JRE MMA Show #11 with John Danaher

00:05and we're live John Danaher thank you very much sir very nice to see you it's my pleasure Joe thank you for having me yeah nice to be with a fellow fanny-pack proponent as well and now you you have one of the the beautiful higher primate leather bags like that huh Joe Rogan has just given me one of the most beautiful fanny packs that I've ever seen in my life I wear a very cheap fanny pack and this this is a thing of beauty I was just telling Jo about my student Gordon Ryan was recently given a Gucci fanny pack it's literally the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life when he wears it around me I get insanely jealous would you buy one of those it's like eight hundred principal just on principle I can't buy an eternal fanny pack but I could definitely stab Gordon Ryan in the back with a knife and steal it from a blankie Ryan I could do that easily

00:58Clara's brother absolutely make great TV series the fanny pack is making a comeback it's a slow comeback that a lot of people are reluctant to join they're they're scared they worry about their position in the sexual food chain with good reason by the way I don't know why I feel like anybody that won't you because you have a fanny pack you don't want to them they're too much work strong point yeah it's just not essentially it's always a battle of appearance versus function yeah fanny packs cool very very low on appearance but very high on function I feel like that one bucks the trend I think you're right between this and the Gucci we've got something going on yet there's a video that I put up the other day of my archery game is techno hunt thing which is this big crazy elaborate thing I got more comments on the fact that I was wearing a fanny pack in the

01:51video than anything with a positive or negative comment mostly negative yeah but that's just the internet the the Internet is the Internet is extremely angry that's the first thing you learn about the internet they you can you could literally save a baby's life from and the 80% of the internet will call you an for doing so it doesn't matter what you do the Internet is very angry well what the Internet is is it shows what people are like when there's no social cues when they're not in front of you they don't have to deal with like looking you in the eye and what weird little hidden demons of jealousy and anger and resentment and it's a pretty sad story isn't it that's what we're really like it's it's not looking good for the human I think it's the kind of people that comment in general what it shows you is that 99% of what we call human goodness and politeness really comes out of fear of

02:48consequences there's a lot of that for sure because there's no consequences when you talk online but I think it's the quality of the people that are making those kind of comments like I would say like if you look at YouTube comments like Michael Jordan is not leaving YouTube comments the people that leave YouTube comments and and complain about things usually everything's not going so fantastic in their own life yeah but they have this forum now when they feel like you know if there's a video that has 3 million downloads they also are on that video they are at the there they're in the comment section you go to them they're a part of that unqualified no one asked them to be there literally all you have to do is make an account no one has to know anything about your education the way your mind works what you've done with your life what mistakes you've made doesn't matter you are all

03:3766 and that's your name and you could say whatever you want and you'll your your comments are right there with everything else yes it's very gala terian but in a lot of ways it's also it's like boy I don't know if that's the best way to get your information yeah I think there's a lot of truth to that yeah so John you are one of the most fascinating characters in the world of jujitsu and the world of martial arts and for people who are not aware of your background you started out correctly from wrong you started out a philosophy student that's correct is and you were working as a bouncer and you were jacked right you're a power lifter at the time yes and you wanted to figure out a way to defend yourself I'm also really a question of wanting to figure out it was it was a pretty simple desire that I had when I grew up in New Zealand martial arts was almost entirely based around

04:37striking prowess you'll back me up on this joke we're similar age when we grew up the it's no exaggeration to say that the study of martial arts in in english-speaking countries North America Western Europe etc was absolutely dominated by the striking odds and if you ask the average person who was the best fighter in the world they would typically say whoever was the best boxer in the world so in the 1980s Mike Tyson wasn't just the best boxer in the world he was the best fighter in the world people always equated prowess and fighting with the ability to strike I grew up in that time period and so I grew up doing studying kickboxing as a teenager in New Zealand I came to United States and for the first time and there's no wrestling culture in my country New Zealand has no wrestling culture it's one of the few countries where there's no indigenous for a sling

