wanna see me fight, especially heavyweights, people wanna see. A lot of the people who are not, they've not got a technically trained eye, they wanna see two guys punching each other and one guy unconscious.

46:19That's the brutality of it, and that's the reality of it. And my style, generally speaking, brings that. Well, I mean, generally speaking, don't you hold the world record for the average of others this time? I do, yeah, yeah. That a fight ends, which is pretty crazy. So I mean, that's why you're such a draw, right? Because you're knocking everyone out within two minutes on average. Yep, yep. So like, I progress through contracts and money quite quickly because of my style, but not everybody does. So generally speaking, you get in the UFC, so you get what's called show money, which is your money to show up.

46:53Which is, what can you tell me? Usually it's 10 grand, dollars. Yeah. And I mean, people's contracts are different, but I'm just speaking generally, people start off at 10 and 10. They get show money, win money. So generally speaking, and this varies amongst, you know, if someone's got a career in another big organization, sometimes they'll sign in for more than that. But I was coming up a regional show, so I think I either got 10 and 10 or 12 and 12, I can't remember. But generally speaking, it's like you get your show money, which is between 10 and 15k dollars. And then you win bonus, it's double your show money, usually.

47:35So 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 15. How long are you on that contract? They usually do four fights. Okay. But the thing is, they can terminate that at any time. So if you're in like a fight that's boring, it's a bit of a stinker. Even if you win, they can just be like, yeah, we're done. Done with that. Interesting. Yeah. So if it's four fights, you're getting 10 and 10, you could earn, that's 80k... If you win, you usually go up, so it'd be like 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 14 and 14, 16 and 16, something like that. Okay. The low end is you could make 80k from those first. Yeah. But if you lose, you just get in 10.

48:13That's the... Yeah, you can make a 40k. Yeah, and generally speaking like if you go 10 and 10 you win You go 12 and 12 you win You go 14 and 14, but you lose that one you go back to 12 and 12 does that make sense? But if you have it an exciting style and the us you like you see I'm very lucky because I'm from the UK and People from the UK get behind the fighters a lot of the time and I'm very lucky that I've got that myself. So I did 10 and 10 and then I think, 12 and 12, I remember rightly, and then they resigned me then because they had two first round finishes. So they resigned me for a bigger contract then, which is great.

48:54And then I did sign me for another four fights and then you know, you win a couple more in an exciting fashion and you can get bigger contracts, you don't have to stay for the four. So after two fights you got a new deal. Yes. And that drastically changes the money. Yes. Yeah, like from still in the tens still in the tens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I thought it was 50 I thought I thought I thought um someone like in Gary who came in from a what's the organization? He came paid worries I also came from K. Oh, okay, so he must have been I thought he was on 50. I mean he might have been I don't know he might have been like a different time there.

49:27Yeah, maybe was I don't know it like say it varies from person to person But from my experience I came in is I the 10 and 10 else 1212 I can't remember exactly and when does the big the big like six figure show money begin. So I got a good contract because I took the title fight on two weeks notice. So I was in a bit of position there where like I could kind of like save the card because there's a title fight on the card somebody pulled out the ask me to step in. So you know I was in a position that the UFC was kind of like needed me a little bit then. So but to to answer the question, everyone's different with that, but with the money aspects, it's like when you start becoming popular and winning fights, when people want to see you, basically, that's, it's just as much about, do people want to watch you fight?

50:18That's, that's like a bit, it's not just about winning fights. Winning fights is extremely important, but you, you gotta make people want to see you. So that was against Sir J Pavlovich. That's right. Yeah, that was the end of 2023, November. And that was your first six -figure payday because you took that massive fight on short notice. Yes. It was your biggest payday. It was my biggest payday. Er, at the time, I got a bigger one in my last fight. Oh, but it was your biggest payday up until that point. By far. By far. By far. By how much far? By it. More than double. More than double, okay. And that was a six -figure payday.

50:56Yes. Okay. So the reason why that's so surprising and interesting is because you were fighting at that point for the interim heavyweight title. So I'm thinking about those kids back in Solford. And if they want to get a life threatening, six figure, because that's what it is, six figure payday, then the journey that you went on is from the age of... What, seven years old? You started? for you to get a six -figure payday from a heavyweight UFC title. It's a long time. It's a lot of work. Yep, it's a whole lot of work. Yeah. I was thinking about your story arc, and if you were to paint it on a graph, like drawing a graph, am I right in thinking it's like slow, flat, and then quite sudden?

51:47Oh, yeah, there's a lot of that going on. They say, don't they something like, it takes years to become an overnight success, or whatever. Yeah, and that's exactly what I'm dealing with, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, say, I've been going since I was eight years old, and the stuff that I've gone through in that time is unbelievable. I'm a massive believer in, like, just outlasting people, like, just being consistent and outlasting people. A lot of the time overtakes anything else. Like, there's so many times, and a lot of it is down to my dad as well, is like, I wanted to quit and he's just from my...

52:26I don't get wrong, I have quit a couple of times with him and me. And it's been like, Tom, I think you really need to think about this because you've been spending your whole life doing it. Like, don't quit now. You know what I mean? There's been a lot of that from my dad and I think a lot of other dads would have just been like, yeah, you've done it enough now, you try your best. Just leaving it at that. Whereas it's always been, you know, my dad's always believed in me. And my mum as well, not not knows my dad. And the lot of close people around me as well, to be honest, I'm very lucky in that regard that people have pushed me to continue, which is great.

53:03When was the first time you quit? I've quit quite a lot of times, mates, a lot of different reasons. A lot of different reasons. Injuries? Yeah. Tough. Very, very tough to deal with injuries as a professional athlete. Not getting regular fights is all so tough. So now I'm like it was complaining to you a minute ago about, I'm not going to fight this, that I'm near that. But I'm going to get a fight. The thirst from the fans is there that the UFC want me to fight. I've got a belt, I've got a defend. We've got to unify this. There's millions of dollars at stake here. Like I'm going to fight soon.

53:35I don't know when it's going to be. But at one point, nobody cared if I fought or not. And I had no money. And that, that, I think the toughest time for me was, So I had my first kid when I was 23. My wife was pregnant when she was 22. When were we were 22? And I'm the first kid at 23. And then when I was 24, we found out that she was pregnant again. And which I'm very happy about, of course. I don't want to see my kids negative thing. And then we were having twins.

54:09And we had the twins, everything great. and I had no money and I mean I didn't have any money at all and I'm like living on this dream of me becoming this global superstar with these millions of pounds in the bank and with these titles and travel. I'm living on that dream but I'm in otherton in Greater Manchester it's raining outside I can't afford to put fuel in my car and I've got three kids upstairs crying. Do you know what I mean? That's what I was on. And I really felt like at the time, I don't wanna say like I'm some big masculine guy or anything, but I felt a little bit demasculated if that's the right.

54:55I felt like I'm here with this wife and kids I ain't providing nothing. Like and that was really tough for me mentally at that time, where I'm like, how am I gonna provide for all these people? I got to do something else because I don't think that people around me were like, Tom's living in a dream world. He needs to get a proper job and earn some money for his family. I don't think people, because there was a lot of people around me who actually believed in the dream as well, which is amazing. But I felt the pressure. I felt like people felt like that a little bit, even if they weren't saying it.

55:32So that, I think for me was the de -toughly sign for me, I think, is when just after I've had my kids, I'm away training every day. I'm barely spending any time at the whole, when I am spending time at home, I'm completely exhausted from training. The kids have me up all the time. They're crying, oh why is it not happy? I've got no money. I train all this time, I go to fight, then it gets cancelled a week before. Do you know what I mean? That was really, really tough to deal with at the time. How do you, from a mental health perspective, of how, how were you during that season of life? Not great, very, very tough.

56:07I think, first of all, I mean, everybody's different, but having three kids at the age of 25 is quite tough. I don't think I was, well, I wouldn't change it for the world. I absolutely love being a dad, I love my kids to death, the most important thing in my life. I wouldn't change it for the world, but I think now looking back of me like seven years ago having three children. I don't know how I did it. It was really, really tough. Like I think that's really young and like I was very underdeveloped mentally to have that kind of responsibility and raise children and a family and a house and have a wife and try and get my career off the ground.

