JRE MMA Show #59 with Kamaru Usman

00:09and we're live what's up how are you what's up joe dude you're on a roller coaster ride what is it like to be the champ oh what's the feeling like this is fresh for you oh well first of all i just want to say man it's such an honor to be here um the honor's mine i never i'm gonna i'm gonna be honest i'm i'm my thing is i'm just going to be 100 totally transparent i was never i never really watched the show i never really kind of heard of the show of course i heard you and all the things you do i'm like oh yeah that's fair factor guy you know but i never really heard of the show until like after like a fight or two in the ufc and people are like tagging me and like yo joe rogan's talking about you're wrong and talking about you in pocket i'm like podcast because i never listened to pockets at the time i was like what are you talking about until i finally started listen i'm like oh this

01:00dude is for real this dude got some some some pool he got some people watching this random people would tag me oh joe's talking about you today on the podcast i'm like oh man this guy's for real and then every time after that that i see you i'm like what's up joe yeah we've been talking about you for a long time man we were just with your friend out there we were watching a video of us talking about you back when you were ranked number 12 and i was saying i think you could fight for the title right now yeah man that um and i i i like to attest it to i think because i went back once i started kind of researching you i like to go back and do a little research and i'm like joe's been with this this sport for the beginning like you were in the back with hair he was here freaking interviewing the guys that were doing during the tournament that were finding

01:52multiple fights at night and you were interviewing those guys and i was like damn even back then joe had skills joe was a beast at interviewing these guys there was no shaking behind it because i you know one thing about me i've gotten into com commentating and things like that now and i'm like dang joe he didn't seem nervous you were just like a freaking natural at it and the sport was just growing at that time i was like there was nobody watching back then it wasn't as much pressure you know it wasn't like coming into it today yeah espn pay-per-view all that deal it would be a lot of pressure but back then it was just fun yeah it was it was weird man the first one i did was in dothan alabama and this weird like i don't know if it was a high school gym or something some small auditorium tiny little place it was very weird they have you made it look like a freaking certain little

02:40walk in the park i mean it was i was like damn joe's good at that just been doing this for a while well it's uh it's an interesting thing to see you know to see it progress from 1997 to where it's at 2019 the biggest difference is not just uh the amount of eyes that it gets and the amount of people that are paying attention to the real difference is the level of athlete it's a it's a giant giant leap like in no other sport i don't think there's another sport from 1993 to 2019 where the athletes are almost it's almost unrecognizable how much better the fighters are absolutely uh you know there it's now back in the day was like okay you finished your college career you finished all this you've got to the height of whatever you know sport you could be let's start fighting and so guys were coming in at 28 27 starting to learn the tricks now you got freaking 10 year old kids

03:36yep sparring yeah there's all these crazy videos like little bitty kids fighting in like russia or other places like they're full on mma fighting now yeah it's a totally different yeah whole promotion i'm like i mean by the time these guys get to 16 17 they're going to be killers yeah if you go back and watch like a boxing match from like 93 a world champion boxer like marvin hagle the perfect example marvin hagger from the 80s could absolutely hang with middleweights like he's he would fit right in with world champions today absolutely but a ufc champ from 93 i mean it's just not the same it's not by any stretch it's it is such a back then it was like a it was wild it was crazy but nobody had endurance and you know there was a few guys that had some skill and certain like orlando v or voice gracie there was guys are really good at their individual arts but

04:29there was no real complete fighters yet yeah you got the transition because it was everyone came in with their special skills and that was that was a big thing i think ufc even sold that as oh yeah you got the wrestler fighting the com the combo the the you know guy and the jujitsu guy and uh so that was the thing everyone came in with their one skill and they put it to the test to see what you get better it's freaking crazy joe my first fight first time i ever watched a ufc fight i was visiting jon jones in college freshman year this was our our freshman year true freshman year i was visiting him because i went to a a small school you know william penn university which was about two hours away from him he was at iowa central in fort dodge iowa so i went to go spend my fall break a whole week with him just hanging out because we had met the previous year in high school and just

05:25you know it's two brothers wrestling it was like hey two brothers what's up man where you going to school next year it's like i'm being iowa i was like yo me too and so we kept in touch and i went up to hang out with him and during that week it was a fight on someone like a friend of the team something like that invited us to come to his house and watch it and we went over there to watch the fights i never really heard of it i never really cared i was just a freshman just trying to hang out with john and paul who was this around this was 2005. i think yeah 2005. so it's like first season of the ultimate fighter yeah 2005. so we go i think it might have been randy couture or someone john just reminded but i forgot who was fighting and we went to the house party and watched it i really didn't really remember the fight i because i didn't really care i never paid attention to it

06:14i never thought i would ever do something like that so i just watched it and then i remember the guy saying hey man you guys can do this why don't you guys try this and i was like me and john kind of looked at each other like oh no no way we gonna do that you know wrestling is controlled you know there's rules you know certain things you can or can't do there's no way we're doing that so we kind of laughed it off and left that day you never knew that freaking years later i'd be doing this doing this not just doing it you dethroned the guy who many people including me were saying as a is a very good argument for the best world to wait ever i felt like tyron is like you got to give it there's like two this legendary status right there's like matt hughes has legendary status for being the original he was one of the first wrestlers who really knew how to submit guys

07:06and then george st pierre was of course many people's eyes the greatest of all time in the welterweight division went on this long run but i was like man when you if tyron beats us manos like there's a real good argument for him being number one of all time beating wonder boy beat smashing darren tale beating damien maya knocking out robbie lower to win the title absolutely i considered him i put him in that conversation yeah he's in that conversation for sure for sure i put him in that conversation i you know nothing but respect for tyron it was nice to see afterwards it was there's a video of you and tyron's mom and tyrone and tyrone's mom after it is a beautiful video yeah man it's a tear jerker i i freaking i let it go cause i'm one of those guys i never really sit and stop and smell the roses and things like that i always i always have a chip on my shoulder and

07:58i'll explain why that is but i always had this chip on my shoulder with everything that i do so i never really sit and celebrate and say oh yeah i accomplished this or i did that or did that but i had known i've known his mom i i've met her previously to to that the fights i fought in st louis one time and of course i'd seen her several times in his fights but i was fighting in st louis and i was there early and she was at the hotel tyler wasn't fighting or anything but she just came to the hotel i think she was just hanging out and i got to sit with her before like all the fighters even came into town i had to sit with her i think we sat for a couple hours maybe three four hours just talking i got to know her and she was she was just such an angel but at the same time she's she's a gangster too like you you can't you know she was everything and the only thing the biggest thing i could

08:56compare her to is if you ever seen that show for way back it's called touched by an angel and i forget what her name is she's like the famous like black actress and um do you remember that woman says i didn't forget her what is it it was maya angelou it was it wasn't no it wasn't maya angelou it was that late i mean she was my angela status how big as she was and inspirational but that's kind of what i compare her to and so we got we got cl you know i knew her and tyron obviously wasn't who i would have chosen to take the belt from but is how long can you hold yourself back because being a champ there's a huge entire instant himself there's a huge difference between being a challenger and a champion yeah and of course i i need i needed to have my family in that that argument i i need i need to get them to that status to where now i'm setting my daughter up i'm setting my everyone up for

09:50you know life better life forever and i couldn't continue to hold that back so yeah it was unfortunate that i had to take that from him and i kind of in a sense i felt like i was taken away from what he was doing for them so when i saw her walking backstage i just couldn't control it i just let my i just let go and i just can't help but cry on her shoulders this is a great it's a great video what what is her name was women's actress is roma downey yeah yeah that's right the video is amazing because she's hugging you and she's telling you congratulations and she's telling you that they're coming they're going to be coming for you so train hard yeah yeah and just like her attitude man it's it's beautiful man it's amazing her character that she handled that i mean this is her baby her baby just lost and lost every round and it was a you know pretty dominant victory by you

10:40and for her to treat you that way afterwards just shows an amazing character yeah and it's there it is right here you can see it up here look at her she just embraces you open arms it's all good it's all good baby look at that that's an amazing woman right there and keep on working because it's so close and you take it to him oh good wow that's amazing man yeah well and even tyrone the way tyrone hill it's crazy right it makes me cry there's something in the air over here what's going on yeah i gotta do it i got it made me cry when i saw it it's making me cry now yeah man and in the way she treated tyron too the same thing i mean she's just that's and that that's that's kind of that's how my mom is too that so i felt such a connection to that to her because my mom is the exact same way my mom would have done the same thing to tyron and um it just it was powerful

11:44man it was movement and because it's and it goes to attest to how how the sport has how big the sport is as well yeah like it's not oh man that's just a regular fight you guys hate each other and you're fighting no this was a competition yeah you know this was two men that went in there to for a competition and one guy won and you know you saw the aftermath to see the family receive each other people loved that man they love when people put all that aside i mean you guys had a lot of trash talk at the press conferences and there was a lot of that going on but that sells tickets and it's good for everybody and it's natural and normal but after it was over it was nothing but respect and it's what a lot of people think is wrong about the trash talk of this era because there's this is a there's an error right now right we're in the trash talk era absolutely

12:36and some people are really good at it and some people are terrible at it but it seems like everybody's trying i mean maz vidal um recently when he just beat darren till it was very interesting because you know his take on it before the fight was why am i why trash talk like what are we doing what do we you know why we're gonna fight like what is all this about like he doesn't like it he's like i don't like where this is going i don't like where the sport is going yeah i mean it was it's one of those things that i had to adjust to because i wasn't brought on those principles i don't i'm not you know because i'm not here yeah i wasn't here for a salesman like people ask me all the time why do you do this and i chose to do this like i'm college educated i can get a job and sit in an office and punch numbers and all that but i chose to do this because of my burning desire to compete

13:28that's when i even now when i compete with guys i'm not competing angry i don't want to kill this guy i'm not rah-rah-rah and all that and all this competition for me my mind is i'm going to beat you and which is partially which it goes to test with how i fight and how i compete i'm not like that this is not the only thing that i can do and so this error came about where now everybody you got to talk you got to sell you got to do this and do that and so do you feel any pressure to do that initially at some point i did because it was um i was fighting the way i was fighting i was dominating guys and i was getting nowhere right it was like no notoriety they were kind of like just kind of putting you on the wayside they would always tell me oh you get a top 10 guy you'll get a top 10 guy but it wouldn't happen it was like oh you fight this guy and you can't really argue with them

14:20because this promotion is giving you the opportunity to even really make money at all for the career path that you chose so for for a while i just felt like man this is not i guess i just got to do this because you saw it the other clown covington he had to do that he absolutely had nothing has changed with the way that he fights he's done the exact same thing since he'd been in the ufc but after the first cup of fight no one gave a so he felt you know what no i'm just gonna have to start doing this right everyone knows it's fake right because he just one day woke up and started doing it and that's that's the thing now you have to do people try to say you have to do that but for me is what i'm not gonna do is i'm not gonna just sell my soul just to oh yeah i'm just trying to earn a couple bucks because i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna do it the right way

15:10george did it the right way and i i'm a firm believer that when you do it the right way you will earn what you deserve it will come to you at some point i don't think that you have to i really don't yeah something i mean kobe covington does because that dude freaking sucks he'd show a big like you got to give it to him he did beat those sanjos that was a big victory he did beat damian maya and that was a big victory those are those are two legit victories over two very dangerous guys he did beat those guys yes absolutely he's got skill on top of the trash talking but the trash talking bumped him ahead of you in line and a lot of us were surprised you know i was surprised i was surprised i mean that he had to he had to do it and i mean it's gotten him where he has and i mean look what he did last two weeks ago when i fought his whole his whole deal was for me to create an

16:00uproar to get my name back in the picture and he did a wonderful job this is one thing that i will i would say is that he has done a wonderful job at having people talk about him whether you hate him which and even the bosses have said the exact same thing is no one has done what he's done no one has ever created the persona that is unanimously hated worldwide like unanimously there's not even a hill like literally like those guys they still had fans you know that wanted to see him succeed like nobody likes he's not safe anywhere no you know you don't even have to be there's flyweights that want to hurt this guy you know so he's unanimously he has he's done a good job of creating that which i love and i i appreciate that it's going to sell a lot of pay-per-views yeah i'm not a hater i'm not a hater like i give credit where credit is due i appreciate the fact that he

16:58has done that and that's one thing that rashad taught me over the years is that you have to appreciate certain things like and i and i do i always wanted this moment i always wanted that connor could be that that that adversary that was shot in rampage that hughes and george st pierre like i always wanted that and and he's done a good job of creating that so not just an adversary in terms of like a legitimate worthy opponent but a dude that you want to up absolutely i mean i haven't i haven't been in a fight yet where it was like a malicious like i was maliciously trying to hurt someone right i haven't been in that fight yes i don't that's the thing about me with my mind my mind is strong i don't compete oh yeah i'm trying to kill this guy and then you swing five punches you miss now you're dead tired yeah i don't compete like that this one i'm still gonna compete as

17:50myself but there's gonna be a little extra behind these these elbows now i'm gonna fillet your face with a little longer cuts i'm trying to this one is going to be one that i really enjoy well that was the same with khabib and connor when he said i want to change your face yes when he said that i was like damn that's deep i want to change your face and you saw that even when khabib was like that his um he was never out of character and khabib never was like oh yeah i'm just going to go out there and try to kill this guy there's a certain level there's a certain mentality that certain fighters have to have and khabib is another guy that i've seen that competes similarly to the way that i do as far as his mind where it's at like i don't give a what you do talk about me do all this try to distract me like they tried me this will come leading up to the tyrant fight they did everything

18:40what are you gonna do and then you had his his little psychic that looked like sideshow bob that was was talking and doing this trying to distract me and this and then colby popped up trying to distract me that didn't change anything that's not gonna do nothing to me like my mind is on competing i'm going to compete to the best of my abilities and i'm going to embarrass you and then this guy is going to be even more worth it the big change in your skill set from your first fight in ufc to now as you're striking your wrestling has always been outstanding your cardio has always been excellent but your striking is much more fluid and much looser you you're much more efficient now he was you were always powerful but it seems like now everything's falling together like you don't have any holes in your game anymore it's a different thing yeah joe um i've

19:30been with my i've been with my same team since the start the same guys that i've been with um unfortunately glenn robinson started our gym unfortunately he passed away you know rest in peace to glenn uh when did he die i didn't even know he died uh last year yeah he died last year i didn't even know yeah he had a heart attack man and uh it was sad i couldn't really believe that it happened you know but it did and i like to say he's in a better place you know but um he passed he was a he started all this you know him and rashad evans rashad needed a new place when he was leaving jackson's and uh and glenn was kind of like they they got together and decided to to start this and it's rashad evans at the top of the game who doesn't want to train with rashad evans right and so it kind of spread like wildfire to where everyone started going down there but yeah i've been with the same guy

20:22henry hoof just came down at that time henry hoof was the striking coach i've been with him since you know he's a phenomenal coach too amazing coach such a good striking coach so those dutch fundamentals i mean that guy's got it down yeah and a lot of you know there's a i've seen a lot of different coaches different styles i don't you know i like i like a lot of different things but the thing with henry is he's it's very basic because at the end of the day when you're tired and and you can't even hold your arms up and do certain things you're just going to do basic regular yeah jab two one two that's what you're gonna do no he's gonna keep it simple stupid yeah he's very like that he keeps it simple and that was a way for me to learn it it's just from the from the bottom up i just i learned it don't get it wrong joe i can do some of that cool like in practice i'll do cartwheel kicks

