Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher, and Gordon Ryan: Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher & Gordon Ryan: The Greatest of All Time
Guests: Georges St-Pierre, John Danaher, and Gordon Ryan
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
Contents12 chapters
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Humans are fascinated by violence and you've got to ask yourself. Why is it the rash guard? Yes
And I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this is gonna be rough
You're learning this shut the fuck up. I got you man. You were powered by McDonald's and Coca-Cola
I want more and then I smacked him and he didn't want to fight anymore
If George St. Pierre and Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins
I
Am here with three individuals
Each of whom are considered by many to be the greatest of all time in each of their respective disciplines
The greatest MMA fighter of all time George St. Pierre the greatest martial arts coach of all time
John Donahue and
the greatest submission grappler of all time
Gordon Ryan
So let me ask the first question you guys didn't see the question no preparation here
What is the key to your success each of you one thing or multiple things that come to mind?
John go first
Is it the rash guard
Yes, I
Like that you choose John right off the bat seem the most nervous
Give the right answer for me. It's about
Finding a way to work in
a world where
Most of the answers are already known
Okay in any developed sport
by the time you enter that sport most of the basic precepts through the
the major techniques that the major mechanical understandings of the sport are long since worked out and so
in a highly developed world
The key to success is to be able to identify
Some area of the industry that you're in which is currently undervalued
To do what the other people are not doing
deeper than that you're you're
Everyone has a view of okay. These are the the main skills of the industry I work in
at any given time
some set of skills
attributes
Will always be somewhat undervalued they're underappreciated by the people in the game
You see that at any in any given industry there are always trends which change
The nature of the industry over time so
fashion trends in the clothing industry, you'll see at any given time there's a
General wave of fashion which pushes most of the people in the industry in a given direction at a given time
What makes people stand out is the ability to look at the various possibilities out there and say here is something which is genuinely?
useful, but which is currently being underused underutilized and I want to bring that back in and
develop it and
Because it's an inherently useful product
It will be very very successful in its initial applications against people who aren't currently using it
If you can do this in whatever industry you're in I believe you'll be highly successful
so this implies both for actual specific like techniques and
the also tactics as well in the case of
Jiu-jitsu so for example in my sport leg locks have always been around okay?
There's there's no shortage of people you can look back in history who are applying leg locks
nonetheless as in across the industry
Leg locks were undervalued and underappreciated. There was a general sense in which most of the leading figures of the sport
for most of the history of the sport of jiu-jitsu tended to de-emphasize leg locks and
When I looked at them I said there was immense potential, but it wasn't being realized and needed to be changed
Since then that has more or less occurred now most people coming into the sport understand that leg locks are an important
Aspect and they're no longer undervalued if anything it's gone too far the other way and now perhaps they're a little overvalued
and the
this kind of
fashion trend exists in every industry and
The job of anyone who wants to excel in a given industry is to be able to identify
okay, what are the things that are currently out of fashion and undervalued and then
Look at what is their actual objective value and then work?
To to to bring them back to the forefront so John brought up fashion
George is wearing a really sexy shirt so
Assuming that's not the reason is there
Is there something that comes to mind as the key to the success of your incredible career?
Well, of course everybody knows the famous answer that every athletes are saying. Oh, it could be genetic
I was maybe gifted that certain predisposition. I worked really hard
but I think
Something that people don't talk enough is when everybody sometime go, right? I
Was never afraid to try to go left and I felt many time trying to do things that were not
Known to be things that would bring me brought me success, but I tried it, you know
I was very often. I was the first of trying new things and I felt many time but certain times
it gave me a certain advantage and
for example, I
was sometime fighting guys that had much better wrestling background and than me on paper and
nobody before that fought those guys never nobody had dare to try to
Take them down because their wrestling pedigree were so good
And I didn't have on paper that wrestling pedigree to take these guys down in a fight
but when everybody
Tried to go right I was going left I fought them in a different way and that was
The blueprint to beat certain some of these guys, you know, I mean, you know what I mean?
So yeah, so we'll actually talk about a few fights where that you did just that this is fascinating
But let's say at the high level. So Gordon again sticking on fashion may I compliment your
Incredible badass hat trying to fit in here
We should say we're in Texas now, so he's
Become a Texan overnight. So what is there something you can speak to that you would attribute to as the key to your success?
yeah, so first of all, it has to be a rule where you don't ask us all the same questions because
How am I supposed to compete with the answer John just gave
There's nothing I can do that's gonna top that. Yeah, but uh, I think it's uh,
There's many things but I think the number one thing is just is John
When I came in I was a blue belt and I was beating brown and black belts in competition already
But he really changed my way of thinking about the sport
I would just come in and if something wasn't working
I would just do it harder and faster and more aggressively and that just degenerated me into a degenerated into
me spastically knee sliding into cross Hashi Gourami against Eddie Cummings for six months and then just getting heel hooked repeatedly and
I'm like, this is not working and Eddie like when I met him was like a chubby
Librarian looking guy and I'm like there's no Mike six to like a jacked like 170 and I'm like there's no way I'm losing
To a guy who looks like this, but he just kept heel looking me
So I would just go harder and harder and it wouldn't work and then John's like well
If you learned leg locks, you might you might have some more success and then I was like, yeah, that probably makes sense
And from then on I kind of just changed the way I thought about the sport instead of doing doing things harder
I would actually try to get better at your jitsu. You remember like a turning point where
you became as opposed to being mediocre not just in technique, but an approach to
- great
I think it was somewhere around brown belt level when I was training
Consistently started training full-time with John when I was purple belt mid-level purple belt and towards the end of my brown belt
Days, I was beating up like legitimate like a DCC champions in the gym
So I think like brown to black belt was a big thing for me
And then when I won my first EBI and I was I submitted Yuri who won a DCC and I beat roost them
So I think that was like my turning point as a competitor
But I think I started to to reach world level a little bit before that
I think somewhere around brown belt mid-level to late level brown belt
It was some of that mental like it was there a moment when you like after a training session
You realized I can actually do this. I could be at the top of the world
I'm your class the critical moment for me was when I think it was right
Right when I got my black belt, maybe a few months before I got my black belt
we had a former ADCC champion come into the gym and
we did a hard round together and I think I submitted him like four or five times and
No one knew who I was
I never won anything up into that point and I was like, okay
Like if this is like one of the best guys in the world and I could submit him multiple times around
I think that this is like something that I actually could do professionally and make a make a career out of this
Okay. So the actual performance was the like you don't need to believe before you could perform like a lot of
Olympic gold medalists
they
They have to believe before they can perform because like they're getting their ass kicked for a long long long time
Yeah, I think but the best way for me to believe in something is to have repeated success doing it against high-level guys
Like I'm not gonna just believe I can do a double leg if I can't a double leg on anybody
So for me the the belief came from the repeated success in the gym
Yeah, but to get to the point where you're submitting somebody like Yuri Samoa is like one of the greatest grapplers ever
It's like a long journey
Yeah
But I had the confidence I had the belief in myself because of the success that I had in the gym
Prior to that got it
Even and it's one step at a time first. It's the Brown Bells. Then it's the black belts and it's world-class. Okay
George was there a turning point for you when you you thought like I can actually do this
Yes, I I always dreamed to become champion
But I think the turning point that there was there was two turning point
And there were my two losses
First my losses to Matt Hughes I went into that fight
Just to not lose I was not fighting to win and it's after the fight when I watched the
The replay of the fight I realized I was like I was doing pretty well
But during the fight in my own mind, I was not seeing it that way
I thought I was getting dominated by you was like a hundred percent when I watched the replay I
Was like man, I can I can beat this guy. I was beating him until I made that stupid mistake
so I was very frustrating but but
That's what gave me the mentally the the championship level
mentality and then I became a little bit overconfident because I start beating everybody after that and
I
Start to believe the hype of people when they look at me. They were like, oh, he's the new up incoming
superstar and he's gonna be unstoppable and and then when I became champion, I I
lost to to to Matt to Matt Sarah, so
before I I believe
my first failure was because I had a lack of confidence and
And my second failure was I was because I was over confidence, so I think it's there's a perfect
Center of confidence. I mean, I mean it's good to be confident because I like John taught me like confidence
It's it's like money in your bank account if you you can have all the skills in the world, right?
and and if you're if you don't have the confidence, it's like you it's like you can
You can be a millionaire, but you don't have access to your bank account
So it's that's a little bit the analogy that John told me so that's how I feel a confidence plays for an athlete
But to be overconfident, I think it's always good to to be aware to be afraid of
What can happen so to have a perfect balance of confidence and fear to me?
That's what mentally gave me the edge to become I believe successful in my sport
Playing off that John gave me a speech one time and he was like you have to be able to
like flip a switch and turn it off where like a guy like Mayweather or someone who goes out who's super confident and
He plays the character of someone who's like no one can beat me
I'm the best that there ever was and and that's it
But if you look at me actually trained very hard
You can't you can't play the persona of no one can beat me and have it translate into your life
And you think that you're so good that you don't have to do anything and no one could ever beat you
You have to be able to play that public persona of no one could beat me
But then you have to actually do the training to make that happen
You can't just you can't believe your own hype and say say that you know
I can just do whatever I want
No one's ever gonna beat me if the able to switch between the persona and the actual athlete and that made a big difference for
me it's tough because
like you're you you dominate such a large fraction of the world in in grappling and
The George to just the perfect dominance after those two
It's hard for the confidence not to just
Like how do you avoid the confidence not becoming a thing that weighs you down where you completely
deludes your mind
For me, it's just well number one the guys in the gym are so tough
So the guys in the guys in the gym that I train with are always like nipping at my butt and always giving me new
New problems to solve and for me, it's really just about trying to learn new stuff over time
So that keeps it interesting for me and it's not really about
You know, no one could beat me I don't have to train or have to do it
I could do whatever I want
It's more
What keeps me in the gym is more about the fact that I'm learning new stuff all the time and working on something new and progressing
to new levels at all times, it's not I don't just come in and do the same thing over and over again and
That gets boring. You just come in and you don't learn anything new and you just do the same stuff for years at a time
And okay, okay
This is boring
But when you have new stuff to work on and new goals short term and long-term goals to reach then it makes it interesting
it's a
For me, it's a little bit like Gordon says is the fair because sometime in the gym
I even before I when I was competing I was I was getting my butt kicked
But I don't care what happened in the gym
I mean it hit my ego, of course because I'm a proud person
I'm a competitor even in the gym, but it's not a malicious competition
§02Transcript · 15:15–30:33
Competition in between each other when you fight you have to be malicious you go there to hurt the guy
but it it hit it hit me in terms of my pride when I get
beat in a gym, of course, but
that fear
That I don't want it to happen in public
especially not during a fight that what keeps help me keeps the balance between confidence and and and
Fear, you know what? I mean? It's kind of weird. It's a mix
It's a mixture of both that I believe I to me
Help me
Succeed to have the right mindset to fight and I talk so much shit that I'm like man if I lose this
This is gonna be rough. So yeah, you put a lot of I mean
That's that's the hard thing to do when you talk shit when you when you play the heel is
So much to perform the pressure is I mean you have to be good under pressure. It's the Conor McGregor thing
You know, the reason I actually started talking shit was actually like indirectly because of George
because because I will become the opposite of George I won I won my first EBI and I
didn't talk shit and everyone was like being like, oh, you know, you only beat Yuri because because he was tired or
You know this or that and if they have a rematch under any of the rules that he would have lost
And I'm like trying to figure out what I'm gonna do
So I'm scrolling through George's feed one day and he posted a clip of him beating someone and I look at the comments that I'm
With this in mind. I'm like George is the nicest person of all time. And if you look at the comments
it's like 10,000 comments and like
9,000 and 900 are just people calling him like all you do is lay and pray you pussy you suck
You can't finish anybody and I'm just I'm looking at this and I'm like people are gonna say what they're gonna say regardless
They're gonna talk shit regardless. So you may as well just say whatever you want and then just be yourself
Is there some aspect that's I mentioned Conor McGregor?
He uh, he crossed the line with Khabib
At least in the eyes of Khabib. Is there something you ever
Regret about crossing a line or does that you ever feel like there's a line or do you just keep pushing the line?
Uh, I basically play it per per person
I just I basically fire back with like one step above what what they do. It's always plus one. Yeah. Yeah, okay
So I go I usually go hard like they fire a bullet then I drop a Duke
And then and then after that initial shot and we go back and forth and I'll just keep one upping them
So, you know, there's a lot of people that love you, but there's also a lot of people that love to hate you. Yeah
so
like what do those people like energize you or do you just
Or is it funny to you? Like what as an athlete as a performer? You should not think about them
It's like a fun thing
It's like it's just like a fun thing that keeps me occupied
Like because like because most of them that like talk shit. They like just say stuff that's factually incorrect
So then I just argue with like actual statistics. Yeah, it's just like
You suck or you're not gonna beat this person. I'm like I've already submitted that guy
So I just it riles them up and it's just it's just a fun thing for me to do my my downtime
Yeah, your responses are usually very factual very scientific. I appreciate
Thank you. You actually you start by talking trash, but then you respond with science. Yeah, it's great
Okay, it's good mix. That's a good mix. I
Mean a topic of haters are more specifically sort of doubts within yourself or doubts around you as you're coming up
Maybe George you can comment. I would just think ignoring John completely in this conversation. I
Was gonna ask you another question, but let me just ask you on this on this topic
Are there times in your life yet?
You were surrounded by people that doubted you all the time
And so what is there something you could say as in by way of advice how you overcome?
The doubt either yourself or others around you all the time
The first time I
Manifest my desire to become a professional mix martial art athlete. Everybody doubt me
Just not even I'm not talking about the UFC just to become a professional fighter
Everybody doubt me and I became a I became a professional fighter. I had few amateur fight
I won them all then I fought my first fight in
Montreal I won and I became a professional
Then I I told people that I wanted to fight in UFC. Everybody doubt me again. So it's a normal thing
So I work my way up beat a few guys. Then I at the time Pete spread was
just not knocked out Robbie Lawler with leg kick and
The person was my agent at the time did a great move
For me, so he brought Pete spread in Montreal to fight me Pete spread came to Montreal
I and I believe
He didn't know who I was
So he thought that he was coming to collect an easy paycheck and I and I end up beating him
So that gave me the opportunity to fight in UFC
Then after I was in UFC, I wanted to become champion of the world, you know
but Matthews was there and he seems invincible at the time, so
Everybody doubt me again, and I became world champion. And after when you when I was well chairman, I wanted to be I
Was competing against other world champion of other weight class
For the title, you know for the legacy and everything so it's not no longer competing against my opponent
I was you know as a competitor
You always you never wanted to be you never want to be satisfied because when satisfaction is the death
You know when you're satisfied you better retire because it's over so always I have to find motivation what you can have more
I want more don't be satisfied in life. So I wanted to be
Like the best, you know, I was I was competing, you know
I like to become the best and and you know
Of course that people doubt doubt you all the time every time you say something that it's outside of the norm of the normality
I don't want to say there's nothing normal, but I'm talking about
when you you manifest your desire to do something that
takes
Special attribute to to to succeed or that is something that is hard to to do
It's for sure. You're gonna always have people that doubt you. It's so strange that people don't
They don't lean into supporting like people that love you, too
yeah, even people that love me used to doubt me and I believe I you need to use that as a
Positive positive thing as a motivation to prove them wrong
Yeah, so for me that that was the thing when someone doubt me nothing gave me more
There's more energy because I want to prove him wrong
I want to look at him in the face and say hey, you see I got you man. I did it
so
John do you ever use this in one way or the other by saying I don't think you can do this to motivate them to
prove you wrong or
more general question of
You know the mental toughness required to achieve or confidence required to achieve greatness
Like what's your role as a coach when you have these two athletes with regards to your first question?
