JRE MMA Show #12 with Ben Askren

00:00yeah my oldest ones super here we go 5 4 3 2 1 Ben Askren ladies gentlemen dude I've talked about you on this podcast at least a dozen times you are the number one guy that I'm most disappointed never fought in the UFC yeah yeah I was good whenever you talk about me I get like 15 texts like hey Joe Joe's talking about you now and you know they'll send me clips or whatever so obviously appreciate that but yeah I never I never really got to fight those top guys and it was for reasons beyond my control yeah and you're done now yeah I saw I said I said I don't want to say I'm done period I said I'm done excluding the fact that I get to fight and prove I'm number one that would be the excluding fest so if you could get in the UFC you'd be will do it again I mean I don't care where it is right I really genuinely don't and obviously that would be the the thing that makes sense but

00:53there is legislation like the out Lee Act and the things going through so I don't know that maybe you know I'm still 33 so I'm not old and you know food with GSP took four years off yeah from one fight to the next fight so I'm not gonna say I'm an age overnight well your style too you avoided so much damage I didn't get I didn't get hit once this into 2017 yes getting hit once yeah and three fights so yeah I that was should tell people you were fighting in one Fc which is a big Asian organization that's like the Asian version of the UFC yeah so what one Fc started in 2012 I think obviously my contracts belcher came over 2013 and then there was a negotiation process in South obviously went south and what happened there you were the champ of Bellator and then all sudden you left and everyone's like so you're still undefeated right I'm undefeated so what what the happened that

01:41Bellator let the champ will go that wasn't what happened so no and there's there's so much misinformation out there and you know I'm popular but I'm not that popular and so a lots of times in my story gets missed told because I get spoken over by other people right and they don't hear what I say so here's what happened obviously so prior to me in Bellator Hector and Eddie were the ones that left right there were Hector was the Lombard and yep Eddie Alvarez were the UFC both of them both the middleweight champion in the lightweight champ and they both got taken care of pretty well if you if you remember in Eddie's situation I don't if you remember this he got an offer from the UFC still under the matching period the Bellator Bellator says we matched it right and in terms of what was in the contract it was matched right but because Bellator has no pay-per-view venue well if UFC says

02:32we'll pay you on pay-per-view and belts as well we will - but that's not real life right right that's a decision they've done to pay-per-view shows ever and they've never met any type of threshold so you know they say it matters but it doesn't say I don't remember they went to court over it and the UFC 180 had got the right - I'm sorry he didn't win he he somehow did like a one more fight in Bellator and then went EFC I don't know exactly what the finality of that case was but anyways when that happened his his contract became public knowledge right and so a lot of UFC fighters were pissed because he they gave him a whole bunch of money and so when I was 12 in LA I had my last fight in Bellator it's under crush coffee July 30th maybe 31st of 2013 beat him up pretty good and then I had a 12-month matching period and so what was expressed to me by the UFC brass was that you need to

03:25get rid of your matching clause and we will make you an offer but we will not make you an offer until that happens get rid of your matching yes how do you do that well here here's how I went about doing it exist 12 months right that's a freaking I'm not gonna say over 12 months right so I'd call bjorna videos and say hey Bjorn I'm not gonna resign please long as the guy was wrong in Bellator correct yeah and now you got fired yeah and Bjorn had a terrible reputation but I never I had a decent relationship with them I never like butted heads too bad so every tear that hit Bjorn let me go I'm not coming back and then so everyone says well Bellator didn't want to resign me well that's that's not true at all every day it's Bjorn let me go Bjorn let me go because you know I love challenges what I love more than anything in the world is to challenge myself if you look at my wrestling

04:11career that's what it's all about taking the next best thing every single time and so yeah so finally in and all this time you know Dana in the UFC is saying we want been asked when we've been asked her and I'm ranked number seven in the world or what you know somewhere around there 12 minnow and so I remember I was going to the Asian food source I was gonna be some tonka soup and the Orang called me said you're released full full you're released you can go I per se I appreciate that so Friday morning it's Thursday night Friday morning it's in November sometime maybe mid November morning they fax over the release my management faxes it to UFC headquarters and I'll sudden that afternoon there's a you know like little scrum where everyone's s container questions and the Dana says we're not interested in Ben Askren and I said why what just happened there right because

05:02for the last three months they're saying we were interested weren't sure where is Jenn now I finally produced this full release from Bellator that I got and now they're not interested and so I said wow I just got caught in the middle of this and was there a reason given well so okay so then Monday is so then I say F that I buy my I bought a plane ticket to Vegas for Monday so that was Friday that happens I say that I'm going to Vegas I'm taking this you know so uh Monday I buy my plane ticket to Vegas I fly out to Vegas do UFC headquarters I met with Lorenzo Dana was on the little speakerphone Deeley and they offered me a super contract but it would be confidential and I would have to fight one fight for the world series of fighting which is like well that's bizarre why yeah it is n fight for the world series a funny relationship with the world series of the world's like a

05:57feeder organization at that time something yeah I mean yeah as Marlon mirai's just engaging both those guys from champs over there DFC I think the relationship was very hazy between the old world series of fighting in the UFC because there was also people don't want the other way right Andre Arlovski gets dropped from the AFC he goes to the World Series Anthony Johnson boom all these people you know so they say one fight one fight world series of fighting we will pay zuper will pay you would you do one fight okay I say let that's effed up but okay I said I don't think anyone's gonna go for it but I'll do it so I leave and about six hours later I got a phone call says that deal is no longer available we're not going to make offer yeah so Wow and you wonder why well I saw here's my guess I've never got to sit face to face today and say what was your problem with me

06:50I think there's four things my mind number one he didn't really like me stemming from I called him out on the steroid thing you know where he said it's impossible and this is where I disagree it's impossible to test all UFC athletes I said well that's not true you saw to does it all over the world for all kinds of athletes right you can do it it's just expensive but let's just call what it is you're a private business you don't have to do drug testing it's obviously they do it now so you do it now yeah do it through you sadhus yeah we're totally right yeah so I was correct and now but that was you know when Dana is wrong in an argument and he's got this huge army that follows him and he said I'd rather hey I think his quote was better I'd rather watch flies than better ask her fight you know I think he said something like ambien takes Ben Askren egos asleep yeah so the personal attack

07:36started right so that that's number one number two my fighting style is not highly attractive but I also think that's a little bit of fake news because if you look at George st. Pierre is that consistently novice Lee McGregor's trumped him but only a couple of times but if you could consistent basis George st. Pierre is the number one draw of all time he heavily relied on takedowns and ground-and-pound I mean he didn't have a finish in like five years or so let me say what my take has always been on you and that style is that it's important and that it really really works yeah well what you're able to do really works and I've always said this and it was proven son Saturday night in the steepy Miocic Francis II gotta fight wrestling is the most important part of MMA absolutely to take the fight to the ground obviously Steve Bay has a lot of other attributes he took tremendous

08:23punches in that fight I mean I know you didn't get a chance to watch it but I saw some highlights the holy I mean the first round was chaos I mean you Francis and God was a terrifying yeah yeah Steve Baek took the shots use great movement you striking of his own but most importantly after a while god is wrestling going and then once he got in got it to the ground and gone I didn't have any answers what to do well your what you've been able to do to guys like Douglas Lima who just fought Rory MacDonald out of the Bellator title really good fight chorus cough who's another fantastic fight who you know was beaten a lot of really top-flight guys yeah you're able to use your wrestling and completely nullify all their striking in offense yeah that's a huge part of fighting fighting is not what's exciting for people to watch fighting is what actually works and you've been able to

09:07do time and time again is take these guys who looked like world beaters and completely nullify their offense taken to the ground and beat the out of them yeah that's huge that's very very important yeah absolutely and so you know not so well we can get back to the UFC thing but so yeah I mean when I started fighting right it was just like hey let's go fight I didn't let me coaching and so I didn't move to Duke's until to one foot sook Rufus yes until 2010 I think so sir no no 2011 I'm sorry cuz I was in Arizona I was coaching it for Arizona State University but when I moved there I know hey these there's a lot of elite strikers in this gym I said I'm never gonna be elite striker but if no one can hit me they can't beat me they're not gonna outlast me they're not gonna help grapple me they're not gonna beat me if they can't knock me out they're not gonna beat me plain and

09:55simple so my whole goal was how do I not get hit not I don't need to be a great striker hitting people I just need to not get hit if you can't knock me out I'm gonna eventually get you on the ground and I'm gonna beat your ass right right and so that was kind of my whole goal when I got in MMA is how do I not get knocked out right and so you said obvious ed but you know found a really good way to do that and it added a lot of longevity to my career where I wasn't taking damage that a lot of other people were taking and I think there's also a lot of other things to being a really high level wrestler that you know besides obviously you can control where the fight happens right but there's a lot of other things that high level wrestling provides us right that came from that world that other disciplines don't get you know a lot of competition we compete thousands of times right how

10:40to get our mind right these wrestlers are just strong any there's just a different strength I just actually I got to go work out with charm bros last week cuz Midtown world champ and it's like you forget how strong wrestlers are like you grab them you're like good god this guy is like you know I don't feel that from MMA people I grab him and I'm like everywhere it's like there's nowhere he's weak very very disciplined right because wrestlers like we've been the system from you thrust into high school Russ into college us and we're under you know coaches and have a very strict training plan and understand how to put a training regimen together where a lot of other martial arts don't have that kind of structured system so I think there's a lot of advantages that we as wrestlers have when we come into mixed martial arts and if I could add to that the intention is pure its pure for

11:25competition because there's no financial reward it's not a bunch of people that are getting into wrestling because they want to get rich it's a bunch of people that really want to prove that they're the best and so you have so many top-flight guys that are incredibly mentally strong feeding off of each other knowing that they're going to be competing against each other and almost no financial possibilities except for coaching well yeah there's a common now so twenty eighteen to twenty two thousand eight when I was wrestling and then when I decided to make that jump to MMA there is a lot better financial structure for senior level athletes now none of them are getting rich and there's only about a dozen of them making like a decent living right yeah and so which is crazy there's thousands of wrestlers exactly so your points mostly correct but there are a handful

12:09of top United States athletes now who could do nothing but wrestle where when I was in in 2008 when I was trained that wasn't even the case I had to go do camps I was coaching at Missouri so I was doing other things in addition to wrestling so like a top Olympic athlete what what else would they do to make money well so like in 20 in 2008 I was doing a lot of camps right you travel around the country do camps make money coach a college team I was making money that way so a handful of things that like I it wasn't just wake up and train every single day but the athletes of today that you were saying now that's what they're doing that's it coaching and yeah bunch of different things here no no no some of them don't have job you say they just do it from where they getting the money Jordan Burroughs and James green for example sponsorships are slightly more lucrative than they were then

12:52there's something called the regional training center system which you know most major colleges have one that's a lot more lucrative and that's fund raising right they're not they're not earning money that the RTC people go say hey rich guy would you like to fund this program that'll help us develop Olympic athletes sure okay right and then the United States USOC has slightly more funding given to USA Wrestling than in the past well it's the tragic story of John do I mean that's literally why that whole if people have seen that movie what yeah that movie called Fox get Foxcatcher yeah awful it's a crazy story of Dave and Mark Schultz and this millionaire billionaire crazy guy who wound up shooting Dave Schultz and was this weirdo guy that was running this camp and these guys kind of got stuck training with this yeah because I mean and that's 96 was when Schultz got shot

13:46right and so that's 12 years prior to you know my Olympic birth and and so then it's even worse I mean these guys are literally making nothing and that all that and then you know then we go back to the argument of amateurism and the Olympics is stupid which was abolished like 92 the dream team was kind of totally abolished yeah I'm sure um we have those guys in that era that 84 88 92 90 were making nothing and so when this guy John du Pont offers them money and stipends and places to live they don't really have a better option and it's freaking sad to be honest about it and then obviously USA Wrestling sanctioned him because he gave us a rest and a lot of money so yeah it was really bad thing and so we're doing a lot better in 2018 than we were ten years ago and way way better than we were doing 20 years ago yeah the Olympic thing where they try to treat the Olympics like it's an amateur

14:35sport event it's a business you make absolutely ins and billions of dollars off these athletes who get paid zero is to me it's disgusting I think it's just this relic of ancient thinking and these guys are using it to steal money from young athletes that's what I think I think yeah I use more evil the USOC are the IOC or the NCAA because the NCAA runs right along the same lines and I think both are pretty evil and both are archaic and both need to be changed and you know if you could abolish the NCAA and the IOC that'd be fantastic for athletes worldwide you know well especially when you look at the football teams that are getting literally billions and billions of dollars every year and these athletes are ruining their lives I mean you have football players that maybe play one two seasons if they're lucky they get their back blown out their legs get blown out and

15:28then they never have an NFL career and meanwhile the university is made tons of money on tons of money and they make nothing yeah and to make that even worse because I actually had that I had a whole podcast about this argument with someone and to make that and we're on the same side of this but to me the even worse if you're an NCAA athletes you can't even make money off your own image you like this yeah we have a youtube channel it's a that's crazy so not only will they not pay you anything which I think we can debate and argue on that but the fact that they can't make money off their own name own image and likeness that's it should be criminal for that to happen Jimmy you were telling me about this right like a guy got in trouble for having a youtube channel yeah punter for like a college football team or a kicker remember his name no member his name I

16:10don't know no and there was there was a wrestler from the University of the University of Minnesota he made a rap album and he had to either quit the wrestling team or donate all the money back or something like that it's like rat rat rap and wrestling have they have nothing to do with each other the fact that he can't go make money off freaking recording an album is like mind blowing it's disgusting cuz you keeping a kid from being industrious you keeping a young guy who's trying to find his way through the world you're keeping him from being successful and but though that kind of success like figuring out a way to make some money off her name doing rap that could lead to all sorts of paths in life like he's he's learning as a young guy like hey look I could be industrious I could go do this I could be creative I can go do that like this is what we should be encouraging people

