JRE MMA Show #185 with Ethyn Ewing

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The Joe Rogan Experience

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I'm here, we'll see you.

It's gonna be here. I like you shirt.

I appreciate it.

Professor Finesser, is that your Professor Finesser line?

This is one of my designs.

My Professor Finesser line.

Got the cross guard there.

I like it.

That's dope.

We got a couple different symbols.

Something that I've built it up, I want to get out to the people.

It's a cool nickname.

It's unique for sure.

It came about a funny way, but I like it.

The mantra that it brings to the fight game and to who I am is perfect.

Well, it's finesse and you fight with a lot of finesse.

So we should start from your UFC debut.

Because that was when you really burst onto the scene.

You fought this guy, Malcolm Wellmaker, who's a killer?

Vicious knockout puncher and had a ton of hype behind him because of his performance.

Was it the contender series we had the big performance?

I was all three of them.

Contender series you knocked that dude out.

I don't remember who it was second, but then it was Chris Motino,

was the third one that he knocked out like that.

And you put on a show, man, and nobody had heard of you.

That's one of the craziest things about this sport.

Is that there can be a guy like you that's learning and growing in the shadows.

And then they get the call.

And I think it was two days notice.

Yeah.

So two days notice you fought above your weight.

Because you're a bannemweight normally, and you fought a featherweight.

And dude, you just, it wasn't just that you fought a guy who was this vicious striker.

It was the calmness and the technique and the smoothness of it all.

That was so impressive.

And I was like, this guy is different.

Like the way you fight is very intelligent.

And I love that.

I love watching a guy who's just all technique and movement.

And you're the epitome of that.

I appreciate it.

That's something I pride myself on.

That's I think.

Maybe it's because I've delved into more of a boxing realm with perfecting the striking

and really focusing on that.

That that technical aspect, that style.

But yeah, it's to me to watch guys go in there and just brawl it out and say, you know,

let's see who can take more punches before the other guy drops is just silly to me.

It's it's like you said, I like to fight with finesse.

I like to hit and not get hit.

And champions don't take return fires.

So I hope to have a lot of longevity with this game.

And yeah, that's why I fight that way.

That is the formula for longevity.

I was having a conversation with fate or the guy who's sitting next to us, who's one of the best pool players in the world.

And he's getting we just got back from ways to well.

So shout out to Brigham and all the people who ways to well for taking care of us.

But he and I were talking about fighters and about it's very similar to I think everything,

whether it's pool or golfer.

And there's the people that really focus on technique and fundamentals.

And really objectively look at what they're doing and refine it.

And we were talking about guys who just stand in front of each other and blast each other.

I'm like, look, the crowd will cheer.

They will love to see you, but your career will be shorter and the end will be bad.

Right.

The end will be bad.

And then you'll probably fight past the time where you should and no one's going to stop you.

They're going to maybe you have one or two close friends that'll tell you when you're going to hang them up.

But a lot of coaches let guys fight way too long.

And I think the organization let's guys fight way too long.

There's a few guys that in the past at least I've seen them on the lineup, you know, upcoming fight.

I'm like, oh, God.

And then I see who he's fighting.

And I'm like, oh, God.

Yeah.

Like I don't want to see this guy take any more punishment.

I don't, you know, enough is enough.

And those styles of just face first, just attacking boy.

The audience loves you.

And that's a trap.

Right.

That is a real trap.

Yeah.

I mean, 100%.

And I think that's, it's almost a little frustrating that the general public gives that kind of energy to that kind of a match.

Sure, I get it.

It's exciting.

You want to see Bloods Bill.

Like people just really enjoy the chaos of all that and all the movement and the energy that goes into it.

But yeah, you're foregoing that whole technical aspect.

Like the perfection of controlling the dance from the beginning to the end and everything in between.

You know, it's, and it's almost like an educated street brawl.

You're getting in there and just swinging and going crazy.

And to me, that's not what martial arts is.

I mean, it literally is the chase of perfection to it.

Of, you know, like the hit and don't get hit.

That is the art of boxing, but the art of striking in martial arts.

You know, you want to be, yeah, near, near perfect in the way you engage in this is land the damage.

And be able to cut those angles, move your head, pull out the distance and not take any of that in return.

And yeah, a lot of guys get, get cheered on initially.

And so it's unfortunate that maybe it's not unfortunate, but you just, you just see it a lot that, yeah, those guys get hyped up off the beginning.

And then all the other things happen, like you said.

Well, I mean, look, they are exciting.

I love when guys fight like that because it's just crazy to watch.

But I have to set aside the rational part of my brain.

This is not smart. It's not a good thing for them.

And there's no future in this. Eventually it's going to catch up to you.

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, if I watch these guys, you know, get after it like Rommie Pugga versus his opponent on the day in a white contender series this last Tuesday, I believe it was.

Oh, it was crazy.

Yeah, I mean, I've trained with Rommie a little bit here and there.

He's from the same area as me.

Yeah, the guys, the guys very skillful about the end of the day.

Both those guys walked out of there just bust it up.

I mean, they want you right to the hospital.

And it's fantastic to watch.

But from a fighter's perspective, at least from someone who's engaging in this on the same level as they are.

Yeah, I, I, I don't know. That's why I like, you know, a little bit more of that precise style with the boxing specifically, I guess.

I really drawn a lot of aspects from it.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, there's, there's an art to like a fighter that fights with style and a fighter that fights with finesse.

Like I always go to Izzy and his prime.

Addisonia in his prime when, when he was just styling on dudes.

I mean, it was a beautiful thing to watch.

It was, it was like a dance.

It was almost like he was coordinating them.

Right.

You know, he was moving them into his strikes and everything was like faints.

They're all like very specific to gauge reactions.

And he put it all into the computer.

And the next thing you know, he's tuning you up.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, his dancing his way out into the octagon and then he's dancing in there, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's, um, and I think the other thing that the general public doesn't understand about this game is that it's a smart man's game.

It's not a tough man's game.

Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you.

Because I've seen a lot of your quotes online.

I've seen you talk.

You're obviously a thoughtful person.

And I think you have to be to have that kind of a style because it does take a lot of thinking.

It takes a lot of, like what you're doing in there by constantly overloading your opponent's nervous system with movement and, and, and constant counters and being like right out of range, but then right in range and then right out of range.

It's a lot of intelligence involved in that.

Right.

And for someone like me who really loves the art of it, I love watching a guy like you fight because I really wish young fighters are emulating people like you.

Young fighters that see a guy like that.

Like that's what I want to fight like.

I don't want to be this guy who goes in there and the end of my career, my face is just a road map of scars and I got CTE.

But boy, people remember back in the day when I knocked that guy out or when we had this fight of the night and.

And it's taken a lot of.

Experience a lot of growth, a lot of seeing different things because when I was a wrestler, it was the Iowa style of wrestling that I emulated and that I hope to emulate, which is.

Is just getting your face.

It's breaking down, break your spirit, break you physically.

Just completely wipe you out with just outstanding pressure, you know.

And I think I suffered with the finesse with a little bit of the technicality of of setting things up and being smooth because I was just clubbing on your head, snapping people down, going, going, going.

And I refine that I've pulled back from that.

Almost almost too much I would say to where.

If I'm if I'm striking with someone, I don't even want to engage in like a battle of physicality.

I think I just try to push and move and get up and I'm like, you know, I'll say it and I'll dance and I'll roll up and I'll shut them down real quick.

And I'm steering them off and I'm throwing really quick and they try to get physical where they're really trying to make it, you know, a high pace and.

And just more physical.

I don't want to engage with that at all.

I want to steer from beginning to the end.

I want to keep my heart rate as low as possible.

I want to land shots and then I want to be back to sitting in.

You said covering a distance, controlling everything where I can say I can take my breath and I can see what's coming next and then I can move accordingly.

And so, you know, after being out for a little bit of time, I'm now even elevated.

Another, yeah, to another greater extent in my own mind that I'm now starting to combine the two things to where before I wouldn't say I shied away from it.

You know, I'm a tough guy if we want to get physical and if it needs to go to that, I'm there all day.

You know, don't get me wrong with that, but I'm finding that middle ground where I was, I was too much of that Iowa style without the finesse.

Now I was trying to be all skillful, all finesse, dance around the Muhammad Ali shuffle, throw that flicker jab, be out of range, you know, and not want to engage in the physicality too much.

And now I've elevated once again to where I'm finding that perfect middle ground that, you know, I'm letting my ego go in the gym to where if we do get into that physicality or someone gets me with something, if it doesn't look perfect, I'm not sitting there thinking, oh, I need to look perfect and avoid these things.

Now I'm just sending it and getting after it. So, yeah, it's an ever evolving game and I'm just getting better all the time with everything.

So, you'll never see me go in there and brawl anybody, but you'll see less hesitation, you'll see more precise shots and then all the other finesse will always be there.

Well, it is a constant work in progress, right? And I think that's one of the more interesting things about MMA is that you see a fighter when they first start fighting in the UFC and then you see as fights go on, they get more fights, they get more confidence, they get more experience, and they also get significantly better.

You know, it's kind of rare that you see athletes in a sport generally speaking when they get to a certain professional level, they're kind of already at their peak.

And they might get a little better, but in MMA in particular, you see dramatic improvement in fighters over the course of four or five years, especially if they have good management and good training.

And one of the things that you're talking about is like letting your ego go in the gym, that is so important. It's so important to recognize that training is for learning.

And it's not you're not trying to win every training session, you're not trying to win fights, you're trying to get better at winning actual fights. And sometimes getting better at winning actual fights is addressing whatever weird weaknesses or weird places where you're not as comfortable and getting comfortable there.

And the best way to do that is just to force yourself in those situations.

Yeah, 100%. It's hard to do though, because guys want to be dominant. They want to, you know, you don't want to lose a training session, you don't want to give, you know, this guy that you're sparring with, the impression that he can kick your ass.

Right. So you want to get it back on him, but sometimes it's smart to not.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I'm over there. There were tolder brothers are training over there at CSW with Eric Paulson right now. And yeah, it's like those guys are phenomenal.

Yeah, they're the best in the world at what they do. They're so fun to watch. Those guys could put Jiu Jitsu on the map.

Oh, yeah, because the retotal brothers like when they do Jiu Jitsu, it is like this chaotic, exciting, like very kinetic, very technical path to your neck.

Right. You know, that's what it is. It's just this constant path to your neck.

And they got these monkey arm that it can just wrap around your neck and get that darts joke from anywhere, man, it's ridiculous.

Long arms are awesome. Long arms are insane. Such an advantage. Like, Hodge or Gracie had that. Yeah, a lot of guys have that.

Yeah, a lot of like the best darts guys. Hombs, that has that. Right. Those long arm guys. Fuck, man. Yeah. And then like you said, like they're their ability to they they almost like enforce the chaos because that's where they they thrive at.

All that scramble situation. They're they're running doing crazy jumps like crazy sweep setups.

What's a cater tie? I think I don't say it was tie when he ran and he bounced off the cage or the ropes.

He runs back in and double X like a WWE match. They're like thriving off of that chaotic energy. Scramble. Yeah.

Yeah, they they they're so good in scrambles. You know, and it's really interesting watching it. Is it tie that's doing one FC that is doing MMA fights now? They're both fighting.

