#2384 - Mark Kerr

32:24When they saw you, they just saw this fucking dominant destroyer, this guy who was, like, smashing everybody, and you just thought, oh, well, that guy is just a machine and just so mentally strong. He just gets out there and gets it done. And then you allowed them to show you where in the making of the documentary, it was what they were essentially trying to capture was you at your prime. And what they caught you was you where your life was falling apart just fortuitously. Yeah. It was just kind of random luck they caught you at that time. So when John Greenhall, who's a producer, I went to Syracuse with him.

33:05We were on the wrestling team together. He's the one that called me, said, hey, I want to do a documentary. At that point, my vision of what it was, was a little Best Buy camera where they're like little flip screen and they show up and they go, OK, we're filming a documentary. I got changed tape, you know, and they show up in Japan for my Volchanchin fight with two 10 ,000, 15 ,000, whatever they were, digital Sony cameras, a boom mic in like five people. I'm like, oh, fuck, you're you're like you're really going to make it like you're going to make a documentary. and so he was right from the get-go John could see John could see what was the contrast like me as a fighter and me as a person that contrast um and so that's what he was after is like to to really show this contrast and like you can do this for a living and be this kind sensitive you know that was what was weird about you it was a very weird contrast yeah very soft-spoken very kind always very considerate to people very nice and then you get into the cage and it's like who the fuck is that guy you know you know what the feeling is the feeling is like the question i always had in my head is going okay if somebody's going to go you me in a room who the fuck's coming out and i never was able to answer that question for myself i know i was competitive right but i didn't know if i had that switch that thing and then start fighting and going oh fuck man they're there's a switch in there and I figured through that process what I was really trying to get is your will I was trying to take your fucking will and most people don't want to give it right like when you get a high level fighter it's like Fabio Gagel didn't want to give me his will headbutted him dug into cuts did all this beat him mercilessly and he didn't want to give me his will he wouldn't give it to me and it frustrated me I didn't know how to take it from him i'm going i'm out of answers you're waiting for him to break yeah he doesn't break he doesn't break yeah some people don't break you can break their body but their will you can't break no he was one of them he was one of them and it's just still to this day i mean the next day his wife calls me and i have lunch at his house wow which is crazy because my first fights don't know everybody in the audience was there for him and uh when his wife calls me in the next day i literally he's gone oh fuck man here it is he's gonna have all his boys up at the house he's gonna fucking get his due right like because i didn't know right and so i go okay what do i got to lose and so i go up and we sit down just like we're sitting here and his wife interprets the whole entire time and it was this it was actually beautiful it was beautiful because that's awesome here's here's what it set for me it set a standard of how i was going to carry myself as a fighter what happened in the ring is in the ring right the second you're out you're you can that's different well that speaks to his character why you couldn't break his will in the first place yeah absolutely because he's such as locked down absolutely it was for me it was it was one of those like revelations of like okay this is this is how you do this as a professional yeah well you know also like brazil had a much longer history of these kind of fights like going way back to the alio gracie days and yeah this is an ad by better help when you have a problem when you're feeling down it's nice having someone to turn to like a partner who could cheer you up a friend to vent to A parent who can give you advice.

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37:34If for any reason it's not a good fit, you can switch to another therapist at no extra cost. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash J-R-E. That's BetterHelp.com slash J-R-E. I mean, culturally understanding way different. and that's like the okay I'm gonna carry myself you know part of it was you know I wanted to change the narrative of like when you looked at the early UFC's it looked like some some guys were just scraped off a bar stool and thrown into the octagon right and so when I came there I was like okay I want to be considered professional right I want to carry myself as a professional I'm going to be articulate.

38:36I'm going to dress as a professional. I'm going to, because I wanted to up the ante. I wanted to like raise the standard. Right. Especially when I went to Japan, it's like, you know, press conference, everybody's in sweatsuits. I'm in a, you know, I couldn't afford it, but I was in a thousand dollar Calvin Klein suit on a charge card. But I wanted to change the narrative. I wanted to be, I wanted to be a professional because if I was a professional treated like professional I could ask for pay like a professional mm-hmm not like some dude that was just scraped off a barstool and thrown into a ring so what was what was the pride experience like so you you had fought in the UFC and then did did you have a contract that expired like what happened so oh boy this is so I signed a three-fight tournament deal with the UFC I did 14 and 15 and I still had one tournament obligation on the contract.

39:33So after 15, the Japanese had seen enough footage and I got contacted by pride. And they're like, Hey, we want to fly you over. We want to, we want to have you as a key piece to build this organization. So I'm like, okay. So they fly me first class over first class hotel i meet with um i meet with a guy named mr ishi jaka who uh his real name is kim duksu he's a korean guy and uh mr ishi who owned k1 wait a minute a korean dude was pretending to be japanese you had to have a japanese name whoa you couldn't do business in japan without a japanese name that's crazy he signed all of his documents signed all of his documents legal documents kim ducksu wow but every single person called him mr ishii jaka wow yeah so he had to learn japan japanese yeah and it's still with an accent because he spoke korean too so it's just one of those were understanding like the the culture back then just it was still stuck you know and hadn't really progressed wow um so mr ishii owned k1 and mr jaka started pride And it was called KRS at the beginning before it turned into dream stage.

40:53Oh And so here's here's where it gets a little sticky. So I go over there. I take for pride to it's supposed to be me and hoist Gracie him and I they're still fight posters that have signed of him and I facing off with each other sign the contract to fight for Way more money than was being probably paid for the in the UFC and when I get back to the States, I get served with papers to appear in court in New York City. The UFC is suing me. It's when Bob Meyerowitz still owned it and Art Davis was involved. And so they were suing me for breach of contract. And it was like one of those things where I was like, okay, I didn't.

41:36You know, like one of those experiences where I was like, oh shit. You know, and the Japanese said, okay, we still want you. You need to sort this out. So it took it took four months five months to sort out the differences between what the UFC needed and if they're going to let me go and all this other stuff in that time frame hoist got hurt and so hoist had to step out and they put uh bronco sigate in there and i ended up fighting bronco and pride too oh wow yeah so if everything if if everything would have went as everything i would fought hoist gracie in the tokyo dome him and i main event me at my peak hoist still in his prime wow that would have been insane oh my god it would have been like thinking about it going because people have asked like who would have won i'm like i don't know but i would have given it every single thing i could that's it that's the poster wow yeah signed inked everything You had at least 80 pounds on him.

42:40Oh, at least that. Yeah. But this is it. This is the transition from not knowing what I was getting into, going, I can't fucking carry that much weight at all and be cardiovascularly. I just can't do it. What were you at your heaviest? 280, 285. Jeez. Like 6 % body fat. Oof. Yeah. That's hard to breathe. Brutal. if I didn't fucking get a hold of you and fucking squeeze the life out of you in the first couple minutes I was fucked I was completely fucked yeah well that was kind of the case with Coleman as well when he was really really big I was in the corner when he lost I was cornering him when he lost to Maurice Smith yeah I was there for that one that was a real game changer oh that changed the narrative for everything cause Maurice what Maurice brought to the game was morris was trained with frank shamrock at the time and so he had extreme cardio he was doing a lot of swimming he was running hills i mean he was really cardiovascularly at an elite level for an mma fighter at the time frank and i used to talk about heart rate training way back when like like literally like functional training and going okay how do how do you how do you approach something and come up with a formula where you can get through a training camp and still be viable at the end of that training camp when you have five minute rounds right how do you do it there wasn't a formula for it right so frank was like i started doing this heart rate training and heart rate recovery and all this stuff and i was like oh shit and then i've run into these trainers when i was in california at gold's venice um there's a guy named tr goodman and he was training hockey players and hockey players have to have that burst recovery burst recovery wow very similar cardiovascular system to fighters so tr took over my training when i was in california and that was a whole nother level because i'd never really had the functional training implemented the way he did and that's when my weight came down it's like i really tried to fight between like 235 and 240 was ideal.

44:56Yeah, that's much better. That seems like the ideal heavyweight. It is. It is. It's very weird that, first of all, that the heavyweight division has a weight limit. Yeah. Oh, my God, it's really weird. Especially the UFC because it doesn't really in Japan and some other organizations. They'll allow the super heavyweight division. And in boxing, you can be as heavy as you want. Tyson Fury's been 290 before. But when the UFC has this 265-pound weight division, It seems like the best elite guys like that 240 range. That's for me, that was like I knew I had a good training camp. If I came in to 35 to 40, if I didn't train hard enough, I was 250.

45:34If I over trained, I was under 230. You know, like for Pride Grand Prix, I think I weighed in at 229. Because right before that over trained, I felt over trained because in between when I fought Ensign and the Pride Grand Prix, I did Abu Dhabi. and so I won my weight class that year and I won the all around so you got super condition oh my god super condition but you you lose I lost a little bit of what I needed was that physical dominance you know I could have the endurance but again it's one of those where it's like going into it when I fought Fujita there's so many factors that were just you know that I didn't account for and my calorie intake just wasn't where it needed to be.

46:20And like a lot of times leading up to a fight, like my appetite just diminishes as I get towards it, especially that fight week. That's interesting. Why do you think that is? Nerves. Nerves. It gets to a point where it's like that morning, I know like fight morning, I have a small little window where I could digest food or I could take food in. It's not like I could sit and eat all day. And then it's just nerves start kicking in. It just starts kicking in like literally, and it's controlled focus, right? Because it's like you can't have all my nerves running everywhere, but it's controlled focus.

46:53But that controlled focus, my body goes, I don't need digestion. Fuck, I'm about to fight. What the fuck do I need to digest food for? Right, right, right. You know? Yeah, a lot of guys have made those mistakes. Al Jermaine Sterling said he made that mistake when he first fought Piotr Jan. He just didn't eat. It's brutal. So that last scene against Fujita is 100 % hypoglycemic. Crash, laying there, can't move my body. And if you watch the documentary, what I'm saying on the way back is, I need sugar, I need sugar, I need sugar. That's all I could think about was like, I need sugar, I need sugar, I need sugar.

47:27Because my blood sugar levels had just crashed to this, like, I can't fucking move. Jeez. it's so crazy to the watch the evolution of the training methods from back then from 97 to like what we're seeing today yeah oh incredible it is really extraordinary because there's not a real another sport that has gone through that much of a metamorphosis not not even close really in that time frame because it's a short it's a short time frame because because again it's asking the question of like okay championship fight 25 minutes five five minute rounds how do you train for it right because the reality is no one can go full blast for five five minute rounds can't do it maybe marab can i wouldn't fucking doubt that he might be the one the only guy because he doesn't seem to get tired you get so this is this is like observationally usually in a championship fight If it's a striker against a wrestler, usually the first two rounds, strikers usually have that advantage.

48:29And then third round, if you go back and watch this third round, the grappler starts to impose a little bit more on him. And then fourth and fifth round is the grappler completely just takes that fight over because it's one of those things where it's that grind. Yes. It's that fucking grind. It's also a big part of being able to stuff, take, do you want some coffee? Yeah, thank you. The big part of being able to stuff takedowns is having energy. Oh, my God. It's everything. Because if a guy's trying to fuck you up and take you down, there's so much energy involved in trying to stuff a takedown.

49:01And then when you don't have it, you're like, I'm just letting him take me down. I'll just, like, take a break here and then work back to the – but no. Like, with some guys, like, you're not getting back up. No. You're just going to get elbowed in the face. I'm just going to grind you into a pulp. And that's that control thing, right? Yeah. Part of what I go, like if I look at my fight and go, I was never going to be the best striker. Like never going to be the best kicker, puncher. But if I could turn you into a wrestler, that was the secret sauce for me. I just need to make you wrestle me. Yeah.

49:33And I'm good. Right? Because I know I can fucking beat the fuck out of you wrestling. Yeah. The key was transitioning to make you wrestle me. Yeah. It's the specialist, specialist thing. It's like if you want to be a specialist being a specialist at wrestling is by far by far When you see what Hamza did to Drekas. Oh my god, I'm that's the example I get perfect Elite elite elite wrestler against a world champion MMA fighter who's been dominating everybody and who's very difficult to take down and Hamza Just ramped it up kept it up attack in like I'm a sin that that Russian daga stan uzbekistan it's this ability to sustain an attack repeatedly because it's that cardiovascular system born at 6 000 feet in altitude 7 000 feet in altitude a little bit more of an advantage right and so you end up with these attacks where you can sustain them beyond your ability to defend them it's also having such a technical game that as you're implementing the first attack you've already got three attacks on standby like and then as he counters you're you've anticipated the counter you have a counter to his counter and then an counter to his readjusting after your counter and you're you're just hitting him over and over he just can't keep the rhythm i i literally i text my son i was at that fight i text my son and go this is what an elite wrestler could do to a professional fighter it's nuts it's nuts because it was like a lot of people thought it was boring because it just didn't get to a decision you know it just went to a decision but you just kind of appreciate that level of dominance against a world champion it's kind of crazy where the guy before the fight dreckus was being looked at as one of the greatest middleweights of all time i mean look at what he did to all these guys he knocks out robert whitaker he beats out asanya he fucking beats sean strickland twice like oh my god he might be one of the greatest of all time.

51:32And then after that fight, you're like, I don't think he's ever going to beat that guy. I don't think he's ever going to beat that guy. Isn't that crazy? It was like, I don't think there's enough time in the world. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Black Rifle Coffee. That's all I drink, folks. If you see me drinking coffee in the studio, it's Black Rifle Coffee. It's because my friend Evan Hafer, who owns a company, I love them to death, and they make the best coffee in the world. They put together the best energy drink in America, made with 200 milligrams of naturally sourced caffeine, low calories, and absolutely zero sugar.

52:04It's available in four new delicious flavors. Project Mango, Ranger Berry, Freedom Punch, and White Frost. Veteran founded and veteran led. Each Black Rifle Coffee purchase you make helps them give back to those who serve our nation. Shop now at blackriflecoffee.com slash Joe Rogan with the code ROGAN for 30 % off or visit your local grocery and convenience stores, Black Rifle Coffee, America's Coffee. Bridge that gap. You can't. You can never catch up. You know, like, I would never pretend stepping into the octagon that I would be able to get elite striking skills, right? You know, like that gap could just, it's constantly just something you never can get to.

52:52You know, it's like Sean O'Malley. right uh-huh he's gonna the only way that he's gonna be able to get a championship back is somebody else needs to beat murab yeah murab yeah and then it's gonna be stylistically stylistically match up yeah right that's that's that conflict of match up because skills you're not gonna do that you mean he got better for the second he did a lot better but still did murab though that was part of the problem that guy's not he's not stopping god how old is he murab I think he's 34. How old is Murab? Murab Dwavishwily. 34. He was 34. So he's, you know, he's in his prime right now.

53:34In his prime for another few years at least. Yeah. I would think that it's one where there's going to be a lot of people that think they can, but that's just a different animal. Yeah, it's going to take someone who's that kind of a wrestler who maybe has a striking advantage. Yeah. Who could beat him. Yeah. But then, you know. That's an anomaly. It's just, it's such a crazy sport to watch that, you know, from 1994 to 2025, it's almost unrecognizable. The difference in the gap. You can't, like, there was a period of time where I couldn't watch, I didn't watch the UFC, probably about like seven, eight, nine years.