16:56to do to take chances and make money the idea that you're saying like somehow another this spoils his amateur athletic standing it's just stupidity I think it's disgusting it tries me nuts a greater percentage just drives me crazy so we're back to your situation we kind of see so the UFC says we're not in you know offer no offer so ballot ORS released you so I I'd spent three months telling Bellator do you think I'm not coming you do you feel like the UFC might absolutely they played me her cell okay so number the reasons Dana doesn't like me number one number two my style and not that great right there didn't you say something like he's a bald steroids you know after that went down that I really torture him but you know but the original one was he's lying about this USANA thing so that was did this the simpler the so those people who saved me and Dana had beef prior to me

17:50not getting an offer have you met him yeah I mean yeah not talked to we've never had length conversations he's a great guy a lot well the wrong approach no I mean I really love you back yeah you and I have had different experiences or sure we have I always feel like I should be there when people have experience let me know the Dana I know yeah so uh so that would be to number three I think obviously stealing a key piece away from Bellator was important to them and then number four I think they thought I really had the ability to be their champion and if someone can be a Bellator champion and make this transition directly to UFC and then be the UFC champion you know then remember this when they're going on belters Mountain Spike now that Bellator would use that to say look we're the same he was a champion here he's a champion there so I think those four things are

18:35and I hey I've never got to sit down face to face with Dana and say why was there no offer that I've never got you know like when Anthony Pettis was the champ and you know I'm helping coach him or Tyrone was I've haven't had more than five words of dating in passing right and so it would be really interesting to me he sit down said what was tell me for real because I have my assumptions on what the deal was but I don't really know and then if I have to add number five number five is I think he got the idea that I would never be a yes-man which I'm not going to be he never would be where Dana really kind of likes the yes-man champions me you see he's got he's got some heat with Tyron he's got some heat with steep a as we saw in Saturday night and he Dana really struggles with the personalities that won't cater to what he wants to happen well fighters very rarely are yes-man

19:25then that's bad nature of who they are a little bit yeah you know especially the really good ones especially as things start going well and start going their way they realize they're the man I mean yes if you're the guy who's running the division you're the guy who's running the division yeah you're not gonna take any from anybody yeah but that's and you see as some of these guys ascend right up the ranks they do like John Joe and started having trouble with Dana right but didn't have it until he Jones was having everybody's his problems I think it very little to do with Dana and more to do with his actions outside of the cage I mean inside the Octagon and the way he was promoted he was promoted fantastic he's just crazy yeah John's crazy you know John his Christmas letter that means I the baddest at 205 ever he just how anyone let him drive a car anymore when

20:12you got that much money is beyond me like pays to pay your buddy 40 grand a year and have him Drive you permanently like why he was driving his own car yeah that one's beyond me well they didn't know until they bought him a Bentley and then he wrapped around tree that's when that's when they should have known and then but then there was the other one where he hit and that was at the hit-and-run was after that one up the hit-and-run was after that one and then there was the other one we got pulled over speeding yeah that he told the cop to go himself that's why he's so good but one of the reasons why he's absolute but then you put you gotta put safeguards in place right like like you're making how many million a year multiple at least for sure you can't pay someone 40 grand to drive you around you're you're preaching to the choir I mean I wish I could clone me and send me

21:01all through all these gonna be fine I got a driver we got a Cadillac Escalade out here look wherever you want to go we're gonna have some fun but no driving no gentlemen no no we don't need driving we got music we got fun let's go oh my gosh I mean seriously yeah well that's what you would have if you know you had like you know it's I don't know what he's doing I don't mean that I never been to Albuquerque I don't know yeah how he's living but you can't babysit everybody you got the UFC has 500 fighters on its roster I mean them any of those guys are prone to wild behavior I would say yeah most of them right yeah high-risk males that fight a sport where you have a potential to be hurt every single time you step in a job yeah but when you're making millions of dollars you got to put safeguards against yourself yeah but I think also what makes John so good is his

21:54self-confidence and he probably like I got it yeah I up before but I got it now so I'm really into sports psychology and I want someone to write this book because no one's ever written it but I think there's this I call it the hypocritical elite athlete so there's two sides to every coin right and if you're a really elite athlete you need both sides of those corner and I'll give you a very example cuz it's kind of what you're talking about there's these guys who are ultra elite prepares to eat right they sleep right they train right they do everything right right but then if one little thing goes wrong it messes with them right if they don't get the right food or their weight cuts bad they start panicking right and then on the opposite side of the coin there's these Cowboys right and they're just like I'm not gonna eat right I'm not gonna sleep right I'm not gonna do

22:38anything right but when time step of the cage I'm gonna fight my ass off and nothing's gonna bother me right and so you need you need both sides those coins to mate to make it whole and so you want someone ideally who does everything right but at the same time when something goes wrong or their toe hurts or whatever they could just say well it doesn't really matter I'm gonna go compete anyways right you want both sides of those that's where I think a lot of you have see fighters are more on the cowboy side of it like well I'm not really gonna do a lot of things right but I'm just saying I'm on firearms neophyte like cowboy might be a perfect example yeah the namesake of my argument yeah yeah that's a good point and it is uh it's probably one of the more fascinating things about any form of high stress high level competition is there's no real guidelines of how to

23:26prepare your mind you know I mean everybody teaches you how to wrestle and teaches you how to kickbox there's all these martial arts schools that teach you technique there's very few real like rock-solid programs of how to how to manage your mind absolutely like like I think you should be taught almost like in in in a step-by-step basis like hey you get a flat tire do you think your car and scream or do you just go this is what it is and hey I could have been born in Ethiopia with no haha right I could be heaven in a coal mine somewhere no I'm lucky nothing this is a minor setback no and so like I actually started going to graduate school for sports psychology I got 900 36 credits done and then I I actually got a scholarship to go further and you know get it paid for but I was just traveling so much that was 2007 8 when i was trying to make the Olympic team and I

24:19was gone all the time and then once I was out of school for a year I was just like there's no freakin way I'm I'm not going back to school I'm not gonna sit in a class you're not gonna freakin write papers I'll still study sports icon my own right and so actually every Monday I do go to something called the mental Monday I wanted my Facebook pages and just people messaged me questions and I talk about the mental aspect because you're right there aren't enough people to talk about it and then you know andresson is actually this company that's being highly successful called wrestling mindset and they have a training program for athletes minds because you're there's nothing out there is there a website for this yeah it's rest of mindset calm no kidding that's great and they're starting that will apply to everything well they're starting to explain expanding a

24:56different disciplines but you're right i think i think there's these general principles of sports psych which can kind of go into any domain right and you're you're hard percent correct that every single individual is different right and one of the like for me i'm i'm an over-thinker right I'm obsessive I'll do something over and over and over and over it again right and so like when I was 14 I was at this big national tournament and I was obsessing about who I had after wrestle and all this stuff and it wore me out mentally I got my ass kicked right and my coach said hey I was that person many many years ago and it helped me just talk about fishing right because that may because if I don't think I don't want to think about what I'm going to do I'm not one of those guys because I think about it too much all obsessed and so ever since age 15 I've always taught myself to train

25:40myself to not think about the competition within like you know six hours right so maybe the day before I can think about a couple days before gonna think about it but like even when I'm in MMA locker room I'm not thinking about my fight yeah my minds off of it because if I'm not if I don't understand what my strategy's gonna be by six hours before and I haven't trained myself by six hours before I right I'm already like hours in six hours you know so like six out you know I I intentionally fly people to my fights who are just my friends who have no intention of telling me what to do MMA wise and just want to backstage right because really smart keeps me really calm because otherwise I start obsessing and that's gonna lead to something really negative so that's like one thing is we're you know but some people are the opposite like they f off too much you kind of got to bring them

26:31back to focus right right you know another and sports tech concept is is what they learned you do you want going to the competition some got to get him amped up some people most people you got to call them down quite a bit like let's relax let's execute because we need to amped up you know you execute Brian so I think there's a lot of these sports psych concepts that can cross over many different genres but you're right no one trains you about it I think it's a huge part of the sport and it's it's it's overlooked because the sport is not just and I think this is true with every sport the sports not just the movements that you make it's what's going on inside the Machine the manager of the body who's the mind and if the manager is like poorly formed and structures all out of whack and you have like whenever a problem comes up you fall right into a pit all these things should be addressed

27:17and you should develop this mindset and develop the ability to manage your mindset Eddy I think at a young age I think it's it's really critical yeah no I totally agree and you know I think I think one interesting thing which I don't know if it's gonna happen mmm era now we'll see right there's very few people who came from a wrestling background that are head coaches of MMA teams right who came from this very very structured environment upset called wrestling it's like you go to I want to I remember my first training camp oh into American Top Team in Florida and I show it's 11 o'clock practice show but 11 o'clock no where's where's everyone at right and then we started 11:45 like 45 minutes late and that's the next day I'm like well am i swimming in charm at 11:45 or cher show up at 11:00 couldn't we say at 11:45 I can show up over so I show up at 11:30 and then they started

28:0511:20 you know like what the hell whereas in college wrestling if you're a minute late you're gonna get punished in college wrestling right it's a very structured organized system so I'm very curious to see the day where there is an MMA team that is very structured like a college wrestling team would be I think would be very effective towards performance for athletes and but then again you are gonna have is a different structure because Kyle dressers are poor right where you're gonna have a bunch of MMA fighters who get rich and then say well I don't want to do what you're saying right now mm how you gonna make them right they're the one paying your paycheck so it does become an interesting circumstance but I think if there was someone who ran a highly structured mixed martial arts team as structured as a college team I think they would have a gigantic amount

28:48of success I think their guys would get a lot better a lot faster and I think you'd see a really interesting dynamic developed between the high level athletes and the coaches well I think they're still trying to trying to figure out what's the best way to coach fighters and I think everybody's got their own way of doing it you know for us the hobbies way is different than the way they do it at American Top Team Matt Hume is doing it different than the way Duke does it everybody's got their own way and the only way you could tell is how well the athletes compete yeah that's the only way you really find out who's correct and who's neat who needs to make adjustments yeah and it's really hard infighting because I mean even your highest level camps how many say Bellator new you how many high level MMA fights do they have per year maybe thirty I mean I think they'd be a lot

29:31for most of these teams right and so you only get thirty sample sizes right whereas a college wrestling team you're gonna have between everybody on the team the all forty guys you're gonna have at least a thousand matches every single year minimum right and then obviously every event is scored by team every dual meet is scored by team every NCAA Championship scored by team so you get a very good indication of what Coach is doing right and what Coach is doing it wrong and then obviously the crew team process the coach that are doing a right now get the the next crop or the best talent right and so you have a very good idea of what's working what is not working where in MMA I think we struggle to see it because the sample size isn't large enough to give us a really really direct correlation now you were able to instigate your strategy in pretty much every single one of your MMA fights the

30:19only fight where you really struggled as a Jayhawk yeah yeah that was that was a close fight what was different in that fight well so that was my first fight at dukes obviously Jamie Rahn's pretty damn good too I really don't think that way from I think he was right number 16 in the world or something at that point in time so I was my first fight at dukes I think the biggest mistake I made I mean and obviously at that time I'm literally two years into my fighting career right so I stopped wrestling completely I didn't do one wrestling practice I moved to dukes August 4 well I moved to Wisconsin August first cert training dukes August first I fought three months later at the end of October I literally did not do one wrestling practice so what were you doing I was just striking like six times a week I was doing jujitsu a handful of times a week and then I was doing

31:02conditioning and said after that fight my rest of then actually I went to my brother's let me New York at the time who my brother is also an NCAA champ went to visit him for Thanksgiving he whooped my ass and I'm like I freaking suck at wrestling like you know like I went cold turkey and so it's like okay I don't need to wrestle every day to be great at wrestling anymore but I need I need to wrestle once a week twice a week with high-level competition so at that point in time and for pretty much the rest of my career I would go to one of the local colleges once a week or twice a week just to keep my skills sharpen so I think that was the biggest mistake I made in the Quran fighting I didn't wrestle at all prior to it but Jamie Rahn was good he's also a Division one college wrestlers he know what he was doing also but I think that if I if I had to pinpoint one thing that

31:46that would be it isn't it fascinating that a guy with as much wrestling experience as you have all you have to do is take some time off and everything degrades well its timing it's all timing right so you you take three months off your time he's gonna go to shammy little that's amazing tell ya I wasn't doing one practice and it's like but that was also what helped me get the striking thing down as I was doing and this is what I think you actually made this point who the hell were you talking to about wrestlers are willing to go in environment I was striking six to seven times a week how many strikers go in wrestle six to seven times a real problem none of them do they probably they refuse to well that was Francis and Gahan oh yes training cam when I talk to people outside afterwards it's crazy before everyone was saying oh my god he's in tremendous shape

32:30everything's amazing and then afterwards it was like he doesn't train on the ground crazy train on the ground yeah I go all he wants to do is strike yeah well you can't let him do that okay I can't let him oh he's gonna fight and the Division one wrestling yeah like how was he gonna do this how was he gonna how's he gonna stand up he's gonna somehow or another magically stuff all the takedowns I hope you have to bring that you have to train it yeah and well and that but you gotta train it but then even when people train it these strikers you have those strikers they don't want to do it right right like I said when I go to Duke's when I started Dukes and it went down to four times a week where we're striking right but in the beginning was six or seven times the sessions a week I'm striking right and so I'm immersed in that culture I have to learn you can't not learn when you're