They're both fighting now. And that's it's going to be exciting to have those guys enter into the UFC someday. Hopefully they will. Yeah, because for sure that they're they're just freak athletes.

You know, it's something that they've been around since they were super super young and yeah, I mean, even even they're striking, you know, it's not super technical.

Quite yet. They're very brand new in it. But they're just they got long reach. They're very methodical. They're athletic. They understand distances from the Jiu Jitsu world of setting up takedowns and you know, closing, closing that distance.

So, but yeah, what I was saying is like going with that kind of a guy. It's like the last thing I want to do is engage in like a grappling position with them in the Jiu Jitsu or in MMA.

And but it's like, yeah, the more I do that, I'm only going to get better at doing that kind of stuff. You know, so the ego engaged full head on into what's your badass only way to get good at anything.

Another great thing about those guys is they're totally natural. And in the Jiu Jitsu world, that's rare. Right. That's really rare. Jiu Jitsu is a dirty sport, man. Yeah. Or, you know, I mean, is it dirty if everyone's doing it? No, let me say it this way. It's an enhanced sport. Right. For the most part, the elite guys are on some Brazilian supplements. Yeah. It's legal, but they're all doing it. Yeah.

I mean, it's kind of legal. Like Abu Dhabi doesn't test. A lot of places don't test. So it's like, and you see these guys, there's no way some of them. And you know, kudos to guys like Gordon, I Gordon Ryan who talks very openly about it. He's like everybody's on performance and

dancing drugs. Why would not be on performance and dancing drugs? My goal is to be the absolute best that I could be period. Right. You know, and the idea that the only reason why he's so good is because steroids is also equally ridiculous. Because when he was younger, and when he was much smaller, he was winning tournaments left and right and beating world champions. Right. And he was totally natural. Yeah, there's, there's no way you can say someone like Gordon Ryan isn't the highest prowess of skill set for Jiu Jitsu. You know, like his technical.

Technicality and his abilities. They are unquestionable. Yeah, what I mean, what are you going to do if everybody else is is on that level, you're now at a deficit. If you're not taking it. So there's a few guys that don't.

And and maybe, I don't know. Obviously, there's maybe some strength skill or strength deficit there, but that's that's why again, going back to my style and what I like to do with like the technicality and having that ability.

There's there's, there's, there's just so many aspects to everything, but if you're that much more technical than someone, then that can negate size to some extent that can negate strength to some extent.

Like there's there's a lot of equalizers there now. You know, on the opposite end, someone who's got that one hit or quitter, they could be less technical, but they're always dangerous. If they hit you one time and you go to sleep, then all sins are forgiven. They could have got beat up for two rounds straight. And they knock you out.

That's all the crowd remembers. So there's a lot that goes into it. But if you're that much more, you know, skilled in your technicality, that's that's you're going to to me. That's the best you can do. That's really what you're chasing for sure.

The really dangerous guys of the guys who have that one hit or quitter power and then they get real technical. Yeah, those are the scary guys. Oh for sure. I mean, yeah, that's then now you have it all.

Yeah, that's that. But it's a critical often not the case though. That's what's interesting is power can be a curse. Asking talent talent can be a curse too. Because you don't work as hard because you fuck everybody up in the gym. And so you don't show up for practice sometimes. You still fuck these guys up. They're just on your level physically or for whatever reason. Yeah.

And then there's guys that have that power that always just rely on that power and never really develop the fundamentals. It's like Deonte Wilder is a great example of that.

Deonte Wilder, who I think is the greatest one punch knockout artist in the history of the heavyweight division. That fucking guy.

Well, and not a big guy. Yeah, but his power is nuts and Teddy Atlas has the greatest definition of a description of it. He said it's the great eraser. Any mistakes he makes one shot a racism all. Yeah, it's so true.

I agree. I mean, but could you imagine if Deonte could move like Tyson Fury? Right. If Deonte could box like Tyson Fury. Yeah. With also with that crazy insane power. Yeah, that's that's game over for everybody.

We stand in front of that guy. Yeah, I'm single person. You know, this episode is brought to you by Blue Choo. Man, let's talk about Blue Choo. They're already the number one brand for better sex. But what they're doing with Blue Choo Gold is completely next level.

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Head over to bluechoo.com for details and important safety information. Check it out. This ad and the products being advertised are intended for a United States audience. Yeah, if he could move like us. I mean, it's a tall fucking order because no one can move like usic other than usic. But imagine if he can move like usic. Right. You know, I mean, and has that crazy. Stop. Bang. Right. One shot. You're in another fucking dimension. Yeah, and that's, you know, this and then.

That's that's obviously like at a personal level. Like some people are blessed with that talent. Like you said, or skill set athleticism. Well, the power things just it seems like it's a gift. Yeah, no, it is. I mean, I mean, I think it was for us. I was talking about Connor and he was talking about how the muscle connect to the musclehead differently. It's like a long or short once and then you either have like that real explosive power within your cardio suffers whatever it is. He's going into it. It's a gift. I mean, can you develop it to some extent? Yeah. Of course.

Now the other thing with with punching with striking is it's not always like power that knocks people out. It's a shot that you don't see come in that knocks you out. Sure. You know, and so it, you know, then you can kind of equalize on on that playing field. I suppose to some extent if you're getting people guessing, you're getting people fainting, your hitting those shots that they're not seeing, then you're going to get similar, you know, knockout finishes like that.

There's a lot of guys that knock a lot of people out that don't have one punch power for sure. Max Hollow is a great example of that. Like Max is never even though he has not guys out with one shot. It's generally like after a bunch of damage. Right. But I mean, Max talked about it pretty openly about guys like Connor and Jose Aldo. And he's like, they just get tired quicker because of the speed and power. They're so explosive. It's so much energy to try to close the distance that quick and land those big nuclear bomb shots. But you only have a few of those in a whole fight. Yeah.

I feel like Max's perspective on those two guys may be construed just because of, I mean, he fought Connor the first time, I guess when Connor was in his prime, you know, and he's coming up almost before his prime. It was on that right.

They were both kids. I think Max was 20 at the time. Yeah. He was, I think he was like the youngest USC fighter at that time or something. He was a different human back then. For sure. But I just think so like, because Connor's cardio is something that I have noticed.

It wasn't, it wasn't super poor like initially when he was fighting at 145. I mean, to me, he never like Chad Mendis. They had a lot of grappling exchanges. Chad took him down.

Chad hit him with shots. You know, Connor just stayed nice, calm, cool and collected. And he got back to the striking where he could do that.

But to me, he never was like, gassed out. But then he watched the second Diaz fight. And he's running around the cage for five rounds. Now he's gone up on a weight class.

So then it goes back to, you know, what's his, what's his training regimen look like? He's not cutting as much weight so he doesn't have to be as much as discipline, his diet changes.

There's a lot of aspects. So like, I don't know. Connor, the, the Connor one was, was weird to me just because I saw it. I saw a change in it when he was at 145. He didn't have poor cardio. As soon as he left that weight class, his cardio waned. And then Josie, although, I mean, that guy was undefeated for what?

He was 10 years with champion for 10 years. And you never saw him get tired. And I never saw him get tired. Yeah, Max Fautum at a certain point when he's a little bit older, this and that. So I don't know. Maybe that's just Max's perspective on that. Not saying Max is incorrect and what he's saying. But, I don't know.

But for me, there's just, I haven't pinpointed exactly what's the right and wrong way to do everything just because there's so many variables, especially in MMA. I mean, we are kind of discussing a little bit earlier is it's not just solute that you have like good cardio that allows you to continue to perform in that fight.

But there's another aspect of how calm cool and collected you can be because, you know, like we were talking hit in the mids and something, if you're real tense and you're just trying to kill him. Yeah, you're going to burn yourself out. But if you're fast and snappy, you're producing just as much. If not more power. And now you're being more efficient with it. You know, and so.

I don't know. The cardio one is is a funky one and combat sports to me. It really is. But I think if you look at Josie Aldo, Josie Aldo when he was on top when he was the king, he was wrecking everybody. And he was the hammer most of the time. And he was so athletic and so fast and had some of the best leg kicks we had ever seen. Like the Eripe favorite fight. How fucking tough is your right favor? Yeah. Because like that guy many, many, many humans would have been stopped.

And I was like, I'm going to go back to long time ago just from those like kicks and you're right. I just kept trying to the very last second. Right.

Even though he was way behind the score cards, never folded up his tent. He was still trying. But Aldo wasn't the nail. You know, I'm saying like there was, there was very few moments in a fight where someone had really started overwhelming him.

And the things that Max has always been so good at is knowing when to hit the gas and knowing when to just slowly ramp up the pressure. And you see guys start to fade and Max is a cardio fucking machine. Super disciplined guy and great camp. Those guys in Hawaii really prepare him well. He is always like 100 like the fight with Gachi fighting in the fifth round of a fucking crazy chaotic war.

And there's the same exact pace he was fighting in the first round. Right. So it's the experience of knowing what your body can do when you can hit the gas, when you need to back off, when to move, when not to. And when you feel your opponent start to fade a little bit.

You see the mouth being open a little bit more. You see the movement looks a little sloppier. Right. Oh, 100%. That's yeah. No one went to rest is is a big aspect of that as well. Because you go and you, I mean, that's why a lot of the training you do is, is that short burst. You know, you hit like your sprints.

You know, you might maybe hit the straight away on the track and then you jog and maintain because in a fight, you're never completely resting. You're always moving a little bit.

So yeah, I mean, that's that's a huge thing to experience. I think his, his style and just what he's created. Like you said, his camp is is a high output, high volume individual. So, you know, his body is probably become used to that. And that's, that's how he performs.

Yeah, I was shocked that Connor wanted to fight him in his first fight back after years off. I mean, five years is a long time to not fight. And then to come back and fight a guy like Max, who's been constantly fighting.

Yeah, the best guys in the world. And knowing that Max is a guy who never fades. And he's in very different. I mean, the only guy has really gotten him out of there is Ilya. And, you know, Ilya caught Max when Max went down from 55 down to 45, which I think was a mistake.

He was so big. He got so big to get up to 55 to fight Justin. And he did it over a long period of time, put a lot of mass on. And then you essentially, you're starving yourself to get down to 45 again. Your body's going to be weak, no matter what you do.

It's not like he was when he was fighting at 45. He maintained a lower weight class, knew exactly when to cut and would make it no problem each time. That last cut to 45 was a nightmare. It was a horror show.

And so when he got in there with Ilya and then you're fighting El Matador, that motherfucker, you want to talk about technique.

Technique and strike the smoothness and efficiency and the one punch go night night power. I mean, that guy has it above it. Who the fuck did that to Charles Oliver the way that guy did?

Yeah, I mean, that's nuts. He's got cranking up at 55 when Oliver is a big 55 too. Yeah, I mean, yeah, him moving up to 55 is some big dogs right there.

Big, especially when you look at him and Justin, when him and Justin were like facing off, which I'm like, that's a way bigger dude.

Yeah, like Justin's bigger than me and Ilya smaller than me. When I stand next to two of them, like, this is crazy that Ilya has the kind of power that he's just wrecking guys even that are way bigger than him.

Yeah, I mean, his skill set is amazing combined with the power. That's that's someone he talked about has a skill set and the punching power, you know, and encompasses those things.