54:14And over the last five, six years, I've watched it almost religiously, right? and just realizing the fighters today, oh, my God, man. They hit a level, and it's that mutation. It's like this first generation, second generation, and they're advancing so fast that you're looking at these new fighters. You're like, it's such a unique set of skills to do this, incredible set of skills, unique to any other sport in the world. And it's also you're really fighting three different sports as one sport. Yeah. Which is really nuts. You're fighting grappling. You're fighting jujitsu. And you're fighting striking all together in one sport.

54:58It's like, wow. It's like playing soccer, football, and baseball at the same time. It's like, how the fuck would you do it? Yeah. While getting kicked. While getting kicked. While getting kicked and punched and elbowed. But without guys like you, it would have never gotten here. Because if there weren't people that were willing to fight for very little money, travel overseas, have these crazy events and, you know, and beat your body up and do what you did and what Coleman did and a lot of those guys did in the beginning. Without you guys, there's there is no UFC today. It's just not it's not the same.

55:35It was, you know, one, like being in the Hall of Fame and being in the Pioneer League and understanding that, like I said to myself, you know, even if I advance a sport, you know, this much, it needed this much at the time to get to where it is today. Right. Like Coleman advance a sport this much. Well, you guys brought in the new element and the new element was elite wrestling with enormous muscles. Yeah. And it was like, oh, this is a real problem. Yeah, and especially in the early early days because Coleman would get on your guard and just head but the fuck out of you because head Legal yeah legal like and bare knuckle like when I first did his why I interviewed him after he be dense Everett when he became the first UFC heavyweight champion total bare knuckle Yeah, a little bit of tape on the on the hands try to keep the bones from snapping in half That was it frightening like like people You know, they watch it now and, you know, this film, right, it gives people a little bit of a look inside of, like, what it was.

56:44And, you know, for me, the... The cool part about it is understanding like I'm like I said I'm just a little piece but that little piece is necessary to be able for me to watch some of the guys do what they do now. Well, it's different than any other sport in that these little pieces had to be there before people could figure out what to do. Yeah. Well, Dana put them all together. Yeah. You know, when I actually talked to him when I was in Newark, that's one thing I said. I said, look what you built. You can feel however you want about him personally. Look what you built. Yeah. Like, no one could even imagine this.

57:24Well, you have to be a madman to do what he does. Like, that guy works so hard and he works so many hours and he fucking loves it. I mean loves the sport like truly loves the sport. He and I have like long conversations on the phone I would imagine about fights. I would imagine just about like I go. What are you gonna do about this guy? Oh?

57:45You know is this true does this guy really get hurt you did fuck yeah Oh, it's minor. Okay, six weeks. You're rescheduling it. Okay, good. Yeah, you know We have these long-ass conversations and I'll tell him about kickboxers that I've been watching or tell him about these guys I mean that's one of the ways that we became friends and one of the ways that I started working for him in the first place is because We would have conversations when I first met him when I was on fear factor, and I wasn't even working for the UFC I'd be like you got you watch the fights in Japan. Do you ever watch Japan Valley Tuto?

58:14Do you know about this guy? Do you know about Hicks and Gracie? Do you know about this guy? Yeah, I've been just rattling off different names and he was like what do you? How do you know all this like I don't know I don't know the rules to basketball. I don't know what's happening I know when the ball goes in the net, it's good. I don't know the rules to football. I don't know the rules to anything. Yeah, exactly. I only have room for combat sports. But, you know, ask me about Marcelo Garcia. Ask me about. Yeah, I can answer those. I'll rattle off some stats. Oh, my God. I know some shit about fighting.

58:43But to me, it was like Eddie Bravo and I, when we were kids, when we were young fellows, when we were hanging around, working out, we would say to ourselves, like, you know what this sport needs? Some crazy billionaires who love the sport that's gonna dump a bunch of money because we knew at the time We're like this is the most exciting sport in the world, right? So all it needs is for these really rich guys to be fans of sport And it's almost like it manifested itself because that's what happened the Fertittas came along And they were just really rich guys who loved the sport and they took a crazy chance They were 40 million dollars in the hole Yeah, 40 million in the hole on the UFC and it was just losing money losing money and they just hung in there year after year after year Until they were almost ready to fucking sell and then they decided to go forward with the ultimate fighter That's the game-changer that was it that 2005 personalized it yeah that personalized it well people got to see it on spike TV and then it became the fights were so wild that people were calling their friends Yeah, and they were saying you got to watch this so as the the show is on and This is like before social media was really all that yeah So as the fight was on the the ratings kept going up and up and up and up and it was like spike TV was like Holy shit.

1:00:04We got on to something we got a hit Yeah, and Diego Sanchez won the 185 pound division and then the fight between Stefan Bonner and forrest That's the fight that changed everything change the game because that's one of those if you ask just a marginal fan, they'll refer to that. Exactly. They'll refer to that. Because at the time, it was nobody had ever seen anything like it. They didn't know what MMA was. And here it is on TV. And these two guys were so evenly matched. That was the best part about it. They both had trained together in the house for all those fucking weeks. They'd all be talking shit to each other and all.

1:00:41And they knew they were going to fight in the final. So it was like this long buildup. And they were perfectly matched. Yeah, and it was just bang bang bang bang bang bang swing wheel kick. Oh I mean there's so much shit in there That fight just went on and on and at the end of it the whole crowd And you know yeah, he was the one I was the first person to suggest I was like they both should have a fucking contract This is yeah, yeah Take a contract away from one of these guys for this fight in the in Dana to his credit gave both those guys the contract Yeah. And it was all of a sudden the sport was hot.

1:01:17And then Chuck Liddell was the poster boy. Yeah. Because he was the perfect guy to be the most famous champion at the time because he was a destroyer. Oh, God. He was unreal. You just seek and destroy. And he had an iron chin and he would just stare at you with a fucking serial killer's eyes and just march. You know what? When you watched him, like me watching him, he was so awkward when he held his hands and punched. it was so like even watching now he was just hunting he was just hunting and hunting and loading up with everything and it wasn't like it was every single thing was thrown with intent everything was thrown to shut you off and he could do it for five fucking rounds too which was crazy the thing about that style is it's unsustainable he never ducked a punch in his life he took him and blasted right through he had an iron jaw it was fucking iron yeah but everybody's iron jaw gives out after a while it just you can't and you can't sustain it it's just one where yeah um so when the Fertittas first bought the UFC um I was living in California and a friend of mine who was helping me at the time said hey listen uh they're up at Big Bear having a training camp I'm like okay let's go up so get my truck drive up it starts snowing it was like february they're gonna do their first big push with tito right and uh i get hit by a drunk driver at 11 a.m in the morning oh my god so uh my attorney was in the car with us he i literally the tow truck takes us up to the top of the hill um i still get to talk to dana i still get to talk to frank and lorenzo and i'm like yeah i got it by drunk i was like well we're going to beverly hills willsure tomorrow why don't you Just jump in the limo with us and we'll take you down.

1:03:10I'm like, okay. So I get like this three-hour drive down the mountain with Frank and Lorenzo, the new owners of the UFC. Wow. And we're just sitting there talking. They're like, hey, how is it working in Japan? They knew everything about me. How is it working in Japan? How do they do this? How do they do that? And it was just this really cool conversation, really cool experience to be able to go, okay, maybe this has landed in the right spot. Oh, they were the right guys. They were the right guys because they were like Frank and Lorenzo are rabid fans. Yeah. Like rabid. And they would train and they would beat the fuck out of each other.

1:03:46And that's where they met Frank. Frank, they brought Frank in to help them. They've kind of erased Frank. So Frank Shamrock, in my opinion, is one of the all-time greats. And also one of the most important in terms of the metamorphosis. I agree. In terms of the evolution of the sport. Because Frank was the first guy with the elite cardio that could do everything he could submit you off his back Like remember when he fought Kevin Jackson yep, yep caught in an arm bar bang first round right off his He was elite everywhere and his cardio was off the charts when he fought Tito Ortiz Tito was much bigger than him Yeah, not just a little bit bigger than him much Frank's not a big frame No, no and Tito is a fucking house Tito's yeah, and he just overwhelmed him beat him down with cardio and then after that fight tito taught everybody cardio is number one it's number one he when he was teaching when he was coaching on the ultimate fighter he told everybody it's fucking cardio without cardio you have nothing and his cardio was legendary too i mean they say what fatigue makes cowards of us all right it's true yeah it's true i mean it's just one of those and again this goes back to what i was saying about frank and I having conversations back then about heart rate training mm-hmm 25 years ago you go heart rate What like little polar, you know watch and you know keep in like oh We need to recover this many beats in a minute but actively recover right like you had to still continue to do shit and recover And this is what Frank was saying.

1:05:18Yeah, I started doing this. I'm like, what the fuck? He was a very smart. Well, he is a very smart guy Yeah, and I don't know why they had some kind of a falling out but they but they don't highlight him anymore They don't talk about him at all and I think pivotal pivotal I think you got to let that go just for the honor of what happened in honor of the sport Yeah, because the for the honor of the sport when you look at Frank like when you look at his fights Like he was elite man. He was he was ahead of his time He was ahead of his time by far. He was the first really truly complete mixed martial artist I agree, you know when people see him like the fight that he fought when he was fighting in Strikeforce You're not seeing the same guy you're seeing him.

1:06:00It's later in his life. You see when he fought Nick Diaz You can't it's like I said about goats. Yeah, you want to look at BJ Penn You look at BJ Penn when he fought Sean Shirk. Yeah, look at BJ Penn when he fought Big Daddy Stevenson That's one of the scariest fucking guys. Yeah, who's ever stepped in an octagon at 155 pounds period I put him with all of them and I don't know what happens and then there's Khabib same Oh, yeah You put that guy with any 155 pounder who's ever existed and I don't know what's gonna happen How are you going to beat that guy? There's a few guys like that, and Khabib has to be in that conversation too.

1:06:32When you look at his dominance over the way he was winning fights, I'll never forget when he fought Edson Barbosa. It was in the first round, and Edson had this look in his eyes like, oh my God, I've got to get through how many more rounds with this motherfucker? Because he was just already exhausted, and this fucking animal from Dagestan was just on him, on him, dragging him to the ground. Oh my God, man. I'll never forget. We had Michael Johnson down the ground. He's beating Michael Johnson up. And he's like, quit, quit. You know I need title shot. It's mine. You know title shot is mine. You know I deserve it.

1:07:07Quit. And he's just beating the fuck out of him, trying to be nice. He gets him in Kimura, and I'm going, please tap. Just tap. I'm like, please tap. Please tap. Because I'm seeing that spiral fracture. Oh, my God. When they get that spiral fracture, I'm seeing it coming. I'm like, please tap. We've only been through that with Frank. When Frank got Minotauro in that? Here it is. He's talking to him. He's like, listen, give me some volume. I need to fight for the title. You know I deserve this. Come on, buddy. I don't want to have to hurt you. Oh, my God. Look at this. I mean, he's doing whatever.

1:07:43But this speaks to your point. See, everybody agrees that people are cheering. Look. I need to fight for it. Look at this. He's trying to be nice to him. That's such dominance. It is. Trying to be nice to a nice guy. Like, come on. You know what the fuck is going on. Yeah. And again, to his credit, he didn't. I think he could have just fucking ripped that arm apart. He let him tap. He let him tap. I think he could have. Wow. He was so dominant, man. This is like, again, we're saying, like, taking somebody's fucking will. Taking it. He was a will taker. Oh, my God. Like, when he did to Conor. Oh.

1:08:18When he got on top of Conor, he's like, let's talk now. Let's talk now. Just beating his face in. Going, come on. You want to talk? Let's talk now. You talk about humble pie, like fucking having to sit back and like. Yeah. Because that's at a level where, because you're a bad motherfucker to begin with. And somebody that's even a badder motherfucker. Who just dominates you. Just. Oh, my God. Just could kill you. Same size as you. And basically he could kill you. If he wanted to, you're dead. Oh, my God. Yeah. You're not going to live. He's going to live. He could just literally choke you unconscious.

1:08:51Yeah. And just keep choking you. He was going to break his neck. He had him in that fulcrum choke. That is such a nasty choke. Look, here's where he gets it. So he's getting it, and he's holding on to it. Look, he's not going all through. No, no, no. If he wanted to, he could drop that right hip down, pull that left arm up, and that thing's snapping like a twig. It's so scary. Oh, my God. That's my scariest technique. Other than guys when they break their shins. Yeah. When they go shin to knee and the shin snaps in half. like silver breaking. Oh, it was horrible. Weidman was the worst. That stuff, one watch is good enough.

1:09:29It was so, when Weidman's was so loud. You don't need to pull that one off. And Weidman's, yeah, don't pull that one. Weidman's went through his calf. His bones snapped through and poked out of his calf. Oh, which is real dangerous too because then you run the risk of heavy infection. Yeah, all of that. All that, you're on the dirty mat. You got an open wound and oh. No, some of that stuff is just like, gosh, man, it's other level. Do you feel weird that you did it? Like now when you look back on you've been removed for so long and you're like, you beat the fuck out of somebody, dude. Oh, my God.

1:10:02I remember when you took Dan Bobish down and you stuck your chin in his eyeball. Oh, my God, man. First, the only one still exists is this mission by chin and eyeball choke. Yeah. I don't know if you call it a choke. I'd never seen anybody do that before. I'm like, that's genius. You know what? It wasn't illegal. It wasn't illegal. And I know it hurt like a motherfucker. For him. Why would it be illegal? Why is it okay to elbow the eyeball? I don't know, you know, those are the headbutt days. Oh, yeah, headbutts. Oh, yeah, so why wouldn't it be legal? You could chin but a guy if you wanted to I guess yeah, so if you use I mean, but the thing is it's a real weapon Yeah, it is real.

1:10:40It's very effective. Like I don't think we should poke to eyes because yeah Different eyes are so vulnerable, but that is also obviously a real weapon like kung fu guys pointed out all the time They go look these guys are the toughest fighters in the world you poke them in the eyes They're right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I don't know how good you are I poke and you have to be pretty fucking yeah, yeah count on no no Yeah, here it is. Yeah, you shoved your fucking shit right in his eyeball He's just like bro, and I know so so when I'm down there you get I could hear him Like yeah, fuck that hurt.

1:11:16Oh, it was horrible, dude. It was horrible But again, it speaks to what we're talking about, the dominance of elite wrestling and how elite wrestling, it surpasses all martial arts. It's the number one most – and an elite wrestler can learn jiu-jitsu. An elite grappler, you could easily teach them how to do head and arm chokes, triangles. All that. All that. That's not – you're already used to manipulating bodies. So part of my participation in ADCC was to represent wrestling. Right? Yeah, because the first year when I got approached to go over there, I'm like what like what is it like a submission grappling like Like gilis grappling gilis you do They're like hey listen here's what we're gonna do we're gonna give you X you know come over and it wasn't a ton It was like$15 ,000 to go over and I was like Okay, I was like, all right Fuck I don't know but I'm while you were fighting.