Would I ever say to someone you can't do this as a kind of reverse psychology?
I know
My job is to prepare people first and foremost with their skills and as Gordon pointed out earlier if you're
In any way a rational human being and you're noticing that you're getting tremendous success
with a given move in the gym against high-level opponents who
Give a good read on what your actual opponent and a competition is is like
you would have to be a moron to
Not recognize that kind of success and say this is something I should be building into my game
And you will carry the confidence that you earned in the gym into the arena
So I never try to use reverse psychology. I build up
Everything I do in terms of confidence is to give people physical skills
I know people say all this physicality on the one hand is mentality on the other and confidence is
squarely in the the mental aspect of the game, but all the underpinnings and
beginnings of confidence of physical
okay, a rational human being will see where they're having success and where they're having failure and confidence will
Surround those areas where they're having success and will degenerate in cases where they're having
Failure, so my job as a coach is to set them up for success in the gym with a given set of skills
And I don't have to do anything
psychologically after that I just
If I can set you up to be highly successful
With a given move or a set of tactics ten times in a row against quality opposition in the gym
I don't have to do a damn thing when it comes to instilling confidence. I
Will tell people hey, you're doing a really good job with that move. It's working well for you
but
When they not an agreement, I'm not trying to force anything on them
They're recognized they or they already recognize that long before the words came out of my mouth
But on the other hand intelligent rational people will recognize when they're failing with given moves and no amount of talk on my part
Can ever change that?
if I teach Gordon a
given arm lock and
15 times in a row he tries it over a month and all 15 of failures
There's nothing I can say verbally to come up to Gordon say hey, you're really good at that move
He's gonna look at me say bullshit
I'm terrible at it and that will create a crisis of confidence where Gordon no longer believes the words coming out of my mouth
So I will never compromise that but isn't there a line you just said 15 there you have to believe
that
Doing this arm lock 15 times over a period of a month is worth it because eventually you might get it
Thank you. Yeah, that's a separate issue that that's a separate issue that
There are times where I've more or less pushed athletes to go in a certain direction for example
When I first met Gary Tonin, he never had a guillotine
Strangle and I I would say don't carry, you know
You're a scrambler like one of the greatest weapons a scrambler can ever develop as a guillotine
like it should be in your arsenal and
He was like, I just go for the back and I said well, there's gonna be a day
You can't take someone's back and it's always good to better strangle from front and back
Okay, of course, we all prefer a strangles from the back that makes sense
But there's gonna come a day where it's gonna be useful for you
and so that was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said you're learning this shut the fuck up and
He like literally wouldn't teach him any anything else until he got a guillotine
Yeah, Gary like asked him a question. He's like, let's say you're guillotine
And
For the first three months as gifted as as Gary Tonin is and learning most moves most moves Gary gets it like
in minutes there was something going on with Gary just couldn't get a guillotine on people and
Finally after around three months, he started having some success until ultimately became one of his best weapons
We had to go through like 15 different variations of guillotine until he found one which actually worked reliably for him and
That was one of the few times where I put my foot down and said no
Do you have to learn this the long search had to do more with the physical characteristics?
I couldn't figure out the right look it made sense
It made sense in the case of Gary Tony because there were more opportunities per minute of his grappling for guillotines
That the investment in time was worth it for another athlete. I might have said well
He hardly ever gets in the situation, but front head long so guillotine so it's not even worth
investing the training time
Let me ask you a question on the on the competition side mentioned haters
And do you think about this aspect of the competition with athletes? It's a great question and the answer is no
I'm
You can see that you could you couldn't find two more polar opposites
psychologically than George St. Pierre and
this monstrosity on my left and
I've I've never said to my athletes. Hey, I think this is the sort of demeanor you should carry yourself with
I'm myself a very flawed
Character, and I'm the last person on earth who should be delving out moral advice to other people
the only thing is I
You know, of course, I believe some things are off-limits
But as long as it's done in the context of sport with no one's physically attacking people or do anything crazy
Where it just goes completely over the top then I give almost zero
Moral advice to my athletes. I'm a jujitsu coach not a preacher
Next I if I can if I may
We we are entertainers
You know, we're athlete or professional athlete, but we make
We make a living because of people or want to see us perform
Same thing an actor same thing a singer and a lot of the time
especially in the fight game
An event is promoted it needs to be with emotion
Love me hate me, but do not ignore me
and
you know it
When it's authentic and in the it's done
well, I think me my personally my my favorite fighters to watch are the one that are that that
Have a sort of some sort of a bad persona. I really enjoyed watching those guys because
They bring it an emotion element into a fight, which is great. You know, I
Feel to me it's more interesting to watch when there is an emotion involved and I believe that's why
Some fighters make more money than others, you know, you know what?
I mean, that's the reason why we can make a living out of this
Yeah, they're better entertainers, but you're right. The authenticity seems to be really important. There's actually something very interesting there
It's time to break out some some secrets
You know who like you think of George St. Pierre you think of like the highly technical polished
Martial artists, do you know who his favorite fighters to watch were?
You'd probably be thinking of probably someone who's really technically advanced
Actually, it was Mark Coleman
Kevin Randleman and Phil Barone. He used to love watching that was a hammer house. That was his favorite
he would love those guys and
whenever their flights were on George we watching the hammer house crew and
It's funny what you said about how those guys bought an intensity to
To MMA that was off the charts. Have you ever met those guys in?
§03Transcript · 30:37–45:28
and in their prime, let me tell you it was it was something to behold and
I had this crazy larger-than-life
Personality that most of the things I did made no sense whatsoever
But I mean technically but that was their appeal and and there were these guys and George loved to watch them more than anyone else
You never knew what what could happen with these guys. I remember when Mark Coleman won the pride Grand Prix
I was in my living room. I was jumping. I was so happy. I was like, yeah
He beat Igor Varchevchin. I was like
Like to me, it was amazing. You know what I mean?
Because of the emotion that they brought into the fight. George is actually very
Interested by something you said there normally when I
Ask what is the appeal of a given fighter?
And what makes people watch a fight you you talked about the idea that fighters entertainers and that's absolutely correct that they are
it's this weird weird industry where you're you're
Both an athlete and an entertainer and you need to be successful in both regards to become
financially successful insofar as
Your favorite athletes to watch at least were people who are almost like the polar opposite of who you are
I've always said that most people if you look at
Say a million people watch a pay-per-view event
What percentage of those million people have a genuine?
Technical understanding of what's happening as they watch a fight
It's tiny
It's absolutely tiny the vast majority of people who watch a professional fight have almost no
Technical understanding of what's going on in front of them. So how do they relate to the fight?
What's the only way they can?
It's through emotion. And
So when they get a sense that these two don't like each other
Then they can relate to the fight
But only a tiny percentage of people watching a given professional fight can relate to it on a technical level
The overwhelming majority will always form an emotional attachment to the fight
That's why when you see things shows that UFC primetime. They never focus on
tactics and the techniques of the fight they focus on the emotional elements the
Preparation the view of their own family members as athletes get ready
It's always an emotional pull
Because that's how 99% of the viewers relate to the fight if I haven't think about chess
Okay, if I have minimal knowledge of two world champions
Coming to fight each other in it or match up against each other in a game of chess
I know so little about chess tactics, and I can't really form any kind of technical
Appreciation of what's going on on the board?
But if you tell me that these two chess players hate each other's guts and they've got a rivalry which goes back five years and
They've said this and that about each other in public then suddenly I might is break up and I'm like, oh, okay
This sounds interesting
Because I just don't have the knowledge to appreciate what's going on on the board and a chess game to be able to
to appreciate the
technical nuances of what they're doing so any
Interest that I have in the chess match is going to have to come from some kind of emotional level because I'm just not qualified
To make technical assessments and that's exactly how it is in the case of both grappling and mixed martial arts
That's why the ones who evoke the most attention are always the ones who can form some kind of emotional appeal
Conor McGregor was the all-time master of this. I
believe also
Emotion can be used as a weapon
For example, I've learned I've learned this from my favorite boxer is Sugar Ray Leonard
Sugar Ray Leonard, I remember I was very young so I I watched his fight later when I was older
But I know that sugar Ray Leonard
Was the best boxer of his era?
To me personally and I don't think nobody could beat him. I think it was skill skill wise. It was the best. However
When he fought in Montreal Roberto Duran
Roberto Duran
Made it in a way that Leonard became very emotional he wanted to stand in front of Duran and
fight a different fight that that he normally does because he wanted to show that he's a man and
He lost that fight which was a mistake
so by by
Then later on he beat Roberto Duran in quite easy, you know, the the fair that you know, everybody remembered a no-mask thing
but my point is
Emotion can be used in a way that it can make your
Derail your opponent out of his game plan and I felt a lot of my opponent trying to do that with me
So that's why I never got involved. That was my way to defend myself against
some kind of bullying to put like a like a shield in front some other guy like
Gordon he expressed himself differently. Of course, there's a language barrier, but for him he's better at
Giving giving giving back that says he's a better counter-attacker. You know, that's the way you respond to to to the aggression of
Of an emotional attack. I think everybody is different in that regards. What's interesting that John said that he doesn't
Study the tactics of this game or maybe you're not interested in the tactics of this game
Because it seems like this is more than just being an entertainer. It seems like it could be an effective part of the match
Yeah, I just feel like whatever investment you make in that is
It's going to get negligible rewards first of all, it's probably any kind of pertain to one match in front of you rather than the
totality of your career and
Whatever gains you get out of psychological trickery and play
Typically
Don't last long you've raised an excellent example with sugar Ray Leonard he did fight outside of his usual
manner in that regard but rather than me try to tell someone hey
Behave like this before a fight
I would have been probably more forceful between rounds with an athlete and saying you're fighting this fight the wrong way
And that would have a much
more
beneficial impact on my athlete and
Psychological trickery before a fight. I believe another example of
Emotion that leads to failure is a
Jose Aldo against Conor McGregor. I think it was it was on purpose that
McGregor did this try to bait how though to become overaggressive to open in himself because he's an excellent counter puncher puncher
That's what I believe in made a mistake
There's another great one my match against cyborg
2018 no gi worlds where he didn't even try to win
he just like wanted to smack me in the face the whole time because he was so angry that I was talking shit to him before
the match and
It was like the finals of the absolute it was like the biggest
Match of the weekend and he just didn't even try to pass my guard to do anything
He just wanted to hit me in the face and I was like sick. I just won
It was incredibly fresh. Yeah, that's seen to watch like a grown man sort of lose composure
Gordon one thing I've always been very impressed with you and that's
No matter how heated talk gets
Before a match with you when you go out to grapple you're absolutely cold
Like I've you've never gone into a match
carrying anything other than just
cold-blooded
Calculation and you've always been able to separate very well
the idea of words and deeds and I think that's always been one of your
One of your strongest assets a way I often measure this is when a match is over
I will ask the athlete questions about the match and
If they can't answer the question, what were you doing in the fourth minute? Okay, what was that setup?
He used in in the third minute that got you into the Kimura lock if they can't answer that that tells me
They were just fighting on instincts and emotion, but with Gordon it's like a logbook
It's like okay in the seventh minute you went for that
Judy get on me set up from from on the left side
What were you thinking? He can always give an answer. He's absolutely stone-cold
Speaking of emotion
Gordon you will potentially if you're healthy face Andre Galvao and the ADCC coming up super fight
Who is Andre Galvao for people who don't know? Can you tell the story of your beef with?
the the emotional interaction with a man, yeah, so uh
Andre is a
He's considered the greatest
ADCC competitor of all time
multiple time black belt world champion
winningest ADCC champion every has six six gold medals and
I've been trying to compete against him
Pretty much forever like since I got my black belt in 2016. I've been trying to get matches with them
he was in the first DBI that I did and he ended up pulling out and that I've been trying to get matches with him and
He would always say no and give one reason or another and then
After the last ADCC, I was like hey Andre said he was retiring after this after this
This competition so if he wants to retire, you know, he's he's the greatest ADCC competitor of all time
And I think it's great. But if he wants to compete and that's great. I was like super nice and then he started like
posting like passive-aggressive Instagram
Captions and
Then we started going back and forth in the internet and there was like one point where I saw him in person when he
Acknowledged he's like I understand like what you're doing
Like we're gonna pump this fight up and he was like totally on board
but then there must have been something that happened where like it changed from like him like going along with it to being like
actually pissed and
Then there was that one night of flow where I went to go shake his hand and he he flipped me off and then he followed
Me backstage and started to try to fight me and then I smacked him and
Then he didn't want to fight anymore. And then we've been going back. He's actually blocked me on Instagram now
So he just won't engage no one from Atos will engage now
But it's gonna be interesting how he how he shows up if he can keep it under control or not
Do you think how do you explain that level of emotion? Is this fear of losing your throne?
Is it or is it just a human being like with a cyborg just?
Just becoming emotionally unstable. It might just be me. I just have a way to get get under people's skin
It's just I don't know. He's he's he was he was cool for a while and then I just I don't know it just
Then everyone gets like this. They're all so emotional by the time they actually step up to compete that it's pretty easy to read them
They're either so emotional that they want to actually come forward and and beat me like like Tim Spriggs is a perfect example at ABCC
I posted like
On my story on Instagram like 10 minutes before a match
I said like what I'm gonna do to Tim Spriggs is gonna be criminal and he's like a very stalling guy and he came
He saw that and then he came out and actually tried to fight me like he came and actually engaged my guard and I ended
Up submitting him
So it either has that effect or it has the effect where?
They know I've talked so much shit leading up to the match
That they're so afraid to lose that they just get super stalled and they move away
So either has one effect with I come forward and they want to they want to beat me beat me or they want to just
They're so afraid of getting submitted that they know if they engage they're super cagey and they just back away and don't really do anything
Do you think this match happens?
There's a lot of variables and what I have to see how my stomach is and to
If I'm actually gonna show up and compete my stomach's healthy. I doubt that Andre will actually show up to compete
I've been trying to compete against him for six years and he hasn't done it
So there's no reason to think he would now is it possible for you to speak to where like your estimates are about your stomach?
Or is it not too unclear for now?