Yeah, he's got it all. I mean, and the thing with him too is he's just so he's so calm, cool, collected. I think that's also something. I mean, I do a lot of like comparison from from Muay Thai boxing to the MMA world because

you know, I'm in MMA, so I understand that there's so many different aspects to it where like someone could take you down and that's going to affect your your striking skill set, you know, if you got someone who's real dull wrestler and you're in your way better striker, if you're sitting there and worried about them taking you down and smothering you, your striking goes out the window a little bit because now you have a whole different set of weapons that you're worrying about.

And you can get caught easier. Yeah, especially if you're like just loading up on them. Yeah, you're going to get ducked under and double aid and and then taken down and that's that's the whole thing. But I forgot where you even started the train. I thought, but I yeah, I mean, I think it's his his collecting is too, but I was saying there's comparison. So all these and that's what boxing you see these guys, they might have a couple more rounds, but they come out in like the first round maybe.

The second round is is a feeling out round, you know, it's it's a slow buildup where they're they're collecting data, they're setting traps, they're they're doing a lot of that and you see that MMA. It's just not at the same level. Obviously, there's a there's a greater skill set. There's more weapons to worry about. It is different.

But I don't know, I obviously I'm reaching for peak perfection with everything. So if we're coming and we're looking at distance control, I think the boxers do it better, you know, if we're looking at setting up fans and working off a job, especially.

I think that's I think that's the most frustrating thing when I watch MMA or UFC fights and the watch the majority of the guys never, never ever use a job. And it's always just as big overhand, right? I'm like, like what are you doing?

Like what are you doing? Like you have two hands like you have the job set it up. Now I'm not saying that's everybody, but I see I see many people doing that. But that going back to Tuporio, that's one thing that he does so well is is a shorter guy. He sits back on that back foot. He's throwing that job. He's he's understanding your distance control so he can get in. And then that's where he's got that power and he lets that go.

It's going to be interesting to see how he rebounds because that was a lot of damage. Two fractured orbitals, you know, they had to stop the fight in between rounds. And he took big punches from a guy who's got fucking rocks in his hands.

Yeah, Justin can crack.

Well, they call him what the most violent in the game. And I think that stands true. Yeah, that's that's a hard one to bounce back from. It's going to take extra time. If you really let know his injuries heal and be fully recovered before he even thinks about sparring again, you know, every touch in the face again.

Yeah, I don't know where he's at now, you know, but I know that he's still recovering. And it'll be a while. I mean, the fight was in June. We're doing this right now. It's August 30th.

Was it 30th or 31st 31st 31st? So you know, he's had a couple of months, but you know that he probably needs like six months before he's even sparring. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's going to take some time. It's going to take some time. And the thing that I really hate to see is when you have undefeated individuals like that, who have gone undefeated their whole career, feel invincible. And then sometimes that one takes them off their pedestal.

You know, like Josie, all those a great example of that of I mean, he came back and he fought tough, but he just never was the same. Right. He was never that untouchable.

You know, there's probably many people that I can touch back on. But yeah, hopefully that's that's the main thing that he's going to need is that that mental

and destructibility and to come back and just be like, I'm the same person that one fight doesn't change anything. And I'm ready to go do it again. Well, he's a very mentally strong guy in I think he will bounce back in that regard. It's just there's also the just the reality of how much damage and only he knows how much damage he actually took in that fight. You know, how that affects him as well.

Because you know as well as anybody that there's only a few of those kind of fights that you could have in your career. And you got to be very careful how you recover from those.

And a lot of fighters, a lot of great fighters have made a mistake of coming back too soon. Volkanovsky is one that I point to all the time who's arguably the greatest featherweight of all time. He is one of the most masterful fighters in the game.

He took a short, short notice fight with Islam in the rematch and got head kicked. And then I think it was only four months later that he was fighting Ilya. And that is crazy. That's a crazy thing to do. He took a full head kick, shined the dome, gets KO'd. And then four months later he's fighting the fucking scariest challenger that he's ever had a face. Right. Yeah, 100%. You can't rush back into those things. I mean, especially when you're that cemented, you don't really need a rush back into.

Right. You have your legacy behind you. Well, you shouldn't even take in that fight with Islam. There's no way you should take a World Championship fight when you're hanging out with your buddies drinking beer, you know, eating fish and chips or whatever the fuck he was doing. And then hunting with Volko. Right? You know, he's having a good time. But he wasn't in training. He says there's no way he was in training. He didn't look like he was in training physically like his body didn't look the same. Right. He didn't know you looked out of shape. But he definitely looked smoother and less ripped than he usually does. There's a there's a difference to his life.

to be in a two or three month fight camp of day and day out,

two, three practices a day, the diet set,

the mentality a set versus I'm just training.

On the outside of that.

When you came in on two days notice the fight well-maker,

were you in training at all?

Like what was your scenario?

I was doing a food eating championship training,

was killing double doubles and three-by-three's.

Now but without one I was fortunate because

I stayed strict pretty much year round.

So I had fought in January at the beginning of the year

and then I was supposed to fight multiple times

and I just had two or three opponents pull out.

And then I fought November 7th for the title fight

for the A1 combat, which was Lidia the Week in before.

So fortunately I did, I was,

even though people were falling out,

I kept to the course, I stayed strong,

I stayed in a fight camp mentality.

That November 7th fight ended up happening.

So I had a strong two months.

Now still even that one week difference

of going being a fight camp.

And then I have a couple of drinks at the casino,

I'm eating food and I thought to myself

because January was, it was a similar thing

where they said February, Australia, get ready,

get your passport, let's look into this,

bubble, blah, you know, I had a nice knockout finished there.

But then yeah, it's just that one week

of being off of eating whatever I wanted to

and just kind of doing whatever.

I ran once, I showed up disbaring and like touch sparred.

I'd gotten to one other practice

because in my mind I was like, I need to be

somewhat ready for this.

Like I can have a week, I've been in fight camp all year long,

I can have one week and then that's the week that they call.

I'd say 48 hour notice, MSG, 10 and no one

defeated Malcolm Wilmaik or you want it.

And then of course I'm gonna can't say no to that one.

So you fought the weekend before the Wilmaik or fight?

I fought November 7th, yeah.

Wow, that's actually good.

If you didn't get hurt.

Yeah, well it was a minute, 30 seconds,

knocked him out on the first round.

So it was, to me it's just the stars aligned.

I mean,

Don't you think it's also good that you just had the experience

like seven days prior to the whole thing,

getting in the cage, cage shots, you just fought.

So it's much more comfortable for you

than if you had like Connor taking five years off.

Is it elite as Connor is double champ,

one of the greatest of all time for that?

Even a guy like that, you take five years off

and you could see like what it did to him.

It's like it fucked with his head.

Oh yeah, you could see it.

There was at the same Connor energy going into it.

Of course, I always want a quick turnaround

like after I fight just for that very reason.

I cut the weight, I know what that's like.

I warmed up in the back with all the anticipation,

you know, and that energy flowing through my body.

I walked out in front of the crowd.

They announced my name.

I got in there.

I actually fought someone.

So yeah, if you have that going for you,

then that's, yeah, that's way way better for sure.

You have the more active, you could be the more comfortable,

you could be with the experience,

as long as you're not getting hurt.

You know, here's a stat that I was reading about Izzy.

And people forget about this.

When he was a champion, he defended his title a lot, man.

He was the guy that they can go,

hey, we need someone to headline this card

and Izzy would step in.

And I think he fought three,

he defended the world title three times in one year,

which is crazy.

Because I don't think the middleweight title,

since he's gone, has even been,

can tell you how many middleweight fights have there

even been for the title since he's been gone?

There's only been a few fights.

I think there's only been,

I mean, Sean and, and, and,

and Drickus, Sean and Drickus, two,

Drickus and Hamza,

and then Sean and Hamza.

And Sean and Hamza, I mean,

it might literally be like maybe five fights

since he's lost the title.

And fuck, he defended it more than anybody.

Right.

Yeah, which is crazy.

He defended it three times in one year.

Yeah.

And then you have this, you know,

huge span of time in between defenses.

But then there's a question of like,

what is the, when does it become a benefit

and when does it become a detriment?

Like when, when you're fighting too many times a year,

like the Marabdovich Willy fight,

one of the things that a lot of people talked about

after Pielder-John beat him in the rematch was,

what about the strength of schedule?

I mean, Marab was fighting constantly.

He was fighting, he fought so often

and for so many years that you gotta think

that at a certain point in time,

maybe he's doing himself a disservice by being so active.

Yeah. I mean, for sure.

I don't know, I mean, that's,

it's something you gotta feel out for yourself, you know?

It's something that you have to know

and you're hard to heart send.

Nobody else can tell you that.

Your coach can't be like,

no, you're training really well these days,

you're super sharp, this and that.

Like if something's off realistically,

you should be perfect going into your fight,

especially at a world championship caliber.

It's just, I mean, I keep making these comparisons,

but it's another thing that I go back to

with the boxing world is these guys look at it as a business,

like look at Floyd Mayweather.

Like everything was, like he made sure

that the cage was his side, he picked the gloves,

it was certain people at certain times

and there's, there's some things to be said about that,

but it's a business, might say.

It's a very smart approach to it, you know?

I'm fighting when I'm ready, I'm not fighting injured,

which is more of the main thing is like people

go in there with injuries and, you know, get hurt or lose even.

It's like that could be detrimental on your record.

I think that MMA guys are a little bit more on the tough side

instead of the business side of things

where they'll fight anyone anytime, which,

I mean, that's how you gotta be,

but that's how you build your team around you.

You have a team that tells you,

hey, you know, this time isn't necessarily the best

to go into it and this and that.

And just being a little bit smarter about your schedule,

it's like, yeah, us fighters are gonna sit there

and go, I'll fight anyone any given time.

Doesn't matter, but yeah, this is a business,

it's not just fighting, like getting in that cage solely.

It's a lot of aspects that go into it.

Don't you think it's way more difficult

to go into a fight perfect in MMA than it is in boxing though?

In boxing, it seems like it's much easier to avoid injuries.

For sure, there's differences.

I just, I reflect back to that.

I like the way that they conduct themselves.

I think it's, and there's a lot that's to be said to that

because it's a longer standing sport.

There's been more time and experience into it,

but yeah, 100%.

I mean, you know, I was before this April fight,

I was the first round of the day of sparring.

I was just going light with Kalim Bisping

for a little one second.

We moved around and he's a heavyweight.

We moved around, he took me,

he tried to take me down, I stuck to, he took me down,

and I kinda just sat with it

because I didn't want to get caught in any, you know,

knee tweaking positions or anything

because he's just so much heavier than I am.

And I sat into a butterfly,

which is typically how I would do that, elevate the hips

immediately and try to make a scramble.

And my, my Mineskis just popped instantly, right then and there.

The first round of the day barely had done anything,

barely started and it wasn't even like a crazy position,

but yeah, now I've sustained injury.

Now I don't go against heavyweights anymore

because it's stupid.

Yeah, you should never be doing that.

It's stupid.

As a bantamweight, you should not be sparring with heavyweight.

Well, that's why I go the first day.

I'm not the first day but the first round.

I'm just trying to warm up.

There's a lot of things to be said.

I grow and I learn and I get smarter every time.

I think you should stay away with guys

that are reasonably close to your weight period.

10 pounds is probably a maximum above you.

You know, you shouldn't be going with anybody more than that.

