JRE MMA Show #170 with Michael "Venom" Page

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All right, MVP in the house.

The most enigmatic, difficult dude to solve in all of MMA.

That's you, man.

Bro, you know what?

I always want to start simply because

what you have done for me specifically

i get a lot of criticism a lot of hate and especially obviously jumping when i first got into the into the mma world new to me you know i'm just like okay let me just be myself do my thing

first fight goes well land this crazy kick goes viral and i get nothing but hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate but then having prominent figures like yourself that are constantly have been champion my style, champion,

championing the points element of things.

I just appreciate you for that.

Oh, my pleasure, brother.

I appreciate you.

It's almost like we called for you because there was a time in the early days of MMA, like in the early 2000s, where I was like, this is what's missing.

What's missing is point fighters.

And people would like mock me.

I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, I've sparred with these dudes.

You can't hit them.

It's a different thing.

I'm like, they have a very specific skill, that skill of closing distance and being elusive.

It's not like any other sport.

It's almost like fencing and MMA combined or martial arts combined.

Yeah, yeah.

I always tell people that, like,

most of the combat sports in terms of kickboxing, the full contact side of things is more to do with the, there's a fixation on power, knocking people out.

Whereas...

Our element is just the speed element.

Yeah.

Just getting in and getting out.

Yeah.

Get in touch.

Like you said, the tag, tag kind of feel, fencing,

similar kind of footwork.

And yeah, just not many people had decided to cross over to

any kind of full contact world, really.

And he had the likes of Wonder Boy Thompson.

Raymond Daniels.

Raymond Daniels.

You and Raymond were the most prominent ones in him in glory.

Yeah, of course, you and

the

little bit of MMA.

A little bit of MMA.

But you're more prominent in MMA.

The point was that...

This was an element that when I remember when I was doing Taekwondo and I would fight in tournaments, I would occasionally fight in point fighting tournaments.

I'd fight a guy like Mafia Holloway or one of these guys that were really good.

I'd be like, this is crazy.

This is such a crazy skill.

Very different.

And when I saw MMA, where a lot of guys were just like, like real flat-footed and waiting, I'm like, there's a giant opening here.

And then you came along.

Yeah, yeah.

And you really were the proof of concept.

And I was like, okay, this is it.

You get a world champion at that who figures all the other stuff out because essentially striking is striking.

You know, you can learn throwing leg kicks kicks differently.

You can learn, you know, different stances and movements.

The grappling is the big heat.

That's the big hurdle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But once you can solve the takedown defense and some of the grappling hurdles, and you've actually got submission victories,

then you got a real problem because every fight starts standing up.

Exactly.

Every fight starts standing up with a big-ass fucking cage.

It's a big ass cage.

And I see guys like Kevin Holland, like, he's like, what the fuck do I do with this guy?

He hated every moment of it.

it.

I could feel it.

But that's just part of my style is that kind of frustrating

people because it's just so unfamiliar.

For someone like yourself, you would kind of be in there, whether you're successful or not, you'd understand what's happening.

And you'd be calm enough still to be like, okay, I need to know how to figure this out because I've experienced this before.

For someone that's never experienced, and because there's few of us in the MMA world, who do you go to to train?

There's very few people that are really good at that.

Yeah.

And like I said, Wonderboy Thompson.

Yeah.

He,

you know, a friend of mine,

obviously meeting him and, you know, us getting on.

And he's even said people have contacted him like, oh, yeah, okay.

I'm fighting MVP.

Like, I want to train with you.

He's like, I want MVP to win.

So

he's like, I can't help you, bro.

I can't do anything.

Well, it's good for the sport.

Yeah.

It really is because, you know, like, think about there's certain techniques that just come along like the calf kick.

And all of a sudden, like, how is this?

People have been kicking legs for so long.

How is this kicking a different spot on the leg kind of revolutionizing?

Yeah, yeah.

We need to see that.

And I think the introduction of you is going to make a lot of these guys that are like high-level point guys go, hmm,

there's a spot there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because the opening, look, there's always an advantage in the fact that every round starts standing up.

As long as you have takedown defense, every round starts in your realm.

And your realm is different than all the other stand-up realms.

It's totally different.

And if a guy is a plotting guy and he thinks, oh, this is my world, that's not your world.

It's your world against someone who agrees to fight the way you fight.

100%.

Yeah.

And I always say that is because I've come up against guys.

I was like, man, he's got a big, big hit, a big punch on him.

And I agree.

I'm like, yeah, I get it.

But power only means something if you land.

Yeah.

And my whole element is like not being touched.

It's also fucking with people's heads.

One of the things you did during the Jared Cannon earfight after you hit him, you're like, Calm down.

Calm down.

I was like, oh no.

Cause you imagine just getting popped.

Your eyes are running, your nose hurts, and this dude's standing in front of you going, calm down, calm down.

I'm like, no, he didn't.

Oh, no.

It's psychological war.

But that's the end.

That's obviously kind of like part of my personality coming out and the entertaining side of me.

And a lot, obviously, added to the criticism that I would get, which because of how I would make my opponents feel in terms of their frustration, and then obviously the antics on top of it.

So many people,

the main term that came with me was like, oh, he's fighting cans.

He's fighting cans.

My whole career was like, he's fighting cans.

Like, he can't.

But I always say to people, is I'm just making it seem

a lot less difficult than it actually is.

These guys are super talented fighters.

I'm just not fighting on the same wavelength and timing as them.

As you said, these guys that plod around, they're so used to it.

So when they're fighting other people, it looks very even.

And when they're fighting somebody that they just can't get their hands on, and they're getting frustrated on top of that.

So there's the mental side, the physical side.

And you have a lot of power, so there's consequences.

Yeah, there's consequences.

It's not like you're

tippy-tappy-patting them.

Yeah, yeah.

Every now and then, like the cyborg fight was one of the craziest knockouts in all of MMA history.

And, you know, one thing actually wanted to do i actually brought some gifts for you but one of the things i actually wanted to bring for you don't tell me you brought a piece of his head

he would have let me have that so i have to leave it i actually wanted to we we basically had a pokeball come it's a very specific one and they messed up on delivery but i'm gonna get it to you in vegas okay so when we go over to i'm just making sure

I get that to you because again, it's something that you've spoken about with me, and it's a big part of my history in MMA, just that cyborg fight.

Bro, that was the most gruesome injury I've ever seen.

I've seen a lot of broken bones.

I've never seen someone with a caved-in head.

Yeah, yeah.

The doctors were saying that what we were hearing back from, they said he's only ever seen that in a car accident, never in.

Yeah, that's his MMA.

Yeah.

That is so crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that was his last fight.

And I know after the fight, he was like, we're going to fight again.

The doctor's like, hey.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I think he was.

I'm someone sent me something where he was supposed to fight again, and

then I'm not sure what happened there, but yeah, he did.

It's crazy.

How come you fight again after that?

What made it, yeah, I felt very bad, obviously, at the time as well.

But then I didn't see him for another two years.

Boom!

That was just

a sound.

Give me this sound, Jamie.

It's hard to breathe.

So, just got everything you need in a fight, you lose off the liver shot.

It can't be.

Oh, it sounds like a baseball bat on a pumpkin.

You know what I mean?

Just whop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Because the thing is, I didn't know.

I keep telling everybody, I didn't know what happened because obviously they're like, you celebrated, like, threw the Pokeball at him afterwards.

I did not know.

You thought it was just a knockout.

Yeah, this was a knockout.

And obviously, Custom kicking his legs.

I'm assuming maybe I broke his nose or, because I can see he's not out, but he's in pain.

it must have must be something like that it's only the next day that I found out but yeah it was it was a bad one that was a bad one yeah it was a very bad one and the thing is like I said I met him

I want to say like two two and a half years later down the line Obviously this clip's just been going going crazy online and so on and so forth.

And I just I felt awkward.

I didn't want to but also he had come over for another MMA show but with one of his students

but one of his students was fighting one of my teammates

And at the beginning, my coaches were like, oh, do you want to, you know, go and at some point go and see him and say hello?

I was like, yeah, please.

Like, I'd love to because that's the last time I saw him.

The fight happens.

And my teammate is known for his leg locks and breaks

his student's leg.

So I'm like, fuck's sake.

God.

So the officers were like, do you want to go and see him?

I was like, yeah, yeah,

I'll try.

I just felt like I needed to.

Sure.

And I kind of walked into the room.

His guy's obviously upset for losing.

He's like getting sorted out by the medics.

And he's sitting there, just looks at me.

And I'm like,

hey.

What do you say?

Like,

I'm lucky.

Like, I'll just like, he's like, shook my hand.

I could just feel the energy wasn't right.

It just wasn't the right time.

But I didn't know when I'd get to see him again.

And I haven't again since.

So,

yeah, I just felt, it's just one of those things.

I just felt bad.

Yeah.

But what do you do?

He does nothing.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you do?

What do you do?

He's got a broken leg.

You broke his head.

It's just

stay the fuck away from you and your crew.

I mean, at least you're nice about it and friendly.

Yeah.

It is what it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's such interesting because you've trained with

Marius, my coaches, one of my coaches, Marius.

And obviously he says to say hello.

Tell me hi.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He says he trained with you guys.

I think you guys trained for about four years with Eddie Bravo as well.

I've known him for 20 years.

Yeah.

Crazy, crazy.

Crazy.

And that's obviously that's a big part of my history now with them,

them two, the brothers, Alexis and Marius.

Were you at the gym when

Lee Murray was?

No, no, no, no.

I was just after.

Yeah, yeah,

luckily.

But interestingly, though, when I was in, at the time that

he was around,

I was still very like heavily focused on the points fighting kickboxing

so

but a friend of mine was training at shoot and he was like you need to come and train with these guys like these guys are serious and but for me MMA was just never going to be a thing that I'd ever see myself in really I've always seen it as

I guess like your average fan back in the day and some fans now of like ass brutal man like I right and again I'm a points fighter like I don't see myself being good enough to or tough enough to fight these guys like what changed

obviously my had a successful career in the kickboxing but it didn't really go anywhere it's like you're fighting the same people like the amount of times me and raymond have fought and we were like the some of the top two guys like if we're both in the competition like we both walk in the room everyone's like oh my god are these guys gonna fight like right we were the guys

But I'm fighting the same people and it's just like everything.

Everyone hoping that you're going to lose or your fans are kind of like supporting you.

And then I come back to reality, come off a plane, I traveled, I fought all the, you know, the whole week or whatever.

I've won a world title and I've come back home and

nothing.

They come back home to just me being myself, just me being me, which I'm okay with.

But there's no recognition.

There was no sponsorship.

I paid to do.

everything and as I loved it and if I could choose to route again I'd still do it because I absolutely loved it.

But there comes a point, I'm getting older, and it comes to a point where I have to, and I'm now starting to...

At the time, I'm a kid.

But now it's getting to the point where I have to work.

And so now it's like, I can't do this forever.

But at the same time, I know I want to

compete for a living.

I just didn't know what, in what.

So then I...

said to myself, okay, cool.

Let me,

I need to take a step away from this.

I know while I'm in this, this will be a distraction.

I'm not going to be able to focus on things because another competition that I'm going to want to win is going to come up and it's going to turn my attention.

So, I said, Look, I'm going to.

I said to everyone, I'm retired.

I thought, let me say it to as many people as possible so that it's hard for me to turn back on it.

So, I'm just like, Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm retiring now, not fine again.

Yeah, this is my last fight.

And I said, Cool.

Started to go around looking at boxing gyms, looking at full contact kickboxing, looking at MMA gyms.

And the first gym I actually went to was in Miami, Coconut Creek American Top Team.

Yeah.

Because my sister

used to live in that area because I got siblings over in America as well.

So

came out there.

And in my head at the time, there's only few people from the UK that was doing anything.

in MMA.

So when I was like, maybe I'm going to try MMA, I was like, obviously have to go to America.

And I'm lucky enough to have siblings that live over there so i'm good so get to america get to american top team i go in there i'm like this is where i'm going to start like i've met a couple of the coaches and just kind of just like general chitcha i didn't tell them who i was or anything just kind of saw the vibe the facilities are amazing i was like yeah this is this is going to be my new life and then i get back to england and A good friend of mine, Marvin Francis, was like,

just in case, just have a look at some gyms over here.

You don't know.

Because obviously, I've got things to sort out before I can just make the full move.

So, while you're doing that, let's have a look at a couple of gyms.

And we did some research, we went to a couple of the Gracie gyms, went to a few other gyms that I was around.

Then I found London Shoot Fighters.

I hadn't done any research, and at this time, I personally wasn't watching MMA at all.

The only person I knew is this.

So, I'd have been

what 24.

so what's that about

it's over

12 13

years back

and I was trying to say the only guys in the UK would have been Brad Pickett was fighting

Solid fighter solid fighter Michael Bisping was fighting

but and nobody had like achieved anything of big quality from there everything everything was in America

Was Bisping still living in England or had he moved to America?

I think he was still in England.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But again, I was only learning it as I got more into it.

But initially, I just thought I made the decision without actually researching anything, which is very much like me.

I'll just

jump in headfirst.

Figure it out afterwards, right?

So I literally, I said to myself, okay, cool.

I've got to

London Shoot Fighters and the only person I knew was Chuck Liddell that I've actually seen.

And I just was like, this guy was just knocking people out.

I was like, I could relate to that.

I was like, he's a striker.

Everything else I didn't really care for.

I was a typical fan.

Like, when they got on the floor, I was like,

fuck fuck's sake.

Stand up.

Stand them up.

So,

and I've never been to a show, anything.

But

these are, he's a guy that I like watching.

And

I made a decision I want to do it.

Cool.

Started in London Shoot Fighters, and for some reason, the guys there, I don't know what,

because I've had good coaching.

So in my outbreak, so I feel like I can hear sense.

When I've gone to a place, I'm hearing how they're coaching and what they're saying.

And I'm like, it just makes sense to me.

I was like, cool, I'm going to start here.

I still want to go to America, but I'll start here for now and then just see where it goes.

And I just fell in love with the place.

Was that the first time you did any grappling at all?

Any grappling at all.

Wow.

Didn't do anything.

All I was doing every day was applauding people because I was tapping every two seconds.

I was just

every two seconds.

That was frustrating, right?

But I loved it though.

Oh.

Well, you have a good mindset.

Yeah, it was weird.

Like, I kind of enjoyed the fact that, like, I'm looking at this guy, like, if I saw you on the street in my head,

I'm destroying you.

Yeah.

But this guy just twisted me up into a a pretzel.

It's a humiliating feeling.

Oh, so humiliating.

But again, I crave.

If I go back to the point side, from about, like, you met my brother outside.

Him, he's the oldest of my siblings.

Sorry, of the boys.

My sister's the oldest, then it's my brother.

I've got two other brothers, then me.

And at the time, we were fighting around, but they were winning everything.

I used to get my ass kicked everywhere we went.

And this is every single weekend.

That's crazy.

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every like he was for me he was the more talented one but i mean like every single weekend we're driving to birmingham to manchester to scotland and we did trips everywhere like my dad started a gym and he was going around everywhere.

And

every weekend, there's like three hours that way, four hours this way.

They're coming back, and I'm just going to boss lips.

And they're just the medals are just like cling, cling, cling, cling, cling.

Like they got all the medals, and they're talking about how they spin kick some guy and they did this.

And I'm just like, Yeah, yeah, cool, cool story.

And I got destroyed for

four or five years.

And

when I is that I got to a qualifiers

is in Birmingham

it was an Ayaska qualifiers and I managed to win that which that in itself was success for me like I'm like oh man I qualify to go to the world championships I've already done well everyone else was there so they were supposed to do it like they're good enough to have the expectation of themselves So then I get to the World Championships and the way they seed fighters in the US was very different to the UK at the time.

So

I had one fight, another fight, another fight, and I'm winning and I'm like happy.

I'm like, I must be in like the finals already.

And then they're like, okay, bring the seeders, fighters in.

And there's like a shitload of fighters join your

mat.

And I'm like, oh.

My dad would tell me, he's like, yeah, I think you're in

the semis.

I think you're in the quarters.

And then he was like, bro, just keep fighting.

He couldn't work out.

I don't know.

Seriously,

I genuinely don't remember.

I just remember just feeling tired and I didn't understand why this was still going on.

Because in the competitions, three, four fights, you're in a final.

Right.

And I was at least 10 fights deep and still felt like I was fighting.

All in a day?

In a day.

Wow.

So there's a...

Again, the Ayaska World Champions in Orlando, Florida.

And

it was at the time, the biggest points kickboxing competition.

So there's thousands and thousands of competitors, kids, adults, adults, doing forms, doing, you know, catters and all this stuff.

And then you had the points fighting, the light contact fighting, and that was it.