21:16i'll do the all that cool yeah that reverse loopty front side taekwondo kick do i catch it i can try it you know do you think ever about like moments in fights there are moments in fights where a fighter will do something the best example is chris weidman versus luke rockhold chris weidman tries this wheel kick out of nowhere and he misses with it luke gets a hold of him drags him to the ground and beats the out of him and it was a luke has a nasty top game absolutely his top game is crushing and he just he just ruthless ground and pound and it changed the course of chris's career in a lot of ways like that beating went on i mean he lost the title and then he lost other fights afterwards but before that he was dominating he had beaten anderson twice he had crushed vitor he was a different thing it just there's these moments these pivotal moments and fights when someone just try something

22:16i mean most of the time you just get away with it yeah but sometimes like and that is my go-to when i tell people don't try some that's not your thing this is the best example chris weidman throwing that wheel kick against luke rockhold yeah you gotta um and that's part of everything that's grouped in with fight iq you have to be able to assess risk rewards and certain things like that and that that's kind of at some point it was a knock on me it's like oh this guy never gets out of position he never does any other cool or any of that you know it's kind of who's giving you that knock people you can't listen to them yeah i was saying a long time ago it's like this guy's not up like he keeps running through guys and he's beating guys like a world champion already yeah a lot of people always kind of you know like oh he didn't do all this he's not doing all that but the thing with me

23:10is is being able to assess when when i can do that when i can't do that right like when i thought rda i threw a freaking axe kick in the fifth round right you know i and i was i practiced that in practice i i catch guys with it all the time and it's just being able to assess you and you had him you're getting rewarded yeah i knew that there was you know this is an opportunity for me to start letting go yeah and so i started letting go and i mean rda is a tough tough dude very tough tough dude he's a tweener hardhead he seems like he's a tweener to me like he's not quite a 170. i mean he could beat a lot of guys at 170 but it's almost like he should be like 160 or 165 yeah but 155 is too hard of a cut for him these days yeah but the thing that's that's just that's the nature yeah because if we if we started saying okay we're going to accommodate everybody

24:02it's never going to stop do you think there should be more weight classes well you don't care i don't care no i mean 170 works for you yeah it's still a hard cut does that mean nobody wants a heart 190 180 180 88 to 190. believe it or not like for most people that are listening to this that's on the light side yeah no absolutely i know it is but the thing is i'm so lean and i'm 180 i'm walking around below six percent who do you oh wow who do you use to cut to um for the last couple of fights man i've been working with uh clint clintonberg up at the p.i and trifecta yeah and trying to like clint a lot yeah and clinton trifecta food system trifecta essentially you know the meal delivery meal prep stuff okay and they they do a phenomenal job phenomenal and clint the reason i chose to go with him is i've always did it by myself i like to cook i cook for myself i always

24:58you know when all those fights earlier fights in the ufc every one of my fights i was in charge of my whole diet i cook for myself i do this because i've done it so many years in wrestling all the wrong way i can look at myself i can wake up in the morning look at myself in the mirror and tell how much i weigh and i'll be right on just because i'm so used to my body so i know what i can or i can't eat what what can hold food or i can hold water and it's just it's a discipline thing for me as well and so i decided you know what i'm getting higher up now one thing that i don't understand is that i haven't done the research is is what foods to eat before certain practice at certain times to feel me the best to make me help help me feel the best because i'm getting older and and things aren't the same they you the way that you see me i'm 31 and i'm gonna be 32 in may and i'm like

25:50man i just don't what differences have you noticed a lot of difference yeah like at 24 i just wake up at 6 00 a.m and i can go for a freaking five mile run like that with nothing now i can't do that anymore do you think that is age or do you think that is miles like all the hard training it's a combination because 31 you're in your athletic prime yeah it's a combination of both because in wrestling years i i got to be in the late 40s i mean these wrestling years i'm a late force i mean back is her shot my you know my shoulders are shot my knee my knees oh my god my knees i've had five knee surgeries jesus christ yeah i saw you limping did you have one recently i just had surgery i actually um had surgery on tuesday oh that's a hernia right i had a double hernia jesus so did you fight with a double hernia uh i tore it before i like five weeks before the fight

26:41and um but i don't know if it was completely off you had a hernia and a broken foot for that fight it was crazy the funny thing is and ali makes fun of me about this my manager is uh like all fight week like if you saw me you would think this guy was like a zombie like i i limp around i freaking like in patches on me and i'm in a boot or or sleeve and and all i do all day is i go do the media rounds or whatever i need to do training come back and i'm just in my room either game ready on me or or something on me but when i walk through that door the fight the ninja nightmare wakes up i flip the switch and a lot of people would would if they go back and look at videos when i walk into the cage i step right before the cage i pray say my prayer for protection and when i walk in i just freaking don't if it's like i flip that switch do you have a prayer that you say every time

27:34yeah you have the exact same thing yeah what do you say similar along those lines i just i basically just a prayer for protection prayer for me to be able to display the best of my abilities it's never i because i'm not selfish it's not i'm not getting in that prayer please let me win no it's please protect me in here so i can go back to my family safe and sound and protect my opponent as well and give me the strength to be able to display the best of my abilities and that's it and once i freaking walk through that door i'm the freaking nigerian nightmare i just feel like a different person i am and you see it in my face i'm i'm good and danny but when i walk in it goes away i i just i transform into that person yeah i think a lot of people would be surprised at how friendly and easygoing you are outside people can't tell and that's the thing now is there's really

28:29i haven't i don't there's no change in me i'm still the same freaking guy i since i haven't done anything since the fight nothing people are like asking me have you gone on partied in this now with the bell not having the no my daughter i bought it for my daughter my daughter did but i didn't i didn't do any i just sit on the couch watch tv go back maybe go to the uh the shop that i like to take my daughter to get uh get french toast she loves this one place so i'll take her there come back that's it or maybe take her to a date night the only difference is now a lot the people are starting to recognize me more so like i'm walking out of movies people stop me hey can i get a picture can i get a picture yeah of course you know but nothing changed i'm the same freaking guy i haven't got a chance to do anything i had surgery last tuesday i've been in bed for

29:18weeks so i haven't done anything but i don't think anything is going to change i'm the same guy well you sound like you have the perfect attitude like the idea that you're having making a prayer to just do your best and not be hurt and not have your opponent hurt and protect you and your opponent that's that is a beautiful attitude and the fact that the way you're approaching this i mean you're just you're just here to compete and to do your very best although you you're free of the burden of a lot of that some people carry around with them joe and i was thinking about this on the way up is um a lot of a lot of those fighters a lot of those champions like after a while you you they feel this certain pressure yeah to to be able to do this or that and and some of the examples that i gave is there's so much pressure on anderson silver i almost felt like he couldn't wait to

30:11lose yeah he was just like it's like a pressure the way you just want to put it down your imagination said that to me when bj penn beat him yeah he said it was just so much it was so much pressure george and peter ran away from the sport because of that pressure yeah you know some people for me i don't feel like i was just i was just thinking i was like i don't care like look at this fight now they're coming to fight right everyone's already bringing making a big deal out of it it's another fight for me i don't even think of myself as oh you're the champion i don't care i just want to beat this guy up do you think that you will care though when the media obligations and all that happens or do you think you'd just be able to zen your way through all that um i would be lying to say i would never care i would be i would i think that would be doing an injustice but i feel like i go to

31:03certain people like i have some of my go-to people that i i get to there i call them my mentor coaches and like rashad the biggest thing with her that i learned i talked to a shot about is rashad was always pouring into me like man just enjoy man enjoy the ride you'd be okay with that feeling because it was a certain time where i was a little more nervous than usual i was i was nervous for what one i think i can't remember the fight and i was nervous and rashad was like man just make friends with that feeling be okay with it make friends with the feeling of being like understand that it's okay to feel that way yeah and just be okay with it and so that i go back to those feelings and even it was an exercise when i was wrestling i was living at the olympic training center i was training and i started feeling all this pressure that that a lot of people put on me oh

31:54you're a division two guy you can't be olympic champion you can't do this you can't do that and my coach at the time brandon slay was like yeah a lot of people made you know made put that pressure on me when i was competing too and said that are you too short you you can't beat these guys you can't beat bulvasis satya of the you know the most famous russian wrestler of all time and and they're saying you can't beat him you can't do this you can't do that and he said one exercise he should do is he'll think of all these negative thoughts because people start saying it in your mind it goes into your mind you know especially now when all these fans tweet and say stuff to you you read it yeah if you read it it's in there and so one thing he said you should do is just put all those thoughts in just imagine this envision this glass jar you just put them all in the jar

32:42shut the lid grab a big sledge hammer and you just smash it and it sounds silly but i was like oh it wasn't until a little while after i started kind of doing that so when i start doubting myself man can i do it can i do a good time and this guy he can beat me i mean what if he knocks me out and embarrassing me in front of everyone then i'm like snap the out of it man put it in that jar put in that jar and smash it i'm like have fun with it man you supposed to feel like this rashad said you're supposed to feel like this yeah man yeah and i just take a deep breath i smile and i just i snap back in and eddie alvarez also is uh it's like someone i consider brother and these are the guys that that i go to for when i started to feel down and i i talked to eddie quite a few times before this last fight when i started feeling a little bit of pressure i talked to them and they just kind of

33:31they snapped me back were you were you getting frustrated that you weren't being considered amongst the top contenders when you were undefeated you were dominating all these people and you were seeing like when the when wonder boy got two shots and then you know you saw the damien maya fight and these all these other fights was that was that hard for you yeah it was it was a time where i'm not gonna lie to joe i was like why the am i doing this i'm you i'm gonna keep fighting for 25 and 25 30 and 30. right what what the thing is what a lot of people don't understand is they think oh man it's that 15 minutes that you're out there or that 25 minutes you're out there training and fighting and that's it you know you got paid 10 and 10. bro you just did i just did a five month training camp to where i had to eat right for five months for twenty thousand dollars yes if you would

34:27if you win and on on top of it it's that's society so backwards nowadays to eat clean food is more expensive so for me to just eat clean for five months i'm already five ten grand in the hole on top of it you got bills coming every month that's not going anywhere yeah you know that just to train for these fights i've spent more than that and you have taken more damage than that because that's when you really take damage i'm sparring and when i i fractured my foot that happened the last week in training my last barn session i kicked someone in the face boom my foot's gone how was the it was it was bad it was at first i just figured you know it's like more time you kick shins and elbows all the time and you know you get the little fractures but that you know you work on it and that's gone in a week but this one just wasn't going away the swelling kept coming back and coming

35:21back so i'm starting freaking i'm like oh i think i really broke something and and so i started freaking out and then a day or two three days four days i get it worked on i have a really special compression socks that i have on it at all times i'm icing this thing four times a day and it's not going away i'd wake up the swelling would be bigger i'm like oh man i did damage so and then i kept walking on it and i haven't cause i i have to practice because i got to keep that weight down i got to keep time and time unless i'm going and so i'm just like man there's no way i'm not fighting like you only get an opportunity once if i call and say i'm pulling out of this i might not ever get a shot again right and so i'm like i'm gonna fight and there was no doubt in my mind of what i could do i i was just it's gonna happen i'm already dealing with the hernia situation and

36:14so i'm like screw it and the thing about me is i haven't ran in three years joe i have because of your knees yeah my knees are so bad i have not ran how the do you have such good cardio what are you doing for cardio i everything i do i do freaking hard i guess i do it freaking hard i'm on that air dying and man shout out to my strength and conditioning coach dr corey peacock man he's also on it too i mean doc cory is a we put in we put in some time man and it's not just him it's it's my coaches with greg greg jones when we wrestle we rest i wrestle freaking hard and when i i can't do it often anymore but i i wrestle hard when i cuz your knees yeah when i hit pass i hit pass hard with henry everything that i do in my mind i try to do it at the speed that i would want to do it in a fight or even greater because my whole mentality is when you get tired when people get tired that's

37:05your threshold that's where you're at so that's why your body feels like that oh i'm tired as far as i can go i try to get to that as fast as possible boom because then everything after that is extra right i just push push that conditioning more and more and more so i just freaking go hard everything that i do i do it hard of course i do it smart but i do it hard but i haven't ran joe in almost three years that's crazy because one of the most impressive things about the fight is you never let your foot off the gas and in the fourth round i think it was when you had tyron hurt and you really started pouring it on i was like okay he's trying to finish this fight how how much gas is he gonna have left in the tank because you know that sometimes when someone tries to finish someone and they can't they're done you know you poured it on you took a couple of deep breaths then

37:52right back on him and i'm like damn that's some serious cardio yeah you were sprinting in my mind i watched that back i was like what the was i doing i was swinging like wow wild man just because i saw the light at the end of the tunnel yeah and i was like you know and i'm i'm just like i was sprinting towards it but then it caught me getting dimmer and dimmer i was like oh it slow down you're still gonna get there man he was tough as he ate some big shots and people didn't really see it what happened what started that transition we were in the clint i had him in a tie clinch and i think he was trying to work on my body and i hit him with the knee i hit him with another knee and in my mind i just remember some of the trainings that i've been through i've been in that situation and training and i used to train with uh cosmo alexander muay thai guy yeah freaking amazing

38:44and one thing that he would show me is how muay thai guys would sneak in elbows and so i i'm in there and i'm like i'm tyron's not really getting out of this so i'm like freaking let me try and this elbow that you throw it's a sideways elbow and i'm in there i throw a knee in and i just threw the sideways out boy and it doesn't look hard it doesn't look crazy or anything like that but it was like side of the head and i just felt it land and i'm i'm trying to because you got to read fast so i'm trying to read him i'm trying to assess him i'm like he hurt because he kind of stumbled back but tyra has a very good poker face so he has this nonchalant face on and i'm trying to read him i'm like wait way so i kind of fake a little fake at him to see if he's trying to set me up for a big shot and i fake he doesn't throw anything he keeps saying i'm like oh so i threw a jab and i threw a a

39:39a right hand i threw it across his guard to hit him and he really didn't looked and changed it didn't look like he was out there i was like oh he's hurt freaking let's go let's it's go time and i remember i talked to eddie alvarez and i asked him why did he freak out like that when he had rda hurt and eddie was just like man i saw that light at the end of the tunnel and i just freaking i had to empty the tank and i'm like it empty the tank let's go this is my moment empty the tank so i'm throwing like a madman and tyron is taking it all and he's tough as i'm like damn he's not going down and there was a couple of times he was rocked he looked like he could have went down and all i had to do was really settle back and hit him with clean shots but i wasn't even thinking about that i was just like get this guy out of here now this is what i wanted to do

40:30put the stamp on it let's freaking do it it was a hell of a barrage yeah and i'm throwing i'm throwing i'm throwing i'm like redliner redline the gas tank is on e it's on e it's on e which is the only reason i even shot in to for a shot i was and then i heard my coaches saying take him down let's see what they realized yeah i wasn't freaking knocking them out they were like take it down i was like let me grab his legs and i grabbed his leg and tried to but that was the thing i could recover pretty quickly so you recovered very quick because it was one of those pivotal moments in a fight where i was like man if tyron doesn't go out here how much does he have left i knew i was i was scared because i was like i know he knows he's probably down three to four rounds yeah and i knew i was like i was i was in a sense waiting for him to just start letting go yeah just snap out of it but