Yeah, I get smarter with these things.

I do dump things and I figure for them,

most of my history I've had to learn the hard way with things.

So I'm getting better at it.

I'm getting smarter.

But like I said, it was just a freak thing.

It wasn't like we were going crazy hard or anything.

It just was the first round.

I was just trying to move and then some little thing happened.

How bad is it?

It wasn't a full, full tear.

But it happened back in like February or before that April one.

So leading up to the Esteban fight,

it's like I didn't grapple till the last maybe month of it.

Maybe it was all the way up to it.

I mean, that's what happened was the April fight,

which was the Esteban fight.

So yeah, it's very difficult to avoid everything.

There's a lot of different things that won't even seem

like a detrimental position.

But yeah, you got grappling, which can tweak all sorts

of different parts of the body.

A simple cut from striking can happen very easily.

So for sure, it's much more abundant in the MMA world

because there are more weapons.

There's a lot of variations of things to watch out for.

But that being said, I like to carry, like I said,

this is a smart man's game.

I like to carry a level of business wise and smart wise to this.

So though the exact functions may differ,

it's the mindset that I like to carry from it.

Right.

Well, what you said is perfect,

that it's a long business.

Boxes have been around for a long time.

And the really elite trainers,

the really elite coaches, they know how to prepare their fighters

and they know what fights to take and when to take them.

And unfortunately with the UFC,

sometimes you get a call like the Malcolm well maker fight.

And you're like, oh shit,

it would've been nice to get two months to prepare for Malcolm.

But I have two days and I just fought,

fuck it, rolled the dice.

And you also were coming out of nowhere.

And I don't think a lot of people had time

to prepare for you because as good as you are,

when you fought well maker, when you fought,

how do you say his name?

Estevan, what does this,

Resteval Estevan?

He was also undefeated and super skillful.

He was a really good fighter and still is.

But to have those two performances in a row,

the way you looked, you looked like a guy,

if you were 20 years ago,

you would have been a fucking alien,

like no one had seen anybody like you before.

That's how much this sport has grown just in 20 years.

If you go back to like ultimate fighter season one,

there was fucking nobody like you.

Nobody like you back then.

You know, it really wasn't until Anderson burst onto the scene

shortly after that that we really got to see

that kind of elite level striking.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, talk about alien for that time.

That was interesting.

Silver, that's one of the top to ever do it.

There's no question.

Oh my God, people forget because maybe they see

he's later fights in his career,

but you go back and watch him when he was in his prime.

I remember when he fought Chris Lieben.

And Chris Lieben is a murderous puncher.

Like one of the hardest punchers it's ever fought in the UFC.

He's one of those guys that's got that fucking God given crack.

And he's just such a warrior.

I mean, wades into the storm, you know?

But that style is tailor made for him.

And when I was looking at the odds,

a friend of mine was there, I go bet the house on the Brazilian.

I go bet the house.

I go listen to me.

This is a mother fucker, dude.

Just wait because that's when he really

came into his own over in cage rage.

When he, that's when he really became Anderson Silva.

That was a yellow cage.

Was that cage rage?

That's when he did that.

The elbow, the crazy elbow.

Yeah, Tony Friclin.

Yeah, what was the, it was like a upkick,

like a crescent upkick.

Was that pride or was that the cage rage?

He was on the bottom and he whipped his leg over the top.

It wasn't like a straight upkick.

He kind of like brought it over.

Ooh, I don't remember that one.

Yeah, I don't recall either.

Who was he fighting?

I don't know.

I'm not good at names.

So in pride, it was, who was he fighting here, Jamie?

Japanese gentleman.

You should know, Kami.

Oh, you should know, Kami, this was Rumble on the Rock.

This is BJ Penn's promotion.

Look at that.

Oh.

Yeah, he's just doing things that like,

you know, nobody had ever thought of that time.

He gets that right leg loose, ties his hands up,

ba-ba-au.

That's crazy.

And no Kami was a beast.

And they fought again in the UFC later and he K-Oto Kami.

Yeah, stuff like that, the elbow you're talking about.

Yeah, it's just like just a pioneer for it.

You know, he's not like he's watching Phil,

and he's not sitting on YouTube watching people do these things

prior.

He's the one that's coming up with this stuff.

Yeah, this is the crazy elbow.

You know what the funny story about this elbow?

He was training that and his coach told him stop doing that.

You're not going to do that.

And so he made his wife hold pillows at home.

And he was practicing at a home.

He was having her hold a pillow.

And he was just working on the mechanics of that elbow.

So he wanted to prove his coach wrong.

And he wanted to get the knockout with that technique.

And low on the hold.

And he did it.

Well, he had some great fights over there,

particularly the Lee Murray fight.

Did you ever see that fight?

Probably.

You know, Lee Murray is, right?

He's the British dude that became a bag robber.

He was the bank robber, correct?

Biggest heist in UK history.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a bad dude too.

Oh, he was a bad guy.

At the time, everybody was scared of that, dude.

Well, that guy could crack.

He's another guy who had crazy power.

And just a vicious dude.

Just an absolutely vicious guy.

Absolutely.

He was a legitimate criminal.

Yeah, exactly.

He had that whole aura and persona to him.

Yeah, he was a real gangster.

Yeah, that brings a little bit more of like this, you know, I don't want to say fear,

but like, who's this guy, you know?

The fucking guy was an elite fighter.

And he was also a elite criminal.

Right.

He's multi-talented.

I mean, that's something in a movie.

Like a guy who's a top tier criminal who also competes and wins in the UFC.

Right.

Yeah.

And one by triangle.

That beat Jorge Rivera by triangle.

Yeah.

And it's crazy.

Yeah, I know.

And you have Anderson come in and just demolish this dude.

Yeah, he's rectum.

And he wrecked him with technique.

And there was a lot of it with leg kicks.

Yeah.

He just, Anderson's more time was at such a different level.

It was so artistic.

Yeah.

I think that's the perfect word to describe that was artistic.

Because it's just beautiful.

The way he said things up, I mean, he made elite guys look very brand new in the cage.

And I didn't see very many close fights with them until later in his career.

Yeah, it's a later in his career thing.

And I always say that with fighters, you really have to look at them when they were at

their highest RPM, whatever.

So you generally, it's only a few years.

Right.

But that few years, like judge them by that.

Judged them by those performances when they were just on fire.

And I tell people you have to always go back and watch those Anderson fights when you

front kick, V-tour in the face.

Right.

First time anybody had ever won by knockout with a front kick to the face in the UFC.

Now people do it all the time.

Right.

But I didn't even think that was a good option.

Like there's a video of, and I grew up kicking.

There's a video of me and Eddie Bravo.

We're working with one of those Bob dummies.

And he's like, what do you think about a front kick to the face?

I'm like, it's better to the body.

I mean, you could land it to the face, but I don't really see very many guys do it.

It's much more wrong.

Yeah, it's perfect.

Just watch the Anderson's self-effight.

And everybody does it now.

So many guys get knockouts with a front kick to the face because you don't see it coming

when it comes straight up the middle.

If everything's coming around and all of a sudden something comes straight up the middle

and catches the bottom of your chin.

For sure.

I like that side kick to the body, to the liver, to the one that he'll in the liver.

I think that's more of a natural motion.

But I have been working with the front kicks.

I like them a lot, especially with the weight on the back leg a little bit, and especially

with these calf kicks, people are really trying to bear down and throw the calf kick hard.

That's what was going to be my technique.

And my last one was when that calf kick comes off their very beginning, because that's

what footer he does.

This comes out.

He looks for his distance and he bases down and throws that calf kick almost every single

time against every opponent.

And I was like, especially because I was playing on going there one handed and I was like,

I'm just going to pull this front leg up, front kick to the face and it's going to land.

It's going to be beautiful.

But yeah, I started to work that.

You put that weight on that back leg.

This one comes up fast.

And with the one I like better, especially with the boxing as I come down here, is kind

of getting that lean forward and you're stepping back.

And then when people think your face is in range forward, you just pull back and throw that

one straight up the middle.

And you're talking about the front leg, front the back leg on the second one.

You're kind of basing out here and you're stepping back onto the back leg.

And when they open up, like they're going to throw something, you lean better when

throw it up the middle.

And so you're changing the distance there as people don't expect it.

For the calf kick, you're just light on the front leg and you throw it off the front leg.

Are you sliding forward?

Are you just picking it up and stabbing?

I'll just pick it up and stab it because they got to close a little bit of distance to

get that calf.

That one's, you know, the kick is a longer range, but that one you have to come a little

bit closer for me to throw it appropriately.

Some people smack it with the foot or whatever it is.

I don't like that.

I like that dutch style, almost like a soccer kick.

You're raising it straight up and that shin bone is touching that soft calf.

And so to do it that way, I get a little bit closer with distance, but then that's where

you set it up and all the other stuff.

Be a little safer doing it that way.

Yeah, the calf kick is interesting because a lot of guys are kind of just going straight

up.

You know, like you ever see Yuki Yosefite?

He's one of my favorite cars to watch.

That's probably like the perfect example of Don, a very deliberate and technical calf kick

is how he does it.

He destroys people's legs, destroys them.

And he's kicking up all the time and there's no pivot.

It's so fast.

It's so fast and there's no tell and he's throwing it in every combination.

So he's hitting you with a jab.

He's inside, low kicking you.

The left hook.

He's outside, low kicking you.

Yeah, he's smacking it from all the different levels is constantly and taking out your base

every time.

Every time you're close enough, he's taking out your base every time, every time, ever

from all angles.

I love watching this guy fight.

He does that cool thing too.

Like what he just did, check out that.

Watch it.

They gave him trouble for that because you're not supposed to do that in kickboxing.

See, he does that.

He hooks the guy's leg.

So he throws like a half speed kick.

Show that back it up again so you can see that.

He throws like a half speed kick holds it and then trips him.

My dad was actually just talking about that one with me.

That's it.

And then he does the very clean technique.

But he is such a wild guy to watch because of the damage that he does to guys' legs.

So this is what I love about the artistic aspect of it and the technical aspect when people

figure out, okay, what do you do when you're fighting a guy like this?

Well Jonathan Haggard, he figured it out.

His constant switch dances, constant knees to the body, moving jabbing, constant movement.

He never let him get set up for those.

And he took a lot of leg kicks in that but he landed way more than he took and he won the

decision against Yosuz.

It was a big win.

But it was also like a blueprint.

Like if people got to see that fight, they see it.

See you find that fight.

Jonathan Haggard and Yuki Yosuz.

He did a really good job of picking that front leg up.

And that's going back to MMA is something that it's still developing.

But I don't see a lot of guys defend the calf kick.

I see a lot of guys willingly eat them.

Yes.

And it's like you do that with the shin guards on.

You could probably spar all day and take calf kicks, you know.

Sort of.

If they're landing clean, like really clean, yeah, you're going to feel it.

But for the most part, you pick the leg up.

You pull it back a little bit.

It doesn't land super flush.

You could take it with shin guards on.

You take one good one with no shin guards on.

It's a completely different game.

It takes, you know, you're that leg away from you.

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Yeah.

So look how Jonathan is never stationary.

Constantly switching stances.

Look, I mean, literally constantly and constant movement.

And then when you're thinking about the legs, the jab, the step forward knee, everything

is constant movement.