1:12:12Yeah. Well, I was yeah, and so I'm like, okay I just go just as a sort of surprise. It was one of those where I was like, OK, now that it's explained to me, I go, well, wrestlers need to be represented there. Right. Yes. And so I go over there and it was one of those things where it's like, well, I can actually show everybody here in this world that thinks their shit's dominant. Like, no, this is a skill set you need. You need elite wrestling. skills, right? You can have jujitsu black belt and all this stuff, but if you're missing this piece, component to it, you're fucked. You're fucked. And so it was all about control.

1:12:51Did you see the most recent fight with Mauricio Rufi? No. Okay, so Mauricio Rufi, who is one of the most dynamic strikers in the sport, he's literally like a big Conor. I mean, it doesn't make sense that he's in the same weight class as Conor, because I think he's 6 '1". But he's real tall. He's at least 6' feet tall. He's real tall and long and just elite striker. But he fought this cat, Benoit Saint-Denis, who is a judo black belt, elite on the ground, super fucking strong, and he just dominated him, man. He got a hold of him, ragdolled him, got him to the ground, and Mauricio had his moments in the fight standing because Benoit Saint-Denis is a French Special Forces guy.

1:13:33He's a hard motherfucker. And so he did stand with Mauricio for a little bit, but he got dinged up a little bit, but once he got him to the ground it was just full domination and then it left everybody in this position where we were looking at mauricio rufi as being like that guy's a future world champion yeah to like oh no like that gap's too wide yeah like he's got to learn so much to be competitive with the now they're gonna know yeah imagine like camaro in his pride no forget it yeah and that's that gap we were talking about like you can't you know way to fucking make that up there's no There's not enough time in your career to be able to do that.

1:14:11Kamaru is like 38 now, okay? And he just fought Joaquin Buckley and dominated him. And Buckley is another one who was this guy who was dominating everybody at 170. He just knocked out Wonderboy. We're like, this fucking guy might be the one. And then all of a sudden, 38-year-old Kamaru Usman shows how fucking important wrestling is. It's everything. It's everything. Because you can be defensively responsible. He's very defensively responsible standing. Other than the Leon Edwards kick, he very rarely gets cracked. Gilbert got him a little and dropped him, but very rarely gets in trouble standing.

1:14:48But once he gets you, the gap is so big. You can't make that up. The gap's so big. Yeah. And again, this is one of these things where fundamentally also wrestling gives you a cardio base that you can build off of. Not only because that's the other missing component, right? It's like this, because at an elite level, it's fucking intense. It is really intense. Like Kurt, when he was on your show, he was talking about, yeah, I trained till exhaustion and then I trained. Yeah. You know, it's like that's how he, because at one point when Kurt and I were competing against each other, like 93, 94, I just, I just was bigger, stronger, and I could just defend his attacks.

1:15:30Bro, you won the Olympics with a broken neck. Yeah, fuck, man. With a broken neck. Come on. With a broken neck. I was there at nationals when he literally hit the mat. And I'm like, literally, I watched when his neck broke at freestyle nationals. And he got hit with an arm spin. And he gets arm thrown. And his head gets almost like separated. It was nasty. And I'm in the stands going, oh, fuck. He's not going to be in the trials. There's no fucking way he's going to be in the trials. And sure enough, fucking five weeks later, he's in the trials. I'm like, what the fuck, man? There's no way he should be fucking able to wrestle.

1:16:09There are guys like that in the world, and people need to know. You need to know. There's levels to everything, and there's levels to mental strength. There's levels to guys who just will go. And it's really kind of a crying shame. Look, he had an amazing career in WWE. He's loved by everyone. Everybody loves him. That's great. but it's kind of sucks that people don't know like at at real wrestling yeah yeah oh my god man he was the shit he was so good and small for a heavyweight he was so so he was always undersized yeah but the like the years that i beat him and then 95 when we wrestled in the freestyle nationals and i beat him four four times in a row at that point so we we wrestle in the 95 freestyle Nationals and I get a hold of him for the first time and something was different I was like oh fuck like wrestling going oh man something's different with Kurt and he ends up beating me and then in the freestyle Nationals in 95 and I'm like oh fuck there was just something different I'm like because he he could stay on an attack longer stay on an attack longer he was stronger he hit a gear that I didn't fucking have wow like I go oh fuck like looking back and I'm going oh shit I totally missed that like most guys at at 220 pounds which you're wrestling at they they would have these attacks that they'd initiate it's like grab a hold of you hold on to you and then initiate an attack Kurt was constantly probing and attacking and attacking which was the benefit of being lighter yes yeah and lighter and quicker lighter and quicker but still wicked strong my god he could still get in if so it's these attacks that he just sustained and he just where are you out of position so this counts an attack attack attack and all of a sudden it was just this little little angle that he was hunting for the whole time and then he hits that attack and fucking takes you now you're like fuck like what the fuck it's just there's levels of of drive there's levels of discipline there's levels of will there's levels of wanting something and that's what scares people i think that's why people get really terrified of of like truly special athletes because they don't want to know how lazy they really are.

1:18:31I think it's one of the things that drives people nuts about seeing like some insanely disciplined, like elite top of the food chain grappler or striker or whatever it is. Yeah. MMA fighter, because it's like, you don't want to know that someone's willing to work that much harder than you ever have. Than you ever have at anything. I know. At anything. Fuck. That's, I mean, Kurt, Kurt was one of the, where he opened my eyes, I was like, fuck, There's another gear. I thought I was training fucking hard. That's what's crazy. We're kind of seeing... We've had this conversation recently in regards to Marab.

1:19:07Because we're saying, okay, is Marab just physically gifted? Because I think Kane had some sort of a genetic advantage with cardio. Because DC would talk about how he would take three months off and come back in the gym and fuck everybody up. with cardio drills. Somebody that size, it's an anomaly. It's an anomaly. It's an anomaly. But Marab swears that when he was young, he had bad cardio. He said, no, I smoke cigarettes. I can imagine that. It's like Sakuraba smoking cigarettes. He said he didn't take care of himself at all. I'm like, really? And it's just hard work and discipline. So I have a bunch of friends who do 100 milers.

1:19:48I'm real good friends with my friend Cam Haynes. And Cam Haynes, he just did a 100 miler like two weeks before we went elk hunting. Like he does 100 milers all the time. He's done a 240. What is it? The Bigfoot 240? Is that what it is? He's done a bunch of these through the mountains with thousands of feet of elevation and decline. He's done a bunch of these that are 200 plus miles. God, that's not. And you got to build up to that. But once you get to that, if you're sustaining it, you can do those things. So he does those things on a regular basis. He does multiple ones a year. So that didn't you didn't used to think that that was possible.

1:20:26They used to say that if you ran a marathon like you were destroyed for like two weeks. No, he was running a marathon a day while he worked a full time job. So he was getting up in the morning at dark. He was running 13 miles. He was going to work during his lunchtime. He would eat after lunch after work. He runs another 13 fucking miles. He would be one where I wouldn't want to look at him because I think I'm lazy. That's the thing. That's why there's a thing about, like, I think I'm lazy and I love him. He's my friend. So I think I'm lazy when I watch what he's doing. And Goggins is another one.

1:21:01Yeah. Oh, my God. And Goggins is even more insane because he ain't doing it for nothing. He's not preparing for elk hunting. He rarely even competes in races. But yet he's doing a level of cardio where he brings world champions like Israel Adesanya He comes to train with him, and he's throwing up in a bucket. He can't keep up. He's crazy. Goggins is 50. Oh, my God. He's 50. Wow. How old is Goggins? 50. 50. 50. Oh, my God. And he's got two terrible knees. Oh, my God. He's had many knee surgeries. Oh, my God. His knees are destroyed, and he does not give a fuck. He forces them to work. Golly. So, again, this is like that's a level which is just exceptional.

1:21:45Yeah. Because there's just a weird level it is because that's a pocket It's just a pocket of people that have that there's only a handful There's only a handful like that guy because it's not just that he broke the world record chin-up competition once like he's he's done He's done a ton of things that are just like physically insane You know he was a smokejumper. He didn't even tell anybody about it. He did it just because it was hard This is why he's famous so while he's famous they take him up in a helicopter to fucking parachute to fight forest fires Because it was hard to do yeah, I'm not shit new man.

1:22:23Oh my god. He sent me a photo once he takes me a photo of a grizzly bear track And he goes we just landed near this I mean, it's a fucking track like that big and he's out there with a backpack pack in a fucking and a shovel to fight fires. And only because it's hard. He's a multi-millionaire. He's a multi-millionaire who's getting parachuted to fight fires. And here's the thing, man. If I didn't talk about it, maybe I'm out of school, people wouldn't even know. You have to know that. Maybe he doesn't want people to know. They need to know that. That's fucking insane. That is beyond insane. That's like one of those where it's like, you know, the wiring that exists in him, It doesn't happen by chance that's that's that's you have this genetic Ability, but he was fat when he was young and he's lazy.

1:23:12He was drinking milkshakes He talks about it openly he said the first time he decided to Enlist when he went like to run to go running. He couldn't even run around the block He was totally out of shape. He's got he has photos of it He shows you like this is like no I made myself this so this is my thinking about fighting like have we just accepted that you can't really fight full blast for five five-minute rounds or is it that no one has built themselves up to a level where you can like when you were talking about how Kurt get a new gear or with the gear that Merab is clearly on right now yeah or Hamza there's there's that gear yeah what what if like we're gonna push that even further where there's guys that can sprint for five five-minute like there's a few flyweights that can do that yeah Yeah.

1:23:59Like Pantoja can kind of sprint for five, five minute rounds. He can go. He can go. So they'll eventually be a fighter that can do that. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking too. And because it's just one where, like I was saying, from where I started from 25 years ago and the training methods and how archaic they were and how little knowledge was out there. Right. Now knowledge is advancing at such a rapid rate and they're understanding how to recover. Yes. Understanding all these different factors that just weren't there. Yeah, and if you add in a bunch of stuff like hyperbaric chambers, so if these guys have access to hyperbaric chambers and training with hypoxic chambers and shit like that, there's levels and levels and levels that can be reached.

1:24:41You just have to be a complete fucking psycho and go through all the levels. Yeah. And get to - It's like Donkey Kong. Yeah, like measure all your food, all your electrolytes, everything throughout the day. Have your sleep environment perfect. You could wear a mask. I'm telling you, there's guys out there that'll do it. There's guys that'll do it. They'll do it. Well, they have to if that's where you get the edge, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's becoming to a point now where the financial benefit is worth the sacrifice, right? Yes. That you'll end up going, okay. Because what started to happen when I was fighting is that once the financial piece started getting in there, it started attracting more talent.

1:25:20Right. Right? Right. So that talent, it brings the level of everybody up. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's like a little bit more money, talent that could have maybe went and did something else. They're going, no, I'm going to go do this because I can make money. Yeah, this is the thing, right? If you're a young kid and you're really good at baseball, but you also like jujitsu and MMA and you have an amateur fight maybe. And you're thinking about what you're going to do with your career. You could be so rich playing baseball. Oh, God, yeah. You could be so rich. If you're really good at baseball, you could be rich as fuck and nobody's trying to kill you.

1:25:55Yeah. Nobody's trying to beat you over the head with elbows. Nobody's taking you down in front of everybody and humiliating you. Wow. Let's play ball. Dude, seriously. Seriously, I fucking play baseball in a heartbeat, man. Fuck yeah. Oh, my God. So that's the problem with MMA. It's like you hear, like, what is it to fight in the UFC? Like, what is the bottom scale? What's, like, the lowest contract that you get in the UFC in 2020? And this is not even saying they deserve more because this is just how the sport works. Yeah. And it's way better in the UFC, by the way, than it is in boxing. When you watch a boxing card, most of the money's at the top.

1:26:29There's very little spread out. There's guys that fight in the UFC undercard that make excellent money. But when you first start, you don't. I think it's like 10. It's one of those things where it's like what I expect to start at Microsoft, right? Yeah. And going, yeah, I get a million dollars a year. Fuck no. You work your way into. And that's one of the things about the sport. As long as it has the opportunity to let somebody grow into it, you know, and still gives them financial incentive to grow into it. Right. Right. And just one where it's like, I wouldn't expect like, hey, I'm a good fighter.

1:27:03Pay me a million dollars. It's like, well, that's not how it fucking works. Now, I wouldn't say a million dollars, but wouldn't you say like, let's make this argument. Wouldn't you think that for young, struggling fighters, if they got paid more for fights, they could put together better camps. They could. They could get better recovery and nutrition, have less stress, and be able to perform better so it would make the product better. So here's where my career transitioned. I call it internally funded. My first four fights, I was using that money to get to the next fight, to get to the next fight, to get to the next fight.

1:27:41And all of a sudden I get in Japan and they pay me enough money for the one fight that the next day I woke up and I was a professional fighter because it was the only thing I had to do was train as a fighter. What was the biggest check you got in Japan? A little over half a million. Damn. Back then, that was a lot. Cash. Yeah. How did you get it out of the country? How did you get it out of the country? Here's what's fucked up about it, right? So my first couple times over there, I'm like, I put, like, first time I got, I put 40-something thousand in one cowboy boot with two socks. I put 40 ,000 in the other cowboy boot with two socks.

1:28:24I'm serious. It was straight out of the fucking cartoons how you got paid. Because the next day, you would go up to a room, and you literally would have a room. You'd have an adjacent room. You saw Japanese guys in black suits smoking. and then you'd have this room, which is where you get paid. They had these, you know, suitcases that had your pay. You could choose your currency, right? I'm getting paid American dollars. So they would have your contract, slide your contract over, and they'd go, okay, this is why you get paid. This is the dollar amount, blah, blah, blah. And they would literally take it out, count it.

1:28:56You would sign on it, and then they would just hand you the cash. First time they ever did that, I'm like, it's$150 ,000 in cash. And I'm like, fuck. I'm like, I'll be right back. I go to the bedroom that's in the hotel room, and I grab the fucking case to the pillow, and I go over, and I fucking just scrape the fucking money, put it in the pillowcase, and I go, okay, thank you. It's just so fucking, and go head out. I don't know what to fucking do. That's crazy, dude. I'm like down in the elevator, like fucking holding the money. Like, I don't know what to fucking do. $150 ,000 in a pillowcase.

1:29:33Like, who is that guy? I didn't know what to fucking do. Big giant guy with 150 grand. That does not look good. No, no, it does not, man. It's like. What did they expect you to do with it? Did they give you any advice on how to get it out of the country? Oh, no, no. That was not. That was. It was your responsibility. Oh, my God. So literally, I'm like, oh, fuck, man. I get on it. And like in my head, I'm playing all these movies, right? Like on this movie, he got caught at the border. You know, I'm like, fuck. You know, I know that's going to be this one. And, you know, it's like, so I ended up fucking just going, oh, cowboy boots, tube socks, like fucking 40 grand in one boot, 40 grand in the other.