56:48Like there was really, really tough at the time. So I think I was just in survival mode, to be honest with you. Actually, it's funny to say because I've been having these conversations recently with a couple of friends. It's like my friend now is having twins, he just found out he asked me, what's it like? And I said, to be honest with you, I'm going to be really honest because I pride myself as a nice person. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I can't even remember the first year. And I can't because it was so difficult. And it wasn't just the twins, it was also the money situation. In fact, my career's not going anywhere.

57:23The stress I was under just trying to be a young guy but having all this responsibility on me. But like I said, I absolutely wouldn't change it for the world. It's literally shaped me into the person that I am today. I'm really, really proud of where I am now. But at the time, it was very tough for me mentally. Was there a hardest moment that you reflect on? Because sometimes when we think back to our lives, we can remember like a vivid rock bottom, where something happened, we went to put petrol in the car, or when we were alone and our minds started saying dark things to us. Was there a rock bottom in that period of life?

57:59I was still like aware of how lucky I was to have like three beautiful children and still be chasing the dream that I was on. But I think I just hated all in anybody money. Like I felt like I just hate going to people and asking them for money. Like that was like my worst nightmare. And I had to learn like borrow a lot of money off my dad. to borrow some money off friends just to put fuel in the car to get to the gym to be living in what I thought at the time was like a make believe. I didn't think it was a make believe dream, but I think I feel like the people on the outside thought, what is he doing?

58:37What is this guy doing? He needs to look after his family. I felt that a lot. A lot of that might have just been in my own psyche to be honest with you. A lot of it. I don't think came from my global circle, but I remember having to borrow money from friends to like fueling my car, buying up for my kids and stuff like that, just so I can like keep living on this dream of having to fight in six weeks, getting 600 quid and being able to give them 20 quid buck. Like that was totally worth it. Does that not put a lot of pressure on the relationship? Because I mean, bloody hell, relationships are hard enough without twins, another child.

59:14And everything else that makes life and relationships difficult. So it's quite remarkable that, you know, being a relationship is not easy. In any, in any, in any, in any regard, being in a relationship and showing you life to somebody isn't easy. Yeah, it did, it did, but you know what we got through it and we're really strong. And I'm really happy with the family unit that we've built, I try and be the best dad that can be like. that's more important than anything else to me. It's just spending time and making my kids as good as I can and I'm aware that as a dad and as a parent, you can't control as such what your kids, you can't mold a kid into what you want it to be.

59:57You can't say like, because I've got three kids and they're all completely different, they're all brought up exactly the same, but they're all completely different. And you can never say, this is what my kids gonna be and this is who he's gonna be and how he's gonna be. But just to be able to hopefully bring some kind of positive outlook on their life and hopefully given a positive experience on this earth is what I'm looking to do. You're part now, you're married to Justina. Yeah. Did she understand? She understands well that anybody. Yeah, absolutely. If it wasn't for her, my dad, my mom, a couple of friends around, I would have been, yeah, I would have been a mess.

1:00:32Absolutely mess, yeah. She was very understanding because I know that most women They would have been putting the pressure on big time. Yeah, she was it's because when we met I've been with a since I was 19 She was 19 also with the same age That was my dream from the beginning so she like got on board with that And she's kept me she stopped me from quoting a lot of times as well. She stopped me from quoting so many times Yeah, there's this spot's tough and like I said, there's no So in football for example, I know a little bit about football You start from a grassroots team as a kid, then you go to an academy and then you can get signed at the age of like 12, 13 and start playing for the under -13s and professional club and there's a place where you can go and obviously football is a tough game, you can put you off like that as well.

1:01:17But at least there's a career path of what you're going to do and where you're going to go. Whereas MMA, you basically shoot in the dark for 95 % of it. And I'm very lucky to have people like my wife, my family, my mum and dad and the people around who believe in me as well. Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, we started talking about this because of that kind of graph of your career where it's kind of flat relative to what then happened and then quick all of a sudden. And even when you think about the financials, it's like very, very little and then yeah, if you get all the right forces behind you in terms of like personality and timing and then someone drops out here, you get the interim shot, you win, then things take off.

1:01:57And that it's also remarkable to me that it's happened in such a short period of time, um, relative to how long you've been doing this because, yeah, when I looked down and I saw that this was 2023. Yes. But you've got that sure. You're kind of a new face on the scene to some degree relative to some of these other guys. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. I think the new generation is definitely coming in now. And in, uh, like the old guard, the old champion's account, uh, they're at the back end of the career and now it's time for, um, new guys, which is that's progression. That's, that's great. Quick one, I want to talk about something we all need to take seriously, which is cybersecurity.

1:02:31Whether you're a first time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional who's been through it all, staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated I have to say. And that is where Vanta comes in, who is a sponsor of this podcast. Vanta takes the pain out of security compliance, automating the tedious but essential process of proving your business is secure across over 35 frameworks like SOC 2 ISO 27001. Centralise your workflows and answer security questions up to five times faster and protect your business without losing focus on growth. And this is really a critical part of this.

1:03:06A new IDC white paper found that companies using Vanta save over $535 ,000 a year and it pays for itself in just three months. For a limited time, my community gets a thousand dollars off fan to repvanta .com slash Stephen. That's v -a -n -t -a .com slash Stephen for one thousand dollars off. So Tom, there's this black box in front of me, which contains something which represents a pivotal moment in your career. What is in the box? We'll remove the belt. I mean, it's not, I'll be honest with you, it's not that exciting. Interesting. It probably stinks as well. I've probably smell it for all of that.

1:03:41I'm okay. I'm clean actually. That's too bad. This is a knee pad. Okay. I... What is the story behind the knee pad? Why did you bring that? So, first of all, I've had a knee problem for a long time. I started the knee problem when we were talking about the things that we've just been talking about, the financial struggles. And I knew that I was never kind of like one, two fights away from getting to the UFC. So I wanted to train through the knee problems. Then I got to the UFC. I'm training, I fight, I win. Oh, my knees are all right. I'm doing pretty well here. I'd like to fight with one knee, fight again, I win.

1:04:25Then I get a new contract. And then I fight the off -meaning of the fight. I don't want to say no to the UFC. I'm on this roll. I've still got this bad knee. I'm training with one leg. You're training with one leg? Yeah, I've trained with one leg for a long time. Yeah, pretty much. I never kicked with the leg. kind of went on the knee ever or anything like that. Anyway, this kept going and going and I was fighting with one leg. Then the most devastating thing that happened in my whole career was my knee just give out in front of 25 ,000 home fans in the Ulterina in London. In what was a title eliminator fight?

1:05:03So if either of us were to won that fight, we would have got a title shot next. So it's a massive fight with title implications. And not only did I lose the fight because of the injury, losing the fight is one thing. Like if I go in there, I have a good fight, I show off all my training, but I get knocked out, for example. Like even though I'm gonna be sad that I've lost the fight, I am relatively satisfied that I went in there. I had a goal, create came up shot. Like I can live with that. But whereas with the knee, I went in there, got injured straight away. The knee was down, I couldn't walk.

1:05:46I surgery and then I was unsure whether my career was going to be over or not. And that was a massive, massive turning point in my life, not just in my career, but in my life. that really, really give me a chance to think and slow down and figure out what's important and what isn't, and that all came because of one of the biggest worst things that's happened in my life, but one of the most important things is, well, I've got the most growth from that knee injury that I've got from anything else in my life, I think. What kind of growth emerged from that? At the time, I was doing a lot of things wrong in my personal life and in my professional life.

1:06:25Like I had a lot of people around me that shouldn't have been there. I was doing some training sessions and training with people that I shouldn't have really been training with. I wasn't leaving a good lifestyle in terms of diet and my recovery. I wasn't 100 % focused and I should have been, but because everything was going so well, and I'm a little bit like superstitious. I didn't want to change anything because I'm like, well, it's going well. I don't want to start changing and I knew that there was a lot of things wrong. I knew that there were people that I shouldn't have been surrounding myself with.