Still too early to tell I have this round of treatment that I'm doing until late February
And I'm pretty sure that I need to do the same test
They did initially to retest all my levels and then go from there
So I've been feeling a little bit better like it's not nearly as bad as it used to be
I was explaining to someone the other day like
For the last four years
I would be so nauseous that every time I would walk into a new room
I'd have to actively locate a garbage can in case I have to throw up
So I'm like one step above that right now. I'm like doing a little bit better than that
So it's definitely getting a little bit better, but it's not it's not where it needs to be
Can we talk about diet for just a sec because both of you George and and Gordon?
Like suffered from stomach issues different kind and have arrived for now for different places
So can you maybe George speak to?
The general question of what is the best diet for performance for training?
Like what have you learned through your career about this? Well, I think everybody is different
to me personally
I implement fasting
Time restricted eating and
Prolonged fasting. What's the longest you've done so far? The longest I've done is five days. You don't I do it quite often
I do I do four time a year I do
three to five days
water fast
And I liked it. It helps me with inflammation. I think it boosts the immune system and
That's about the I read papers about about this and I it helps me also feel
Feel good. It's kind of a terrap very therapeutic to physical and mental just mental
Mental and physical because when I eat my when I break my fast and I sit at the table with with other people
It doesn't matter what I eat if we all eat the same thing
I always tell them I said my food right now tastes better than all of yours, you know
because I you know, I I have this
thing that I think I believe sometimes you need to put yourself into suffering to realize how
pleasurable something is and I
Tent
Personally like diet wise I eat whatever I want
Whenever I want I don't I no longer have any problem with this
but if I would have a competition coming up like
Knowing that I what I know now about my body I would
orient myself
§04Transcript · 45:31–1:01:21
more towards an animal based diet
That's because I've tried different things and that's the kind of diet that I believe helped me
Having less inflammation and feel better in terms of performance for for for doing something physical
So high protein high fat low carbs
well
This is is different between animal based diet and keto. I mean there is carbs. There is a lot of fruit
I got a lot of the carbs from the fruit a lot of organs organs
I know a little bit about paleontology and the passive
About you a prehistoric human and and I I know that
And not only about that I know because I've traveled certain place in the world
I want to visit the Maasai in Africa the hunter-gatherer tribe and I know that when they kill an animal
They go for the organs first and I know I pretty most predatory animal they do the same thing
So organs I believe is something that normally in our culture in the western part of the world
We don't really eat but it's something that is very nutritious
Have you been able to convince Gordon to try fasting?
Haha
Talk about diets
It's a different situation. I think for Gordon because he's an heavyweight. He doesn't want to lose weight
You know when a heavyweight the range of like my range was like I was a welterweight and middleweight, but heavyweight
It's like some of the guys that you can compete can compete against their main there might be 300 pounds. So if you lose weight
It's a it's a big problem. You know what I mean?
So and there is things that will work for me that might not works for Gordon, you know
So we have to make his own experience and I told Gordon sometime when everybody goes left
You try to go right see how you feel with certain things experiment not not a topic
That's part of your optimization
Optimal performance formula. Well what I used to do before my stomach issues and for those of you listening who don't know
I had recurring staph infections in
2018 and I took a bunch of oral antibiotics and it just completely wiped out my stomach
So I just was diagnosed. It was misdiagnosed as gastroparesis
So for those of you messaging me on Instagram who are just watching Rogan asking me about my gastroparesis. That's not what I have
They misdiagnosed it and I did some other tests and for four years. I didn't even know what it was
and then I got this I went to this doctor in California who
Diagnosed me with I've H pylori and then a fungal and a bacterial overgrowth of my small intestines. So the issues in the small intestines
so what I used to do was I used to do like
seasons where I'd have a
very clean season where I was competing and I would
Have a lower body weight and I would do like an off season kind of like a bodybuilder where I would eat a lot more
Food and a little bit dirtier food and I would have cheeseburgers and pizza at nighttime to have the extra calories
But now I can't eat those foods because they upset my stomach
So now I pretty much just try to eat whatever I can and maintain the weight the best I can
Based around how my stomach feels so right now it's like rice chicken eggs
fish
vegetables fruits and
Pretty much nothing else like anything hard to digest
Anything spicy red meat fast food all that's all that's hard for me
Which sucks because in Texas things barbecue
And I mean this diet is really important for you John I can tell
Like is that something you think about for athletes at all again?
That's part of the I've to be honest with you. I've never seen any
measurable
Improvement in sports performance in jiu-jitsu by change of diet. I do believe that diet is important for longevity in
Human beings and I do think it makes a difference especially once you get past the age of 40
with regards longevity
For older athletes. I do believe it makes it some difference, but my observation is in athletes and
In their youth and working up into their prime. I've seen athletes have the worst
diets
God bless Travis Stevens, but that guy won an Olympic silver medal basically on McDonald's and candy. Yeah
George st. Pierre for 80% of your career you were powered by McDonald's and coca-cola
Tochino Freddo that was my yeah, my meal of choice before a championship fight
Gordon for him his youth was just five guys hamburgers Gary Tonin same thing
I've worked with Japanese judo players who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and won Olympic gold medals
I've worked with Russian wrestlers who just ate
Whatever was put in front of them and their athletic performance was outstanding
I've worked with other guys who did have what would be considered a very clean diet and
Their performance was no better than anyone else on the mat. So I've never
I've never seen someone say okay. I changed my diet and because of that there was a measurable
Improvement, you know in sports performance another way to phrase it though is I have noticed with a lot of lead athletes what they eat
They begin to believe that that either is not a hindrance or it's actually good
I Travis Steve is an example of somebody who eats shitty
because he believes it's like it's like a power because
Whatever, he's traveling across the world. He can't rely on healthy good food to be there
So I'm going to eat shitty
So that that's the like my body knows how to perform under whatever skittles or whatever. It's got McDonald's everywhere's got McDonald's
So that makes like and they've convinced themselves and you talk about Russian athletes. A lot of them have very
strong beliefs about like this
Particular food being good for them. There's no agreement among them. Exactly. No agreement. Yeah. Yeah, so believe is more important than the actual time
Yeah
if I can after
You know after a night out when you're hanging over I
Think the best thing and I'm saying this and also sincerity
I think the best thing to eat to me was like like a cheeseburgers with
We call that a puts in back home because it's very fat. It's greasy
So it up so the next day when you wake up, I think you feel better because it absorbed the alcohol
My mom told me the same story once and then I try I was like I was hungover for some party and
I woke up. I was like probably I don't know 19 or 20. I woke up and
My mom's like yeah, just have it have a cheeseburger go go eat go eat something greasy and I did and I was like
I feel kind of better now. I do not know the science the exact science behind it
but I always notice and I don't know if it's placebo, but I always notice that if I
If I'm if I party hard and I've been drinking a lot
If I don't eat before I go into bed if I don't eat shitty food
Then I guess I will wake up and feel worse than if I eat shitty food. I feel better. I know it sounds crazy
I don't know why but it works for me
Yeah, but it's also hard to do science on extreme performers so the discussions we're having is amongst the very
You know that this might not apply to a general like recreational athlete, but for the elite
I've just seen champions in every kind of combat sport and I've never seen a correlation between
Dietary habit and performance and people under the age of 30. I do believe that diet is important for longevity. However, and
For that alone that may well be worth investing time in it
But with regards sports performance at least in judo - I've never seen any significant difference. Well, we had a little bit of a
Difference of opinion on this I think
What about strength training and muscle building or at least we had a discussion about this. So what do you believe is the value of?
Of you know training outside of the sport so fitness
Lifting heavy lifting explosive all kinds of lifting
Do you leave personally for me? I believe and I've learned that from from John
I used to do like
To train like a bodybuilder before because I thought in my early days of competition
That was the most efficient way to do things - because it was like I was watching Jean-Claude Van Damme
Arnold Schwarzenegger we thought back back in the day. That was the thing
That that's how we should do it, you know for to get ready for a fight, but I realized later on
That it's all about efficiency and
Some guys they don't lift at all and they're doing pretty well. So I
Do cross training mostly for longevity?
Well, it's mostly for a therapeutic
Like a therapy it's more therapeutic than for performance
It's to keep my body healthy to do a certain movement that are different than what I do every day in the gym in combat
sport to keep me
Healthy and
Athletic so all the interesting movement stuff that you've done outside the sport that was for
Therapeutic mostly therapeutic. I think it does it could trend trend transcend to performance, but it's mostly therapeutic
I do not believe that squatting
Five plates or or bench bench pressing three plate will make me a better fighter
I do not I believe actually it could hurt me more. It could damage me more than then benefit me
so
Gordon is somebody who on Instagram post a lot of pictures of you being shredded and huge
What's the value of strength? So I do like a combination of?
John got us big into like gymnastics type movements like toes to bar and muscle ups and things like that when we were young
Like toes to bar because that's like the exact motion you have to do when you're retaining guarders needs to chest
So I do a lot of that stuff
in combination with I do a lot of
Opposite of George I do a lot of bodybuilding workouts
Where I do like a basic split like a chest and triceps back and biceps day and my idea is that?
Weight lifting should always be a supplement to jujitsu so you shouldn't be missing a jujitsu session to lift weights
So I don't do I do probably I train jiu-jitsu every day, and I lift three to four times a week
I feel like lifting seven days a week for me is too much and the lifting takes a lot of energy when you do like
Hard lifts like that
but my idea is if you want to get good at jiu-jitsu do jiu-jitsu and if you want to be bigger and stronger lift weights and
and eat food and I
Generally don't go super heavy when I lift you start putting crazy weights then start tearing muscles and stuff
I'm so I usually do moderate weights with a very high rep rep range like four sets of 20 with a drop set at
The end to fatigue the muscles break the fibers and grow
Okay, so
Four sets at 20 that's interesting so that's more for endurance and raw strength yeah, and also I think
close to the competition I'll pick the intensity up and
While there's no real way to get significant gains in vo2 max
I think that lifting and just getting used to mentally redlining
Gets me kind of in competition shape because a lot of times in jiu-jitsu the guys I'm training with
They're not on a technical level where they can
Physically exhaust me to the point where I feel like I'm gonna die
But I get most of that like what I'm wrestling because I'm not as efficient in wrestling so I get a lot more tired
And lifting when you do like if you do like four sets of 20 leg press to squat and you go back and forth
Like you're like about to die at the end
And I think I feel like gets me in the mental habit of redlining before competition
But does muscle help you it's like the actual mass of muscle like this
So I'm being stronger will always help and a combat will always help yeah
To some degree it's not gonna be to a degree where?
It overrides efficiency, but I think that they can't help being strong or can't hurt being stronger
there's a bunch of people who believe depending on the sport that
The strength can quickly become
That have detrimental effects to efficiency
Yeah, like I agree that certain kind
I mean if strength is pure is like very cleanly purely applied to the exact movements of the sport so in judo the
Explosiveness you need is very difficult to replicate in any kind of way except by doing judo. Yeah, I mean for us
They always have to understand
There's only so much
Technique that can overcome a certain amount of strength like if we all try to fight a silverback gorilla
It's gonna kill us
But that that being said I do think that like for example heavyweights are usually the least technical because they rely on their size
and strength to beat smaller people
But I think that if you stay with us with the discipline of doing everything very precise
And I train with a lot smaller people most of the time so I get out of the habit of using
Using my strength. I think if you're very precise of the way that you train
I think that the extra size and strength can help you quick question. How would you fight a silverback gorilla? I?
Mean is there which animal do you think you can actually defeat that would be impressive that most people would say you can't
You know I actually I don't have an answer to this
I thought you were gonna say I want I want I want to say that me and John had like a four-hour
Discussion on this one time. I'm like what would win bear or gorilla?
And he went into like this whole dissertation about how like Jaguar spin underneath and like barren bolo
Silverbacks and kill them and like rip their rip their artery in their legs out. It was amazing
I guess okay, so before we talk about strength John. Let me ask you what?
Do you think people would be surprised by if two animals faced?
One of them would win and people wouldn't predict that so they would be surprised by the effectiveness of certain animal at fighting
In the whether it's in the forest in the jungle, so let's move it slow down
Yeah, okay, so there's two animals of different species fighting and it and most people would pick
So for example the lion gets a lot of credit for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why the king of the jungle
Well, I you know a lot of people told me that the lion
For example the tiger can be lion. Yeah, this is one of those age-old debates
Yeah, well in grappling in fighting
It feels like some animals use teeth and some use other parts of their body
also like bear actually, I don't even know how they I
Think they have extraordinarily powerful and long claws and in addition they're powerful bytes as well
So I wonder and the same with the silverback. I don't know how much there. I love that we're having this discussion
We need Joe Rogan for this. I think so. Yeah, I think so
so
Your your question has gone in and in about five different. So it started with strength
and let's go back there, which is
Do you think for an athlete in jiu-jitsu? Let's stick to grappling?
Do you think strike strength is helpful or detrimental?
I've always believed that two things will
create whatever
Whatever effectiveness you have in grappling those are your skill set and your attributes
And the best athletes are those who excel in both
§05Transcript · 1:01:24–1:17:42
Don't kid yourself if someone gets twice as strong
By some kind of magic potion
They're going to be a more effective grappler if someone gets twice the level of endurance that they had
Previously they will be a more effective grappler. These physical attributes have a very important outcome on the
Sorry a very important effect upon the outcome of matches
It's always a good thing to be stronger. It's always a good thing to have better endurance
It's always a good thing to have better balance or whatever other attribute you throw out there
Gordon's point was okay. Everyone agrees on that but there's a problem in order to build these things
You have to carve into other elements of your training regimen and then it becomes which becomes more important
increases in strength or increases in skill
There comes a point where
Investing in strength training starts to get diminishing returns. I can't tell the difference between someone who bench presses
300 pounds on the mat versus someone who bench presses 400 pounds, but that's a big difference
That's a hundred pound difference and for an athlete to go from bench pressing 300 pounds to 400 pounds
That would require a great deal of of training effort and focus
But if I can't tell the difference when I grapple and then why bother okay
Once you get to a certain strength level
It doesn't really help that much to go from a 400 pound bench press to a 450 pound bench press
If that's the stage you you're really getting a diminishing and returns on your training investment
Now skills on the other hand
Experience far far less in terms of diminishing returns every new skill you develop
Can translate very very well into big increases in performance. Look at the example of Gary Tonin that we talked about earlier
investments in guillotine
made a significant improvement in his
Effectiveness in matches and led directly to some of his most important victories
But if he had invested the same amount of training time in
Developing a bench press that was 25 pounds more than previously that would have had no outcome no influence on the outcome of those matches
So the question always becomes yep, everyone acknowledges that these physical
Attributes are important and everyone understands that becoming stronger or fitter is a
Desirable thing and every athlete should work on them. The interesting question becomes okay at what point do you start to say?