33:17doing six or seven a week right and but these strikers they want to do one wrestling practice a week to wrestling practices a week well if you're here and they're here how are you gonna catch them by doing one practice a week it's frickin impossible right you need I mean if I if I got to like be in charge of an MMA guys camp and I don't know I coach wrestling I love coaching the kids I don't know if I ever want to coach MMA people I would consider for someone like high-level but you got to immerse yourself you literally have to take three months and freaking wrestle every single day because Russell you've got a bill you have to build those skills you're not gonna work you're not gonna learn something well doing it one time a week you are gonna do it period no I completely agree and I think that it all depends on what the athlete brings to the table like some guys have

34:01like a little bit of wrestling and then maybe they need to work more on submissions yeah maybe some guys need to work more on their striking they get hit too much I mean it's it's every single fighter is it there's a different recipe and you have to figure out what that recipe is and it's hard because it's like the only way you find out is how well they perform in competition and how many times you even get the chance to do that three a year three a year yeah maybe mm-hmm yeah and so that's that's it and listen so I'm not saying I'm not saying a striker has to do six sessions a week for three years straight but I'm saying take three months take six months immerse yourself in that yeah be obsessed be obsessed learn those skills figure it out and then after that it might be once a week twice a week three times a week but then when when we start considering the the CTE factors

34:46which I'm not totally sold on on CTE yet so you don't get hit poster boy for wrestling as a martial art if you really think ya know for sure but so I watch i watch concussion mm-hmm well I was actually flying to my fight in April of 2016 I watched I said that's scary I didn't I sparred two more times to rest my career so my crew was 19 more months I sparred twice I didn't I didn't do it just cuz you didn't want to get hit yeah I felt is another an unnecessary risk well there was a recent study that came out or just a few days ago that said that it's repeated sub-concussive hits them causing CTE not concussions yeah so but the study that made me really question the CTE phenomenon was they that study where they studied a whole bunch of professional football players it was like a hundred percent like 99 percent have CT right but then they studied people who had played football

35:41for any length of time any length of time and it was like still like 80% of the people yeah it's like well F I can't live my life in a bubble like oh how could eighty percent of people who have ever played football I mean how many American males what percentage of American males walking around at forty years old today played some level of football it's like gotta be eighty percent so you're telling me seventy percent of America's walking around CTE yeah are the American males like that's crazy know that but that's real come on really is what's happening no I buy you got you got to think there's got to be some kind of low threshold because otherwise forty years down the road if everybody played football and everyone who played football has CTE everyone's gonna be walking a lot of people are walking around like that come on that's what's going on or is it it might be the

36:25diet coke I think way more people have some form of brain damage than real really yes yeah I do well I think in the world of martial arts I know so many guys yeah but let's talk about not martial art what do you feel are just regular people ballplayers I think football players it's even worse because you're running you're running at each other yeah ashing hats I mean you watch football I mean yeah damage those guys take is crazy it's once in a UFC you'll see like a wild headkick ko boom and football games these guys are literally running at each other I mean it's crazy one team's running this way the other teams running that way and they slam into each other and these guys are 250 300 pounds that that impacted the jarring of your brain plus they have helmets on which allows them to be more confident clashing into each other I think a giant percentage of

37:17those guys but you think but so instead of that one study said it was something around 80% of anyone who ever played any level football fever length of time right only time has CTE that is like I mean if we take the American population at least 80% of American men played football at some point yeah I sell AFC D so we're talking about like yeah a gigantic population I think there's levels of CTE though I mean I think you know you get to the point where you like Joe Frazier you could barely talk before he died rest in peace but then you also get two guys that are just like a little forgetful and don't know why or impulsive and don't know why you know I mean yeah there's a lot of them yeah there's a lot of weird stuff that comes te I've studied it pretty extensively okay and the more studies that I've read on it the more I've gotten really disturbed so do you think there's maybe

38:01there's a low threshold for what they call CTE well there's also genes that certain people have what was that gene Rhonda Patrick talked about it I don't remember what fantastic she's amazing right yeah and she was talking about some genes make you more susceptible for traumatic brain injury than other ones like if you have it your many times more likely yeah develop CTE but then also and then so the other thing that I would is out of curiosity to me when they did a CT studies especially with they're doing you know after death with these football players right that were so now if they're dying they're probably played in the 60s 70s 80s right that time period steroid use very very high and drug use is also very high into that culture and so and and alcohol of a tool including drugs so it's like did those things contribute contribute is it a you know is it like a mitigating factor or

38:55is it like gonna create this crazy storm of brain damage that you're gonna freakin running into people like this then you're doing steroids then you're freaking and drinking a pack of beer then you're doing some cocaine and like that can't be good for you right that'd be good for you can't be no it can't be yeah yeah especially the pills a lot of them get car the pain pills yeah caught up on pain pills that's a that's a big one man we just found out a Tom Petty died from pain pills yeah my wife and I were talking I was sad that was that man he couldn't have a sense of because my wife and I both love Tom Petty's music but how he did how at 66 years old he was still like not so okay with himself that he was jamming pills down his throat you know that he didn't have a sense of I have had great accomplishments I've had a great life you know why people around me that love me

39:43that you know it's got to be a sad lonely thing when you're overdosing on pills I would have to assume I would want I mean I don't want to guess but I would I would imagine he's in some kind of pain if it was freeze taking those opiates a hip fracture he was recovering for I gotta tell you something man my friend from amber from the UFC she hurt her ankle recently she blew out her Achilles and she said the doctor immediately tried to prescribed oxycontin oh my god out here Slee yeah she's like I'm not taking that no and you know um it happens man doctors just try to shove pills down your throat yeah is it's a real common thing and if you have any sort of serious injury and they put you on that stuff one of the things they put Tom Petty on was fentanyl and fentanyl is that that's killing everything to achmet right boat til meth are very similar no heroin it's it's an

40:33extreme heroin yeah it's an extremely potent opiate yeah it's it's much more much more potent than heroin many many hundreds of times more potent yeah and so they give these people fentanyl patches and then they're taking oxycontin's too and who knows what I get in I mean I I feel terrible for someone who has bad pain like you know from a broken hip or something like that but Jesus Christ take the pain rather than death seriously this you could take CBD you could take CBD it doesn't even have a psychoactive effect and there's radical pain reducing properties yeah yeah and I don't do drugs but the fact that people are so actively prescribing these these heavy really heavy hard drugs to the patient people kill people and weed is still illegal and I don't smoke weed so I'm not even like for myself but just for other people well it's a phrase weed to be a pain reliever

41:26really I know a lot of people do say that it's just maybe I don't know I just I'm one of those people that you're in pain if you're in pain just be in pain just like just just yes yeah just relax hmm you know I mean I remember one time though I got my knee operated on I had a ACL reconstruction and they gave me one of those buttons in the hospital we get more and it was when but they had my leg on this motion machine right so like yeah right after surgery they're trying to get your blood moving and so there's a couple screws in there and they take in my patellar tendon and cut it and put it inside and drilled it all in place and everything and then I'm sitting that's this thing is just it's just throbbing pain and they give me this little button but I'm like I'm in the hospital I'm not gonna overdose but I remember thinking wow this could be really dangerous if you had this in life like

42:20it was like a little button on your hip you just press it and you get a dose of morphine but it was a wonderful feeling I've only done it once while I was in the hospital but I I got it for that brief moment I was like wow this is an amazing feeling ya feel like like you're floating through a cloud of love and just flying through the air like I went from being in exacerbating pain to so how do you feel then so we got in this discussion we talked about CTE so now like okay I think MMA is a terrible career path and people ask me all the time as a professional don't do it to different organizations we're like a couple people it's probably the right career path for majority people probably not a great career path but so you know how do you feel about it when you think that I mean you're obviously saying and I'm on the fence but you're saying I think a lot of these people are getting

43:12CTE clearly how do you feel about you know being involved with it that's like in my future I could pry coach um MMA but I struggle with it because it's like well should I really recommend this person do have a mayor should I not because are they gonna end up up and not be able to take care of the kids or where I don't think you should ever recommend MMA to anybody okay good I usually don't oh yeah I don't think anybody should recommend intermittent but I think some people it's their destiny yeah there's a few people out there that they they want to look I don't think you should recommend skydiving to anybody either though I mean my friend Andy stump is a world-record holder in the world and that's that's this death did you read there was that book called something chasing Superman or you people like him and how it almost always ends up very poorly because you need this bigger rush

44:07and this bigger rush in this bigger rush it's talked about big wave surfers and the flying suit and all this I was talking about the psychology behind it and how like it ends up poorly very very very often because these people need bigger rushes and more challenges and then themselves up it only makes sense yeah I would never encourage anyone to do that but for him I mean he's a retired Navy SEAL and this is just another level of psychotic that he gave you to fill his time with uh-huh but he's got a bunch of sponsors and he actually makes a living doing that I would never recommend that to anybody I recommend skiing sure you know my kids like skiing I like skiing I go skiing with them every time I ski you know I've never gotten hurt okay but I'm like that every time I'm skiing though I'm like don't get hurt don't get hurt don't who wouldn't get hurt don't hurt don't get hurt I think it's

44:56Sonny Bono's who else one of the Kennedys hit a tree right then maybe that was uh that could have been false play no someone pushed him into the tree yeah it took its key out with a sniper rifle yeah I think that there's a lot of very very dangerous career sure and I think if you feel compelled to do that yeah when no one should be talking you into that yeah I don't think anybody should stop you like I like the fact that boxing exists you know never want to tell you no vasila Lemmon chenko don't fight sure I would never want to tell him don't fight I want to see him fight but what if they what if it gets proven without a shadow of a doubt that these things cause he he CTE do you think the government is gonna ban them no I don't think they can really how could they be are they gonna ban the government like banning everything they really do they like banning things that

45:50cost them money or that cost people who don't to them money fair no no the banning of the drugs is really tied to pharmaceutical drugs more than you yeah they're not banning it because they're trying to save us they're banning it because someone's putting pressure on them to ban it or put it in your house nobody's banning skateboarding no one's trying to ban BMX ride those guys get up I mean I was watching this video the other day of those guys doing the ramp with the skateboard and the guy got to the top of the ramp and didn't catch it right and fell like $100 it's awful oh Jesus Christ I mean they get beat the that's that's another one where the damn book was it's at chasing Superman or being Superman or something laughing Superman coding super manners that was called the coding Superman okay so like if you go back and watch the orig x-games I went out you know I was a kid

46:37I don't remember what year it is 90s at some point and oh the rise of the Superman decoding the science of all three humor performs this is a this is a freaking fantastic book I mean it's like it's so awesomely I'm obsessed with sports psych like I said sure steven kotler yeah that guy's interesting yeah but so if you look at like the original X game stuff and then you go to like the X Games today oh yeah it's different world yeah totally different events so much more extreme because you there it has to be this advance advance advance advance but then all sudden people are getting left up yeah you get to a certain point where you can only do so many flips in the air with your bike apparently oh they're trying to go for they would do one rotation every big oh this is crazy yes somewhere comes wrong with two and then now they're doing three wasn't there the movie about Tony Hawk was like

47:23the first one did is 720 or something but now they go way more don't they yeah it's and they're gonna be mourn every year and if you watch any of those parkour kids they're jumping to building and and we've had one of them in here what was his name James who find it I don't remember that one mostly your political ones I think some of the people we're highly fascinating yeah it's it it's an interesting time well I get labeled all right I know as our it's everybody's so quick to label people - mm-hmm it's such a strange time finger pointing and putting people in boxes disingenuously it's more divisive pdz a lot of these leftists they want to you know they want to say well I'm trying to make people less racist but what they're really doing they're being very divisive yeah you know and like I would I think you identify as a libertarian I identify more as a libertarian than Republican or

48:20Democrat but yeah a lot of people say I'm you know alt-right or love Trump so much and it's well I'm more libertarian than anything yeah you know I think less government less invasion into our lives but people want to put you into a little box because your own growth what they're saying yeah it's a weird time for that and that's what I think what you were saying about shaming they try to shame you and yeah that's racist or shame but you're not doing that if you're pretending someone's racist when you know they're not yeah or if you're pretending that someone is a sister homophobic or whatever when you know that you're just there people are there ignoring nuance yeah and what and what what they're really doing also is they're making they're making people afraid to speak their minds right and really how if you and I had a disagreement on something how we would

49:05come to a common grounds by discussing it yeah yeah I'd say well I think you're a reasonable person what do you believe you'd say and this well I don't agree with that and this is why and eventually we would talk it out and maybe we still disagree but we come to a common ground right yeah but instead those people on the one side they're not saying that they're saying what you say you're racist you're sexist you're homophobic name one right and then end a discussion then there's no discussion at all right yeah they're trying to win yeah exactly they just turned them win they're trying to label you and then get the upper hand yeah I think this is a real problem with people not being reasonable and I think that you should be able to have conversations like I've had people have criticized me like even in person I've talked like why would you have that guy

49:46on your show which one any guy like Milo unitless perhaps yeah and I'm like well look what happened I mean we got to see how the guy thinks I mean all this weird the issues that came up at his book deal fallen upon a lot of that had to do with conversations I had with them yeah it's like now you get a chance to see how the guy actually thinks I don't think there's anything wrong with the way he thinks I think it's he's a provocateur I mean it's not how I think yeah but I think that everybody has this perspective on who he is that is exaggerated because of this public persona that he does to be outrageous so I think that's a double-edged sword because I think I think Alex Jones does it as well we're way crazier than well but okay but same idea right is like yes part of their persona is a show is a show it's making it more extreme yeah because they want to say that one thing that's totally