1:06:59I knew that there were training sessions that were just wasting my time really and there were toxic people around me that shouldn't have been there and I needed to go but I didn't want to change everything because it was all going so well. And when you talk about like a rock bottom moment, when you sat on the floor of the UFC obviously ought to go on in the auto arena with your leg up in there. And there's 25 ,000 people who are there for you start leaving the building. It's a bad feeling. It's a really bad feeling. So that really made me like reassess some of the decisions that I was making at the time.

1:07:42And the Thomas panel before and after that moment, completely different people. I feel like I completely rebuilt myself, not only physically. Because I think you can look at me physically in fights before and see a physical change. Just in terms of my physique and the way I'm moving around, obviously I had one leg before and I've got two legs now which is way better. But mentally the growth has been enormous. Is that I completely cut out anything negative that was in my life. Anything that wasn't, anything or anyone that wasn't serving me to become like run parallel with my journey to becoming the best everywhere in the world.

1:08:20I completely caught off. Why? Because I was so superstitious, I think. But why did you? Why was it so important for you to remove those people at that particular moment? As an athlete, I needed to, and not only as an athlete, as a map, I needed to really slow down. Because I was on this like fast track. It's like I got in the US and it was just like fight, fight, fight. And every time it's like more and more popular, more interviews, more media, more fame, more money, more this and I didn't really have time to like assess really what was around me. I didn't have time to like start cutting people off and start changing this and tweaking this and doing, I just didn't see it because I was on this like, I was just going and going and going and when I had that and next minute, I'm sat on the couch for six months with this big cut on my leg.

1:09:15I can't walk. I'm doing physio and doing all the rest of it. And yeah, I just feel like as an athlete and a man, I really had that time to slow down and really assess my life and be like, this isn't working. It needs to change. That was actually the closest point where I was pretty close to throwing in the towel then, to be honest, on my career. because at that point, I'd not made like mega money or anything, but I've made enough money to like be comfortable and in a bought house at that time, I'd made some decent money, but nothing like life changing, but I've made enough money to then, I don't know, be living my life to an all right, you know, standard for however long.

1:10:01And I was like, well, I'm financially comfortable now, I've had some fights in the UFC, I've had some success. I think I would just outside the top five at that time, or something, maybe top 10. Now I've gone way further than a lot of people have done. Maybe I'll just leave it there. Was there an element of you that wondered if the public would ever want to see you again? No, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Because I didn't have an actual fight, I felt like people thought I'd faked the injury or something. So I think like a lot of people thought, Yeah, he didn't really want to be in there with that opponent.

1:10:34I felt, because especially my opponent at the time, it's played, you've been running through everybody. And I felt like a lot of people were like, Tom just didn't want to fight. So I felt like very insecure about myself at the time. And when I came back, I really had a chip on my shoulder. And I still got it. I want to prove to everybody that I'm the best ever in the world. You got six months on the sofa. Did you read things people are saying? I tried not to, but I always do. I try not to, but yeah, but I think it's quite healthy in a way though, as well. I think that fueled me a lot as well. Is that people started quoting on me and stuff.

1:11:16And a lot of people, even like people like, yeah, you know, you've got a lot of ways to make money now. Like, you've already done loads of media, you know, you got on the mic and stuff, you can maybe be a pun -dit and stuff like that. But for a time I was like, yeah, maybe I can. Maybe I can just like, you know, be a pundit. And you know, I've been in there. I've been in a venting a couple of times and stuff. I've been thought almost the elite level. Yeah, maybe I can just do that. But then I started reading these negative comments and I was like, actually, I want to fight. Like, what is this?

1:11:47Well, where am I going? I'm letting these regular people like speak, like talk to me and put regular thoughts in my mind and I'm not a regular person. So I'm an elite special athlete, and I always have that belief in myself that I'm not regular. I don't want to be regular, and I can't let regular people tell me how to function. And I was almost at the point where I was letting regular people tell me how to function. And the kind of online haters spurred me to be like, but now I've got to come back and win the style. There's no chance this is going to be the end of me. Did it knock your confidence at all?

1:12:30Even though the nature of the loss, and it's your first and only loss in the UFC, and you went on to beat this guy in a rematch, did it knock your confidence at all, even though it was via injury? Yeah, no, no, because I was really particular that. So there was two things that I really wanted to do after the fight. So I lost to a guy called Curtis Blades, that's one of the injured money. In 15 seconds and 15 seconds, yeah, right, we're gonna fight. So I wanted to fight Curtis again. That was really important to me as that I fight him again because I can't function as a human being knowing that I trained for a fight and didn't actually fight somebody.

1:13:12If I were to lost, at least I can look myself in the mirror and be like, I try my best, That's all I can do. But I seriously had unfinished business. And the other thing was that the injury happened at the auto arena, which from anyone from the UK knows that that is a prestigious, if you're a UFC fighter and you're English, you want to fight at the auto, especially the headline, the auto. That's an unbelievable experience. And I couldn't then never fight at the auto arena again. I had to fight at the auto. They were the two things. I wanted to fight Blades again, and I wanted to fight at the auto just so I can mentally just tick them two things off and then move forward.

1:13:56And I did both of them, and I won't both fight. So happy with that. John Jones. Yeah. How'd you feel about him? I'm sick of talking about him. I bet you were right here because that's what people want to talk about. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of people now, they think, like, oh, all Tom does his talk about John. And it's not the case, I don't want to talk about it, John, but that's all people ask me about. You know what I mean? Everybody, like I said before, it's probably one of the most anticipated fights in UFC history, me and John, John. So obviously that's the subject that people want to talk about.

1:14:31That's what people are interested in. So John is an absolute legend of the sport to answer the way I feel about him personally. he's quite relevant. The stuff that he's done in the UFC, he will be absolutely immortal forever. He will always be known as one of the best ever. And I really, as a mixed martial arts fan, really, really respect what he's done in the sport. Are you fearful of fighting him? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I'd be an idiot otherwise. He's the best. one of the best to ever put a pair of UFC gloves on. And I think, like I say, regardless of what he's done outside the octagon, and for anyone watching who doesn't know I am referring to these legal issues that he's got.

1:15:22And that's nothing to do with me. I have no idea about any of that. I don't know, personally. I think inside the octagon, he is 100 % one of the best people to ever do it. What do you admire about John Jones in terms of his fighting style? He's extremely smart, extremely smart. The way he goes about his business in the octagon, but also his business outside the octagon and the matchups that he's chose for himself. very smart, very, very smart. The way that he's chose, guys who he much is up stylistically really well with or who are well -past the prime, I think it's genius. I think it's absolute genius.

1:16:11He's saying that he's an avoided people that would might have been. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that he's chose very well. He chose very, very wisely. The right opponents at the right time which is super smart. So don't see a question, yeah, probably I'm saying. So what about his, you admire that he's, he's sort of fighting IQ. Yeah, one of the smartest fights to have fight in. Really? Yeah. Explain that to me like I'm a muggle. Okay. Okay. He will, he has a certain way of making fighters fight his style, if that makes sense. So he will constantly keep his opponent guessing with kind of like different things that they like.

1:17:04He will always have a style that suits him really well. And he will force his opponents to fight that way, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. Yeah. I guess it's kind of difficult if you're uneducated but he has his style and he will never come out of that and risk fighting somebody else's style ever. He will constantly force elite guys to fight his style which is really, really difficult to do in it in a technical perspective. Kind of saw that against a steep pay I thought. Yeah, but steep pay is also 42 years old with a million miles on the clock. You have to remember that. But you are right.

1:17:40You're definitely right. But from seeing it up close because I was almost in touch in distance at the Altagome. Steve Paye was more than offbeat in that fight in terms of how far he is away from his prime. What is it that John Jones is doing there? Because you see these great athletes who have their own really clearly defined style. Then you see them getting in the ring with John Jones. and suddenly their style seems to have vanished, or they're scared, or he's doing something to keep them out, like on the back foot and outside of their zone of comfort so they can never really get into the rhythm so they play his game.