And yeah, it just all day.

And then it literally got to this, like, okay, I won a fight, and the guy was like, okay, you're in the final next.

The referee said that to me, and I was like, oh, like, I can't believe I'm in the final.

And this guy was very good.

I can't remember his name.

He was young.

I was, I think it was like 12 or 11 at the time.

And I won the fight.

I just clapped to

my back.

I was just like, oh my God, everyone ran in there.

Cause again, nobody expected that of me.

And I remember going in there.

The trophy itself was six foot tall.

And in my head, I was like, I just want one in my house.

And I managed to win that.

But something

that competition clicked.

So all the times I was getting beaten up.

all the competitions I was getting destroyed at.

No, it wasn't even like close.

I was getting destroyed.

I won this competition and I went back home.

And every person I used to get destroyed by, I was smoking them.

Like something was different.

Instantaneously.

There was a weird shift that just went click.

Wow.

And all the kicks that would, I'd walk into

face first.

I was like, oh, actually, I can do this.

I was like,

wow, you entered into the matrix.

I literally, I just, I, to the point, to the point where I saw when I went back home, it was like 12.

And for the year of that circuit,

I didn't lose a fight.

And

this is from getting whooped.

It's crazy.

And I'm fighting all the same guys that I grew up with.

They must have been like, what the fuck?

Yeah, what the hell's going on here?

Then

when I was 13, I asked my dad, I was like, can I please fight in the seniors?

And the seniors are 18s plus.

And he was like, and he said it to me, he said it to me later on.

He was like, as a coach, I knew you could.

As your dad, I was like, hell no.

And I begged him.

Like, every competition we go, I was like, please, can I find the seniors?

Please.

And there was a big British Championship competition.

And

I begged.

I was like, please.

He was like, you can do this one.

And again, I don't think he, remember, these guys are 18 plus, but all different sizes as well.

I don't think he knew I'd do well, but not as well as I did.

So I won.

my senior division

for my weight.

And like I said, these are big men.

But the problem is whoever when you win in this competition specifically when you win your season

you go into the grand championships

and i'm like dad

you gotta let me go he's like no that's this is different now because they're they're the winners of their division this is that was your weight division now these guys are the winners of their own weight you can't do this i begged him and

I beat everybody and got to the final.

And the final was really, really close.

And I felt like I got robbed.

and even my dad was like he could never tell me no after that because I destroyed some of the best fighters on the in that in the UK at the time do you think it was a confidence thing of having gone through that grueling tournament and proven that you could do it and now you didn't have doubts in your mind anymore Or was it you had just seen so many different high levels of competition that like maybe your own expectations had risen?

Like what was it that made that instantaneous shift?

Because it's one thing to go and compete and do really well all of a sudden and like now I'm competing.

But then you went and you were doing it against people that were normally beating you and you're fucking them up.

That's like a 50% shift.

That's a massive shift.

I would say one thing, obviously, I hated losing as anybody would, especially as a kid.

And

we also and I think as all of us, we wasn't allowed.

So a lot of the kids would fight first and then the seniors would fight.

But because we all traveled down together, we stayed the whole competition until the seniors were finished so we can drive back.

A lot of the other kids were messing around when, obviously, we like this guys that I've spent, I've known since I was eight years old, that I'm still good friends with now because we were the kids playing with each other afterwards, like just being all cool.

But my dad was like, No, no, no, you represent me, you sit down and watch.

So, as much as we could play a little bit, like when he wasn't looking, but we have to try and get back to the map to make sure we were watching people.

And I I feel like

I'm a visual learner and I feel like that helped me become that visual learner.

As much as I was getting my ass kicked, I was also spending time watching amazing athletes.

Yeah.

I think it's an important thing to mention that at that time, there wasn't video readily available like there is exactly.

Like I remember the first time I went to the Taekwondo World Cup, it was in Colorado Springs in 2000, I mean, not 2000, 1980, I think it was 86.

And the first time I went,

I immediately got better just by seeing

just by seeing everybody.

I just went as a spectator.

Yeah, I hadn't beaten anybody to qualify for the nationals.

So when I went there, the whole experience was just absorption.

And I came back and I was much better.

Much better.

I'd never seen those guys live, but my expectations for competition, my expectations for movement and speed, everything had risen.

And at the time, I was 18.

So it was just when you're 18, your brain just, you just absorb.

You just absorb.

And I think even more so when you're younger.

Yes.

And

when you're a little kid.

Yeah.

And

my first competition, I was five years old.

So

that is just many years again being up.

That's incredible, though, because your body develops with that.

I started a little late.

I started karate when I was 14 and then wrestling and taekwondo when I was 15.

But I wished I'd started earlier because I was with these guys that were younger and their little bodies had like grown stretching.

They'd grown punching and kicking.

Like you develop into that.

Well, funny you say that.

That's where my name came from.

So Venom came from when I was nine.

And

the only kids that was in my dad's class at the time, mainly

are a few others, because at the time we did it, it was basically one class.

He didn't really separate the kids and adults.

It was just one class.

So you're, I'm trying my best.

I'm throwing everything in to hit adults.

and yeah, they're not moving, but I'm trying my best to just get some kind of reaction.

And then, when I started hitting people my own size, even though I was losing, because they were, they're just obviously I was tall for my age as well, so I was fighting kids slightly more naturally developed than me, but I had a had a whack on me.

That's a great way to put it, you know what I mean?

Like, even though I, you know, I wasn't beating these guys, these guys were just way too fast for me.

But when I hit them, they felt it.

And it was one of my, again, Marvin was literally just like, you got some venom in you, man.

Yeah.

And we was very into like kung fu movies back in the day.

And then, and I was very, I'm creative mind.

Like, I loved just

even with my martial arts.

I learned a jab like this, and now I have to add something.

Oh, I can't do things conventional.

I've never, never liked to do it.

If there's a, everyone's walking that way, I'm like, I want to see what's over there.

Like, I just, I don't know what is wrong.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but.

Oh, what's right with you?

Or what's right with me?

But I just got that, like, I was just curious and and creative.

And so, there's a film called The Five Deadly Venoms, like old school, old school kung fu classic.

And he would be like, Yeah, five deadly venoms, let's make a move for each like uh thing because he'd be like scorpion or toad.

And I would make up weird moves and try to add it into, and that was always my thing.

I'd see something on the in the movies, and I'm like, I'm gonna try it in there in there.

This is all while I'm still getting beaten up, by the way, as well.

But that never left me.

So, even when I started beating all these people now, I'm doing it with the style and flair of like what more can I do?

Yeah, you know I mean

it's so perfect for martial arts for you for MMA because

a lot of MMA is pattern recognition you get it you get accustomed to certain types of movements.

I know this guy's gonna do this the calf kicks gonna be available.

I'm gonna faint with this and I'm gonna throw that.

I'm gonna shoot that double here because I know he's gonna come with the overhand right.

All these patterns,

you don't have normal patterns.

At all.

So you're moving around, your hands are down, you're sideways.

And they have to make up new patterns as they go along.

So they have to think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They have to react.

It's such an advantage.

Yeah.

And I always tell people that the first time they're actually really going to experience this style is on the night.

Yeah.

And you have to figure it out on the night.

Because there's not enough guys that have what you can do that also compete in MMA.

Yeah.

There's might be five or six in the whole world.

Yeah.

Which is nuts.

Yeah.

it's kind of nuts man it's it's really the it i had been saying this for decades i'm like this is the one thing that's missing yeah yeah and then when you came over i was like see

this is what i'm saying this is crazy you can't even hit him it's weird though it's a blessing and a curse uh

blessing obviously being able being having the advantages of a fight but sparring headache earlier a lot of people wanted to kind of like let me see what this is about then word spreads quite quickly.

And I struggle with sparring.

I think it's starting to come back now.

People are a bit more willing.

But I struggled with sparring.

You just couldn't get sparring.

Couldn't get sparring.

Also, and I kind of see it from other people's point of view.

It's like, well, why?

I'm not going to fight anybody like that.

So why?

Why?

Why am I coming over?

Yeah, but if you saw that, if you, with your mindset,

you would be like, I got to figure out what

the fuck he's doing.

100%.

And my teammates, they're forced to.

Right.

And a lot of them, they even say, like, I'd spa you, and then I go spa someone else.

And they feel so slow because I'm when I'm with you, my eyes are like this.

Like, I'm forced to be like ultra alert.

And then I go on, and someone's throwing a punch of the ass.

That's the thing, too.

It's exhausting.

Yeah.

It's exhausting.

Your style is exhausting because you always have to be at high alert.

There's no moment because there's so many times where you've done like

a shift in rhythm and it looks like you're slowing down and then you explode and crack people.

And you've done that so successfully, so many times, that if they've watched any tape, they know

there's no moments where you could catch your breath.

There's no moments.

And you're always putting pressure on people.

You're always fainting.

And the faints alone.

See, people don't even know.

They don't know.

You're just standing there.

It looks like you're just standing there.

But you're standing there and a guy's fainting and you never know when he's going to actually launch.

And

your whole body is constantly tense.

You can't breathe.

That's just their energy body doing this without anything happening.

Without anything, without any kicks landing.

No punch.

Which is actually why I'm actually a big fan of Tom Aspino as well.

Oh, yeah.

You don't really see that anywhere full stop, but definitely not in a heavyweight division.

No heavyweight moves like him.

No one moves like the Man.

He moves like a 185 or it's crazy.

It's nuts.

With that kind of explosive and that power, it's crazy.

Crazy speed for a heavyweight.

Crazy speed.

And that's why when the John Jones thing was being, you know,

John is...

one of the, if not the greatest fighter of all time, but he's not the fastest guy in the world.

Yeah.

He hasn't, but he's just so complete complete, and his fight IQ is off the charts.

Off the charts.

Very well-rounded.

Very.

Very well-rounded.

And wild.

You know, opens up his world title fight with Shogun with a flying knee.

Yeah, crazy.

Wild.

You know, just believes in himself, goes for it.

Yes.

Goes for it.

I thought that was a complicated matchup for him.

It is.

It is.

Because that guy's not easy to get to the ground.

And Aspinall.

And he's fast as fuck.

And he's big.

He's a legit 250-pounds natural.

Not, you know, no, he doesn't need anything.

There's no way he can make 205 ever.

He's fucking big.

Yeah, I've got to train with him and I went down there and I was like, this guy,

he's a tank.

It's a tank.

So that's a problem.

Yeah.

That's a problem when you're not really a heavyweight.

As great as John is, and I think John beats most heavyweights that have ever existed.

That's a big, that guy's a problem.

Francis is another problem.

That's another problem.

Because you're dealing with the power of real 265 pounds solid natural grew up in the sand mines.

Literally.

His story is crazy.

Crazy.

His story is

told it on the podcast.

He told the whole story of him going to Morocco and getting to Europe.

Yeah.

That's a movie, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Crazy movie.

I'm surprised nobody has jumped on that.

I'm surprised too.

Someone needs to.

It's nuts.

Yeah, we'll do it.

We'll do it.

We'll do it.

But when him, he was a child working digging sand in Cameroon.

It's crazy.

You know?

Incredible.

And then you have incredible genetics.

Yeah.

And then you have just this fierce mindset from all the shit that guy's been through.

Yeah, yeah.

That was another one.

So there were two fights that I was really interested in with John at heavyweight.

Once he won the title, I was like, God, bring back Francis, please.

I just thought so.

Sort out your difference.

I wish I was running shit.

I feel like

me and him get along great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just feel like, I don't know, I think sometimes it's

the executives and the fighters.

And Dana generally gets along with people, you know, like most fighters he gets along with, but him and Francis,

it didn't work.

I love the guy.

I've never got the privilege of meeting him, but he just seems very sweet, like a big, friendly giant outside of the cage.

Yeah, exactly.

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He's a fucking great guy.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm always saying from my experiences with him.

Yeah, yeah.

But as a fighter, I'm like, Jesus,

make it happen.

Keep him around.

You got to

be important.

It's an extraordinary gem.

Yeah.

And you want to talk about sellability.

You want to talk about marketability.

What's more marketable than that giant man who destroys everyone?

Yeah, yeah.

He's the guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So true.

Drove me nuts.

I know.

Drove me nuts.

Nothing everybody.

And I think that's added to people's frustrations with the Tom Aspinall fight not happening then after as well.

Well, that was not on the UFC side or on Tom's side.

That was all John.

Look, John's a wizard.

He knows how to play all games.

And one of the games he plays, I'm retiring.

No, I'm back.

And now I'm hunting after Michael Williams.

It doesn't matter to him.

He's going to get the same amount of money.

He's still John Jones.

It's all mind fuckering.

Keep you guessing.

And meanwhile, John's deadlifting every day.

You know what I mean?

And partying.

He's just so wild.

But it's like that fight would have been amazing to see.

But to me, the biggest thing.

So that means it probably can still happen, though.

I hope so.

I genuinely hope so.

You know, they were talking about doing it at the White House.

Yeah, yeah.

And then Dana said.

Dana's like, I can't trust John to show up and be fun.

Which is fair, which is fair.

That's what you got to say.

There's been a few times when things went awry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But fair enough.

However,

it would be great.

Do it on a card where you have 12 other fights.

That's what I say.

Who gives a fuck?

Let's see if it happens.

If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.

That's true.

That's what I would be.

Let's go crazy.

Let's fucking go.

I guess what would happen is that fight overshadows many fights.

Uh-huh.

So if it doesn't happen, even though the fights are amazing, still, people are like,

It does, but so what?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, you get, I don't know who you would do, Ilio Taporia versus Justin Gaitchy or something like that, something crazy like that.

You'd have a few other fights.

It depends on what happens this weekend with Pereira and I have.

it depends on what happens with Murab and Corey San Hagen.

Those are two very complicated fights.

Beasts.

Yeah, very complicated.

Marab is a beast, man.

Beast.

He's such a beast.

Dude, he was talking to, I forgot who he was talking to.

He did an interview.

Oh, he was on Mighty Mouse's podcast.

No sauna, no cold plunge, no stretching.

Doesn't do any of that.

Doesn't do any of that.

Just no warm-up.

Shows up.

I just show up, start the train.

Just shows up.

Shows up and fucking hits the gas.

He stays up till 1, 2 o'clock in the morning.

Just like his whole routine is totally contrary to everything that you've heard before.

And this is how he weight cuts.

I stopped eating.

He just stops eating.

He stops eating on Tuesday.

He just stops eating, stops drinking water, keeps working out.

The man's mind is a giant factor that I think a lot of people are looking at as cardio, which is an insane weapon.

Of course, yeah.

But the man's mind yeah the toughness the mental toughness that is Fort Knox yeah you ain't getting in there you ain't getting in there remember that time who was it he was mounted I forget who got him but he got him in a mounted guillotine and he didn't I think it might have been Ricky Simone and he or it was was it I don't know somebody else had him and he got out and then he won the fight but he was he was being choked unconscious for like two minutes yeah and he's like yeah and he's like kicking his legs and moving around he's like there's no quitting that guy fucking zero quit you have to put him out Zero quit.

And the Marlon Mariah's fight, he was basically out on his feet in the first round.

Yeah, yeah.

And just came back and stopped him.

He's a monster.

He's a beast.

He's a beast.

And he keeps getting better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, what a guy, you know, you feel like, oh, a guy like that is so good.

Look how good he is.

He's better than everybody.

No, no, no, no, no.

He's still getting better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's not done.

Yeah.

He's a project.

He's like, what can the human mind force the human body to do?

And how young is he now?

He's like 34, I believe.

So, which is in that lightweight class?

Yeah, it's a little bit more of a problem in the heavier weight classes, but I don't see anything.

Like you said, his mind is

a fucking steel trap.

But it's funny you say that because I don't really have structure either.

So, like I said, the weight cut I do, but that's because I came in with no understanding of weight cut.

And London shit was like, you do this.

You look so big from 170.

How the fuck did you do that?

How much are you cutting when you went to 170?

So, even like now, I'm massive now.

Yeah, you look like, let me guess, 220.

What do you weigh right now?

Yeah, it's about

215.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I was going to do it in KG.

So, yeah.

Right, okay.

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

We never adopted that.

So stupid.

It's a way better since.

But yeah, it's.

But I've never struggled to get down, though.

Because, again, I was just told, I guess it's ignorance as well, but I was just told to do these things.

And it's like, okay, you do it.

What is it?

When you start, like, say, you get a call from the UFC.

Eight weeks out.

Okay.

So you're not going to accept any two-week fights?

No.

You know.

Well, it depends on the fight.

And it depends where I, I'm always training.

But middleweight, maybe you would.

Middleweight, yeah.

Middleweight.

You have taken some short notice fights.

Yeah, yeah, for middleweight.