41:21that's one thing you never really give yourself enough credit with your game is with my games i feel like i um i put people in a trance in like a certain stage to where there's just no getting out of it and i and that that's kind of been a knock on me people are saying oh you're not finishing fights you're not doing this you're not submitting guys you're not knocking them out this is my mentality on that and this has been since i was wrestling as they were wrestling you could pin guys really quick do slick moves and pin guys but then the guys would get up and say oh man i never seen that movie before he caught me in this slick move that's why he got me now i'm gonna get him next time i'm gonna do that i'm gonna get him and the same thing with the fight it's like man i had my hand down and he caught me sleeping so he caught me with a shot it was a lucky shot he's not never gonna do

42:13that to me if i next time i'm gonna get him oh he caught me with a slick submission i've never seen that before i'm gonna train for her next time he's gonna i'm stop him my thing is even wrestling what i always wanted to do is i wanted to tech fall guys in wrestling and tech fall what that means is when you're beating someone by 15 points you have a 15 point gap they stop the match because it's basically a skunk like you skunk this guy like he sucked that you beat him that bad they had to stop it that is my mentality that is always what i strive for and in 2011 i believe i not 2011 2009 i led the nation division one two and three naia whatever in tech falls i think at one point me and brett metcalf was battling like every week i would look and see who had the most tech faults it was me be him be me him and i had the most because that's my was my goals i wanted to skunk guys

43:07because in their mind what it says is you can't with that guy there's you can't hang with him there was nothing you can do it no he didn't it wasn't a quick pen a lucky pin or or this like he destroyed you he just set levels apart and that's what i do even in fighting now i do the exact same thing is i would much rather dominate you from start to finish i want to break you i don't want when you think about fighting me again it's not you know i don't want you to you i want you to say no i don't know no he beat me everywhere he broke me he took something from me because you're going to think about you only remember the fights you lose you know like i've been so many guys and wrestle i can't tell you maybe 30 guys that i beat in wrestling i don't have no idea but the ones you lose you can almost tell everyone and that's what my my take on it i want to dominate you so bad

44:02when you think about fighting me again you don't you say that i'll pass on that fight and so people are like oh man this guy doesn't really finish guys but how many guys want to fight me again not a lot of them do you have one loss in mma yes i do one loss right yeah i have one this is my second fight um uh caceres i forget his name uh forget his first name um it's the cassette jose is it jose cassarez is his brother alex casey yeah it's jose because his name is jose caseres alexis old i think his older brother oh yeah and uh man it was i took the fight on like a two weeks notice or something like that because it was like eight months in between i fought my first fight and i thought see that's the thing with emma fighters coming into mma now this is a lesson to you guys everyone feels like oh i'm just going to jump in and it's going to be peachy i'm going to be

44:54getting fights every other week every other month no so i fought my first fight and i thought okay this is great my career is kick-starting i'm going to be doing fights never so often i went through 20 like 22 opponents within my first fight before i got the second fight wow because now you know it's google now everyone oh he's a national champion wrestler no i don't want to fight that because everyone wants to get to ufc and they figure oh it's the best record you want to be undefeated to get to the ufc so nobody wants to fight anyone that's hard right and so of course at that point i was a wrestler i could take anyone down and hold him down for three rounds and one fight so everyone no one wanted that fight so it was months and months went by and then that fight came about i was just like i'll take it and i'll be honest i never grab hold before that i never did jiu jitsu and so

45:46i figured i could wrestle my way through all this like man these guys these guys are low level guys you know look who i train with i train with rashad evans and these guys those guys can't touch me i get in the fight i throw a one two his legs are there i hit him with a one two boom boom double leg like lit within 15 seconds boom threw him down full mount and i'm kind of throwing punches i didn't really know what i was doing i'm throwing punches and i'm trying to elbow him and jose cassaris died i think six two six and one six i don't know he's well taller than me long limbs he throws his legs i'm in full amount he throws his legs around my body hmm i never seen no like that before right my mind at that time was like what is oh what's this i i didn't know what to do so i'm like so i start kind of panicking in my mind i don't know what to do i'm like get out which is what you don't do

46:48right so i turn my body i'm trying to like get up and walk out which is what you don't do and so he just basically climbed up my back boom we're not even sweating yet boom he's on my back i'm standing up with the backpack on he's six something he has a foot on the ground one foot wrapped around me he's fighting for the joke and i i think i hold him off for another like minute and a half i'm standing and i'm fighting this choke all the while i'm thinking like oh i can't go down because i don't know what the i'm doing down there as well right so i don't really know the defense down there so if i go down that just might make it worse i don't know the defense and this dude looks like he knows what he's doing behind me he's got a few more he's got a few fights and i'm i'm kind of scared and i'm fighting it now i'm standing up my feet are getting heavy it's getting shaky i'm like

47:46i'm a strong guy why the my feet shaking because they're starting to fill up with blood my adrenaline is pumping and i'm just like oh i'm about to lose joe there's this moment in your mind to where you start to come to realization with certain things yeah i'm like oh i'm about to lose and what and then i start thinking about random thoughts and one of the thoughts that i thought thought about was before the fight we had a commission meeting in the back and the commission said if you get choked unconscious you're suspended for six months so you can't fight for six months because in my mind i'm like this i'm a tough guy i'm you gotta put me to sleep i ain't never it right so i'm like if i get it took me eight months to get this fight and it's a short notice fight i haven't made money in eight months i'm broke as i sleep and i live with rashad i live with another man

48:48i'm broke as i have no money i need money so if i can't fight for another six months i have no money so all these thoughts are going through my mind and i hear alex caceres on the other side of the cage screaming he's gonna tap he's almost out and i'm like am i gonna tap i'm like well played alex now i'm thinking about tapping just for that oh man and i just saw it going down and i'm like you can't be suspended for six months bro i know you want to be tough right now you want to go to sleep but you can't be suspended for six months bro you have to you gotta you know you gotta make money you're broke i tap joe i tap i never felt so i don't wanna say emasculated if that's the word i never felt so like like i just that's what i said like win or lose it takes something from you and i walked out of that fight i went to the back i paced for like maybe two three hours in the back

49:55all the fights finished up and i finally went to locker and got my stuff and and came out but i just paced back and forth and the feeling in my mind was i am never going to feel like this again i do not ever want to feel like this and ever since then i got a ghee i never had a game before i got a ghee i started training with george santiago my jiu jitsu coach every morning i was like bro i saw he gave you your black belt after he gave me my black bra and this is the thing is i never i i never worried about that i never worried about like yes i was freaking beating up blue belts before i was even a white belt like yeah because i never did that skill trained the jiu jitsu skills but like i knew how to grapple through certain things sure you know i've been grappling at a high level but it wasn't just jiu jitsu so he kept challenging me like i was always because i want i want to be that

50:49guy i want to be the freaking blue belt that freaking works all the brown and black belts but he would freaking promote me it's like purple bell because you've been training you're training the ghee i'm gonna promote you so he kept challenging me and challenged him so now people knew i felt like all it was doing was alerting people of what to expect when they went with me and for them to try to to really me up and so he promoted me um i think a couple years ago i was uh brown bell he performed i think maybe two and a half three years ago and um and then he promoted me to black belt he just asked me to come in and jam i didn't really even know i just felt like okay man he wants everyone to take pictures with the belt and uh he freaking gives me my black belt another thing just floored me i was like i never knew i never expected all this i just wanted to compete right i just wanted to

51:40be a martial artist learn all this stuff and compete i never knew that i'd get a black belt i never knew that i would win the the championship belt be the best in the world at this at that time so i never knew all that how much did you adjust your training um to incorporate jiu jitsu did you add more training sessions or did you substitute absolutely freaking lutely i i would what i would do is because i was living with rashad at the time so what i would do is i would somehow get to the gym because rashad was traveling a lot this was at the height he was doing a lot of different shows and stuff and so i would go to the gym at 7 00 am we'd have 7 a.m practice i think monday wednesdays and fridays george would have a class and i would go and take that class and then our pro class was i think it was at nine so i would just stay at the gym while the pros came in for the practice

52:30at nine so i would go through that class as well and then after that whether lift on my own strength condition right after that and dumb ass me that's what i said i was 20 something at that time i wasn't eating in between all the sessions i wasn't doing any of this i was just freaking going going going going so you'd eat breakfast and that was it i i didn't eat breakfast at that time you didn't even eat breakfast i didn't even eat breakfast i would get a cold go to the gym workout then go roll into the next session and work out then roll into straightening condition whatever i did on my own workout no food no food and then freaking go home eat a big meal snap then go back for the night session night practice and that's how i was for a long long time and rashad was would always come home and say hey man why don't you come out with me this weekend let's go out let's go do some

53:20and i was always like nah man i got trained on monday man i don't want to do all that i want to go out and rush i'll be like bro there's you gotta have balance in this it's got to be your balance and i just thought at that time like oh that you say that because you're the top you're the champ you're the best so you say that my whole day was i just need to work i need to catch up i need to catch up to these guys i need to work so i was just doing overtime overtime over time but you know now i understand what rashad was saying there has to be balance yeah when did you adjust your eating i think um we got a strength of conditioning coach jake banachi and jake amazing coach man he worked with a lot of the extreme couture guys work with like randy and those guys back in the day and uh he's kind of started like you you got to fuel yourself he kind of started you know letting me in and i see

54:16that's the thing about me i seek knowledge like i'm always i always want to learn i always want to learn whatever i can and i started learning like oh no wonder i was dead tired in that session no wonder i had nothing left because i really didn't eat i had no fuel so i started kind of putting things in and and the more and more like i said it wasn't until my last two or three fights that i started working with trifecta and clint wittenberg and just you know i seek knowledge if whenever i can get knowledge i i take it so these trifecta folks what kind of stuff they prepare for you man they prepared my meals and they they send it to me they send me the like i said i like to cook for myself so they send like a cooler or pre-packaged yeah they send they send me the pre-packaged food but i'm not so much into the prepackaged stuff like you know i'm just throwing a microwave

55:02and eating i'm not so much like that because i like i like hot food i wanted to feel fresh so they'll send me like the packages like the protein and the chicken and the steak or the fish and things like that and basically i take it out my responsibility to take it out i think it's pre-cooked but i take it out and i put it over the stove and make some you know veggies with it and other stuff that i want with it and and i'll cook it that way so it seems more like a fresh meal even though it's kind of pre-made just for my mind right i get it i get it so um do they have it broken down with a certain amount of calories for each meal depending upon what kind of working out you're doing yeah man clint broke it down i give him my schedule for the week and he breaks it down like this is what you need to eat four servings of protein first servings of carb fats and this and that

55:53before your weight lifting session before you're sparring before this you need this this amount of sugar and this amount there's this amount of that man made a big difference because i would there'll be certain practice likes i would lift and i'm like yeah i feel good i want to get out of there to where usually i hit a wall like boom this is miserable you were getting by yeah yeah i just i just gone through it the ufc performance institute is amazing it's just incredible what they did i mean when they were just talking about building that i was like what is this gonna be like what are they doing there oh they're spending a lot of money yeah who knows what the it's gonna be but then i they took me on a tour of it i was like this is literally the ultimate training facility in 10 years it is still be up to date and still be like incredible this thing is now catching up

56:42i know they took me there yeah i know you can literally live there but a lot of people relocated to vegas just to make that the center of their training oh yeah yeah i see like claudia godelia's down there of course but um trained for his last fight in france i believe yeah his last two fights he did it in france and um yeah we we you know like that's my boy we we talk all the time and um that's the scariest heavyweight of all time like i don't understand what people are people a lot of people like especially after those last couple of fights the derrick lewis fights people were like these fans man they were condemning them like this guys yes and and yeah one of those things you just got to give you got to give them time to recover from the steep a fight yeah the psychological yeah yeah he got over it with with curtis blades yeah i mean he stopped curtis blades

57:38who's one of the best guys in the heavyweight division curtis is a big guy and and even for this fight everyone's like oh kane's going kaye's going to do them kane's going to do kane's the better version of stipe and and i get it like i understand cain is the greatest with ever heavyweight we've ever really seen you know i mean you know dc right now is that's an argument too you know but kane was great but kane has been gone for almost three years two and a half years a long time and people are putting all this pressure on him that i expecting him to come back and be the same old king like nothing happened right and i'm like guys like and then not to come back come back against the scariest heavyweight we've ever seen ever ever i mean francis flip you a little bit the first time he lifted weights was with me what francis never touched weights ever yeah and that's the scary thing you

58:38go to africa and there's millions of guys like like that walking around i was saying that his story is like it's like that conan scene where conan was like pushing the wheel like he was he was working in a sand mine just digging sand yeah and becoming this tank of a man it's crazy yeah obviously superior genetics on top of that because you don't get to be 265 naturally yes just i mean you have to have fantastic genetics he's got that too but his ability to land punches that just put people away with like he can graze you and you up absolutely and and his speed oh i mean it was just playing around and that's the thing in our room like everybody surprised everybody and he loves sparring with smaller guys he loves it because and it's not yet because it's not he's not trying to hurt anyone he's not trying to hurt you but it's just he likes working on his feet he's

59:40so fast i think he's faster than me forced like i mean it's and i'm like he's that fast with that much power i mean if he even and i said what i say if you touch anywhere near this circumference right here you're gonna wake up and ask what happened well that's what cain was saying that he was he didn't remember what happened when francis francis apparently grazed him with the first punch near the back of the of his head and came to remember after that and then clipped him with that uppercut on the inside everyone was saying like oh he hurt his knee that's what happened no he got hit with a punch in there it was a small sharp punch that's all it takes but yeah yeah what's what's amazing that stipe weathered the storm that's what's amazing it goes you got to give credit to stephen i mean because weathered the storm when francis was convinced he was going to put stephen away

60:33after the ovaries destruction i mean he put over him into orbit yeah so to watch that was like holy and you think the striking credentials of alistar i mean alistair's glory heavyweight champion strike force heavyweight champion k1 grand prix i mean he won the three of the most prestigious titles in combat sports and to have francis clip him like that was just like jesus that goes to a test to mma this is why the sport's so great mm-hmm it doesn't matter where you come from what you what different good it's well you're good at it it doesn't matter those with those four ounce gloves and then being able to wrestle and grapple and do all this everything change it's an even playing field for everybody yeah now if he just gets his wrestling on point i mean he's it's he it's crazy he's only been doing mma all told for what five years now yeah five six years that's crazy yeah i mean i made this

61:34switch around the same time we had our first official ufc fight at the same time wow yeah what was your first year of your first fight what was your first fight my first fight i think was in 2013 or 2012. so seven years ago which is crazy yeah and how much striking have you done before your first fight not a lot i mean i mean the thing with me is like i used to watch videos when i was convinced myself like i was going to start doing this and this has been years in the making like i was i coached on season 14 of the ultimate fighter with uh bisping and uh mayhem miller i was a mayhem's wrestling coach wow so and that was the season with tj dillashaw john dodson dennis bermudez and all these guys and so at that point i had started to uh shout out to ryan parsons man uh dr parsons one who brought me in he was managing mayhem at the time and uh i love ryan yeah ryan's a good dude