1:18:20What is it he's doing there? Well, first of all, he, John Joel's in a light heavyweight. So he's now moved up to heavy, he's had two fights to heavyweight, but traditionally there's a light heavyweight. For a light heavyweight, he's extremely long in terms of wingspan and leg length. And when you're that much taller, and this is not, I'm not saying anything about it, but most of the guys he's for, from middleweight coming up. So he's generally the taller guy and keeps people at the end of his reach so well, like his distance management is one of the best ever. He does that really well. And then when he's moved up to heavyweight, he's fought a guy in Surrogown who, no disrespect to him, doesn't have a ground game.

1:19:02John John's one of the best wrestlers ever in MMA and 42 -year -old steep A. So he's Charles really really well what he does but he just uses his distance management and his timing is incredible like the way he uses the attributes that he's got is honestly like from from somebody who's studied martial arts from like I said eight years old. It's like, it's almost like beautiful for me to watch the way he expresses different techniques under that much pressure against the league composition. It's amazing to watch. He's got incredible set of skills in that regard because he can kick, he can punch, he can grapple, he can wrestle.

1:19:47I think in today's mixed martial arts, everybody has to do all that. But arguably everybody has to be almost elite in everything. The thing that he does really well is he does everything on his terms inside the octagon. Like everybody can do all the stuff that you just listed, put it to get elbow knee, wrestle, grapple, choke, and bar, whatever. But he does it all on his terms and that is something that is the elite of the elite. And like I say, all of us, all of us, I want to say, oh, I'm talking about the professional I remember Mae Fighter who's had a one fight, two John Jones. All of us, everything in between that can do everything really well.

1:20:28You have to be able to, to be able to swim, but he just does it on his terms when his opponent is not expecting it and that is unbelievable. So you must be thinking about how you stuck that. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's difficult because I don't want to over obsess about it because there's no contract with my name and his name signed. Yeah. But in the back of my mind when I'm training, of course, I'm thinking about that kind of stuff. But I think what I bring to the table is I'm way bigger than anyone he's ever thought. I'm close to my prime. I don't think I've reached it quite yet. I think I've still got maybe a year or so before I get there.

1:21:04And I think I'm just really... I don't want to say I'm athletically gifted because I've definitely put a lot of work into it. But I think when it comes to athleticism for a big guy, I think I don't want to sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but I'm just being real. I think that I'm like head and shoulders above any other heavyweight and not only that, my decision -making. I think that's the difference. There's a lot of people, like any heavyweight, put parable of sonnum, they can knock anybody out, like golf without saying, we're massive guys. But my decision -making is elite, like elite elite, it's the best, some of the best in MMA.

1:21:43And I hate to sit here with a lot of cameras around me, I just locked you in the face and tell you that, but it's the honest truth, I believe that. I'm also almost in my prime, I'm hungry, and I bring all these physical and technical attributes to the table, which somebody like, for example, Steve P. Milchich used 11, 12 years older than me, and a million miles on the clock, doesn't bring. So when people see your fighting style in the here that you've got the world record for the lowest average time to end fights, just over two minutes. on average, your fights last before you knocked the guy out.

1:22:16They're going to be thinking, right, so Tom's strategy here is he's going to storm John Jones and throw that hand and knock him out. And John Jones is going to be thinking the same. John Jones is going to be like, right, he's going to try and finish me quick. That's his game. There's literally a wild record that says, that's his game. Yeah. I love that. Like, if people think that's all I bring to the table, Well, like I like begin a bit of a mystery. I absolutely love that. Like there's so much of my game that I've not had the opportunity to show yet. And I absolutely love it, you know, when people like critique the fact that I've not been into the later rounds or maybe I've not had got the condition that other guys have got or look, that's not my problem.

1:22:58That's the problem of my opponents. They can't deal with what I'm throwing. I never ever go out there to finish the fight quick. It just happens. And that isn't actually an issue for me. That's the issue for the guy standing across the up to gone from me because I have never been in a fight where I'm trying to finish really. I'm just trying to go out there, do my thing, see what comes and see what's what like. And the fact that people are doubting what I can do. And just because they don't know, because they've not seen it with their own eyes, they think I can't know it, which to me is humongous advantage.

1:23:32humongous advantage like John, John for example, is known for his film study, like he loves watching his opponent and seeing how they move, seeing the patterns that they bring up and like, good luck with doing that with me mate because the footage isn't out there and I think that's also part of the reason why he's not quick to say any contracts or to agree on anything. Yeah, the money's a factor of course. Yeah, he's right at the end of his career and he might I don't know, I don't know how John's mind works, but definitely somewhere it's an insecurity of his that there isn't any footage out there of me that you can watch for longer than three or four minutes.

1:24:09And that is just a humongous advantage for me, massive. Because you finished the fight so quickly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's so much of my game that I've not even been close to showing. And I'm very excited to surprise some of these guys when I do show it. But I can't imagine how many times you must have played over in your head. You were talking about drilling earlier. That fight. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Yeah, I've definitely played it a lot. But I do that with all opponents, even guys in the division right now who have not got any prospects to fight in at the moment. I think about that a lot, like I think about how I match up physically and mentally with them.

1:24:53So if you're playing that over in your head, run me through the tape, you're playing. Well, that's top secret. Is that really the case that there's a particular strategy? Absolutely. And you're playing in your house. Yeah, absolutely. But there's one thing that I know for sure. This is nailed on guaranteed. And this goes for any human being in the world. And this has been proved time and time again. Even though sometimes I don't believe that it can happen. But now I know, if I punch a human being in the face as hard as I can and it lends, they will be unconscious. I know it because it's been proved at the elite level multiple times.

1:25:35So I need one and that's it. Well, I wanted to test that. So we've got Jack here. Who is that? LAUGHTER I'll put you down. Yeah, it's not today. Have you had your punch -powered tested? Yeah, I haven't tested.

1:25:58I'm probably in real life as well for whatever, but I think I don't want to tell you because I don't want people to watch it and know my secrets, but I punch people when they're not expecting it and they're the ones that hurt. I disguise it in a certain way. I do bits on my YouTube channel and stuff about me explaining techniques and doing different things and now I've got something called a school platform which I know you had Alex Hormollsie on the channel as well who is our shares in school and I show different techniques and stuff like that but I'll never show my game if that makes sense. I'll show a generalisation of what to do in strategy and what's focus on and not but my personal game and what I do for my style I'll never show it because that's something for only me and my coaches to know.

1:26:46And when you think about your routine for those six weeks, what advice can you give to like an average person about the health routine that you go through to get into a elite shape. What are the tips and tricks you've learned that you can impart on me as someone that's not necessarily a fighter? Well, it's something that I'm learning as I'm getting a little bit older. And I'm not saying I'm old by any chance, by any stretch of the imagination, but as I'm getting older and I'm getting more, I've been training a long time, even though I'm not up there in age, but I can definitely feel more on my body than I used to, especially being a bigger guy.

1:27:20generally recurring more injuries, but I think that if you train in, for example, four hours a day, what I've found is doing at least half of that time recovery is what I'm aiming to do. So however the recovery looks to you, whether that's stretching, breathing exercises, sauna, swimming, steam room, jacuzzi, you know, there's a whole Google recovery from exercise. there'll be a million things that you can do. But I like to try and do 50 % of my training. The easiest way, I can say, is if I'm training for four hours, I try and do two hours worth of recovery. And I think that has helped me a lot, not to mention, massively, massively underrated.

1:28:03And as a heavyweight, I can kind of eat what I want really, if I want to. I really? Well, I don't have the smaller weights. They all have to be under a certain weight. So weight cutting is like a big thing in our main people. They do extreme diets and then cut a lot of water throughout the last week and try and get, you know, squeezes as much as they can to get under this weight division the way in, then they put the weight back on. I just have to be over 93 kilos and I do that no problem, but... But doesn't your nutrition have an impact on your performance? Of course, of course, that's kind of what I'm getting to is like, it is so important what you put in your body like.