Which was the first one.

Was it the first one or the second one I did?

The last fight.

Maybe.

But I would take short-notice fights depending on where I am.

In training.

In training.

But even, I just like to have a rough idea, right?

Even right now, it's like trying to get, and I'm like, I'm bugging people because i've i'm i've come from a circuit where we fight weekends right every weekend we're somewhere and it keeps you sharp yeah and then this that's this is probably the most frustrating thing for me obviously started in the better tour and you're training all the time and then you have a fight and then you're training i'm just like and a lot of my fights i don't get take too much damage so i'm like i'm ready now like yeah give me a week off and I can come back.

And then it's months and months.

I'm like, who am I fighting?

Does this?

The problem is you're a hard sell yeah you know when people get a call

yeah

flat

dude like shit i'm gonna have to learn how to dance in six weeks

and that's the thing so i'm hearing that and i i assumed wrongly that when i get to the ufc that is gonna disperse everyone's gonna be gunning for me

like yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna show everybody that this guy is is is is a can like he only fought people that weren't his level yeah it just it's is still the same.

I think, and obviously, the more I fight, the less people are putting their hands up.

I think even Whitaker said, which I respect to be fair, he came out.

I don't even wait, somebody sent me something, but he had said, Yeah, would it be interesting that fight?

Yeah, he's just at this point in his career.

That's just a sat back waiting to happen.

Yeah, it's not.

And his style is very similar.

Exactly, yeah.

I'm a massive fan of his as well.

Like, I love his, obviously, he can tie in the wrestling way better, and just, yeah, I love his style.

I do too.

And and you've got to realize like that guy he's take he's been in it for a long time he had two fucking wars with Yoel Romero yeah when Yoel Romero was made out of metal yeah yeah yeah that guy's

he's still fighting still yeah yeah 48 years old fucking people up looking like he's 30.

Who wouldn't?

Bro, when he was in here, he came in the studio.

It was the m most amazing thing because Joey Diaz translated for him.

So it was him and Joey Diaz going back and forth and you know, Joey's Cuban as well, of course.

And so

when he was here, he had to be 230 pounds.

His neck starts at the top of his ears.

And one of the things that he said, man, he was talking about the Cuban system.

He goes, you have to be a machine.

Because he was talking about the system of like you get more food if you're at a higher caliber of athlete.

Just to get more food.

The athletes, yeah, man.

The athletes that are the lower caliber, they eat twice a day.

Yeah.

In his caliber, he's eaten three times a day.

He's like, so every day,

every day they're coming for you.

You have to be on my gene.

And I was like, oh, my God.

And you get to look in his eyes, man.

Bro, we are

soft in the fear.

Oh, we're so soft in the West.

We're so soft in the West.

What the hell is that?

I'm not a fan of communism.

I don't believe in it.

But damn, it creates a fucking peace.

Alexander Karelin.

I mean, I don't know if you get, there's two things that you don't get that with.

There's like substances

for sure taking place.

And then there's also

a regiment that they have, both the Cuban system and the Russian system, where they had figured out the balance between unbelievable hard work, but technical ability and recovery.

They didn't go meathead style.

In America, we went meathead style, and we burnt a lot of dudes out, but the dudes who survived were just the killers of the killers.

But they probably could have made more killers like the Russians did if they did it more technically.

It's the same.

So again, shoots, they've been, okay, they were the first MMA gym in the UK.

I think like 95, 97, 90.

I got a t-shirt.

I got a London Shoe Fighters t-shirt from 2003.

Yeah, crazy.

I couldn't find it.

I was going to look for it today, crazy.

So like I said, they've been around.

Yeah, I'm going to tell them.

I'm going to tell him.

They've been around a long time.

And obviously, they've fought.

with every i think they fought with every every major competition that's ever been out they've they've done boxing with the likes of David Hay, Derek Tejora now.

Even Dylan White did a kickboxing fight with them.

You know, myself, Lee Murray, John Hathaway.

Even like Carlos Ramola was the first Czech guy before Yuri to be in the UFC.

That was them guys.

They've done a lot, but they're the meathead style.

Yeah.

They are like...

Yeah, everybody will love.

Anything to produce Lee Murray.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, you got that guy in your gym.

that's the problem just the echoes of that guy's style will permeate through that gym for decades that guy's just an angry man

he was an angry man but at the same time you needed somebody like because my coaches are beasts like you needed that kind of militant force to be able to manage that and cope with that and that's what my coaches they are they like yeah they're people used to come to our gym and we're just like yeah who's ready and if you don't do it i'll do it myself that's one thing i always respected about them even with the machines that the fitness machines that we had to do the scores are crazy like i'll see people in other gyms posting their scores i'm like is that it and they're celebrating it and i'm like we're forced to do this

how is that but he'd push you but he'd also do it himself like he'd jump on a machine like whoom

versus clamber yes smoke it fight like five fights back to back and then running and this and that like and we're doing we have to do all of it because he's doing it and he's not doing it he hasn't got a a fight.

That's the way you lead, yeah.

And he left, especially with killers, exactly.

Yeah, that's the problem.

They demand respect, right?

And they have to know that you're real, exactly.

Yeah, otherwise, you're just some pontificator on the sidelines with a fucking clipboard.

Fuck off, bitch.

Which is more nowadays.

Like, I'm seeing a lot of like, uh, and to be fair, I'm a fan of a lot of these guys, like the fighting nerds.

And again, I'm hearing that they had, I forget, like a data analyst or something that's in, and he does like this, you know, he studies this, and I think that's cool.

Like, I feel like we

should have like add elements of these things as well.

But obviously, I've just grown up by this iron, sharps iron.

It does, it's undeniable.

Iron sharpens iron.

Yeah, and you know, there's outliers, there's a guy who will come out of a gym with nobody, and he's a monster.

There's just a few of those guys that exist in the world, but for the most part, like if you look at a gym like American Top Team, for example, look at how many animals have come out of that gym.

So many.

Pantosia, who I think does not get the credit he deserves.

I think Pantoja is one of the greatest ever.

Fucking guy's a monster.

When that Japanese cat came over from Ryzen, he just like, like, ragdolled him.

Like, he had no business.

And then the Kaikai France rematch, like, you see the difference between when they first fought and now the difference between like a dominant all-time world champion.

Yeah, yeah.

People, like, when he's on a card, like, people don't freak out.

I'm like, god damn it.

Just because he's 125 pounds.

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Get that shit out of your head.

You're watching one of the greatest ever.

But that's the thing.

It's the marketability of people.

This is what I knew I had to get right as well.

Yes.

And a lot of I say that to my teammates as well.

I'm like, do you know how you're going to market market yourself?

And I know, just, you know, if I beat people up, it's like it doesn't always just, unfortunately, it should, but it doesn't, that's not what's going to get you.

If I have to, as a

promotion

owner and the person managing everything, I'm either going to pick you that's beating everybody, but nobody cares about, or this guy that's, you know, pretty decent, but everyone's making noise about.

Gonna pick that guy.

So you need to be able to market yourself.

And I

knew that from the jump.

And this is before really social media was massive, massive is a thing.

But

I said to myself, okay, I need to look in how am I going to market myself?

Because we don't have that much time

on the mic.

The interviews at the time, I don't feel like people got the recognition.

People just cared about the fight.

They just wanted to watch the fight.

I didn't care what you said beforehand.

Unless you're arguing or shouting, you know, there's beef.

Unless you grab that mic and go crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've got to go crazy.

Chail Sunday was the first time.

Oh, he's the best.

Yeah, he was.

He figured it out before he's the best.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anderson Silva, you absolutely suck.

He's the best fighter.

But he's still got a bad body.

This is why he's on the mic now.

Yes, because it was

perfect.

Yeah, yeah.

It was perfect.

But there was balance for me.

For me, there's perfect balance.

Like, it wasn't too far.

It was exactly what you wanted.

Right.

Exactly what you need to market a fight and to promote himself.

Yes.

Yes, I agree with you.

But, well, yeah, again, it's weird, though, because I think authenticity is important when you do that as well though and Conor McGregor kind of is the next person for me that's kind of delivered that 100% He took it to a whole nother level a whole nother level every time this guy's on the mic He'll say one line and I'm like t-shirts easy

Jeremy Stevens is yelling at

You can't beat this guy.

I'm just like why did you even open your mouth bro?

It's so funny man.

It's so funny.

But you and you need to be able to do that like i before i even had my first fight i would i spent hours i was a big wwe fan

and i felt like the rock you know dwayne johnson for out of all of them was the best at marketing himself he had the the the crowd in the palm of his hands every word that he said and it was simple sayings And I was like, yeah, I studied it, I studied this.

I was like, okay,

okay,

and even like his stances, he'd come up, like jump on the ropes and put his hand up and just stand there.

just like look around.

You know what I mean?

Like he just, he just demanded eyes.

So again, I just came to, okay, what could I do?

So I was like, okay,

you know, venom, you know, the snake, I'd relate to a snake.

Okay, I was like, okay, yeah, let me, let me do this.

Okay, okay, okay, that's check.

I've got a stance that I can do.

Okay, I need a saying.

Okay, like, what can I say?

Because again, I used to listen to people on after fights and I didn't hear anything they said.

They're like, yeah,

I'm going to say I beat that guy.

And I'm like,

thank you for my sponsors.

Like,

who?

Who were your sponsors?

Didn't hear anything.

So I'm like, it has to be

like concise.

I have to say specific words.

And just, I write this stuff down.

But again, I speak to my team.

It's like, bro, what are you guys doing?

You need to do this kind of stuff and understand that this is a part of your game.

You've got five seconds after the fight on the mic.

If that,

what are you going to say?

What message is going to land?

What is going to make you memorable?

And I do things on my walk-ins as well.

I need people to remember.

They're watching 16 fights on the night.

Why do they remember me?

Yes, my style is exciting.

That's cool.

There's this weird guy.

He does some weird stuff with his arms, and that is quite cool.

But they're not going to remember my name.

I need other things to keep them coming back.

Oh, there's this guy in the Bwayans.

He stood above this guy, put his snake hand up.

And then, oh, that's the same guy that did the dance.

Because now you're getting it from different places.

That's the guy that threw the Pokéball.

Oh,

what's his name?

What's his name?

The more times you keep hitting them with different things,

the more times they're more likely to kind of really buy into you.

And I think this is why I was able to create a big enough brand before even touching the UFC.

Just because I paid attention to that.

You were one of the first guys to make a name for yourself in Bellator.

Because Bellator, it was hard to break out.

There were some wild fights in Bellator that never got recognized.

At all.

How about the Eddie Alvarez, Michael Chandler?

Beast, man.

Fucking crazy fights.

And I feel like those guys left a lot of who they are.

In there, yeah, unfortunately.

We got them kind of after them.

And Chandler's still remarkably durable, but that's just a discipline thing and a hard work thing.

Yeah, yeah.

I think he's just accustomed to, like you said, he's trained a certain way his whole life.

He's always going to have that kind of athleticism.

But he's, you know, 38 now.

I mean, it's like you can only.

I wished he had not been in Bellator.

Look, I'm all for competition.

I think competition is important.

I don't think there should be a monopoly in the MMA business.

I think it's bad for the athletes.

I love the fact that PFL overpays people.

Keep doing it.

I like it.

Give them a million dollars.

Everybody.

Get a million dollars.

Everybody gets a car.

I wish there was more organizations.

I hope one FC succeeds.

It does help.

That helped me as well, even in my negotiations.

Fucking everything.

However,

there's a caliber of athlete that I feel like should only be in the UFC.

And you're one of those guys.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

There's a caliber of athlete where, like, I want to see how good they really are.

You know, like some guy like Patchy Mitch.

Patchy Mix is a beast.

He's a bad motherfucker, but so's Mario Bautista.

Mario Bautista had the perfect game plan to fuck up his party.

But that dude, when he was in Bellator, was of that caliber.

I was like, I want to see him over here, man.

I personally, and obviously, because I've experienced it, for me,

the first time I got nervous in an MMA fight was my first fight.

In the UFC?

No,

ever.

And then after that,

I was like, oh, yeah, this is the same as when I was fighting in the kickboxing model.

I'm cool.

I didn't have any, I didn't get them nerves again.

The first time again since then was the first, no, sorry, weird enough, the second fight in the UFC against Ian Gary.

Now, the first fight, I don't know why, I just,

I don't know what it was, but I was quite relaxed.

And then the second fight, I was like, oh, it's something a reality hit me of like, oh, you're in the USC, the people are going to demand a certain thing from you.

And you've got a reputation of before of the knockouts, of the celebrations, of the walk-ins, of the this, of the that.

And then I just let that put weight on me.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

That's crazy that it was the second fight.

I can't even explain as to why it was the second fight and not the first one.

And then even the third fight, I still had that kind of, oh man, I'm not performing the way I want.

And I felt like I'm eager to impress.

And I never felt like that in Bellator.

But at the UFC, I'm like, I'm trying my best.

I literally have to sit.

Yeah, it's my best friend.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing.

Cage cameras, people.

Same thing.

Same thing.

But I just, the magnitude of it, I don't know.

I'm guessing.

It's what we all grew up with.

It's what everyone grows up with.

It's like, this is where, like I said, there was always question marks around my name even i was jump jump knees and this and that always question marks around my name still but then now i'm here it's like oh actually i can these guys can

respect me now actually respect me now because i'm here yes and then i was just like trying too hard trying too hard trying too hard the last fight was the first time i was like

You're back.

I'm back.

And this is why I was like, just keep getting me back in the cage because I swear to you,

I'm back to where I used to be and how I used to feel.

It's just an issue of getting guys that are willing to fight you that are of a certain caliber.

Exactly, exactly.

Because, you know, obviously, right now, you're pretty big, so for you to get down to 170 again would be a real problem.

Are you committed to 185 or are you

open either way?

I want 170.

I can see a clear pathway.

Even after my last fight, I messaged Hunter

and I literally, like,

look, oh, let me fight.

Um, it was Morales, yeah.

And I was like, look, another undefeated guy, perfect fight.

Like, he's a beast.

Like, i'm i'm ready let me take him then and i said what i could do after that is in like

december i think i said or

no march next year i was like yeah give me that for november like march next year

usually come back to the uk let me fight the winner of um leon edwards and and pratas

i was like another great fight there yeah and then you've got july card Obviously, everyone's going to put their hand up to be on that.

But I said, if you guys want me to be on that, again, I'll fight for whoever you want in that top range.

I don't care who it is.

Pick somebody.

I'll fight them and then I want a title shot.

Or you give me the title there.

But I'm like, I can see a clear path to what I want.

And it's just, everything seems slow, which I did.

Like I said, I didn't expect

coming to the UFC.

I felt like it was.

I think there's just too many athletes.

There is a lot.

I think they have on

contract more than 500.

Damn.

How many athletes does the UFC have under contract?

Throw that into.

But then also they're there.

I think, and obviously I'm managed by Paradigm

with Audi.

And he said he feels like the Paramount deal is they're having to integrate that now as well.

And I'm like, I didn't think about that.

But every time Bellator, because Bella talk kept getting new partnerships, it did slow things down a little bit.

Oh, yeah, that would make sense.

So, that doesn't start until January.

But obviously, they're sorting out contracts and things from now, and then they obviously have to try and align the shows.

And I'm guessing, obviously, I don't know, but I'm just saying it just feels even slower than before.

And I'm like,

that sucks.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm like, I just want to be back out there.

I don't care.

And this is why I'm happy to take 674.

Wow.

674 fighters under contract.

And they don't have fights every week.

They have fights almost every week, but not every week.

I mean, just think about that.

So you have 52 weeks, you have all these fighters, fighters want to fight multiple times in a year.

I appreciate that, but I'm MVP, man.

Let's go.

I am with you.

I'm with you.

I always say that I wish I was a matchmaker, but I don't.

Yeah.

Because it's the hardest job.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah.

I stuck to Joe Silva back in the day when he did it.

He fucking hated it.

Dealing with everybody and managers and people flake out.

Yeah.

Fail drug tests.

Like, goddamn it.

And these guys, you know, what they're doing right now is very difficult because what

Mick Maynard and Sean Shelby are dealing with is the volume is so much greater.

Yeah.

There's so and there's so many more really good guys.

Like in almost every division, like guys are coming in from the contender series.

That guy looks like a world championship caliber fighter.

Talented.

Talents off the charts right now.

And it's because they get to watch.

These are the kids that are growing up watching Anderson Silva.

They're growing up watching John Jones' first fight.

They're growing up watching the early Chuck Liddell fights.

It's

totally different.

When they're play fighting with their friends, they're in stances that look right.

They know what they're doing.

They know the names of every submission and this.

It's so true.