05:33culture this there were but it was kind of lost in them a sense of time when I grew up wrestling was something I saw once every four years at the Olympics on TV and I didn't even associate it with fighting to be honest with you and his sword as these strange sport two guys tackle each other and so I came to United States and I was working as a bouncer America has much much more of a wrestling culture in it in in New Zealand when I grew up when you fought you were expected to fight with fists and if it went to the ground the two guys stood up and they resumed fighting you stood up and you fought like a man that was the idea and in the United States when I was bouncing I was absolutely shocked and impressed by the prowess of judo players and wrestlers in street fighting working as a bouncer I worked alongside them and I was massively impressed what year is this

06:25this is in the early 1990s I write in 96 in 1991 so I started working late night and late 1991 in New York City New York was a very very very different city back then it's it's like a it's almost like two different cities from what it is to be amazing how much it's check the transformation is night and day it's become like a giant TGI Fridays now is that's pretty much it to give you an example I used to live on West End Avenue on the Upper West Side when I would come home from working in nightclubs at 5:30 in the morning to go to sleep there would be large numbers of street walking prostitutes on my block my Avenue if that if you saw even a single streetwalking prostitute in that area today will be front-page news at the New York Times it would be so shocking so completely how do people know just yeah people's mind Times Square is the best example time square was an extreme

07:34example because Time Square used to be all seedy peep shows nothing but CDP filled and now it's like Guy Fieri restaurants it's all television so the transformation is huge so that was the New York that I went into and it was a it was a violent New York 1991 I believe was the year with the highest murder rate in recorded history for New York City so it was a very very different New York City it's not what you see today so I came into this environment so these people were incredibly adept and and fighting they were using grappling technique to do - so this impressed me a lot at it shortly after that time as I was working I started to hear talk about this show this ultimate fighting show and there was this Brazilian guy who had beaten everyone he was wrestling people and strangling up man and locking their arm sings actors people things that I never heard of so I heard this and one

08:28day I was teaching at Columbia University and a close friend of mine and was also on the ph.d program came into my office it was office hours and he said John you know I know you work as a bouncer and I know you work at night and I started doing this this martial art it's called Brazilian jiu-jitsu and it's mostly fought on the ground remember you said most of the fights you get into people get put down on the ground and they wrestle and I was wondering if you would be interested in doing it and I was like Brazilian jiu-jitsu yeah I never associated martial arts with Brazil for me martial arts you know Japan Korea you know right Brazil like what do they got capoeira you know right who's this guy so I'm like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu isn't you to see like Japanese like what a contradiction of terms like Brazil Jiu Jitsu so this at the time I was around 230 pounds and this guy was couldn't be

09:25more than 140 and he'd only been training two weeks so um he goes to me you know we go on the ground and and we bristle on the ground and I was like okay let me put you in a headlock and let's see what you can do so I shut the door of the office I cleared out the furniture this poor kid on the ground now I had the only thing I knew how to do on the ground in those days was hit a lot of people you know as a strong guy had a pretty nasty headlock and so I grabbed my poor little friend and throttled him with it basically a kids guitar my type headlock and to my shock and horror he started slipping around behind me and I started holding harder and harder and they about two minutes wing guy and I really had no real control over him and he was starting to get around behind me now I didn't know back attacks where I had complete naivety on the ground but I could feel something bad was at me

10:18someone getting behind you is never a good thing in a fight and I was getting tired my arms were getting tired I had no control of the guy and finally he slipped that night to stand up and run away I'm twice your size you've been training - goddamn weeks and if this was a real fight he would have got away from it I'm tired that's not good and I was just saying if he did this in two weeks what could you do with some training so I was fascinated I went down got completely destroyed on my first day it was hilarious you know who is there on his first they met Sara was that most he was a blue girl at a time so even on that first day you you met people that would become very important in your life later on and I vowed to the moon and the stars that I would at least become competent in the game I couldn't live with the idea that I was incompetent at an important element of