There's never a chance for Yosa to set up and nice spinning back kicks to the body there.

Close to you.

Yeah, I know.

He's wicked, man.

This dude's wicked.

But how could he figure it out?

Look at that.

Outside low kick on a hop.

I mean, in constant stance switches and that switch needed the body.

Look, Yosa is looking for those, man.

If you, you can only take so many of them from this guy too.

He's got fucking stones for shins.

Yeah.

Yeah, you got no nerve endings.

It's anything below the knees.

It's really incredible, man.

So, switching this fight is a real master class in striking.

And this is one thing that I always give credit to one for.

I think one has the absolute best strikers when it comes to just pure striking.

And the exciting guys that they have over there, Azadula Imangazalia, have you seen that guy

fight?

Yeah.

He's my favorite.

I fucking love watching that guy fight.

Yeah.

It's like, Jesus Christ, he's good.

And one of the guys that he trains with just fought in the PFL, Mega Med off.

Did you see that fight?

No.

I forget how to say his name.

It's like, I think it's Abu or I forget his name.

But he put on a master class in striking.

And he looked just like, like, Azadula Imangazalia, like the way he was fighting, like that style.

Long tall striker and these daggistand guys, man.

You got daggistands got elite Muay Thai too.

That's, it's crazy.

Yeah, that's it, dude.

Umru.

Umru, Mega Med off.

Well, speaking of that, show me a little bit of that.

Is this cat?

He fights just like Azadula, like very similar.

And I know they're from the same place.

You talk about artistic.

That's like Zabee.

Sorry, Paul.

Is another one.

Yes.

Yeah.

And he was kind of the first of those guys that you go, oh, I think of these guys as wrestlers.

Yeah.

But look at this guy.

He's throwing 360 roundhouse kicks and wheel kicks.

He was doing like, I don't know, not Kung Fu, but it's one of those practices before he

was ever wrestled.

Yes.

Yeah, it was like sand shoe or something.

But you watch this cat fight.

He fights just like Azadula.

He's got that long reach, slick striking wicked kicks.

He throws a lot of high kicks.

And that dude, Alvarez, he's finding was tough as shit, dude, because he, he, he took a

lot before he finally wilted.

You can see he's hurting from the late kicks already before that.

He's getting destroyed.

This cat's vicious.

He's being a long guy like that is just so much more beneficial.

That's why everybody thinks he's all these big muscleheads like like the OG UFC that's

that's the fire build.

The guy on the, the guy on top of the world.

Yes.

It's like it's the tall, long like skinny guy that can strike well.

Like that's the perfect like MMA build.

Yeah, because they can strike you from six inches away from where you can strike them.

That's a crazy advantage.

That's a back to their, whereas with tie on Thursday, whatever it was.

And he's like, I want to say he's at 78 inch reach.

Wow.

He's like, he's like, I have a 78 inch reach.

He's like, so I can touch you guys from this and that.

Any southbound blah, blah, blah.

But I'm like, well, yeah, like that's like a light heavyweight reach.

Yeah, it's like, well, no, do it.

Both of those guys have crazy long reach.

It's ridiculous.

Real, real long arms, real long legs.

Perfect for triangles, perfect for, for, for any kind of dors.

Right.

Guillateens, anything.

Reenaked with an arm in.

Yeah, and then you fight.

You know, like this.

It's like, you could touch from a million miles away.

That's what me, I'm the opposite.

My whole style is all the way out or all the way in.

Like, I gotta get in and get to work in there, you know?

And there's something to be said about that too because those two styles cancel each other

out.

If you have a long guy, he's not going to fight as well on the inside.

It's not saying that he can't, especially with the Moitai, the way they clinch is actually

very efficient.

And with the boxing stuff opening stuff up and being able to get your, your longer limbs

in there is, is perfectly viable as well.

But just, you gotta play off of your, of, you know, your, your God, you have a talents

in your assets.

And so the shorter guy is going to negate the long guy by getting inside.

And if the long guy can maintain the distance and keep him there, then he's going to win

that.

Yeah, there's benefits to all body types.

It's just knowing what to do with that body type.

Like, look, Mike Tyson is arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time.

He's in the, in the conversation with Ali and Joe Lewis and, there's a few guys.

That you could like put into that, that category as the greatest heavyweight of all time.

And I think Mike Tyson certainly in his prime was right there.

Yeah.

You know, Lennox Lewis, you gotta put Lennox Lewis in that conversation.

Even prime time Larry Holmes, you gotta put him in that conversation.

But Mike Tyson was 5'11, you know, as a heavyweight, that's crazy.

And he was only like 2'15, 2'20 in his prime.

But that bombing and weaving and constant movement, he would just overwhelm guys.

You see the tall guys putting their hands out, they just, they were just dealing with

this fucking Wolverine that was running towards them.

Yeah.

And I had just seen something from him or read a quote.

And he, he said it wasn't my physicality, that was my greatest asset.

It was my elusiveness.

It was that I was so elusive that I could get in and I could get to work, you know.

Yes.

And a lot of people, unless you're like a real practitioner or, you know, a student of

the sport, they don't see that.

They just see, they just see the bombs coming and they attribute that to, he's got a punch

of power, he's his monster.

But there's just so much more intricate, you know, it's like you said about Anderson,

like this is an art form.

This is a game of, of said things up.

It's a chess match, you know, everybody looks at it like it's checkers, but it's, there's

so many more moves that could be made and that need to be made to be the best at this.

And you really want to be appreciated by the people that understand that.

You don't want to be the guy that gives into the, the howls and the, the cheers of the

casuals.

The, the real feeling, the good feeling that fighters get is when someone is a true student

of the game, who really understands what they, like I love when you're doing this.

I love that thing you do when you do, there's, though, that's what the guys want to hear.

They want to hear like from their fellow fighters.

Right.

Like, you know, like when an elite fighter goes up to another elite fighter, it's like,

bro, I fucking love what you're doing.

You could see they're like, thank you.

Like it's like, it's different.

I have a sense.

Means more.

When, when you know that a guy is really operating at a very high level.

Right.

Yeah, because of the rest of the people have never stepped room into even a gym to

spar or like go a couple rounds of grappling, you know, so it's, they don't know what they're

seeing.

They have no understanding.

Sometimes they think when the guy's missing, it's because he sucks.

You know what?

It's funny is that even I have had that realization because I grown up, it was like me and my

pop's watching you see and to me, you know, that was, that was my thing.

But I would always sit there and go, well, why doesn't this guy do this?

It's right there.

Just do that.

It's right there.

It's like, dude, you're not standing in a cage surrounded by thousands of people.

You don't have the same fatigue.

You don't know injuries.

You're going into it with it.

You don't know what you practice leading up to it that you're even have the capacity to

think about and to act on.

It's like, there's just so many things.

So like, I watch stuff now and I'm so much better at that because I'm sitting there going

on.

He could do that, but I don't know what he's seeing.

I don't know what's going on in his mind.

So, yeah, there's different levels to it.

Yeah, for sure.

It's, I mean, it's a very complex game.

It really is.

I wanted to ask you a question.

Do you think that it was a benefit for you to lose your first two fights?

Do you think there's maybe something to that because we were talking about your first

two opponents in the UFC being undefeated until they fought you?

They had never experienced loss as a professional before.

And then they get on this crazy big hype thing.

And there's something about being undefeated as well, especially when you're a guy like

well-makers, not just undefeated, but a knockout artist.

Like, people get really, really jazzed up and excited about that.

Do you think that maybe having that bad feeling of loss early in your career may be grounded

you more?

Yeah, certainly.

I went six and a no on defeat as an amateur, but I can tell you at that time, I was not

living a fighter's lifestyle to the fullest, you know?

At that time, I would let him go to practice in the morning and then I had to go to work

at night or whatever, but I was like, man, fighting's the best.

You just go wake up, practice once.

You get to kick it the whole rest of the day.

You get to go fight and make all this money and live your dream.

That's all it takes.

This is cool.

And I went in all these amateurs scene fights, which that's what the amateurs are for for

learning and getting here to experience.

Yeah, it really showed me that there was change that needed to be made in what I did with

fighting and what I did outside of fighting and outside of fighting was arguably more important.

You know, there was a lot that I needed to change.

A lot that I needed to refocus on and make right by.

And it wasn't until I did those things that I saw this, this drastic change, you know?

It was until I that I erased all the negatives and then filled it with all the positives

that I'm able to be on a 10 fight win streak doing what I'm doing now because who knows?

I mean, maybe I would have changed that, but I don't think it would have been as drastic

if I hadn't experienced those two losses the way I did.

So before those two losses, your first two professional fights, were you kind of fucking

off?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

What were you doing?

Everything.

I mean, partying, smoking, drinking, being a delinquent, being not the best partner.

How old were you back then?

I came back from college in 2017.

I tore my moniscus and a dole me and then my coach was, same knee, my right knee, different

knee.

Coach was an asshole about it.

I snap crackle popped all the way through the rest of the season.

Was it until I drank an asshole about it?

Well, you didn't want to ignore it like completely.

You just pretty much somebody suck it up.

What a great coach.

And yeah, exactly.

That's why I didn't go back.

I mean, it was a lot of things.

I was in Bristol, Tennessee.

So it's like, there's not a whole lot to do out there coming from so-called.

So that was a culture shock.

I was on my own for the very first time.

And then yeah, I got hurt.

So then I started, I don't know, everybody else is out there partying and stuff.

I never partied.

I grew up very religious.

I was very strict.

I all throughout high school, I didn't touch anything.

I didn't look anything.

I wanted to partake in anything.

I just wrestled.

That was my only drug was wrestling back then.

You know, that's all I did.

And I had a lot of success then.

And it wasn't until I deviated from that course.

And I started finding fun or enjoyment or just maybe just trying to fill time and numb

some of the things that I was thinking about or worrying about or like that wrestling

thing of it.

It might not have been the biggest thing to people.

But for me, that was my first time experiencing where I had just placed like eighth of the

California State.

I was fit that the national tournament.

I was just doing everything right.

I had won the US Open for my age division.

And then I go to this and I'm on my own for the first time.

And I have all this adversity.

And it's just like, I don't know, I just felt like, like, why is this happening to me?

You know, I felt like I had been abandoned at that point.

And maybe other people would have recovered from it better.

That was the first time experience for me.

So, but yeah, I was barely 19 years old around that time.

I think I probably started fighting around the amateurs around 20.

So I was, I was relatively young, but so that's when you started partying?

I was as soon as I tore up in Niscus, I finished out the wrestling season.

And then I remember like even school like slouched off like I did.

Well, I wasn't really caring about school too much.

We had fun.

It didn't really even try too hard.

And then I went, I remember that day.

As soon as the last final was done, we all went to my buddy's house.

And that's the first time I ever got drunk like ever.

And so, and it's not to say that those things are like the end of the world if you're controlling them.

But I certainly wasn't, you know, I had like a lot of compounding things be it first time.

And that carried over.

It was like that all the way up until.

Yeah, it was after that second loss.

I was probably still not doing what I needed to be doing to be a disciplined athlete.

I respectable, just like, you know, good person really.

I wasn't, I wasn't being a good person.

And yeah, there was, there was a lot of change, a lot of growth.

You know, I had a lot of people guide me back into that.

And as soon as I made those changes, yeah.