They're calf kicking each other in the fucking schoolyard.

It's a totally different world.

Very true.

And those kids are going to grow up, and that's going to be integrated into their neuromuscular system.

system.

Yep, yep.

Yeah.

And they're going to learn.

There's guys coming along that are like elite black belt level jiu-jitsu, elite stand-up, elite wrestling, takedown defense, cardio off the charts.

And they're 22.

And you're like, this is nuts.

Now it's just about whether you can compete, whether you can pull it off and keep your head together on fighting guys.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is, again, I think is something that people don't speak about enough.

Listen, it's...

Aaron Pico is as talented as they come, right?

That dude is a fucking vicious boxer, incredible wrestling, gold chip prospect from the very.

But Lerone Murphy is another guy.

I was saying before that, this is the guy that's not getting the credit he deserves.

Because you got all these loud killers at 145, but you got this one dude that does everything perfect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he's beaten everybody.

He's beaten everything.

And he doesn't take damage, and he's clever, and he's slick, and he does things, and every technique is perfect.

Absolutely.

And there's no fat on anything.

There's no wild winging punches.

Everything's tight and intelligent.

talented.

That spinning elbow was a work of art.

He just knew.

Aaron Pico's a trainer.

He's come bang!

That was a crazy.

But that's the difference between someone who can compete at the highest level.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And someone who's accustomed to it.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the knowing when to hit the gas and when not to.

Pico's just all gas, no breaks.

Yeah, go ahead.

Like you said, it's like similar to Michael Chandler again.

Yes.

Just like in that rage mode all the time.

All gas, no breaks.

Yeah.

You need to take your time.

But that's a wrestler thing, too.

They always want to break people.

because in wrestling, you can do that.

You have that mentality where you're constantly hitting the gas because you're not going to get knocked out with a flying knee.

True.

True, true.

It changes.

Yeah, because you get that.

That's how you compete.

You get this mindset of, I'm going to fucking dominate.

I know what I did in training for this.

My gas tank's off the charts.

My aggression's off the charts.

I'm a killer.

I'm going to dominate.

I'm moving forward.

I'm moving forward.

The problem is with a guy like Lerone is like, you think he's back.

Time, he's coming forward.

Oh,

that was amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The timing.

It was just like oh but pico even stepped right into the elbow it was ruthless it made it 10 times worse

ruthless yeah yeah and that's oh that's my thing the car crash effect when you create those collision so for a guy like lerone who's not a big marketing guy not a big like doesn't say wild shit on the microphone just steady professional does his job he needs to do that right he needs like this spectacular thing where all of a sudden everybody goes yeah he needs to fight alexander volkanovsky and And that looks like that's what's going to happen now because of that one performance.

Which is, I'm so happy for him.

He's a cool guy, man.

I'm so happy for him.

But this is why I tell people, if he had just a little bit, a little bit of chat, a little bit of show your personality or something.

Give me something help.

You have that.

No, but you know what it is?

I always say, like, everyone,

like,

Demetrius Johnson for me is

one of the greatest.

Of all time.

Of all time.

Of all time.

Another underappreciated guy.

Because of his size, yeah.

Yeah.

But

i feel like underappreciated because you can't market him in the exact same way as you'd market like a conor mcgregor or somebody else like that

but he's a gamer i'm like shed a light on there's a massive yeah massive community of gaming that industry is billion dollars deep market this guy because he's on he goes back home and he's just like yeah he's one of them he's one of those guys so but again we didn't see i don't feel like we saw any of that until afterwards when he was kind of like doing his own thing.

And now obviously doing a lot of his YouTube channel.

I'm happy.

I'm so happy that he's, you know, is getting ready.

It's kind of when he went to one that he started doing more of the gaming stuff online.

But no, he had been doing it, though.

He had been doing it and he had been doing it.

He was doing it.

Yeah, yeah.

But again, it's just more, I guess.

They didn't capitalize.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

I think certain people, you have to, like, what is your thing?

Not everybody is just the fighting.

They have things to kind of release, like wind down.

And, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Find that out.

He's killing everybody anyway.

So how how else can we market it?

Instead of being like, ah, can't market in this name.

He doesn't talk, he doesn't say anything.

There must be something there.

There has to be something else there we could look into.

Well,

it's interesting because some guys, their personality is no personality.

Like Pereira.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

His personality is stoneface.

Just stoneface, destroyer, death machine.

Here he comes, Amazon warrior, like literal, actual Amazon warrior.

Yeah.

Like, not a faker.

His fucking family comes from a tribe in the Amazon.

But then then that's what he markets, though.

Yeah.

I guess that's what they market.

But it wasn't.

He markets that.

He markets.

He works out.

That walkout.

Oh, yeah.

That's true.

Bro, I do it myself.

When he's walking out, I'm just waiting for him.

That's true.

And that's what I mean, though.

I mean, like, that's you.

He,

you're selling your story with just something so.

That's actually a very good point that I didn't even think of.

Yeah.

His walkout.

His walkout.

His walkout was investing the sport.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm trying to say.

Music.

Yeah.

Jungle music behind it.

You're just walk.

You got this Amazon warrior.

It's simple.

Everyone can relate to it.

Oh, yeah.

It's consistent.

So I'm always going to, oh, that's the guy.

And you see kids in the audience throw the one-two off.

They do it.

And like I said, because I'm a big wrestling fan, I see it's those moments that everybody will remember and everybody will do.

Right, when the stylebender came into The Undertaker.

Oh, beast.

But that's what I'm trying to say.

It's those kind of things that people just don't.

Yeah.

And I'm talking the fighters themselves.

Obviously, I feel like the UFC can do their bit as well, but technically, you're already on the platform that's going to show you to everybody.

So then it's your job to figure it out as well.

Another aspect of the game.

Yeah.

Like strength and conditioning, like all these different things.

Exactly.

Just think about it.

You're a professional.

Figure out how to market yourself.

Yeah.

You are the product.

The problem is, though, it does lead to like cringe moments.

Just tell everybody it's your personality.

And some guys try and it's like, yikes.

Shit.

You gotta take the risk

Because if it goes well it goes well.

Yeah, it goes well So like as you said about Alex Berg technically we wouldn't care if he walked out of that and got knocked out We wouldn't give a shit.

Yeah, but he's he's a killer.

Yeah.

That fight this weekend is very very interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

Because so here's the downside to fighting all the time.

Fighting all the time with your style is a very different thing because you take so little damage, which is another huge element.

Like I kind of would tell people that if you have a kid and your kid wants to learn martial arts and they want to eventually be an MMA fighter, I would say two things.

Number one, wrestling.

Take that kid and teach him how to wrestle because if you could just develop takedown defense and understanding of grappling, at least you have a base from the time you're real little.

Exactly.

That should be your base.

Because it's the most important aspect of the fight.

If you can't grapple, a guy can take you down and he can hold you down.

You can't do shit about it.

Number two, learn how how to point fight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Learn how to point fight.

Because

there's a different thing that you guys are doing.

People think of Billy Banks as Tybo.

You got to go back and watch Billy Blanks when he was a fucking karate wizard, dude.

Exactly.

He was a wizard.

And he was hitting people where you couldn't hit him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, all the old school guys were all like light on the feet, bladed style, and they had this leap-in ability that if you're used to a guy standing in front of, it's a giant problem, and you don't have the timing to solve it.

You could go two, three rounds deep before you start actually landing in it.

Exactly.

You can't do anything to them.

It's a giant problem.

And I would say you want to be the person giving the other person that problem.

Exactly.

Then you can learn all the other stuff, too.

Exactly.

Learn your boxing fundamentals and Muay Thai and knees and elbows.

But if they're nowhere near you and you can hit them, you can close that gap quick.

You have a blitz.

So, I mean, understanding that distance controls.

Yes.

And also the feints, the stutter steps.

Those things

change the game.

Yes.

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It's lost when people are plotting and just teeping each other in the stomach and kicking their legs.

But it's funny, people always used to go on about me and Wonder Boy Thompson fighting.

And I'd always say, like, it won't be as exciting as you think.

For us, like me and him, there'll be moments where we're bouncing and faking and we'll laugh at each other because we saw what would have happened if one of us went.

But the crowd's like, the fuck is going to fight.

The fuck are you guys doing?

Smiling at each other.

They don't get the fight that's going on

in that moment.

And I say people, it's not as exciting.

Two pluses don't always give you that plus.

Not always.

But you still want to see it.

Of course, people always want to see it.

It's also like fighting.

doesn't have to always be ultimate excitement.

You have to, like, that's why I say no stand-ups ever.

When a guy takes a guy down, that person on the bottom does not want to be on the bottom.

They want to be up.

If they can't get up, tough shit.

It's only five rounds.

Every fight starts, stands it up, which is a giant

advantage for a striker.

Because otherwise, they wouldn't be able to get themselves up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So none of that.

See, it's got to be pure.

It's got to be real.

You can't have like ways that a guy won only because the rules set it up for him to get to a better position.

I agree.

The only thing that I find slightly frustrating

in that element is

I don't mind the wrestling.

I think wrestling is a beautiful art and is, like you said, one of the most important arts to dictate where you want the fight to go.

But

if you're taking me down, try to kill me.

I agree.

Try to finish the fight.

Don't just take me down and just...

I agree.

I've had people like rubbing my legs and looking at the clock.

Here's the thing.

If they're not good enough to kill you.

Yeah.

Right?

What if they're good enough to take you down and hold you down, but then they just have to be real defensive afterwards?

And they'll throw a little pity pat.

I know.

I know.

That's the only element that I just.

But here's the thing.

They're not good enough to do more.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, but you must be, though.

Maybe not.

Uh-uh.

Maybe not.

Maybe only good enough, like you're so good and they're just good enough to hold you down.

But if they've reined up and started reins, and then you fucking framed off,

you got to half guard, you got back up to your feet, all of a sudden we're dealing with this shit again.

But if you just stay on top and don't take any chances, now you can't do shit.

Yeah, I agree.

It's just boring as fuck.

And it's not, for me, it's not even a boring element of it.

Like, I still enjoy that aspect.

If I was watching, I only enjoyed that aspect because I know what I'm looking at now.

Like, I'm like, oh, he's, he's got, okay, like, he's got the, he's grabbed his wrist there.

Okay, I can see what you're trying to work to.

Okay, no, you didn't get it.

Okay.

I can, I'm still in the fight.

Whereas some people, I guess, the people, if you don't get into grappling, you're not going to know what's happening other than they're just lying there.

So I get it for them but for me still it's just that the aim of this game is for me to beat you and i mean like take knock you out put you to sleep so i'm trying to show you that i am the stronger man as a warrior and that's not by holding you right that's not by holding you down holding you down to get you to position to land this elbow and hold you down to get position to land his butt yeah but just to

i completely agree however

even though i'm a fan of yours if a wrestler who had that boring style took you down and held you down for three rounds and won a decision, I'd be like, damn, he did it.

He did it because he can't do it any other way.

If he can't stand up with you, he's going to get fucked up.

And he can take you down anytime.

Why would he ever let you up?

And if losing position is dangerous, so if you're very explosive and you're very good at grappling, you're very good on the bottom, you've gotten submissions off the bottom.

If a guy reigns up and starts throwing shots, but he feels like his base is gone and he just wants to clinch and hold on and maintain position, and he maintains position with this kind of shit.

You know, you're on top, and he's doing this kind of shit.

Just little movements, like he's still getting away with that.

Yeah, he's still doing it.

Yeah, I agree.

I just.

Because that might be his only path.

Right, for you.

But the thing is, he's not good enough.

Yeah, yeah.

Where then you have guys like Khabib.

Khabib gets you down.

You're getting fucked up.

You're getting fucked up.

Everybody loved it.

Everybody loved it.

He's talking to you.

He's creating that space by still pinning you.

He's crushing your legs between these legs.

trying to choke

on you.

That I can appreciate all day, every day.

I can too, but some guys aren't good enough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're still fighting, yeah, yeah, right.

They're in there, like,

they're not good enough.

There's guys at a world-class level that are not going to be world champions, but they might be able to beat a guy who could be a world champion if they can do that thing.

Yeah, it just sucks.

I know, I know.

It's hard to class you as a world championship

fighter then.

I'll be a world championship.

I'm talking about Russell Hamzat, then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Drickus Duplic is a perfect example of that.

You gotta

elite grappler who dominated the fight

with very little damage.

Yeah, in when I dominated it to the point where you're in the worst position you could be in in MMA.

You're in a crucifix over and over again.

Every round.

Over and over again.

And you can't do shit about it.

You let him just...

You can't do shit about it.

But so do you think that is he's worried about

him exploding?

Because in my head, I'm like, the fight ends if I keep, if I elbow the shit out of you right now.

He was worried about the chaos and Drick is getting back to his feet.

And, you know, they wanted to just win.

This is the whole thing.

Because he came back to his corner, apparently.

And this is told to me secondhand, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

Yeah.

By a reliable source, that he was saying, can I box now?

I was like, no.

Okay.

No, you're not fucking boxing.

His team was like, take him down.

He can't.

Look, if you got that clear of a dominance,

that I still agree with, though, as the coach is saying, no, take him down.

But I'm saying, once you are in that position, smash.

Smash.

Your whole thing is smash.

Yeah.

Smash the shit out.

What the hell?

I think they just wanted that win no matter what.

You know what I mean?

Because it's like, it's such a big deal.

Hamzat finally got a shot at the title.

Like, just like, what is the clearest, most intelligent?

Like, if you're betting a billion dollars on this fight, what's the best way to victory?

Yeah.

Fucking just take him down.

Yeah, yeah.

You can take him down anytime you want to.

Hold him down.

Punch him a few times.

Make sure you're in dominant position so you're not going to get stood back up yeah if the referee starts talking to you and telling you to start

a little bit of this do a little bit that fake a submission don't throw all your gas into it you know do whatever the fuck you got to do but get that goddamn title yeah right

and then

then you know there's going to be some guys that he can't do that to yeah and that's where things get interesting yeah yeah but who would you say that is though because i he's that his wrestling style is just crazy yeah it's it's so brandon shaub had been to his training camp okay and he called me up.

He goes, He goes, Bro, we got to talk.

He goes, I just got back watching Hamzat Train.

He goes, I've never seen anything like that in my fucking life.

He's like, dude, but I'm telling you, he's mopping the floor with like Division One All-Americans, world-class grapplers, jujitsu black belts.

He goes, he's mopping the floor with people.

He goes, it's nuts.

Because they asked me if I wanted to spar with him.

Shaw goes, fuck you.

He's like,

fuck you.

I'm not going in there.

He goes, he was mauling people on the ground.

He goes, I've never seen anything like it.

He goes, it was crazy.

He goes, he's so high level.

Yeah.

I had the privilege of going to the gym

in Dubai and trained alongside him and saw it for myself.

And it's, yeah, I was like.

It's a shocking level of grappling.

Yeah.

And when you can achieve that shocking level of grappling on world-class MMA fighters, why wouldn't you do it?

This is, this is just my thing, my take on it.

Like, if you just want to win and make as much money as possible and keep doing that, I mean, you should finish, guys, whenever you can.

But if you don't think you can, and the path to victory is grappling, this is still a sport.

Yeah, fair.

If it wasn't a sport, there'd still be headbutts.

Yeah.

There'd still be a lot of people.

There'd still be stamps and stuff.

Yeah, stumps, soccer kicks, all the wild shit that used to be.

You'd still be able to wear shoes.

Who gives a fuck?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's a sport.

So if it's a sport, we've got some rules.

I just don't think, I don't think there's anything wrong with winning by the rules.

It's not my favorite style.

Fair, fair, fair, fair.

My favorite style is either a knockout artist or a submission artist.

I like a guy who just finishes everything.

Olivero when he was

in his prime.

In his prime, just kids.

Catching triangles and darces.

Oh my God, he was a monster.

He was so good.

Those guys, like, when you watch a guy who's like an elite world-class submission artist and the fight goes to the ground, it's just a totally different thing.

You know, you're in real, like Fabrizio Verdun, when he was in his prime, when he caught Fedor with that triangle.

Bro, that was catching Fedor with a triangle is crazy.

Just if you know how explosive that guy is and how fast he is and strong enough, what a great grappler he is.

But Fabrizio Verdum's another guy who doesn't get his due.

When you think about all-time goats, you think about Noguera, you think about Fedor, and you think about Minotaro.

And Fabrizio Verdum tapped them all.

He tapped all the greats.

Very true.

All of them.

Tapped them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tapped them.

All the greats.

Didn't just win by a decision.

Yeah, didn't just hold up.

Tapped Fedor when Fedor was Fedor.

People are like, whoa,

that's crazy.

Fador's a beast.

Bro, he was a monster.

Stoic warrior from Russia.