11:08fighting I didn't want to be a world champ I didn't just want to be competent and I believed it would make my bouncing work significantly easier that was absolutely true within a very very short period of time bouncing got massively easier for me I vote you know you always hear this cliche Judas who saves you know Judas who saved my life you how many people in here people say that all the time well I can think of without any question there are four times in my life that Judas who actually did save my life bounce I can say that with complete honesty it's a cliche for most people but for me it's it did happen so it made a massive difference but I still saw it as something it was interesting and something I just wanted to gain competence in that fundamentally changed this really at that point I wanted to finish my PhD and become a professor that's what was my original goal when I

12:05came to United States but things started to change when the three senior students at the hands of Gracie Academy Carl made a mess Sarah and Rodrigo Gracie all went their separate ways they had to go out and start their own schools and hence I was busy fighting professionally in Japan so he couldn't be at the Academy all the time and he came to me and he said John you gonna have to be a teacher like there's no one else and how long do you betray I believe if I go to the it was around four years I believe I was a purple ball when I first started teaching it hands those don't quote me on that but I'll have to go back and check but I believe that's and why did he come with you probably cuz he felt sorry for me I don't know I was there a lot and I think maybe he saw some enthusiasm oh you were obsessed right like you were there daily yeah that became much more so when I

12:57became a teacher was I I saw that okay I'm feeling big shoes here you must remember all three of those names that I just mentioned all three were world champions okay these were good good people and for that time they were they were killed us and Here I am a PhD student now I gotta fill in these shoes so I was like I got to get serious about this so I made a commitment to to becoming the best possible teacher I could now you must remember I went in as a teacher that was my first assignment and so I decided my primary focus in Judit so it would be upon teaching and fortunately I came from an academic background I had many brilliant brilliant professors coming through the philosophy programs both in New Zealand and the United States Columbia University had a fantastic ph.d program so I was very experienced in the art of teaching but in an academic context and I thought maybe this has

13:57given me fate has given me this angle where I can use an academic approach to teaching in a sports environment and that has really become one of the patents of my approach to teaching and jiu-jitsu so this is in the 90s and you are a purple belt at the time when did you develop this leglock system that has become so legendary so for people for the uninitiated that have never heard of you or understand what we're talking about here for the longest time jiu-jitsu was primarily attacks on the arms and the neck that was pretty much it and there were known attacks on the legs but they were frowned upon yes something happened you you got to see some of those techniques in MMA you got to see some heel hooks occasionally foot locks there's a few guys Orlovsky pulled off a foot lock in the UFC against Tim Sylvia there's a few guys that were pulling these off this is pre who some are Paul

15:01Harris but you all of a sudden came along with this very effective system that there was rumblings many years ago about this where a lot of people were talking about it and a lot of people were saying that you know John Danaher has this insane leg lock system and then you started developing all these chair people don't know the top grapplers in the world there's a there's a lot of top crap which in the world jiu-jitsu is incredibly competitive but you're recognized as being one of the premier coaches of the most promising young people like Gordon Ryan who you're talking about before was in Abu Dhabi champion Gary toning Nicky Ryan Eddie Cummings you have an incredible crew of world-class strangle artists who are also known to be some of the very best leg lockers in the world so what happened how did that how did that all take place let's go through we start

16:04about the history of you have you you've actually asked about six different yeah I'm sorry no no no it's good but we can answer them in turn so let's go this the first question your first question was a historical question how how did it happen yeah first off there was nothing in my early learnings of jujitsu which suggested leg locks nothing okay hence I would teach by the way I should say Mike made my sensei throughout my entire career has been hinder Gracie I never left him so he taught me from white belt to black belt and I never left his Academy I'm the only one of his students who stayed with him from wipe out the black belt and never left so him that would teach leg locks but it was taught in always the same fashion that everyone else that here's a move his you know a figure for toho he's a heel hook he's an Achilles lock so the the moves themselves were known okay

16:56they they were they were in existence wasn't like I invented he or Hawks or something like that that's that's not the idea but they weren't emphasized a very very talented and influential figure in my life was a guy that I only knew for three days now that sounds that sounds crazy right how can you learn something from someone in three days well actually the influence he had occurred in three minutes I'm a big believer in the idea that someone can come into your life for a very short period of time and have a massive influence I truly believe that in my case it was a great American grappler called Dean Lister Dean Lister was invited by Matt Serra to come to the hints of Gracie Academy I believe don't quote me on this but I believe Dean was a brown but at the time I'm pretty sure Matt was a brown but at the time too and I brought him in for around three days and he trained mostly