1:28:37I didn't realise that until I was maybe 28 years old, 27, 28 years hold and it needs to be monitored. Like, again, going back to writing stuff down, like, write down what you eat in a day and eliminate one thing for the next day and write how you feel. Like, that's what I did a lot. He's like, and now I'm at the point where like, I will eat similar things a similar times every day because I know I'm a body functions on that. And I know that if I'm doing an intense session there, I need a little bit more calves before and after. And what kind of calves is something that I've worked out to how I feel before and after?

1:29:16And again, it's just a lot of every person's body is different, so I would never like to sit here and I'm not a nutrition expert and start going on about what people need to eat because that's not my expertise. But I know from a personal point of view that writing things down and experimenting, taking this out and adding this in and then writing notes on how you feel and doing that every day has been massive for me. What about sleep? You mentioned sleep early. I do like to sleep a lot. I'm just a big napper. If I train in the morning, I'm going to sleep straight after. And that takes a lot of discipline.

1:29:52It takes a lot of discipline for me to be like, I'm coming home from training. I'm going to shower, eat, and sleep. And nothing's coming in the way of that. It takes a special like we kids. Like, if I'm coming home, if I've done a two hour sit session in the morning, I'm coming home, the kids are excited to see me. This guy wants to play on the Xbox, so they'll want to play outside. This one wants to snack, and that one wants to play outside, and then it's just madness, and then one of them is built a drink. You've got to clean this up, and then one wants this on the TV. It's just a constant thing.

1:30:24For me to then walk in and be like, I'm going to bed. I'll be up in an hour and a half. You know what I mean? That's data playing as well. Well, that's a bit of book. All these little increments, they just pay off massively. Because I talked about ketosis on this podcast and ketones, a brand called Keton IQ sent me their little product here. And it was on my desk when I got to the office. I picked it up, it sat my desk for a couple of weeks, then one day I tried it. And honestly, I have not looked back ever since. I now have this everywhere I go. When I travel all around the world, it's in my hotel room, my team will put it there.

1:30:59Before I did the podcast recording today that I've just finished, I had a shot of Qtone IQ. And as is always the case when I fall in love with a product, I called the CEO and asked if I could invest a couple of million quid into their company. So I'm now an investor in the company as well as them being a brand sponsor. I find it so easy to drop into deep -focused work when I've had one of these. I would love you to try one and see the impact it has on you, your focus, your productivity, and your endurance. So if you want to try it today, visit Qtone .com slash Steve and for 30 % off your subscription.

1:31:28Plus, you'll receive a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone .com slash Stephen. I'm excited for you. I am. The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid, but what if you had the right question to start them with? Every single guest on the Diroversio has left behind a question in this diary. And it's a question designed to challenge, to connect and to go deeper with the next guest. And these are all the questions that I have here in my hand. On one side you've got the question that was asked, the name of the person who wrote it. And on the other side, if you scan that, you can watch the person who came after who answered it.

1:32:0751 questions, split across three different levels, the warm -up level, the open -up level, and the deep level. So you decide how deep the conversation goes. And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms, alone at night, and on first dates, and everywhere in between. I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at the diary .com You mentioned a term earlier on that we didn't go into which was hipnotherapy. Yes For someone that doesn't know what hipnotherapy is Can you give me like a broad idea of what it is and how the role that it's played in your life and Any evidence you might have seen that it actually works.

1:32:46Yeah, so I'm going like quite hard on the hipnotherapy Now I actually spoke to my hipnotherapist yesterday and I'm going to start doing it twice a week. Why?

1:32:57A few different reasons, really, both personal and professional. I had a situation recently with my kid, where my kid was in hospital and it really kicked off my anxiety massively. And since then, I'm struggling to relax a little bit more than I would usually as struggling to switch off. So I think that for me personally, again, I don't want to sit here and preach about hypnotherapy because it's not my expertise at all. But for me personally, it brings my anxiety down a lot, so that it helps with that. It also helps with sleep. It also helps with just being just in a more tranquil place in general.

1:33:37And when you add that, those qualities into what can be a very anxiety filled, anxiety filled sport. I think that's just a massive advantage, not to mention the other stuff that we talked about, like life and just general stressiness as well. For someone that doesn't know anything about the hypnotherapy that you do, they might think that it's like, you know, in back in the day, it wasn't swinging the thing in your face and then you fall asleep and they tell you you're a dog in your back and stuff. Yeah, yeah. You just go on TV when I was younger. But it's not that, is it? What is it? Any people are going to start thinking it's like some like, say some woo woo thing where start going unconscious and doing all this, it's nothing like that.

1:34:21Essentially, you're just in a room, the way that I do it at least. I mean, a room with a guy talking to me, I'm completely relaxed, lay down or sat up, doesn't matter, usually with my eyes closed. Usually, I'll take you through a story of like, you're going to a place, you're walking down a street, or what, you're set the scene kind of thing. And I used to think, I need to listen and focus in on every word he's saying. Like I need to put myself exactly where, you know, follow the story, go on, go on, story exactly as he's telling me to follow it. And I actually spoke to him about it. And I was like, I'm struggling to like listen for that long, because it goes on like 45 minutes, struggling to like follow the path that you're leading me down for that long.

1:35:04And he's like, listen, don't worry. You can be thinking about whatever you want. You don't have to follow what I'm telling you. You said because you're some conscious is listening all the time. It's the same when a couple of times I was like fighting to stay awake because I was tired. Most of the time I did after training as well so I'm tired. I'm like fighting to stay awake and I said look I'm fighting to stay awake. I'm like getting really tired and he's like look if you fall asleep, doesn't matter if subconscious is still listening so it doesn't matter what's going on. And a lot of the time I'm just there, I'm just like chilling out, I'm listening to what he's saying but I'm also drifting off of my thoughts and I don't know how, again, I'm not like a psychologist, hypnotherapist or anything like that, but I only know from my own personal perspective that when it comes to like anxiety and positive thinking and just generally being in a better place mentally, I just believe in it a lot.

1:35:53I think it really helps me. Anxiety. What journey have you been on with your anxiety? It's something that I've always kind of dealt with, but I think it's not uncommon to deal with it. And I think that a lot of people think it is uncommon. Like I am a little bit OCD, and I think that OCD and anxiety goes hand in hand. Like I think that, and it used to be a lot worse to be honest. I used to struggle with it when I was a child and still struggle with it now, but I used to be a lot worse when I was younger. And how did that manifest? Oh, at one point, at one point it was like, I couldn't sit in a room unless the room was the way I wanted it to look.

1:36:34Like, unless the curtains would close the right way, the drawers would shut perfectly, everything was facing forward. The TV was on a certain angle, like I couldn't rest. Really? Because I would think like something bad is going to happen unless all that's right. But after a while, I kind of grew out of that a little bit and got a hold on it, but it still creeps back back sometimes, I try and keep it at bay. Does it come out at certain moments when certain things happen? Yeah, yeah, it does, it gets worse. Like I said, I've been through something quite traumatic recently, where my son was in hospital, and that's a whole other story of it's on, but at one point, we were really concerned about, like, my son's health really.

1:37:17And that was a big traumatic thing for me, and I noticed a lot that my OCD started to come back, and I want to do certain stuff again because my anxiety is creeping up and just got to really try and keep it a day. And anxiety, separate to that. So your anxiety is always been something in the background in your life, but it flares up in certain situations. Yeah. So I mean, I'm in an anxiety fueled sport. So I think naturally there's a lot going on because of that, but But it's just something, I think everybody deals with it. I don't think I'm, I don't think I'm uncommon to anybody else. I think, especially these days, it's a lot more accepted to be like talking about it and stuff.

1:38:02It's super common in the Netherlands. Yeah, it's very, very common. It's very, very common. I think social media doesn't help with that, especially for like, I mean, for myself, it's like I have a thing now, I've only known for the last couple of fights where social media's gone from my life when I got a fight date because there is no chance that I'm thinking about my opponent all day and I'm also scrolling and reading all comments all day, it's just not, I just want to deal with it. And for the next fight, I'm actually going to have like a training camp full where only people who are actually involved in my training camp or personal life.