I'm not going to be helped by further increases in
in strength training or endurance training
and
my point with my athletes is in the
overwhelming majority of cases
If there's any kind of doubt
Invest more heavily in skill training than attribute training, especially once you get to a certain level on the attributes
well, the interesting thing that I think you should account for with strength training is
There's Instagram
There's the world it's a it seems to be more fun to build muscle mass
It's like an addiction people have there's also economic elements to like most people I hate to say this, but it's true
most people are more concerned with image than function and
It's hard to sell a
Fighter or a jujitsu athlete who doesn't look like one looks like Vader. Yeah, it's a tough sell now
You can do it in fighting and in jujitsu because ultimately it's about whose
Hand is raised at the end of the match and you could even use it as a selling point
You can be a guy that doesn't look like he should be winning but he is winning that is a selling point
but if you give most people a choice between
Looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger and winning matches versus looking like Vader and winning matches most people will select
I wish I'd rather look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And so most athletes feel almost like an economic
Impulsion to be in good shape and in order to advance their marketability
Yeah, Nike's not gonna sponsor fate or tank habit. Yeah tank habit. No
fatal, maybe
But yeah, yeah, we need at the very top. There's there's something about a static
Like image of strength and power. It's also an also a personal thing
If you look at yourself in the mirror, do you like what what you see? You know what I mean?
Yeah, do you find yourself attractive? You know, what what can you do to make you look better?
And I think to me to me it was something and one of the reason I work out it's also for you for that
Well, I'm sure if fatal looks in the mirror. He says I look damn good today
Some people you know, it's harder for them. I mean, yeah
Alright, so the question on training you guys John Gordon train
Often three times a day every day
I'm
George had a different like a
Different approach to training. So like what is for not? I don't mean that kind of the opposite or something
It's just not every single day. So and
obviously you are
Legitimately at the very top in terms of performance accomplishment in the field. So what have you learned about?
What it takes to train to become not just a lead but the best well I I a
Lot of people when you say train they see training hard. I believe you need to be very constant
And very disciplined you need to train but you don't need to train hard every day. That's what John taught me
For me is the nervous system. Sometimes I feel if I load it up too much it comes to a point that you're
It's too much. There is no no more information that I can absorb
so
And I do believe that it's something that you can train to your the
capacity your capacity of being able to learn of absorbing certain thing and
I did a lot of volume of training
But when I when I was getting ready for a fight, especially during sparring day
I like to do it quick because my when I fight it's five round of five minutes. I don't like to spend
An hour or two hours in a gym because I need to know how hard I can be
Going for 25 minutes, you know when I not for two hours for 25 minutes and at my last fight
John and I we
we
We were thinking of how could we?
Make me more
of a better finisher, you know more opportunist and
John, I remember we when we were training with Gordon Jake Schill came Gary Tonin
my round of grappling were different than if I would be training for
Abu Debbie, you know for for a bi or like some like in grappling the round are longer
but in a mixed martial art fight
It's very rare that you're gonna spend more than
Four minutes or four minutes and a half on the ground. It's very unlikely
I mean it could I can happen but so I
Do you remember we did the round three minute we did all the round I was doing were three minute round
So it gives a different
Rhythm to the training it forced me to be more opportunist to be more of a finisher
Because I had only three minute to do what I needed to do
So if I if I say something I need to go for the kill right away
I cannot be too over patient, you know what I mean?
And it it served me well in my last fight and I think it that's a good blueprint to follow
when you're a mixed martial art fighter if I would if
the result where it was great and I think
it
Maybe I should have done that before it was a great great idea that we had not to do
Be very careful doing too much volume
Yes, try to get out and then try to focus on finishing getting getting up
It's I mean it's obvious to build up your foundation
I believe you need a lot of volume but when you get ready for a competition you need some to be something that
Replicate what you're gonna be facing. What are you what are we talking about? What do you think?
Like is there rest days five days a week?
Twice a day once a day. Is there any one formula like that or no?
This this I do not believe in over training. I believe in under rest. I
believe
You can be under rest and
people
Always link that immediately to the volume of their how much volume they they train which it could be something else
How are you feeling? I'm emotionally. Are you you having?
problems
Personal problem. Do you have a hard time sleeping because you have a like someone died or I don't know like you
You hold money you're broke or what like, you know, I mean could be anything
There is something that can affect you psychologically or emotionally
That made it in a way that you cannot sleep. Well because your your stress your cortisol level is high
You're you know what? I mean all these factor need to be take taken in consideration
It's not only about the volume of training people
Always think the volume of the training is the only thing that can affect
Recuperation which is not you know, yeah, I said to minimize the amount of stress from all kinds of fact
It's a very stressful job to be a professional
Combat athlete whether you're a grappler a boxer kickboxer a fighter and you need to be taking as
Into account is it more or less stressful than marriage? Just kidding
next question
So, I don't know how to ask this question given what George just said but you training three times a day and
Finishing and what what have you learned about what brings out the best in you as as the elite level grappler
So over the recent years have actually changed it up a little bit
when I was
Coming up through from white to black belt. I felt that the volume was the most important
So it would be anywhere from like three
to seven sessions a day
Going from school to school from New York to New Jersey, and I think that the volume was very important to build the skills
Where I just didn't know how to move my body at purple belt the way that I should
So I think that building the skills is
It's super important. I think that early on volumes very important now that I already have the skills built
I think that acquiring more knowledge is the most important
So I find that if I do so many sessions a day like if I do three sessions a day
I feel sometimes by the third session
I'm just like so mentally like there's just there's so much information
That's went through my head the first two sessions that I feel like I'm not even there mentally on the third session
So I feel like doing less volume now
But having more mental clarity per session is more important because I already have the foundational skills acquired
So a lot of your training is almost like
Just thinking like learning a lot of it. Yeah, so I'll do like
I mean our schedules been messed up since the pandemic because Henzo's got shut down and they were using a French gym in Puerto Rico
And now we're using a French gym in our and in Austin
But once we have our own school have a setup schedule where I can pretty much just be there all day long
But right now I do like a lifting session in the morning, and then I'll come in and help teach at Henzo's
So I'm there mentally I'm seeing what's going on and I'm playing around with ideas in my head
And then I'm there physically and very sharp mentally for the competition class during the 1 p.m.
Session and then after that I'll go home. I'll rest and get ready for the next day
What have you learned on seeing all these different athletes there a
universal rule that applies or is it
athlete specific
First one thing needs to be addressed is that George and Gordon play very different sports with very different athletic demands
Gordon can be in matches that range from anywhere from six minutes to literally hours long
as a result
the overall
Pacing and intensity of matches is massively different most obviously there is no striking and Gordon sport
Striking by its very nature is a much more explosive
Physical action than grappling is grappling is primarily an isometric
Kind of sport based around an isometric tension and endurance
Georgia sport is
Does feature a significant amount of isometric tension, but the majority of it is based around explosion
So the physical demands of the two sports are radically different in addition the time of application is
Radically different George raised a very interesting point his matches seem long 25 minutes for a championship match
But always understand it
It makes martial arts fight at championship level if it goes the distance is really
five five minute matches each round is
A match in itself and that's exactly how you're scored
You're scored by who wins the most matches over five matches as a result the application of the techniques
especially the grappling techniques has to be done at a certain pace as
George pointed out realistically
the maximum application time you're going to get in most situations is somewhere between
15 seconds and three minutes even for a specialized grappler like Damian Meyer
There's still a significant part of each round which is spent in setup time to actually get the match to the ground
It's very likely that at some point your opponent will stand up out of grappling and you'll have to reinitiate the entire process again
So that even for specialized grapplers you might be spending only three minutes out of a five minute round
On the ground and as a result you've got to get your work done in a very short time frame
Gordon Ryan once it goes to the ground and it can go to the ground because he chooses to sit to the ground
May spend the entire match in ground positions
As a result the matches have completely different pacing and completely different physical demands and the preparation that the two athletes go through will reflect that
If George st. Pierre in training for mixed martial arts becomes fatigued to a point
Where he's no longer physically effective and able to defend himself the consequences for that in MMA training can be very deep indeed
Okay, if you make a mistake in mixed martial arts because you're fatigued and tired and you take a full power roundhouse kick to the head
That's some deep consequences a grappler doesn't have to face that you can be completely exhausted in grappling and just sit in the bottom of
The mountain just practice just survival skills. We just don't get submitted from bottom out and that can still be an effective training session
complete and utter physical breakdown of fatigue can be
Can end an athlete's career and mixed martial arts the consequences of?
training through fatigue and MMA
Potentially very deep and very disturbing
The consequences of training through complete physical exhaustion and grappling aren't really that severe. Okay, you just tap whenever there's a problem just tap
And so they're very very different sports in the way you you prepare for them
in a grappling
§06Transcript · 1:17:45–1:33:34
athlete like Gordon Ryan we can take
many more liberties with physical exhaustion and
The amount of hours a day you spend in training then you could with a mixed martial arts athlete like actually be a benefit
exhaustion as a
Framework of learning so like from a place of exhaustion
Is there any benefit to the you only you said being at the bottom of mouth sort of understanding?
Did you get to grappling somehow deeper because you're physically absolutely absolutely
Because then the only thing you have left in your favor is your technique and then you'll see how technical you are in
addition you'll get to explore realms inside your mind that we don't spend a lot of time in and
you'll learn a lot about yourself and your ability to do a which will have
Potentially great benefits in similar situations and matches. Yeah, there's a I mean for me for a recreational person
getting
Exhaustion allows you the great benefit to experience what it feels like to really get dominated at an even greater frequency
than you otherwise would and
There's something there there's some animalistic thing that's very unpleasant and then afterwards it takes you to a nice to a place of
like
humility and I
Know you get it forces you to rethink life in positive ways
There's something about dominance. It can be if you get dominated a few times you can
Rationalize it somehow you say okay
well I've screwed this up but with it when you're exhausted and you have to do like 30 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour of
Just being down me over and over and over being submitted
It I don't know. It's it's a very good process for
For other avenues of life. I find I can't explain why some I'm
Driving home crying afterwards listening to Bruce Springsteen, but afterwards
Yeah, this
Afterwards somehow you can think clearer you can see clear about what is the right path through life in all walks of life like
relationships work, but also the grappling
Actually, the grappling is the hardest one to see what you have to do
It clarifies other avenues the humility. It's the it removes the bullshit
It's like we see the world through some kind of fog and it just removes it and now you can see things clearly
I don't know what that is. I think I think it's important
Like you mentioned to push yourself like sometime
To see how far you can go because sometimes you can go further than than what you think and it can boost your confidence
You know
You can push yourself through a certain limit and maybe you thought your limit were was before that point and you push through it
But like John just mentioned it's a risky thing to do in
Striking because if you're exhausted, you're gonna get brain damage and grappling it's you know
You tap if something wrong, but you can do it also in strength conditioning. I like to run track
I do it all the time and track and feel it. It helps me to
To to know myself better. I think it's important. So it's a good point
It's like it's like the scrimmage wrestling rounds we do it's like, you know, if you stop moving
That you're gonna get scored on and you know in your mind like there's no mechanical reason why I am
Why I should give up a score here, but you're so exhausted that you're like, oh man, this is terrible
If I if I stop moving, I'm a pussy
If I don't stop move if I don't stop moving I'm gonna be twice as exhausted when we actually do stand up
So it's a it's an interesting game. You have to play inside your mind. It's it's your pride very often that that
Keep you that keep you
Sharp, you know what? I mean? Because you just want to lay down and beat it because you're completely exhausted, you know
What do you think is the connection John between this ego pride thing?
martial arts and actual violence in our
With our ancestors. Do you think you ever plug into that?
You think there's echoes of something going on there or like you mentioned you have flaws and demons
Is it deep in there somewhere?
Do you think we're struggling with those demons?
Yeah, you'll need to patch up your question or what though. It's going in several different directions. Wow
That was not only my big dominant. It's just I mean Dominic
We're like, okay now we interview you
I mean, do you think do you I don't mean just a line between what is what is martial arts and what is violence?
I mean there there seems to be a gray area and that connects us to the the evolutionary ancestors. Absolutely
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I think there's a deep
recognition and all of us that
and this is
The evidence for this is is so easy to to see in in daily life
If you're walking down the street and suddenly you hear a commotion and two people are fighting
You will see literally everyone on that street stop whatever they're doing and watch the fight
Humans are
fascinated by
violence and
You've got to ask yourself why and of course, it's a recognition that for a significant part of our evolutionary history
violence was one of the most important elements in
Human existence as much as we curse it as much as we talk badly of it
The juxtaposition between humans social nature and their need to for each other to get along and to express
Love amongst the the various members of a given community
there are
Disputes between humans that can't be resolved and ultimately
Throughout history violence has been the number one method of
conflict resolution
for better or for worse and there's a recognition and all of us that
This is where we come from and there's a reason why
Combat sports have this thing where people will watch them and they might even be repulsed by them
but they find it difficult to take their eyes from it and
I
Do believe that most combat athletes carry that sense of their
even if it's on a subconscious level this kind of belief that
This is who we are
George you use the word pride and I believe that's a big part of it. I believe that
Most
humans have this sense of self-worth and pride which they're willing to fight for and
If it gets crossed by someone else, they're willing to stand that
Some people will stand more early and some people could be pushed further back, but everyone's got that line
beyond which they won't be pushed and
There's some kind of deep recognition and all of us that we have that somewhere within us
No matter how hard we try to bury it or what have you and that's why I believe there will always be this eternal
interest in combat sports
Now I don't believe that most people today have any kind of respect for unrestricted violence or
non-consensual violence
I think most people most good people are repulsed by that now. I'm I'm sure that as humanity
Improves out into the future that will become more and more widespread
but
That's not to say we can't exercise these these
Old evolutionary demons inside of us and
And
sometimes there are just disputes between different people different cultures different nations where ultimately it's going to come to
Into into a shoving match and that will degenerate further into violence
there's always going to be a need for humans to be able to
to
express themselves
Through violent methods and to use physical force to get to their their goals and objectives
Our
our need as humans is always to find a balance between
the two forces of conflict and
Cooperation we need cooperation because humans isolated from each other more or less helpless and useless
in order to
Advance human communities need to build and grow and so that sense of cooperation
occurs in most of our daily lives
but there will also be
Irresolvable conflicts where physical force has to be used to form a resolution and so most human beings find themselves
swinging like a pendulum between conflict and cooperation and
And that is something which
Really gives birth I think to combat sports because sorry. I really have to ask you about this then there's a guy in Harvard
Named Richard Rangham, and there's a lot of people that believe this he wrote this book that
Basically, there's a lot of people studying is what happened. How do we get from apes to humans?
Like what was the magic thing right a lot of people attributed to fire and ability to cook meat
There's a lot of different theories. So he actually
his
Theory how do I describe this is basically that that the beta males one?
that the the the
Apes that were able to cooperate. So you the way you develop cooperation is there's a big bad leader
that
the alpha male
that you can only
Knock off their throne if you cooperate and so we built big tribes that just excelled the cooperation by
Practicing the overthrowing the leader and so and anytime an alpha male would rise up they would get would
Would develop our skill further and further of cooperation. And so we're all just beta males
The descendants of beta mouse that says kind of theory that cooperation is fundamental and it's so distinct to the the rest of the
neighboring animal kingdom
So fascinating. I wonder what you think about this tension of violence of cooperation
How important is this cooperation to the core of you know, who is you you can look at it in the in a given training room?
Jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts is solo sports a solo athlete steps into the cage or steps onto the mat
but all of your preparation is done in a cooperative training environment with many peers and
As much as it's an individual sport all of your preparation is done in it as part of a group
There's a sense in which
That's an interesting metaphor for humanity itself everything we do in life
We do alone, but we grow up in this given community and what have you
With regards the the whole alpha male beta male thing
Humans are it's true. This fella's correct. We you know, most
primates do have very strongly defined alpha males who rule the roost and determine the entire direction of the
The community they build around themselves
Humans on the other hand
Don't have an alpha male in that strict
Biological sense of someone who's responsible for the next generation
Dominates all the female population, etc
Yeah physically dominates but we do on the other hand have our own
version of alpha males and so far as we have political and sociological leaders who have a
Disproportionate impact on the direction of a community
So was the cooperation allowed us to
Have a greater scale of hierarchy with the alpha male on top or the alpha creature on top. Yeah. Yeah
No, that's a fascinating theory
In in nature were were very weak as a species
so we needed to cooperate in order to to evolve that I think
Made us that the top of the food chain if you look at
Humanity in nature
really the two things that seem to
More than anything else determine whether or not a given human community will be
Successful in a predatory world on numbers and technology
Okay
the more your numbers increase and the the higher the technology of the weapons and
Support systems you have around you the more successful you'll be in a predatory world
So it's not clear that just
Killing off the idea of an alpha male was the the single biggest thing
the rise of technology
and the growth of community
After the imposition of language, these are other things that would have been very very important factors and in humanities rise
George you made an interesting point if you look at humans
Just the raw material of humans with with with fucking pathetic
And a predatory animal kingdom, we're just the absolute bottom of the food chain
We don't have a single
effective
Weapon other than better than average endurance. That's about it
But you put us in a community who can talk to each other with language give us the time
to come up with technological advances such as metals
And suddenly a human will go from no combat effectiveness in the animal kingdom
To a human armed with a simple metal tip spear can kill
Damn near any animal in the in the animal kingdom and working as a group. I'll beat your silver back
You know, I'll I'll fight him in a deep water pool because he cannot swim so I don't have to touch him
He'll drown and I'll get him into the pool
You know why because someone told me because we live in a community someone told me that information so I know he passed it on to me
Yeah, he taught you
Well, you have to convince him to you have to somehow convince him to join you in the pool, which is very difficult
It's a very problem. Very very difficult
From a technical perspective John you've looked at
Mixed martial arts fighting in general and grappling. What's the difference between fighting and grappling?
That's something I'd love to ask all of you. Maybe John you can start like well
When you talk about fighting you mean unrestricted
MMA top-time fighting. Yeah, it's funny. You said unrestricted MMA type MMA type fighting. So there's this this
Yep. Yeah, there's MMA fighting and then there's grappling. It's really the sport of grappling you're saying
Okay, what's the difference between MMA and grappling? Yes. Okay
See that would have been a much better question. Yes
well the
§07Transcript · 1:33:37–1:48:43
the single
When you talk about grappling you're talking about jiu-jitsu rules on yeah
I mean you could maybe also mention different rule sets that somehow fundamentally challenge change the sport, you know
in the sport of mixed martial arts
You've got two
Ways to inflict damage on the human body you've got kinetic energy which is done through striking
kicking knees elbows fists
and you've got
Isometric tension used along the lines of
lever and fulcrum
Which can be used for strangulation and joint breaking
In grappling you lose one of those you you're no longer allowed to hurt your opponent with kinetic energy
you can do it accidentally through a throw, but you're not allowed to just
You know knock someone out with a throw in most grappling sports it can happen
But it's relatively rare and it's it's not encouraged by the rule set. So
Yeah, you got close
So
there's a sense in which in mixed martial arts you got twice as many problems to deal with and
and they occur in a
much shorter time frame the single biggest difference between grappling technique as a weapon in
Human combat versus striking technique is time
Grappling technique takes a huge amount of time to apply
Okay, the great advantage of grappling technique is certainty of outcome once you get there
It takes a huge amount of time to set up a takedown
physically take them down
Work their way work your way towards a dominant position culminating in your opponent's back and then apply a stranglehold
that's a long chain of events as
opposed to a
Strong punch or kick which can take quarter of a second than application from start to finish and the matches over
and
so there's a sense in which
Grappling is it's
It's fighting for the patient and the calculating
Whereas striking is much more for us in this short time frame where everything gets done and in the blink of an eye
There's a sense also which grappling is a much more forgiving sport. You can make a terrible mistake
End up in a terrible position and still fight your way out and win
in
Mixed martial arts. It's much much less forgiving
If you get hit and stunned your chances of recovery
Minimal you're going to get swarmed on and unless it's right at the end of the round you it's very very hard to recover from
Getting hit and swarmed on
So there's a sense in which
The biggest difference between them is time of application of technique
In mixed martial arts, it's incredibly unforgiving in terms of time
Even the smallest error can have the deepest consequences in grappling. You can make massive errors and still come back and win
Grappling will typically be won
in a much higher percentage case by the more skilled and conditioned grappler, whereas there is
much more of what they call a punches chance in mixed martial arts where
There's a much higher likelihood of a lesser athlete
Defeating a greater athlete in MMA than there isn't grappling simply because of time of application of his techniques
Even the smallest period of inattention in MMA and the match is over
Gordon Ryan could fall asleep for 30 seconds have his opponent mounted on and wake up and finish him in five minutes later
It's not gonna happen in MMA
Okay, so the the stakes are much higher
You can do a lot of damage in a very small amount of time and just the dynamic temporal dynamics of how things happen
Is near different everything you'll see will be a reflection of that
Then you go further into things like rule sets in the sport of grappling if Gordon Ryan comes out and sits down
in the middle of the mat his opponent must follow him to the ground and engage in
Mixed martial arts if you come to the center of the cage and sit down
The other guy can just walk away from you. They're completely
Oriented in different directions grappling is ground centered MMA is typically standing centered
It's begin of every round you have to start standing again
If I disengage from a ground grappling situation stand up and walk away from my opponent
My opponent must follow me up to the feet in
Grappling. It's the exact opposite if I sit to the ground my opponent must follow me to the ground
It's written into the rule set and so one is inherently ground or oriented and one is inherently standing oriented
So it's more it's more difficult to dictate where the fight happens in mixed martial arts
Yes, you have to be able to impose where the fighters where is in grappling you can simply choose it
So George, what is your sense of the the difference in terms of how you approached it?
Between the two sports. So you also are a student of wrestling and grappling so in preparing for fights
What parts of grappling purely the sport that you have to leave behind
I
Am very lucky. I had the opportunity to I train with I consider the best
mentor trainer I ever ever had and
I have
Some of the best grapplers that I can train with they were they were there to help me to my career
so
for my training is
Of course because I do not dedicate as much time in one specific area
It's hard to be you know a world-class athlete and that in only one particular area always
for me
Like the idea to be more well-rounded to be very competent in every of those areas striking grappling
takedowns and all those areas then being just very good at one and
not as good at as others, you know because I like the idea that
It gives me more option when I fight someone I can
mold myself to become the perfect nemesis to
That person better if I'm more well-rounded if I do not have those well-rounded skill
and
I don't have that option, you know
You have less tools to work with less technology. What about you Gordon? What?
What do you think is very distinct about grappling in the way you approach it versus fighting
I think most of it was covered
But I think that though the one one of the big things is the fact that when you're looking at MMA
You have a pretty general agreed-upon and unified rule set where if you look at UFC versus Bellator
There they have slight differences in the rules maybe
But it's pretty much the same thing
Whereas in grappling you have EBI rules and you have a DCC rules you have IBGJF rules
You have no time limit rules and each rule set will play to the skills of different athletes
If you have if you do ADCC rules
it generally is slightly biased towards wrestlers or if they can stall to the overtime and
Then hit a takedown in the overtime and not really doing a jiu-jitsu, but they score a takedown
They're gonna win whereas if you have like an EBI, for example
You have to finish the guy in regulation or you start in a jiu-jitsu position with your back taken or in an armbar
so I think that you have
certain rule sets that play in the favor of
certain athletes and
Certain athletes can win in one rule set but then they just have no chance of winning in the other
Like when I fought Yuri the first time in EBI
I beat him in EBI the chances of me beating him on that night under an ADCC rule set were probably pretty low
When I fought Leandro low under an ADCC rule set he beat me that day
But the chances of him beating me in the same day in an EBI rules that were like next to zero
So I think it's interesting that
In MMA you have one unified rule set which have small differences, but they're all generally the same
I'm in and jiu-jitsu you have a wide variety of different rule sets that
have
Biases towards a certain athlete skill sets you mentioned Leandro low. I got to ask you again about ADCC
You have lost very very few times in your career
one I mean this is the same is true for George and
The only person who has ever submitted you is Felipe Pena black belt. Yeah a black belt
He is a DCC world champion multiple-time IBJJF Guianogi world champion
You may face him a ADCC or elsewhere in the future
Will you beat him?
Yes, I mean I have to say yes, right
but uh, I
Fought him initially when I first got my black belt that I fought him a year later. So 2016 and
2017 and despite what people remember about the match and whenever people talk about it's like oh, yeah
The guy who strangled Gordon but no one remembers that the first match was like a 45 minute war
And then the second match with the full 20 minutes of ADCC and if I didn't get my back taken in like the last
Minute and a half two minutes. It would have went into an overtime. I could change the outcome of the match
I
Think that if you look at Felipe's performances, especially nogi specifically nogi since then it looks like he's almost gotten worse
whereas since that match
in 2017
the only match I lost after that was against Vinny my glish by my points and
I'm on like a 55 match win streak over the course of four years
winning all the major tournaments nogi and
Felipe since that match I think is like five and two
Nogi and he's lost his last two match matches one was convincingly where he was dominated by Andre and one was by submission
So I don't think that he's progressed nearly as fast if anything
He looks he's worse than he was when he beat me in 2017 based on his previous performances
That being said I know he's gonna come in training very hard for this one and he's gonna be prepared, but I just don't think
that in terms of technical ability, he's anywhere near my level and
He was much bigger than me both times. We fought the first time. He was much bigger than me the second time
He was one way class above me. So now there's not going to be an advantage in
Technicality and it's also not going to be a physicality advantage. So I think he's just gonna be beat everywhere
This is a good example of the scientific response to a
To a comment to a question. Yeah, so he's not
But that's a match you're you're not deeply concerned with
And in terms of the set of opponents because you you have and you will be facing a lot of really difficult
Yeah, that's actually in my opinion one of the easier matches because of the fact that we're relatively the same size
if I show up at 230 pounds like a lot of the guys are
260 270 plus so that extra weight doesn't make a difference. I think out of that entire bracket
Felipe is probably gonna be the one of the easiest matches because of the fact that I can easily take him down and
If I take him down, I'm gonna pass his guard
Whereas I feel like the other guys because there's so much bigger and they're very cagey
It may take me a while to actually take them to the ground
And get on top of them
And I think it may be they may be longer drawn-out matches because of the fact that they're so much bigger and stally
It's hard to take them down. But Felipe is relatively my size and as wrestling is atrocious
So I've already taken him down in the last ADCC match
So I'm pretty sure I can just easily put him down pass him and then finish him
Well, I'm not sure what response I was expecting but that was those those phrase beautifully
We talked about the Tiago Alves fight that George had and John barred up in class yesterday I
Believe but the point is we're talking about wrestling and I think that that's a fascinating fight that
There's an incredible display of strategy of skill of heart
George could you maybe talk about that fight John? Maybe - what lessons you gained from that fight?
Go ahead. It was your fight not mine
Well, maybe it also tell what happened in terms of your injury I think they're around oh, yeah
So I was fighting Tiago Alves and in the third round. I
Tear my adductor muscle
It happened when I was on the bottom and he I think he pushed my knee down tried to pass my guard and I heard
a pop I
Don't know what I think you're going for an arm bar
You were on his back you switched to arm bar and he cleared the leg by pushing on your leg and you went in with
A pre-existing injury and it tore. Yes, and and it get worse and and I heard a pop
I didn't know what it was, but I know it really hurt. So I came back standing up and
there's a
Famous video one that goes on the internet about when I go back in the corner and I tell my my coach
I'm like, I don't know what it is. I think I tore my my my adductor muscle and
Great Jackson is like I don't care hit him with your growing
I
Was very worried because I wasn't paying but I didn't know I did not know what what I had
So I didn't know the gravity of it and it plays on your mind
So but I had to buy it to bite down my mouthpiece and finish the fight, you know
I knew I was ahead on the on the scorecard and now I needed to finish finish strong
So what was your strategy there in terms of strikes in terms of wrestling? So he's
Exceptionally difficult opponent to take down. Yeah. Well at first I
Knew I would add a good jab a good, you know to stay always
From the outside, you know fight him from the outside and and use my footwork because he was like a tank
it was much bigger and much stronger than me and
I
Didn't want never wanted to stay in front of him
So he was all the way out or all the way in and when I was coming all the way in it was with
my proactive or reactive takedown where I
myself initiated the takedown by
using a distraction like a jab to make it is and goes up and then I go with a
single or double leg or
to react like baiting him for him to come hit me and then
While he's coming to hit me. I go change level and
That's the way I like to take my opponent down
§08Transcript · 1:48:46–2:04:36
You know some guys for example, like like cabbie, for example, he's very good at
Bringing his opponent to defense and use chain wrestling to take his opponent down. I find it for me for myself. I specialize more into
Explosive takedown in the center of the octagon because I found it more economical for me
What what did you see you were you're commenting John about the wrestling
Those those quite interesting. I mean also, can you generally comment on the fact that George St. Pierre who don't I don't think you wrestled I
Russell I started wrestling I was 19 years old, but I wrestled some very good Russian guys
so they took me underneath their wing and but
my ability to cover distance
Come from karate does not come from wrestling wrestling is how I finish once I got the leg how I finish the takedown
So the the timing and the movement and the explosion are wired for this crowd. Yeah, I
Think an important distinction to make here is one which George
Made throughout his career and I believe George you were the greatest innovator in MMA history
with regards this and this is
the creation of what George calls shoot boxing, which is the amalgamation of
Striking technique in George's case mostly karate because that was his martial arts background
into grappling and in particular takedowns
When most people say so-and-so has better wrestling in mixed martial arts
You have to be very careful what they mean by this
there are many highly credentialed wrestlers in the early days of mixed martial arts who went in and
Truly struggled to head a takedown
Now these are very very good wrestlers who in a wrestling match would easily put down their opponent
but in a striking situation where the ranges are completely different and the setups are
Entirely different the stances are different even the the overall conditions are different. You're no longer wearing shoes
people
underestimate just what an impact it is for a wrestler to take the shoes off you lose like 20% of your forward drive the
minute you take off the shoes
All of these make massive differences in whether or not you're going to be able to even make contact with an opponent for a takedown
as
George pointed out the true value of wrestling in MMA is finishing the takedown once you've established contact
But that's only about 20% of the action of an of a mixed martial arts takedown
80% of it is an understanding range rhythm setup
opportunity etc, etc and
That's not part of wrestling at all
You even the overall conditions are completely different in the sport of wrestling you start a very close range in a very bent over stance
And you're expected to wrestle for an international stars for three minutes at a time
Now suddenly you're completely upright
and
You're not wearing shoes all the conditions the the rhythm and speed of it is different the counters are completely different
it's just an entirely different animal and so George was an early recognizer of this and
Started to put the emphasis on direct training for shoot boxing
In addition to wrestling so he practiced with very good wrestlers in the Montreal Wrestling Club
Just the sport of wrestling and that's what made him very good at finishing takedowns, but it was in his shoot boxing training
Which he himself largely developed remember George started at a time when MMA was pretty damn young and
He we were when when you entered the sport of mixed martial arts George it wasn't even allowed on TV
Like it was completely banned. It was in his country. It was
physically banned
They had to fight on Indian reservations and the I mean this is way back in the Wild West days of MMA
And so as a as a young developing athlete he had to
More or less do this by himself
If you ever want to hear some incredible stories talk about teenage George St. Pierre
Had a coach who used to make him put on boxing gloves now
he was 16 17 years old and just put him on a hardwood floor against a professional boxer who was in his
late 20s at the peak of his career and
He said George you're not allowed to punch. You just got to take him down while he tries to knock you out and
There was it was crazy
Darwinism, yeah, he was like it's like you're gonna you're gonna
Adapt or you're gonna die
Literally and he could have been very bad, but it turns out to be great is methods
But there's a sensor in which people think oh, you know
What determines your takedown ability in MMA is your wrestling skill that?