50:39effing crazy I'll catch a headline somewhere right and so they have these beliefs but then they kind of go beyond them because it is a show yeah and because they will make more money if they get more followers or more people clicking on the articles or their videos or whatever right so I think it is but then you know you go to someone like the Bret Weinstein guy I think he's fascinating yeah people calling him a racist crazy and you know he was strong liberal well he's as progressive as a cat's he's far from a racist as you could ever get yeah yeah there's a there's this need to label people well alex is out showman yes and but also like he says some things that are pretty up like the Sandy Hook stuff you know yeah saying that Sandy Hook was us he's looking for conspiracies everywhere everywhere he finds them someplace so sometimes he's right exactly sometimes

51:27yeah but the problem with looking for conspiracies everywhere is you're gonna you're gonna make people feel terrible yes I mean if there was a article that I read about a guy who was a conspiracy theorist until his son was killed in Sandy Hook well people were telling him that his son wasn't killed and that has some sort of a government actor and this guy was devastated yeah you know of course the people that are really the nutty conspiracy theorist oh he's undercover still still undercover there's people out there that look for conspiracies yeah everything and it becomes a real problem because it muddies up the water but I think I think at the same time you at least for me and I think we've similar thought processes you can't just take what mainstream media tells you and say well I guess that's how it happened right so Eddie and in some situations but in Sandy Hook

52:19you have dead kids you have people grieving your bodies autopsy reports yeah it happened at guns you had a mentally ill person who had access to these dark then if you take that same thought process on say Stephen Patek and the Las Vegas shooting well we still don't know how that turned out right the Las Vegas shooting is complicated because we know one guy did do that well no new stuff yeah they think there's other people involved and he might have gotten help from people yeah whether it's willingly or unwillingly but or wittingly or unwittingly but I don't think there was other people shooting I think they've said that so I don't know right and that's what a lot of these conspiracies you have to understand that you're never really gonna know the real truth right you have to keep an open mind and you say okay well this person says this what does this person say what

53:05does this person say do these things check out with each other and it's like how many different times does they change the Las Vegas shootings timeline right and then it was kind of weird that it went way out of mainstream me like I'll sin you heard about for a week and then you didn't hear about it again for a sign of the times I think the new cycle today is about hours yeah but you would people would want answers I mean that's the largest mass shooting in United States history think we'd want some more clear answers on what really happened and how it happened and why it happened and we never really got those now I know there's been a few new articles on it recently and so maybe we're gonna find out more information but it's an incredibly confusing story because the guy was clearly a psycho and clearly up yeah and clearly planned this out for a long time I mean

53:49he he got hotel rooms overlooking music festivals in other places yeah and like was planning out how to do this for a long time he had a note in his in his hotel room that had all the ballistics calculations so he knew like like bullet dropped from X amount of yards and he was calculating how to kill all these people yeah he was on some weird antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication which does all kinds of weird to your head there's a guy that was prone to fits of rage he was a calculated professional gambler there's a lot of weird stuff with this guy yeah the the fact that he accumulated these weapons over years yeah and maybe did it knowing that he was going to do this so you don't there's a whenever there's a mass shooting or anything that's crazy you have two things happen one everybody wants answers and two everybody forgets about it really quick because some new

54:46happens in the news and if it wasn't your family that got shot it wasn't someone who you're close to the gunshot I know people that got shot there yeah I know people that I met them I met people in Vegas that got shot there I talked to them after was over it was complete and total chaos and when there's complete and total chaos you get all sorts of conflicting reports people were running into other casinos saying that there's a shooter because they ran out of that area and so then people were calling in police reports there's a shooter Monte Carlo there's a shooter in this and so those things get reported as fact when many times it's part of the confusion of a chaotic mass shooting like that Vegas event I don't know what happened other than the fact that this one guy definitely killed a bunch of people but whether or not someone was helping him or whether or

55:30not there was other people involved or I think they're still investigating as to yeah and they said but so I guess my greater point there would be that if you're an intelligent individual you can't just take what CBS tells you to be complete fact right you you go do some investigation yourself you try to read from different sources and then hey sandy hook I think there's like a 99.999 and then I'm percent chance the Sandy Hook was real right is there some crazy in the infinitely small chance that didn't happen sure right but I think I think there is I think it's very unlikely and there's a Vegas 0% 0/7 hook didn't happen okay so I looked into a pretty but you know it's just sad to me and you're a dad you know you you know you the idea of your kid going to school getting this school getting shot up by some psychopath yeah imagine if someone was saying that that was fake yeah after

56:20your kids dead and you'd you'd be frustrated infuriated you wouldn't even know where to turn and these that's actually happening to these people and they're they're getting labeled as frauds and people are emailing them and you know saying how could you do this you're you're defrauding the American people you're a part of the Illuminati or those people who are on right the way one side of it there's so there's a sofa if you go a spectrum for me right there's the American who's drinking diet coke and eating frozen pizza and listening to every CBS says right and then in the total opposite spectrum there's the group that thinks every single thing that ever happens in America is a plain conspiracy by the New World Order right so those are our two ends of the spectrum right now we can fall anywhere in the middle there but I think it as a telogen individual we look

57:07at situations independently and say well there's some sketchy things they're not sketchy things they're that's probably true right and independently think about stuff by ourselves and that's yeah that's how I do it and so you know that's a wise way to approach it and I think CBS or NBC or you know any name your news source they're run by people and if they weren't there they only have access to a certain amount of information and sometimes they get bad information yeah and sometimes they don't necessarily know I don't know how much of it is a part of some grand conspiracy rather than how much of as a part of the chaos of these moments the the lack of information and people drawing conclusions and and then also witnesses on the scene on people on the scene of something that's crazy they give all sorts of weird yeah red counts mm-hm and they're just they're filled with

57:53adrenaline they don't know how to handle the situation people you know people don't handle chaotic events very well yeah but I don't think there is flat that's fair oh good for you yeah you what do you possibly believe in that might be crazy can I take a piss and I'll no worries man I wonder if there's something wrong with my bladder you can hold it yeah do you think I've trained it yeah I mean sure I just that guy is gonna try to shoot himself to see the flat earth and a couple days into the space yeah don't think March 2nd James Kingston was that guy James Kingston thank you sorry James yeah it's a Dunbar there is Dunbar's number brother you can only keep 150 people in your brain at any time look at that picture we're looking at a picture for the audio folks if James Kingston on the top of this tower and I don't know how many stories he's up there but it's

58:50insane because below him and I mean way below him are skyscrapers that's probably like Dubai or something right do you think that Dunbar's number could apply to other things besides people like website search or numbers of instructions that yeah yeah yeah yeah I think so you know I think it applies to too many things it applies I just think for names names and people I'm I'm struggling I think I'm getting like I have an overflowing pot like Shane Burgos and Calvin cater were fighting this weekend and I called Calvin cater Chris cater after he won even though I'm a fan of his like he wanted I want Chris cater and then I went it's name's Calvin dumb like I think I just don't I think I'm running out of space in my head for names so my apologies to Calvin cater I'm running out of names am i we're talking about Dunbar's number how you can only keep so many people in your brain okay

59:45my brains overflowed I have any hard drive space left I didn't know so I thought it was uh is that the guy says you can only like keep track of 150 people yeah what's going on in the relationships that you you only have so much room and you're in your hard drive space yeah it's based on tribal societies like you our brains are sort of designed to keep track of 150 people that's how we evolved and then all over the last you know X amount of hundreds of years now all sudden you have to keep track of many many multiples of that especially if you're someone like you or I that runs into so many people who you you meet on a regular basis gonna keep those people all in your brain but is it is it so I guess I haven't read that ready to attach much is it that you have to just know their names and faces or is it that you should know like what's going on in their life I think you're supposed to be

60:35able to track them like have a some sort of a whether it's intimate or personal relationship but these people know them yeah yeah it's like there's only something like especially if you think about commentating out fights I have to pay attention to these guys and what they're doing and their career and there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 500 fighters now yeah 500 fighters that's active and then how many of them get new guys come in old guys go away I still keep them all in my head hey what's Sean Sherk up to these days you know it's good they're all still in the head yeah and it's like there's not there's only so much room and after a while you know you wonder like wow where are all these people going yeah and I've found that obviously with it's sad like you know college friends it's like yeah you know and it's good cuz you see them and it's like no times past right but

61:21it's like III if I know if I was living in two minutes away we'd probably best friends still right right but now I get to see you once a year twice here maybe I can't keep up with you it's doing super challenging I totally agree you know now max and i run the wrestling academies my brother we've three in Wisconsin and it's like the this fall was my first wife full-time worked at one and so now I'm really immersed in the one Academy where as I was kind of loosely keeping track of all three but now that I'm kind of totally immersed in the one I find it a lot harder to keep track of what's going on at the other two where I was kind of been right at before when I wasn't so immersed in one yeah I can only imagine Eddie Bravo has a hundred schools that's crazy there's a hundred tenth planet jiu-jitsu is worldwide like how he can't keep track all I'm candy I don't know

62:07I don't know I'd have to ask him I know he travels to all of them he travels he's constantly traveling not gonna chat with all it travels constantly he's doing seminars at all of oh my god always traveling yeah what's the it so did you do like one time a year for each facility or something I don't know it's good question that would be Colombia he's going he's going I mean probably would even be once a year three years Singapore now yeah he was out in Singapore when I was there in one of my fights this year it was maybe the maybe the may fight yeah I think he was out there doing his a tenth planet seminar and now that now they have a tenth planet program at evolve it's crazy evolve is supposed to be an amazing facility I've heard amazing things yeah it's fab imeem the nicest MMA facility I've ever been to and so they have they actually just opened their

62:50fourth location just in Singapore which Singapore's uh it's a city-state right it's six million people and on a really really small island but some of their some of their academies are only a mile or two apart like they're not far apart but the population density is such that you know they listen they start classes it I think it's six a.m. and then classes at 11 p.m. and you can freakin stop in any time of day and there will be a class there that's full with Muay Thai or Jiu Jitsu whatever you name it it'll be going on that's variable yeah well Manhattan is kind of like that in a lot of ways right man has how many jujitsu schools are in Manhattan I mean I've seen Marcel hundreds but have big ones handles got a huge one ourselves got a huge one so yeah there's a lot right there I mean hanzo's is huge that place is enormous hundreds and hundreds of students I thought there I

63:42know I thought it's so big that's what someone someone told me has over a thousand students in the main New York City location and I think it's you know it ain't cheap because you got to pay for rent mm-hm and so they're probably paying a couple hundred bucks a month yeah I've so evolved is I think three or $50 a month Wow but obviously so Singapore is one of the most wealthy countries on the planet so do you have to take that into account Pro much everyone that lives there has a decent amount of wealth and you know they spend it different Singapore is a fascinating country if you I got you know I was there 15 times or whatever so I got kind of immersed in the culture and then I didn't reading the books about laQuan music I started the country and so you know there was a whole bunch of those Asian countries that got independence in the 1950s and 60s and Singapore Bleu was founded in

64:311965 it could be off by one year there maybe but you know a lot of those countries are not doing super well economically and Singapore is like this is freaking standout country who's like top five world per person wealth and why why is it more are they doing so much better uh and so this is me from an outsider's perspective so they really do a lot of kind of its kind of like self tracking right and so every month a bunch of your check comes out to you know like we pay taxes right a bunch of money comes other check but so they can spend that this is fascinating a spend their money on three things it goes it is fund right education health care and housing okay and so if you want cheaper of any one of those if you want the cheapest form of it right it's very government subsidized and it comes out of your fund right so only a little bit of money comes out if you

65:23want the nicest health care or the nicest housing or nice then it's only a tiny percent government subsidized right so that the more expensive the stuff gets whether it's education or housing or health care though less subsidized it gets and the cheaper gets the more subsidized it gets and so everyone kind of you know they pay they pain to the fun so everyone has this personal fund that they can use and then you know eight into those three things and so I think a lot of people have I think they feel like they have more control over their lives and and you know obviously there's very strict regulations and laws but from what I've seen and I spend a lot of time there everyone seems pretty happy that's interesting yeah that's an interesting way to I mean I don't think there's any one good way to government to govern people yeah and I think we have a pretty good system over

66:07here but it's obviously filled with bureaucratic and way too much government there's way too many people doing stupid jobs and there's pay too much or damn and I mean it's and and then the like you know trying to chase down medical marijuana in 2017 trying to stop legal marijuana I'm like why like who's paying you to do this like why why are you doing that doesn't make any sense well you know not what our tax dollars should be going towards you know funny when you go all the way back I think about it so we talked about that process of who's keeping them from doing this and you have about the pharmaceuticals with with weed which nothing is true you know what a funny one I think about is John McCain and mixed martial arts okay who is sponsoring John McCain Budweiser who was psyched amazing advertiser for boxing it's like you cannot make an argument that boxing safer than MMA you can't

66:55freakin do it like it's impossible possible it's impossible yeah but John McCain's over here getting paid by Budweiser and saying MMA is awful let's ban it and the same time he's promoting boxing essentially it's freakin mind-blowing well in his defense it was MMA from a long time ago and it was yeah it wasn't really the same as MMA now and he's turned the corner and now he supports on my man yeah but also you've got Budweiser in Bud Light or sponsors now of MMA yeah it's like but that's a real problem with politicians they're yours there's so many dirty politicians I don't know what percentage is but it's hot 97 it's probably it's probably a high what crazy that what crazy conspiracy do you believe in so the one that got me started really like independently thing for myself was 9/11 which I think that was that was for a lot of people yeah yeah what what do you

67:46think about 9/11 oh I know I don't know all the answers but I know the given explanation I don't believe what give an explanation the one that came what's the damn report that they wrote the NIST report no I wasn't what was was it yeah well NIST is the one who did the report on Tower seven collapsing no what was the other report they came out with right away anyway so I had my buddy live right by the airport and he played loose change for me mmm-hmm and I said you were out of your GD mind like you are insane man right and then I started thinking well that doesn't maybe maybe I should think about it you know that it was an inside job um not totally I mean I so I think obviously the planes flew into the buildings for sure there's no doubt about that but that may be the there was Inklings inclinations that had that was gonna happen and that not enough was done to stop it I think