1:38:39And when I say personal life, I'm talking about my wife and my mom and dad. And probably that's it. They're going to be involved like I don't want to have any outside noise coming in at all. Your son's doing okay now? Son's doing okay now, yeah. Yeah, thankfully everything's good. Put things in perspective, doesn't it? Honestly, unbelievably. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't really, really bad without going into too many details, but spent a stay in hospital with something that we wasn't sure what it was at first. And yeah, massively, absolutely. Like, nothing else really matters if... There's a lot of light as long as you've got your health and your family's health, like you're in a pretty good spot, I think, because it's just a horrible place to be.

1:39:27Is this the son that received an autism diagnosis? No, this is my, so one of my twins has autism. Yeah, yeah, this is the non -autistic. Okay, tell me about your son that was received the autism diagnosis, and this sort of journey you've been on there. I think this is really, really important because I've done this podcast a while, And I get so many DMs from parents who have an autistic child asking me to talk more about this subject because They just don't feel like their information's out there and they there's a number of feelings that they feel I think one of them that I see in my DMs expressed is a bit of guilt Yeah, to some degree, which is an interesting one, but also just a lack of people talking about the experience so take take me on the journey from when that's child was born and And the path to the diagnosis.

1:40:14I mean, I'll give as much detail as possible because, like you say, I think parents need details and there isn't a lot out about it. And now, for me, recently, like I say, I've been through something traumatic with another one of my kids and the NHS has been absolutely nothing short of unbelievable like we're in an emergency situation where we need an emergency treatment and I could got 24 hours a day looking after while there was an emergency going on and it was unbelievable. We came away me and my wife being like we are so lucky to live in this country because my wife isn't from this country as well.

1:40:58So we both came away being like we are so lucky to live here in a place where you can get free everything in an emergency level straightaway. So I'm not trying to throw the NHS under the bus at all because when there's an emergency it's amazing. That being said, as far as the autistic community, we are being failed and I don't know if that's from the NHS, from the government, I don't know who that's from. But I was in a spot, so my twins are nearly six, they're coming up to six. So I was in a spot like my twins were born and they were born just before the lockdown. Then COVID hit everything like the world went to shit as we know.

1:41:45And then my kids got in a place where we had a child before and we're aware that kids hit milestones. We've got twins, so they're hitting the milestones at different stages. Then we start to notice like maybe two years old, maybe two years old. We start to know it's like one kid is a fair bit beyond the other one. In terms of speech, in terms of how responsive he is, in terms of eye contact, in terms of what we could see something's different. But me personally as a dad, I was kind of like in denial as to, right, this is a lockdowns fault. This kid is two years old, he's been in the house, he's been around me, my wife and his two brothers, sometimes grandparents when the government would let us.

1:42:40And that's it for like two years. He's not in social situations, he's not around other kids and that kind of went on for a bit. I was kind of like heavily in denial about it. Even though now looking back, I could clearly see that things weren't moving normally, especially because he's got this twin and the twins like, you know, he's moving at a different rate so it was right there in front of my face, but I'm just like in this denial, he'll catch up, it's just a lockdowns fault, the government's keeping us all locked inside blah, blah, blah. Patti McGuinness, funny enough, it was a guy from my area, like from a similar area, don't know Patti at all, never met him.

1:43:20But he had this program and it was about autism and I don't know why one day me and my wife was sat down and watched this program and he I believe has three autistic children, all of his three children I died in also the autism. So anyway, I'm watching this documentary and he's talking about all the different symptoms because it's a massive spectrum of autism. There's a million different things and I'm watching he's talking about this one kid he does this. This is the way that autism presents himself in this particular kid. And in my mind, I'm thinking, my son does do that a little bit. And then he's talking about a different kid who also is diagnosed with autism, the way that the child does this.

1:44:02And I'm thinking, anyway, he's going through talking about his different children. And I'm thinking, wow, my child ticks a lot of these boxes. And then I Google it. I know nothing about autism at the time. And obviously that is the worst thing you can ever do. And I'm going through the symptoms being like, wow, this is when I don't know what to do. Like we need to try and try and get help. So anyway, make a doctor's appointment at the GP. And that is a complete mess. It's difficult to get an appointment. We go in, the put us on a waiting list. Anyway, a year We're a soulgoals by. The child isn't developing at the speed of his twin.

1:44:49We can see this clearly. We are worried about what's going on. We don't know what to do. Like we are literally, we have no idea about what's going on, how to progress this child, what his future is going to look like. We know nothing about autism, me and my wife at the time, absolutely zero about it. we don't know. It's just so such and we're talking about anxiety. Like, you don't know what your child's future is going to look like and how to help him or her on how to progress as a human being. That is some of the worst anxiety that you can ever have. You've brought this kid to this earth and you can't even point them in the right direction of where to go on how to navigate the way through life.

1:45:39And And it's a really, really difficult thing. Anyway, I go on a questioner's spot, the show. Paddy Vaganis is the host. Me and Paddy are chatting a little bit after the show, and I said, not Paddy, if you don't mind me asking it, I watch you show about autism. I said, I'm trying to get my kid diagnosed. I've been on the waiting list a year, like what should we do? So anyway, you give me the number to the specialist, I call the specialist, we go in for a meeting, long story short, paid for the diagnosis, got the kid diagnosed and now my child is in a mainstream school. He has a one -to -one teacher.

1:46:25He's getting the help he needs. He's doing really well, he's progressing. How the future is going to look, we don't know, we're dealing with day today. And now I am completely aware that as a person in a good financial situation, I have the ability to do that is to go pay the money and get that. And now there is so many people, so so many people who, and I mean I get hundreds of messages about it, hundreds of people stuff me on the street about it because I've spoke a little bit about autism, who they are going to the GP, they're going for assessments and they cannot get a diagnosis. They're on a 3, 4, 5 year waiting list and these kids are getting sent to mainstream schools and the kids are just regressing and regressing and regressing because they don't have any help and the parents of the kids have zero direction and they don't know what to do and we're in a really tough spot with it in this country where like I said, we've got this amazing NHS.

1:47:33I don't know if it's the NHS that's holding this or the government, but and I don't know what's causing autism. There's a million things out there about vaccinations, about dire about things that they're watching on TV, about the toys that they play with. You know, there's a lot of different theories on it. Me personally, I don't know what it is, obviously. I'm not a specialist with that, but I know that autism is getting bigger and bigger each year. There's more and more people trying to get diagnosed. There's more and more people getting diagnosed and the health just isn't there. The health, especially in schools, like I'm so lucky that my son has an amazing once -one teacher every day he goes in, he enjoys school and he progresses a little bit.

1:48:12And we know what we're in position where we've had help as parents that we know what kind of direction and where to navigate him in sometimes. Now there's so many parents out there who've been on, like, say, three, four, five, six, six, seven year waiting list, their kids are just getting worse and worse and worse. And as a penalty to that, the parents life are then getting worse and worse and worse. And they have absolutely no direction of where to go and what to do. And it's a serious, serious crisis that we've got in this country at the moment. There are in this country, there are 700 ,000 autistic adults and children.

1:48:51But in the US, roughly 2 .5 % of the US population has been diagnosed with autism. and it is four times more common in boys than girls. And there was a 787 % rise in the number of autism diagnosis over the last roughly two decades, which is on one hand awareness being highest for people are going and getting a diagnosis, but some think there might be other factors that are actually increasingly about people that are autistic. Why for someone that doesn't understand autism and the process that, and the plight of a parent that has an autistic child, and is the diagnosis so critical? Is it because you then get additional support and guidance and you can access that support if you have a diagnosis?

1:49:32So I was under the notion that if my kid is diagnosed autistic or not, doesn't matter. That was my original thing, doesn't matter. He's still my kid, I'm still gonna love him, I'm still gonna guide him through whatever he needs to in life. Now, I completely respect anybody who's doing that. He has a hundred percent respect from me and I'm sure everybody else, but the biggest issue is, like me personally, I'm a professional athlete, it's like I know that for this many hours a day I need to be in the gym and training. When I'm not in the gym, I need to be recovering. When I'm not in the gym, I need to be in the right things.