Now, now I'm here, haven't been able to live and experience it.

Because that's the best teacher out of all of them.

You can go and watch a YouTube video on how to do something, right?

Like fix a car.

Oh, I know exactly where the alternator is.

I know where this pump is.

I know how this connects to this.

Then the second you open it up, it's like, okay, well, I didn't know I needed this tool.

And wow, this is really way harder to pull off.

And it's the experience.

It's, it's the hardship and experience that teaches you things.

So 100% if I hadn't gone through that, who knows where I'd be and what I'd be doing right now?

When you hurt your knee in college, it was at the first time you'd ever done it.

Where you had an injury where it completely compromised your ability to perform.

Where you realize like, oh, like my body's very vulnerable.

So I had actually sprained my ankle.

It was, it's called the OC duals.

It's like the number one and number two in Orange County face off.

And I had tore up my ankle pretty good.

And that was going into league and then CIF and all that stuff.

And I had almost worried that I wouldn't be able to wrestle, which is a big thing.

Luckily, I was able to wrestle on that.

But yes, I guess the meniscus was probably the first time where it really took me out of

my game like that.

And to me, it was more of a, I don't know if it was a vulnerability of the body.

I had come to terms with that.

I understood that.

I don't know.

I've maybe I thought there was a higher power like protecting me.

And at that moment, like I was no longer protected.

And I had been abandoned.

And that's kind of what got to me.

Honestly, as I thought, like God had abandoned me essentially at that time.

Really you didn't think like maybe God, did you even consider that it was a challenge?

That it was something you could have.

I can look back on it and say with certainty that is.

And that's you were young.

I was young and that's, that's why I said I clouded my mind with a bunch of other things.

Said a focus on it and thinking about it clearly, I just just moved farther away from

the issue.

So like at that time, that's what I thought.

Now being a mature man, having grown my relationship with God, having read and studied

and understanding that, like I said, that those hardships are what build us.

That's what tests our faith and what really brings us closer to God.

Now I see that it wasn't as big as I had made it, you know.

But I learned and maybe falling farther down the path taught me even more.

Yeah, I think it does.

I think falling, I think failing is actually a very good teacher.

I really do.

I think in all aspects of your life.

And especially when you're a young person, you have this idea of who you are.

Having that get knocked down, we have to rebuild is very important because once you rebuild

and you realize like, okay, now I know what I'm capable of.

Now I know that there's going to be ups and downs, but I must maintain the path.

Right.

Did you have to get your knee fixed?

Did you have to do anything to it?

Yeah, they did a scope on it.

So they shaved the part that was hanging away.

Which to me, I wish I had never done.

Because that has given me issues to today.

Like any of this inversion, like a triangle choke with a right leg going over, that meniscus,

it was my lateral meniscus outside.

It rolls over and it catches.

So then I got to bring my legs straight and pop it back into place.

And it's gotten better.

I get through it quicker these days, but they tell you to not even get that surgery now.

So my second professional fight where I got ankle locked, I got a...

I think it was like an outside reap.

And I went to sit up to grab it.

And he had the position locked in my knee, just like eight times in my ear, real bad.

And it was in the same exact spot that lateral meniscus, the outer, which I don't know what

other legume is on the outside there.

But to me, it was like exactly where the meniscus on the right leg had happened.

But I grabbed up or sat up, I grabbed his arms.

I kept trying to fight through it.

And then he switched it over to the heel hook on the other side of my ankle pop twice

as I rolled and I finally tapped then.

But I didn't even get an MRI on that one.

I tried to.

It took so long that I was doing the knees over toes and strengthening.

And I was starting to move on it by the time they're like, okay, we could get your MRI

in a week.

And like, dude, I'm already moving and exercising and doing stuff on this.

Like, I was cool.

But yeah, I never did anything with that.

And that knee's really never given me any issues.

And then the one I got the scope on still bothers me to today.

Yeah, they don't recommend that anymore because they did a study of people that have had

a big mini-uscus surgery versus not having mini-uscus surgery and just rehabilitation.

And it shows that rehabilitation seems to be the better path.

Yeah.

And especially for like, I have one that's been scoped and it bothers me all the time.

That's the one I got shot up today.

It always bothers me.

It's like, there's missing padding on one side of it.

It's missing.

But I had a bucket handle tear and in jujitsu, it would lock.

And my leg would be stuffed like stiff.

And I could, I had to like push it back into place.

It was excruciating.

It was like stuck locked out.

Yeah.

It would go back eventually, but it would take sometimes a day before and it would swell

up.

But if I, first of all, this is a long time ago.

Unfortunately, there was no stem cells available back then.

I would have 100% just done stem cells.

And now I would have done the knees over toes stuff and a lot of cycling, like stationary

box bike cycling at not high resistance.

Because of fairly low resistance is just repetitive motion.

It's really good for getting the blood flow to the knees and really good for strengthening

up the tendons and the ligaments and everything, but without load.

It's just, you do it like a very low resistance and just for a long time.

And that's really good for your knees.

So yeah, I mean, there's so many things.

Like I think even like leg extensions would probably be like a good little exercise for

the knees.

I mean, it's pretty deliberate spot.

I think, you know, like back packing.

I think, I think like a controlled version of that because there's a lot of times you're

dropping down like pretty heavily this and that, which is probably not the best.

Down to the knee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But if you were doing it like, because that's kind of the knees over toes is he's doing

some similar motions.

If you had some, maybe not as much weight, some weight on your back, you could slowly kind

of find that and then have a soft landing.

Like, I don't know.

I was back packing recently and I was just thinking about this like, like in a controlled

setting, like in a gym, like on a machine that I'm like, maybe not as much as like a

steep incline or decline, like something like that would be really good.

And then the range of motion stuff is, I've had, you know, with with my injury and stuff

and time to step away.

I've had like a lot of opportunity to think and I feel like I've grown tremendously and

it's like, yeah, all the little tiny things like the knees, like they're fine.

Like I do it.

I really don't have an issue too much.

Like maybe if I get into that position, it'll do it.

But it's like, you know, what happens when I do get into like a position, let's say a

leglock position, for example, or like a straight knee bar and, you know, what if my flexibility

is an issue there or just simply like a wizard position where the knees getting popped up,

like just any there's a there's a million and one positions that the knees could be compromised

there.

So yeah, it's going back doing a lot of range of motion stuff, a lot of strengthening on

the knees.

Do you do polyquins step downs?

Do you know those?

No.

Charles, polyquin, you're seeing you find polyquins that very simple.

You're essentially doing it either you're doing it from an incline board with like a little

bit of elevation or you're just doing it from a straight up step.

And what you're doing is you're just lowering yourself down.

So one foot is above on the step and the other foot, you're lower like that like there.

There you go.

He's doing it on plates.

Very simple, very simple, right?

I mean, you're literally only going like 10 inches, but you're going up and down like

that and it's just controlling the body weight like that phenomenal for knee strengthening.

And for knee stability, it's excellent.

It's one of the best exercises.

You're doing backwards pulls with like either a sled or on a treadmill.

Do you walk backwards doing that?

I'm not doing it like really any exercises weight and like, I mean, I do little things,

but first right, the conditioning after boxing, but I stay away from the weights.

But it's not even for the weights, I'm talking about you do it on a treadmill.

You do on a treadmill, just basically keep the treadmill off and just with your own resistance,

you step backwards.

So you put your back to the screen and hold onto the bars and you're basically just pushing

with your legs going backwards.

And it's really good for strengthening your knees and also for blood flow.

That's a knees over toes guy thing.

His page is phenomenal.

That guy is.

Yeah, the 24 hour fitness and burnout there treadmill.

Yeah, yeah, you can do that or you could use a sled.

We do it with a sled here.

You know, you put the sled, you put like a waist strap and you just back up and pull the

sled.

It doesn't have to be a lot of weight.

It's not a weight thing.

It's really just a circulation thing and a strengthening thing.

He has another one that you get the band around your back and then you're kind of, oh,

he did it.

You're essentially like leaned over and then straightening the leg.

It's got, you're like in a lunge, I guess, actually.

You're in a lunge.

The knee goes over the toes.

You have the resistance on the back and then you're pushing and essentially doing the

same thing is probably walking back with the sled.

The band is attached in the front or in behind you.

It's attached in the front.

So the resistance is pulling you forward.

Okay.

And you're lunged over the knee over the toe and then you're extending that leg and it's

just hitting that knee perfectly.

It's very similar to the one you're talking about.

I'm sure.

Yeah, because so much time you spend pushing forward and not a lot of people spend much

time pushing backwards, but pushing backwards is really important.

It's really important to just overall knee strength.

Right.

I think the side to side stuff too is like, I was almost like, let me get in the sand.

And I do a lot of like working out in the sand just for the boxing, for the footwork

and being able to stand a stance.

But like that little side explosion stuff would probably start strengthening those muscles

on the side and the ligaments going that way.

And then I'm trying to think like, how do you get that motion?

I mean, you could get a band and probably do a kind of like a lateral extension or pull

it up into your inward extension.

You know, he used to do a lot of weird shit with bands, BJ Penn.

Oh yeah.

He did a lot of weird shit in his prime with like flexibility stuff and developing strength

from weird positions with bands.

Yeah.

I see, I don't know if BJ was a part of that program, but like the Rafael, the San

Joes, all the fashion kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Rafael dos Angios was training with Nick Kerson.

Nick Kerson was a student of Mar Marinovich.

Okay.

And Mar Marinovich is the guy who trained BJ when he was like in his prime.

When he really got super serious about cardio, but it's a very controversial approach.

The Marinovich's approach was you already know how to fight.

So forget about fight training.

We're just going to give you the most fucking insane gas tank you've ever had.

And that way you'll be able to execute everything you want.

And so the primary focus was just plyometrics and their conditioning program.

And it was hell.

Right.

And BJ did not like going through it, but when he went through it, he was like unstoppable.

Because he just never gasped.

Right.

And that's the interesting thing about conditioning in general is we have these ideas of what

the threshold is.

Like what a human body is capable of doing for five minutes, for three rounds or five

rounds.

In terms of what kind of pace that you could put up.

And then you have certain guys that come along that sort of redefine what the threshold

is like Mar Rob.

Mar Rob comes along and here you got some guy whose gas tank is fucking super human.

And he makes the best fighters in the world just wilt under this constant pressure being

taken down.

And his strength and his skills are wrestler.

It's just this constant attack, constant, constant, constant, constant.

And you wonder like, okay, how long did it take to build up that reserve?

How long did it take to build up that gas tank?

That's not something you can achieve in just one camp.

Right.

That's something that takes literally years to develop.

Oh, for sure.

That's why I mean, like I said, going back to wrestling, my, what I would say in my super

power, my most utilized skill set was my cardio, my gas tank, you know?

And I don't know.

What is anabolic versus anaerobic, like the striking versus the grappling cardio?

I think there's something to be said about that wrestling cardio, like just that like

strict, you're just grinding it out 24, 7, you know, you're always colliding, your muscles

are always tense up.

I think there's something to be said about that that if you had great wrestling cardio,

you could do almost anything.

Yeah, it builds up a foundation that's kind of unstoppable.

Right.

You can maintain that kind of work ethic.

Right.

It's all, it's, that's the other thing about it.

The mental toughness that comes from wrestling.

Right.