68:44this is one this is another thing where you have a gigantic tragedy and because of a gigantic tragedy there's a lot of people that draw these conclusions based on witness testimony and things that are happened but I think you have to realize that anytime there's some something that happens people start looking for all these different correlating factors right you start saying well hey look you know there was this local tests that were being done there was they were looking out for planes that were potentially gonna fly into building they they knew this was gonna happen in advance but if you talk to anybody that is in intelligence there's they're dealing with that every day mm-hmm just one day something happens yeah there's always warnings about terrorist attacks there's always warnings about things happen and a lot of times they these warnings get to warded like the FBI stopped that last

69:35week there was one there was one in San Francisco yeah right they had bombs and they stopped them yeah and this has happened many times yeah now when when it doesn't when they don't catch it and it goes through then people start thinking oh there was some sort of a conspiracy they allowed these planes to fly into buildings the missile hit the Pentagon and people look there was a video came out of that last week but I might have been fake news the Pentagon thing there was a video of the Pennock of something hitting the Pentagon which will take a missile and not an airplane but I don't believe it was yeah I was like this instincts I've never seen this video before and obviously there's no video evidence of what hit the Pentagon well there's a video of something I know there was one he had a camera thing or a security camera video that was released but what they did have is all sorts of

70:22pizza pieces of aircraft all over the lawn and you know in a blown up building and a plane that's missing and all the people dead like I'm gonna guess it was a plane yeah you know I just I think people look for conspiracies and everything because it's exciting well I mean stimulating about it there is but then obviously the I I know that you don't believe that everything we're told is the truth right away right I mean if we go to something like Gulf of Tonkin incident right I mean that's been proven to be false or the fact like the banana republics right where Dole asked us to go take out one of their dictators because they were gonna nationalize all the banana plants in that country yeah I mean those things have been now proven to be totally factual that the United States government went and did that stuff so the fact that and you know in 1960s or 70s those things were reported

71:11the opposite right so we can't obviously take everything that we've been reported as truth well there's definitely been conspiracies that have been put together and executed and these conspiracies have greatly affected the American people the gulf of tonkin is a perfect example another one that they were planning on was Operation Northwoods the operation Northwoods was one that they were planning on blowing up a drone jetliner and blaming it on the Cubans they were gonna arm Cuban friendlies and have them attack wanton Omo Bay they're gonna sacrifice American troops in American lives and they're gonna do this in order to get people to be excited about a war with Cuba yes was this is a real thing that was signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff it was released by the Freedom of Information Act and it was vetoed by Kennedy so we know that there were people at least in 1962 they were

71:58planning on like this yeah so that's a real thing too and the idea that that just went away and no one does that anymore it's crazy I don't I don't believe that I think there's there's most certainly evil people in all sectors of life yes absolutely yeah so it's good to have an open mind but there's also a lot of conspiracy looms and they get consumed with it that's that's the issues they get consumed with nothing that I've been told is true yeah which is obviously I said the one part of the spectrum and I anyone who's that end is crazy also yeah there's people out there that think the satellites are fake and they think that the most real and that the earth is flat is once why I just shake my head like the moon landing was my favorite really I got balls deep in that for years I was completely you think they did not go to the moon no I don't I don't think that

72:45anymore but you know what I think now I think I don't know okay but I do think that it is one of the more fascinating conspiracies that between 1969 and 1972 they had seven at 7-7 attempt six of them successful but they went to the Apollo 13 was the one that they didn't apparently make it and they had to come back but that was the only time in history that a human being has been more than four hundred miles above the Earth's surface all the Space Station missions all the Space Shuttle missions all that stuff is is within orbit yeah it's low it's very low they went 260 thousand miles out and back in a deep space but they had never even flown a chicken out there and see if it live like we really really yeah no I'm not into this the space Schieffelin so when they did a couple of flybys look at went around the moon early before they landed on them yeah but other than

73:36that I mean without unmanned drones like what we have on Mars and things like that we've never really sent a living thing out through the magnetosphere through the Van Allen radiation belts into deep space have it you know I mean there's all these possibilities of solar flares and anything that would have killed them instantly and they just did that and then we haven't been able to do that since 1972 that's the one way I've never looked into the moon landing I think it's kind of goofy right well it's it's weird it's a weird one why have we never gone back it's been 50 our technology's far superior to what it was in 1969 right the technology is far superior except that they're not using that technology for manned space travel into you know deep space like that and yeah I went to the moon so it's like our technology and all these other areas is superior but they haven't really worked

74:24towards that because they haven't been funded so the big issue is in many ways it's money right it's there's how much money is there and going to the moon and it's also very risky to send humans out there we're talking about manned missions to Mars now which may or may not take place by 2030 they're talking about doing that but it's way cheaper and safer to send robots out there I risk human lives throw the moon right and they put robots on Mars mmhmm yeah yeah the Rovers the Rovers on Mars our most that's the most interesting because they're sending these really high-resolution photos of the surface of Mars and they're running tests and checking for Biological life it's really really interesting stuff but between 69 and 72 when they did all this stuff I mean there's the the technology back then was nothing compared to what they have now in terms of calculations and

75:16computers and yeah and it's also there was there's unquestionably some stuff that whether it was image or video that was faked and I think really yeah so I've no idea like I said never looked into this at all Gemini 15 is the big one because there's a photo of Michael Collins it shows him in deep space and they they use it as a press really saying that he was on a spacewalk when it was really an image of him from a test run where there was all this stuff in the background and he was on this harness and they just blacked out the background and tried to sell it as him being in space see if you find that Michael Collins book was looking up how much it cost to send somebody to space so it's in the same family not 70 million for a NASA astronaut to fly on a Russian shuttle private guys trying to sell tickets to places I mean Bezos is trying to do it musk obviously but that

76:11space that's just that's just low Earth orbit that's that's still inside 400 miles none of them are trying to go anywhere no well they might in the future at Branson well I think that's all same thing it's all throw but but but they are talking about future visits to the moon and tomorrow's but a lot of times I feel like when they say that you know George Bush Senior said that they were gonna go to the mute back to the moon again in like one was that 1990 or whatever the hell that was but people have always said we're gonna go back to the moon but we haven't been back since 1972 does that mean that we never went no but then it gets weird when you find out that Wernher von Braun was a Nazi who Wernher von Braun the guy who he was the head of NASA he was the guy who organized the moon landings and he was the head rocket guy he was he that guy was a legit Nazi like he's wanted by

77:02the the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that he was alive today they would prosecute him for crimes against humanity they would helm the five slowest workers every day in front of his Burlington rocket Factory oh yeah no a hundred percent I mean that's what they did the the what what they did was they took this thing was called Operation Paperclip where when we won World War two they took all the top Nazi scientists and they secretly brought him over to America and they did it on the down-low so that no one would think like hey why do we have a guy named Wernher von Braun running the American space program because the the Nazi scientists were insanely advanced hmm so the question is like well were they really Nazis or were they scientists that were under the boot of the Nazi administration I mean well I don't know I mean that yeah but I do know that these are the people that were

77:54the head engineers and the people that designed it Wernher von Braun's himself was saying how impossible it was his years before they did the moon landing years before Operation Paperclip that it was impossible to go to the moon or how ridiculously impossible would be but technology advanced from then - when 1969 happened - when they did it I stopped saying that we never went to the moon because I really don't know what the I'm talking about that's that's a big part of that understanding these conspiracies is hard you have to well you have to really know how much do I know about rocketry how much do I know about aerospace zero yeah so if I'm running around saying I don't you know I don't believe people went to the moon what is it based on it's based on mostly on ignorance speculation and the exciting the excited feeling that comes with trying to uncover a

78:44conspiracy sure but they and I think you do have to be a little bit discerning on what you hear and but it is frustrating and that's where a lot of these conspiracy guys they think they know more than they do because you have to come to the realization that you're probably never gonna know the real answer with all these things very likely I mean some of them come out many many many many years later which are my gulf of tonkin right now or Operation Northwoods many years later it comes out but you know there's a good likelihood that I'll never know the truth on stuff I read a lot about I think with the moon landing it's way more likely that we went to the moon but that some of the footage is fake and I think they probably did that because it's incredibly difficult to film things on the moon and I think they filmed some stuff in test runs and then tried to

79:26pass that they didn't have it back in the center of their chest I think they were been taking a selfie on the moon the kidnap snapchatting it you'd have to take your shoes off then you would die yeah they didn't have a camera that you put in front of you well maybe they have ones clicker buttons they could have what their big loves on and they you know they put the thing out there could be like it and then BOOM snapchat the moon well that's what they said well it was that they did it remotely that's how they captured the video of the lunar module leaving the surface of the Moon and panned up and watched it go that they did all that remotely hmm it's all there's some squirrelly footage ever see the video of them jumping around it looks like they're on trampled yeah see that we're like they're just bouncing straight up in the air like what the is that how come the physics are

80:14different in different flights like in some some of the flights like Apollo 11 they're barely getting off the ground yeah well were there like they're walking but they're kind of do ya like that well there's ones like that and then there's also ones where they fall down looks like they're getting yanked up by wires I think it's entirely possible that some of that stuff was fake huh but I don't I think it's way more likely that they actually went to the moon than they didn't but it's way sexier to think that they faked the whole thing it's fun it's fun to think they faked the whole thing that everybody was quiet about it and you know Neil Armstrong gave this real cryptic speech on the 25th anniversary of the moon mission saying that you know there are hidden truths that uh what is the exact quote that he said some of the great truths that could be real revealed removing some of truths

81:06hidden layers like what he was giving away it was real cryptic it was like what he's let's see if he could find it yeah play the video might have been given in a way well it seemed if you were conspiracy theory this would give you a rock-hard boner listen listen to this just play the whole thing so you don't confuse everybody in 1994 Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance and held back tears as he spoke these brief cryptic remarks before the next generation of taxpayers as they toured the White House today we have with us a group of students among America's best to you we say we've only completed a beginning we leave you much that is undone there are great ideas undiscovered breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truths protective layers what the does that mean I I mean what I'm supposed to say yo I went to the moon supposed to say

82:24breakthroughs ladies give it away the truth protective layers like I don't even understand what that means the the cop the press conference is one of the more fascinating things if you watch the press conference again I was balls deep in this stuff for the others the press conference from 1969 when they were turned from the moon is one of the most cryptic weird things you'll ever see these guys look like they just stole something and they're being questioned it's it's no it's I've never seen a video where people look like they're more full of than that video of the press conference from 1969 it's a weird man it's weird they're like a fidgety and looking nervous I could get away they might have done it they might have been forced to say some things they didn't say and that could be part of it absolutely no they could have done it but there's a lot of weirdness with the

83:15moon landing it's it's if you wanted to have like a conspiracy that to wrap your head around it's exciting it's one of the best ones who benefits from it the United States government did because it showed military superiority of the Russians and we were able to do that but also you know it was the Nixon administration people would just flat-out full of well yeah I mean they were just lying to people left and right back there that's government though yeah but even more so then because was unchecked there was no media yeah there's nothing that would expose them for this and this stuff in they would air it on TV once in 1969 you never see it again unless you watched it on Phil there's no YouTube we go back and watch the astronauts on trampolines video that's about favorite one you watch that you'll what in the is happening there these guys are bouncing up in the air how are they doing that

84:05like they never did if you watch Apollo 11 when they were moving around on the surface of the Moon just like they're moving in slow motion and then you go to whatever was like how old 14 or 15 when they were doing the trampoline thing they're flying through the air have you seen that I've not I know I had never gotten to the moon thing the flag watch make you watch this and like their feet are hidden look at this watch these guys bounce up in the air it's like they're on some sort of wire like they could be being yanked up into the air oh yeah like what the are they doing and they're playing like falling down and it's very weird but it could have been that they were really on the moon and these guys were cowboys and Yahoo's and they wanted to bounce around oh you were Pacey you're posting those videos yeah I had a debate on Penn Jillette's radio show with a guy who was

84:57an astronomer and he wasn't willing to admit a lot of stuff that was a fact like the fact that Wernher von Braun was a Nazi and why is the flag looks like still there well the flag had a wire first of all on the top of it that stiffened it up to make it but there's there's videos of the flag moving in a non-existent breeze which is weird too and yes they try to make some logical explanations for why the flag could be moving in a vacuum and some of it makes sense but some of it doesn't like the the wires one is weird if you watch them fall down like go to that one right there Jamie you like if you watch like sometimes they're falling down and when they're falling down it looks like they get yanked back up but I think it might not have been real footage what they might have done is use some test footage like right there Jamie right there let it go like homeboy falls

85:48down and then it looks like he is yanked back up look at this oh he did not standing up yeah what is this that's not I'm standing up you can't stand up like that right but you're on the moon 1/6 Earth's gravity but there was no there's nothing to make him go like this exact right you can't give up without exact now we go back to MMA because that's what these freakin folk style wrestling's the next generator mm eh you could turn your bass to get up you can't look at there's nothing on the ground how is he gonna get them amazing yanked up I think he would have super abs he would have to be like no because okay maybe a breakdancer maybe a breakdancer but you can't get up without putting a bass down right yeah yeah that was really weird watch it again watch em get yanked up he's got no bass yeah that little piece is played in Reverse yeah it almost does

86:37yeah that he couldn't stand up with but the thing falls down right afterwards so it wasn't in Reverse now I think it's entirely possible that some of the footage was but it doesn't mean that they didn't go to the moon yeah it means it overzealous people and he only had one foot on the ground there too right yeah that's true look at this watch so he stood up like you can't do it what his right foots down his left foots up but he just goes straight up that's fake but I've never been in 1/6 Earth's gravity and neither of you know says we never went to the moon I said fake video was real that's from television ok the video that guy standing up like that he got helps on that yeah well can't stand up like that very well he could have been on wires it could have been that they were using that to simulate what it would be like because they definitely filmed a lot of simulations