1:50:09And I have this process of things that make me successful. That's how I work in my life. If you don't have a diagnosis of autism, the only way I can describe it because I've been there is you just kind of like treading water, you just stuck in one place, flailing around and not really knowing how to do them steps and progress your family life in your child's life. That's the way that I look at it personally. I'm speaking 100 % for myself, but if you've not got a diagnosis, first of all, you're not getting any funding, which like I said, I'm in a financial position, I don't need any funding, but there's a lot of people out there who do need funding and funding looks like outlets for the child, helping school, help at home, help for the parents, help for the friends, sensory rooms in school, sensory toys, you know, there's a whole host of things that can help autistic children or autistic people and without that diagnosis, if you don't, if you're a In my personal experience, it feels like you're treading water.

1:51:20I feel like I needed a process of these are the steps that we have to take to help my child progress. And I think that it's what we need is it's not about another number on the statistics that you've read out. It's not about that. It's not about me saying I've got an autistic child or whatever. it's about the help that your child can get. And right now, we definitely don't have enough help in this country. I heard one of my best friends was diagnosed with autism. And one of my best friends for a long time is actually also worked at my company for many, many years. And he'd spoke to me about the sense of relief that he experienced when he got his diagnosis, but also it was kind of like you're describing there was suddenly a sense of direction and understanding like someone turned the lights on.

1:52:11And with the lights on, he was able to make better decisions. And it's not held in back in any way. If anything, it's done the opposite. It's helped him to understand himself. But I think for some of us who don't understand haven't been through that, we either don't can't relate, but also we have no idea that there's additional. So I had no idea until you just said it just then, that there's additional support given in schools and stuff like that to kids who have that diagnosis. So it's critically important. And I'm so glad that you share that with us because hopefully there's some people watching in the government, but also parents that can get together and there are presumably getting together to change this.

1:52:46Yeah, I mean, it's a tough thing for me to talk about because I'm completely aware that there will be people watching this and thinking, who is this knucklehead talking about, like autism diagnosis and what the government needs to go through? But it's also an experience that I've Just from my local area and my circle of friends and people around me, that there is a shit on a people who are in the same boat as I am and need help. And I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I've got the help and that we are progressing, but I know that there's a lot of people who don't and that are struggling. So I want to try and speak for those people if I can.

1:53:32Thank you for doing it. And that's, there's a lot of my audience that are going to be very, very grateful for that. There's something next to me on the table here, which is this, It's belt. It's very, very heavy. I know this is just a replica, but you do have the real one at home. And the reason why you only bought me the replica instead of the real thing is because the real thing costs a lot of money apparently. Apparently. Apparently. So I heard rumors online that the real thing actually costs about three -inch grand. And you have to sign a contract when you receive this belt that if you lose it, then you have to personally pay.

1:54:06If it goes missing, I'm paying for it, so hopefully that won't happen. But it's in a very serious spot, so it won't go missing. I'm not going to ask you where you keep it, because there's people listening. What are these flags around it? I've actually never seen one before, so... I'm not too sure. I know this bit here. The side. Yeah, so these little... These stones, whatever they are. You get one of those, so they're all... I think on the real one the diamonds and this is a is it a Ruby or something? A Ruby? Yeah, you get a Ruby when you defend it. So I defended it once so I got one and then obviously that fills up the more you do it.

1:54:45Oh, so if you defend it one two three four five six seven times it's going to be all go before yeah. Okay, what does that say there? It says UFC three or four Edwards versus Muhammad two. My personal one has my like my name on it and the proper details because this is a replica. And when you won that interim heavyweight championship, and then you woke up the next day, how did you feel? Honestly. Well, I woke up about three days later. I didn't sleep for about three days after because I was very excited. Yeah, pretty good. I mean, I want it in weird circumstances, so that fight I took on really short and I also say actually there wasn't in shape for that fight at So I actually just come back off of a stagdo.

1:55:33So I wasn't in my best shape when I answered that call. Was there any anti -climax to it? No, no, but there's definitely an unanti -climax a little bit to like being, to quote unquote, successful, because you still feel the same. Like, as you still have the same issues, like, issues as you had before. Like, money, fame and titles doesn't change much in terms of what goes on inside your brain in my opinion. Maybe it does change for some people, but for me, I still have the same struggles as I did before. It doesn't change anything in that regard. I think when you're younger, especially, I don't know, it's like young people, they think that rich people have no problems.

1:56:21And it just isn't true. It's just so far from the truth. You know that. Yeah, I mean, they say more money, more problems, but it's just a different set of problems than some of the other roles. Well, that's it. I mean, at one point, as we spoke about in detail, a big problem of mine was I couldn't pay my rent and I couldn't pay fuel to putting like, ah, that's gone. But there's more problems that have a role since. The money won't fix. You're not a me. Are you at all concerned that when your time does come, you want to retire relatively early so you don't get any cognitive issues or have to fight your time.

1:56:55Are you at all concerned about what you do next? Because we've seen people like Tyson Fury sort of really struggle. I am a little bit to be honest, I'll be lying if I said otherwise. Just because it takes up so much your my time, it takes up so much of my time. And the time that I'm not actually physically training, like I'm not in the gym training, I am doing all the stuff towards it. I even stuff like breathing exercises, I would class as part of my training, stretching, eating right, sleep. I would class this all as part of my training routine. So when I've not got that, what will my life look like?

1:57:34I don't know. I don't know. And that's something as we spoke about before. And I'm aware that I'm on the second half of my career now. When that's done, how does it look? And I don't know if anything can ever replace that in our lasty. What about the money side of things? Are you having to think now? What's the average age of a UFC fighter retiring? Most people don't even get there. But if you do really, really well, you might fight until if you're really, really lucky, you might do steep -haze age. Forty. Forty. Yeah. Yeah. A bigger guy has tended all along, but I don't know why that is. But generally the heavyweight is usually forty.

1:58:10So how do you think about financial longevity? Are you investing your money if you've got people that help you? Yeah, I do. I do. I'm looking to invest all the time. Actually, my team has actually been really, really good with that kind of stuff like a lot of my, not a lot, but a few of my sponsorships. I actually have shares in business as well as the sponsorship. And also, I want to do more stuff. I really love the sport of MMA. So I'm always like, even though I'm retired from fighting, I will never be involved. I'm no bit retired from MMA, that makes sense. I've definitely made mistakes in the media space before, definitely, but I'm learning.

1:58:55And I definitely think there's a place for me somewhere in the future to educate people on MMA. However, that looks, whether it's punditry, whether it's podcasts, whether it's, I don't know, something somewhere. I definitely think that I will give some kind of insight to somebody where people can hopefully learn something from me and that really had. I think you're more than capable of doing all that I'd love to see you give breakdowns. I've seen some of the stuff you're doing with school as well. You've been doing great. I've also done a lot, but the given my own show now, two and two sport as well, breaking down fights.

1:59:30This is just start. I'm just getting the foot in the door. It's not something that I'm focusing on full -time now because I'm obviously really busy with other stuff, but when I'm done, that's what I want to do. What did your dad think of all of this? He's been such a central figure in your life. Well, this whole John Jones situation, you went in there, this belt that sits in front of me here, you must have blown his mind. I don't think so. Really? Yeah, I think that he had this firm belief. He believed in me way before I believed in myself, I always say. And I think that this is also his dream as well.

2:00:06But I don't think for any of us, and this is going to sound super arrogant, but it's the truth. I don't think any of us are surprised by it. I think that in some way, it was written for us to do it. I can't explain it any more than that. I feel like we were both expecting to be here. This is where we are and this is where we're going to be till I'm done. Did you ever tell you you were going to be here? What did you say? Just a little He was never like, you're gonna be that, but it was like, look, if you keep doing this, this is where you're gonna go. If you keep being dedicated to training and keep living your life right and keep focused, you can be heavyweight jumping in the world.