No expression.

And his earliest time.

That's the first of his time.

Oh, way ahead of his time.

That's the first of his time.

Way ahead of his time.

Ability to catch submissions off his back with lightning speed.

He had a lightning fast arm bar.

Yeah, yeah.

And power on the feet.

Yeah.

But he walked down Cro Cop.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Crazy.

With stand-up.

Yeah, Crocop's head kicks were insane.

Every kick.

Every kick.

But like Fedor was blocking them so intelligently, too.

He was using that high block with the knee way up like that to catch that left kick.

And they caught it shin to shin many times.

That was a crazy fight.

But Fedor in his prime was so good, man.

Because he was the first guy other than Minotaro.

Minotaro, but he was more dangerous on the feet than Minotaro.

But Minotaro on the ground was like one of the first guys, like super dangerous off his back.

Yeah, just super, super lethal guard.

Like when he beat Bob Sap,

that was the nuttiest fight in the history of MMA.

That was the nutty.

Bob Sap was 350 pounds with ass.

I was going to say he's kind of like your

Nganu nowadays.

But way bigger.

Way bigger, but not as skilled.

Yeah, no, no, different.

He's gotten, yeah, Francis' improvement because in his earlier stages, I was just like, yeah, he's got power, but he's technically like.

Francis basically beat Tyson Fury in a boxing match.

Crazy, right?

Basically beat him.

Because I scored it for him.

I scored it for him 100%.

They could not let that happen.

He dropped Tyson Fury with a left hook and then danced in front of him.

I mean,

that's skill.

I mean, he wasn't ready for Anthony Joshua because Anthony Joshua was a different thing.

Yeah.

He's got more one-shot knockout.

I know he likes to switch in.

But again, this is where the boxing is.

If you don't have that kind of intellect in the boxing, that footwork and foot positioning is put your foot on one side, you're going to get killed.

You're putting your foot on the other side.

Yeah.

You're safe.

You can kind of manage the power and see the punches coming.

But he kept switching stances, but just putting him and leaving himself in just the wrong positions.

Yeah, he wasn't ready.

Wasn't a guy like that.

He wasn't ready.

He wasn't ready.

There was a lot of hype off the Fury fight.

Also, Joshua got to watch him box in the Fury fight and see some patterns.

Fury, I think, probably took him lightly.

Yes, I think so.

It's one of the greatest of all time.

This guy's never had a boxing match.

At the beginning of the fight, he's like, time to go to school.

Like, oh, really?

And then he probably got stunned.

He just got stunned, and that was it.

He's now working.

You talk to any fighter, they will tell you the worst times of their life is when they thought that a guy was nothing.

Yeah.

And then in the middle of the fight, they realized, oh my God, I'm losing.

They took a guy lightly and they didn't get up for the fight.

And then they went in there and that dude was fired up and ready to go.

But that's saying you can't take anybody lightly, though.

No.

Mike Tyson, Buster Douglas, another perfect.

Yeah, yeah, 100% now.

No one.

This guy was partying every day.

Yeah.

Exactly.

He did not take it seriously.

He did not take it seriously at all.

He got the big respect for Buster Douglas on that one, though.

Oh, my God.

It was one of the greatest performances of any heavyweight title fight ever.

To want to walk in and do that as well.

The fact that that guy could do that the whole time, but only did it against Mike Tyson is nuts.

nuts because he was one of those guys and we all know them that is super talented and just never realizes their full potential like gym you know guys in the gym they're like you'd see him sparring i talk about this all the time like i've had so many people obviously i've got to see over the years that are talented and again it's the same thing but can you do it when it counts right can you do it when the lights are on can you do it when there's pressure and it means something to your you your friends your family money yeah can you still do it yeah that's when it counts but i've seen guys that are there's a guy

actually,

and I always talk about him just because he was super unique.

And weirdly enough, he got to the UFC for on a short stint, Galore Buffondo.

I don't know if you ever remember him.

He only had two fights, but he fought Charlie Ward, and I call it Hadouken.

He just grabbed him and threw his head into the floor.

Oh,

and it was a KO.

And I don't know.

He actually never got the bonus for that.

I don't know how he didn't because I've never seen anybody just throw someone's head down.

You need to watch it.

Oh,

but

look, boom, there you go.

And if you, if you keep it going and you see how he finishes, look, he's like,

wow,

that dude landed hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That dude landed hard.

And if you see the finish, look at this is how athletic this guy was.

Just watch.

Light work.

Just landed, just landing a little

spider stance.

Yeah, perfect landing.

Now, I had to deal with this every day.

Yeah.

And that was nothing.

He's super explosive, but again, he's a striker, very weird striker.

Like, kicks, he's kicks are like his hands.

He can

for ages, yeah.

I was sparring him one time, and me and him, like, I'm the guy with him.

When he steps in, my eyes do this, and I'm like, okay, I have to make sure I'm because a kick will come from anywhere.

And we're sparring and going back, going back and forth.

And

I'm in my element, and

everything slows down for me.

And I see his head drop down.

And alarm bells are going off.

And I'm like,

he doesn't shoot.

He doesn't go for takedowns.

But I'm feeling alarm bells going on.

I'm like, something's gone wrong.

I don't know why.

This felt this slow.

Something is wrong.

And I've never done this block in my life.

And I went like this.

X block.

I've never done this in my life.

Never been taught this.

But my body said, throw your hands.

He did that and did a cartwheel kick.

Front flip.

Oh, geez.

Yeah.

Landed on his foot and axe kicked me.

If I didn't do that, I'd be sitting here in two right now talking to you about the story that I once used to do MMA and this guy split me in half.

He and he's front flip axe.

He's done a front flip axe kick.

On his Instagram, I don't know if you'll find it, but on his Instagram, there's clips of him doing it on a bag.

And he literally flips, lands on his foot, bah, hits the bag, and he's just standing.

But he did it.

I've blocked it.

Now, even that alone, because I've now blocked it, you should fall off balance.

He took his foot off and carried on sparring.

Everyone in the gym was like, What the fuck was that?

What the hell was that?

I never even thought anyone could do that.

He's another person that in the cage.

He never showed this stuff.

I've seen him, someone on a single leg, and he's run up the cage and slipped up the single leg and kicked off the cage and landed behind the person.

I always, when I talk about this, it sounds like I'm exaggerating.

He used to do stuff that I've never, it's only in games.

And this is why everyone's like.

I've never seen him do that flip.

I believe every word you're saying.

He's because that was crazy.

The landing was crazy.

Yeah, like it was, like,

doof.

Yeah.

No, he landed softly on one knee.

Yeah.

He

was insane, but just never showed it wow never retired yeah he's like he's just he teaches and stuff now but he just

and it's a shame man he was a fun character uh like i said an amazing person to train with because he made me better because he's and he's got the few people that in the gym that could actually kick me in the head and wow

and catch me because i usually i'm i'm good at seeing i've got good eyes and he's just yeah it was just something else it's crazy that you knew it like you had intuition i don't know what happened

but something said if you don't do this you're going to die today.

Wow.

Wow.

It's crazy that you've recognized that of all movements.

Yeah.

But again,

because he never shoots.

He's a striker.

He'll sprawl and then start doing his jiu-jitsu from there.

Never really shoots.

And he just went like this.

And I'm like, what's going on here?

I don't feel like sprawling.

Something's wrong, but I don't feel like sprawling.

Oh, here you go.

Here you go.

Oh, my God.

He does one.

He does one and he lands.

He does one one and he lands it.

That's crazy.

Boom.

That is so crazy.

Imagine doing that during a sparring.

It doesn't make sense.

And I'm talking, he's hitting the bag.

Boom.

Look.

That's crazy.

And I tell people, people feel like,

you're talking rubbish.

You can hear that.

If that hit me,

that is so wild.

And I wish he was able to show this stuff.

The explosion you have to have to pull that off.

The amount of force you generate.

Yeah.

And who would see that coming?

I still don't, to this day, know how I saw it coming, but

if he did that.

And again, he goes into

he went into these fights and he would, it would be relatively basic.

He wouldn't show all of this kind of stuff.

So he would tighten up in fights.

Yeah, he'd just tighten up a little bit.

He just wouldn't express himself in the same way.

Did anybody at that time work with with like a mental coach?

No, not.

I wouldn't from our gym.

The only person I

know did it from our gym was actually Alex Reed.

And but he is a weird character anyway.

Funny guy, lovely guy.

But he used to have like therapists come and do this kind of stuff.

And at the time, I feel like I didn't care for it because he just made it seem lame.

It's just because it was from him.

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I understand more so as over my time the importance of the mental aspect of things as well.

Maybe

if someone could explain to him or if you could have a conversation about what goes wrong when he competes.

Yeah.

Like what are the thought processes when he competes and what could be done different to change that thought, like to combat them when those thoughts come up.

Yeah.

To have a tool.

Yeah.

Have a mental toolbox where you go, no, no, no.

We're not going to entertain this kind of negativity.

We're going to stay positive.

We're going to stay zen.

You know, the most important things, don't ever give in to anxiety.

Don't let it get to you.

Don't let it follow you.

You're positive.

You're breathing.

You're moving.

You're a killer.

Keep moving.

And just have someone with him maybe initially to coach him through those movements.

I wish there was some, again, but again, also, maybe the...

The gym that he's in with us at London Shoot,

that's not a thing.

We beasts.

And the thing is,

he still look amazing up into the fight.

He'd get to the fight, and you'd be like, bro, I can't wait for people to see this.

And he'd get there and you're like, what are you doing, man?

And it was just, it was frustrating because

he was still super talented.

He still, you know, he won one.

I think he lost the next one.

And then that was it.

But even his previous fights before that, he's got some exceptional fights.

But just...

Not what he's capable of doing.

I've never seen what I've seen in the gym

on stage.

Wow.

Never seen.

And he still got signed to the UFC just because he was still talented.

But, and obviously, somebody saw his talent and was like, yeah, I want that.

But

nobody's ever seen what I've seen this guy do.

And all of our teammates are like,

oh, if you have seen that, this,

everybody would be throwing money at this guy.

Just make sure he's on the next class.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It's really crazy.

Yeah.

Because it seems to be like that in almost every sport.

Yeah.

But in fighting in particular.

Yeah.

Because it's the biggest mental hurdle.

You know, there's no team to fall back on.

There's no, I guess we lost tonight, boys.

No, you got fucked up in front of the whole world.

And that's the sport that you're in.

You're in the sport with the highest highs and the lowest lows.

So that pressure is just, it's unexplainable to the average person.

Yeah, you can't explain it, really.

This is why I try my best to

focus on the element of fun.

Because I feel like when I'm in, when I'm dancing, smiling, laughing, joking, everything slows down and everything's enjoyable.

There's no stress.

And anytime I feel slightly stressed, you might see me dance, which is interesting because people just think I'm just doing it for the other person, to mock the other person.

And sometimes it's just, just stay chill, man.

You're here.

You're here.

Like, you don't need to do anything more than this.

Right.

If I feel like a little bit like, oh, that was a bit, and my mind starts going, no, no, no, no, no.

Let's shake it off.

get into this get into your mode again and then go back to enjoying yourself that's my but i know some people need to be in this angry state and just you know psych themselves into it and i don't even need to be angry at my opponent and i think that comes from the fact that i used to have to fight my siblings right it's never it's not based on anger right i love them like but my dad is he used to say like yeah that's not your sibling on the map but straight afterwards make sure you pick that person up make sure they're good

and again my brother would beat me up my other brother beat me up my sister would beat me up

everybody but i still had love for them so i don't i've never needed anger to thing and and the fact that my family did this thing and even my nephews and stuff now we still they still it's generational just something that keeps us all together and we're so close

it's not based on being angry just based on learning something enjoying something and doing it with people that you love

so i can that because that's why i can make it fun everyone everyone loves this whole like tense.

And I don't.

I think what a lot of people don't understand too is the hardest part of it is the day of the fight.

It's not the fight.

Once a fight starts happening,

you're there.

You're in it.

And it's not scary.

Yeah, yeah.

Unless you're, you know, unless you're getting fucked up.

You know, when you're getting fucked up and you know like the end is near,

there's like, like, you want to see ultimate bravery.

Khalil Roundtree in the last round with Pereira.

Yeah.

When Pereira's putting it on him, That's ultimate bravery because he knows he's getting fucked up.

He knows he doesn't have much time.

There's nowhere out.

His skill set is all in stand-up.

I mean, he can take guys to the ground, but at this point, that's not going to happen.

It's not happening.

And his face is broken up.

And Pereira is doing that Cobra thing where he gets Cobra style.

And he leans back and slams in.

Oh, it was terrifying.

But

that kind of bravery in front of the whole world.

A lot of people, they're not sure if they have that.

Yeah, fair.

And so there's just the pressure of that in front of the the whole world.

Like maybe, like, they're in there.

It's like, just do enough.

Just do enough.

Exactly.

They're scared.

Which shrinks you.

And sometimes super-duper talented people are the most scared because it kind of came too easy for them.

There's a thing about super-duper talented people that for some reason, like that gift comes with a curse.

And that curse is that it came to you too easily.

So you never really developed

the real will and drive to like overcome, just make these little tiny wins every day to pile onto a skill set.

You're just a lightning bolt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, you're a lightning bolt.

And then, you know, when it's time to actually fight, you're like, you don't know if you've been tested.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't know who you are yet.

Yeah, yeah.

I think I get that a lot, though.

As in, like, people are always like, he's just naturally talented.

And only when I tell people that, I used to get my ass handed to me.

But this is the thing that I've always said.

Guys who grow up with brothers, especially older brothers who can kick their ass, they're ready to fight at all times.

Because they're fighting fighting in their fucking house.

They're ready to fight with guys who can beat them up their whole life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just that alone sets you up for competition in a different way than someone like, I grew up with my sister.

We didn't fight.

It's like, nobody beat me up at all.

It's totally different.

Because you're accustomed to being around hostile males who are dominating you.

Was it older or younger, though?

Younger sister.

Okay, yeah, because my older sister would still beat me out.

My sister never got into martial arts.

I was the only one in the family got into it.

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

But if I did, if I grew up with a bunch of brothers, I'm sure we'd be beating the fuck out of each other.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, weird enough, we had to do it.

That's one thing again.

You'd always say, you can't, no, this is not for out here.

This is for in there.

If you've got an issue, you verbalize it.

And if you still have an issue, we can sort it out.

It's in there.

But yeah, I'd be annoyed at that.

We'd have fights every now and again, but nothing crazy.

But it's just the accustom, being accustomed

to just a constant back and forth.

How about fuck you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like it's in your house.

It's in your house.

And

I was the wind-up.

Oh, yeah.

But I couldn't fight, so I had to do it some other way.

I just had to take some shit.

Yeah, take some shit.

You also have to be a little tougher because you're the smaller one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's part of the thing.

What's crazy about John Jones is his brother.

He's got two older brothers, no?

Well, I think one of them is younger.

Isn't Chandler younger?

But they're all beasts.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

So you're growing in a house.

You're a hostile, no?

Yeah.

So So you're growing up in a house of beasts.

Like,

you better be ready for some hostility.

You got to be ready for some aggression.

And

there's a giant benefit of that

as far as mindset.

Because the mindset, you're accustomed to hostility.

I mean, all his brothers are super freaks.

Just giant athletes.

And so,

you know, he's in this house with highly competitive males his whole life.

So you're totally accustomed to competition.

Whereas with some people, competition is like super overwhelming.

And it's a test you don't want to take.

You almost don't want to find out if you're good enough.

I think school, even the school system has like, they slowly, over the years, they've slowly taken out certain things that allows, challenges people in a way that gives them that gift of being competitive.

And especially in the UK, I don't, I'm not sure about in the States, but in the UK,

they changed the rules, this was just after I would have left, to

not allow to pick teams because you know because then people feel bad if they get picked last.

I'm like, if you're shit, I'm not picking you, get better.

This is real life, like that's how it works in real life, and that bad feeling of getting picked last.

Yeah, Lionel Ritchie was talking about that yesterday.

Oh, seriously, yes, so Lionel Richie, before he was in a band, it was always like he was the last one to get picked for this, he was the last one.

He was talking about that openly.

But look, that's what created Lionel Ritchie.

100%, yeah.

And again, I think we, or again, over there, not sure here, but we model Molly Coddle, like

the kids.

And then they think that

you surround them in cotton wool.

Yep.

And then the real life hits them and they're just like, it's the opposite of Yoel Romero.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

You've been kidding my change.

It's the opposite.

It's the opposite.

I think I was talking to my brother as well earlier about how they say, was it?

I forget the saying.

It's like tough men create good times, good times, and the whole cycle of that.

And it's,

I thought, it's very true, though.