17:54with Matt Serra in preparation for a grappling tournament if I if I remember correctly now Dean was knowing mostly in those days for his achilles lot later on he would become a huge specialist but in those days it was mostly in Achilles log and he came to the Academy role with some people and he did he was doing Achilles logs and getting some success you know went both ways I mean but he couldn't really get his stuff to work on Matt Serra and sarra could get his stuff to work on him but he was doing something which was unusual and so I talked with him just briefly after class and I said you know that's interesting what you're doing with these Achilles logs because I don't really do that at all it's not something I do and he said one sentence which completely changed my outlook because why would you ignore 50% of the human body one sentence why would you ignore

18:4750% of the human body and I loved and I say I don't know why why would you makes no sense and we never talked again and then he went back to California not to become too 2-time ADCC champion mostly with leg locks but what Dean gave me was not technique didn't show me a single technique but he gave me a point of view if you give a man a point of view you can change him okay you can we can work from there that was the influence and my sensei Hensel Gracie was an extremely liberal minded professor of jiu-jitsu he wouldn't let us do whatever we wanted okay he wasn't one of those guys didn't know no one in my Academy studying leg locks he was never like that he was he would allow his students to go in any direction they wanted provided they could prove it was effective so I started studying leg locks and that's where I'm gonna come to the second question which you asked

19:50which is why did leg locks have such a bad reputation in jujitsu curious right we don't yeah this way about unlocks I'm gonna run through the main criticisms and you'll you'll be my witness on this chair I'm sure you heard the same criticisms a thousand times you would always hear people refer to leg locks in the following ways first the first criticism there were too dangerous okay if you allow people to do leg locks everyone would be injured in a week and it would be impossible so that was the first question you would always hear the second great criticism is they didn't work again you might be able to check out a white belt with a heel hook but if you have world championship level you're never gonna tap anybody they didn't work at higher levels that by itself those two criticisms seem to go in opposite directions if they're really that dangerous but they don't work how does

20:34that how do those through gel they're either incredibly dangerous to the point where they can't be practiced or they don't work that they the two arguments contradict each other then you hear other arguments if they were positionally unsound that if you were in top position and you went for a leg lock you would lose position and that was hit as Austan okay that's a criticism with no merit because the that Christian criticism applies to guillotines armbars etc you can be mounted on someone go for an arm lock in a loose position in that one bottom but no one criticizes arm bars so as I went through the reasons why people criticized leg logging none of them really made sense so I started asking myself well often the reasons people give as opposed to what the real reasons are are very different and the more I thought about it the more I thought the real reason

21:26people donate leg logs runs much deeper than their let's understand jiu-jitsu for what it is jiu-jitsu is a systems-based approach to fighting ok what is the system of Besson jiu-jitsu well it can be described in a few different ways I'm gonna give you one rendition which is pretty simple and will resonate with most of your listeners jiu-jitsu is a system based around four distinct steps you can add steps you can subtract steps but the rendition I'm gonna give you now is probably probably the most widely known ok let's say a friend of yours asked for advice on fighting he knows you're a Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert you're a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and he say to me Joe Rogan tell me I don't know anything I want to fight someone else using your Brazilian so what are the steps was only G so what's the system that it what is the system that it espouses you're gonna see always that's

22:28step number one is take your opponent to the ground ok why what are you why do you think the ground is so special why did Brazil just who choose the ground as step number one of its system why do you think well it all came out of Judo right so Brazilian jiu-jitsu took the effective submission techniques of Judo and then just refine them that's the Salah collision what's the what's the mechanical physical reason cuz you can control someone on the ground far better right you can control people oh Michiko control sweet from the standing position with angle and distance there's different ways to control people yes in boxing if you only are boxing but why the ground why did they choose the ground what's the mechanical reason what happens when you take a human being to the ground well there's a whole barrier behind them that you could press them against what