There's something like when a guy has like an elite wrestling background and he enters

in the UFC, I always say they have an advantage.

They have an advantage over everybody else because whether or not you choose to put yourself

or you get coached by someone who puts you through hell and camp with wrestling, you don't

have a choice.

Like everyone's going through hell.

There's no one is get, there's no easy path to get on the fucking wrestling team anywhere

in the country.

Right.

You have to wrestle for your position.

Yeah.

It's little, you got to battle for that spot, you know.

And then the practice is once or twice a day of just purely grinding it out, standing

in a wrestling stance alone is extremely tough to do.

Now you're doing it at elevated pace.

Now you're doing it with someone snapping on your head.

Now you're doing, it's like, and then you go on, you do live wrestling and then finish

it up with sprints.

Yeah, to me, to me there's nothing that beats that.

And I think the style of it is like go, go, go.

Like even Jiu-Jitsu, you're finding places to rest.

You know, you can go on in the guard and you can rest in certain entanglements.

Striking is all about being able to have an explosive motion and then find your way to

be defensive, to slow down what they're doing.

You're either getting in and stuff in it.

You're at a distance where you can be a little bit relaxed because they can't reach you.

Or you're moving off, making them miss where there's no resistance there.

Just with wrestling, you don't have any of that.

There's no chance for a break, especially if you got someone like Moralb who's just on

you 24-7.

And so to me that's back to the cardio thing we talked about earlier.

I don't know.

I think if you got elite wrestling cardio, then you could do all the rest of it.

You'd be able to strike, you'd be able to do the Jiu-Jitsu entanglements.

You can hang for that duration of time with great cardio.

It's also if you could figure out how to be a great wrestler, you can kind of figure out

anything.

It's just a matter of taking that same focus that turned you into a great wrestler and

applying it to whatever it is, MMA, whatever else you're trying to do.

If you're willing to go through what it took to become a great wrestler, that's an extraordinary

human.

Very few people ever reach a very high level of wrestling.

It's just too fucking hard.

It's the best foundation for combat sports for sure, for MMA.

Because if you could take a guy down and he can't take you down, that's a massive advantage.

Massive.

You dictate where the fight takes place.

If you develop elite striking on top of that, it's a perfect combination.

For sure.

I mean, anybody asking me personally, I would say get a wrestling background, get some

boxing, you can figure out the rest of it.

You can figure out how to check kicks, block kicks.

You can do the rest of it.

But if you have those two fundamental core bases, you're pretty good against most people.

I would say that too, but I would say another thing is, and this is very controversial.

If I was teaching a young kid, I would say get into point karate.

Learn point karate.

Because if you could learn how to move the way those guys move, the things that those

guys, when you see Michael Venom Page just stump people, they're just stumped.

I don't have any, Kevin Holland, who fights everybody.

He's fucking competitive with everybody he fights.

With MVP, he was just stumped.

Like, what am I going to, what the fuck am I doing?

I can't even touch this guy.

That is a giant skill set.

And I always said before MVP came onto the scene, I'm like, one of these guys, one of these

really elite point fighter guys is going to come in and start fucking everybody up because

you can't hit them.

Yeah.

And that goes back, I can't even like wonder boy, both the prime examples of a karate style

individual.

Yes.

And they're really long.

So, you know, they can utilize that a little bit to their advantage with that, that lunge

in and out.

But to be honest, yeah, that's something that like I've wanted to delve into a little bit

more with myself because I like, I can throw kicks really well, honestly.

I have, I have good flexibility.

I have the ability to throw them with speed, with power.

But having something like that where you can throw it nice and fast and snappy, those

little side kicks and the way that they throw the kicks is great.

Yeah.

And the only other relation I would have to that is the, the Sevat style.

I like the way the Sevat style guys throw their kicks.

I'm not very familiar with Sevat.

The only thing that I don't utilize myself is a lot of the toe stuff because I'm not

wearing shoes.

Oh, like the toe kicks to the body.

They're, they're like stabbing you with their toes, like everything.

Like they'll even, they're even kicking like your leg.

Well, you know, Yose does that.

He stabs guys with his toes.

It's like the ball of his foot, right?

But like going in with the toes, man.

Yeah.

The slowmo videos of him stabbing guys in the liver with his fucking toes.

You know who else is really good at it?

They're conditioning their toes.

Yeah.

Well, that's the thing is you better have some, you're probably have many multiple breaks

on each toe.

We know to that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why we were talking about the front kick to the body is good if you do it like a

traditional Moitai where you're going up and out, which is fantastic.

You can produce a lot of speed and power.

But I think everybody does this, this kind of shovel up toes into the body kick nowadays

in the MMA world.

That's what I see more so.

I mean, Connor, Connor utilized the heck out of that.

Most guys bring the toes up.

It's, and you better be very precise with that because all it takes is one elbow blocking

down here.

Your toes.

Your toes out.

Yeah.

And I see Rodriguez's toes after he fought fluffy.

Yeah.

Do you see that picture?

It was off Gregory Rodriguez, his Instagram page after he beat fluffy toe to the photos.

You haven't seen it?

I haven't seen it actually.

Oh, you're going to cringe.

It's hell.

Is it like a don't know Jones break where the worse bones are sticking out, but it's

it's holacious.

You look at what happened to his toes.

Dude, and that one like that takes it out of you.

You start smashing your toes like that and you got to continue fighting.

Oh, yeah.

Or you got to continue to fight camp with like broken toes.

Yeah.

So one of my wrestling camps, I was chasing my brother in the front yard the day before

and his heel came back and my pinky toe was like this straight sideways.

Went to the family doctor.

You put it up.

Oh, yeah.

I have a picture just like that actually with my fingers, my toes throwing west side.

Oh, look at that.

Jesus.

Ow.

Yeah, that's that's terrible.

Those feet have seen some elbows on.

Right.

It's got a big old bunion.

Is everything on there?

Wow.

Yeah, that's.

That's a he did it and really good fashion too.

Yeah, there's a guy that's just I don't understand how he makes 185.

Right.

I don't understand it.

Whenever I interview him, I'm like, you're 220 pounds or how are you, you're at least

too to and shredded.

I know.

I mean, it's like I guess the bigger guys have a little bit more to lose.

They just, they probably probably probably do.

They definitely do.

Well, that muscle you have water to lose for sure.

Right.

I mean, that's one thing to be said, but especially like heavy weights like the Alex

put it as I'm sure he gets a little bit looser, goes up to 220 and then, but that's, but

that's still 40 pounds.

I mean, that's a lot of weight.

Yeah, it's a lot of weight to lose and but I don't know.

I mean, look at Aljo cut into 135.

Yeah.

He's like, he 175 pounds.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I think he doesn't do it anymore and he feels way better at 45.

I mean, that's a lot of pressure and he had to move up because of that.

I think a lot of the banter weights get up to relatively that way.

I think everybody, I think that's why I've started seeing people try to comment the whole

weight bully thing.

They've said it to me on Instagram, this and that.

They saw one of my training pictures.

I was a little a little loose and they're like, the funniest comment was someone was like

higher a nutritionist ASAP.

Like, and I was just cracking up at that.

Like these guys are roasting me, but,

yeah, I think everybody cuts relatively

the same amount of weight.

Like, I think 30.

Like, what's the heavy she get in between?

135.

No.

That's what you weigh, son.

What are you weigh when you're thickening up?

What's the heavy she've ever been?

I weigh 175 is probably the paper tag.

Maybe like 178 if I'm just full of food,

eating and being a delinquent, but yeah.

I get out there pretty big, so.

But when you're in camp, like the week before,

what do you like to be at?

I've had all my cuts right around 150.

I don't really get much lower than that.

That's not too bad.

It's not the end of the world.

I mean, 149, 148, 145 would be beautiful

if I could just do 10, be no problem.

But this last time we did 11 and one night,

and it was smooth sailing, you know.

I just keep, that's another thing.

You experience it more, you get better and better at it.

And I've gotten a wiser that the sauna

doesn't have to be a million and 10 degrees, you know.

Like the USC portable son is,

I think it like maxed out at 150, it said.

And I could send that for 22.

Is that a red light sauna?

The portable ones probably is, right?

Probably is.

I don't recall, but I'm sure it is.

But that with the emergency blankets,

and then cool and off in between, that's something that,

I had to get wiser too as well.

You know, like, because everybody tries to tell you,

you're already there, you're already sweating.

Like don't lose the heat.

And it's like, no, this isn't a sprint, this isn't a marathon.

We're taking this nice and easy.

So like this last night, I was taking all my gear off,

putting ice on the body, cool on the body temperature back now,

which is arguably the most important aspect

of the whole wake cut is the body temperature

versus the dehydration.

Because the body gets dehydrated,

and it has more of a capacity to deal with that,

than it does to overheat.

If you overheat, you're done for.

Like, that's, it is what it is.

So is the overheating, does that drain you more

in terms of like your ability to recover for the next day?

Like so when you're cutting weight,

if you're doing it like 180 or something like that,

something high, and is it that?

Like, because it does wear you out, obviously.

Like, if I do a sauna session for 20 minutes,

when I get out, I'm tired.

Yeah.

So you've got to think, if you're doing multiple ones of those,

if you're trying to make weight,

and then you have to fight the next day,

you went through a lot physically, right?

As opposed to what you're doing,

if you got it at 150, it's not that bad.

It's just sucks a little.

Yeah, because I know.

I've done both.

Like, and that's your ton of sauna suit on as well.

You know, the sweet sweat, the sauna suit,

and then you get in that portable sauna,

but it's like before I was doing that

with a pair of, I don't know, like a spandex,

you know, like top and bottom, and then a jacket,

and then sweats, and then a big jacket,

and then I'm getting in the 180, 190 degree,

24 hours sauna and sitting there for 15 minutes.

It's like, it's like, dude, yeah, I felt,

there's been weight cuts where I just feel like terrible,

a trot, I look terrible, you know?

And then I have some of these more recent ones

where I lower the temperature down.

I extend the duration of how long the weight cut is itself,

and there's a major difference in it for sure.

That's really good advice.

Work smarter and not harder.

Dude, you've trained for two months

over just pushing your body to the absolute limit.

You're gonna go fight somebody for 15 minutes,

you know, possibly 25 minutes.

There's all this hard stuff already happening,

you know, that part should not be hard.

That should be the, it's going to be hard,

but you should make it as easy as possible.

That should be the mindset to it.

Yeah, it makes sense.

It makes a lot of sense.

Did you see the Moses' Atama fight this weekend?

I don't think so.

Do you know who he is, right?

No.

Okay, he up until this fight was probably

the most promising prospect in the Heavyweight division

in more than a decade.

He is a young guy, he's only 21 years old,

and people were talking about him being able to break

Mike Tyson's record of being the youngest ever

Heavyweight Champion.

So he missed that mark, and then he finally got

a title fight this weekend.

Look phenomenal for the first few rounds.

And he...

I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yes.

And he was fighting this big Croatian cat.

I forget his name.

Yeah, yeah.

Philip, her growth is a vick.

And he...

I was stuck out of that first.

Yeah, in the beginning, he was two in this guy up.

I mean, he's so fast and solely,

but he had never been into deep water before.

Every one of his fights, he'd been able to stop people.

And he hadn't had any like real good decision wins

where he fought a bit,

and he's not the biggest heavyweight, but he's wicked fast.