We're creating too much good times for people.

and everybody's complaining about everything.

Exactly.

When things are really good, the problem is whatever is bad, even mildly, becomes a giant thing.

Then you're dealing with like microaggressions at work.

People get crazy.

They look for all kinds of grievances everywhere they go.

When you are involved in hard competition, you're not interested in any of that stuff at all.

Because it's just a giant distraction.

The real thing is so difficult.

And that's why I think, even though it's uncomfortable for kids, kids, I think like wrestling in high school, any kind of competitive sports in high school, martial arts, especially.

I've been absolutely

valuable for you.

For ages, I've been saying this.

It's okay to lose.

It's okay to lose.

It's actually good for you.

Very good for you.

And you need to learn this kind of stuff.

Like I said,

as soon as they're out of your care, they have to experience that anyway.

You can't, you're not.

And I used to do this even in when I was teaching.

We're teaching a jab or something, teaching a jab, and we're doing slipping drills.

And you're jabbing like this.

I was like, you're not helping anybody by jabbing away from their face because now this guy thinks he's amazing at slipping punches.

Right.

And then we make him spot and he's like, do,

do,

do,

do,

fuck, move your fucking head.

I'm doing what I usually do.

So I'm like, it's better that you hit him in the gym.

So then when they go out into the real world or they go into a competition and whatever, they can actually, they're actually good at these drills that I'm giving you.

You're not helping by trying to be helpful.

Yes.

You don't have to hit hard, but be accurate.

Yes.

Get them used to it.

And then slowly speed up.

Yeah.

And,

bro, I say this all the time, but it's exactly the same thing.

People need to go through those actual trials and tribulations in certain areas so that they can be ready for it later on.

100%.

And this idea of protecting them and

everybody gets a participation trophy.

Yeah.

That's so bad for it's that feeling of bad from losing is beneficial.

It's just like the feeling of being tired after you work out.

That's how you get in shape.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's all good for you.

Exactly.

It's all good for you.

You're getting into emotional shape.

But this is why I feel a lot of people are trying to take shortcuts for everything.

Nobody really wants to do

the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nobody wants to do the

hard work.

And I get it

if it's really excessive.

You let you get to a certain point.

And it's like, okay, you need to at least some help to get to a certain point to then work out.

But you need to work.

You need to work.

And it's good for your brain.

Your brain is, we have, for whatever reason, a whole series of human reward systems that are built into our brains from the times that we were all living in tribes thousands and thousands of years ago.

And in this brain, it requires tasks.

There's things, it's like enforced in your brain that if you go out and you make arrowheads and you hunt the deer, you have food.

Your family survives.

So you have tasks.

So they're whittling the stick and you're into it.

And you better be fucking into it.

Because if you're not into it, you're not going to eat.

So if you have a life where there's none of those things.

And you're sitting there in front of Netflix.

Of course you're depressed.

Of course you're depressed.

Your body's not getting any of the stuff that it needs.

Your mind isn't getting any of the tasks that it needs.

Someone was telling me that it's the reptilian mind set that looks for dangers and seeks dangers because we're not in a society that has those dangers.

We look at danger.

Our dangers are now, this person looked at me funny.

Or this this person like or you're even worse your phone your phone.

Yeah, it's even it's even easier now.

Yeah, people are commenting on

the first time this was still early

So

like my comments were from YouTube initially.

I had an Instagram I didn't really use it like that So after my first fight, I was super pumped.

I'm like because like I said to you, I was so nervous after my first fight.

And I always say, I always say, look, if you watch all of my walkouts have been like yeah vibes yeah yeah I'm just happy to be here my first fight

I was like this

I was dying inside Joe just like what in my head literally I was like why did I decide to do this

why am I here but what

I was stressed the whole walk was the most the longest walk and you've never seen me so tense and then the second I got in there and the bell rang I was like like, oh, yeah, same thing.

Okay.

Then I started to feel myself and, you know, the vibe, like my energy started, like the MVP that we obviously come to know now came out.

And that was, for me, that was just like, that was great.

But in terms of,

I just lost where I was going.

You lost what you're talking about?

Yeah, yeah.

No worries.

It happens all the time.

So, but that was interesting that then the second fight was the one that really overwhelmed you.

That was in the second fight in the UFC that overwhelmed me.

So the first fight you ever had was when you walked out?

That was when I walked out.

The first fight you ever had.

So that was me against me versus

me versus Dishman.

And I just walked out, and seriously, I just had nothing but fear inside me.

And what kind of athlete was he?

What did he do?

I'm not sure.

He's a kickboxer or something.

Didn't see him.

He was first fight.

I had like, I think three pullouts before

I got to that fight like probably like the three weeks before three different people and at the at that level it happens all the time yeah and I had fights online so my coach was like can you are you able to take these down I'm like they're randomly filmed from so many random people Yeah, so like, I wouldn't even know how to, where to begin to find out to try and get them taken down.

So I just, if anybody did research, they would see that I've got I had like a 720 kick,

so it made sense why people was pulling out for people that don't understand what that means.

That's not a 360, 360-degree kick.

This is one of them.

This wasn't even the first time I did it.

Where is it?

Yes, it's a coming up.

It'll be after this.

I'll

be forever.

Okay, yeah.

Okay, it's gonna be, yeah, I said just before this, just before this,

that's crazy.

That's such a crazy kick.

That dude is sitting there going, How the fuck did he get me with that?

He put his hands on his knees and everything.

Like, how the fuck did he pull that off?

So I understand why, like, people would look at that and be like, no, no,

yeah.

But this guy stepped in

and yeah, like, I just, I felt so bad negative going forward walking in but then once I was in there but yeah if you see the walkout

but even even how I'm even here I'm super tense

like it was only until I started bouncing that it was even a thing

What was the thing that was bothering you the most about doing this?

Just

my decision like why did I do this?

I don't know specifically.

Oh, but once you got losing.

Once I got in there, I was like, oh, cool.

He had an obvious game.

Yeah, yeah.

He was trying to take me down.

Yeah.

He wasn't strong.

So I was just like, yeah, just push off.

Like, felt, I was feeling good.

And I think after he felt my strength, he was like, okay.

He kind of stood back.

That style is such a problem.

It's such a problem.

I'm watching you move here and I'm thinking like, what do you do?

Oh, you can't do anything.

You can't do anything because he's so far away from you.

And you like that when you try to close a distance on him, and or when rather he tries to close a distance on you, and he just can't.

He just can't get close.

Like, look at that.

That's just nuts.

That's a terrible puzzle to try to solve in real life.

Yeah.

Wow, look at that dive.

That's pretty good, though.

You got to hold your ankle.

I mean,

that's that shows you how much you wanted that takedown.

Yep.

Until this happens.

Oh, boy.

The best part is just the standing there.

That's amazing.

Look at this.

It's amazing.

That's amazing.

That's the best not walk-off KO ever, right?

That's a standoff KO.

Like, you realize, that's crazy.

You didn't even look at him.

That's amazing.

It was funny when I stared at him.

It's funny when I, when people asked me, like, why did you stand there?

Like, what if he came back?

I was like, I landed the kick and I stood still.

And I was thinking he might come back.

So I couldn't spin the other way and land another kick.

That was, that was the game.

And then when he just, the referee stepped in, I was like, perfect.

Yeah.

This looks good.

This looks good.

It did look good.

It looks good.

That's the thing.

I went, okay, that's where I remember I was going.

I went crazy viral for that.

Everyone's like, who's this guy?

And I was, I was like, because of the relief that I had, because of how tense I was, I was like, oh my God, like that was, for me, ticking the box that I can actually do this.

I can actually make a career of this because I wasn't sure.

And got home where did you jump online like I want to I want to see like I'm seeing a video like crazy thousands of like

comments and this and that like

okay yeah maybe the next comment

maybe the next one nope

yeah people don't like me

they didn't like you for that video I felt like I had murdered someone's child for that video yeah okay that just just shows you why you shouldn't read comments no 100% because you're only getting the opinions of the dumbest motherfuckers alive.

If you just saw that.

So let me tell you my thought when I saw that, because when that clip went viral, I went, finally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, this is proof of what I've been saying for a long time.

They have a different thing.

Like, the really elite point fighters have a totally different thing, and you can't even get close to hitting them.

And we're seeing that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was the beginning of it.

Yeah.

Because even though Raymond had really good success in Glory.

Yeah.

He was amazing.

He did a great success in Glory, glory but it was different right because you're in a small ring it's roped off and he wasn't accustomed to leg kicks yet it was he had a he had what that one spectacular jumping sidekick spin back kick to the face oh he he nearly hit me he needed to hit me with one of those he he was very famous for his double back kicks oh my god and then every now and again he would hook it and it was just like he's he's not people out in the points game for it everyone's seen it like and i remember the i think it was the first time i fought him and i was young but i I had a reputation.

He's the he was the guy like over in America that had a reputation.

And you know what he's we've collided.

I was like, I don't care who this guy is, man.

I'm just, I was feeling myself.

I was killing everybody for ages.

I remember faking, like, moving, moving, moving around, moving around, faking, faking, got him in the corner.

I was like, oh, perfect.

Boom, blitz.

Same thing.

I was like, something's off.

Boom.

Did this.

Bah, bah.

But both, normally the first kick is light.

Both stamps.

I was like, shit.

Not only was that fast, but that was powerful as well.

And that just got into my head.

This threw me, threw me right off.

I didn't want to commit to any of my strikes.

And it just, it just from the first, from the first moment he let that go, I was just like, yeah.

He was very dangerous.

Dangerous.

Very dangerous.

Dangerous, dangerous.

And he was another guy that, like, you know, proved that point that this is a completely different skill set.

And if you don't know how to deal with that, you're in real.

They took the elite guys, took like the Nikki Holtzkins and the Joseph Valdolini's, those guys to figures.

Nikki was a beast.

Yeah, just chopped the legs.

Yeah, and Nikki was so technical.

Yeah.

He was tight, hands up.

I chopped the leg.

He was a beast.

Yeah, chopping the legs, man, is a totally different ballgame.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As soon as the legs start getting chopped, you're like, it's hard, you can't bounce anymore.

But that's the thing, it's weird because I started to utilize that as a way to

win fights with not obviously taking the leg kicks, but only giving you that option.

So everyone's like, yeah, but that's an awkward style.

I was like, yeah, but when I stand in front of you like that, you don't think to do a punch because I feel way too far away.

So you're not doing a punch.

The only thing you have is what's in front of you is a kick.

So it's like, I got used to timing kicks as you're kicking, collision.

going in or just just pulling just off and then putting my foot in slightly deeper and then just pulling off and put my foot in slightly deeper.

And now I know I can pull this trigger when I'm ready.

And you're getting more and more demoralized because you're not landing.

You're throwing the kick.

You're swinging around.

And there's only one thing available.

And there's only one thing available.

So I have to keep pressing that same button.

Right.

And the idea of you shooting on.

It feels far.

Yeah, too far.

It feels very far.

But that's...

the Hamzat thing.

It's like Hamzat shoots from the middle of the fucking octagon.

That guy's got a crazy shot.

That shot he hit Whitaker with and the one he went with,

who is it?

Oh, the leech.

When he picked up the leech, he picked him up, carried him over to Dana White.

And it's like, I kill everybody.

Like, whoa, this is nuts.

He was another guy.

They're like, how the fuck are you making 170?

Yeah, yeah, he's a big, he's a big boy.

When I first met him, I was like, what are you talking about?

170?

Yeah, big boy.

I fucking hate the weight cutting.

I hate it.

I hate it with a passion.

I hate it more than anything in the sport.

I think it should be eliminated, but it's too late.

I think people should get down to a healthy weight and fight for the healthiest weight, whatever the hell that is.

Do you think there would be a way to combat that?

Not as much.

Because overseas in boxing, they got the, you have to weigh in multiple times now.

Well, some fighters make you do that.

Like Javante Davis, he made Ryan Garcia do that.

He wanted to make sure that Ryan Garcia didn't rehydrate.

Yeah, yeah.

Mayweather did that to Canelo, too.

It's just a G move.

It's a small.

That's when you're the A side.

You're the smaller, you're the A side.

You're like, yeah, yeah, I'll fight you, but you've got to wait 143 when you get in that fucking ring, bitch.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guys will take that fight for that, you know, big paycheck, but it's not a good move.

Yeah, yeah.

But I just think that it's legalized cheating.

I just think that it's cheating.

You're not, look, if you're 155-pound champion, but you weigh 190 pounds, that's kind of crazy.

That's kind of crazy.

I agree.

And if I didn't have to wait cut, because if you don't join in, you're fighting monsters.

That's true, but they would have to fight monsters too.

Everybody would have to fight a person that weighs what they actually weigh.

No, I agree with that, but I'm just saying with the fact that people are weight cutting.

Yes.

When I got to this arena, I'd prefer to just for

what I weighed at.

Yes.

But because everyone's weight cutting, I was like, you have to.

You have to.

You have to.

You have to do it.

Because you'll look.

Like

when you are fighting at 170, for people that understand, I'm short.

That's 30 pounds less than me.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

Like, that's just a giant advantage that you can't give up.

And when you're doing that across every single weight class and every single world championship, the last guy that I know that didn't cut weight was Frankie Edgar when he was 155 pound champ.

When Frankie Edgar was a 155 pound champ, he weighed 155 and he moved like a ghost.

He was all over the place.

He was fast as fuck.

He had great endurance.

His recovery was incredible because he could take a great shot because he wasn't dehydrated like everybody else was.

That's the thing.

I actually feel great at middleweight.

Yeah.

You definitely have the size for it.

Yeah, I'm naturally that way, but it's weird though, because people's body types, because they are cutting, they're still slightly stocky, not necessarily as frame-wise as big as me, but they're just slightly stockier.

And obviously, as you say, the guys that will want to come in and just go, Yeah, they just want to clinch and get you, yeah, it's a giant advantage.

It's an advantage if they're going to be that much heavier than me as well, moving people.

Like, even when

in my last fight

when I got taken down in the in that in the last round,

trying to uh against catton air trying to move him i was just like geez this canner's huge he's a big this is a big boy well he's one of the only guys that's got kos in three different mid classes from heavyweight heavyweight light heavyweight and middleweight yeah beast he's huge for 185 that but it's another perfect example and i think look there's something to be said for the ritual of doing it for a lot of fighters it means a lot and you could choose to cut less so that you're more healthy the day of the fight but everyone kind of concedes you have to cut something yeah yeah And I just don't think that's smart 24 hours before a fight in a cage.

Why would you deplete your body purposely?

Because it's basically like getting drunk.

It really is.

Like you're dehydrating the shit out of your body.

Seeing people just look a mess.

And you only have three,

five, 40 hours to rehydrate between the weigh-ins and the time you're actually going to fight.

If you're lucky, you have 40 hours.

That's not enough time.

Yeah, I can do it.

I don't care to do it.

I can do it.

I just, I agree with you.

you.

And I just, it would be if everybody, if everybody was like, okay, let's all just do it our weights.

Well, imagine if people did dehydrate and rehydrate it, and we started calling it cheating.

You know what I mean?

I mean, it would be if people got caught and they looked at it the same way people look at people getting caught with steroids.

Fair, fair, fair.

Because

the reality is right now, you can't do it because of the weight class limitations.

There's too many weight classes where like where you're at.

So 85 to 205, that's nuts.

That's 20 pounds.

That's so

And for maybe people who have never grappled, they don't know what that means or never been punched.

They don't know what that means.

But that's a giant amount of fucking horsepower and gravity on top of you.

And so

if you've got weight classes at a reasonable

space, like I feel like 10 pounds is good.

I feel like every 10 pounds, you get 45, 55, 65, 75.

And if you're in between, you either add muscle or you lose weight.

You'll stop lifting as as much weights and do more cardio.

You'll get down to that right.

Yeah, not that.

But that's what you are, what you actually are.

And if we did that,

there would have to be some sort of a hydration thing where they just show up and weigh you.

Like, you know, like people show up and drug testing.

Drug testing, like drug-free sport.

They'll just knock on your door.

Hey, Venom, what's up?

Can you DNS?

Let's talk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That makes sense to me.

Yeah, just show up.

What do you weigh?

Get on the scale.

And then you get on the scale.

190.

Bro, you're a banner weight.

This This is crazy.

Because there's dudes that are out there doing that.

Oh, I know.

100%.

We always talk about Glayson T-Bow.

When Glason T-Bow was 155 pounders, he looked like a bodybuilder.

He looked like he weighed 200 pounds when he got into the cage.

It was nuts.

Yeah, the rehydration.

I've seen people cut.

ridiculous amounts.

And then, yeah, like you said, the way they rehydrate.

It's terrible.

But it's also a lie.

You're not 155 pounds.