1:30:11Put it in the fucking and like walk and like, you got anything to declare? No. Just like walk through. But realizing that eventually when I claim money, they hand a claim form. They go, OK, you're claiming 140 ,000. OK, thank you. Have a good day. Oh, you just have to claim it. You have to claim it because they want to send it. They want to send that receipt to the IRS. Oh So when you go through customs, I thought it was just a function of not being able to take that much cash So no, no, when you declare it when you declare it there's that situation too, right? But when everybody's gonna go, where's you gonna have

1:30:49Guess back then could you even go no you couldn't even know you know there's Say, look, this is me, man. I just won. Look, aren't I awesome? Exactly. This is how I really did win. Right. Back then, it was hard to get tapes, man. Oh, my God. You know what? The example I give is the corner video store next to the shutters where all the porn was. Yep. Right next to that was the VHS tapes. Maybe beads. So everybody can hear it when you went through, you dirty pervert. You're going to go see Faces of Death. Oh, my God. That's it. Faces of Death. UFC. Yeah. Yeah, that was right. Literally, those were where the UFC tapes were.

1:31:30Those were where the pride tapes were. I remember I was living in Hollywood. I just moved there. It was 94. It was when UFC 2 was available on VHS. Yeah. So I'd heard about UFC 1, but I didn't see it. And then UFC 2, I saw on tape. I rented it from one of those video stores. And I was like, holy shit, they did it. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, holy shit, they did it. Because this was always the dream. This was literally Bruce Lee's conversation. Bruce Lee's conversation. I mean, he was the first guy to be completely outside of the norm in terms of sticking to your style. Because you were like a traitor if you left certain kung fu styles or certain karate styles.

1:32:16He was the first guy to say, no, use what's useful. Put it all together. Judo Gene LeBel he got with. He got with Chuck Norris. he got with all these other that was the first thing like i like the symbol is a kanji for a dragon right bruce lee was enter the dragon right dragon is all these parts to make one mythical thing yes and that's that enter the dragon that's that bruce lee was the first one if people don't realize it he was the first one to go fuck this is incomplete exactly and so fortuitous that he ran into judo jean labelle yeah and because i think once you grapple with that guy you're like oh my god I'm fucking helpless and then it's just like oh this is super important you know cause like Gene was one of the first guys to ever have like a mixed fight so there was a guy was a boxer and he had a judo gi on and he chases the guy and gets the guy into a grappling exchange and then strangles him but he had like a boxer versus judo you never saw that no see if you can find it Jamie I want to say it's in the so way back 60s?

1:33:19So this is going to be way back when. Way back when. So this is Mark Coleman and I did a clinic in North Carolina that was a judo Gene LaBelle clinic that he brought us in for. What year is this? 63. Oh, my God. So Milo Savage. So the boxer looks like he's, okay, I remembered it wrong. The boxer's bare knuckle. And he made him wear a judo gi, though, which I would have said, fuck, you don't know wearing this gi. He probably doesn't understand that that's a weapon for Gene. Oh, my God. It's an extra set of hands. We didn't see him take him down. Oh, that's just... Did they show him taking him down?

1:33:59Oh, my God. Oh, don't skip through it. I'm going to see the technique. Because once he grabs... Oh, that is. Here it is. So, Milo throws it. But that's it. So, once Gene's got a hold of him... Oh, it's over. It's fucksville. It's over. I mean, you don't know what that even feels like until you feel it. Oh, my God. So I ruled with Higgins Machado. And, oh, my God. He's just putting him to sleep with a collar choke. Oh, my God. That was just brutal. Yeah, he's mangling him. Oh, my God. He's just mangling him. This poor guy. Oh, my God. And Gene, his style was very, very brutal. Oh, my God. Like, he had a very almost like catch wrestling style base submission.

1:34:39And he had a lot of like very, very painful moves that he would do on you. Oh, my God. You imagine just not understanding what you're agreeing to. No, he just got choked unconscious. No, I mean, you can't know until it happens. I mean, I don't know how much cross training people did. I bet he probably thought I'm just going to go in there and use my boxing. Yeah, and be good. Oh, my gosh. It's just you don't know until you know. And then you go, wow. But it's just so wild that even at the highest levels, like at the level that you were wrestling at, a guy like Kurt Angle can go, let's check it up another notch.

1:35:18Yeah, another notch, man. And that's the crazy part. You always find, like me being a fan of MMA and UFC and watching it, there's always an outlier, right? Yeah, always. Always an outlier that you go, that doesn't make sense. How the fuck is he getting to there? Yep. Yep. Right? And that's like, he's just found a new way to do it. He's found a new gear. He's found a new way to just go, okay, this is what I'm going to do. It's like a Dave and Goggins thing. Oh, I'm just going to run 125 miles. Yeah. Yeah. And to be able to maintain that drive, that's what's probably one of the hardest things. Because you have to have almost no rest.

1:35:59And you're maintaining an insane drive for years and years and years while sharks are nipping at your ankles. All of it. All of it. up yeah all chasing you all chasing yeah and everybody's scary well i used to tell my fucking training partner i go fuck the getting there that's one thing fucking staying there that's the secret yeah that's the fucking it's so hard to stay at that level because everybody else is building on your your experience right they're going well this is what he did this is what he's incorporated these are the things he's doing you know i'm just gonna build on it yeah you know There's some weird rules to this fight that they had agreed upon, too, and Gene LeBell said that Savage had brass knuckles in his gloves.

1:36:42Oh. Oh, what? Yeah, I start reading the rules he couldn't punch or tackle. Or, sorry, he couldn't kick or tackle them. And in exchange for that, Savage offered to wear a judogi. A judogi. Oh, sorry. Oh, that's how they wrote it, Brian. Yeah. No, it's a judogi. That's a new outfit. So they wrote a karate one instead because they didn't know the difference. Okay, so in the parent belief that LaBelle was a Karatika. So that's interesting. So he made a rule that Gene couldn't kick him. Or it's a tackle. He couldn't tackle him and he couldn't take him. So echidna tackles or takedowns under the waist.

1:37:28Ooh. So you had to only hip toss him or only drag him to the ground. Everything had to be above waist. That's kind of silly. Yeah, it's really silly. Because it's one of those things where it's like Greco. Yeah. They're doing like Greco. Yeah. A thousand dollar bet. Yeah, to anyone who could prove that a boxer would be beat by a martial artist, I think, in a straight fight. Wow. This is way ahead of its time. I wonder if the brass knuckles thing is true. Yeah, I don't know. I'll try to look that up. According to LaBelle and others. Who's a mad motherfucker, Gene LaBelle? Ahead of his time. Again.

1:38:02And again, that fortuitous meeting, him and Bruce Lee getting together with Bruce Lee was like, you know, the most famous martial artists on earth, the guys who's turning people on to martial arts had the most open mind and had this philosophy of using everything that's useful and then meets this guy. It's like, Oh, here it is. Here we go. Yeah. He would have loved MMA. Oh my God. He would have totally jazzed on it. Oh my God. He'd be at every fight. Yeah. Yeah, that's one of those things where, you know, again, it's just somebody being ahead of their time. Way, yeah, way ahead of his time. But not just that, but like the first guy that became a world-famous martial arts person.

1:38:42Like, there was no real world-famous martial arts people before Bruce Lee. I mean, you'd have to be into martial arts to know about. To know martial arts, yeah. But Bruce Lee, like everybody knew Bruce Lee. Yeah, yeah. changed martial, igniting martial arts all over the world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where I look back on it and I've read like part of, part of the history and stuff and you understand it obviously way better than I do. But, you know, like ahead of his time, just like when Gracie came along ahead of his time, you know, and, and presenting something where he's knocking down all these stereotypes.

1:39:21Yeah. And they had rigid stereotypes back then. You'd have to get in gang fights to protect the style that you were in. Do you know? So I started training at Beverly Hills Jiu-Jitsu Club in California. I remember that spot. So boss would have me out there. Avi Rubin is the guy that owned it. And I would go out there and I would teach wrestling a couple days out of the week. It's how I got introduced to boss. Oleg Tatarv, Marco Huas, and Pedro Hizo. They were training out of there as well. So you would get these guys, jujitsu guys, that would sit on the outside, wait until the other students were gone, draw all the blinds, lock the doors and go, can you teach us wrestling?

1:40:05Because they were so afraid that if they got caught there with me, it was like a traitor. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. That's hilarious. So you would get like. That's so crazy. It was one of it didn't make any sense to me because you would figure sharing information would be better. Yeah. And it was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Jiu Jitsu. We're not sharing shit. We're not. You can't participate. You can't. It was so fucking archaic. Like I like the outlook. And it's like like looking back on it going like, wow, that's dogma. That's like this. Like, oh, yeah. It's weird. Yeah. They didn't all have that, though.

1:40:43No, they didn't. There's some guys who were open to teaching people everything. But there was definitely some schools for a while that were holding back techniques 100 % I remember when hoist Gracie one of my friends said that when hoist Gracie caught Dan Severn in a triangle That he asked his instructor to show it to him. He's like you're not ready for that I'm not gonna show you that like why don't you just show him something that works I rewound that tape probably 50 times and I still can I'm like what the fuck is he doing? Like what the fuck is he doing? Like you could figure it out. Like what the fuck is he doing?

1:41:17Because all of a sudden Severin goes from beating the shit out of him going, he's fucking tapping out. Yeah. Nuts. We couldn't believe it. I didn't know there was a name for it. You could submit a guy off your back with your legs? Yeah, like what the fuck? But if you look at it, like the space where he had Dan's head and arm is like that big. Yeah. It's like that fucking, like when you do a triangle like this, that's not a very big space. It's like to have fucking Dan because he's a big dude going, oh, I get it. And your legs, you can hold your legs in place for a long time. Your legs carry you around all day.

1:41:52Oh, that's like. Especially if you actually get that foot under the knee where it's like really locked in. It's not pressing on the end of your foot. You could hold on to that bitch for a long time. Oh, my God. And then he's like pulling on the fucking, I'm like. Pulling on the hook. What the fuck? Nuts. Yeah. Changed everybody. You're like, oh, my God, you could win off your back. It literally, I still remember to this day just looking at it with my mouth hanging open going, oh, fuck. I think it was one of the things that made MMA so popular because Hoist wasn't a big, he didn't look like you.

1:42:22No, no. So if you were dominating everybody, it would be like, Jesus, look at him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Hoist just looked like an athlete. Yeah. He was like a thin, he was 175 pounds. God. Which is so crazy. So, you know what's a good. So crazy. I had a conversation with Hoist probably about four or five years ago, and I'd never spoken with him outside of a competition or event or anything like that. I cried. He's such a good person. Oh, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. Like he was so just like talking to him, and he was just so powerful and so inspirational. And just having this conversation with him was just like amazing.

1:43:01I was just left the conversation hung the phone about and going wow what a what a just an amazing human being Yeah, he's a he's a really good guy and the most important guy ever in terms of like the spread of MMA He's the most important guy. Oh prolific He's the guy when he won the first one and you looked at the way he did it Everyone's like that guy. Yeah, and everyone was like, what's he doing? Yeah, no What is this? stuff he's doing to these people. The thing. Changed everything. Yeah. Made everybody instead, because it went from this idea that it was just the most brutal person would win.

1:43:37It was the tank abbots. Yeah. But no, no, no. There's this one guy, and he's doing everything with technique, and he's not physically imposing at all. And he's handsome. He didn't make, yeah, he's good. Look at you. Handsome fella. And he wears that fancy gi thing, you know? He looks like he's a bad motherfucker, and he's choking everybody out. But it's incredible watching that for the first time. I said, like, literally, it was like, oh, this is fucking new. Yeah. Like, this is because you've never seen it before. No, nothing like it. And then the sport explodes. But the sport was getting fucked so hard back then by all these organizations that didn't want it ever to become sanctioned.

1:44:17Yeah. Because boxing was very threatened by it. And everybody had businesses with people. And then there was there was so much bullshit that kept it. It was out of New York until like 10 years ago. So we were on, me and my brother, we were on our way to see a UFC event in New York. And it got canceled. And it got moved down south. Yes, to Dothan, Alabama. Yes. UFC 12. Yeah. We were on our way to go see it. I was on my way to work at it. Oh, my God. That was the first one I was going to work at. Oh, my God. Yeah. And it got moved. Yeah, it got moved. And so New York was like, nope. Nope, ain't having it.

1:44:56Ain't having it. Ain't having it. Well, they kept it out for the longest time, though. There was the guy who was really fighting to keep the UFC out of New York. Eventually, he got brought up on corruption charges. Oh. Yeah. Shocker. Yeah. It had more to do with unions and the fact that Zufa, who owned it, they also owned hotels. And didn't have unions. Exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was a lot. A lot going on. You know, I went to the first sanctioned, the UFC flew me out to go to in New Jersey when they had their main, main, main card in New Jersey. Their first big event that was sanctioned by the New Jersey Boxing Commission with Tito.

1:45:39And they flew me out to that event. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Flew me out to that event. And actually, this is at the time they offered me to fight. After that, they offered me to fight Pete Williams. and it was one of those where they go yeah we're offered to fight people you might have to take a little bit of pay cut but you have to believe in what we're doing and i'm like okay what's the they're like we'll give you like an appearance fee of like 15 grand to fight to fight 15 grand to show up and then it would be doubled if i won and i'm like i'm making you know a lot more in japan like why would i go do it like that's crazy yeah yeah that's a terrible offer yeah that's one of the worst offers i've ever heard and it's one where where the whole idea behind it would be hey we just if you believe in us and you believe in the director going look we just got sanctioned in new jersey right yeah so so that's the the the the steps we're taking to move this to Vegas and to do this.

1:46:46And one is like, you know, like most fighters, it's like I have X amount of fights and I don't have more. Right. Right. I only have X. So that would have been one off my X number. Right. And I'm like, oh man, I can't do it. And they only ask once. At that time, the UFC was like, we're going to ask once and that's it. Okay. Yeah. Just leaving that alone. Just leave that one alone. That one's like, okay. Yeah. Why not? Why not ask me a second time? Why are we negotiating? I don't know. If you were at Pride then, right? So what year are we talking about? 2002. Okay. So this was when the UFC was still hemorrhaging money.

1:47:24Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Hemorrhaging money is still. Oh, gosh, man. It should have failed. It could have. I mean, one is they didn't have. If anybody else was in charge of it, Pride would have failed. Yeah. That's crazy. They had no idea how much money you were getting in Japan. Oh, they had no clue. They had no clue. That's nuts. So you know what's crazy with Japan? Here's what I ended up doing. And I said, listen, I said, they said, what do you need? And I said, I need consistency. And they go, OK, what does that look like? And I said, pay me X dollars per month. And then every time I fight, pay me a bonus on top of that.