I mean, just wicked fast and beautiful technique,

but as the fight went on, he started to fade,

and then the eighth, you could see him like,

really slowing down, and just really tried to take

this dude out, but couldn't.

And thought he could, it was empty in the gas tank.

Instead of boxing him and just out-poiding him

and being skillful, he just was inexperienced

and he emptied the gas tank, and then Philip came back,

and he finished him.

Yeah, well, he finished him in a weird way.

It's like, is there almost exhaustion?

Yeah, he's just stumbling over him,

something at that point.

Cause they're both exhausted,

cause it was a war, there's a nice right hand,

and he stung them there.

What did you see in their little table talk

where they're sitting across from each other?

Yes.

And he's all like, it's not about,

how many times you can hit,

or you can hit somebody, it's about how many times

you can get hit and keep coming forward.

Yeah.

And then that Moises was like,

that's the stupidest thing I ever heard.

He's like, why would you base your fighting style off

like how many times you can get hit

and then low and behold, you know, like this comes across.

That's why I talk about technicality and finesse

and skill set and it's a game of hit and don't get hit.

But dude, you could just have someone who's just so tough

and just so willing that this is a perfect scenario.

That's why there are so many aspects to this fight game.

Well, it was really fun because he was basically quoting Rocky.

Yeah.

He really did quote well.

He did about how hard you hit.

It's about how hard you can get it.

Right.

And keep moving forward.

Exactly.

And he pulled the Rocky out.

He literally did exactly what he said he was going to do.

But it's all these things.

It's like youth and hubris and thinking

you're the greatest of all time

and looked like the greatest of all.

Could pull up a Moses Itama highlight reel.

Because if you look at his highlight reel,

you like this guy is the second coming.

Like this guy is something really special, man.

When you watch how he fights,

I mean his hand speed, his knockout power.

And for a young guy, this fight, I think he was 20.

And you look at his highlight reel, you're like,

oh my god, the sky's the limit for this kid.

He's just putting everybody out.

But he wasn't really being tested.

And then he finally, I think, was it Derek Chisora?

Who did he fight before this fight?

He finally beat a top level guy.

And he took him out.

And so, but it was a guy who's a real veteran

who'd been around a long time.

And he kind of thought that he could put it on everybody

and knock everybody out.

But this is like one of the things

about any combat sport.

You have to know when to hit the gas, when not to.

And you have to have those experiences

of these long, grueling fights.

And he really didn't have that yet.

So his first experience with a, yeah, dillian white,

that's who it was.

And his long, his first experience with a real, no,

it was Chisora, I think, because I think it was dillian white

first.

And then Chisora was the next fight afterwards.

I'm right about that.

Oh, it was just the end of it.

He's just his chaos on this video.

What is it?

Bulba's record.

Who is his last fight before Hergovich?

But I mean, I still think he's got potential to be a world

champion for sure.

I mean, the kid's only 21 years old.

Dillian white right there.

That's who it was.

It wasn't Derek Chisora.

It was Dillian white.

And Jermaine Franklin was right after that.

So every fight has been TKO, TKO, TKO, TKO, TKO, TKO.

I mean, if you watch his fights, I mean,

they're fucking stunning performances.

But wasn't really being tested in that way

with a really big, durable, heavy weight

who could take a shot, who has a ton of experience.

And now he's got his first loss, but he'll be back.

He's only 21.

Well, that's how they do in boxing.

They feed these guys, build them up.

And then when they're solidified, now you fight somebody

who is substantial.

And I've done a lot of comparisons, but to me,

where the MMA guys are just more down to go and do their thing.

They'll fight anybody any given time.

It's not a pretty quick decision, though,

or is that by necessity?

Because the UFC, if they call you up and say,

hey, in four weeks, do you want to fight for the world title?

I know you've never fought in the UFC before.

For that in boxing, that's unheard of.

That would never take place.

But in the UFC, if you're a pretty good fighter,

and you're doing well, and you win a bunch of championships

and other organizations, and all of a sudden,

this opportunity arises, we've

had guys with their first fight in the UFC fight for the world title.

That is true.

That's what you get when you have a melting pot of things,

though, because those guys are well established

in their own personal careers.

They're wrestling or kickboxing or whatever it is.

Or Ryzen.

Yeah, it's not like you're pulling out the local kid.

Tell him, let's go fight for a world title.

But they would put all pull out the local kid,

and fight a guy who has 10, 15 fights in the UFC.

That does happen.

That happens all the time.

Well, that's what I'm saying is like,

I think that the boxers would be more hesitant to take something like that,

like your chance.

But they have a make guys are always down to do that kind of stuff.

Well, the boxers, though, it's a different culture, I suppose.

It is, but it's also the fact that no one gives a shit

who the promoter is in boxing.

No, if someone's going to watch Jervante Davis fight,

they don't say, well, who's performing that?

I mean, hold on.

Is this for Bob Aram?

Is this for Golden Boy?

He's like, no one cares.

It's just who are the fighters?

What the UFC is a very different animal.

So if you get a call for the UFC, like, oh my God, we're in the big leagues.

Right.

And that's different.

100%.

Yeah, they have all sorts of different promotions

and different people you can fight for in boxing.

But UFC is the pinnacle.

It's, yeah, if you get the call from the UFC,

that's where you want to go.

So there's a whole lot of differences to it.

I just think whatever it is that the MMA guys are more willing

to step in on the short notice.

And put their careers at risk and put their opportunities

to continue fight streaks or whatever at a risk.

So that's how I see it.

That's what I picked up from those two different things.

Yeah, it's definitely a different culture, right?

It's a culture of accepting those risks.

And also of probably people that are just...

There's much more willing to take a chance, it seems.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what I think, like, that's us a little bit more padded up to.

A little bit more wild to be fighting the MMA anyway.

That's...

Yeah, that's...

It's a little bit more wild for sure.

And that's a little bit more of a business, I would say,

in my opinion.

The boxing.

The boxing is...

Yeah.

Which we've got a lot of very smart people involved in boxing

that are like managers and trainers.

They're like really working to build a guy

and turn him into a prospect, turn him into a contender,

and then turn him into a champion.

And the UFC only have the one organization doing that.

Because they're managing all the way classes and all the prospects

and they're picking and choosing...

Not only that.

They schedule fight cards.

They schedule fights around cards.

They don't schedule cards around fights.

Right?

So, if you, like, say if Canelo Alvarez is fighting someone,

it is...

Whenever Canelo is ready to fight, that's when the card takes place.

Yeah.

Right?

So Canelo Alvarez wants to fight September 12th.

Okay, great.

So, September 12th, let's put together a fight card around Canelo Alvarez.

Right.

Like, the UFC's coming to Salt Lake City, October 3rd.

Who's there?

Who wants to fight?

Like, we're gonna have a fight.

Who's gonna be on the fight?

Who's gonna be on the card?

And then you put the card together.

So, it's a different animal.

Yeah.

Now, they're different, for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I try to draw wisdom from all aspects of everything.

So, I'm constantly delving into all the different realms myself.

Do you read a lot?

Are you a guy who, like, do you read anything on psychology

or on warrior tactics?

You ever get into, like, book of five rings or any of that shit?

For sure.

I'm reading a, it's called Haga Kari right now.

And it's essentially, it's a single individual, Yamamoto.

It's like Tunishe or something.

I forget his name exactly.

But he served for, like, the reigning leader at the time.

His leader passed away.

He wanted to commit Seppaku because he was of that mentality, that warrior mentality.

But his leader had commanded, like, that no one was allowed to do that.

This and that, but he's taken a lot of storylines, inspirations from all these samurai, because

it's going into a time period where the samurai weren't a necessity anymore.

And so, the ideology, the lifestyle, what it meant to live that bushito lifestyle had changed

the little bit, and their purpose was different.

And my boxing coach gave it to me, actually, when I was kind of in this limbo state of

life, like, it's essentially saying, how should a warrior live outside of the fight?

You know, like, what does he need to be doing on a daily basis?

But then it's, I like the real life, like storyline, because now you're getting a bunch

of different perspectives from all these people that were samurai, all were warriors who

lived that, who fought in battle.

And now you get to see like a lot of different things.

Like, someone says, you should do this.

And someone says, no, don't do that.

And to me, I like that because I get to kind of delve through all the mindsets and then

apply what works best to me, you know?

But I love reading all that stuff.

I'm not been so good at staying off the phone and, you know, I watch a lot of YouTube, which

is, it's always fighting or some kind of gun channel or hiking or camping or hunting

or spear fishing or something.

But, yeah, I'm trying to get way better at that.

Trying to stay out the screens.

Like, I want to be more interactive with the world around me, learn things constantly.

And so picking up a book and reading it is a long, a long diet set of goals that I have

is continuously be doing that.

Yeah, I think there's benefits to a lot of stuff on YouTube.

I think YouTube is not social media and I think I learn a lot on YouTube.

And I just get, it's, for me, I like to wind down on YouTube, just watch some ancient

history thing or watch a professional pool match or something like that.

It's just a wind down time, but it doesn't feel like I'm wasting time.

Whereas if I'm looking at Instagram or Twitter or whatever, it feels like I'm doing something

I shouldn't be doing.

That's not beneficial.

Oh, 100%.

That's, to me, as I'm building up my platform and whatnot, I understand it as a business.

And so I understand there's some necessity for me to be into it, producing content,

not necessarily taking in content.

But yeah, 100%.

It's something that has affected our culture in a large way.

It's all the, what's it called?

Like the short term, like media, you know, where you're clicking through it.

It's just, it's killing our attention spans.

It's just, like, you know, your dopamine is firing at all times, going crazy.

It just, you're getting, it's your focus.

Yeah, you're getting this like, that's where, that's where I love the YouTube.

But I almost have to recognize that just because I'm watching a spear fishing video,

doesn't mean I'm getting in the water and going in spear fishing.

Because sometimes I feel like I get my fakes a little bit by doing that.

But then I have to remind myself, it's like, life is lived in your actions and your experiences.

So Satan watching the TV screen, somebody else experienced that, you know, you, you get

the inside scoop, you get to kind of be there under the water, watch what's going on.

But yeah, you're not actually living it.

So I like it.

I love, I love to learn from that social media.

Yeah.

It's, it sucks.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's happening, everybody and, uh, it's certainly not a

part of the warrior lifestyle.

Yeah.

As you're talking about, for sure.

I mean, cause then like, you want to think about like your, your meditative aspects of

like how often are you delving deep into your own brain and just figuring out things about

yourself and asking those questions and pushing beyond.

And when you got a phone screen, stealing all your attention, how are you ever doing that?

Right.

Absolutely.

You're not, you're not, you know, if you're, if you're spending so much time doing that,

you're a spearfisher guy, huh?

You really like spearfishing?

I like to spearfish.

I, uh, it's been some time since I've been back in the water.

I had a buddy that we used to go all the time and then he moved into Washington and, uh,

I don't know.

Where are you guys spearfishing?

We know local like, uh, there's a chrono del mar beach and then there's a smaller kind

of hidden beach that you walk down and it's got plenty of structure and all sorts of

fish out there.

Uh, Laguna's got the kelp forest.

So I just been going shore diving and, uh, going over there, grabbing lobster when it's

lobster season, grabbing down to the honeyholes and just grabbing them with their hands.

So this, it's all the shore stuff right now.