23:17about if you're on bottom position well you could use that barrier as leverage true but there's something that occurs when someone goes down to the ground there's something big that you may be missing what am I missing what's the most explosive event in the Olympic Games the the event that probably requires more transfer of energy and development of kinetic energy than any other there's a bunch you could name but one of them for me is always gonna be the javelin throw the javelin throw involves a full-powered sprint a jump a massive explosive turning of both hips and shoulders and a throw all the quintessential explosive elements of the human body involved in the javelin throw probably to a greater degree than any other Olympic event and as a result people can throw a javelin 80 90 meters what would happen if you took those same javelin throwers and made them perform

24:20the same event on their knees wouldn't be so good they probably couldn't throw it more than 10 meters okay and what's changed the closer they get to the ground the less they can employ explosive force what's the first thing Cowboys do when they go to brand is theater take it down yeah they lock up its legs and they put it down the ground nobody tries to brain this standing steer you're gonna get killed because it can employ explosive dynamic movement to hurt you you put them on the ground dynamic explosive movement is massively curtailed it takes away the single riskiest element of fighting which is quick dynamic movement that can generate kinetic energy so step number one of those idiots who is get it to the ground it's inherently safer less things can go catastrophic ly wrong on the ground and in the standing position what's step number two secure a dominant

25:20position control control too vague there's many ways to control people it's a definite step you've just taken the guy down what's your first thing in Busan you didn't see well the first thing I would try to do is get to a dominant position what do you mean by that beam is obviously passed to side control voltage that you decided it right then get past his legs passes legs why legs are strong they carry you around you could hold a person in position they're very good defensively they dangerous too dangerous okay if I end up inside your legs if your ass killed you to play you can unlock me you can leg lock me against crime even if you were an untrained fighter you could up get me many a man has been knocked out by an object even a nun shooted guy can form a knife get Lakes it dangerous so step number two is get past those dangerous legs what's tip number three go for a

26:12submission no he must be a tenth planet backbone state number three Joe you're failing one pass okay I passed the legs well I'm gonna try to control I'm gonna try to either amount or like I said side control you're on the right track you're gonna work your way through a hierarchy of positions yes you're gonna go knee on belly you're gonna go side control you're gonna transition to mount you're gonna transition to remount depending upon my game there's a sequence of pins once you get past your opponent's legs and jujitsu encourages you to go through those various pins if you look at the sport you'd see the pins scored different amounts of points neon ballet schools a certain amount mounted position school is more rare mountain schools more why ever wondered about then why do we school the pins of jujitsu differently well there's more available from rear mount of course you

27:13have you can of course you can attack the neck you can also attack the arms you you have a positional advantage where you can't be attacked you're you're behind them so it's one of the most superior positions to achieve mm-hmm very good what about the mount mount when the striking involves phenomenal when you just put your finger on it right there Joe every one of the pins if jujitsu the value of it is measured by your potential to strike your opponent on the ground that's why they score more knee on belly scores more its I control because from distance of knee on belly you can strike with more power it's inherently unstable however so it scores less than mount which is inherently more stable and office the same punching platform step number three of jiu-jitsu is to work away through a hierarchy of pins where the pins are graded in value according to your ability to strike with

28:16effect on the ground so far so far we've got three elements in this system of jiu-jitsu step number one get to fight down to the ground we're explosive kinetic energy is less likely to be balanced by a dangerous opponent step number two get past this dangerous legs step number three work your way through this hierarchy of pins where the pins are understood in terms of the potential to harm your opponent with strikes on the floor what's step number four step number four is try to secure a position where you can submit them you've already got the position so what's taking on the form attack with the submission correct so we've just described by zone jujitsu it's a four step system it's beautiful its elegant and its deadly effective step number one take the fight to the ground take away the danger of explosive kinetic energy step number two get past this dangerous