Your wrestling skill will determine your finishing ability on takedowns, but there's so much more to it than that
Whenever people say, you know, what what are the broad?
Elements that determine the outcome of a mixed martial arts fight
Okay on the broadest possible level. I always give the same three things
The athlete who can dominate the pace of the match
The athlete who can dominate the direction of the match and the athlete who can dominate the setups
Will win the vast majority of fights therein those three things
The direction the pace and the setups you dominate all three of those
You're gonna win 90% of the matches you're in
George could always dominate the direction of the fight because he could stop the other guy taking him down and
He could impose his own takedowns at any point in a match
So whether went to ground or whether it stays standing was always up to him
George had the most sophisticated array of setups and to takedowns
That I've personally ever witnessed
The whole distinction between reactive and proactive takedowns came very early in George's career and
He excelled in both most people tend to favor one or the other
Most athletes have a very hard time
imposing
Their setups on an opponent and as a result they have to use
The cage as a crutch for their for their setups
Would they just bully someone towards occasion then put them down on the cage?
George is one of the very few people who was equally good against the cage or in the open and could do so in both proactive
and reactive
situations
and
The scary thing is that as good as all of you saw him look in the octagon
Anyone who knows George as a coach will tell you he was twice as good as that in the gym
Where he would often go against people several weight divisions above himself
I could sit here all day. I won't name names, but I always laugh when people say oh, this is the greatest
pound for pound guy of all time and I've personally seen George
Take that guy down and crush him in the gym
And I can't say anything because it's rude to talk about that in public because it's just training
But I've seen George go with people all the way to light heavyweight some of the greatest names in the history of the sport
Put them down
Advanced position on the ground and dominate them in training. It's it's what he did during that time. I
Georgia I got to say I deeply admire many of the things I saw you do not just in the octagon but in training as
well as
the the impact that you had on
The degree to which
Takedowns we use this sport was absolutely inspirational
That's why one of one of the reasons why I always say you're one of the only athlete I ever met who taught me
more than than I taught you because you opened my eyes to a whole new world of
Shootboxing and how I grew up in a time when you I was laughing before when you talked about sugar a Leonard
I was a kid watching that match and I grew up in a time where there was
boxing and there was kickboxing and then I came to America and I learned grappling and
This young man here was the innovator when it came to the integration of the two
Well, then I have to ask cuz George sits here uncomfortably being complimented
If George st. Pierre and
Khabib Nurmagomedov face each other in their prime who wins who that's it. Very very loaded quiz. How yeah
Like what are the different trajectories you see?
Okay, how does each one win in your view if one wins or the other one wins what happened? Interestingly, they're actually
very similar in size despite the fact that
George fought a welterweight and could be
Fought it lightweight if you actually see them stand next to each other the of similar height could be actually a little more thick set
Yeah, he's actually heavier than you walking around
George walked around most of his career between 188 and 191 pounds and
So could be actually would ironically have a kind of size and strength advantage
Despite being in the lighter weight division
That's been the general trend as MMA has grown is that athletes will come further down and wait to make weight divisions
I
Believe that George has the best takedowns in history in the open in the cage
Khabib was his great strength was using the fence to facilitate takedowns
Joe
Khabib's other great strength was not only his ability to take people down but to keep people down for extended periods of time
both of them were
Powerful strikers on the ground and could do terrible damage to opponents on the floor. So they're both very similar in that regard
Khabib was mostly a
Puncher from the back George is mostly an elbow from the front
But both of them could lay waste to opponents with strikes on the floor
Both of them were highly competent with submissions on the ground that they weren't submission specialists in the sense of someone like Gordon Ryan, but
they were
certainly
No slouches with submission holds
Yes, it's a fascinating idea so it's almost like who gets the first takedown
Yeah, I do believe that
They could probably stand up on each other. I don't think either one of them would be able to hold the other down for a whole round
Both of them are notoriously difficult people to hold down
So I don't think that whoever won the first takedown wins the match. I don't think it's like that
I do believe that George would hold a decisive advantage in striking and distance management
the few times that could be did look shaky is
when he
Khabib was either advancing forward menacingly, but when he had to fight moving backwards
There was a definite asymmetry between his ability to fight going forwards
Which is very good and his ability to fight going backwards, which was noticeably
weaker
George would often fight both forwards and backwards and was the Tiago Elvis fight you most of the standing time
Yeah, it was was going backwards
That's probably there was the single biggest difference between the two athletes and skill level would be in the standing position
on the ground
Khabib slight edge and takedowns on the fence George slight edge and takedowns in the center
Ability to inflict damage on the floor roughly equal ability to fight off the back roughly equal
Ability to stand up from bottom roughly equal. It's a very very hard match
in
terms of the biggest
Difference in skill level is going to be in a standing position. And so it would come down to
That doesn't necessarily mean that could be would lose in the standing position
he might just push it to the fence and just use match tactics where he
Kept a fight on the fence for significant periods of time
And you can win rounds in that fashion, so it's a match that could go either way both of them are
Absolutely the best that you'll ever see I've always believed the three greatest mixed martial artists
I've ever seen in my life for George St. Pierre could be even know when we get off and John Jones
The three of them have some interesting similarities and differences all three
Beat every single person they ever faced
I I know John Jones officially has a loss by DQ, but no one believes that was a loss
George does have two losses, but he
Defeated both athletes decisively in rematches could be did it by having no losses
Interestingly all three athletes have at least one match which is controversial in terms of who won and who lost
John Jones has had several matches which could have gone either way on the judges scorecard Khabib's
Match against Clayson T. Bell could have gone either way
George's match with Hendricks was could have gone either way
They all had matches that they won which people would dispute the outcome so that was a similarity between the three of them
all three of them
Have had the ability
To dominate the direction of fights when they want it to go down it goes down when they don't want it to go down
It doesn't
That's why I put such a heavy emphasis on that idea that
Mixed martial arts champion must be able to determine the direction of a fight. It's the single most important attribute that they all must have
As to which of the three is the best it's going to come down to criteria
You can't pull them apart the
Which answer you give as to which of those three is the greatest of all time will come down to the criteria that you use
Okay, is it being undefeated?
Is it the amount of time was that the quality of the opponents that they had if you do it by quality of opponents
I think you probably have to give it to George if you do it by
Measured dominance through not being defeated and it has to go to compete
Arguably you could say the same with John Jones since his one
losses
By DQ
But then you could also say the last three or four fights that John's head haven't been the same measure of dominance as we saw
previously so ultimately you've got those three guys in my opinion and
Which one you choose will come down to who it says more about who you are as a viewer than it does about?
The respective level of the athletes you could throw a blanket over them. The three of them are just that good and
And which one you select will probably say more about who you are as a viewer than it does about them as athletes
The goat is not even born
because the generation
That is present
benefit of a huge advantage
they have knowledge technology that we didn't have before and
We had the knowledge that the other generation did not have before
but I
Believe the best the goat is not even born yet as good as they are today
§09Transcript · 2:04:40–2:20:45
I think you in sport where you can measure the performance
track and field
Olympic lifting you can you know someone is
Better than the other one because you can measure the performance fighting. It's all subjective
we always debate of who would win but
10 the tendency in sport is
That
Performance get better. I don't think it's because the athlete necessarily get better. It's because they have access to better technology knowledge and
They learn from their predecessor
As long as that knowledge is transferred forward
Something tells me that the greatest of all time lived a few thousand years ago and it's forgotten some of the greatest warriors
They can imagine the kind of grapplers. We just the history didn't record them
Mmm, there could have been small tribes where they developed many UFC's
And they've developed the kind of things we you have to think of like the Gracie's
Just a small family was able to develop so much so quickly
I I often as this this discussion with Johnny
I think it's very important like to mention I ask you it very several time like what would happen if we would take a
Fighter of modern days facing the champion of pancreas. This is an interesting question
You brought something incredible a good point and people don't don't realize it, you know, yeah
no, I think one of the great tragedies of martial arts history is our loss of
The historical records of pancreas like most of what we know is
From what I'm told is actually lost in the fires of the Library of Alexandria
And we're left with only a pitiful amount of information on
pancreas images
But what we do know is that there was a very large
Participation in the sport and that it was widely considered the most popular
Sport in the ancient Olympics and that it was represented in the ancient Olympics for many hundreds of years
Plus a long period of time before its introduction into the ancient Olympics. And so the development time
That it may have had would have been very significant it
As far as we know most of the development would have been in the major Greek city-states for
literally hundreds of years of development
Given its prestige as an Olympic sport then the best athletes would have been doing it
Some of the sharpest minds that we know of in human history were involved in the sport
Plato the great philosopher
Was a pancreas in his youth in fact his name Plato is a nickname
Platos is like plate. It means broad or big guy like the big guy and
He spoke often about pancreas and in his written works
Imagine people with the intelligence of Plato
thinking about
Grappling technique for hundreds of years in the most popular Olympic sport of that time
significant numbers of people with
Financial backing as city-states put great prestige upon an Olympic success
They would have funneled athletes in
Bought in the best coaches and they had that for many hundreds of years like it's quite conceivable
that the best pancreas athletes were of the absolute first quality and
It it's it's so sad to think we'll never know what was their skill level and
It's interesting to think about what kind of techniques had developed whether
There's stuff we haven't discovered yet in class. You're talking about the most effective
Take down strategy in wrestling and collegiate wrestling. So maybe let me ask first because we offline talked about this, too
What is the highest percentage submission in grappling overall?
You have to go with the rear naked strangle strangles from the back
If you look at most tournaments most rule sets it has success across all rule sets
all weight divisions all body types
It doesn't require any kind of specific physical advantage such as height
in order to be effective
It works equally well in both fighting and grappling
It will work regardless of how physically and mentally tough your opponent is
Okay, a heel hook is a very high percentage technique in in modern-day competition
But if your opponent simply makes up his mind that he's not going to tap and is willing to take the physical damage
it won't result in the end of a match a stranglehold by
Contrast will always in the match regardless of your opponent's mental toughness
so
I believe it's fair to say that at the end of the day the single most high percentage
method of
Submitting people and grappling is a renegade strength. So when you look at an athlete maybe Gordon you could speak to this like what?
What's the best?
You mentioned Gary with the guillotine. What's the best submission to really invest in is it the rear naked choke?
To really invest your development like understanding the entirety of the system that leads into that
I think that I mean you have to do them all obviously
But if I had like one submission that I would only one submission I could pick for the rest of my life
It would definitely be a rear naked
Can you explain maybe some of the actual technical details of why that's the case?
well as John spoke about they're different in joint locks, whereas
You don't have to tap you can just let your leg break and then keep going with the strangled is
there's no
There's none of that and then it's just an inherent
Advantage you have being behind someone
Whereas if you go for an arm bar you stop you start from top mount and you're facing the guy then you put them down
And you're not directly behind them with leg locks. You're facing the guy
Whereas when you're on someone's back you have them in a pin where you can your chest the back
You have a body triangle and you you're paying the guy in place. He can't explode out
He can't grease his way out most of the time
And there's an inherent advantage you have being behind them due to the fact that we're poorly set up to deal with threats behind us
So would you say that's the most dominant position you get to like more than mount?
More than yeah sack control. I think if you look at most matches historically
Most guys who get stuck in positions for long amounts of time are guys that they're back taken
If you get an explosive guy from bottom mounting and bridge and he can off-balance you and lock half guard
Maybe and then work back to guard but someone locks a body triangle on your back
That's where you see most guys getting pinned in place for long amounts of time
Was uh was the body triangle like a well understood thing?
was that an invention at some point like as a system as a
Perhaps some of your listeners can correct me on this
But I believe there was a technique banned in judo called doji main
Which involved crossing feet or locking a triangle around the abdominals from the back and it was banned in judo
I believe because of intestinal injuries which occurred in the early developmental days of
judo and
In the modern era when I first began jiu-jitsu body triangles were relatively rare. They were not a standard part of class
and
Sometime around the late 1990s early 2000s people started to realize that this is a stronger method of control
It it greatly increases the amount of control you have over your opponents hips and torso over regular hooks
It's not for all athletes. It's difficult for most people who are of shorter thicker statute to
Employ on on big people if your opponent is very broadly built through the stomach. It's almost impossible to apply and
So because it can't be applied by all people it tends not to be taught much at beginner level
so as a result, it was always seen as a
Kind of a specialist move for taller athletes at a higher level of competition rather than a broad-based move for everyone
Or every body type in every class to employ so it just didn't get emphasized that much but in top level competition now
I think you would see that it's very apparent that the vast majority of athletes whenever they have the opportunity or a choice between
body triangle and
Regular rear mounts the majority of modern athletes would choose a body triangle
So we also had this conversation about wrestling maybe Georgie can comment on like what's the the highest percentage?
Not statistically speaking perhaps that's also interesting as John talked about but just for you in terms of mastery of a takedown
What's what's the best way to take it down a human being?
in wrestling well I
Personally for me it depends for every fighter are different. They have a different set of skill
For me I when I look someone
Want to bring down a tree a big strong high tree
He cut it from the base
So the legs that that's what we stand on
So it was to attack the leg, but is it single leg double leg is it we talked about like?