62:33super good guy man i loved ryan and uh and i was you know i'd fiddle with it i just you know throw my hands a little bit like yeah i'm gonna do this one day you know just kind of playing around and playing around with it and so i love boxing i love watching all that stuff i was like man you know maybe i'll do this stuff one day but when i watch those guys go through the ultimate fighter being here in vega being in vegas and in the house i was like yeah no way i'm not doing that never not doing it even back then you were thinking i'm just going to wrestle yeah because at that time i was living at the olympic training center i was training for the olympics right i was like yeah i'm going to do this no it's not so what was it that flipped the switch rashad really rashad um the same time i think 2011 i was still at the olympic training center i had gone back

63:23and um just training and i was friends with king mo i've known king mo ever since i was in high school and funnier thing is like man like we were so connected because we were from similar we're walking a similar path king moles from like african descent so am i and he wrestled in texas and so was i in high school and then he's a division two guy i went division two he was a national champ i was a national champ and you know walk in a similar path i was i just felt connected to king mo so i would always talk to him i looked up to those guys king mo and in dc and they were like you know the black dudes that you look up to because there weren't a lot of black wrestlers so they was the dudes that we looked up to was like yeah man king moan so he's been doing mma i think at that time he was this strike force champion and so king mo calls me uh and my friend jake fisher who is a world

64:19team member at the time said hey you guys want to come down to denver and train with us you know i'm going to train that night of course i'm going to go yeah training with king mo my boy i get to see him you know so we go down this is the first time i've ever been star strike in my life and this was now i've been watching mma now you know done the show and all these things so we get down there and we're in a dressing room i'm you know i'm just thinking king mo is coming and we're going to work out with them there's mead fisher tc danzler and another kid named bo and we're in the dressing room we're changing and it was joe warren's gym we're changing shout out to joe shout out to joe warren man badass dude it's a funny dude yeah and we're we're changing and all of a sudden you know i'm changing i look back shot evans walks in the dressing room i i've never been starstruck in my life

65:14i was just like oh that's what shot happened so of course you know i had to play it cool i can't be that dude you know i ain't no fan boy but i'm thinking my motto that's rashad evans i just watched this dude fight rampage and they do the ultimate fighter and all this joint like that's a shot so we get we get back out now we're training together we're wrestling i just can't believe how you know good to this day he can lie and say he took me down he didn't get one take down that training session i freaking took him down several times ran him off the mat but the one thing that i couldn't i was impressed but how good of a wrestler he was then i started doing my research i was like oh he actually wrestled he was a wrestler at michigan state he was a two-time juco champion like he was a wrestler but i couldn't believe how good he was but then after that session we sat on

66:09the mat and we just talked and to keep in mind my whole mind is like i'm talking to a superstar here right and he was at the top of the game and i couldn't believe like we talked like we were brothers like we was homies like we've been best friends he's a great guy man i mean i i could he floored me and i was just like like that's rashad evans gave me his number after like give me these numbers like bro yeah like hit me up what you doing what you gonna do tonight i was like oh we got we gotta drive back to colorado springs he's like oh okay well i'll be back in denver i made you up you know talk like we were boys and of course i'm like it's like you're holding the piece of paper his number on it i'm like oh that's what shot's number so i go home it's like do i wait two days to text them do i do i what do i do oh wait what do i do oh that's rashad's number

67:10she's sitting on my desk i walk by it i look at it oh man so uh he a week goes by and he freaking texts me he just texts me out of the blue like yo what up man like what's up i'm gonna be in denver this next you know next month or something like that why don't you come to a train with me i was like yeah yeah for sure for sure so i went training with him again um just you know hung out for a little bit and then he started not it became regular he would text me regularly like hey i got a fight coming up i'm about to fight phil davis i'm gonna bring you down in florida with me to train with me for two weeks you're gonna fly me to florida to train with you yeah yeah of course i'm down so now i became like part of his training arsenal and every time i that's the thing was every time he would make fun of you and like you know like brothers do he'll poke fun

68:03of you you know you want to do heaven man you know you want to do this you should be doing this why you over there busting your butt wrestling like you would train all through this whole race leslie camp go all the way to russia wrestle a tournament if you won the tournament you got 1500 bucks and this guy's i would help these guys train those guys go out and beat somebody up make 7 500 000. like what the what sport am i in right now what's going on and so he kept poking at me like man you know you want to do this you want to do that so he slowly started to shift my motivation and my focus towards mma instead of winning that olympic goal and then of course i was dealing with a lot of different injuries here and there tore up my knees throwing my back and i just i started to felt like my chance of winning olympic gold started to diminish more and more and more

68:52and then i started falling in love with this sport here and there and then i talked with him i talked with king mo and kim i was just like man don't straddle the fence man because i straddled the fence and look what happened because kimono was supposed to be the olympian and he was like i traveled the fence and look i lost to the trials and now i'm in mma so if you're going to do that just do that and rashad was like why don't you come down to florida i just freaking i was like man that's it i'm done wow now when we were talking about came velasquez earlier kane has had a series of catastrophic injuries knee injuries knee surgeries shoulder surgeries back surgery when you think about your style that's kind of similar to his in a lot of ways in that you rely on pressure volume mental toughness and wrestling all those things you're constantly attacking you're constantly bombarding

69:47your opponent with with technique and with pressure when you see that you've gone through all these surgeries and you see like what happens with a guy like kane where his body just can't compete with his mental toughness anymore it's almost like his his mind is too strong for his body his body just breaks yeah i mean it's does it with you at all it's a little bit because it's um it's like man you gotta switch out because you want to have longevity yes i've had seven surgeries now so what's what have you done besides this five surgeries five knees for five minutes i've had four meniscus on each four four two on the left two on the right and then i've also had micro fracture which is probably the one of the most the biggest serious surgeries that i've had on my right knee now is that one of those ones where they try to regrow cartilage yeah it's i guess the process is they

70:41they make breaks they make fractures in the condyle to hopefully i guess just scar up you know generate a blood supply scar up so where it creates a little cushion but it it didn't work i feel like it set me back really but yeah man big time have you ever um heard of uh dr neil reardon and uh what they're doing down in panama with uh stem cells no i mean no no i've never heard of them i've heard of stem cells and i've actually had a round of stem cells and what they're doing down in pam you just talked to do you know tj dilshaw yeah no talk to him about it man because uh he he has some phenomenal i actually sent my mom down there really yeah they were trying to give my mom a knee replacement surgery i was like well hold on mom yeah let's let's see what we can do so i sent her down near the panama they can do he his office is in dallas yeah and i had him on with mel gibson

71:33mel gibson's dad when he sent him down there was 92 and he was in a wheelchair now he's a hundred and he's walking around and wow according to mel i didn't ask but according to mel still getting hard ons i didn't ask i don't think i know the way he said he had i mean mel's gone down himself and man i would go down if i had anything really wrong with me too i mean i've gotten a lot of stem cells done here in the states yeah but they can do some down there in panama they just cannot do here in terms of regulations and and they're they're doing phenomenal work with uh regrowing cartilage and meniscus and all kinds of yeah i mean especially like right now while you're in recovery phase anyway yeah you should really should get in contact with them yeah for sure i'm gonna i'm definitely give that a try because they've they've helped tj quite a bit i know other fighters have gone down there as

72:26well yeah that's something that definitely i'm gonna look at yeah because you know i mean when you're dealing with bone on bone like i'm sure you probably are that i've been on for a long long time it's hard to train a long time well that's why it's so impressive your cardio because you're you can't run so you do are you doing plyos as well yeah i mean part of what like like i said my strength conditioning coach uh corey we do a good job of adjusting to what i can or can't do and you know obviously back squats are not the biggest the best thing for me to be doing so we modify we do different types of squats and things like that and we still get pretty good results do you do any swimming yeah i i play in the water a lot too and that's i do a lot of footwork stuff in the water because it takes a lot of pressure off yeah i was forced like i i can't i mean i'm not going to go in

73:16here and do backstrokes and all this crazy swimming techniques but you know i get in there to get that workout do you do sprints in the pool or anything like that yeah dig into those friends um you said your shoulders are with you too shoulders i mean i'm a wrestler you know the shoulders are always gonna be banged up you know but i haven't i've been fortunate no surgeries there yet but um yeah knees i've had surgeries five and then i i tore this my index finger that tendon right there i tore that my junior year in uh college and i tore that i had surgery with that to replace that repair that and then now this freaking whole apparatus that i have going on they put a mesh is that what they do bro um they did a little bit i told them because they didn't the doc didn't want to work with mesh that well because he said that you know there's good and bad results

74:10with the mesh so you know i got this freaking drain coming out of me right now oh look at that oh my goodness look at that is this pus and stuff it was blood like it was basically the blood it's like a vacuum i think that's what they call it oh it's draining blood but now it's coming down it's not that much blood coming out of there how long ago was that tuesday i got that wow so uh yeah i'm gonna have to walk around and maneuver with this thing in cheese and the worst thing is the burning because it's obviously sticking out of a hole there's a hole in me so the burning sensation around it the third day i told the the physical therapist that i was like yo i almost cut the off of the scissors because i'm not big into the painkillers right right you know so i'll take it maybe the day after i'll take it you know maybe but they just don't do much for me it

74:59doesn't kill the pain right they i'm like why do they call these painkillers it doesn't kill the pain it doesn't it just makes me a little loopy it makes me stupid as i don't feel them either yeah i saw i just have a bag of them and i just i don't do anything what about cbd do you use that i do man shout out to i'm sponsored by uh love hemp beautiful love hemp is a uk company very good company yeah amazing they're doing some really really big things and i'm big into like the oil i have and i have the rub and both of them are great yeah i use those a lot so that's in my repertoire yeah that's huge for anybody that's experiencing any kind of inflammation plus for general anxiety and overall health cbd is fantastic yeah and no psychoactive effects too you know yeah because that's that's that's the freaking stigma behind it's like oh it's marijuana it's weed

75:47yeah we were talking about marijuana before the podcast yeah the problem is like when people don't get high and then they get high in a pressure situation like this you're just like yeah you go into that tunnel like yikes oh my god yeah it's um i've tried i've smoked four times in my life yeah how did it go ah not good i mean the first time was my 24th birthday 24th birthday uh i smoked with uh who was it a couple friends of mine at the olympic training center and it didn't do anything because i don't even know how to i don't know how to hit the blind i don't know right i didn't inhale yeah so it's like man this stuff don't affect me dawg i ain't gonna do this so so so i didn't know you say screw that if you want to do it again and then the next time was the year after with jason miller mayhem miller oh mayhem knows how to hit that wheel yeah i wasn't we

76:57we were doing it was doing an ultimate fighter we were doing that and um one thing we do at night is a lot of people expect like man when he's not on he's a man super cool guy he's a very good dude i mean there's always like kind of like being around mike tyson there's always like edge yeah there's always that edge to where you're in the room with the with the freaking lion like yeah he's the coolest lion ever but you still know what the lion right you know and mayhem's like that you're in a room everything's cool but he still has he can snap at any moment so we're sitting on the balcony at night and we'll just talk and he would just talk about these the weird thing about mayhem is he always watched like he watched nothing but like smart like the news like the colbert report like things like that you know he wouldn't watch i would think he'd watch like 90210 or

77:50rickett shows like that like no man he you know he was very intelligent guy and who would just sit there and talk at night and um he gave me the nickname that night too and freaking he's like bro your first name starts with the k your last name is ush man usman i'm gonna freaking call you cush i'm calling you cush hahaha freaking the next day on set everyone calls me kush to this day people call me kush you're like i'm the nigerian nightmare which is free and at that time it wasn't born yet you know the name wasn't right because i didn't start fighting yet but so i've had nicknames all through all throughout my life my career which is that whole ben askren that he's trying to run with what is he calling you martial see this is the thing is when i started wrestling i started in high school my coach was uh this big marine dude you know who's in shape buzz cut white dude and it comes up to

78:52me i'm five foot two a hundred pounds soaking wet and he's like yo he's like what's up what's your name kid uh i tell him buddy i don't even think he paid attention and he's like you tried wrestling i've never heard of wrestling all i've heard is wwe i'm like nah man i'm trying to get hit with chairs and stuff i ain't trying to do that so if i kind of looks at me like he's like ah okay yeah all right we'll give it a shot and our assistant wrestling coach was the assistant football coach so they kind of would poke at me yeah you come try wrestling come try wrestling i'll do the football season then the next year i freaking i nutted up and i freaking just signed up for wrestling i went in and um he looks at these reason roles she calling names and he goes who the who's this kid who the is this kid and um that's me coach he's like that's your name i'm like yeah he's like i'm not saying

79:57that because my whole full name is kamardian kamarudin kamarudin he's like i'm not gonna say that like commerce martian and kamar mark i'm going to call you marty and i'm just like yeah sure coach i'm i'm five foot three hundred pounds i'm just scared of this guy and i'm like sure i mean you're a kid you don't care you're gonna have nicknames all growing up so why does the ufc shorten your name to kamar no i that's that's what you just called me oh yeah my parents called me kamaru but the full it's like my my name is joseph my parents call me joe exactly yeah so the you know so that it's it's kamaru that's what my parents have always called me that's what i call myself okay you know but my full name is it's like joseph you say you know it's camaro dean so um so marty yeah he's like i'm gonna call you marty so up all right now the whole team is calling me marty and you know

80:50so white people are so up no but man i i love people's names i love that coach man he essentially changed essentially changed my life changed the course of my life that is such a funny thing though to do yeah i'm gonna call you marty that's not even close that starts with a totally different letter i know but it it seemed to work it worked so well to where um this is the thing about nicknames if you if you're a guy that just a regular average guy and you suck your name dies with you you move on no one cares right you know but if you're doing something incredible something spectacular that name lives on right so now marty went from just now everyone on the team called me marty to where people know about the wrestling around the wrestling circuit you know in high school calling me marty oh that marty guy that kid's good and then our college coaches are calling

81:43like oh i want to recruit this kid you know this kamaruli and kid and he's like oh marty so now they oh no me as marty so now i go to college and the coach is calling me marty and now the college team is calling me marty now here's the situation with this whole bad aspiring thing is like i just mentioned if i was just a regular guy who sucked no one cares no one knows your name you die out right but because i made waves like i was that marty kid that wrestled at nebraska that's beating the out of everyone division one two three naia juco doesn't matter ben knows of me so you know he's trying to cling on to something to bring it back like oh this is funny i'm trying to hide from it no i really was marty from nebraska i really was in everyone's ass while i was marty from nebraska i really was that guy so enough for him to bring i thought he was silly but you know

82:37these fans fans wanna they cause ben is a representative of the trolls like uh most of the trolls look like ben asked if i can give you any of that's hilarious yeah that is hilarious if i can give you any advice please don't pay attention i don't get any don't pay attention to comments you know that glass jar yeah once you smash that thing just don't even put anything in there anymore man don't nothing i and i've i've heard you say that so many times like i um when i started paying attention to the show i started watching the show and i watched it when you did with tyron when tyrone was up here and and you're so right like some because that's one thing that i always felt like so unfair about tyron is a lot of people just gave him because and i think it started because he didn't take that belt they didn't dethrone georgetown pierre so i i think a lot of it stemmed from that