29:15legs step number three work your way through a hierarchy of pins each one graded upon your ability to harm your opponent with strikes on the ground and set up step number four submissions and now the question that needs to be asked where the leg locks fit into that system now where do they fit in they don't know they don't they don't traditional leg locks fit into the system and only one way when the system is failed when the system is not working and you can't take your opponent down you can't pass it a nano minute position and you can't get the regular submissions to work it try a leg lock yeah that's what we see yeah Lake looks were seen for generations as a signal of failure when you couldn't get the system to work you had to resort to leg logs it meant you were a bad jiu-jitsu player he couldn't impose the fundamental system of jiu-jitsu and so you chickened

30:23out and you went to Lake Long's that's why they were despised hmm that was the real reason why for generations lake Long's were dismissed you don't think it was because so many people were injured by them that they weren't necessarily not people get injured the worst injuries and Jets who don't come from submission homes the worst injuries in jujitsu come from falling body weight when people jump God when people accidentally want poorly perform takedowns that's where you see catastrophic injuries engineers we sued career-ending injuries the joint lock submissions you're out for a week two weeks you know catastrophic injuries as I said go on YouTube and put in god paul gone wrong you'll see catastrophic injuries you'll see career-ending injuries there you know can I see from Armas he o hoaxes etc you'll see people getting hurt but it's a contact sport

31:14you expect that okay no there's a very simple elegant system Brazilian Jiu Jitsu we just saw one rendition of it the four step approach and you clearly see leg locks don't fit comfortably into that system what I did is I tried to find an avenue where they could come in and the results were surprising the first thing is our four state renditions of jiu-jitsu looked at jiu-jitsu from top position well we took our opponent down to the ground and we were on top of them but my study of jiu-jitsu didn't start from top position started from bottom position if you look at my students in competition you will notice that around 80% of the entries until leglocks come from bottom position or with their opponent behind them in other words from what is supposedly inferior positions so for me it was never a question of losing position when I went for leg logs because I was already

32:18underneath my opponent I started underneath how can I end up on bottom but go freely I'm already on bottom so most of my early work in link also how to get into the lacox um disadvantageous positions from underneath or when someone is behind me so I never have to felt this problem okay I'm I'm gonna lose position if I go for leg locks I could still play a conventional u Jitsu game and have a very very strong leg leg injury that was the first Avenue of leg locking but things became more interesting when I got further into the leg lock game and I started to realize that as you add leg locks into the game you change the very nature of the sport if you look at you - - as it's ordinarily practiced it's a single Direction game if someone is in front of me and I'm standing over them jiu-jitsu is all about movement from the legs towards the head I'm supposed to

33:21pass their guard work my way up to chase the chess contact and get my head next to their head either in front of them or behind them either mounted or rear mounted so jiu-jitsu always goes in one direction if you ever get stopped or you lose position you just start the process over again it's a mono directional sport it always goes from the legs to the head once you start adding leg locks into the game jiu-jitsu becomes a two directional sport where you can go from the head down to the legs you can go on both directions so if I'm passing someone's guard and i somebody can't do it I can fall back and go back into the legs if I'm side control on someone and they start to recompose their guard I can fall back into the legs I'm going from the upper body down to their lower body traditional Jews who always goes from the lower body directionally up to the upper body so you end up head to head

34:14with your opponent but once you start adding leg logs Jiu Jitsu for the first time becomes a two directional sport instead of a one directional sport and you can play your opponents reactions between the threat of lower body and upper body in ways it opens up submissions so much more easily than the traditional game so if I take you back to the moment where Dean Lister says to you why would you ignore 50% of the human body you go back and think about this and what is your next step do you just start looking at students and looking at what you're teaching and analyzing positions and you're still rolling at the time yes correct the first thing that I start to look at is okay who out there is doing a good job with Lake logging and the honest answer was there weren't a lot of people what you would see is random success with Lake logs you'd see a guy wins a match

35:12here guy wins a match there most of the imminently Glaucus of that generation are actually coming out of Japan you take people like Romina sato had a decent heel hook for that time in Minari that was a little bit prima Nariman erik ainge slightly after Romina started they they fought each other and grappling matches cover one was younger than the other but you know they had some success I believe even Sakuraba finished Newton with a knee bar so you know the knowledge was there but there was nothing systematic about it there wasn't there wasn't there weren't people who were coming out and just systematically finishing people with one move okay so there wasn't much in terms of people to study so the first thing I started to ask you is well what is that what is the nature of leg lock in what if it's it seems to have some problems associated with it it's not as controlling as the