87:32they get a lot of that because they wanted to prepare the astronauts it's entirely possible that some of those simulations gotten passed off as being an actual video of them on the moon sure yeah for enough or they faked the whole thing I wasn't there I think I think folk style wrestling is the next that's the next genesis of MMA right what's next yeah like that guy standing up people don't realize if you watch the lemur Rory fight it was incredibly frustrating to watch for me because Lima was literally just laying on his back in guard you know and guard is almost non-existent effective in MMA now well unless you're Brian Ortega okay there's a there's a lot you guys tiny all right I think those but those guys are like you like your wrestling is so highly effective in MMA some people could say you can't get by just with wrestling why I don't wrestle I'm a black belt in

88:25jujitsu all right yeah you use a lot of rest yeah primarily yeah I mean it's not that brian ortega can box to we can do a lot of other things to strike that's good solid striker but his guard is so dangerous yeah it's just another level of dangerous as opposed to most MMA fighters including Lima yeah and so uh you know people actually going back to their base right which has been it's been a no-no forever and in May you don't go back to your base because you expose your back right but then again you know what percentage of guys who are sitting in guard actually get submissions from the guard now the numbers really small really well so you're gonna have to find out now okay like this is so so frustrating so the in the in the Lima fight Rory wins the first two rounds it's competitive but he wins pretty clearly right but the leg kicks are stick I never been kicked as hard by anyone as

89:13Dedalus Lima he kicked me one time in the leg I'm freaking him walk right for a week really oh my god he kicked so hard he kicked so hard so hard and so uh third round there's this accumulation of leg kicks and all sudden Rory's leg is really effed up from getting kicked a handful of times right he's doing that low calf game yes well kicking him kinda all over the ear or Troy starting to do this one you know checking it so Lima starts taking control of the fight the wins the third round in my opinion fourth round in the beginning he like kicks him once and Rory falls down he hops in the mountain starts beating him up he's like holy crap this fight might be over and then Sirois recovers but then in the fifth round Rory goes out and shoots like a similar like double leg like immediate we're talking first ten seconds right and going in a try anything he might get finished

90:01this round I mean he he can barely walk look at his leg right and so we make us take him down ten seconds into the round he literally stayed in guard for four minutes 50 seconds and you're like at some point is he gonna try to get up because he has to get if he gets up any lands weren't - more kicks are getting taken down two fights likely over Wow you know but he refuses to turn to his base because this is anti jiu-jitsu you shouldn't turn your base in jiu-jitsu cleaver getting choked yeah it Joe at that point you're losing right what else you gonna do well he never tried to sweep um you never do you try to submit him on I tried butterfly sweeping a couple times but so at this point I mean even and I thought it's to two rounds two rounds right right he was in the fifth round you know you got try to get up at some point so that was that did it for Rory

90:46so you want he won 49 46 on to score cards in 48 47 on one hmm so why it was 3 2 1 so then even more right even more reason to get up it right if you're losing by that much but yeah leave him I refuse to get up so at that point I'm thinking oh hey maybe Lima thinks he won or something I don't know hmm but yeah so why did you do two people are struggling with this fact that in modern day MMA you're going to have to try to get up because guard is no longer that effective and you just get punched in the face over and over and over again and that's terrible what are your feelings on going to half guard and like going for an under try the same side and yeah try it but it's not you know again like as me as a as a top guy I would rather be in half guard than full guard I'm gonna land a lot of damage from half guard and then you're also if you're in half guard you're me

91:34trying to work in yourself tired and you're very unlikely to sweep me right so I think half guard is better than full guard but I think I think eventually where people are gonna have to get to is they're gonna have to actually get up you don't have to get up and and put your feet on someone's hips and kicking them is no longer a great solution it works every once in a while but it's not like you can do that every single time it just yeah that's pretty rare pretty rare so he rarely everybody's so aware of it yeah so bottom bottom and top folk style wrestling I think is the next Genesis in MMA where people are really gonna have to have a deep understanding because once you do get taken down or once you get a takedown and there's some you know you'll Romero was the perfect example he never did folks down wrestling in America right he's a very very elite freestyle wrestler but he gets these

92:16takedowns and he can only stay on top for like 15 seconds right it's like you did all that work to get the guy on the ground and now you just let him back up like what what was the point right what was the point of it well he smashes some guys in the ground like Machida when he got him down on the ground some of them yeah put him away he's um he's a freak athlete too it's hard to say hey do what he does cuz like no one's built like that guy that guy's the weird he has the weirdest body I've ever seen really why because he looks like he's 230 pounds and he weighs 185 when he weighs in yeah it's like is that 185 I always look at him I'm like I don't even understand it like where's the weight going and you would think he's was guys at some peds but looking at him but then when you look at him like he won a world title in 98 now you're not somewhere in there mm-hmm he

93:05looks the same the same at age 18 or 19 now yet the crazy Owens incredible because then you think like well V is on peds it had to be prior to age 18 because he looks the same well what are your thoughts on like Karelin cuz you know the curries yeah but they had they used to call him the experiment yeah and his parents are tiny you know parents like five five five seven and then he's six foot whatever the he is a guru of yeah man yeah and I always wondered like one day in the future whether it's five years from now or 30 years from now they're going to be genetically manipulated people crazy right well you watch Icarus yeah sure yeah and that was fast thing and that pretty much is I mean cemented the Russian that anti-doping program or every single person state-sponsored doping program or everybody forever yeah for everybody what's crazy and it's like you had the

94:01hint that they were likely cheating you know but then as someone who competed it against them man and that's a tough pill to swallow because they wanna make you feel I mean now it's like well I guess I should have been one way or the other but to know that you were a leg down and like going to MMA now iím man I do everyone was cheating for sure right so I'm gonna fight him whether they're cheating or not but like the product days it was essentially sanctioned that was sanctioned like they would tell them like hey you know in this contract it says you can do steroids right how does one FC handle that so they don't they don't do drug testing yet oh that's yeah I mean I should be fine I've been pushing them to do so you know in my time there and in their their thing is that a lot of these countries it's not prevalent in Indonesia or Manila or wherever well just go find out just get the

94:48out of here with that that's my Pig that's not my Rogen saying that get the out so there but there I know you've sought you've you've talked a couple times I've heard you about their way in program I want us yes which i think is fantastic and I think every every MMA organization should do it at a high level one can you explain it yeah so it's really simple you do hydration and you do weight on the scale same time so you can't cut water weight out right right so to piss hydrate get on the scale literally moments later like you go in the bathroom you piss they test the specific gravity you go get on the scale right so essentially everyone moved up one weight class every one of their champions bumped up a weight class so like over there I fight 185 but you know it's a century welter but they even call it Walter weight because it's the same thing because I can't cut any water well

95:34so they adjusted it so they adjusted they moved every daily so I was the welterweight champion I was still the weight welterweight champion they just moved the weight class is different so there's the day of the fight the day before the fight shades before the fight if you make the two days before the fight if you make both the weight and the hydration you do not have to wait tests or hydration tests on the last day here you're clear mm-hmm so if you make it both those dates because you're not gonna be there's not gonna fluctuate 24 hours listen if you can figure out how to cheat that I can't figure out how someone could possibly cheat that test because now when they're first instituted I said well how is someone gonna cheat on this or how could someone cheat you know what it's like they look they watch you piss you know you can't have like a whiz major on or anything so

96:15I don't I don't know how you would cheat I don't think you can I don't think you can I don't think you can so yeah so it's fantastic because like fight week then instead of making this and so when I would fight 170 I would be 183 to 185 to start my water weight cut out cut the water way to 170 or 171 to play on pedal or non-title and then I would hydrate back up so now I don't have to do that that dehydration process I'm literally the exact same size I was Prior and you know media obligations during week are obviously a lot easier because I'm not worried about cutting my weight or I'm not feeling miserable or whatever yeah and it's a lot safer and then so if someone misses so misses obviously they're fine the same as in America if you miss what you're fined if you miss hydration so say Joe you were 185 and you weighed in 185 but you're dehydrated you didn't

97:03really make it right right you have to get hydrated and make weight so if you miss way if you miss oh it's the last day you have made it you have to keep drinking until you piss hydrated and then whatever you weigh there is what you weigh so that was the parameters when comes the hydration or not hydration it's the it's the same scale used for so in America at the beginning of the college wrestling season or high school you have to do specific gravity test I believe I might mess up a zero but I think it's one point zero to five okay this is specific grade which I know is the same they used for hydrated not hydrated in wrestling in America so anything under that you're dehydrated no you're good so you want to be below so one point zero zero zero zero zero is water okay so you want to be close to that right and so there is like you do have to just you have to drink some

97:45water right you drink a whole bunch of water you piss it out you're perfectly hydrated but if you know there have been a couple times like so in the early days they did they did tests this is the first two days were actually just testing to see where you were at the third day was the one that counted you know mm-hmm it's like if you if you ate a bunch of like meat or something you might show up as dehydrated even though that's what you walk around it every single day so you have to make sure you drink a lot of water so it's coming out nice and clear that's an interesting way of doing it and I think that's a great idea because I think that is one of the biggest problems in mmhhh Uriah Hall and Vitor Belfort got canceled last night because your Hall was like literally having seizures on his way to the way and raizy right it's good it's insane it is and I I think it's one of the worst

98:26parts of MMA because I think MMA shouldn't be about who's slickest in being able to deceive the wait system I mean it should be your skill versus your opponent's kill you both the same size well the whole point of it is the whole point of a way is to fight someone our same size yes that's the whole point of it yes and so why people would fight back against the system that one Fc is using is beyond me because listen the most miserable part of my weight cut I'm fine dieting that's all good right but when you got to cut that last 12 13 14 pounds of water weight out it's miserable everybody knows is miserable right and it affects your performance the next day yeah I mean so my thought process will it affects that more than it affects me maybe that's just me being positive about it all right then why is that because if you're wrestling better and I'm not right or maybe it's

99:14just me me psyching myself up so my thought process on everything is anything that goes wrong will affect my opponent more than it'll affect me oh that's good I am more stable I can deal with that goes wrong most people affects them and so maybe that's just me myself that but that makes me feel good about it well a lot of people feel that way about weight cutting they like weight cutting because they think that the other guy is not gonna be able to handle it as well you know you can go through some adversity and then the next day he's gonna be troubled sure exactly so but I think if you take that process away I think it makes media obligations a lot easier so it makes people a lot healthier and yeah I mean how many fights have you just from a business standpoint how many fights if we had canceled this year because of the weight thing I mean it's quite a few did it

99:55change your performance how physically how'd you feel the next day I think I felt you know honestly for me I know they said those studies that you don't really fully hydrate I believe it was 36 to 48 hours and man I've always felt fine and so I I so when I graduate college the weight class in the United States from for the Olympic stuff was 163 I would weigh roughly 175 on a day-to-day basis and then water cut down to 163 and then when I was fighting in 170 I would be say between 183 185 and water cut down to 170 so my water weight cut was very very similar every single time and you know I was discipline in that manner I want I didn't want to be fluctuating and so my goal is actually to get down to my target weight six weeks prior to competition right so I'm walking around 183 to 185 six weeks prior so I'm the same exact person every single day whereas I think the part that

100:47a lot of these people F up and it's because they're not disciplined enough is they try to descend while they're training right so you know maybe I get up to 195 which is that's a small bump some of these guys are really under spin they get way way way way overweight right and so during that last six weeks or even the last couple weeks they're trying to bring that body weight down right and so in my mind there's two ways to lose weight you can diet and lose body weight right fat mass whatever and then there's the water weight where we're sweating and we're taking that out of us right those are two ways and so I think a lot of guys and I you know I don't know if you've ever cut weight show but I know so I'm for me it was in college in the summers I get really fat and then I'd bring my weight down in the fall and you feel it when you're not when you're losing more calories and

101:29you're taking in it's like this weird feeling in your body and you feel like all the time mm-hmm and so I think a lot of fighters are doing that really close to win they're fighting and so now the water weight cut makes you feel terrible and now cutting everything out calorically also is that's like a double whammy that's what I think about it there's another thing that benefits wrestlers and that wrestlers seem to take pride in being able to push through discomfort yes and the more miserable you are the more you just bite down your mouthpiece and deal with it because you get used to doing that all through camps all through college and high school you're always dehydrated you're always losing weight well I mean the college dressing that is not that the way cutting is not that bad anymore so they have the system and people are starting to change 97 I think couple died and so change it but

102:19you know then they Institute the same thing as one Fc that's sort of a so it's once you do it in the being a season find your minimum weight but I think more than I think what people find it's it's a one-hour weigh in so you so if your dual me does that one o'clock everybody weighs in at noon right so what people have found out you can't cut weight you can't go weight you wrestle like so the problem with fighting doing that though is brain injuries yes so that's I think we want to see the best but in college wrestling you talk about the discomfort thing part of that is that you know when you go to a college wrestling program again it's very structured you can't skip right you have to be there every single day right on time and then it's like you have 40 black belt right jiu-jitsu black belts well and not even just black belts like world class 19 to 23 in their physical

103:02prime ready to fight each other every single day and so you get used to this grind dealing with people battling people discomfort every single day you know and a lot of it you also dealing with injuries like you know and Chael Sonnen talks about it a lot that hate and I always talk to Mike as let's listen the national tournament for an NCAA is March 15th through 17th and you cannot guarantee me you're gonna be totally healthy on that date you cannot guarantee meet your be not sick on that date you're gonna have to compete March 15th through March 17th no matter what if you want to enrolled you know a national title and so wrestlers get used to this grind where you just don't see that in other sports yeah I think that that aspect of wrestling is one of the biggest tools that they take into the Octagon the mental toughness and that ability to I mean the grind it's again