1:47:58And they go, OK, how much do you need? And I said, OK, I need this amount per month. And they go, OK. And that was just another stabilizing thing where I knew that every month I had X amount of dollars coming in. That I could pay my bills I could do my stuff not worry about that because it allowed me to Transition to like it's not a hobby Right, I'm not like fighting and then I go to work, you know, it's like this is what I do for a living Yeah, I was the point of Thinking about money investment like by giving them more money and they get better camps wouldn't you think the product would be better?

1:48:36Yeah, I mean I don't like to be think of people as products, but it is show It is. The program. The program. Now I guess you don't have to pay for it. You're going to just pay for the subscription to Paramount, which is pretty badass. Yeah. Where you don't have to pay for a pay-per-view every time. But, you know, if they had more money, they'd be able to do a better camp. They'd be in better shape. All the way around. All the way around. They'd be better recovered. They have better nutrition. It's investing in what your product is. And your product is elite athletes. Elite athletes. In order to get elite athletes, they need funding.

1:49:12Right. They need tools. The only way they can get tools is through money. You know, better coaches, better recovery facilities. And I don't know the, you know, I obviously. Let me ask you this. If you were like looking, like say if your son wanted to start fighting or someone wanted to look to you, would you, if you were giving a young fighter advice, would you say go right into the UFC? Or would you say, no, the best case scenario is go into another organization like the PFL, build your style up, build it up on maybe a little slightly lower level of competition, although not necessarily. Yeah.

1:49:53Still elite guys. Submission grappling. Literally, fundamentally, you need to build a base of what you're going to become, right? Right. So submission, grab ADCC. If a young kid, like 16, 17 year old kid, even 18, 19, 20 year old kid, I go, you need submission grappling because you can participate in those at a competitive level that teaches you how to compete. It teaches you how to prepare to compete. Right. And it teaches you without the impact of striking and punching and all of this. So that's like the first foundational piece. And this is just my opinion. Right. foundationally is like if you you have to have a mechanism out there which allows you to compete without having the physical impact that fighting does so that would be the first thing like submission grappling adcc stuff you know all of that really teaches you how to compete to train to compete and it starts building that base and then you start adding pieces in going okay i understand this let's add the striking components and do it now and let's do these little like pfls or let's do this, let's do that.

1:51:01And it just allows you to build out something where you're not just throwing into the fire because that shit doesn't work. I mean, the fighters have become so good now that you can't just throw somebody in there because you get fucked up, it might fuck your confidence up. And I just, I'm done. I ain't ever doing this. You could definitely reach an opponent that you shouldn't be reaching. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I wonder that if you also, if you build yourself up in another organization, Then obviously you have at least a name mm-hmm and the hardcore fans know who you are So like like right near de Ritter.

1:51:36Okay other example. Okay, who's a elite right now? I can't I say middleweight I can't believe he's really a middleweight. He's so fucking big, but he's a Fantastic grappler, but he was already a champion in one so he's a champion in one FC And then when he comes over to America and he starts fighting for the UFC people are already hyped for yeah So he's like immediately getting tossed in there with Kevin Holland, immediately getting tossed in there with like very elite fighters. And so like maybe there's an argument for if you were like managing a fighter saying like don't just – if you fight well in the UFC, you might be three fights in in the waters that you really can't swim in.

1:52:18Yeah. Because the level gets high very fast. Oh, it does. It does. Like maybe you'd be better off getting a few years in at a different level of competition to really tighten your skills up and make sure that when you finally do. You've been ringside for this. You see when a young fighter, when he clicks and he gets it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he understands how to compete at that level. It's brilliant. It's amazing. Like watching it, you're like, oh, my God. He's in there. Oh, my God. It gives me goosebumps to think about it because it's that moments that I can look at and go, oh, fuck. And, you know, it's a beautiful creation.

1:52:56It's like a testament to the amount of hours worked. Like, you know it better than anybody alive. When you see someone perform at like a super elite championship level, you go, you know how hard that motherfucker had to work to get to what you're seeing right now? It's even, and this just brought this up just as a thing, like DJ playing me in the movie. You just don't get there. Right, right. It doesn't happen by magic, right? Right, right, right. That's fucking work. That's work. That's a lot of fucking work. Oh, my God. He became you. He got all of your mannerisms down. Like, down. Not like a simile.

1:53:32No. A facsimile. No. Like, creepy down. Like, he even said he fucking walks like me. he even got my little fucking walk he did get to walk like you man I'm like where do you hire a walk coach the crazy thing is that story was made for him that was made for him because you have to be that big to sell that and you can't get that big that quick it should take you forever so we were talking about this the other day with DJ is that like there's like through the history of movie making there's been actors that have like I'm getting big and they go eat you know Ben and Jerry's ice cream and then there's like watching the whole transition of what DJ was doing and how he's like well I just don't need to be big because that's one thing I need to be big but put on quality of what I'm doing and so it's these fast twitch it's like a wrestler fast twitch fibers you look at him and go oh shit he just didn't get big he put on specific muscle for what he was doing you know and to be able to go through everything and understand going he secluded himself he literally locked himself away um for 11 weeks up in vancouver and didn't bring his family up which i guess he normally does and just went through his training camp jesus like going like going fuck okay you know like every day same routine get up to the same routine do this i was up there for fight week got all of his stunt guys all like this is this is foundationally because i'm not going to teach him wrestling 25 years of wrestling in fucking a month right or two weeks or a week or an hour it's like okay but let's get foundational pieces right because the people are going to watch it they can look at the film and tell whether you put the work in or not right especially someone like you oh god yeah it was one where where that was the biggest deal uh for benny is to be able to shoot these scenes without stunt double going how because because it just detracts from what he's trying to do as a filmmaker right how do you shoot this whole entire well well i'm going to give dj foundational pieces of like changing your level for a double here's where you get in like certain foundational pieces you have to have and then like i told them once you get to a certain point everything from that point on is your own it's like when you watch wrestlers going oh he changes his level and then all these little nuances that's individual that's individualized Like Michael Jordan, it's like the structure for a jump shot is the same, right?

1:56:00But all these little nuances of like how to get to the position to hit a jump shot, that's Michael Jordan. Right, right. So I go like when I shoot a double leg, like lowering your level, that's foundational, fundamental, right? It's like attacking without my arms out in tight. That's fundamental. But once I hit the person with the attack, right, double leg, everything from that point going on is my own. whether I tip him this way, tilt him this way, run him forward, run him backwards, sit down, change it. It's all these little new ones. I go, we need to do foundational and then you're good. So it was a lot of work for him to get to that foundational point.

1:56:38And once he got there, it was like, okay, you're good. It looked very realistic. The fight scenes were excellent. It was like really well done to the point where it looked like the historical fight. Yeah, they did. And again, this is Benny, you know, just like him and how he wanted to shoot it. And I really appreciate that because it's like that's hard to do. It's hard to hard to really capture. Like you watch a documentary or a docudrama rather on a person's real life when that person's a famous person like yourself. And I've seen you compete for decades. I'm like, I've seen it. I remember those fights.

1:57:11They got it. They got it real close to the point. Wow. Yeah, this is it's really well done. And it also looks realistic. It doesn't look, you know, sometimes fights look a little corny. Oh, my God. That was the one thing we were talking about. There's always going to be a space for a Rocky fight. Sure. Right? Literally. Nothing wrong with Rocky. Nothing wrong at all. But that's not the film they were shooting. They were shooting. Like, this is how do we create something that pays homage to? Yeah. And something you can build off of and somebody can look at it and go, oh, wow. I think it's important if we're talking about Rocky, though.

1:57:47We have to say Rocky 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever the fuck they got out to. But Rocky 1 was real. Oh, my God. I literally remember being in the theater and literally watching it and just like as a kid watching it. And like I wanted to be Rocky. Dude, I drank a raw egg and I ran around the block as soon as I got home. Oh, yeah. 100 fucking percent. I mean, you're like, that's. You're like, holy shit. That was a great movie. Oh, unbelievable. And they tried to push him out. They didn't want him to play the lead. He wrote that movie. Oh, my God. He won an Oscar for that, right? It was amazing.

1:58:23Yeah. It's a great movie, and it's a weird movie. It's a weird movie. It is. It is. Because that's the classic underdog. Yeah. Overachiever, you know, but he doesn't win. There are guys like that, man, and that's what's crazy. There's guys that, like, are hyper fucking talented, but for whatever reason, they just never bust their dogmas. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Buster Douglas got it together for one fight against Mike Tyson and pieced him up and did it artistically. He was hitting him with a jab followed by a left hook. Just whap, whap. And it was beautiful. The movement. Wasn't that in Tokyo?

1:59:02I believe it was. Yeah, Tokyo Dome. Yeah, I believe you're right. Yeah. That was one of the craziest fights. Yeah. I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that. Because his mom had died. Yeah. And he just got it together for this one fight. Wow. And for this one fight, he showed everybody what he had. Yeah. It was amazing. Never to be repeated. Never. And then Holyfield knocked him out in the next fight. Yeah. Gosh, damn. Unbelievable. But like that one fight, man, he got it together and you go, wow. So there's guys like that out there that are supremely talented, but for whatever reason, they just never sustain, never can keep it together.

1:59:40It's a mental thing. It has to be. I mean, all of it is, right? I mean, just like you're saying, like the outliers, it's a mental thing that they have a level or a gear they can get to that everybody else just can't. It has to be or there's got to be something, something they're doing that's so different. And everybody's trying to figure it out. Like, what is he doing? And it seems to boil down to almost always dedication. Like, how dedicated are you to it? And are you so dedicated that you're really willing to objectively look at what you do good and what you're not so good and change that and fix it and really tighten down your diet and really get religious with your supplements?

2:00:25That's the ability to be able to be just have this self perspective, right? This in-depth honesty. Because a lot of it, like I literally before Chris Campbell, right? I was just talking about. I thought I was training fucking hard. I thought I'm training fucking hard. And he just grabbed me by the hand and he goes, no, let me show you what hard is. And so it was this routine where it's like, in college, my senior year, 6 a.m., I'd get up. He would pick me up. And I wouldn't be a minute late. I had a chair that I put next to the door that I slept in for the last. Because one time being late, he just throttled me.

2:01:06And I'm like, that ain't never happening again. ain't fucking ever happened again man slept in the chair next to the door you know it'd be like all right because he would just give two beeps beep beep and like all right i'm up you know and fucking out the front door we go to the gym we train in the morning so we do wrestling drills stuff like that and then i'm gonna do cardio or strength he would go to work he was a full-time attorney he'd go to work all day i would start practicing with the the wrestling team warm up and then I'd wait for him to get off of work five o 'clock. And then we'd train for a couple hours and then get up and repeat.

2:01:40But it's this level of intensity with everything had intention. There wasn't anything that was left without intent. Right. You know, from how we drilled, how we trained, everything was very focused and intentional. There wasn't anything like, I'm going to do this today. You know, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Everything has intention. This is why you're doing this. This is why you're doing that. This is why you're doing this and that's the difference. That's the difference is this intention of every single thing you're doing Has this intention for an end purpose? You know, Gordon Ryan is right?

2:02:17Yeah. Yeah, that's Gordon's belt up there when Gordon trains 365 days a year Yeah, he doesn't take any days off unless he's injured and if he's injured he'll still be on the mats watching Watches everybody. He says I'm still thinking about jujitsu. That's intention And it's not just training like hard sparring. It's going over technique, going over counters, tape study all day. And that's that is somebody who's living their life intentional. Right. Everything has a end purpose. Everything. And it's why he's been able to do what he's been able to do. I mean, I've looked at it going if he existed when I was doing ADCC, I would have never won.

2:02:58It's not

2:03:26It's just a different level DVD still. It makes millions just selling instructions because that's how much he knows about jujitsu. And he's only 30. Everybody considers him the greatest of all time. You know, it's crazy. It's funny to just brought this up. So when DJ and I connected again in 2023 when this got kicked off at Green Light for the film, he sends me this picture of Panther videos. Panther martial arts. Seek and destroy videos. that are in a VHS tape. He's got like 10 of them in the picture, right? And it's Mark Kerr, Seek and Destroy. Benny had found them and sent them to DJ, and he's like, study him.

2:04:09So it's this videotape series that I did for Panther production. Here it is, Sam. Whoa. So this is one of these things where - Seek and Destroy. Oh, my God. No holds barred fighting techniques. Yep. And so DJ sends me this picture, and it was fucking - I was literally like, okay, I'm in. Dude, look at the size of you. You look like a superhero. Oh, dude, I had such, this is, I call it phone booth fighting, right? Like, I could, in a very small space, I could generate a fucking shit ton of power. Oh, dude, you were a freak. Shit ton of power. You were a legitimate freak. And I remember, like, watching you fight the first time, I was like, that's going to be a real problem.

2:04:54that's gonna be a real problem what do you do is one thing that you're giant but it's also that you got elite wrestling skills on top of that like oh shit yeah this this might be a problem yeah oh my all these dudes in karate gays are like god damn it yeah oh my gosh you're like phil i'm turning in my gi and then the gi the problem with the gi is they can anyone grab it yeah you know it makes wrestling even easier if you like if you allowed the gi still i think there'll probably be a few people that get choked out but also a lot of people get taken down a lot easier yeah so even so because you can grab the gi higgin machado i've rolled with him right uh john jock and higgin and higgin it was like giving him an extra set of hands yeah i i go dude i literally so the so on torrents when i train with him there's like uh there's one room and then another room and there's a door between them and so he had half of his class kind of all stacked up in the door watching us train and it was like five minutes with a gi and i just looked at higgin i go i ain't never fucking wearing this thing again take the gi off man fucking here have it back because it's like fuck it's it's a weapon oh my god yeah it's a weapon especially a guy who's got really good collar chokes those guys are terrifying they get that thumb behind your neck and you're like oh christ it was like he was getting me in positions he would tie up an arm like with the gi and I'd be like fuck now now he's got like what the fuck dude it's a totally different thing you have to really be aware of grips and you gotta you can't explode your way out of stuff that's what the argument for the gi is defensively that you have to get out of every position with technique you can't just pull your arm out your arm stuck so you have to figure out the right way to do this where you don't expose yourself because they have too much friction It's been a minute since I've been, and I'm like, no friction.

2:06:48I mean, you literally, it's all friction. I mean, it's like no slip. Yeah, it's a problem if you have one. But the thing, Eddie Bravo always used to say, why would you want to train in that for MMA, though? He's like, that would be crazy. That would be like saying, if you play racquetball, you're going to be better at tennis. Yeah. No, play tennis. You have to play tennis at an elite level. You should be, all your grips should be based on control of the body, gable grips. Yeah, all that. Yeah, under hooks and over hooks and like you can't because that's the one thing that we saw with a lot of jujitsu guys in the early days They were so used to grabbing collars and grabbing sleeves yeah that when they went to the ground They lost 30 % of their game.