83:29i don't know about that man i know it doesn't it stopped robbie lawler if that didn't give you i understand i understand but but george saint pierre was still looping around as the royalty champion but sort of not because he retired he said i'm gonna step away yeah but he stepped away yes i unders for you being the obviously you know so much about the sport you you're being in the sport for so long yes but for these fickle fans that don't know that's why you can't listen to all they know is it's george st pierre verstappen was a champion he never lost his belt yeah so i felt like tyrone never got his fair share necessarily i feel like the same because because they're like oh he never took the belt from george and he always wanted to use the wonderboy fights i think the wonderboy fights were so hard yeah but even after even before the wonder boy that way that is the way you fight that guy

84:18yes you know unless you know someone like me comes in and does it what would you do what would you i don't know i just do i just do me because he's still in the mix i would just do me you know i would eventually get a hold of him i will eventually break him and you know eventually make it look easy and then people are gonna just complain so you know it is what it is yeah the the the problem with him is he's so difficult to get close to he's a different guy because his style's so different he'll stand totally sideways on you his hands will be down and he can wrestle i mean he in terms of take down defense he's got good takedown defense and his strikes come from weird angles man he moves like a snake like he bends at the waist and pops forward do you ever watch him kick box yeah and that freaking well i but i saw that you know i knew it was a problem when he

85:04threw that one kick that came over the shoulder yeah and smacked yeah question mark kick yeah it was weird up the front leg he's very good with it he just you don't even know what's going on you think maybe he's going to kick you in the body yeah yeah absolutely loops around comes over the top and like smacks you in the face no he's very talented like i like wonderboy a lot you know but like i just felt like you know i saw that show with tyrion and you said the exact same thing to him and that's what i said too and that's what i was thinking too but it's easier send than none because partially when i got into this and why why i appreciate the platform that i have right now is the fact that you can affect so many people at such a rapid amount of time because there's been instance to where i don't know if you ever remember that movie uh what women want

85:54and there was no gift what mel gibson i didn't watch it and basically he could hear women's thoughts and things like that and then there was a there was a girl in the office girl in the movie who she was planning to kill herself because no one really paid attention to her she's like no one would care and she just walked around with books i applied for a job everyone blew me off no one cares i'm gonna kill myself this day so she was planning to kill herself and he hurt her because he could hear what women think he heard her thoughts but initially didn't really pay attention to it until later on he realized she was missing from the office and then he like ran to go find her and and essentially saved her life but my thing is and that's a court that i live by with great power comes great responsibility like what if there's someone that's dealing with something at a certain time

86:42and yes i didn't ask to be put in that position but they you know they just decided oh i'm just gonna reach out send a message before i kill myself this day no one's gonna respond no one's gonna care and i happen to read that message and talk that kid off the ledge and that kid becomes you know wins the nobel peace prize later on in life like that's a responsibility that i have that i didn't i didn't put that on myself but that i have with the the gift that i've been blessed with to touch so many people and so how am i gonna know that if i never read any of my messages or comments or things like that yes of course i you know the negative ones yeah blow them blow it up but how do i know it's negative if i don't read it you know so that's what i'm saying it's easier said than done it's like i read this if now what i do is i read if i even feel like it's getting negative delete

87:34dilly dilly i can't read them all cause after that five i got thousands i'm sure so you know i can't read them all but every now and again when i'm bored enough and i have time like i'll read some of it because sometimes it is good good things but you know that most of the time you know i should i you not there was yesterday i posted a picture there was one guy that responded to maybe 40 to 50 people all negative oh yeah like when we finally die give out his instagram you were gonna die in this you know what i just i just blocked him he said you're gonna decide he's like oh man you're gonna get knocked the out you're gonna do this i'm just like oh my god like bro really you literally took your the time out of your day to sit here today just knocked down this door and he opened the door and saw your face imagine oh my god i wish we could do that i wish we could do that

88:34and he answered guess who answers the doors ben askren he looks like ben chest belly out like this he's never trained a day in his life what did you think of the robbie lawler fight with ben ah man like i mean come on they gotta run that back i i was thinking when it was over that herb dean made a mistake but the more i watched it the more i think he didn't i think what happened was i think robbie went out i think his arm dropped and i think when herb came over this is what ben says too that he loosened up the choke a little bit and robbie came back to it and robbie probably doesn't even know because robbie's such a savage she probably didn't even know he went out yeah but okay so yeah you know this is the argument and this is why it has to be ran back yeah it's a good argument you know this is an argument because first of all when when when robbie ran that truck through ben's face

89:29like he was out it's a funny way of putting it he was out and welcome he recovered i mean he got hit with some bombs but we're freaking wrestlers mm-hmm the one thing about wrestlers at the elite level is you can be out of it but your body will naturally go through certain emotions grab a leg pull up you think he was out when robbie was bombing on him robbie ran a mack truck through his face like that was under let's watch it pull that fight up truck through his face like i feel like robbie knocked him out woke him up knocked him out like like robbie was just savage mode and that's the one thing about and knowing robbie now because i train with him is robbie's such a different guy like he's something nonchalant well he you know the way he handled the loss was so classy but that's robbie man that's just so close and the explanation this is the thing with the explanation is you can argue

90:26the fight should have been stopped when robbie was was you know bombing on him you can argue that yep for sure but at the same time robbie explains it is robbie has so much experience and it was a bulldog it's like big brother choke so you know it could have not been doing anything but robbie explained it as i put my hand down because this wasn't doing to relax you know because i don't want to panic robbie has that much experience he should know what to do maybe that's what he was doing but the way he put his arm down it looked like it was out yeah but then when rob when herb dean came to check on him while he was giving the thumbs thumbs up herb dean didn't really give him a chance to put the thumbs up it stops the fight right then and there but as far as oh i loosened the choke that's why he came to no you don't loosen the choke until this the ref pulls you off of him or you pop

91:16his head off he said he lightened up when herb came over because he thought that herb was going to stop the fight because he felt robbie go limp you don't lighten up because you think someone's going to stop a fight you don't you don't point you don't lighten up because you think you squeeze harder because you want to make him stop the fight i see a point and also there is a difference between squeezing someone out and beating on them when the referee's coming if the referee comes and you stop punching because the guy's out yeah that's one thing that's one thing but you don't you have him in a bolt you're here in survival mode you can't like really you're in survival mode that's that's sort of but bulldog chokes are legit man i mean they really do work yeah i'm not gonna i'm not gonna oh no listen i'm not gonna say titch lost the title yeah lipstick i'm not gonna

91:59snoot and caught him in a bulldog choke remember that yeah i'm not gonna say that don't work i'm not gonna say that i'm not gonna you know he could have been out he could have not been out but the only way to to put that all to rest is to run it back but what what kind of sucks is when you're like no i pass i i mean i'm my pastor what you what come on bro relax he said he didn't want to fight him in the first place well no yeah well robbie looks sensational robbie looked like here we go we're going to watch this ben look at the body on him you laughing are you hearing it come on stud that's the ideal oh my god combat sports body like it did but it is amazing that he's able to get a hold of robbie i was stunned no i knew he was going to get a hold of it right i thought but right away that was crazy savage boom now eat that eat that eat that uh these are big shots uh uh go to sleep go

92:57to sleep go to sleep i'm out oh this is here i think he's still there man i think there's no evidence that he's out no you don't see the hands go no no i don't think so i think he's eating the shot and then he's got the clinch i don't think he was ever out no there were certain moments he was he was ugh well he definitely ate some big shots but i don't think there's any evidence at all that he gets to me this is the thing like band is tough as though like i give credit with credit yeah yeah ben is tough as hell man he's tough as hell and right now he's just drunk driving right now he's drunk driving he's not wanting his legs trump drives this way to put it bro he's just driving right now look at this drunk driving but now robbie breaks free see i forget the actual scramble that led to the bulldog choke yeah it happens from when robbie tries to get up because he

93:43does get the takedown oh look he's drunk driving oh my god oh man a lot of blood you caught him with a nasty left hand there yeah like rob is just looking for looking for a bomb and ben is just moving forward like a zombie but he still grabs a hold of him it's interesting interesting that he was able to grab a hold of him because i would have thought that robbie would have avoided that at all costs yeah but that's why he's able to grab ahold of someone he's when someone is so you know worried about you grabbing them and they it kind of shuts them down a little bit goodness of the body there by robbie yeah that's another thing you did in the tyrant fight those body shots good lord i was trying to take that home you hit him with so many right hands to the body so here we see ben he still got the clinch yeah he's doing a good job here trying he's trying to come to it he's

94:32trying to you know recover doing a good job keeping it close now you can't get really get hit with big shots you know and he does get the takedown at some point yeah i do not remember how it happened or what was here it is here it is he reaches down so he's got him in the clinch here he's got the underhook on the left side and so someone okay he grabs the leg i do this is interesting i don't remember this all i remember is the opening exchange and then the final exchange yeah like two two on one he's right now he's trying to go two on one yes good job so he's got the single single robbie doing a good job now he's got the hands clasped together it's amazing to me how good of a wrestle he is i'm going to be honest with you but it's just it's just funky because it's like not really muscles there yeah it's just like gumby but you know it's not going anywhere but it's tricky

95:29yeah it's very tricky yeah very very sneaky now he's got him down and now robbie's on his back he's in yeah sort of inside control okay so now he's got an arm yeah typical robbie see robbie's just chilling boom he's starting circles out he's got the headlock okay now he's got the headlock and now watch that right see this position yeah but through this position see robbie puts it down yeah it's moving he's moving yeah no yep see changed my mind again yeah like see that's that's what's tricky about that that's what's tricky about that i changed my mind again i don't think he was out no see because the first back it up to just to the arm going limp because the thing about the arm going limp is the way it went limp looked it really looked like he was out okay but this is this is what i'm saying right here is initially in the situation wait wait till he turns

96:17wait till he turns when right right wait to pull his arms out boom right here see this is uncomfortable yeah this is very uncomfortable yeah you're spread out here and the guy's choking on your neck you got to bring one down to relieve pressure either that one down or take this one inside yeah so robbie did the approp right thing or the arm fell down whether he was out so it man it it's a tough go man one one more time let me see that arm drops just back it up just a little bit here yeah the way it drops see like nobody moves it moves it immediately shut it's so hard to know move yeah he might have just been dealing with the choke yep nope and changed my mind and it's typical robbie man cause robbie says robbie says man yeah experience he said man i knew that that was uncomfortable so i just put my arm down chilling yeah that's and that's it now now i'm on your side

97:07bro like there's only one you have to run that back i would i would say so but the how much can the ufc tell him what to do like what could the ufc what do you said to ben askren listen this fight has to happen again that that's you like that's the sport we're in ufc's the judge the jury and if they want the execution what did ben what did uh dana white say after the fight he said he wanted ben to fight him again right yeah dana said we're going to run that back and ben is like not pass man i don't know robbie's like yeah we got to do it again well i know robbie was angling for a fight with darren till but after maz vidal starts staring till which was nasty man nasty people sleep on mossvadel they do i do not know why i don't understand it go back and watch those backyard fights that guy's been going out a long time hey man and he even man that's he too bad both backyard fighters and

98:05one that he just had again this weekend yeah i know that was crazy it's about um you know it's like you can't just talk p like nowadays it's this error you could just say whatever you feel like you can say what you want because it's a social media you want to get fans on your side and this and that and he just happened to say it to the wrong guy at the wrong time yeah like that's that's the situation and you did it backstage too yeah yeah massa don't give a like you know mutual i think i i think it's a mutual respect with me and master though like i respect him you know i mean if we have to fight we have to fight one day but you know like we feel the same when it's like if you're going to talk online when i see you keep the same energy like when i saw ben astren backstage right the only thing that stopped me from pushing his head through that wall back there was the fact that

98:57i almost blacked out blacktop when i was walking towards him then i realized dana was right behind me so you were angry it wasn't that i was angry it was the fact that bro like if you're you're you came at me online like you had a problem with me right like you started talking mad to me like you had a problem like saying things putting up memes and all this to me that means like you have a problem i don't know what i did to you but you got a problem with me so when i see you now like i want you to still have that same energy don't just act like we're cool like what's up bro yo you want to hug it out don't act like that act like you still have the problem same problem well you think he's just trying to mark it i mean ben but that's that's anger that's right but that but that's what i'm saying that's the thing like people are kind of letting them off with certain things you know

99:45now what happens if master dog would have starts him like that yeah backstage because he did talk oh yeah yeah what happened if that was him mastered basketball starts like that what happens yeah you know so that that was my thing is i when i saw him backstage i almost wanted to push his head through the wall you know but and then i realized dana's behind me brian's body what happened to moz vidal in england because they don't like that over there i don't know i think he got away free scot-free really i think now and everything's fine isn't he back already that's hilarious but that's the case because that's assault yeah but i mean i guess you could say it's wrong it's hard to say assault when you're dealing with ufc fighters right right it's almost like you played basketball off the couch absolutely you know it's hard to say that's a tricky tricky situation

100:36right but he struck him out in the parking lot yeah after the baseball game what but i think david didn't dana put out a statement saying that that can't happen anymore we got to do it better something like that they really should do a better job of having security around to separate guys they did and they didn't let me near ben askren or colton yeah well there was one time not before this fight but before a previous fight where you were backstage it was actually was it a press conference it was a press conference and you were trying to talk to colby like what's up man i was talking yeah i was scheduled to fight santiago puns and that's right and we were doing a big press conference and they happened to have like i didn't even know he was there because they hit they had him hidden away the whole time it wasn't until we were going to get on the bus to go to the press conference

101:27he came downstairs like we were all meeting in the lobby and i saw him and right away i told i don't know what it is i just i just my boy i just started your blood my blood just started blowing i started to read i was like man this is not gonna work this is not gonna work yo you gotta move it reads like we're getting them right now we're moving and read but it puts them in a different car and every all the other fighters ride together so this is what i mean he's already isolated that's so funny so we get there but we have to line up to walk out so he's lined up and he just happened to be in my vicinity and i just freak i'm just i was trying i was like yeah i'm not gonna say i know i'm not gonna say nothing i'm not gonna say anything i just look at him yo i see you was talking all that online now huh now we're in person you can't talk what's up with all that you was talking online

102:13you thought she was tough what's up with that was that tough guy now and he's just like i think he was reading his lines like what he was going to say when he got out there and press conference he was just like and he heard me and he's like i don't want to say nothing i could get my ass whip right here i don't want to do that and i could say all those thoughts was contemplating and whitaker was standing next to him and whitaker does one of these joint like look around this new talking to because i had to watch every video over and over where it could look bad like he ain't talking to me and and then saw kobe is like oh he's talking to kobe so whitaker just kindly slid off to the side and um and i'm like what's up with all that you was talking and then he's like quiet quiet and then he sees the security kind of because then they heard me and security kind of walks i didn't even

103:05know there was a camera back there uh and then security walks up and security's like oh no no no we don't need this we don't need this and this was uh what press con khabib was about to fight this was after that conor khabib's bus situation yes and so they're like yo we don't need this this week we don't need this and now once this security he goes he goes stick to stick to p stick to uh network television junior stick to this boy you not on my network television what does that mean because i guess he was fighting his first fight now in pay-per-view oh but this is the thing you were on fox yeah but this is the thing is he had never headlined a car to this day i don't think he's ever headlined a card yeah no he headline a card did he not a pay-per-view but um wendy when he fought um rafael dos sanjos yeah that was the main event wasn't it no it was a co-main event under uh joel romero and