103:49it's it's a it's a badge of honor in wrestling to be able to handle the grind yeah it's not really in kick boxing or in we tie or any other sport well they're not really forced to it mean how many how many kickboxing are our jujitsu schools key name where there's literally forty black belts I mean it's but it's been borne out through high school wrestling you go to all these national tournaments and state terms you find out who the best are the best of the best get recruited and they go to these institutions to train with the other best of the best of the best mmm you know and then and then in addition to that the other the post-collegiate guys who are trying to make the world teams and Olympic teams they're sticking on trains so you have this like melting pot of freaking really great wrestlers that are training with each other every single day for five -

104:30you don't plus five years if you're going to World Championships right yeah there also seems to be like a much more systematic approach to training people and a lot more drilling you know and a lot of jujitsu schools like guys show the arm bar from the guard here we hook the arm okay I go under here my legs I Mick my leg I live up okay you practice everybody get together it drives me insane it's right a few times saying like I'll go to jujitsu classes sometimes and they literally go over to techniques you drill it twice and then the last rest of the class is just people rolling five minutes yeah five five minute goes maybe it drives me insane Joe because I come to this wrestling background and then I also like sports psych in the study of high performances like me that's what I love yeah I love I love studying people who are the best in their field at whatever

105:16they do and we know without a shadow of a doubt just saying go for five minutes is not the most effective way to train someone no does not happen so in wrestling there's a whole bunch different you could do some days you might do matches some days you might do a 30-minute go some days you might do a groups of three one-minute go some days you might do situations I start on the single like I start the high crotch I just have friend lock right so there's all these different scenarios that we might try I mean if I'm coaching my Academy right and we're working on it we drill front head blocks or we call Mantha's position we grab both armpits and bounce and go if we're drilling that we don't just say okay now go five minute goes because how many how many tries are they going to get it going in the manthis position that are the headlock maybe one maybe two but essentially most

105:56people have you say go for five minutes they're not disciplined enough to make themselves do new skills they revert to whatever they do best right and then just do it over and over and over and over again right and so if I want a kid to be good at a free headlock which if you're gonna wrestle at a high level you need a good for a headlock period factual you have to have it I'm gonna put him in there 50 times in that practice mm-hmm he's gonna get it over and over and over and over and maybe the next day it's single legs and maybe next day it's double legs right yeah and then maybe some days you say hey go for 10 minutes go wrestle right right because you want change I mix it a bit yeah but saying go for five minutes every single day is very much not the most effective way to do it and it's so insanely frustrating for me to have that happen and almost every jujitsu school on the planet

106:39Eddie Bravo's talked about this a lot and one of the things that he says she just is so fun to roll that people just want to get to the rolling part real quick I don't care what they want he could I don't freaking care Joe I wanted and my kids tell me all kinds of stuff I said I'm running practice oh my god I went to the Olympics I want to watch trophies yeah you're at my school because you want to learn how to be the best I'm gonna help me be the best yeah just listen to me yeah I don't care what you like I don't care what you like some days everyone said well hey you guys won't play a game our let's play game right every once in a while just to keep it fun just to keep it fun right hey you want to do this let's do that everyone said well okay I'll indulge you but most the time you're here and so you know we don't for our young we don't really push our young kids too hard but like

107:21especially well tell about high school guys you're telling me you want to be a state champion you're telling me you wanna go to college or tell me all these things you wanted to I know what it takes to get there I've been there myself I've seen many other people achieve those things and so you know and there's a lot of you know it's really funny because people choose doing this even your MMA wing the life people choose what they value right and I'll just give you a simple example I'll get this I got this one kids probably list in the show right now excited he loves you what's his name okay I can't give one of my kids a shout-out not all of them so okay I know who you are he's gonna know who I'm talking about he goes freakin hard just boom grind grind grind just I couldn't I couldn't ask for a kid to work harder Joe but when I start teaching technique he Tunes me out and then we go to a

108:05national tournament any places but he gets he gets scored on a whole bunch by the technique we were just drilling and then I say hey bud you just tuned me out the last three weeks we were just drilling that thing and you got your ass kicked by it and so I love the fact that you want to go hard but you need to also value the Niq right and then there's some people who value the technique too much and they all don't use technique and then when it comes to going hard they don't go hard enough right because in wrestling or in any in any venture you want to take in life there's not just one way to be successful you need a bunch of different attributes to be successful and so if you over value one or another and you devalue other things you're not going to be as successful as you could be you might still be successful but you're not gonna reach the pinnacle because you're not putting

108:49yourself in the right situation it's funny because in a lot of ways it's like what you were talking about earlier the two sides of the crown of a fighter being a wild person who doesn't care the cowboy and then the other guy who's like super systematic everything's controlled yeah you almost have to have everything and the fighters that have those really strong attributes just have to be aware that those attributes are strengthened even further by technique yeah 100% and and and so again it's both sides that pointed me another one would be you know something called beginner's mind and then know it alright when you come in when you come into practice you need to have a beginner's mind I mean unless I got to workout with three or four time world champion Olympic champ John burrows last week and he was asking me questions it's like this guy really cared about warning from every possible

109:33source mmm he's already he's already at the pinnacle thanks still trying to learn interesting thing that Dominick Cruz said during the broadcast about stipa Miocic that steep a when he went to Alliance MMA was asking everybody everything you have to yeah but then when you go into a competition you can't have the same mindset thinking I don't know I need to ask right and so like kids who kids who have just the beginner's mind they'll be they're great in practice but then they go into a match like coach which I do here what you do would you just go wrestle you know but then kids you come into practice like I know it all right well that's a very unhealthy mindset also because you know it's great when you compete it's great when you compete so you got you got to balance both those things right like you can't have just one because if you're I'd know it all I'm a badass that's great for

110:18competition but you come into practice you're gonna stop you're learning right now when you are coaching kids how much time if any do you spend on mindset and so every night on my facebook every Monday I do this mental Monday and then I usually repeat repeated or something fairly similar to the in practice but I also think it's a lot you know I think competition is where you get your really really good teachable moments because that's when kids care the most right and so like the kid house timer when he loses and because he didn't want listen to me yeah because it will look at look at this this is a great example you know I said what I I did this by do private lessons with this fourth and fifth grader they're brothers and and like five weeks in Rome you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong they don't want

111:04to listen right then they do it they have a match last week they do it wrong and it didn't cost him the match but it almost cost him the match and and now I can say every single time I see you doing this wrong I can say remember that time and that match when you got put in your back because you did it wrong and you refuse to listen to me so I think that matches create great teachable moments you know like hey you remember when you wilted under the pressure because you weren't tough enough well you need to practice a little harder so you get used to that pressure remember when the referee made a bad call and you flipped out because he made a bad call and then you didn't think about well I still have to wrestle dressed as match right so there could be all these there's all these teachable moments within competition where you can say point to something very clearly and say

111:44well look at this and see how this affected you and see how you would've been more successful so I think for a mental aspect it comes a lot more on one on one basis and sometimes I'll use it and for the whole team I don't like like really picking on people every wants to know why I will but so I think that I think this competition provides a lot of teachable moments for athletes to see well am i stronger here would only work on because again we can't you can't say one mental aspect makes a guy successful it's this conglomeration of many many many mental aspects that'll make you highly successful now when you're coaching whether it's coaching wrestlers or MMA final coach MMA fighters anymore none zero I have okay I helped a couple buddies but I don't you don't consider it and really just helps you when you could let's say just say when you're coaching wrestling yeah do you do you

112:30concentrate at all on strength and conditioning or is it from the wrestling yeah that you get most strength conditioning so we only got them you know an hour and a half three or four times a week and so we don't do a lot of strain conditioning I know I respect the older guys I recommend they do some on their own you know for a college program for a high school program where we're getting Monday through Saturday maybe twice a day possibly obviously we're gonna do that but you know we're an academy you know we're kind of on our own we get them three or four times a week so it just doesn't Trump what we need to do in that short time window but how do you balance it out though like how do you know how much strength the conditioning to do versus how much technique and scale work I mean at the college level are we talking about or because we do not we do no strength conditioning and I

113:14recommend kids you're in their own you know and if I had 12 hours a week with them I would do that but we you know we don't we don't have that ability to I think I think it's important I think it's really important I don't think it choice I don't think it Trump's especially knowledge and then if kids wrestle really hard against each other I think Kael had that one saying like wrestling's the best training initially I came over he said something if you wrestle really hard against each other you're gonna develop those things it's like I think like people when when I grab people or squeeze people they're like oh my god I've never felt anything like it and I think that comes from that doesn't come if you put me in a weight room I can do nothing abnormal I am not abnormally strong in any exercise I'm actually like on a college Division one college team I'm significantly less

113:54strong than most people right but then when they wrestle me they're like holy I've never felt anything like that and I think it's because a lot of those things that I do are very very very wrestling specific and I developed that strength because when I grab some perks like freakin grab as hard as I can when I squeeze them I squeeze them as hard as I can and so now from doing that thousands of times I've developed that squeeze or that strength and so I think strength addition is important but I don't think it Trump's doing other stuff and if I had all the time in the world and these kids didn't have to go to high school or middle school I'd put them through some but you know we don't have that luxury what did you do when you were finding an MMA how much did you devote to strengthen twice a week Kish maybe three sometimes what kind of stuff um so I had a personal trainer since I

114:37moved to Milwaukee I actually and then I actually helped him open up a CrossFit gym and it wouldn't be that specifically CrossFit workouts but kind of that type of work nothing slow when I'm doing three sets of ten then two sets eight you know nothing slow like that potentially you know one one or two days we might do like a slower start and then but you know I think fighting you need to be very highly active you know you need to be in really good shape and evil move things really fast so kind of cross it type stuff I think is probably the right direction to go and now when I go back to college programs besides like the heavy weights the in-season stuff for college programs is mostly higher paced stuff which i think is you know very relevant to both wrestling and fighting so did you do when you were saying like you're doing like CrossFit style workouts so were you doing like

115:26kettlebells box jumps yeah everything just so when I said that I just meant that you know we were moving at a high pace through a lot of stuff you know and it would be like he would tell me hey do go do some no do slip OSHA's do this do that right now what about like your diet and nutrition and supplements I think I have never been that much into nutrition I I so listen I don't okay I was fat when I was a little kid right clay too much at age 11 I said I don't be fat anymore so I went from a hundred thirty pounds 100 pounds in damn you lost 30 pounds yeah eleven six fifth grade sixth grade six when you're a hundred pounds that's a lot of weight that's yeah percent of your body oh yeah I was fat as everything and you were wrestling then too yeah you know I was I was having some success because when you're fatter there's not many people to compete against right

116:14right so lost thirty pounds six great so I stopped drinking soda I had this whole whole list of stuff I just that's amazing about discipline at eleven yeah I know and that's that's so now when I look at kids I think I think the mental maturity is huge in long-term success being able to make like see see the future and make decisions on what you want to do at that young age so lost thirty pounds and so now I've slowly started like reintroducing a lot of stuff but it looks like sodas gross I haven't drank a soda and forever you know there grow fast food I cut out fast food I don't I don't ever I haven't eaten fast food twenty years I mean it's just disgusting you know and so like I eat generally healthy my wife and I cook at home a lot we make really healthy food and so but I don't take any supplements zero no multivitamins nothing nothing so you get all your

117:03nutrients from your food yeah and I just figured like I saw a couple I tried a couple supplements in college I never I never felt anything from them like I didn't feel any different you know and so I'm like I didn't feel anything why me why am I gonna take we need to take it and then so then obviously I became like this anti PE D Crusader it you know by chance and so then it's like well now I really can't take anything because if I go take something and I pop hot because these idiots are putting something in the supplement should be there I'm gonna look like a total right so I literally I don't I didn't even take protein I may have took nothing Wow yeah that's crazy so did you make sure that you ate the proper amount of vegetables green leafy vegetables and Foodland script you know like it's like healthy food like we're eating salads in right you know I'm not eating cake and ice

117:54cream and pizza and that kind of stuff and we're eating healthy food at my house you know but I'm not measuring the grams of this or grams of that or so I really think what am i and I this has been proven by science that you only have a certain amount of time every single day to have a high amount of mental focus on stuff and so I think like my training is more important than focusing on nutrition and stuff and so I want to really like really Zone in really high-level focus when I'm training and stuff and so I think if I worry about also stuff they'll take my focus away from that right right or wrong that's kind of how I thought about it that's a smart way to approach that and it never really affected me I mean like I said that you know even when I took the supplements in college I never really felt them at all so right well if I don't feel it why would I do it you

118:38know it's kind of ironic though that you were an anti-drug Crusader and you went to the one place it doesn't drug test I know right it really hurt it hurt me but there's you know and it is if you look at so we talked about like Singapore being so fantastic and having a really high GDP a lot of the countries over there Indonesia Manila you know they'd Manila Philippines they don't have huge high GDP s right I mean they're not super wealthy countries and so when we think about you know how much it costs to buy a lot of the steroids that are readily available in America they're just not as available and so I think they do have a point and if you look at the athletes there's not a lot of athletes that look like yo Romero now you all right probably not using like I pointed out earlier well he's tested clean except once except once painted supplement but they have moved it was a

119:28supplement so when you look at their athletes maybe accept a few of the Russian ones they look pretty normal like it's probably unlikely that they're using from my for a few Russian ones that's it for Russia they can't help it it's like part of the culture yeah that one Russian the one Russian guy that I fought in April of 16 he was freaking enormous and you know the other thing that I think a lot of MMA people are using some type of oh my gosh I'm playing what gives you endurance BPO BPO that type of stuff because if you watch a college dress that's how tired people get in seven minutes right and then we're fighting twenty five minutes and you're not getting it tired like that's not normal well people have definitely tested hot for that in the UFC who's the guy that fought Mighty Mouse yeah there is no rush yeah yeah crazy yeah so but I think more people are using that and I