2:07:27Yeah, yeah, and that's again. That's the evolution of it's why like Foundationally gila scrappling right because it just teaches you fundamentally what you're about to do if you're gonna get an MMA. Yes. Right. For sure. Foundationally, it's like, that's where you need to start. Yeah, I think so. You know, it cuts even to the point where it's like you because you have a lot of wrestling in there and you have a lot of moves. Like my first times at Abu Dhabi, the only thing I kept saying small moves, small moves, small moves. Like I didn't like like I literally if I felt uncomfortable, it was these small, tiny moves.

2:08:01Right. You know, it wasn't this like explosion because it's like, fuck, I don't know what I'm going to explode into. Right. Right. So it's But foundationally, it's, yeah, gis are, it's a different sport. It's a totally different sport. But I think there's something to be gained from cross-training with the gi. I think the gi is like, it's a fun thing to do. And in most street fights, the realistic thing is you're going to be wearing clothes. Yeah. Especially if you're fighting in a place where people are wearing winter coats. Oh, God. Oh, my God. That would be amazing. So much stuff to do with.

2:08:30A smorgasbord. So many things to choose from. So much control available. but for the if you if you really ever wanted to think about competing i would say just go right into wrestling wrestling and jujitsu learn that stuff first that's foundational yeah you have to god man i can't believe you've been involved in this this long ago i know it's so long i mean you're a spectator to history i know i know i feel super lucky incredibly fortunate you know when i felt the most fortunate during covid because everything was locked down you couldn't do anything but the UFC was still putting on shows and you'd get tested and you have to get tested when you got there yeah everyone's wearing a mask yeah sit down next to each other but we were in the apex Center and I got to watch like world championship fights with no audience I was like this is crazy and there's only one of maybe maybe there's a hundred people in the whole room that are getting to watch these fights like we saw steep a fight Francis and Francis beat him for the world title there was no one in that room man wow it's crazy to watch if you watch it today it's such a weird video because it's an elite performance by francis in his prime where he's like seeking destroy going after steve and patient you know it's when dc started calling him patient francis yeah and dude there's no crowd and it's kind of eerie wow it's eerie because when he kos him and he start you hear people go Oh, oh, oh.

2:09:56It's like people kind of freaked out. That's unique. It's very unique. And I was like, wow, there's so few people that get to be here. Oh, my gosh, yeah. While this fight is happening. Like when Justin Gagey fought Tony Ferguson. Oh, my God. We were in an empty arena. Wow. The arena was completely empty. It was only the UFC crew and only the people that were working around with the UFC. Oh, my God. There was no crowd. Wow. And if you watch that today, it's bizarre. Oh, my God. So I even thought, like, my first fights in Japan, how quiet the crowd was. But not that quiet. There was no one there.

2:10:35The Justin Gagey-Tony Ferguson fight, there might have been, I don't know, 100 people, 200 people in the whole fucking arena. It was nuts. It was, like, totally quiet. Oh, my God, that'd be so spooky. It was eerie because you heard the slaps of the punches and kicks way different. Oh, I bet. Because there's no people cheering. Because there's always people cheering. It's always this background noise. The UFC like. And you hear thuds and stuff. And I hear it a little better than most people because I'm wearing the headphones and the microphones are in the. But you don't hear it like you hear it when there's an empty arena.

2:11:10When there's an empty arena. You hear the thud. I need to go back and watch that. The thud of shins hitting me. Oh my God. The thud. So I've sat there with a group of people that, like, watching somebody check a kick in here shin on chin. And just me, nobody in the room getting it, but me going, oh, jeez. I don't care. I don't care. That fucking hurt. That hurt. I don't care. You can poker face that shit all you want. Oh, dude. It fucking hurt. That's like a big fuck you. Like, I know that hurt, dude. I know that hurt. I know that hurt. I mean the COVID times were dark times but it did make me feel very fortunate to be working for the UFC because To be there live as a you know a person who's like just love this sport since it first started To be there live while those fights were going on like this is nuts That is just one of those where you know again money can't buy that I mean it's just one of those experiences like like I've had a couple through this process of filmmaking where it's like no money on earth could buy that experience like in venice standing there like literally like i'm crying because it like i said it was at the end of that it was like therapy watch watching me and and literally settling into like wow man i was a dick you know i just was really hard on everybody around me and then having benny next to me dj next to me feeling their emotions and feeling dj's emotions because they'd never experienced anything like it either you know well i think anybody trying to do what you were trying to do is got to be a bit of a dick i don't think as nice as you were and you were always super friendly there's you're doing something that's really insane you know you're you're you're cage fighting for a living in front of the world in your underwear yeah oh my god i tell people it's hot pants i know fucking i'm in hot pants you want to know the truth fucking hot pants you know i mean you You were a human superhero, built like a human superhero, and you're fighting for— Who the fuck expects you to be normal?

2:13:13No. They do, though. That's what's crazy. I'm like, no, I was a selfish, self-absorbed. And I look at it, I go, okay, all right, I can accept that and understand that I was trying to raise everybody up. And if you couldn't get with a fucking program, I didn't have patience for you. Well, you had gone through, like when you were talking about these camps, and you had gone through the kind of training that's required to reach the level that you were reached that you had reached You know that you know what's in there for everybody and people that don't want to come aboard you get mad at them Oh, yeah.

2:13:44Yeah. It's like you're gonna hold me back. Yeah, and that's part that's part of it like understanding like Like I just didn't have patience for it because I didn't have time. I didn't have time for it, right? Yeah, it's understanding like like I know that X I only have X amount of fucking fights in me And I got to try to maximize and that's not going to work, you know, because a lot of that was assembling people that were accountable to me. Right. And, you know, money can hold people accountable in a certain degree. But at a certain point, it's like, you know, the training partners I had around me, it was like, hey, I can help you get to the next level.

2:14:24Right. That was kind of the enticement. Yeah. You just need to make a commitment to me. Right. Right. Right. Right. make a commitment to me and I'll give you that little piece that you're missing, you know, and that was kind of the, the, the part that I helped, you know, go, okay, my training partners be accountable to me and, and I'll help you with that little missing piece of how to be your professional, you know? And so I just didn't have patience. I didn't have patience. And it's one where I'm nice. I'm cordial, all this other stuff. But you know, at the end of the day, I was like, I was demanding.

2:14:55Do you think that maybe that, that kind of drive played a factor in you having an issue with substances? Yeah. Because you just wanted relief? Yeah. Maybe relief from the mindset? Yeah. You know, part of it was that, you know, you almost, like, I almost buy into the bullshit and I can never be this perfect being that I was trying to be. And so I'm always falling short. And that feeling of always falling short in this, just like, you know, I couldn't live up to what I thought I needed to live up to. Right. And so that was hiding. And, you know, I'm just going to get a little relief from it. You know, it's going to so I can unplug.

2:15:35Right. You know, and it was just one of those where it started with pain, you know, realistically started like a fuck. I'm doing something that inherently I'm going to have pain. Yeah. You know, and it was this progression from that of like, you know, from pain to I didn't know what an opiate addiction was. Yeah, in all fairness, I think we should tell people back when this was all going on, the opiate epidemic had not occurred yet. Yeah. And people did not know. And they were also telling a lot of people when they were taking these pain medications that they were not addictive. Yeah, they argued in court that it was not addictive.

2:16:12Oh, my God. Which is really crazy. Which I didn't understand. Well, fuck, I didn't understand. Like I didn't understand like when I took it to the level that I took it, when I stopped or tried to stop, I didn't understand what being dope sick was. I didn't understand like getting like physically sick because I don't have the substance in my body. Like I would get diarrhea. I couldn't walk from here to the end of the room without having to sit down for a half hour. It's almost like a parasite. It is. It's almost like a parasite that needs you to keep feeding it to stay alive. Because like how else could getting poison out of your body be bad?

2:16:48Yeah. How nuts is that? That you want it bad? You want to get it? You want to get the poison back in you? Like what kind of weird biological mechanism is that? That crazy part is the first recognition of like that I'm stuck, that I don't know the answer of like because I'm caught between, you know, like, all right, I'm going through this physical withdrawal and everything else that comes with it. or I'm just going to go seek the thing that's causing the physical withdrawal because it makes me feel better. You know, so you're caught in this loop of just bullshit, right? And then you go, I'll just have a little.

2:17:25Yeah, just that's it. I just need to feel better just a little bit. And, you know, so it's one of those where it's like there wasn't the internet back then. I couldn't fucking get on and, oh, let's Google something. You know, it's like, it wasn't that. So how did you figure out that? When did you realize, like, I've got a problem? God, man. I always from probably age 14. Really? Yeah. I knew, I knew when I first drank first had a drink that I drank until I was drunk. Like, cause that was this taste of Jack Daniels and it was like, Oh, this feels good. It was like a, not a normal reaction looking back on it going, Oh, so I've always had a propensity towards it.

2:18:13And then, you know, it functions both ways because I get addicted to the sport. I get addicted to the routine. I get addicted to getting in a ring and taking someone's will. I get addicted to the crowd, the championship, the adulations, the this. It's like that's who I am. Right. Right. And it's a it's a contributed to my success, but it's also contributed to my to my demise. You know, in both ways, it's like, you know, from an early age, I understood like, hey, you know, this could be a problem, you know. And then when wrestling came along, I didn't drink during wrestling, like during that whole season.

2:18:48I didn't drink, you know, in college. I didn't drink during wrestling season. Like when, you know, when it's like, OK, you know, I'm in recovery. I have seven years of sobriety now. Congratulations. Yeah. I mean, it's it's for me. it's one of those foundational things of like, oh, that's what I've been missing my whole life. Yeah. And you keep repeating that term for a good reason. Foundational is everything. Yeah. Having like, like morals and ethics, that's foundational. Having your health, that's foundational. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because it's one of those we're understanding like, like those are the building blocks.

2:19:24Because if I don't have those things in place nothing else fucking stands up right of course you know i mean it sounds like the duh no but it's an important thing to reiterate because everybody should hear it you know and it's a huge part it's a huge part it's it with most things in life most things in life you have to have structure some kind of structure you know figuring out like my son what like what makes him function structure he he's told me this he goes you should have been harder on me i'm like fuck I'm like okay I'm like alright I didn't know that's hilarious I'm going to give you four stars dad yeah could have given you five but you weren't fucking hard on them that's hilarious but he functions best with structure he's just one of those individuals that are built like that right well I think part of that is kind of probably seeing what you did and genetics and there's like some learned memory in there probably I would think so.

2:20:23I would think so. I think there is. And I don't think we totally understand where personalities come from. It's a mixture of like spirits and hormones and genetics and where you are born and what part of the fucking moon is facing this way. Oh, my God. Yeah. I always wondered if that shit's real. Oh, my gosh. It's like, yeah, well, Jupiter's orbiting around my Saturn. I always wondered, like, why are they so into this? Is there something to this? Because if there is, I would feel real stupid if I was ignoring it the whole time. You know what? Listening to Joe Dispenza, some of his stuff, it changed my whole, it's changed some of my perspective of how, like just having, we're energy, right?

2:21:04We're energy. And your emotional energy is transferred to me. It's like why I was addicted to Dawn. Because of that exchange of negative energy, right? Yeah. Back and forth. It's like being an addict. Right. I'm addicted to the drama. You're also addicted to making up. Yeah. That's the other one. Yeah. Because that's a feel good too. Yeah. Right. Sometimes people want to get in fights just to make up. Hell yeah. I mean, it's the whole process of that fucked up shit. It's how fucked up. It's called fun. Oh, my God. What do you hate fun? Yeah. Oh, my God. So it's that really fucked up part of understanding, looking back on it, going, oh, shit.

2:21:44Bro, when you guys were fighting in the movie right before you were about to fight Fuff-Chanchin. Oh, my God. It is such a crazy scene. it's really well done man oh my god it's really well done it's it's how emily flips that switch of like fuck you motherfucker yeah well you wanted me to come it's like oh my god it's like fuck that's what does it every fucking time it's amazing like that little like oh god i guess i didn't want her to come i'm a fucking asshole it's amazing it's so realistic i mean they nailed it they really nailed it it's how weird is it for you to watch like a segment of your life be recreated in a movie is it so i mean it's it's so surreal i've used i've like i haven't found another word to explain right it seems like there's not a word that they figured out for that one there's not because it's just one where it's like you know what's on the other side of it and this is just me going you know what i'm grateful i have a sense of humility i have a sense of just being like deep profound gratitude that dj emily benny everybody involved in the film wanted to take this on yeah like it's amazing because i looked at it going like a lot of it's self-worth going you really want to do a movie about my life about me like what the fuck like really and then understanding like what they see in me and the belief they have in the story and everything that's around it because at the end of it it's redemption it's like where i am today i'm so thankful that i have my health i'm so thankful that i have my sobriety i'm so thankful that i get to experience these things and share you know my experience strength and hope they call it right you know with other people and give them going look look at all the fucking bullshit i went through and i'm on the other side of it you know so whatever you're going through anything's possible yeah anything truly I mean and the thing about what you did is that like I said I thought it was so brave that you did it publicly when you did the smashing machine documentary and I was thinking like did you were you happy that you were getting on film so like maybe this like would make you get clean was there any of that oh there's a little bit of that yeah because part of it is that I didn't, I didn't, at that point, the only person on the planet that knew what I was doing was Don, right?

2:24:11Nobody else on the planet knew what I was doing. And so when John had put the camera down, he's like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Like, you're not being truthful with us. And I'm like, well, at that moment, I kind of went, fuck you, get the fuck out of my house, you're done filming. And there was this, there was this moment where it was like, I needed to tell somebody. And I go, okay, like, here's what I've been doing. And I don't know who to tell. I don't know how to tell it. I'm just going to show you. And that's when it shows me shooting up. It was that moment where I'm like, you want to know what I'm doing?

2:24:49Well, I'm going to show you. Because it was one of those where it's like, it felt like a weight got lifted. Right. Like all of a sudden it's just like, oh, fuck. Did you ever think about not going through with the documentary? Yeah. Yeah. So here's what they ended up doing. So I didn't see one stitch of footage at all until I saw the complete documentary in Los Angeles at the Dolby Sound Studios. So it was like a couple of years. Wow. Not a second of footage. So I sit down, the documentary as it appeared on HBO, right? And the filmmakers aren't watching the fucking film. They're watching me watch the film.