104:03and whitaker oh in chicago he's never headlined a card wow never never headlined a card well you might be right and i'm thinking about it yeah and and he's like he's like stick to network i might i'm headlining like bro you've never done and and so he's trying to play that angle and all this and that and i was just yeah you were right look at that romero too yeah he's never said josh covington he fought damien maya on an undercard well i think it was like on the main car but cm punk and michael jackson yeah yeah tremendous fight no it's it's man i was impressed with him beating dos sanchos i really was i thought that was impressive and what way well because he beat those hundreds yeah because yeah like i give that yeah you beat rda rda is a name like that is tough as hell former champion yes but i already had one round already won fourth and fifth round rda was taking him down

105:08like you saw already took him now numerous times well he didn't let me just clarify he didn't beat him as impressively as you did that's right yeah but i should not but i don't really care i don't really care about all that stuff like man it's my thing is over all in all joe like i've been on such a journey man my whole life i've been on such a journey i've dealt with so many things that i internalized man and i i don't really talk about so i don't really care what all these guys are doing man i've had a hard life not the hardest i'm not saying it's the hardest life but i've had i've had a lot of things happen to me in life to where i'm just i'm at this point in life where man i i don't i don't want to deal with all the hate i don't want to deal with all these other stuff i understand it's going to come with the support that we do but man i got bigger going on in my mind

105:54that i'm worried about rather than all that little things man good for you that's like i said your attitude in so many ways is so good that you you're you're there to compete that you're you're there to do your best you're not getting caught up in and petty nonsense and you you know you're just putting pressure on yourself to be the best you could possibly be that's that's where that's where you see real greatness yeah and i mean like and like tyron was man there's a there's this thing to where you you get to a point where you have to you're the guy who has to provide you're the guy who has to hold up and it's not not necessarily people saying you have to do it but you you feel that sense of responsibility you know and in my family i i felt that i feel that sense of responsibility like there's one in your family when you were growing up yeah you know like i like

106:45when i say i come from humble beginnings you know like being raised in nigeria like and it wasn't like the village village where we lived in huts we had a house but it wasn't really we didn't have plumbing you know we had to go to the well or get water we electricity was rare that's a scarce thing you know and it's a way even when we came here when we immigrated here yeah life got a lot better how old were you when you came here uh about eight years old and it was hard to adjust to the school system you know because kids with kids kids are mean i have to talk with the funny accent and kids would tell you hey why don't you say this to the teacher say hey call her and i was always in the principal's office because i had no idea what that means and things like that so kids are cruel i had you know i dealt with all that did you know in english when you came

107:35here yeah we spoke english but it's pigeon english so we knew that like you know we're colonized by the europeans so the english is the root of the words root words are from the european so we knew english but it's just our take on it and so how much different it's pretty different yeah yeah it's very different like if i was talking with another nigerian i was speaking patient english you would pick out words but it's a little different like can you say something in pigeon english yeah like nothing right now we just sit down here just to talk now you you know she's not just they talk just a yeah each other you know don't be any tea that sounds cool yeah it does if like me and israel sonja was talking like it would be mad cool oh right right right now like we speaking to each other so going from that to you know being essentially raised and then going through school

108:26and and one thing that uh man i haven't i i really haven't ever shared with anybody you know very very few people know is that my father has been incarcerated since 2009. and this is the first time really i've you know ever talked about it like been caught my dad was um it goes to a test is just a justice system here man it's so it's so so crooked and it's so backwards yes of course we're fortunate like there's so many things that we're thankful for living here in this country that you know you can sleep at night in your house and not worry about somebody breaking and robbing you and killing you you know for the most part and so we're thankful for all that we're thankful for the opportunities but my dad was a businessman and my dad built one of the uh one a really very big business in dallas he owned like an ambulance company and you know it comes to a certain point

109:26where people just don't want you to be you're an immigrant and you're succeeding in a certain business to where it's kind of like people don't care about people don't want you to be there and you know it's one of those situations to where my dad hired the people that he thought were the right people to do what he didn't know the job to run his company while he could tend to certain things like us like his family day-to-day different things that they cared about to where they run the company into the ground and now because my dad was the owner of the company they put it all on him even though the people that were doing you know the things that were wrong in the company admitted to doing the wrong things but what the court is saying is that oh because you own the company so ignorance isn't it's not an excuse so because of that we're going to sentence you

110:21to 15 years so he got sentenced when he did no crime yeah i didn't see the thing what was the business again my dad owned an ambulance company an ambulance company yes so it was a transportation for emergency non-emergency you know and one thing that they he hired these like the the ea that paramedics the em you know amx to run the company because these people that that know the business so he had people that he hired from that require he acquired from a different company but you know one thing that i would say is my dad's ignorance is is he didn't really do his research well enough on the guys that he hired so you hire certain guys and now these guys are running the business and these guys are like yeah we're going to make you we're going to help you grow this business like any businessman yeah i hired the right people yeah help me grow the business so now they're helping he's they're

111:13doing that if he thinks okay i trust these guys they're taking care of the business and the the most disappointing heartbreaking thing about the business is my dad they're not they're not the one who does the billing the billing for the business they contract a difference an outside company to do the billing so it's not them doing it so they're doing the runs they're sending the notes to them this is the runs we did to you guys build the government or whoever else to pay us my dad's the owner he has people that are doing all this he's not there running the day-to-day so eventually they go under investigation oh we're investigating like i think maybe like 15 patients or something like that i don't know what the exact number like 15 patients were investigating for these runs or whatever that would build this billion on them and so they put it all under investigation and they're like okay

112:06after a while they come back and they say all right we'll give you your stuff back like we didn't really see anything but we'll give you your stuff back after they shut it down for a little while so damn now i gotta go back to so my dad's like oh i'm getting out of business they already killed my business for me so now i became one of the biggest company but you shut down for so long you've lost you know what you've worked for so now he's getting rid of it getting out of it then they come back later a few years later for the same thing that have already said you're good here to have your stuff back they come back and say no we're gonna prosecute you for this so now those guys i and i've i've seen that this is obviously how the feds work now those guys that you caught the ems and these guys that were clearly dead was wrong you gave them a deal and said hey we caught you guys because those

112:54guys started their own company doing the same so they get caught now they're like okay we want that guy so you guys basically gave him a deal to say okay that that guy was in on it and my dad's like and i guess they offered my dad a deal a plea deal which his lawyer didn't really tell him about because he had a court appointed a lawyer a lawyer so he said no i didn't do wrong why would i take that deal which would have been i think maybe like five years was the deal or something like that my dad's like no i didn't do wrong why would i take five years so he goes to trial and bro we've seen murderers we've seen all these people that have defrauded the government like stuck more hedge fund guys billions of dollars get bail they said no they wouldn't even grant them bail my dad is a citizen like turned over his passport and everything they said no i'm not gonna give you bail we're gonna

113:50hold you we're gonna freeze all your accounts you can't really fight the case so you're stuck there and now your family's left with nothing with nothing no money in the account nothing and so my dad had to deal with that and they just threw the book at him you know we'll give you 15 years and this was 2009 and he's already been in for ten yeah he's been in for ten and and one thing that really killed me was um one thing it was important part in a trial where um the lawyer was basically telling the judge like this guy's an upstanding guy no crecord you know he has kids look at his kids and how well they're doing his older son is in college the second one is in college the the youngest is about to be in college these kids are all scholarships student athletes great student athletes and the one thing that killed me was the prosecution was like the reason that is is because

114:54he was defrauding the government from this money that's why they're in college and i was like wait my dad's not paying for us to be in college we're all student athletes we earned this we we worked hard earned scholarships as far as to be in college the defense didn't say that they didn't say like did he have a court-appointed attorney i think he did yeah and bro my dad just got railroaded man and it was like and it was so heartbreaking to where you're telling a man that has raised his family raised his kids to to work hard get to a place in life and you're telling him that the only reason he's there is because he cheated and it was just one of those things that added a chip on my shoulder at all man like so there's been so many moments that added to put chips on my shoulder with everything that i like i've been through so much that i just internalize

115:48and i compete with all this energy and so to for that you telling my dad that yeah like you're gonna sit down and i just and and obviously of course i researched more and more into that because i was so heartbroken after that like my like you're just gonna for what for how much you're saying not even up to almost a million they with this they just piled a lot of money on they're like oh this this and that for a little over they're saying a little over a million total which is nowhere near that you gave them 15 years when these guy hedge fund guys that that you found guilty for manipulating these markets for billions you give him six months house arrest if that and you're saying you're gonna give him 15 years and i started researching i'm like a lot of these judges have stakes in these prisons and to what they do is they they give a lot of time because

116:42they get paid per prisoner that's and you know that story about that guy in pennsylvania who was a he was a judge and he was doing that he was sending kids to jail he was extending their sentences and giving them sentences for nothing and it turned out he had been getting paid by the prison to see him down the river yeah i heard a lot of them get like kickbacks and different things from that and so to put people there well as you become more and more famous you can shed more and more light on this yeah man what does your dad do for parole man i don't i don't even know i think soon listen this podcast alone you talking about this could very well bring someone forward that wants to help you with the appeal yeah and my uh my dad actually wrote because when during the obama administration there was that whole clemency deal when they were doing it my dad actually wrote a

117:32letter i actually have that letter i don't know where i put it but he wrote a letter to him and it was when i read the letter man i i i can't help but cry about it because my my dad um it's my dad cares about his family so and when i go and see my dad because my dad is so proud of me and uh and i'm so proud of him i mean he raised us so well and um to go see him in there and i mean it's not like he's sitting at the maximum security but for someone to tell you that you can't go home to your family at night for today you got to sleep when we told you to sleep we got you got to eat when we told you to eat for 10 years and when you know i didn't do anything wrong because i chose to say no i didn't do anything wrong i'm not going to take the sentence you give me they say okay fine then you're going to sit in there for 15 years and there's nothing you can do about it

118:24it is and man it broke my heart man and then when i think about something i just hold it in because i you know i try not to cry about it which i i'm just like screw it i've have different situations that happen in life i'm like you know but i i ate that one up on the shoulder i put that chip i'm like you know what they're gonna say that the reason i'm here that was scholarship is because my dad they're saying my dad got money a little bit of money are you serious what about the freaking hard work that i did to get here what about all the times that i sat in a freaking hot box my bathroom upstairs with the trash bag on because i knew that i needed to get a pound off the next day in order to be able to wrestle at this jv tournament what about all that you know that didn't make any difference you know the reason the only reason it was there is because of that what about

119:10all the times my brother ran worked hard to make national team when he was playing soccer or my little brother getting numerous scholarships for division one football everywhere like that what so all that put a chip on my shoulder joe to where i was like man i got to succeed at all costs i don't really care and where where did this happen where was this trial uh in texas in dallas texas not the best place to have the truck happen but uh it happened and then i it put a sour taste in my mouth but um has he filed an appeal um and he filed an appeal one time didn't even look at it man it was like one of those things where it's like that judge they put you there you're there that was his domain they didn't even look at it like um who cares does it feel like you're using the system you're being a ufc welterweight champion but i think that they treated him like that because you're an immigrant

120:04front in the system um get in there and that's you know joe to wrap that put that on that's part of what this next fight symbolizes to me is the attitude that a lot of people have towards immigrants is people are forgetting that americans are immigrants i was just having that conversation in the last podcast people are forgetting that yeah into entire countries yeah to where they people have this attitude towards like we're americans go back to your country you know you know go back this is a free country or this and that people like i always heard that growing up i always heard that and i always the more i research i'm like what are you talking about first of all this this whole attitude when you walk into a nail shop get your hand feet nails done who the majority of the people that run those nail shops asians i'm not saying all of them in the world

120:55in the country but the majority of them are asians but there's a lot of people that look down on it like i'm not washing your feet i'm not going to do your nails no those people i take pride in that because that provides for them you know they do that you know but people people condemn it that's not a job people want to do when you go to these hotels and certain things who are the main people that are the maids that clean up the hotels a lot of them are immigrants we take pride in them because now we're in the country in a better place where we can provide for families those are jobs that a lot of people so-called americans the whole kobe covington whole persona are like i'm above that i'm above that that's the persona but then at the same time people now want to cry oh they're here taking our jobs let's build a wall let's keep them out they're taking our job

121:46no they're providing they're helping this country get to its height the fact that you could come here and have someone do your nails someone clean your house someone wash your car someone do all this for you it's part of what makes america so great one of the greatest nations in the world and the fact that they want to build a wall you want to keep these people out you can't come here you can't bring your culture your stuff here it just it saddens me and it upsets me it's part of what this fight when it happens this fight represents for me because i feel like that's the attitude that this young man has he's entitled to i'm i should be ufc champ you're you're a soy boy yeah you can you don't deserve you can't hang with me boy that's his attitude you can't do this boy first of all who's your boy i'm a grown ass man don't talk to me like that and that's the attitude that he has i'm

122:33entitled to this i mean i should be the champion because i am this way i'm american i'm this and that bro we're all american here and so this fight is greater than than just oh me beating up a guy that's talking a lot of there's this fight means a lot to me so when i get the chance to put my hands on that guy let's just know this the wrath of every immigrant that have stepped foot in this country that i'm gonna put on him well you and your family are the ideal immigrants absolutely over overachievers i mean this is what like first of all what is it about nigerians that do so well in this country that's one of the things if you look at like nigerian immigrants like successful ratios of of different immigration groups nigerians in particular are extraordinarily successful upon immigrating to america yeah i think it's a family a family thing it's like when when our families

123:29decide and we get the opportunity to move to a better place right the thing is that the whole persona is we're going to be able to sustain this forever so my kids are not going to just play around in sports because that's not guaranteed right what is guaranteed is the fact that you're going to go to school and you're going to become a doctor because you're going to get a job anywhere in the world that you want that's why majority of them are doctors right majority of doctors engineers because these are jobs that high demand jobs you're always going to get a job anywhere yeah and so that's all that's all we push you're going to be a doctor or you're going to be a a nigerian an engineer none of them are saying you're going to be a professional athlete my parents hell no they didn't care for that like i lied to them the first couple years that i was wrestling i didn't tell them that

124:16you know my brother is a doctor in pharmacy in dallas my little brother you know could have gotten the nfl it was a stellar football player played at university of houston university arizona you know my sister now is in college she's in nursing school in college like that's just what we push we want you to get a job that you can provide for your family forever yeah they remind me of koreans in a lot of ways absolutely yeah super hard working and appreciate once they've gotten to a place like america where there really is no ceiling on the possibility you could do anything you want once you get here if you work hard absolutely and then this is that's another thing that's dear to my heart is when you're in nigeria like when you're in a situation that we were at my mom was a teacher my mom owned the store to to a little convenience store when we we did little jobs on the side we told

125:09certain things on the side and on top of it raising three boys rowdy boys like that that's what we in the school we didn't it wasn't like oh there's the car the bus is gonna pick you up at 3 7 a.m to go to school no the school is two miles away three miles away you're walking you better get going don't be late because if you got if you was late you was gonna get a whooping before school started that's how it was and especially the education system was so high because you missed you missed a couple answers on the test you had to go out and get a switch and you were gonna get whipped in school for those answers that you missed on the team would beat you in school yeah absolutely the teacher the teacher the teacher was on first of all it's not teacher his uncle and that's your uncle and your aunt in school they knew your parents you knew your family they were going to