Well, there's also the the John Smith low single. Yeah, actually I don't even know if that's applicable for digits at all
You can use it, but it runs at the problem with submission holds
Yeah
It's it's not impossible to use but without shoes and in a situation where there's a whole plethora of submission holds in the scoring
that
It's a little more difficult to use you know
It is interesting something being a high percentage in terms of effectiveness tells a story
You're saying that every athlete is different, but if it's more effective for most people I
Mean it's interesting. It's it's interesting what John talked about is that the highest percentage thing is actually
In collegiate wrestling that he was talking about is on the defensive side so blocking a takedown and spinning around to the to the back
So that's an interesting idea then also. There's all of these kind of going in for a singleness switching to a double or
Wizard position and doing knee tap like there's all these kinds of combinations that seem to be
Effective when you look at the statistics, and it seems like there's maybe it's a scientific way of thinking, but it seems like there's
Some conclusion to be drawn there. Oh, yeah, I believe you need to the high percentage move. There's a reason why they works
I think it's it's made for a bigger amount of people
For example I one of my main
strength
Athletic strength is I'm an explosive person so I'll use technique that are explosive if I got a single leg my
One of my thing I like to do is to go for the double power double
but for
Someone else we got for example in a single leg position. Maybe he likes like body true better
He's more a Greco guy like so or he's a judo guy. He's gonna go for something something else so
But there is move that are I would say like you just mentioned are universal like statistically speaking. They're
The highest percentage move that works for pretty much everybody everybody pretty much can do a
Adeka Jimmy, you know it's very easy
But it's not everybody that can lock a triangle with their legs
So so those move like a real naked choke and I got Jimmy's the highest percentage move because it's maybe more accessible
It's accessible for a bigger range of yeah based on the physical characteristics of the people do you draw on your wisdom from these high?
Percentages John for like in terms of what to focus on yeah, absolutely
Jiu-jitsu has an ocean of moves and you can get lost on that ocean
You can drift for a long period of time and and that was very little to show for it
so my whole thing is focus we only live one lifetime and
Your training lifetime is even shorter than your actual lifetime
So in that time I must die on the mat
I I put a very high value on
Choosing what I believe to be the most high percentage
Moves and putting an extraordinary amount of focus on them
The only problem is that in one generation a move which can be considered low percentage might actually turn out to be high
Percentage in another generation for example
we talked earlier about leg locks when I was first out of judice if they were considered the ultimate low percentage move and
a big part of my career has been convincing people that in fact that was
That was incorrect that they can be a high percentage move if we just change our approach to them
So we can't just follow tradition and say oh, this is low percentage. This is a high percentage. It has to be part of a
fairly systematic study where you
investigate
What are the reasons why it's high percentage or low percentage with regards to takedowns?
If you look at what we can consider the most high percentage takedowns
If you're in front of someone the single most high percentage way of taking them down is to get a hold of both of their legs
And push them backwards
Okay, if you get a hold of one of their legs and put a force on them
They can use their other leg to defend themselves and hop around and funk their way out of takedowns and cause all kinds of problems
For you. I don't care how athletic your opponent is if you get a hold a firm grip of
Both of his legs and start pushing him backwards. He's gonna fall down to his butt now
He might be able to recover from there, but he will fall down
Even easier than that is to be behind someone
Takedowns from in front of someone are difficult you go right into their hips their head their hands
You go into all their defensive weapons if you're already behind someone and you're doing what in America they were referred to as a mat return
This is significantly easier than taking someone down from the front if you have control of their head in a front headlock position
You've already closed distance on your opponent. You already have close contact. You don't have to worry about shooting anymore
There's no sprawl out of that. You don't have to worry about guillotines Kimura's or the
Standard defenses those will intrinsically be easier takedowns out of front headlock
And so if we're going to talk about high percentage technique
I always go back to the mechanics of it rather than just historical tradition because historical tradition can be wrong
It was wrong about leg locks. It could be wrong about other things too. So my primary thing is okay. Talk to me about mechanics
That's what ultimately is going to determine whether something is high percentage or not
Gordon pointed out earlier that when you're behind someone you have innate physical
Advantages over the other guy the human the human body is set up entirely to defend to defend threats from the front
We are poorly adapted to defending threats from the rear. We don't have eyes in the back of our head
We can't apply pushing strength backwards
If you get behind someone
Takedowns are ten times easier from behind someone than they are when you're in front of someone if
You have to take someone down from the front get a hold of both of their legs
If you can get a hold of both of the legs and a part of pushing force, you will almost always knock them down
if
you can get a hold of their head and
Work takedowns from there again
It's much easier because most of their defensive apparatus has been taken away from them before the takedown even begins
And so for me the most high percentage takedowns will always be from the front double legs
From any takedown from the back is going to be significantly easier than any takedown from the front
so all manner of mat return takedowns are going to be very high percentage and
Takedowns done out of situations where the opponent is broken down in front of you
§10Transcript · 2:20:49–2:36:38
And you have either front headlock or front chest wrap position are going to be significantly easier than takedowns from the open
Of course you have to consider the full
Spectrum of mechanics involved here. It's possible that an outside low single leading to a double leg is much higher percentage
I think there's a lot of chain wrestling yet, you know that needs to be considered as a possibility
Maybe a straight on double and part of this cultural too
Are people afraid of this kind of thing that they came to be the case with leg locks are people aware of this?
are they worried about this are they training for this to defend this and
And then this opponent specific, of course that
You know with Jordan Burroughs people are preparing for the double which is why he had to develops a whole other kinds of different stuff
And then the head to all the different controls all the different ties within the rule set
And that's where it's so fascinating to see the effect of rule set on all of this judo over the past
I think 20 years went through this every Olympics different changes to the rule set like fundamentally different
In terms of what's allowed to grip whether you're allowed to touch the legs at all. That was a big one in
2012 I think
And that changes the sport completely and so interesting
It's so interesting to watch how a tiny change in the rule can change the sport
at the highest when you're talking about people competing at the highest level and
the cool thing there is
The rule change happens on a scale of every four years
So you get to see people that are at the top of their game have to like recompute
So it's not like you have a new generation of people coming up with the rules. I have to figure out shit
You're not allowed to like it's the equivalent of saying you're not allowed to kick anymore in MMA
Because you were not allowed to grab legs anymore in judo
interestingly if you look at the
case of judo if you look at the world rankings of
athletes when they went through one of the most
Significant rule changes in judo history where they banned any form of grabbing the legs
The ranking of athletes didn't change much
Yeah that tells you that there there's a reason why those guys are at the top
Yeah, and it doesn't have to do that. There's specific to a rule set
Yeah, think about that in terms of imagine for example in mixed martial arts if they just said hey
Starting next week instead of having three five-minute rounds. It's gonna be 15 minutes straight
That would massively change the preparation of the athletes
It's a different game at that point and judo literally was a different game before 2010 and after 2010 and yet
The international rankings didn't really change that much the countries that were dominant before
Remain dominant the athletes that remain before largely remain the same
you would think was such a massive change all the rankings would have been thrown upside down, but they weren't and
Again, it goes back to this idea that there's a reason why the guys at the top are at the top
And now for something completely different we talked about aliens earlier. Yeah, so George brought up Bob Lazar. I
Will likely probably talk to Bob Lazar on this podcast and then
And then John had this a skeptical look on his face about Bob out aliens. So let me ask John and Gordon
Do you think there's intelligent alien civilizations out there in the universe outside of our own? The universe is?
unimaginably large the idea that we are the only life forms and a cosmos as large as this is
I think naive and foolish
There's a very high likelihood that if life could evolve on this planet that it could have done
So on many many other planets around the around the cosmos
I think anyone who puts even a moment's thought into this would realize that there's almost certainly other forms of life out there
the real question with regards the alien community is
Have they got here and now they circling our planet and little silver saucers and making observations and periodically
Stealing people for experimentation purposes. There's a whole silver saucers. It could be different other color saucers
And that question I'm I'm not at all convinced. No, I didn't recently
Navy footage has come out showing
Some very interesting phenomena if you talk to almost any experienced pilot
They will tell you they've seen things in the upper atmosphere that are very difficult to explain
I'll be the first one to agree with you on this. There are some things out there that are extremely difficult to explain
It's literally UFOs
Unidentified. Yeah, I mean we just don't know what they are
but to go from the idea that there's things out there that we don't understand to
this
like little creatures running around and
and these somehow exist I
Just reserve judgment. I just say I'm agnostic about these things. I think it's possible but
All the evidence that I've been shown so far was insufficient to come to any kind of definite conclusions until
Aliens land in Central Park on Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. And get out with little alien ray guns and start shooting people
I don't believe in
Many of the stories that get told well, what about if it's not little aliens with ray guns
But something very different very very difficult to detect for us humans. That's very human
Then at that point it's a it's a fascinating idea and it's certainly possible but show me the evidence
All right, what about you Gordon
Do you do you look at the cosmos and ponder the stars?
Often I think it's fair points John raised
something really interesting I saw the other day was a
someone posted like if an alien organ or civilization
65 million light-years away somehow managed to look at earth
They would theoretically see the dinosaurs because there's 65 million light-years away. So like imagine us looking at
Galaxies that are 100 million light-years away. That's a hundred million years ago. You have no idea what it looks like now
So that's what's super interesting to me about it
yeah, the the expanse is huge and so much cool stuff could be going out there and
The scary thing of course is if they haven't visited us yet
the
there has to be a good reason for it and
The set of scary reasons of all the fact that they maybe once it gets sufficiently advanced in your development
You destroy yourself naturally as humans seem to be approaching now
We more and more have the tools to destroy ourselves completely
in terms of our weapon systems
and we're developing them more and more and they're becoming better and better and
Then we're starting to get angry and angrier on Twitter and Instagram at each other. Oh
Those are good points. You're raising
History has taught us that
Everything that lives one day will die. So we will perish one day. Yeah
it's also just the the sheer difficulty of
of
Travel through space like space is an unimaginably inhospitable environment and
to the best of our knowledge
This even the theoretical speeds that we can attain in space even if we could
Travel at the speed of light. We're not even remotely close to that
Still the distances that need to be traveled to get to even relatively close solar systems
very very long if you look at
Astronauts who have spent significant amounts of time in space just orbiting the earth it has severe health effects on them
We just not built for space. We're supposed to be in a gravitational environment
But we you're referring to your biological meat bag that's containing the essence of the mind. That is John Donahue
Maybe we can transfer the mind
alone
The bag the meat the meat bag is not designed for space but maybe the car again
This is all that's of the mind. It's it's possible. But what do you think of concrete evidence? You folks who like difficult things?
What do you think about Elon Musk going to colonize Mars
is this something you find an interesting or a
Aimless pursuit I think it's a must or a salvation
We need to leave at some point a planet because historically in the past we know that we've been bombarded by asteroid
volcano
They're crazy things happen here. It's very unstable. You know, we if you look at it to
Lifetime of a human being it's nothing but just look 12,000 years ago what happened, you know
So there is cataclysm that happened all the time. It's very unstable
So if we want to survive as a species
I think it's it's we need to get out to be able to get out and spread our seed
so these are the early steps on a really long journey, but is there something about like
You know, we don't get that exploration from most of modern society, you know the kind of exploring that people did throughout the centuries of
you know coming to the
North America just throughout we were shrouded in physical uncertainty of what's out there
And now we get to do the same kind of exploration with Mars
Is there so I mean is there any aspect of you that wants to travel out to space that wants to travel to Mars?
There you know, the goal is to allow civilians to travel
Perhaps in our lifetime
Meaning affordably you can do so now unaffordably
Traveling to space and traveling to Mars are two different things. I think I would like to travel into space
I don't know if I would like to travel all the way to Mars because of the risks involved
just cuz
Boring. Is there some part of you that enjoys?
I think that if I was like towards the end of my life
I would like to travel to Mars just just just the experience. Yeah, but if I go to Mars, I'm not coming back
I think that's it
one-way ticket
Hey with the technology we have now maybe in the future
Maybe our the children of our children will will be able to to experience that to go to well the weekend
Well, the whole design of the Starship that the SpaceX is working on it's supposed to come back
It's supposed to be reusable. So it's not it's not a one-way ticket. That's the whole point
It's always going back and forth back and forth. What's the time frame between two planets like to travel from?
I think the current thing you'd be stuck on Mars for two years
But how long does it take to get from Earth to Mars? Oh, it's pretty I'm not exactly sure but it's pretty quick
It's pretty quick. Like I don't know and the scale of months not scale of years
You might not be healthy when you come back, you know all the astronaut they experience health issues
You know, they lose a lot of muscle mass bone density. So yeah, I don't think the technology is good right now. I mean
Let's say that it is I would love to be doing it for a weekend if it's safe
I would be the first one to do a professional fighter who sacrifices body
Something so there's some sacrifice we do in life, right? I would don't want to be the first
I wouldn't want to I leave the other one, but when I know it's it's safe
Okay, count me in. So one of the things that people say and this is something I wonder about is
It's like having children or something
Once you see once you're out in space and you look out and you see Earth you look back at Earth
That's an experience. It's unlike anything else like you can't replicate it here
Is to look back at that like blue dot and that nerve-wracking
You see like Earth disappear into the distance
Yeah
Yeah
Disappear into the distance and then you get to actually stand on Mars and see and just to look you're standing on the ground and
You're looking out and you see the planet from which you came and where you might not be coming back
but there's a challenge to the whole thing where the risk is tremendous and
I don't know. I find that risk really compelling for some reason but that could be just the exploration
Look, I guess that's a genetic thing to how much do you want to explore?
There's a sense though in which even in the best-case scenario
where they did get the technology to whisk you to Mars and if in a
fairly short period of time it's kind of an inauthentic sense of exploration because
your participation in it is
no more exciting than your
Participation in an airline flight to a foreign country. You're basically you didn't have anything to do with the creation of the vessel
You're not in command of the vessel. You're not in any way shape or form important to the mission
You're just a person sitting in a passenger seat and you get off in a destination the same way you would if you flew to
Singapore or London or someplace like that
Well, there's a hierarchy of there's a leadership and then there's a bunch of people and they all have roles
You don't go to Mars without having a subscript set to go to be you've made it sound like space tourism
Where you just yeah, I don't I think it's a long time before you have space tourism to Mars. We have nothing to contribute
Okay, like you will have to tell what you do you go through like a training program you go training program
And then there's there's technical things you'll be contributing so there they would bring people
You know in terms of agriculture, I don't know. Okay, so this is this is better
This sounds like they're actual they're more like explorers. Like if you talked before about
Explorers and human history where Magellan sets off on his boat and every person on the boat had a specific function
They were they were all
Into the mission in a very authentic fashion if they weren't on the boat the performance of the crew would somehow suffer
So that this sounds much better and with just would like with Magellan. I think most of the crew died a
significant number did yeah
And from
Yeah from bacteria, I mean from things that are unexpected and so on and if we discover life on Mars
I mean who knows what that entails because that's like a manned mission to Mars
would likely be very driven by the research to do all the kind of
Exploration required to find life now from
Mr. Musk's
Point of view as a developer presumably there has to be some kind of financial incentive here, too
Is there some kind of financial benefit to Mars missions is is?
presumably
There wouldn't be that many people on earth that could afford a ticket to pay for the kind of research and development that would require
This is there some kind of mining on Mars of minerals that would be useful
I think there's a lot of answers to this
But the only honest answer is the one with it looks back into human history where we did a lot of things just because we
could a lot of hard things just because we could and that led to a lot of
Innovation that ultimately made our life better. So this is more. This is why you have NASA
This is why you have government organizations. Like what's the purpose of NASA NASA would answer that by saying, okay. Well, we're helping
Launch satellites up there all that. They'll have a bunch of answers. But the reality is the programs
were
funded in large part by our desire to explore the unknown and
There's some aspect to which we have to all invest into that because historically speaking
§11Transcript · 2:36:44–2:52:18
That has produced a lot of cool things along the way. They were totally unexpected like but NASA is funded by public funding the taxpayer
How is mr. Musk going to fund this? Well currently most of the funding was the SpaceX is NASA giving
money
to
So they're making a competition who can who can get our satellites. We need to go to
You know was for the space station to
Resupply the space station or we need to launch satellites up who's going to carry those quote-unquote payloads
They just need so NASA's paying whoever the heck wants to
get
Kilograms of thing up into space
Why did this is NASA's specialty? Why did they just give up on that?