You're 200 pounds.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, that's what you actually weigh.

And I understand why you do it.

And I understand why everybody does it, but

there's got to be a better way.

The worst I ever saw was Travis Luter when he fought Anderson Silva.

I don't remember that one.

He lost, but he had Anderson down.

Travis Luter was an elite black belt.

Yeah.

And he was in the ultimate fighter.

Wins the ultimate fighter.

I mean, dominates everybody, dominates people on the ground.

Everybody that I talked to trained with him was like, guys, on a whole nother level as far as jiu-jitsu.

Yeah.

And the day of the weigh-in, he can't make the weight.

And he's so dehydrated that his lips are cracked.

cracked yeah I see and he's not walking to the scale he's shuffling yeah he's just and I'm watching him and he missed the first time and then this is like one of the second or third time that he tried to make weight and they eventually didn't make weight so even if he beat Anderson he wouldn't have won the title but bro he had him down and he was on top of him in the beginning of the round and For anybody that's ever rolled with Travis, if he was healthy and he has you down on the ground, like that's you're you're fucksvil.

Yeah, that guy's good.

He was really good, but it was just the weight was way too much.

He was just dreaming.

And then 24 hours later, he's supposed to fight one of the greatest fighters of all time.

And it depletes

liquid around your brain as well.

So you're taking the shots, so you're not going to take it as well.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's a lot.

Yeah, I agree.

You're tired.

Your endurance sucks.

Everything's all fucked up.

Everything's all fucked up.

But it's where I get down very close to my weight because I...

On fight week, I'm very low.

Like, what do you weigh?

If you're fighting 185, what are you weighing?

Fight week.

185 is easier though so 190.

oh that's great yeah yeah like i don't what about 170 when you're at 170 i'll get down to probably about

182 183 not that bad not that bad and then cut and then cut down from there that's not that bad yeah i don't i don't again i don't like to overstress myself Pereira weighed in at 185 and fought at his 20.

Massive.

Fought at 220.

Yeah.

Weighed in at 85, fought at 220.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like you said, that's that's a lot.

That's insane.

That's a lot.

That's insane.

Yeah.

That's so much fucking weight.

And what does that do to you?

Yeah.

I've seen people, I can't even remember what fire is.

He's in Bellator.

And he was banging the sauna to get out, and his coach was holding the door.

Oh, God.

You need five more minutes.

And the guy is kicking the door, like, bump.

He's like,

I'm never doing that.

I don't ever want to feel like that.

That's so crazy.

Yeah, when he got a blackout.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've seen people passing out and stuff.

Brian Ortega was just in an interview talking about that.

He essentially like almost like,

how did he describe it?

It was like 30 minutes where he was in real trouble for his last weight cut.

Yeah, he's like, it's just, he just got really wrecked.

People have blacked out before.

He was a lady that fell off the stage.

Fell off the scales, wasn't it?

She stepped back off the scales and then just her legs just went.

Oh, I don't remember.

30-minute coma.

Oh, sugar.

Due to his weight cut for Aljamaine Sterling.

Holy shit.

But he missed.

He keeps.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is too much for him.

I don't know why.

Why doesn't he just go up?

Well, that's the problem: the guys at 55 are jacked.

I think he just, he dialed in his diet, though.

He looks a lot thinner now.

Yeah, yeah.

Like he showed, pull up some of those photos he's got on his Instagram.

He's been taking photos lately.

Like, he just, he realized he can't never do that again.

So he's lost a lot of body power.

Oh, that's good.

That's good.

I think sometimes it is the discipline of it as well.

Yeah, look at him.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look at him now.

Way bigger.

Way leaner.

Big difference.

That's where he needs to be.

He doesn't mean that in ages.

Yeah,

that's where he needs to be.

100%.

You know, he likes to live that good life.

Same, even when you said about having random weight checks, make me consider certain burgers sometimes.

Yeah, but they would have to give you an out-of-shape clause.

No, you know, give you like 10, 15 pounds in between fights.

Yeah, yeah.

But then once you start training, they should be able to randomly show up during those six weeks and go, all right, Michael, get on the scale.

Yeah.

174.

Okay.

Good.

Good to go.

Good to go.

We're inside of six pounds.

Because what you actually cut, what you're saying at 85 is perfect, in my opinion.

I don't like to be.

Five pounds is just a good weight

sauna session.

It's not that much.

You're not losing a ton of weight.

You're not killing yourself.

Yeah.

Maybe you ride the bike for a half hour.

What do you do?

I literally do a 30-minute jog.

It's like really low with a sauna suit on.

Straight away, I take that off, go straight into the sauna, 15 minutes, then wrap 15 minutes, then wrap, and I'm done.

See, that's perfect.

Yeah, that's actually probably therapeutic.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

It's not, it's not, it's not bad for you at all.

That's probably actually very good for you because you're giving your body all this recovery from the sauna, and you're getting a nice little cardiovascular workout, but nothing crazy at all.

You're giving yourself a lot of heat shock proteins.

You're not killing yourself.

Yeah, but there's guys, man, I've seen them, and they've looked like, okay, here's the worst one: the worst one, other than

other than Travis.

Travis was the worst because I watched him shuffle backstage, but the visuals is TJ Dillshaw when he went down to Flyweight.

He fought Henry Cejudo at Flyweight and he looked like a dead man.

Yes, I remember this.

He looked like a hostage that had just gotten released and had not

fed for ages.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He looked fucking.

Because he gets quite jacked as well.

Yeah.

He fucked up.

Yeah, yeah.

He fucked up.

Look at what he looked like on the left.

That's crazy.

That picture.

I mean, he's quite big there.

Right, but that picture.

That picture is fucking crazy.

That's a prisoner of war.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, that's not a guy.

Look at what he looks like.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

Well, now he's fucking tanked.

Now he's a tank.

The one on the right is not fair because that's how he's.

Yeah, that's less.

Yeah, he's finished down.

He's a buck 65 now.

He's fucking

massive.

But he was, he's another guy that doesn't get the credit that he deserves.

When he fought Hannon Barrel, I love this style.

Pure flow style.

Yeah, it's pure flow.

But it's the level changes of the up and down.

You don't know where he's attacking.

It's not linear.

It's not just I'm going here or I'm going here.

Switching stances, constantly.

Yeah.

I used to love watching his style.

Have you ever talked to Ludwig?

No.

Oh, you should meet Dwayne Bang Ludwig.

Okay.

And talk to him.

Because Dwayne is the one who coached him in that style.

Dwayne, who was an elite kickboxer himself and fought in the UFC, at one point in time, had the fastest ever knockout in the UFC.

I think it was a five or six second knockout in the UFC.

It was one of the fastest ever.

Just step back, one right hand, plan.

But Dwayne was a beast, but maybe even better than he is as a fighter, he is as a coach.

And he doesn't have that style.

This is what's crazy.

He devised that style.

So this is Dwayne.

Watch this.

Bank.

Ooh, there it is.

Nice.

So they call it six seconds.

I don't even think it was six.

I don't even think it was six.

But the point is, Dwayne's style, like he learned from Boss Rutin, and, you know, it's like Dutch kickboxing style.

Um, but he realized, like, Dwayne is like this consummate studier of fighting, and he realized that the best way to fight is to overwhelm them with possibilities and options, but have a whole system of how to do this.

So, his system is all about switching stances and combinations while you're switching and turning and moving.

But he's got it mapped out.

Nice, nice, nice.

The dude came over to my place with like a binder, like this thick binder of techniques, and he's full-on egghead with this shit.

And TJ and him just locked up.

And the fruits of that labor was the Henn and Barrow fight.

Go to that fight, Jamie.

Because I feel like this was one of the finest championship performances.

At the time, I thought it was the best I had ever seen.

Of a guy who was an underdog going into a fight.

Hen and Barrow at that time, a lot of people thought it was the pound-for-pound best.

It was him and Jose Aldo.

They were talking about those two guys together.

And TJ just went in there and worked them.

I mean, it was like a sparring sparring match.

He went in there super loose and just moving around and started cracking them.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a fun watch, though.

Just get me in there.

Yeah.

So this is like Hennan Burrow was the boogeyman.

Everybody was scared of this dude.

He was so fucking up.

Look how he starts.

Look how he starts.

Ooh, stepping with an uppercut.

Just movement, constant movement, overwhelming you.

And look, always on the tips of his toes, moving around.

He didn't back up at all and never gave Hennon Burrow the chance to get some momentum going yeah and at the end when he eventually stopped him I mean was just a fucking ruthless combination when he took him out of there but like if you knew how difficult it is to be look at that right hand right off the bat in the first round at this point Hennon Burrow's like oh no I'm in problems yeah because nobody had thought that TJ was going to be capable of doing this yeah TJ you know was

a really good up-and-coming fighter, a really good contender, but this was his finest performance.

And it was in a world championship fight

against a guy that everybody thought was the man.

TJ just beat that ass.

And if you go like further, see if you can go to the actual stoppage, Jamie.

It's like further in the fight.

When he, like, at this point in time, TJ's just styling on him.

Yeah, yeah.

Just standing right in front of him and popping off.

Look at that.

Not getting hit.

Staying right in range, dropping down.

Head movement.

Yeah.

Oh, look at that head kick.

Oh, my goodness.

Beautiful.

Look at this guy.

I mean, and it's artistic.

It's fucking beautiful, man.

Yeah, it's a beautiful stoppage.

Like, one of the best championship-winning performances in the history of the sport.

Yeah, easy.

In the history of the sport.

Yeah, yeah.

Beautiful.

But that dude, unfortunately, had two bum shoulders.

Oh, is that what it was?

Yeah, forever.

He had, even when he won the title, his shoulders were fucked.

He had torn super spinatuses in both of his shoulders.

I've done one on this.

It got to the point where he never got it fixed.

So it got to the point where they're just popping out.

So by the time he fought Al Jermaine Sterling,

he told the referee in the locker room, my shoulder's going to go out of socket.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's crazy to go in there knowing that that's.

So now he had to retire, and he had multiple operations on his shoulder, and he can't even reach over his head.

He gets his arm that far.

Like, that's how fucked he is.

Three months ago, he said, he's got to get another one.

Oh, yeah, you can see geez.

Oh, my God.

Get another soldiery.

They're going to cut off the head of my humerus and turn the head into a plastic plunger.

That sounds like a bit too much.

I hate getting a

surgery for anything.

He has the worst shoulder injuries I've ever seen.

I know there's been a lot, like you're talking about.

Was that from before?

It was from wrestling.

Oh, it's from.

I think it's just from having torn shoulders and just trying to rehab them and not getting them surgically fixed.

Okay, okay.

Like if you can have some things loose in there and strengthen everything else up and kind of be functional, but not if you're going to be a world championship fighter.

Fair, fair, fair.

And the problem with a lot of those things is once it tears and pulls back, you can't get it back in place.

So then you have really complicated surgeries where they have to take a piece of your hamstring and stick it up there or some other part of your body and reconstruct what was supposed to be there.

And then you have to slowly build range of motion into it.

Like he got to the point where he was too tough for the injuries that he had, where he should have probably got them fixed immediately.

And maybe he could have prolonged some of that.

So like it just sounds like he just went back in in terms of getting back into training a bit too quickly.

So I feel like the rehab can work.

I know obviously there's certain things you're going to need surgery for.

But there's a lot of my stuff I've managed to bring it back.

I don't think he had surgery until after he was done fighting.

Oh, so he didn't even have surgery?

No, he had surgery on one of his knees because he blew his knee out in the Sanhagen fight.

Or I should say Sanhagen, after talking with Sanhagen about what happens in that 50-50 position, Sanhagen blew his knee out.

Okay, okay.

So he put him in a position where if TJ didn't give in, he was going to get his knee fucked up, and he chose to get his knee fucked up.

But that was Corey putting him in that position.

So he had to get an ACL reconstruction.

But I don't think he got the shoulder surgeries until after he was done fighting.

He might have gotten one and then tried to fight again.

But the problem is, like, his shoulders were fucked, man.

They were really fucked.

But that doesn't look fixed.

For you to be

having to.

No, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't look fixed.

But I think that's all they could do with it.

I think it was.

That bad.

I think it was that bad.

I was looking at an article from right after that fight.

It says it's his third shoulder surgery since 2019.

Okay, so that's when he started getting them.

And when was that fight?

When was the last fight that he had?

That was like 2023?

The algebra fight, I think, was 22.

Oh, okay.

UFC 280.

Is it 2022?

That's when this article was found.

Okay, so he had those shoulder surgeries.

And then I know he's had a ton since.

And since, you know, like you look on his Instagram page, it's like every few months it's him in in a sling.

Well,

I know guys that are like surgery, surgery, surgery, surgery.

And

it never seems to...

I've never, unless I'm forced to, I don't ever really go down the surgery route.

I always try and figure it out a different way.

Like I've had, weird enough, it was both my shoulders, but one was super spinatus, the other one was rotator cuff and kind of like some lat injury as well.

But just slowly back to the point where I couldn't do a push-up.

When in my last couple of

Was it bellital fights?

Yeah, my last few Bellator fights, I couldn't do a push-up.

I could still hit in certain angles, so certain angles, I was fine, but I had no strength in that direction.

While you were fighting, well, I was fine, yeah, yeah.

Oh, no, yeah, yeah.

So, literally, trying to

get that, my arms would just start shaking.

I couldn't.

Why didn't you do something about that?

I was doing like rehabs.

I was like, as long as I can hit you, I'm fine.

Like,

that's so crazy going into a fight with that kind of a major handicap.

I've had worse, but what's What's the worst?

I don't want to say it as an excuse.

But

the day

before my Ian Gary fight, I couldn't stand on my left foot.

Why not?

Up till today, I don't understand it.

I had the UFCPI work in everything.

They did shock therapy.

They did acupuncture.

They were doing...

everything

and I literally I had it I had a

if you see the fight I literally had

ankle supports on.

And they said you're allowed the ankle supports.

You can't really have it taped.

But I had it taped under the ankle support.

But obviously, if I couldn't just do one ankle.

So you had to do both of them.

So I had to do both of them.

And yeah, just the day before the fight, I'm not sure if I did anything when I was cutting weight, like twinged it or something.

But I don't remember anything distinct happening.

Couldn't walk on my foot.

So it was your ankle?

You twisted it?

It was my ankle or something.

And they were working on it.

Literally, I was trying to.

I was in.

And you don't have a single instance where it went?

I don't remember anything.

All of a sudden, it just hurt.

It hurt the night before.

It hurt the night before.

So on the way in, it hurt.

And I was walking around and I was like, it's hurting, but it didn't feel like anything drastic.

And overnight, it just got worse and worse and worse and worse.

Probably exaggerated by the weight cut, right?

Maybe.

Yeah.

And then literally the next day.

In the morning, we had to go to the PI.

My coach was like, bro, if we you can't bounce here now, I'm gonna have to pull you fat.

I was like, there's no way I can get pulled from this fight.

It's not happening.

I was like, it's not happening.

Wow.

And I went out there and he's like, I'm bouncing.

I'm trying to adjust myself and bounce.

And he had it.

They did the tape that he was going to use for the fight.

And he said he'll come in and do it again just before the fight.

And yeah, it was, I was like,

adjusted, adjusting.

And I obviously had a.

Still had a great performance.

Yeah, I had it.

I had my, so my guy,

my videographer Kishan he filmed he was we're doing a documentary so he's filmed all of it as well I was kind of like I'll wait till it comes out as normal but not like not even to say as an excuse because I was able to adrenaline just I'm I'm in it now and fight

but there were certain things I was being cautious of and not not wanting to do but yeah it was just irritating but i've had that's that's probably the worst in terms of how close to the fight it was because it's the day before but i've had injuries in the build-up, and I'm like, if as long as I can throw a punch and throw a kick, I'm make it happen.

That's the thing that people don't understand when they watch fights.

Like, sometimes guys, this is one of the things about the rematch this weekend, Onkolayev versus Pereira, is that Pereira supposedly had a fucked up left hand and rotavirus before the last fight.

I believe it.

He looked off.

He looked off.

He definitely didn't look himself.

But Onkolayev looked really good.

100%.

I don't want to take anything away from Ankoliyev.

When someone looks off, I'm always like, it's like Roy Jones.

Like, people go, Roy Jones didn't fight anybody.

No, no, no, no.

Roy Jones fought everybody, but he made him look like there were nobody because they were fighting Roy Jones.

Exactly.

It's like, so is that what's going on?

Like, is Ankolaev that good?

And so we don't know.

So we got to see him fight again.

I'd only say no just because towards the fifth round, it looked like Pereira could do some stuff.

Like, it's like, okay, you're actually now landing that calf kick a bit more.

Now you're actually starting to do.