126:02whoop you in school if you decided to mess up and that's how it was so that's why there's a lot of these smart nigerians that get out and if there's no freaking job we got to somehow make money it's so up because i don't want people to be kids but god damn when you put kids under that kind of pressure my parents put me in catholic school for one year and i got excellent grades and afterwards i was terrible terrible man and i remember my stepfather said something to me he said your grades were only good when you were in catholic school i was like this guy's terrified yeah i'm like it ain't a good move i mean it's not they were threatening me all the time they wanted to beat me and make me sit on a nail in the closet but it's this i don't i don't i would never want you to go through that but the fact that you went through that is probably one of the reasons why you're the man you are today

126:53that's humanity that's what i call humanity because as human beings when we're growing like and you hear us all the time with parents i want a better life for my kids yeah i want a better life for my kids yes absolutely that's what we want we want to present them with endless possibilities but you can't forget the fact that the reason you're the the the champion or the this upstanding person that you are today is because you went through these hard things all these hardships molded you and and that's part of the the situation now is like everyone's like oh no i don't want these kids to play these sports it's too tough they're too rough you know they could get hurt they can get that or that kid could turn into a freaking champion he can get knocked on his butt 50 times and that 151th time he gets up and says you know what screw this i'm going to be a champion

127:41today there's also that you could do other things you could just i think a guy like you could do anything like once you've achieved what you've achieved in in mma and in wrestling the kind of mindset that makes you push your body to the limit like that and allows you to get your your you just just your body into the kind of condition that made you fight five rounds like that against tyron that's an extraordinary mind yeah i'm thankful i'm thankful for uh and that's one thing that i always say is i'm thankful for every individual that i've crossed paths with because when i really look back in my life and i internalize a lot of things like how did i was a little i mean i was a freaking pipsqueak in nigeria carrying this hot plate on my head to go sell you know up and down the street how did i i never imagined that i would get to the point where i would run into all these different

128:38wrestling coaches that would pour knowledge into me even if for every this is a shout out to every coach if you ever saw me i was drilling a move and you came over and just corrected me or you said no i'm gonna do it this way you know even if it's just a moment an inch in my life that you did all of that contributed to the person that i am today to all those coaches all those people all my mentors that given me advice each and every one because i never knew that i would cross paths like look how crazy my life is i crossed paths with john first time i ever seen the mma fight was jon jones i won my belt on the same card as jon jones you know i stayed when i went to visit jon jones i stayed in the same room that kobe covington stayed in the following year when he went to school with jon jones how crazy is that that's pretty crazy john's roommate was joe soda who also in the ufc

129:30yeah like you know went to the university of nebraska at kearney became a national champion same as travelled wrestled with travell de long name joe and jake ellenberger jake ellenberg and ufc joe ellenberg in the ufc like the like look at the past that i've crossed in this life to get me to this point here i'm extremely thankful man i at the end of the day there's nothing that i can do that that i i got to give it up like this was a plan i didn't this wasn't me i didn't control they say you know what when i'm 25 and when i'm this age i'm going to do that i'm gonna do that do that and it all come together like that like i've been blessed i've been very very blessed to cross paths with all these guys and and has gotten me to this moment so i'm i'm so thankful well i think it's both you definitely been blessed as as all of us have but not besides just being fortunate it's you you

130:28went through the work you went through the work and you completed the process you know and that just the fact that you fought tyron woodley with a broken foot and a hernia and still dominated him for five rounds is crazy you don't you don't get to that without having you built your mind and your body in in a very crazy way in a way through the the the fires of hard work and discipline you forged a champion yeah i mean thank you joe like that that's it's all it all goes back to everything like this is how my mind works it's ever since i was little i'm one of those guys i sound silly but i'm a one trip kind of guy when i go to the grocery store and i'm bringing all that in the house i'm a one trip kind of get carried in in one trip i'm gonna do it all i don't matter i don't care how much it is i'm gonna try to do it in one trip and this is one thing that i say to

131:28myself when i'm carrying all that stuff inside yeah it hurts yeah it's heavy yeah this makes no sense the house is literally 50 feet from that from the car but in my mind while i'm carrying all that heavy i'm just like oh yeah i'm freaking yeah one trip one trip get tough baby get tough bit tough i've been doing that since i was a kid get tough get tough you can do it you don't get tough or when i'm doing sets of of stuffed reps and and you know the coach is like all right four sets of ten i'm doing 10 when i get to like 10 i'm like but i can do one more 11 let's get 11. boom get an extra set in i've been putting in extra said forever forever to where i feel like all that has built me up to where my mind is today well your mind is there but do you do you have a concern like what we were talking about before with cain velasquez that your mind might be too strong for the tissue too

132:25strong for the ligaments too strong for the joints i mean this is what i worry about with a guy like you yeah there's gonna come you're not mentally strong yeah i have no fear of that at all no my concern was with a guy like kane velasquez the guy there's there's certain people that are worried that they might do too much or push too hard but the problem is the only way you become a cane velazquez or become you is to have that mindset to begin with joe how how else can you see ken velasquez fighting can't see it can't see it anywhere i can't see him training any other way that's what made kane yeah and and and i think that's all part of the plan like there's a time for everybody there's a time that there was a time designed for tyron woodley to become champion to be champion there's a time for me to be champion and to reign as a champion there's a time for everybody of course

133:19i'm and like i said i like to take all this different knowledge that i get and i like to put it all together so of course my coaches aren't now that no one would tell me yo just go home like you you look great my mind i want to freaking go harder and they're like you've done great go home so where i'm listening and i'm i'm giving them the lead on that but the way i train is what's gotten me here you know the way cain train is what's gotten him there now it's the responsibility of not just kane but everybody else that's around him that he really confides in to to let him know when it's too much and when it's not too much yeah well with kane there's so many issues now because the the surgeries have been so extensive and back surgery and knee surgeries and reconstructions not just meniscus like you but the actual structure of the knee itself one thing that yeah one thing that i

134:08would always say is cain you you can't always with with cain with anybody else's the human body and the human mind is so powerful you can never say oh man that's if it's over for that guy or that guy's never gonna be the same no you never know you never know like kane you know much respect kane can come back and be a savage and still run through guys for the next year or two for sure you'll never know that so i mean if he gets his knee fixed i don't know what the extent of that that injury was but yeah i'm you know i'm hopeful and uh optimistic that he's gonna be back soon you know but there's i feel like there's a time for everybody and if cain doesn't fight like that can you imagine kane fighting any other way cautious or point fighting there's an argument that is the best ufc heavyweight ever he's for so for sure one of the best ufc heavyweights ever

135:05absolutely no i mean not even a question yeah now when do they have you fighting colby when is that supposed to take place i don't know you know i think it's uh i have to get healthy first for a long long time i've been fighting hurt but i just like i don't want to send you down to panama yeah i'm going to give you that guy's number definitely i'm going to contact dr riordan give it to you i've been fighting her for so long you know like whether it's me or there there's been training camps where i could barely walk like while not training walk walk for i think the last two years my daughter laughs at me i come down the stairs backwards really i go downstairs backwards because it relieves pressure on my knees jesus christ and my daughter laughs at me but i it was it was a time when i couldn't walk that's crazy before the leon edwards fight i fought leon edwards years ago before that fight

136:01i could barely walk i mean i you not joe walk down to and from the house like from the car to the house it was it was in pain i walked on grass i couldn't walk on concrete because i felt like that relieved a little bit more stress like that's the extent of the pain that i've been in some of these fights that is insane now this is during the camp during the camp just to make it to the fire just walking on grass instead of concrete walking on grass instead of concrete because these are softer that's christ and it doesn't it's not as much hard hard surface to walk on so just when the fight came on you just put it all aside yeah when i walk through that cage it let's go this is a matter of me getting maybe ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars let's go i chose to be here instead of sitting in front of it instead of sitting at a desk earning money so providing for my family

136:50this is how i'm going to do it and like i said joe like my daughter lit a freaking fire on me joe yeah man i uh when i that was an adorable moment man and you had her you carried her ah yeah you put the belt on i want her to uh she's looking around but she yeah when she grows up i want her to uh remember that forever because uh she lit a fire i part of remember we were talking about um that the tank that you have in there part of why i'm a little scared to be locked in those tanks is because i'm i've never been claustrophobic ever in my life i never was but there was a time when i found out that i was gonna have her that my girl was pregnant with her at the time i um i'm freaking living with rashad evans i have no money in my bank account i'm broke as hell and i'm having a child and i'm not married yet and and these are especially these are these principles your african parents

137:51like you gotta be married and things like that i'm not married yet of course her mom is a phenomenal woman phenomenal and i'm not married and all these things is happening i was my mind i was panicking and i fight before that i just lost this was right after i lost the second fight now i'm getting ready for the third fight and there was this doctor doctor's office that would go in and sleep in the hyperbaric chamber because we heard it was better for your body and stuff like that so i'd be doing it here and there once a week i'd go in and sleep in the like the plastic ones they zip you up in there and it compresses up and i was in there and one time i was in there and uh i started thinking i usually pass out and when i it starts to decompress i wake up i'm in that thing and i wake up you know but it hasn't decompressed yet you know so i never really thought

138:42anything of it i'm just kind of in there and i'm in this office in this room it's dark because the nurses they flip the light off and they go on about their business tending to other patients and i'm like oh okay i gotta fight this fight i got i got i got choked down my last fight fam okay this might happen again let's do it like they say this dude is tough they saying this dude's tough he could scrap i'm about to have a daughter i'm broke i got no money i gotta win this fight cause i'm fighting for like two thousand dollars one at one if i win two thousand dollars all this is going through my head now this tank hasn't decompressed the room is dark no i'm hearing nothing no nurses so now i start to get hot i mean the thing and i started getting a little hot in the tank i'm like okay so now my body's getting a little hot i'm laying there now i start dripping my forehead is dripping sweat

139:44so i'm trying to control my relax bro you've done this so many times relax you got this you got this it takes you good i can't see the clock so i don't know how much time has gone by now i'm freaking the out my mind is like i'm stuck in this tube i don't know what's going on i i am i dying here i don't know what's going on these you gotta get me out of here oh no so i'm like relax relax so i'm bringing my mind back i'm relaxed take a deep breath you good you good what you don't you worried about now i'm having this conversation in my mind back and forth my relax you good so i relax i'm like i think how you gonna knock this dude out jab jab one two boom okay so now i'm calm i'm calm but what if he counted with the left hand boom now you knocked out now i'm sweaty jesus christ joe i said you know i was sweating so bad so i started tapping on the thing like

140:44you know i don't want to freak out because i i still got to be cool i won't let these nurses know like i'm freaking i'm a fighter i'm freaking out in this tank so i'm tapping on the thing i'm like you know i'm trying to ask them like hey uh how much time we got left just to at least hear another voice right nothing nothing there they can't hear me because it's loud the tank is loud and i'm relaxed i'm full-on panic attack in there full-on panic attack and i'm trying to bring myself back i'm calming myself down and i'm sweating heavily like profusely now i'm just dripping and all of a sudden i'm tapping this thing hard and a nurse walks in as soon as she walks in and flips the line i hear the machine start to decompress oh thank god and i'm like she opens and you're okay like yeah i'm good you know it's just you know just getting a little hot but i had a full-blown panic attack in

141:46there i have not been in a hole in a hyperbaric chamber since i tried it one time i probably could have done it but i was just helping you i couldn't really tell my body was so damaged at the time like i'm so crazy on my body like it's hard for me to tell it's supposed to heighten recovery yeah it's supposed to heighten it but i i after that day like i i certain things kind of make me feel a certain way like i've had tons of mris after that but they freak me out because you put me in the mri machine especially when you got to do the head one i gotta go in head first i don't like those i have to give my i have to give myself a pep talk and calm myself down and go in there to do those now like i just did one the other last week before i had my surgery and the ladies trying to put me i'm like yo i just got an mr i got the disc from the last one that i did last week

142:36yeah the doctor said i could just bring this disc in and i'm good she's like the doctor wants us to get a new one i'm like you sure about that like i already got the same desk here like no we gotta do one i'm like how long is it gonna be 40 minutes 40 minutes because my shoulders are wide so i'm in there tight right and the machine is right here yeah a noise and it's like yeah i'm just it's uh i have to give my mind a pep talk and i'm just like relax bro what you mean man you good you you got this you can do this and i look at you know i'm like let's go let's go let's do it let's knock it out boom then we're doing it and god forbid i i i freaking wake up or my mind starts wandering 20 minutes in that i'm just halfway panic attack through the rest but i'll get through it yeah it's scary but you know since that day you know um and it was it was crazy like i at that point when i was

143:43a pregnant were pregnant my daughter i was just like am i gonna survive i can't keep asking this grown man rashad that works hard to support me i can't do that i gotta make my own i gotta do this so i was scared i was scared i didn't know what was gonna happen and then all of a sudden you know right when we're having her we have her boom boom the opportunity comes out we're going to do the ultimate fighter i said no i don't want to do the ultimate fighter and there was i was like yo bro you got to do this i end up doing the ultimate fighter boom i win the ultimate fighter boom i fight for the finale boom i do this like roller coaster boom boom boom boom boom all the hard work everything that i've been putting it boom starts paying off paying off now i'm making 10 or 10. okay you feel like that's that's enough to be able to you know sustain me until i got to fight

144:27again i gotta fight again gotta fight it yeah boom this happens this happens i get with you know amazing manager ali abdulaziz who freaking you know help just transform the career take it to the next level you know and get with him and now things are going the way that i i you know i've been wanting them to go boom boom boom boom everything's man and it was just it's just motivation to keep working like and every time i look at my daughter how innocent she is how sweet and wonderful she is man it just freaking it transforms me to where i'm and there's a video and i even have a video of uh of her because she's been coming to the gym with me ever since she was six months old i should take her to the gym mom's at work she'd come to the gym with me and when she comes to the gym she knows what i do she watches me do it all the time there's this video where she's she'll

145:15have she has a gloves and she hits the bag too when i when i work out and i was doing a circuit i was getting ready for a fight and she's running around with me and she's cheering me on she's like let's go daddy i'm so proud of him and like tailing to my coach and she's like come on daddy like and i watch those videos and i'm just like i was always one of those hard guys like man i ain't gonna be no sucker when i have kids like i ain't gonna be acting like that i can't watch a video with her and not smile it's the craziest thing to me people don't have children will never totally understand that no it's a different it's a different fire that they they light underneath you man and if you don't get motivated once you have kids you're never going to get motivated no they probably shouldn't have just been doing that anyways it changed my life for sure yeah she is um man she's she's my little

146:06she's my little rider she rides with me she i love her to death man i can't nothing i can't explain it i can't explain it she is she's my she's my plus one that's what i call that's my best no matter whatever i do in life from now on she's a plus one she's with me that's amazing yeah i gotta find the video but it's so funny it's so funny when i'm i'm i'm doing like a circuit and i'm running around and then you could see her run around like come on daddy i'm so proud of him so she's just hanging out like no one's watching her no she's just hanging she's just hanging out with she's a good little girl like ever since she was six months old i put in a stroll in her car seat just put her by the side of the mat boom she just watched me train for two hours wow two hours to when she got to you know a certain point where we had like a daycare in the gym and she would go in the gym she would go