120:19think if you you know you don't have any conclusive evidence but if you look at when you sort of started and then how some of these people fell down uh straight down their bodies look different they look different their company I mean yeah you know Johnny Hendrix would be one that comes to mind I mean what's his freakin record since you saw it it ain't very good I'll tell you that much and Austin he can't make weight and you know if you remember is and I'm so obviously I watch Johnny because he was I couldn't stand Johnny he beat me when we were 17 and then I tried to wrestle my senior so we were different he was 165 I was 174 and I wanted wrestling for the all-star classic and I called the people who put it on I said I wanna wrestle him and they turned the match down so that's I've kind of like I want to get that one back but I never got to get it back from

121:00when I was 17 so I've been following Johnny pretty closely if you watch Johnny like a Content fight prior to that he gets so tired in like two rounds right and we just fight exhausted exhausted and then all Sonny's going these five round fights and you're like whoa how are you gonna get tired and that exhausted two rounds and now you can fight for five rounds Johnny like well not here I mean in his defense I don't got any proof team takedown they implemented a pretty fantastic program over there I mean they spent a lot of money on it that was the whole thing where they were they were paying him yeah then they wanted 50% of his I got the same offer right at a college did you yeah we were both graduate I felt like he was betting as myself yeah thank you $100,000 a year for seven years they got 50% of your career earnings and I said my thought was well if I ever

121:49make it really big I'm gonna make a million dollars a fight and I'm gonna pay him back in one fight you know like it would be like hedging your bet against yourself and I don't ever bet against myself yeah but for them I get it too it's like they have to have some sort of a reason to put out that it's a big bet whether or not you're gonna be able to be us absolutely so if you think you suck it's good to take that bet make it dawg I'm okay with making a little bit of money yeah then it's a good bet it doesn't seem like the best strategy it doesn't say I mean it's interesting and I think I think there's probably somewhere in there with you know I know if you manage this where you go pick out it's pretty proven that alcohol justhe's are gonna make really damn good fighters that that's pretty proven so yeah going to try to find a couple every year spending some money on them and then

122:35getting a percentage of their earning that's probably a pretty I don't want say a safe bet for the people putting out the money but it's you know takedown team takedown had Jake Rosholt who was an amazing wrestler and for whatever reason he just didn't transition great to fighting right it he was good but he wasn't great and it was like for as good of a wrestler as it was probably always gonna be a little better yeah what do you think is the factor look if you had to look at him wrestler because there's not a lot of outliers like that yeah like where you don't like Jin so when we talk about how good Jake right he still made the UFC he still won some fights okay he wasn't a bad fighter but he was a three-time NCAA champ so you expect him hey he'll probably go challenge for a UFC title so I you know in his case I I don't know what the factor was but there's not a lot of outliers like that

123:22where they're a really high level wrestler and then they don't have any success MMA that's really unique you don't see it a lot yeah it's it's interesting like I've looked at it from striking from if you see like really high level kick boxers some have a style that would readily translate to MMA and some are fantastic kick boxers like maybe Peter Aerts is a good example or a nesto who swear I wouldn't really think they would translate that well today whereas Mirko Cro Cop who might have been like a slight notch below them in terms of kickboxing translates perfectly to MMA cuz so explosive and quit and I would want a decent takedown defense - he's infected for a while developed it but the thing about Mirko was unbelievable power and speed and he could just close the distance quickly in black yeah and I think that is a difference between that and the guy who's like a methodical set

124:13things yeah those guys didn't do as well they did translates well they get took and taken down to me what what would you think would be like the stepmom it's it's very different you don't want the other things I think benefits us wrestlers is the fact that people are stuck on doing jiu-jitsu the jutsu way right and strikers are stuck on striking when we come into MMA we know we can't win a match just by wrestling right so we know we know I got to add striking I gotta add jiu-jitsu and I'm open to that idea right I'm open to those ideas that I have to add those things into my arsenal where'd some jiu-jitsu guys are like well I'm just gonna submit them yeah and they don't they don't develop there I mean there's there you can literally not name me Joe jiu-jitsu guy or striking guy well maybe Jose Aldo who has developed high-level wrestling but you can name a lot of

125:04wrestlers who have developed high-level something else hmm right I mean when you see the crossover like John Jones was a wrestler right he can strike with pretty much anyone on the planet right I mean stipa Miocic was a wrestler he can pretty much strike when they know on the planet I mean so you had these wrestlers who are becoming high-level at these other skills but you don't have a lot of other skills becoming high-level at wrestling and I and I'm for me I think it's the stubbornness of people who come from those other backgrounds are too stubborn to wanna work a lot on wrestling where it's Russell's are like okay teach power strike yeah I think it's a it's a recognition of what's important like George st. Pierre is a perfect example of a guy who started off at a keel Christian background didn't wrestle in college or high school became a fantastic rest yeah

125:46he's good yeah and just figured it out and realized realize what a critical skill it is - yeah absolutely so there's a handful of very small handful Jose Aldo would be like he wasn't an offensive wrestler but he would be like he was so ridiculously hard to take down I mean fantastic takedown defenses so there's a handful um but there's not a lot and then but then if you go to wrestlers going to opposite direction into jiu-jitsu or striking you know you can name quite a few that were able to do those things really well you know it's interesting when you see a guy like khabib nurmagomedov and you see fantastic yeah and his his mauling aggressive wrestling I mean you see what a massive factor it is he fights like the Edson Barboza fight yeah like that to me is one of the perfect examples when I say look the ability to take guy down and control him on the ground is the the of it's the

126:36bottom of the pyramid it's the most important foundation yes because he dictates where the fight takes place yeah you might catch him when he's coming in trying to get you you might but if he gets you he was like a frickin Terminator though he was just saying I'm just going to come get you yeah he just eight kicks no hope just a constant chasing him around chasing him right it was it was insane yeah no he's fantastic yeah but no I would totally agree that at the bottom of the pyramid it's like it's the trump card if like if you fighting a wrestling you can't stop a takedown you're gonna lose 90% of time yeah you know and if if you're the wrestler and you can go get a takedown really easily you're gonna win 90% of time the only wild card in that equation is a guy like Brian Ortega fights so well off his back but how many people get submissions from guard how many of those yeah me even

127:22like in having Anthony Pettis who got a lot of submissions guard mmm-hmm a lot of that was transitions off of my body kicked Benson Harrison I bought a kick Benson Benson Harrison he's getting body kicked so he dives in for a takedown his arm bar right or Gill Melendez gets creatine choke because he got jacked a few times right so there are there's a handful of those but just strictly like I take you down you're in guard then I submit you right maybe for three silver do him every once in a while yeah maybe Brian Ortega but the numbers pretty damn small it is very small yeah it's smaller now that I think ever before because people understand the takedown the guard defense even like this guy that I so one of the things that frustrates me the most more than anything else that made his bad strategy she was like drives me up the wall like the lima thing but this frickin

128:04knucklehead that fought Michael Chandler on on Saturday I didn't see it his name's Boyd II go to Yemen I don't know his damn name is so the first round he pulls guard like fast gets freakin hammered on for like four minutes and then he ends up my bottom in the second round third round he gets taken down in I don't know 15 seconds did he try to get up one time no he just laid there guys I asked for performance in 45 seconds like every once while try a comer everyone so I'll try a triangle but it's like dude you're getting your ass whipped you're down two rounds of nothing try to get up try to do something change your strategy if your strategy is not working you can't just stick with the same get your for another four minutes and 45 seconds I give me a break what do you think is gonna happen down there well I think some guys get locked into a defensive position like they realize

128:52they're getting overwhelmed and so they just try to survive you think so yeah really yeah hmm you don't think that way because you're a champ and champions don't think that way but I realize some people there's a there's a acceptance of their their fate ass-whooping this this is just they're getting their ass whooped and so they just try to stay conscious they try to just protect themselves as much as they can kind of like Edson Barboza but then you know interesting Barbosa you saw once he realized he was gonna survive like when it was like two minutes left on third round maybe ish mmm-hmm it's like the first round he's like I'm just gonna I'm just gonna survive right but then when there was cut misses he's like man he was like okay I'm gonna fight again I want to make it through this I might as well if I want to make it through this I might as well just fight

129:36back yeah right so he start fighting back really hard like the last two minutes F he tried he certainly tried but there was a period in the middle where he like had resigned to just take it an but well I think he was just body was just not responding he was getting so up and you could see the pace that Habib put on um harden a first round like halfway into the round Barboza's like Jesus Christ you see look in his eyes get that thousand-yard stare is like whoa when I sign up for yeah this guy's on another level I mean he really is on another level I'm fascinated by him fighting Tony Ferguson and apparently they're gonna do that now it's didn't happen April yeah they don't know if it's gonna be for the interim title or the actual title whether they're gonna strip Connor they're in a weird position I think he beats up Tony that's just my and I've underestimated Tony before so I could be

130:22wrong again I just think I think it's a again trump card I think Tony's kind of well those guys where he's pretty good everywhere he's pretty damn solid wrestling high-level jujitsu but I see Kabir's wrestling even better than Tony's wrestling it's gonna end up on the ground and I think Tony's gonna think he can submit him because it's GG to his very high level but I think everyone who sings work Bebe's just good enough not to get submitted and then he's gonna land damage and land damage and land damage inland damage and Tony's gonna get close to a submission and close to a submission close to a submission but not quite get it and then all this damage is gonna just accumulate and accumulate and accumulate that's kind of how I see it going it's fascinating and I also think it's fascinating now that Abebe has changed his training and has a real nutritionist and no problem making

131:07weight yeah all the factors that played into him getting removed from the last time they were supposed to fight pulled out the card I thought that was kind of overblown he'll he missed weight one time he only missed one is weight one time but his body shut down when he's making way for the michael johnson fight in a similar way but he still did the michael johnson fight yeah but it was the same thing happened during the weigh-in it was a rough way in but there's been other guys who miss wait many times I mean if we go to Johny Hendricks Johny Hendricks Melvin Guillard no Kelvin Gastelum and they miss him I along with silk yeah I thought the key thing kind of got overplayed penis weight one time he had some injury that sucked for him but it was that what was happening for a world title fight you know yeah fighting for the interim time he misses wait yeah I mean and so as one

131:52of those where he probably just like it was like okay for him to make it but be difficult and he just got just a little bit too big actually was it for a world interim title when he was supposed to think it was was Kevin Lee right that was for the world yeah yeah or interim I enjoy that yeah the whole division is kind of up with Connor not even knowing whether or not he's fighting it they're gonna strip him right yeah mostly I think so oh what a matter unless Connor says it I'm in I think I'll be the best back it Oh get forked I want to keep me about I know the best course action strip Connor let let could be even Tony fight it out and then if Connor wants to come back give him a title shot that's gonna happen whatever well I think the the what would be the the most lucrative thing as Connor versus Jesus no I was shut up Joe ought to fight GSP oh you do

132:37the one day yes I want to be number one I don't want to fight tiring because we've been your friends for 20 years I want to fight GSP that's what one fight you think that they would set that up they would have no try to set up GSP versus tire right that would be the big super GSP doesn't want to fight anyone who can hit hard because he's worried about the brain damage so yeah I don't hit hard right interesting we're looking at yeah train with GSP I've never changed so I've trained with almost every top welterweight of this era except yes P really yeah well just being worried but shields Fitch Diaz a couple times tire and obviously you don't go down the line I've trained with pretty much everyone in this era what do you feel like if you do wind up retiring mmm what do you feel like you'll you'll wind up doing just coaching wrestling yes I love doing it really enjoy it a lot

133:27so I could I say I don't think I'd go back to the collegiate level that's obviously always an option I went out for the four years that coach called Russ and I loved it you know and then it was like hey I won the belt or hell is making a lot of money I should probably try to be good at this instead of just doing it halfway you know and so I did that and then you know we opened the wrestling schools and now it's going to learn I really enjoy that a lot and you know there's positives and negatives like I love coaching at the highest level being able to talk about as level to the college guys so I missed that part a little bit but then obviously if you go work for a institution like that there's me a lot of bureaucracy and I worry about that I don't like that I love owning my own business and having my own freedom and not having to worry about what I tweet

134:12or what I say or yeah have anyone tell me what to do or where to be your word address or would you don't like I don't like so I love that freedom obviously then running your own business has its own challenges also so but I think I will coach Russell for the rest of my life whether I fight once more or whether identify once more I'll probably coach rest of the rest of my life awesome yeah but listen man I'm glad we finally got a chance to do this yeah it's fun really really fun and tell people about your podcast I have a wrestling podcast called the tiro and funky show it's another - what tiro and funky show tiro and funky show how you spell that T - ro w okay funky so tired tired Tommy Rowlands is two-time NCAA champ for Ohio State made a couple World teams was really close to making an Olympic team and you know we were on the phone one day and said I want to do a podcast like that I

135:03want to do a podcast - let's just do it you know so it's not like a job for us we just do it for fun we enjoy it we love talking about wrestling and you know for me it's really nice like you know no one's on the same schedule as me now that I can talk wrestling what so - you'll be able to get on talked for an hour or a week about wrestling it's it's a blast awesome so that's on iTunes people want to find you it's Ben Askren on Twitter Instagram I like I'm on Instagram but I don't really kiddin do it I don't know I don't know I can't I can't get an Instagram it's just pictures like I get it there's no banter back and forth I struggle I post every once in a while but you like Twitter love Twitter alright fun Ben Askren ladies and gentlemen thanks brother appreciation it was fun yes sir