It's like, why didn't you start like that?

He didn't have the gas.

Yeah.

So if you've got rotavirus, your gas is very low, and you probably, your energy level feels very low.

So he's trying to be,

he's conserving energy.

So this is what makes this fight so much more interesting because hopefully he's had the camp he is.

Ankalaev hopefully comes in looking exactly the same way he did that last fight.

Yeah, or better.

Or better.

He's going to be better because he's going to be the champion.

I think there's a thing that happens, and Daniel Cormier has expressed this too.

It's like a 30% bump when you become the champion.

You know, like when you were talking about when you won that tournament,

you were better.

Boom, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think there's that when you get the championship.

Hopefully, you're going to get to experience it.

Yes, yes, you'll get to experience that bump.

But this is, you know, I feel like

that's just, we're going to have to see.

And it's a very intriguing one.

Yeah.

Because Pereira, if you hurt his left hand, that's the doom punch.

Exactly.

That left hook is death.

That's massive.

Yeah.

That's the one.

That's the one.

If you look at his highlight reel, there's so many left hooks.

And he catches people with that.

Even when he grazed Jamar Hill.

Yeah.

It was a.

I still don't get it now.

He grazed him.

He's got a hell of a punch on him, man.

You put him out.

The Yuri Prohaska one at the end of the first round.

Yuri's like, yo.

And then he head kicks him in the beginning of the second.

Yeah.

He's got ferocious power.

That head kicked him.

That head kick power.

He was fast.

Yeah.

Hey kick it was fast as well.

Boy, I hope he's healthy.

But I heard he's super heavy coming into this week.

Oh, is he?

I heard he's like 230.

going into this week.

Yeah.

But for him,

I guess he's got a lot to cut.

Yeah.

Some guys can do it.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know know what the fuck well i guess if he was able to get to middleweight yeah well yeah but also sometimes it makes you lazier as well like oh i can do that i need this and then yeah and then you get close to the time oh shit

a bit of work now well he has talked about moving up but again yeah and so is uncolio oh yeah actually he has yeah yeah uncoliov just said that recently that he wants to defend the title a couple of times then move up to heavyweight

i think he's a bit too small maybe but if he puts size on and he gives himself enough time he's got the skill set and Aspinall is going to need some fucking challengers.

But then does, yeah, fair, fair, unless Cyril Gon beats him, right?

Yeah, yeah, but then does he need,

you know, does it I always say that the time that John Jones took off to get to heavyweight, does he need that kind of time?

Because it takes a while to put on size like that.

Naturally, it takes ages.

Not when you're over in Russia.

Fair.

Enough sets.

Real difficult to get those fucking drug testing guys on a plane.

And if they do, everybody knows when they're landing.

Good luck

going into the bathroom while those guys pee.

You will accept glasses of urine.

I will hand it to Vitaly.

He handles it to you.

This is clean urine.

I'm not accusing him of doing that, but I know that

for sure.

Listen, I mean,

there was always like the joke about guys going over to Thailand.

Like, why are they going over to Thailand?

It was good training, and also, really hard to get those USATA guys on a flight.

Ah, yeah.

I know that.

Yeah.

I feel so good.

There's a lot of spectrums.

I feel so into that kind of stuff.

Like, I just don't, I just don't care enough because, again, it's like, like I said, I don't really have a schedule for anything, even when I'm, even the good stuff, like the things that you're supposed to be doing.

I'm just like, eh, I'll just, I'll do it.

So, you're not like a supplement guy or at all.

I don't

protein shakes.

No, nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

That's crazy.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, never.

Never been into it.

Multivitamins?

Vitamins, yeah.

Like, but again, I just forget to take them.

Like,

I'm seriously, ADHD mind.

I'm just like,

you should have someone who makes like a little packet for you.

Yeah.

So I'm going to get my wife to do it

soon because she's very into that.

She's very into her fitness and stuff.

She's a Pilates instructor.

She's got her own Pilates app and stuff.

And she's

smartly.

Well, I don't even know if she even intended it that way, but she kind of blew up over COVID because she set up her app at that time and now everyone's at home.

Oh, perfect.

You know what I mean?

It's just perfect timing.

And she just blew up.

Her apps are called Cloud9 Collective, and she does Pilates for Women.

But have you ever done Pilates yourself?

Yes, I have.

Bro, I did a video with her and got her to train some MMA.

And then she's like, okay, you come and do these Pilates.

She killed me.

It's a lot more difficult than I thought.

It's so much.

But I didn't know.

Weird muscles.

Yeah.

Inside of your leg.

But that's what's actually helped with a lot of my, the rehab side.

Because

it's those muscles that we bypass.

We go to the big muscles.

Yeah, we want to work these muscles.

And it's all those little ones that are not getting worked.

And those are the ones that are injured.

Stabilizers.

Stabilizers.

And I didn't know that, that it was

a man, I forget his first name, but called something Pilates,

who started it for men in war.

to help recover guys in war to get them back out

to war.

But it's become such a female-led

sport.

Well, that goes to speak about what I was talking about with the Russians and being technical.

You know, who was really into Pilates?

Kovalev.

Oh, yeah.

Kovalev was the light heavyweight champion, the crusher.

Yeah, he was fucking everybody up.

He was big enough to do Pilates.

He was doing Pilates all the time.

And everybody's like, wait a minute, what?

That guy?

The strength from you get can get from anywhere because, like I said, those smaller muscles that help facilitate the bigger muscles.

Yeah.

Like,

it's crazy.

It's the same people that like look down on yoga.

Like, bitch, go to a 90-minute hot hot yoga class.

Go to the hospital.

Okay, I did that.

Yeah.

It's hard.

And I was like, yeah, I'm going to go to a yoga, a hot yoga.

You know, I was more thinking, just, it's nice to kind of get the sweat going and stuff.

I remember the lady, she's like, oh, yeah, go to, if you go to that side of the room, it's a bit, it's quite hot.

So, you know, if you're new to it, just go to this side of the room.

And I was like, this woman, whatever, man.

Get over that hot side.

Let me go to that hot side.

And she's like, oh, you know, if you feel, if you ever feel faint at all, you don't have to continue.

You can kind of just sit down.

I was like, what is she talking about?

It's not that hot in here.

Google me, lady.

Bro.

I think, like, three moves later, I slowly like just like moved the mat.

Like,

I didn't want to go too far.

I didn't want to, but I moved from the hot side of the room to like the middle-ish, closer to that side.

And then there was one move I was just stretching, and like I literally just got lightheaded.

I was like, shit, she's this is real.

It's real, it's real.

You see all those little old ladies in there, and you think, oh, this is, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's difficult.

So, my wife is strong as hell.

And I'm just like, yes, it has to be from that.

Like, she, and when I do this, I did a session with her this morning because she does some great sessions.

Like, when I do session with her, like, she, she kills it.

And she's, I have to say, she's smart in how she's done it as well.

Because actually, something I didn't know, because she's on her app, she's done a cycle syncing specifically for women.

I didn't realize that women have a obviously I knew women 28-day cycle and men have a 20-24-day cycle.

Um,

24 hours and they have 28 days so there's specific times that they should be training as uh harder than they shouldn't be training or they should be doing this and should be doing that based on biometrics based on just them time of the cycle time of the cycle of the month but again in my head i'm like there's girls that are training our class and they have to train and do everything that we do

but we we don't we forget that we're just doing it based on that men can kind of just keep going well women should think about that when they're scheduling fights 100

that should be a thing and as i I said she did it for politics when she and I looked into it and I was like oh there's actually this is like even down to ice baths great for you not for women though really not all the time but if you look into it so there's specific times that's okay for them but they shouldn't put their body under that kind of stress in the same way that we can oh that's interesting yeah so there's loads of when I started looking at certain there's loads of things that we forget that a lot of the times it's done from a male point of view right forgetting that we're just different I never would have thought about that in terms of their menstrual cycle and fighting, but of course, of course, of course, of course.

Of course, yeah.

Wow.

So, yeah, she's put it on so individuals can actually be like her, it was scheduled and say, Look, you're good specifically for you, are good to train intensely today.

Or no, you need a very relaxed session.

And these videos that she's got hundreds of videos on, I think, that will come up and be like, This is for you, this was for you, this was for you.

But again, it just made me think about the women in MMA, like you said.

Yeah, it's the same thing scheduling, even down to for them, weight cutting,

you know, at a certain time, going through the elute phase, they're holding weight, right?

Like, it's just

different.

Yeah, we don't have any of those issues to worry about, but we get them to do the same structure as we would do.

That's a very good point.

You know what I mean?

There should be more information about that, even for the female fighters.

Yeah, they should actually be like their coaches should be setting fights up entirely based on I wonder like how many fights they would have won that they they couldn't go couldn't really train right yeah because they were cramping up

yeah yeah it's just we're just different when you i've seen some videos of you you do a lot of plyometric stuff as well right and is that something you've always done well it's it kind of comes with just uh this is why i feel like i can bounce on my calves for ages just because of that constant and it seems to be a thing now i didn't really understand it well enough it was just kind of how i trained and now did you train like that from the beginning yeah just because of the points fighting style is it's a a lot of that shifting, right?

But did you, but back then when you were doing that, were you just doing the martial arts training or were you doing some martial arts training

with plyometrics?

The reason why we did plyometrics more so is because we were also doing a lot of our catas, we did uh martial gymnastics, so the forms.

Oh,

so I had to learn how to do these crazy kicks and stuff.

In which I would then, this is why I would try 720s, not because uh

like

I just randomly decided to just throw it out today because we were drilling them just for cattle, though.

And I was like, well, if I can do it for Kata, then I could surely find the time to throw it when I'm fighting.

And I would be brave enough to try and attempt these things in the points fighting world.

And yeah, that's that.

There's a couple of kicks that I keep telling people, there's a couple of kicks that, even for me, I haven't even shown you what I can actually do yet.

But there's a couple of kicks that I know I can land.

And

usually it's easier on people that are well well-trained.

So, usually, the better fighter is actually easier to hit them just because they are very traditional.

They're very well-trained.

They have patterns that I can pick up on.

I'm like, ah, you're going to step this way and you're going to do that.

And I always tell people, I call it attaching strings.

The first minute of the fight, not too much happens for me because I'm faking this, that, that.

But every time I'm faking something, you twitch.

I'm like, ah, this means this.

Yeah.

You twitch, this means this.

And I'm just attaching strings to you.

So now I'm moving you.

You just became Pinocchio.

But that, and that's important.

This is why, like you said, all those fakes, but those fakes mean something.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Like I said, I'm getting that information from you.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

He wants that.

If I do this, he wants that.

Okay, I'll see it.

Okay.

Perfect.

Now I got it.

Yeah, that's what's so important for a casual fan to understand.

Yeah.

That there's a whole game taking place.

That if you could play it, you would understand what he's doing.

Yeah.

But you're just seeing movement, random movement.

You're like, hit him.

Yeah, hit him.

Why don't you hit him?

Meanwhile,

if you knew, you'd be watching something beautiful.

Yeah, exactly.

You're watching, you know, a dance.

Yeah, yeah.

Snake charming.

That's it for part of the identity, man.

Sparty identity.

I try to tell people, though, but yeah.

Do you know when you're fighting again?

Have they given you any kind of an idea?

Like I said, I pushed out information.

I keep chasing up to try and find out.

I haven't really heard too much back.

They're announcing some fights now.

That's what I'm saying.

It feels like things are slowly starting to happen.

Still waiting.

So Protest is going to fight Leon Edwards.

Yeah.

So 170, which is what you're looking at the most, right?

Yeah,

I want to get back.

I know I'm big now, but you can make it though.

I've seen it.

I can make it.

I can make it.

I want to get back down.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to get back down to 170 just because, like I said,

I think JDM's a great,

an amazing fighter.

I just feel stylistically, I can beat that, but I can beat him.

Well, it's a very good style for stand-up for you.

Yeah.

That's for sure.

I mean, he's very complete.

Very complete.

Yeah, he's very, very complete.

Yeah, very complete.

I really like his style.

And very smart.

You can tell he's very smart.

Like, he has in specific to the opponent.

He's like, okay, yeah.

But like I said, that's one of the advantages.

It's like you're not going to have...

It's going to be very difficult for you, even as smart as you are, to figure that out.

Well, that's why it's exciting for you with any stand-up fighter.

As soon as you're fighting a guy who likes to stand up, it's like, are you sure?

Yeah, yeah.

Are you sure you like to stand up?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I tell people this all the time.

New thing that you've never experienced before.

These guys are wrestlers, man.

I make all these stand-up guys wrestlers, and they always, everyone's all going to strike with you.

Well, listen, brother, I can't wait to see you in there again.

I'm a giant fan.

I'm so happy you're at the UFC now.

And I know you do a lot of stuff online, so tell people how to find you.

Yeah, so again, it's all the social media.

Michael Vennon Page, everything, Instagram.

I don't really do Twitter as much or X, sorry.

My Facebook, YouTube, I'm doing a lot of stuff.

ITM, actually, I'm doing a film company.

I always try to set myself up for the next stage.

My creative mind won't stop either.

I'm making movies.

I'm making movies.

I've already made two short movies.

Wow.

And again, the same.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

That's awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I want to get to acting as well.

What are they about?

So the first one was actually about an athlete's mindset.

One thing that I find with films, I think people are lazy watchers nowadays.

They find just explode, explosion, explosion, action, action, action, and crap storyline.

But I want storytelling again.

And this one is just more about an athlete's mindset.

I did it through the eyes of a runner, just because it's slightly different.

I didn't want to just go down the same lane as MMA.

Did it for the eyes of a runner and just how toxic your want and your need to be the best, how it can look like.

And again,

I'll go into that one.

I'll let people watch that one.

That one's just called Runner.

The next one's called Wait, and it's kind of about what anxiety can look like from a position of waiting for good news and a position of waiting for bad news and how the parallels work

and look almost identical.

So you're literally watching two

points of views.

So

these two.

So this dude's just freaking out, waiting for.

Yeah.

He's.

That's fucking cool.

You're doing things like that.

Thank you, man.

That's very cool.

Yeah.

Like I said, I'm a creative mind.

I need to express it in some way.

And I know when I leave, I'm not going to be one of those guys that retire and want to come back.

I retire and want to come back.

If I say I'm done, then I'm done.

Well, that's great.

And I need something else to go into.

Nothing better.

Yeah.

Having something you look forward to that you actually enjoy and love outside of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because it's hard.

It's very hard for guys to end.

It gives your identity.

100%.

And the thrill, you know, more than anybody.

The thrill of doing that is above and beyond almost anything else you'll experience in life.

My thrill is usually, for me anyway, it comes from expressing art.

And we call it martial artists.

As much as people see the

sometimes the blood, the knockouts, and stuff, it's art.

Like, we just watched TJ Diller show.

That was art.

Art.

That was pure art.

Pure art.

Like,

people don't appreciate that side of it.

And I love to paint pictures.

And I'm like, how can I continue painting pictures after this stage of my life?

I'm like, okay, yeah, cool.

Move it.

Well, listen, man, if you make movies like you can fight, I'm in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trust me.

Yeah, we're doing it.

I believe you.

I believe you.

Kishan, the guy, my camera guy, Kishan Lekhaney, he's it just worked the synergies just work he's directing films like he's done it for 20 years and he's just unbelievable so that's awesome we're gonna do some uh magical things i love hearing stuff like that i really do

and i got a sorry like i said i got a gift for you anyway

what do you like red or red or black you can have both if you want what is it just a t-shirt oh nice and it just it represents uh who we are hands down martial arts this guys that do this and everyone mocks all the the time.

But it's obviously my brand.

So, extra large, large, large, yeah, let me see, large here.

Large.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then, I'm also, I got, again, I'm into everything, but I got a beef jerky company

called Snapdown Snacks for snapping people, wrestling, snapping them down.

Snapdown Snacks.

So, Snap

or Snapdown and some Snapdown.

Thank you.

Here you go, man.

All right.

Fantastic.

Yes.

Enjoy.

Let me know what you think.

How do people find that company?

Is it a website?

Yeah, just Snapdown on Snapdown Snacks.

Yeah, yeah,

split fuel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

if you're in the UK next or when you're in the UK next, let me know.

I've got a Mexican restaurant as well, Ick Shell.

Wow.

That's great.

You're invested in all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We actually had

Kendall Jenner's 818 tequila featuring in there.

We're going to have Jason Mamoa

coming end of this month with his vodka, Mile Vodka.

So,

look at you.

I'm shaking.

Oh, yeah, we're everywhere.

Everywhere.

All right, man.

I'll see you this weekend.

Yes.

Thank you for doing this.

Thank you, man.

My pleasure.

I really enjoyed it.

I do too.

Bye, everybody.

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