Well, they why they realized where mr
Musk came along and then Bezos and others that said we can do it for one-tenth the price
So why did the why should the taxpayers pay for the why don't you NASA do what you do?
Well, which is like test out cutting-edge stuff make sure they're safe. And now that we've developed
a car
Let us let us UPS and FedEx take care of
Doing this at scale doing it cheaper doing it better
I mean, that's the argument and NASA took what they realize is it took way way too long to do stuff
when you're investing millions as billions of dollars into a project the
Debris rocker see builds up and the conservatism builds up to where you're I mean, you really have to test everything out
So projects take years and then you have somebody like Elon Musk coming along and says well, let's do
launches every
Every week and as opposed to just throwing away the rocket will reuse the rocket
That was one of the sort of cutting-edge inventions. It's a dumb obvious idea
Like Elon says why do you throw away the place? The equivalent is if you flew a plane every time you threw it away
Why are we every time throwing away the plane?
But NASA's tried that kind of thing with the space shuttle since the 1970s and yes
well, they did that with the space shuttle, but not not at the scale here that it was the space shuttle was seen as this like
Majestic amazing thing that requires a huge amount of investment with the Elon Musk is like no every basic rocket should be reusable
Next cut cost cut cost. Do you do you think like?
The more technology we have the more advanced we become the more
Specialized we need to be like is that for that reason that now they there is different branch like you just explained out now
There's other specializing this but they left, you know other branch. Yeah, there's there's the greater and greater specializations
we build up more stuff, which is fascinating because
Is it making us more?
Dumb in a way. Do you think like like like yeah, I don't know like you you know
But I use a cell phone, but I don't know how to build it up from there
I mean, it's that beta males building up this whole society
because we're this collective intelligence we rely on each other more and more and
it I do also see sort of the rise of conspiracy theories and all those kinds of things because
Like I've been talking to a few folks about flat earth recently it's fascinating it's fascinating
there's a large community of people that believe the earth is flat and
That idea takes hold in this day and age of all the ideas
that's the one that takes hold for a large number of people and I
Think that's a consequence is this this kind of specialization where it's just huge amount of experts
But if you look out into our world and try to reason simply about our existence
We are losing the skills to do that because more and more people are specialized as opposed to general thinkers
We're like extremely good at specific things. Are we capable now to do a robot that is self-aware?
There that's that's one the legged one. I mean
It's self-aware like not self-aware has been listening, but it's not self-aware
But do you think a human being is self-aware or that's a good question?
I mean I ask this question all the time when the robots move. There's a sense of
When they turn on something entered that robot Wow, and when it turns off something left
If they move in a certain kind of way and if they're if they surprise you there's certain elements that
enable us
to see the magic in
In a living being and some of them. I mean we can care we can maybe list them
but it's the ability to surprise you it's the
Ability to make mistakes and learn from them visibly there's a bunch of things that you just I
don't know it just feels like it has the magic of what is a living being and
Which is what humans have and I try to think about how do you replicate that into a machine?
So when you turn it on enough you feel like it dies every time and the reborn so for most machines
We don't feel that way. We don't when we unplug things
We don't feel that way. I don't know why we don't feel that way. That's an interesting question, but I think when
When the robot has certain qualities
like memory
Like ability to recognize you
Yeah, you start to feel like you're turning off an organism
so so whenever I have like the robots that recognize me and
Remember, this is important that all the things we've experienced together
Then it's like holy shit
That's a that's a living thing. But does it feels it feels like a living thing. Does he remember your robot?
Does he remember things that happened before you unplugged in is it like he's sleeping?
Like you wake up or is he like that? So right now it start to zero everything
No, it doesn't start as you remember remembers everything. That's the key every time you like you you unplug Wow
It's storing the storing the memory, but the memories are basic. They're like, okay, we walked around the kitchen and then
You looked at me I mean the memories it's like data it's just it's not like we've experienced it's able to actually
Experience anything deep like we humans can but just the fact of memory
It's like the toaster or the microwave. Don't don't give a shit about me. They don't know me
They don't know me by name. They wouldn't recognize my face as being different from Gordon's
They wouldn't know the difference and they wouldn't remember the microwave currently doesn't remember, you know
The times I've been sad or happy like what food I put into it
it doesn't remember this when I was being a fat ass or what I was being in good shape and all
Just those memories are enough to make you feel when you turn a thing off
It's like shit. That's a living. That's that that's a living thing disappearing. Of course. That's kind of an anthropomorphism
We do to each other
But that's something is you know that that's something that makes me believe it's possible to create
Systems with which we can have a connection that are non-human like similar to dogs and cats and so on
Just makes me and that's what's interesting to me because ultimately I feel like they'll help us understand
ourselves
And maybe practice grappling moves anyway
Well, let me ask the advice question
Now that we're together I've asked I've spoken to John I spoke to George
What what advice would you give to young folks whether we're talking about?
Sport like excelling becoming great at grappling becoming great at fighting
Become a great at whatever sport they take on or life in general whether there may be in high school or in college
What advice would you give them to?
excel at
That thing they take on I don't know if I'm qualified to answer this because I'm only 26
So you said you're at the top. He said you said giving advice to young people
For me, I think the two biggest things are
Find something that you're both talented in and you enjoy
I think that if you enjoy something, but you're terrible at it
It's gonna be hard for you to be successful in life at that given in that given area
And it's going to be hard to do something for long amounts of time
If you're talented at it, but you don't enjoy doing it
it's easy to come in and
Train hard for a month or for two months or for a year
You can be very talented at it
But if you come in it's but it's a different story to come in
Every day for five years in a row for ten years in a row for 15 years in a row
so I think I
think finding something that you're both talented in and
Something you enjoy are probably the two biggest things for me. How do you find the joy in it?
So you've been training insane amount, you know a lot you've been doing it for a long time
Is there is there ways to rediscover the joy in it? Yeah for me initially
It was just learning new stuff, you know
You just come in as a white belt and every day you learn you see a different move and you're like, oh man
It's that's awesome. And then when I started to compete more seriously towards my professional career it was
The joy of doing camps and seeing the result of those camps and beating high-level athletes
And then it got to a point where I've beaten all the high-level athletes already. So
Who am I gonna compete against?
so now for me the joy is just
Being the best athlete that can possibly be until I reach my prime which I'm hoping is somewhere between 35 and 40
So instead of competing against the other athletes
That would be bored already because I already beat all the rest of the guys
but I
Know that now I know that I can be better in a year from now or two years from now that I am today
And that for me is exciting
By the way, is there some aspect of teaching that's exciting to you? Yeah, I become a better and better teacher over the years
Yeah. Yeah, I definitely I enjoy teaching and I
used to teach a
Lot before I met John and that I met John and I was like, yeah, I just have no idea how to teach
So that's like a completely different element of the sport
you know doing things and being good at doing things or being good at winning and actually being able to communicate those skills and knowledge to
To a vast amount of people is two completely different things
George advice for young people like yourself
well
First I was I would tell them fine
What you want to become what you want to do and long term?
Use certain things maybe sometime you don't love but where you want to propel yourself at the future
Not what your parent your your friend wants you to become what you you you want to become
So one once you find it
You cannot doing it by yourself
Everything that are that is big achievement in life. We cannot do it doing it by ourselves
So what I would say is second thing is
Try to build up your team and try to build up your team to be able to achieve your goal
of
people that are competent and people that you trust you need both competency and trust I
Sell out of people sometime in business. For example, they hire people they that are that they trust but they turn out to be incompetent
So now you have to fire a friend or otherwise your business going down
It's same problem. If you do the opposite you are you're someone that is competent, but you cannot trust is gonna
It's gonna screw you, you know
So it's very important to stay away from the negative build up your team people you trust and that are competent
And I would say the third one is to work to work hard to sacrifice yourself
Yeah, you have to go through hell sometime
But yeah
You have to see the light at the end of it of it, you know to keep your dream in mind
It's gonna give you the motivation to go through the tough time. It's nothing easy to go work work work
It's nothing you can accomplish without hard work
The fourth one I would say
To invest on yourself constantly if you do not invest on yourself on whatever you are in which business and sport
The game will catch up to you
for example if you're if you become
Champion at something and if you stop improving the other guys that are trying to be champion
They're gonna catch up to you. So you need to invest on yourself and most people
Most athlete they make the mistake when they start to have a money
They buy luxury stuff and that's one thing I didn't do when I start making money
I was investing of on traveling to New York train with John Gordon and the guys to learn
What is new in the the game of Jiu-Jitsu? I used to go in Thailand train Muay Thai
In Los Angeles to perfect my boxing skill
So instead of taking that money to buy me jewelry cars and to do what a lot of guys do because it's a mistake. I
Invested on myself because I know there were people coming. They don't want my place. So I want I didn't want them to catch me
And the last one I would say it seems weird. I would say
To give back and it's not because I'm a nice guy and it's not that I don't say that to look good
I say that
When you you make it
It creates opportunity where you can help certain group of people
But when I say give back not give back to everybody to anybody
Give back only to the cause that you want I give back not because I'm a nice guy
I'm kind of it's kind of selfish. I only give back to the people that I want to give back
Because I give back to them and I know that if I'm more successful
I'm gonna be able to give back to people. I loved the cause that that that count for me
So it's it brings me more motivation because I don't compete for myself anymore
I compete to help people I love in a way
So what when you you reach the top in your game?
You need to find new motivation if you're satisfied is is the end of it your success will go down
So you need to to find new motivation. What can motivate you?
You know, what do you want? I want to help this so I need to to be successful
I want to you know, you need to find reason who you what do you want to do with your success?
So when I say give back it's not because I'm not because I'm necessarily it's not to be to look like a nice guy
It's to keep your motivation to be able to keep climbing the ladder even more
That's beautiful George
John
Um first off the two responses given so far covered. I think the most important things or already
Gordon talked about the need for an underlying passion and enjoyment
If you don't have that you're not going to have the longevity that is required in order to build
Skills, which is ultimately everything's going to come down to your ability to build skills
You've got to have some kind of underlying passion and enjoyment which will keep you in the game long enough to build world championship skills
§12Transcript · 2:52:25–2:58:49
It's going to take a minimum of five years and quite possibly considerably longer than that
George talked about the idea of community. You're not going to make it by yourself
So you've got to be able to build people around you and and build a trusting environment around you to develop those skills
What I would add to the the excellent points that both already raised
Alludes to what I said at the start of this podcast
You've got to be able to identify
some kind of undervalued
Elements in whatever industry you're in and show the world what their true value is in
addition
You can't go through life
Doing the same things as everybody else and expecting to get different results
This is straightforwardly irrational and worse. It's even arrogant
It's essentially the statement that I'm going to do the same thing as everyone else
But I believe I'm different and so they'll work for me
But they didn't work for everyone else. That's like saying no, I'm special
No, you're not special. We're all pretty much the same and
In order to be special you're going to have to exhibit skills that other people simply don't have
Thirdly I would say if you want to become something truly impressive in life
You've got to be able to focus on one or two things that you do better than anyone else in your industry
You can't learn everything but you can become one or two skills and the more innovative those skills are the better and
You can truly excel at them. For example at the peak of his career
No one in the world was better than George St. Pierre at integrating striking and takedowns
No one in the world was better at integrating grappling and striking on the ground
He had two things that he could confidently say he was the best in the world at was he the best at every MMA skill?
nope
but he was
Absolutely the best at those two skills and those two skills were skills which he used throughout his career to win
the vast majority of his matches
Gordon Ryan at the onset of his career could confidently say there's no one in the world better than me at leg locks
He could also say there's no one better in the world at me at late-stage defense
To submission holds across the board as he went through his career. He started adding more and more elements
It's gotten to an extraordinary degree now where you could absolutely say he's the best at guard passing the best guard retention
the less this keeps going on and that goes back to what
Gordon said earlier about keeping things interesting over time because we're always introducing new skill sets the day you start saying
I'm satisfied with my skill set is the day you get bored and bored boredom to an athlete is a precursor to
Death by boredom
As long as you're still growing in those directions, you'll stay in the game
For very long periods of time. So the main thing I would add to these
Statements by Gordon and George is this idea of finding something which is currently undervalued and showing the world what its true value is
Understanding that
You can't just use the same training methodologies as everyone else and somehow expect to be different from everyone else. You've got a
Almost every great rise in human civilization whether it be groups of people or individuals
Required some kind of innovation. You've got to look for that new angle. Okay, George st
Pierre found that was shoot boxing early on in his career
Gordon Ryan found it with leg locks early on in his career and they branched out from that from that angle
Add to this the idea that you want to become the
Absolute best in the world in your industry and one or two things that make a difference
Find out what they are and focus on those things and you'll go far
John Gordon George, this is an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for your
Extremely valuable time George as somebody who's become famous in part
by commenting on people's performance
How do you think we did how would you evaluate our performance today?
I'm not impressed by
Learn all the time. I've talked to you guys. I mean, it's great. I loved it. It was very
Stimulated I and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's a it was it was something I really was looking forward to I was hoping that we'd get together
It's so rare that at the same time in history
There will be some of the greats together and the fact that you guys would be willing to come together and talk like this
This is awesome. And that Gordon he would even wear a cowboy hat. I mean, this is just historic
This is like Churchill getting together with whoever, you know, this is great and all but the next one is just gonna be us
Just quizzing John on which animals would win in fights. Yes for the whole three hours
It'll be just so we'll invite Joe and you'll just be we'll make it a systematic
It'll be a debate between Joe and John on which animal would win John and I we have a thing that we send each other
Footage all the time of animal fight where we are very intrigued about animal fight
I get them at like 3.30 a.m. on Instagram. He's like check this out. Like a rhino taking a like a pig like
Like literally like it's not always fair. No, no, it's not ever but interesting stuff
If you people would see what we send the stuff that we that would judge you harshly
Alright, thanks so much guys. This is awesome
Thanks for listening to this conversation with George St. Pierre John Donahue and Gordon Ryan to support this podcast
Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Miyamoto Musashi
There's nothing outside yourself that can ever enable you to get better stronger richer quicker or smarter
Everything is within everything exists seek nothing outside of yourself
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time