2:25:34Right. There's like eight of us in the movie theater. I get films done. Lights come up and I literally stand up and John Greenhall goes, what do you think? And I go, I don't have to get back with you. And I just walk straight out. Don't say another fucking word. Get my truck. Start driving back then. The phones like in the car. He's calling me on the phone and I'm and he goes, you're going to be OK. I go, I have no fucking clue. I don't know. I honestly don't know. because the agreement we had in place was i had i had final veto over the content of it but he never showed you the content until that day i saw it in the dolby sound studios in in los angeles the content the whole film i didn't see any of it until that moment so literally i drove home and john was like uh what i go i i you have to give me a day you have to fucking give me a day i i just fuck i said i don't know i don't know if i can go forward with that i don't think i can i don't think i can it's just too fucking much okay so you did have the power to veto yeah i did i did at the at the very what made you decide not to um john had said something to me like um i guess it's like a a parable where it's like if you live your life and you've saved one person's life you've had a worthy life meaning that if somebody watches this and sees your struggles that you've gone through and sees the hope that you have in that in your recovery it gives them hope or gives them because what keeps you addicted is shame the shame of what i was doing it kept me kept me quiet and i'm fucking who the fuck am i gonna tell right right you don't you don't want them to know no you don't want them to know like fuck no and so that shame is what usually keeps people but if they see me in the film go through this process and this deep revealing process of what was going on with me it gives them an opportunity to go why i can i can ask for help too when you got through the film how long did it take you to get clean um i got clean off of off of morphine off of the new bane i was doing um right after all the way through the volchanchin or all the way through the fujita fight and i was clean for started drinking which is a whole nother topic but you know i had done narcotics in you know probably like three years after that and then i started up again and then it was this process of like start stop start stop start stop and then the thing that predominantly dominated me was alcohol because it's socially acceptable easily accessible you know all these different factors yeah of it and so that's eventually like i like i've said uh And so my mom passed away September 3rd, 1996.

2:28:48And so my son knows this. And so my sobriety date is September 4th. And so my son asked me that day, September 3rd, he's like, Dad, I know you need a drink today because your mom died. But would you stop tomorrow? and at the time I thought it was just another empty promise of like yeah yeah I'll stop I'll stop and next day I got up and there's just something a little different or whatever it was that day and I stopped asking the questions why because it's irrelevant right um and from that day till today I'm sober wow yeah makes no fucking sense but it does it's like you get better at sobriety just like you get better at all other things in life yeah right yeah you get better at figuring out why and you know there's also the reality that I think a lot of people need to take into consideration when it comes to fighting is that uh a lot of guys are they're self-diagnosing or or self-dispensing something to make themselves feel better yeah because they've taken a lot of damage oh yeah and they feel like shit yeah and that's alcohol is a big one a big contributing factor a lot of a lot of former fighters become alcoholics cocaine's another one yeah because it's one of those where i thought i literally woke up joe and this is no shit like waking up going okay i don't know what's wrong with me there's something fucking wrong like there's something wrong with me and understanding like all this different stuff head trauma and all these different things and factors i i literally thought i was like going off the deep end like I was like okay alcohol or drugs was the only relief I got for what the fuck was going on in my head so the thing what did it it was it passed a specific fight um it was it was literally towards it was after 2006 it's like 2006 2007 2008 I stopped fighting 2009 I didn't know what else to do all my identity was tied up and being a fighter you know and understanding like these simple words of like fighting is what I did.

2:30:55It's not who I am. Right. I'm much more than that. Right. I'm much more than a fighter and understanding once I got to that point, you know, it's like, that's when some of the relief came in. But part of it, my head, like there's something fucking, I don't know what it is. And so I was just seeking relief because of like, there's something that's fucked up in my head. And I didn't know what it was. Didn't know what it was still to this day i look at it like you know it was i call it a god shot because it was one where it's like something needs to change because this is unsustainable you know unsustainable with the alcohol unsustainable with what's going on in my head and you know get sober things quiet down you know it's actually quiet downs that first year it took that of sobriety to clear out all the bullshit that was in my head going i just need neutral right and once i hit neutral it's like oh wow i can build on this you know so it's it's it's been incredible it makes no sense at all but it makes perfect sense no it does make sense because you're willing to articulate your deep thoughts your your very vulnerable thoughts on you know who you are as a guy who was you know one point in time when the scariest fucking human beings walk in the face of the earth and you're You know, that's important for people to know and to hear and to recognize that, like, man, a lot of people can get caught in that trap.

2:32:22They can. Don't think you couldn't. Yeah. You know, just be a little bit more compassionate and understanding and appreciate people for telling a very difficult truth about their life. Because I think people need to hear that stuff. They do. They do. Like I said, you know what I understood, like giving them the permission for the documentary, saying to John going, OK, if this could change or help one person, then my life has value. Right. Because I helped another person. And then when it premiered at HBO at the studios, there there's this was like the whole crowning moment is having like a 65 year old grandmother come over to me who I would have nothing in common with.

2:33:03and say to me, you know what? That was beautiful. My grandson, he's got a drinking problem and I don't know what to do. Wow. You know, it's like this door had been opened where she felt comfortable to sit down and talk with me about her grandson. And it was like this moment of like, oh, fuck, this is what it's about. It's about opening that door up so people can connect and go, well, if he can do it, I can tell my truth. Right. You know, because it's difficult, man. Addictions are just, I mean, shaming and they keep you in a box. And it's just this, it's a horrible existence. Did anybody ever recommend Ibogaine to you?

2:33:47No. I've heard of that, though. So they're doing that now in Texas. The Ibogaine initiative passed through thanks to former Governor Rick Perry, a Republican. Wow. who through working with veterans found that a lot of veterans who struggle with addiction and PTSD that Ibogaine is incredibly effective. Wow. And it's not a recreational drug. It's not fun. No, no, no. It's a psychedelic that takes 24 hours and it's apparently like brutally introspective but literally corrects addictive pathways. Like whatever the connection is in the brain that causes you to be addicted to things, it can disrupt those in a very bizarre and unique way.

2:34:27And it's something like 80 plus percent effective with one dose of getting people to stay off of narcotics, cigarettes, alcohol. And I think with two doses, it's in the 90s. So if you do two different Ibogaine ceremonies. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, they were going. Most people were going. My friend Ed Clay did it down in Mexico. And he even had a place that he was running down in Mexico because you couldn't do it in America. because it's illegal here. But it literally stops the train of addiction dead in its tracks. They don't totally understand how it does it, but it's very effective. I know a lot of veterans who have had relief.

2:35:09So they've talked about the neuroplasticity of drugs like that to create new pathways instantaneously. Yeah. I'd like to say those words, but I don't really know what they mean. You know what I mean? When I say them, I'm just faking. I know that's how you're supposed to say it, so I'll say it. But respectfully, I don't know what the fuck's going on in your brain. Neuroplasticity or something. What I do know is my friends that I know that have gone and done the Ibogaine. It's been effective. It's been massively effective. Wow. Get them off drugs. Get them off drinking. Wow. Get them, you know, they just change their perspective.

2:35:41They go, okay, I get it now. They just realize where they were tripping over their own dick, like what they were doing wrong. That's incredible. Yeah. Quick. I mean, what else is like that where like 24 hours later you can get a totally new perspective in life and be cured of addiction? and somehow or another that's illegal that's illegal but the stuff that they're addicted to is not oh my god that's like that's fucking bizarro land right oh my god total bizarro world yeah none of that makes sense man I mean it's just that's so that's a whole nother rabbit hole it really doesn't make any sense like what we just said makes no it should be the opposite this is so stupid because it's just one where it's like If that stuff existed back then, it would have cut short.

2:36:27Yeah. It did exist, but it just didn't exist here because we're corrupt. And so, again, kudos to Governor Rick Perry because what he's done is, like, open the doorway to right-wing leaning people going, oh, maybe we shouldn't dismiss all these things that God put here on Earth. Oh, my God. Maybe some of these things are actually here to heal your brain and we're ignoring them because you can't patent them. That might be the thing, too. that's saying this is just saying right right but i'm saying that this also might cure you and it's readily it's a plan so that's again in the last five six years alternative perspectives has been just paramount yeah in my just in opening me up you know to to having a better understanding of like how rigid i was and how how just this thin line of thinking i had had for so long about stuff like this, you know?

2:37:23And so, you know, it's just been this incredible, um, experience to get to here because I've had to open up. I've had to go, okay, I'm going to do meditation. I'm going to do this. I did, I did meditation for fighting, but it was visual meditation. How the fuck I was going to dismantle a dude in the ring. Right. I would sit and do, but this is meditation to access different parts of my brain, right. To try to get into Delta waves and, you know, theta, beta, you know, all these different things. So I can open different spots in my brain up, you know? And so it's just been this, you know, my wife, she's Nichiren Buddhist, you know, Nam-myoho-renge-ko.

2:38:04She chants every morning. Duncan does that. Yeah. Nam-myoho-renge-ko. So the Buddha you have, the Buddha, the gold Buddha you have, we have one in our house, not quite that big, but we have, yeah. So she's Nichiren Buddhist. And it's one of those things where she got me to start chanting. I don't do it as much now, but the first three, four years we were together, it's like I chanted with her regularly. And it's one of those where it's like harmonics and vibrations and frequencies, you know, and understanding like, man, we know so little. But realistically, all this stuff through like all the different stuff they discovered in Egypt with the sound chambers and all the different things.

2:38:42I mean, it's a whole different thing where we just ignored. Yeah. And it's like, well, shit, we don't even, we're so archaic in our thinking. Well, I think what happens sometimes is thinking and ideas get connected to people. And you think that the ideas and whatever you think you know about history or about the way things can be done. Yeah. Like it's all been solved, kids. Yeah. Like settle down. Everybody knows. No, no, no, no. I don't think they do. I don't think that you should show me how they built that. Show me who the fuck figured this out. Like maybe they knew about medicine that you're ignoring because you can't patent it.

2:39:27Yeah. These people have been making ayahuasca for 10 ,000 years in the jungle. Yeah. Don't. Yeah. Don't tell me. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Settle down. Yeah. Settle down. There's there's all the things that you think are valid plus other stuff. That's the thing that people have to recognize. You can't be rigid with what you believe in because sometimes it's wrong. That's the part where I can't believe how much I've opened up and been just receptive. And a lot of it's because I'm sober and it's like, fuck, I don't know shit, man. Like when you look at the bigger picture stuff, I know so little. Dude, nobody knows shit.

2:40:04That's the scariest thing. There's a bunch of people pretending they've got it figured out, but they're full of shit too. Yeah, every one of us is a talking monkey flying through space

2:40:16We are in a convertible organic spaceship hurling through the universe that alone once you start with that yeah, that's your foundational Okay, this is foundational to your view of the world The problem with us is that we don't fucking see the stars anymore. That's a giant problem with human beings we've screwed ourselves up with light pollution and it's not a coincidence that the people that live in the most populated cities are the most diluted ridiculous people that are the furthest away from nature right not that they're not awesome people but what i'm saying is like you you are so far away from nature you're so diluted from being like a wild animal so you know what i've actually done in the last couple years i've hugged trees i've literally hugged trees it feels beautiful.

2:41:01Yeah, that's real. It really is like walking barefoot, right? Like on grass and getting connected. And, you know, he would have said to me 10 years ago, I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever, dude. You know, but it's like, okay, who says it's not? I think nature's a vitamin. Oh, yeah. I would agree. Hey, where did the term tree hugger come from? Did it come from the time where hippies were doing acid? Probably. Because then that would make So much more sense. Because if you were on acid and you hugged a tree, you would be like, oh, I love you. I love you, tree. You're so fucking amazing. Oh, shit. That originated a while ago.

2:41:43From a series of nonviolent environmental protests in India, beginning with the Bishnoi community in 1730. Wow. Who physically clung to trees to prevent them from being cut down. See, those people are probably on mushrooms. Whoa. That's why they worship cattle. That's what I think. Why else would all those poor people not eat cows? Oh, my God. Cows are good. But doesn't that make no sense? It makes no sense at all. It makes no sense. You guys have food everywhere and you're starving. Starving. And your religion won't let you eat that food. Boy, okay. How'd you come to this? The only thing that makes any sense to me is those cows were giving you the mushrooms.

2:42:26They had to. Because that's where the mushrooms go. That's where they grow. The best source of psilocybin is cow poop. Duncan used to live in, my friend Duncan Trussell used to live in Asheville, North Carolina. And the farmers out there used to put a certain kind of feed into their diet to make sure that fungus couldn't grow in their shit. So that the kids wouldn't go in the field and pick the mushrooms. Oh my God. Because there were so many spores in that area. These kids would go and just get bags of mushrooms and go to other planets. So the farmer had to feed his cow. Oh, my God. Some anti-mushroom.

2:43:03Because I want to see him. It's still there. I wonder if it is. I bet there's parts of this country where they just grow naturally all over the place. I would imagine. Because once those spores get out there. I would imagine. Yeah. I would imagine. I was supposed to actually go down to Brazil and ayahuasca. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it crazy that you have to go to Brazil to do that, too? That's nuts. Yeah. A friend of mine, we actually went down to stem cells in Panama. It's called Origins. And so we go down there and he starts explaining like this. For him, it was like seeing the face of God.

2:43:40He said it changed his whole entire being. And he's like, it's in the jungle. So there's no like, it's. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And he goes, it's life changing. I just picture Alex Pereira walking to him. Dude, totally, man. Totally. Like, that's a scary motherfucker, man. I swear to God. He's the scariest. Oh, dude. His walking is the scariest, bro. Oh, my God, man. It's the dopest, too. Oh, it's this taunt. It's this, like, I'm coming to get you. Nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Yeah, he's built for one thing. And I bumped into him in Chicago, and it's like, he's built for one thing. He's built the fight.

2:44:22Yeah. He's built to fuck you up. Oh, he's built to fight. He's a weirdly strong guy. Like literally it's like he shouldn't be able to do what he's doing. It's like, you know, I go, there's no wind up in his kicks, his low kicks. Nothing. There's no tells. No tell. And he's sneaky. Really sneaky. But he's got unbelievable power. But the thing is he puts it together with technique. It's not like he's just waiting after you trying to exchange with you and land first no No, he's setting you up and while he's sitting up He's taking your legs away and you're not seeing the tells They're not there at all.

2:45:02Yep. That's it. They don't move. I'm sure I'm telling you think it's coming. It's already there And that's the whole thing is you go, okay, you're you're thinking you're gonna pick up on it It's like oh, you're never going to yeah, he's very clever with that and he does it with both sides, too He's just as good with the left leg with a switch kick when he's fighting a southpaw. He just starts chewing up those calves really quick, man. I can't believe that even a thing is that nerve. Yeah, it's a horrible nerve. Oh, my God. That wasn't a thing when you were fighting. No, it wasn't a thing. Isn't it crazy?

2:45:35Oh, my God. You have to know it now. Oh, my gosh. Like looking at it going, oh, my God, he's taking him out. He can't walk. It's like five kicks in. You're like, oh, fuck. He can't push off of it. Isn't it crazy that you went your whole career without seeing that? Like, who discovered it? Michael Bisping. Yeah. Even Michael Bisping said it. I went through my whole career without getting calf kicked. That's so crazy. Yeah. World champion. Never got calf kicked. Like, that's a good thing. Yeah. That's a really good thing. But it's amazing that it came along so late. Because it's unbelievable you would think that something that looks that innocent is so debilitating.

2:46:16Well, Benson Henderson was the first guy to start implementing it in the UFC. And then Mighty Mouse did it to Henry Cejudo and made his leg go limp. Do you ever remember that? He started doing it. But this was like around the time where it started catching on. There was one fight between Dustin Poirier and Jim Miller. Oh, that was a horrible one. There was a lot of calf kicks in that fight. Yeah. I mean, that's a copycat league, right? It's a copycat thing like watching another Friday going, yeah, I'm gonna try it now. See everyone has it Yeah, everyone has it you have to have it and you have you can't take too many no no matter who you are No, it doesn't matter.