147:02to the daycare and she was she was good there and then to the point where now like the kids that are in our gym are around similar age and and our coach's wife henry pookie she does a good job and she'll just watch them you know but they govern themselves they just play around on the other side run around but it's not like they're around harmful things in the gym you know they just have a good time that's great that you have that environment yeah man she's like i said like a lot of people like oh man she's so beautiful you you're gonna be no i'm not worried like my daughter's gonna have a nice one two and a half low kick and you know whoever can deal with that hey good luck wow yeah man but yeah she lit that fire and um and i dreamt about that moment so it's so surreal joe i think about that moment like when you're interviewing me like i freaking forgot your name

147:55while you're interviewing me i'm like joe wait your name is yeah your name is joe it's gotta be surreal when they put that belt around you for the first time yeah because i imagined this so many times let me be let me ask you something honestly do you like the new belt or the old belt initially i used to talk see i was like man not cause you that's the way you picture that old building because and we're human beings people don't like change right you know that was the thing it's like oh man it should look like a spaceship but that thing is phenomenal that's your belt phenomenal i that new belt now is phenomenal it's amazing beautiful it's beautiful of course i always wanted that old belt you know but now it's like comparing two no like this new belt's got all these colors and this country flags on it and the stones it's amazing like you know the people

148:42that are all the ones that are still hating on it and say oh no don't change wait till you put that belt on you wait till you hold that thing and it's super heavy and i'm mad it's amazing it's amazing i love it what did you think about that uh the deal today where all the pay-per-views are going to be on espn plus uh ufc baby these guys are hey there's always a way to cut out the metal man yeah i guess so yeah hopefully this is the thing is my hope is now the pay-per-view scale for the fighters bumps that's what i hope but i hope the numbers stay high because people have to subscribe now oh espn i believe i'm not sure no that can't be because if you're paying your money like unless you get it free like because if you're what it is it says you have to subscribe to espn plus in order to get a pay-per-view well how does that work with people that are out of the country i believe it's

149:44cheaper that i think it's the same price you're paying at the end of the day because i think it was like 65 or 70. yeah but now you get a subscription 60 instead of 65. right and it comes with the subscription right so you have but you have to subscribe and you can cancel at any time so you can subscribe so you have to re what if someone only wants to buy one or two pay-per-views a year they re-subscribe every time i guess yeah i mean yeah i mean it's yeah it works i mean if you really want to i hope it doesn't mess with the numbers but i wish brandon shot was in here so he could talk some you and i can't talk some about this but if shaw was here oh man brandon brandon another guy that's i think brandon's doing his shows got big he's huge like he's doing phenomenal yeah i i went to one of his shows down in uh florida west palm yeah florida and um i gotta spread the shot i didn't

150:35think he was funny i'm like yesterday he's been shot i was bored at night like let's go to a brandon shop show and i go and he was freaking funny he told the whole story man and i was impressed man man hats off to brennan's shop like he was funny he just basically all he did was tell his story of what's going on and what went on in his life in his career but the the twist it was freaking funny i went backstage towards the end i was like man that show was funny i didn't think you were fighting me but that was that was amazing i loved it well he's showing fighters that there's a path outside of fighting absolutely he makes way more money now than he ever made during fighting times and he's doing well and he's happy and he's he's fulfilled he's got two great podcasts that he's doing he does comedy shows he just did just filmed a showtime special he's doing that's amazing and which

151:24is uh excuse me part of um like all this whole people are giving tyrion and giving him for you know doing music or doing movies and all this stuff like that man nah man more power to him i'm glad that he's doing that because that's what we want you want all these different revenue streams to where you don't have to get punched in the face yeah you're 50. you gotta have an excellent strategy yeah and i and i love that and i appreciate that that's what i want to do like can you freaking imagine me and francis in the next black panther like you can see it right like what perfect shoot what perfect we should definitely be in that whoever is making that movie cast him for that hey yeah francis in ghana you don't need to teach us accents at all like i'm from i'm from nigeria there's no team you have to teach me i have my own accent you can teach them you know yeah i can

152:17teach them it's not authentic yeah so you know yeah i i commend them for that man you know about an exit strategy absolutely what do you think i want to do all that like i don't know i've been commentating i work with titan fc down in south florida that's an amazing show too you know i commented very good fighters come out of there very good like i mean they sometimes i'm watching fast i'm like these guys fought each other for one and one yeah and they're crazy like good good they want to get into the big show absolutely yeah so man yeah i commentate for them i think that's on espn that's not ufc yeah and so um yeah i want to get into movies i've been you know practicing i i think i can do like i'm not in no way saying what they do is easy like those actors like i know they work hard to be able to transform and make people feel a certain way and evoke certain

153:08emotions from different people with your characters that's a real art so i respect that and i want to learn more about that and yeah i definitely want i want to do movies to get more famous richer and not get punched in the face oh for sure absolutely what about doing a podcast you ever thought of that yeah i would love it you know i just agree with this i just haven't been approached with the right you know with the right situation no no no no no no beautiful thing about podcast you don't need anybody yeah you don't need you just need a tape player you could use it on your phone you could record what you think there's great little tiny microphones that stick in the bottom of your iphone and it worked great and you just sit down and talk about yeah we'll have to give that a try what i don't want right now is is something that distract me right because i i'm not

153:56one of those guys where oh yeah i gotta fight now i gotta be in training camp you know and if i don't have a fight i'm just doing whatever i want you know i freaking practice every day i'm going to practice because i it's like my life right now doesn't know i don't know what to do if i don't go to practice right so so while you're recovering from the surgery yeah i'm going to try some different things does it feel good though to just like just slow down a little bit smell the roses not really because this whole week i couldn't freaking train like i wanted to go to the gym and at least yeah hit the back excuse me hit the bag or something or just you know because i think i'm an addict of that burn of course that that that that burn of a workout whether it's lifting or push-ups or doing something pushing yourself yeah i'm an addict of that and so when i don't have that it's kind of like

154:46well that's what you're doing you you and that's what made you the champion i mean that that engine that's inside you that's what made you the champion it only makes sense yeah well if you if you really could just relax and kick back i'd be nervous yeah i'm going damn look at them because that's what they say they're like oh you changed now you changed you is a different person now you know you don't got hollywood on us you don't i hate when people say that yeah it's a gross thing people say people just love to come up with some excuses yeah for why they don't do as well as you or why oh one that i was gonna bring up too is i i saw you do uh because when i started researching you and watching your stuff i saw the podcast you did with uh freaking jamie foxx years ago he's amazing i i i mean i'm such a huge i'm a huge jamie foxx fan so like talented i mean talking to him

155:38with triple threat he could do anything how many people can do he does stand up comedy like chicks are in trouble sings incredible yeah women are in trouble oh my god he can make you laugh he can make you laugh he can serenade you with his voice and he can freaking act and a lot of dudes are lucky he's not gay how about that leave me in trouble no he's amazing man he's he's such a genuine guy too yeah like is i've known him for a long time but he's a academy award-winning actor when he comes in and hangs out with you you would never imagine it i i that's that's what i grab the energy's like that is what i mean he's so normal it's like it's like shot evans yeah shot is the same way yeah and those energies i really gravitate towards yes and i love yeah people who don't take themselves seriously yeah but they do they do of course like they do but they don't pretend they're better

156:34than you or anything like i ran into jamie at a gas station like six six seven months ago wait what time was this normal time like during the day he was actually with his daughter she was coming from a martial arts class and uh i'm getting gas and this guy pulls up in this crazy car like i never saw one of these things before i forget what it's called some weird suv that looks like it's from the future really like oh the lamborghini no no it's not a lamborghini it's some crazy he knows the guy who makes him oh it's crazy i mean i don't even know what the it is i never saw one before i'm like what is this thing and i'm looking at this thing and then the dude rolls down the window goes what's up joe i go oh what's up jamie what the is this man yeah he's so normal he jumps out of the car and starts talking people just start coming up to him and he's like hey what's up how you

157:22doing every just totally normal you know what i i kind of i feel a little bit of that right yeah because it's tired because i still do the same like i i'm still still go to the same little nutrition shop that i go to get a protein shake here and there and i still go to this like i took my daughter to the movies before i left yeah so go to ipec and i just roll it it's just me me and her perfect you know we're just freaking wrong as long as you can and people are i and people ask for pictures and and i think one guy one time says like bro i can't i can't believe you're here bro like bro you stairs bro like this one guy was like bro you you here bro like who's mom bro can i get a bro can i get a picture with you bro like he almost like crying i was like i was like yeah bro of course you can get a yeah you want me to take it which angle let me take a couple i'm

158:11snapping the picture and i'm kidding but they it just couldn't believe the fact that i'm normal yeah you know that you're people are just normal people are just normal people are just people there's just people you in you know i think one of the great things about someone who accomplishes something is pretty spectacular is that you didn't just do that and win the world title but you set a lot of people in motion you know how many people watch that must've been pumped up and excited about it and then started doing things there's probably a lot of people that decide to start fighting because watch that i mean millions of people watch that fight so stop and think about how many different people must have been inspired by that how many different people saw the highlights on instagram and on twitter and on youtube and how many people got fired up because of that

158:57and that's what i'm thankful for joe i'm thankful for the opportunity shout out to the ufc for creating such a business and a market now into words you can touch so many people all across the world because yeah that's and fighting is one thing that's universal language it doesn't matter if you speak russian you speak english you speak you know igbo or yoruba it doesn't matter yeah you know fighting right this this right this everybody knows that you don't have to know the rules everybody it's not like cricket yeah it's universal so it's one of those things that that's a sport that's gonna it's gonna grow it's only gonna get bigger and bigger man shout out to the ufc dana you know hunter all these guys lorenzo fertitta all these guys that created this and packaged it to the way it is now because it's given us platforms to be able to touch people and yeah and i i i truly am

159:48i'm aware of what that could have done for certain people certain people yeah i might have not thought of an individual person but someone you know i might have inspired someone to start fighting that come from where i come from or somewhere in china indonesia anywhere anywhere else yeah yeah so i'm thankful i'm very thankful for that yeah i mean that is a big part of what a champion is i mean we were talking earlier about marvin hagler or different fighters that i watched when i was a kid coming up those people give you energy you know this is something about watching someone do something spectacular they give you energy and when you hear a story like yours you know a kid who immigrates to the united states at eight years old and goes through all the that you went through and becomes a world champion people hear that man it makes it gets them off the couch man it gets them to do things

160:36it does and and um i think about during that fight is there was two other guys two special guests that i had come to the fight and they were both nigerian nightmares you know in their respectable rights sports and right uh christian okoye you know kansas city chiefs running back was called the nigerian nightmare because he was a terror you know who christian are you getting the whole christian of course i don't know anything about football it was all up jamie's laughing man yeah he was a monster man he was like uh i think he was 200 like 260 pound running back like i'm talking mack truck running through you know and he has speed and power so he was considered a nigerian nightmare so he was one of those first guys that people really resonated as a nigerian nightmare in american sports and i never watched him play live of course not but these are the guys that create such a legacy to where

161:33when you're growing up somehow you hear about that legacy and that inspired me to want to be great bearing that nickname and also samuel peters i don't know if you know samuel peters wbc heavyweight champion in the world was at the fight oh no and man uh these guys are man i i i didn't i never saw him fight live but he created such a legacy to where i heard about him yeah i had to research them and these guys inspired me to where now having that nickname you gotta you know i have to hold it to the highest regards i have to do the best that i can to be able to inspire many many kids that are gonna come you know in the future so man i'm i'm thankful for the opportunity and just grateful as i'm i'm i'm a humble little kid from nigeria you know i used to walk around barefoot step on nails glasses you know things like that and now look where we at now we rocking shoes designers baby

162:30dude you're the ufc welterweight champion of the world undisputed yeah man i mean it's pretty incredible yeah does it feel real no i mean i i still feel normal i don't feel anything but you know you're the champ yeah i mean but i think part of why it feels the way it does it because i've known for a long time like i i've felt like it for a long time i've i've known nothing's going to change the way i'm going to train for these fights nothing's going to train change in the my mentality i'm going to approach these fights all the same it's still as fight as a fight it's not oh i'm trying to defend this or i'm trying to hold on to this i don't give a i'm still going in there to dominate you from start to finish to break you mentally so you never want to freaking fight me again that's my approach to every fight so nothing changes i don't feel different everyone

163:17the only thing now is that's cool everyone's like treat me a little different people kind of you know people hold doors for me now and like that and hopefully you're making a load more money well yeah that's that's all you heard that dana yes hopefully uh hopefully that but um that's the only difference like i don't feel different i don't act any different at least i hope not no when we were talking earlier about guys who like to trash talk and what trash talking is kind of doing for the sport whether it's good or bad you know and some guys are really funny with it like connor's hilarious with it amazing there's something about that that is like when jeremy stephen said something about he's like who the is that guy i mean the most famous line in sports yeah i mean it's i mean oh man i mean how many times has that been repeated oh shout out to jeremy stevens too yeah i like love germany

164:14always he's a beast yeah but i think that that's not the only way a guy can sell a lot of pay-per-views a guy can also sell a lot of pay-per-views about being exceptional and that was the case with george st pierre like george c pierre was never a trash talker and still sold a shitload of pay-per-views yeah i think i think we're as human as human beings humans can kind of tell the energy yeah if it's a fake energy yeah see people can tell people uh put off by it well people are also enamored of people that are exceptional you know yes if you just ex you can just be exceptional you don't have to just be talking all the time and start pushing each other at press conferences it's not the only way no but then you get those you know you get the majority of the the shitty fans who who likes that stuff who wants to see you too yeah there's a few who even though they know it's fake they

165:07just still like that they just well they want to see it you know so they put that pressure on people like no you got to do this you have to do that because those are the guys that are going to tweet you don't worry you don't tell you to do things do they they tell you no they give you advice on how to talk or no no i mean dana's never once said you got to talk you gotta do this you gotta right no they don't do that do you feel though that sometimes they show you that by favoring guys who do do that like like when colby got a shot at the interim title before you yeah because this is the thing is when someone starts doing that and they're starting to trend a lot more of course the company gets behind them because the company's about money it's about grain like they gotta make money right that's one thing that i understand more than anything right now they're about green like people say oh

165:56danny hates me because this and that they the only race dana cares about is green like if you're gonna make money dana cares right and so and i think that once someone starts doing that and they're starting to create a little they're starting to have a little buzz of course dana's gonna push because bad guys might bring in money making more money so i understand that aspect of it but it's not i don't think it's dana necessarily saying oh man you gotta act like this you gotta do this because this is what sells no conor did it and if conor connor became who he became so yeah conor is going to be favored because conor brings in millions and millions of dollars habib did it his way and now habib brings him when he you know he's favored so he's going to bring in money and things like that but dan is not going around saying you got to be like this guy you got to be like that guy you know

166:44bisping did it his way right you know being brought in money george did it his way it's just as long as you want to be real what you choose to do you're going to be real with yourself because at the end of the day you have to look at yourself in the mirror yes if you can do what you want to do and then at the end of the day look in the mirror when everyone's gone it's just you you take a piss in the morning and then you wake up look at yourself in your mind you're like i'm all right then that's fine dude do you beautiful beautifully put you're a bad tomorrow my man joe thanks for doing this man thank you it's a pleasure thanks for telling people your story and inspiring people and i wish you nothing but the best thank you man thank you appreciate it camaro usman ladies and gentlemen the champ you