2:00:46And I think that, especially because I'm from like a smaller town, a blue collar town for sure, a working class town, that belief is shut down so much from a young age by not just parents, but other people surrounding in the community like listen maybe don't, maybe don't think you're going to be a Hollywood actor because you're not. Maybe, maybe try and be a bit more realistic and do something a bit. No, if you think you're going to be a Hollywood actor, you go for it. Like you go 100 % at that and don't let anything waver from where you're going. and I think that that is not told to, especially the younger generation enough.

2:01:32I think that, like I said, I'm from a very, very blue -collar humble town. And from my town, there aren't many people who've done anything of great magnitude in terms of sport and otherwise. And I think a lot of that, not all of it, of course, but I think a lot of it comes from the mentality of, yeah, maybe don't aim for that, aim for something a bit lower, and that shouldn't be encouraged in my opinion. Always, you first option should be the highest of the high, and if you land in a lower, then you really change the goalpost a little bit, but the first thing is shoot as high as you can. Are you special?

2:02:14Yes.

2:02:21Why are you special? I think that I have, and first of all, I think I'm really physically gifted in terms of athleticism, but it's something that I have worked on a lot as well. It's not, I didn't just wake up like this. I've definitely worked a lot over the years of it, but I think that aside, I think I've got a gift mentally. And this has been honed a lot by the people around me through the years. Like I said, there's been a lot of people supporting me, but I think I've got a gift to perform really, really well under massive pressure, under massive pressure. And I don't think, like I say, it's been honed a lot for sure by my dad and the other people around me, definitely.

2:03:14But I think that I have a God -given gift or whoever universe, giving gift or whoever you believe in that I can perform extremely well under the highest precious situations possible. Even though you feel the fear. Even though I feel the fear. Because I accept the fear. I bathe in the fear. That's not the first time you've said that. No, it's something that someone told me. It's something that someone told me recently. I thought it was funny. So when you feel that fit, is there something you say to yourself? Is there like a mantra or a system? Well, I always say that I used to have two fights. I used to be fighting my opponent, I used to be fighting myself.

2:03:52I used to be trying to block out the fear, trying to like. But you know what, I just took it on board and accepted that this is going to help me like. You've just so many examples over the years. I like to give this example because this actually happened to one of my close friends. So he's putting a wardrobe up and the wardrobe is like a really heavy wardrobe. fell on his kid who was like not even walking at the time. And he is a skinny guy like he's a small slight guy. He was on his own and he pulled the wardrobe off the kid. Right. And then anyway, everything was fine. The kid was fine and everything, whatever.

2:04:33Five minutes later, he went to move the wardrobe to another part of the room and realized that you couldn't pick it up. And there's only one thing that's made him pick that wardrobe and his fear. fear that that kid is going to get crushed under that really heavy wardrobe. And when he actually went to pick the wardrobe up without that, there was no way you could have done it. He had to wait till somebody came and help him move the wardrobe across the room. There was no way that you could have done it without the fear. And there's so many situations like if you're running for your life, 100 % guaranteed that you're running way quicker than you would if you were just running down the street, goes without saying because that fear fuels you in ways that nothing else will.

2:05:13And I have accepted that and took it on board and used it to help me. Because if someone that's watched your fights both on screen but in person, I, one of the things that I remember about you, more so than other fighters I've seen, is how calm you look in the ring. And I don't, I'm like, does he just know he's like amazingly good or is there something he's doing? Because you kind of look how I look when I get to the office. And I don't have some six foot five guy that's trying to kill me. It's all by design though. Really? So, one of my absolute heroes in the sport, I've ever made a guy called GSP, George St.

2:05:52Pierre, who's one of the best fighters to ever lace up the gloves, but not only that, he's one of the best humans as well. I'm lucky enough to have met him a few times and had some deep discussions with him. And he's someone I've studied a lot, both inside and outside of the octagon over the years. And the thing with GSP is he, like me, has always admitted how scared he was. And that's something that I've watched countless interviews and podcasts with him and how he talks about it and stuff. And he used the method and he actually told me about the method where I'm not sure what the method's called and I don't I don't even know if there's any scientific evidence behind it.

2:06:29But it works for him and it's worked for me for multiple occasions where if you physically present yourself in a way that even if immensely you don't feel like that. Like on Fightday, for example, the last thing I feel like doing is smiling in all honesty. I'm not in a smiling mood, but when you smile, you feel good, you relax, you enjoy yourself, you're confident. So I will walk round, fake smiling, with my head held high and my shoulders back, like there's nothing bothering me in the world, not because there isn't anything bothering me, because trust me on fight day, there's a lot of stuff bothering me.

2:07:07I have to get in there for a million of people and have a fight with someone. And it's highly likely that I'm going to be separated from my own consciousness in front of millions of people. The last thing I want to do is walk around with a smile on my face when my shoulders back, when my head up high, being friendly and nice to people and being in a good mood and being relaxed. That's the last thing I feel. But I purposely walk around like that all day in every situation that I can pop to the beat and sooner or later believe it or not, my mind will actually start to follow my body's lead and it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable the way that that can happen.

2:07:44And like you say, you'll see me, I'm stood there in the octagon and I am scared to death. My opponent is looking at me across the octagon like he wants to kill me and I'm looking back like I'm in the queue for a sandwich by design, by design, I do it. the same with the walk to the oxy -gon. There's a million people throwing beer on me shouting in my face, booing me, sticking fingers up in my face, saying that I'm going to die literally while I'm walking to fight another human being. And I look like I'm just what walk up and taking the dog for a walk by design because if your body does it sooner or later your mind will start to follow and like I say, this is like a broad science thing probably, but this is something that I've experienced a lot myself and it's proven, at least to me and to George as well that it can be done.

2:08:38We have a closing to show on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. This question is hilarious as far as I'm concerned and it kind of reveals who left the question. Right. The question is, it's weird saying this to you. people. Why don't you work harder? That's a good question. Who's left that? Can you figure it out from what you said? No. So this was the last guest. I told you I was in America. Oh, Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast. Why don't you work harder? That's a good question. It's a good question. I like to think I work as hard as I can, but I think that if everybody looks itself in the mirror.

2:09:17I think everybody could work a bit harder. I think I probably like sleep too much. Is the reason that I don't. I think that's the only thing holding me back because everything, when I'm awake, everything's geared towards maybe in the best that I can be. So I think maybe I like sleep a little bit too much. Well, sleep makes you work harder. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. That's still working hard as far as I'm concerned. Tom, thank you so much. You are such an incredible inspiration for so many reasons. Like mainly because you're so remarkably down to earth, but at the same time able to confidently say on camera, which I by the way really really admire respect, that you think you're special.

2:09:58And I think there's a certain non -trolontness that sometimes people come with because they're trying to be like fake humble. But I really respect people that say, no, no, I think I'm special. And to be able to say that was such humility, but also So with such a track record to justify that claim, is tremendously inspiring, inspiring because you come from, as you say, like a blue color area, you come from a normal place, you're a normal guy that has just committed himself to something, despite the any short term or medium term rewards in your life, because you loved it and you believed in yourself.

2:10:29And I think that for anybody listening should be evidence enough that we all have a chance at least something. It might not be being the heavyweight champion of the world because you acknowledge you have physical gifts that, you know, myself, I didn't, I wasn't born with, but we can all do something with that obsession, with that focus, with the supporting group of people around us, with the right mentality and with a commitment to it despite the objective reality that we're going through. But also, I admire you so much because if everything you've said about your child with autism and the work you're doing to push harder for, to reduce the diagnosis times in the appreciate and we are all behind you as a nation.

2:11:12You're a good guy. You'd be the first ever to do to unify the belts in such a way as a British guy and would that be something? Listen, if anybody can do it and I just saying about the special thing, I wasn't born special And like you said, I am from the most regular background that you can come from. And I don't mean to say, I'm not saying I'm special in the fact that I'm better than anybody else because I believe that anybody can be special. And I think more people need to believe it, you know what I mean? I think that more people, if they work hard enough and don't quit on themselves, they can be special as well.

2:11:58And I think we'll leave it at that. Hey, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24 % of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.

2:12:34We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.

2:13:07The DirevCOs brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive .com after this episode to see if you could save. safe, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.