2:46:55I mean, it's just one of those were so vulnerable it's it's one of those where it's like There's there's other than checking it or getting out of the way. There's not a fucking shit you can do Well Pereira has a very interesting way of checking it. So he checks it like the hacky sack way Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, when you throw a kick at him, he just lifts his leg. Yeah. He just lifts his knee. He has his knee there, and he just picks his leg up. Yeah. So the kick just kind of goes with it. Yeah. And he goes, it takes all the impact on it. Wow. Because he was saying, as far as checking it, like, you don't want to check it because it fucking hurts too much.

2:47:29Oh, my God. Like, even if you're just checking it, now that leg is fucked up. Yeah. Like, why check it when you can just do that, like, hacky sack thing? And he was showing us with it, like, oh, that's a different one. He does that one. That's a different hacky sack one where he uses the back of his foot. Yeah. But what I mean is he is picking up his leg. Like at the knee, his ankle is coming up parallel to the floor. I know exactly what you're talking about. You're not going to see it. But he's just clever. There's a lot of cleverness. And it seems to be very creative, like the style that he has, like how he figures out how to.

2:48:05Because he knows he's just got to land one. so he's got this very creative little ways to chop out the legs I still think Sean O'Malley's got the best feints oh he's got phenomenal feints so I remember watching him before he got to the UFC and a friend of mine was like no no no you gotta watch this kid you gotta watch this kid and watching him going it would be like this just again and again and again and just realizing oh fuck that's what he was setting up it was 14 feints right to get to what he wanted to get to. And then it was like a faint here, faint on this side, faint here. And all of a sudden he's got a tendency and now it's like attack time.

2:48:46Did you ever see the Eddie Weinlin one? He faints an uppercut and he comes over the top with a right hand. I've seen it, but I haven't seen it. Oh, you got to see it. It's so pretty. It's one of his prettiest knockouts. He stepped in, fainted like he was going to throw an uppercut and turned it into a left hand. Oh, my God. It was so clean. Yeah, he's done some stuff. Watch this. Watch how he faints. It's amazing. Look at that. He faints the left uppercut and comes over the top with the right hand. God. Watch that again. And that's one of those where that is. Oh, my God. That's silly. Bro, that's so beautiful.

2:49:25Oh, my God. That's like one of those things where it's like you can't teach it. You can't teach that stuff. It's so slick. It's such a slick move. I cannot teach it. Did you watch the Terrence Crawford Canelo Halvarez fight? Yeah, I did. Talk about slick. Oh, my goodness. Crawford just outboxed, man. Like fucking unreal. Who's ever done that? Who's ever jumped up two weight classes like that? Scary. It's crazy. Scary. So realizing, like watching it going, Canelo has such a bully style, right? He's going to get in. He's going to bang with you. He's going to power. and watching Canelo or Crawford just box.

2:50:06Just boxed beautifully. Oh, like I watched the whole thing. I'm like, that's art. That is art. He's so clever and just like the way – and it got to the point where he got so comfortable. He's like pit-patting him and then – What? Bop, bop, bop, bang. It's like, wow. You're watching like, wow. Towards the end, towards the final rounds, he really started getting comfortable and really started putting it on. I'm like, this is amazing. You know, one of those rare, like that's history, obviously, right? Watching somebody do, you shouldn't be able to do that. You shouldn't be able to fight at that weight for the first time ever.

2:50:41Against one of the greatest of all time. Undisputed greatest of all time. And do what you did. No. It is beyond, like my favorite, an outlier. You're beyond an outlier. You're something, you're an anomaly. Yeah. Something special. Something really special. I believe he's 37. Yeah. One of those where you shouldn't be able to do that by any account. By any account. 37, my body was so wrecked. I'm like, fuck you. I can barely go bowling. I watched a video of Dolph Lundgren the other day. That guy was like, remember in Rocky III, he was the first guy that was scientifically trained. Whenever I think of UFC fighters.

2:51:25Yeah, absolutely. When you're talking about guys doing everything scientifically, Dolph Lundgren in Rocky III. Oh, my God, man. It was Rocky IV, right? That was a stereotype. That was a stereotype like the Russians. Oh, they're manufactured. You know, like biologically manufactured. I came from a test tube, you know, type. He totally looked like a Russian experiment in that movie. He did. That was the first time I saw VersaClimber. I was like, whoa, conditioning. Look at that. Oh, my God. He's unstoppable. I was on a VersaClimber two days ago. They're brutal. Oh, fuck. I hate them. Not a lot of fun.

2:52:01No. Not an enjoyable activity. I do an Aerodyne, VersaClimber, a rower, and then a skier. All the things that suck. All the things that suck. Like going, shit, just, you know, but it's one of those where I'm like, you know what? I don't have to do it for anything other than the challenge of just doing it. Yeah. You know? I think everybody needs a little bit of a challenge. and just getting over the challenge of doing, like I'm doing 45 minutes on this elliptical machine, period. That's it. Yeah, that's good for you. Oh, it's huge. It's huge. It's giant. Because it's just like when I trained, it comes small wins, right?

2:52:36I just need a win. It's like some days I just need fucking a win. That's it. I don't care what it is. Right. You know, I just need a win. Right. Being nice to my wife, you know, being nice to, you know, just whatever it is, I just need something that day. Right. You know, it's like, fuck, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to get on a fucking thing that I hate and I'm going to fucking do it for 45 minutes. And I'm and that's a win. And I think if you looked at the proportion, like if you looked at this, there was a study done on people that are happy versus people that are not in this life.

2:53:08I bet the people that would generally say they're happy, get more of those. Get more of those wins in over themselves. Yeah. Get more of those doing some shit that you did want to do, but you did it. Yeah. I'm done. Yeah. I feel better and that's for me that's the link to get to where I am today is that I didn't understand how huge those components were yeah because when you're competing and stuff it's easy because every day you need you need to get wins right and you're stacking them right I'm stacking them I need every day I need a good training day I need a good training day and then you get to regular life it's like okay what the fuck I'm not I'm not like what's my not doing anything yeah what's my win letting somebody in on traffic that's a giant problem for fighters too because you're you're you're at fucking 9 000 rpms for years and then all of a sudden boom yeah and you're supposed to go to normal life no no and i didn't so this is this is again we're fucking this idea of like of like i didn't understand how much of myself was tied up in it and how much i needed to go it's what I did, not who I am.

2:54:18And understanding like this, who I am has a lot longer career than this fighter. Right. It's, it's, it's understanding who I like really getting into the fact that, you know, I'm much more than just a fighter, you know, and understanding like, okay, what is that? You know, I'm, I'm a compassionate person. I'm empathetic, you know, um, you know, I'm trying to be kind and understanding the people around me. I try to bring, um, I call it emotional sobriety, right? Like if I'm emotionally honest with the people in my life, everybody else is fits in. If I'm emotionally dishonest, people get fucked up.

2:55:00My environment gets all fucked up. Right. Right. Yeah. You know, so it's like, it's understanding these, these aspects about my life going, Oh God, man, I need to make these the important parts of where I'm building and what I'm building in my life. And it's been, you know, it's been a process. It's been some days I'm like, fuck this, man. Fuck this. And other days I'm like, that was just a day. As long as you can keep that clarity of knowing that these fuck this days are going to pass. Oh, God. Yeah. Well, I call it. Well, my Hall of Fame speech, I call it, you know, like when I was first getting sober, it was like I just I would try to get through a minute.

2:55:39I just need to make it through this minute. That's all. And I just need to make it through this next minute. This, I just need to get through this next. Some of them are fucking hard. Cause I just wanted to fuck, fuck this. Cause I'm so uncomfortable, you know, and I'd get through that minute. I go, I just need to make it through this hour. I need to just make it through this day. And then it'd be this week, you know? And then all of a sudden it's like a month goes by, but I'd still have to go back. I just need to make it through this fucking minute. Right. You know, like it, like, so like, It's just how I'm built.

2:56:10You know, like this self that just is so restless inside. You know, it's like, fuck. You know, amazing. Do you think that that was accelerated by fighting? Or do you think that was a pre-existing thing that drew you to fighting? I think it was accelerated by fighting. You know, I do. um you know a lot of it just you know i'm a competitor being a competitor allowed me to fight but fighting was like hurting another human being to the level that i had to hurt them that was a whole nother experience you know it's like i could wrestle i can compete i can do grappling but to physically beat i had to flip a switch and turn into this other person that i'm like fuck i'm glad i know he's there but it's like that's not that's not me right you know it's just this weird dichotomy or this weird that nobody ever really gets to experience except for someone like you yeah yeah or maybe at another level a higher level someone at war yeah yeah oh my god that's i mean that's you know i understand why there's you know a lot of the veterans and what they go through it's like that's normally that's not how you're built as a human being right you're not supposed to experience that no and come back and just be normal normal yeah like it's like oh fuck that movie hurt locker when he's walking around the supermarket until he wants to go back oh my god it's because it's just one where it's like it's not how i'm built you know i have yeah i have um a lot more compassion as you know for other human beings but But, you know, I was glad to know that if I got put in a fucking room with another dude, I was coming out, motherfucker.

2:57:57That was a good thing to know. It's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to know, right? It's a good thing to know. Do you, when you look back, do you, I mean, if you were going to give yourself advice, when would you think would have been a good time for you to stop fighting? after Fujita after Fujita Yeah. Yeah. Because that was, you know what? And like if people understood like that time period, like I got sober, I fought Ensign and then I went and did Abu Dhabi and I won my weight class, won the all around, which was a big deal for me at the time. It was a huge deal. And then if I would have won that championship, if I would have won the Pride Grand Prix, it would have been mic drop.

2:58:49I could have walked away and it could have been a Khabib moment where it's like oh I wonder how good he Fuck I wonder how good he could have been you know it would have been a complete fucking mic drop right right But it's just at that moment. I knew that something had changed in me that I didn't Didn't have that thing in me that I needed to do it because you need a thing in you to do that you do And that's what we're talking about, like a gear. You need a different gear. You need a different component to get to that level. And if you don't have it, it's like, you know, say in the NFL, if you're thinking about retirement, you shouldn't be playing the game.

2:59:28So you were at a point where your dislike of hurting people was interfering with your job. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, I had to just get to a place which is just, you know, just a place that I just didn't like being. Right. No, it makes sense talking to you, you know, because it's funny you talk to certain people like yourself. And George, like George St. Pierre, I was just hanging out with him the other night. And he, my friends are always like, he's so normal. This is so weird. Like, it's so hard to believe that that guy is one of the greatest fighters of all time. Because he's so normal. Yeah.

3:00:07But that's also the beauty in it. That's why people are fascinated by fighting, because they want to know what can a normal person do? What can a normal person turn himself into? What is possible? Yeah, and that's the—I answer that question for myself, right? And it's one where it's like, okay. you know and to get for me to get there was was so not difficult but like I would watch film of me walking out and I couldn't even recognize myself like my facial expression how I walked how I carried myself I'd look at it and go wow that doesn't even look like me like transforming like into a completely different person and it's understanding like like compartmentalizing everything like no emotions no nothing singularly focused to one thing and that thing was i'm gonna impose my will on you till i fucking take yours that's it and for me it just was a darker place for me to go right of course and probably unsustainable if you want to be a happy person no you can't but you can't in order to be the mark kerr that everybody loved you kind of had to go there that's the only way to do it yeah yeah that's the wildest thing that most people will never understand only a person like yourself who's actually experienced it will really truly understand what those words mean yeah i mean it's just one word it's a nutty requirement of someone fuck yeah a nutty request hey you want to go fight in front of the whole world yeah yeah because it's it's fucking you talk about vulnerable like vulnerable yeah like fucking bare in your soul that's because you you get to a place of exhaustion you know it's weakness you know you're showing everybody you're in there you weren't strong enough to train to the capacity you need to train to to fight and look at this dude he's beating the fuck out of you and you got fucking hot pants on right to add a little fucking insult right you have fucking hot pants on his beat and the fuck so i mean there's that whole thing it's it's very fucking vulnerable to fight because there's it's just it's just very like the loneliest place two loneliest places in the world is walking into the ring and after the fight's over the two loneliest places i've ever been in my entire life are those two places because there's no help when you're walking into the ring it's just fucking you and you know that and after the fight it's just you and you have to live with whatever experience you just had win lose or draw you know times i won i felt empty because it felt like i needed to go do something again it felt like i needed to go achieve something again like everything was so focused on this thing once this thing's over i need another thing i need to go chase that thing oh wow it's just never ending like for me it was this never ending because i was trying to be enough i was just trying to be enough and i could never get there isn't it crazy that that kind of addictive behavior and thinking is almost the only way to make true excellence i know it's just so fucked up right like come on because i know i know it doesn't only apply to fighters i know it's actors and i know it's artists and you know people that yeah do you think steve jobs had fucking i mean yeah that's again singularly focused singularly focused right i mean it's just this it's a it's the you know madness and brilliance you know are almost of the same vein right and you know this driven component of me the the bane of that is that once that thing was over i had to go fucking chase something else and i can never fucking sit in that moment and be okay with whatever and you know again it's one of those things where it's like thankfully I am designed the way I am you know because I'm finally in a place where I'm like I'm okay with me I'm completely okay with me you know and it's taken me a long time to get here well that's awesome dude I'm glad that you got there and uh I'm glad to just be able to sit down with you and talk to you and tell you how much I appreciate first of all your career but you've been able to do that smashing machine documentary I think wasn't just eye-opening for a lot of people to realize like wow a lot of these guys are struggling in a way that we couldn't even possibly comprehend it's all they're doing in private this guy just led us into his life holy shit yeah like how many more stories are there out there like this opens people up to the conversation but also like having the courage to let people like look at your life like that i think it's pretty powerful man no i appreciate and the movie's great and the rock you fucking nailed it oh my god he yeah i mean the rock emily you know she nailed it oh my god she nailed crazy with it she got an A plus.

3:05:07Oh, my God. Yeah, exactly. For that craziness. Well, thank you, sir. Thanks for being in here, man. No, I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. The Smashing Machine. It is out October 3rd, right? Is that what it's? Yeah, October 3rd. Yeah. Yeah. It's very good. I appreciate it, Joe. Thanks for having me. And Boss Rootin kills it in it, too. Yeah. It was great. All right. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye. Cheers. Cheers.

3:05:31Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

3:05:39This episode is brought to you by The Smashing Machine from A24. Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Academy Award nominee Emily Blunt star in The Smashing Machine in theaters everywhere October 3rd. The new film from writer-director Benny Safdie about pioneering UFC fighter Mark Kerr is both high-pressure sports biography and high-octane emotional spectacle. transporting viewers to the dawn of a new era as it follows the strongest fighter the sport had ever seen from the heights of fame to rock bottom and back again. Watch The Smashing Machine in theaters everywhere October 3rd.