36:09traditional methods of jujitsu and that was the really the key word there control okay why do people favor things like really get strangles so much because it's such a controlling position remount as an incredibly controlling position why do people favor things like kata get on me the arm triangle because this too is a very inherently controlling position all the most high percentage finishing holds and engineers who all have control as their dominant feature okay it's hard people as a result one person can continue to use the same move that largely of success over time against the wide array of opponents so everything every question I asked ultimately always came back to control and the one thing you would see with regards the use of leg locks in the late 1990s and early 2000s was a lack of control so all of my studies immediately went to the notion of control now there

37:09are many forms of leg lock but the ones that interested me the most always come out of what the Japanese call a Shi gourami Ashley Graham is a generic term just means tangled legs come there are many different forms of our Shi grameen a Shi gourami is a mechanism by which I can use two of my legs to control my opponent's legs and hips what I started to do is make a deep study of this notion of Oishi gourami how am I going to use my legs to control the real estate between my opponent's knee and his hips preferably on both sides probably the single biggest cliche that you'll hear about jiu-jitsu is its position before submission at the time I was primarily interested in idea of control before submission control is a much deeper and wider concept than the basic point structure based positional position for submission model of jiu-jitsu there's many ways to control

38:08people have very little to do with with position for example a sheer homage cells cause nothing in in jiu-jitsu but done well it can control an opponent just as well as rare mount can so I started to see that there are many forms of control that went outside of the traditional basic positional hierarchy a brazilian jiu-jitsu mocchi grammy is one of them probably the single greatest key in the development of my leg lock system again came from a simple realization that the greatest mistake that people had made in lei clockwork prior to the arrival of the squad was it they made no distinction between the mechanism of breaking and the mechanism of control Oishi gourami was the mechanism of control the lock itself whether it be a heel hook an Achilles lock a figure four toe hold that was the mechanism of breaking if you watch 99% of the people out there who claim to be experts in leg locking

39:10they don't distinguish between the two they see for example heel hooking as a single skill there's the lock on the legs the Oishi gourami or whatever term they use for it and the lock itself they're not distinguished they taught as a single skill you can't differentiate the Oishi gourami and a lot and you'll see people teaching in this manner what I did was to destroy li distinguish between the two so that my students could all hold an ushi gourami position and switched from one asha gourami to another and hold people for extended periods of time and inhibit movement if I can inhibit movement for long periods of time I can break you at will I can take my time when I come to break you because the control is there the control is prime the break is second for most people is just throwing the Oishi grameen immediately go for the lock they don't even assume the Oishi gourami is

40:07described as part of the heel hook they don't distinguish between the two once I made that realization in early 2000s that's when the ball started rolling that's when a significant amount of progress was made I would say that your question was an interesting one okay you had the inside list they gave you the inside what was the what started you going it was that making first a critical distinction between control and submission and in the case of leg logging between the mechanism of control Oishi gourami and the mechanism of breaking which is the lock itself in my case the healed a really good example of this is how effective it's been implemented by your students against the real world class Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors who don't use these methods like a good one is Gordon Ryan vs. cyborg yes cyborg who is a beast of a man in just a physical specimen a real freak and is known for

41:15his tornado guard is you know is no stranger to leg locks is no stranger to any of the positions of noogie or Guji Jitsu but when I watched Gordon wrap him up and control him and before he got the submission you could see cyborg looked completely befuddled young he knows that the match was over roughly 36 before the submission was applied yeah he was just trying to figure out a way out of it and just with nowhere to go yeah this is it terrifying position to be in for a real world-class Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelt like cyborg when you watch that that match I was like this is stunning because Gordon is what 21 years which is amazing and cyborgs in his 30s right I think cyborg is being a black belt many many years longer than coldness even been doing jiu-jitsu yes yeah he's one of the best guys in the world and when you you look at how well Gordon dismantled him on the ground using the

42:16strategy that you just described it just it's good see if we could find that actually see if you can find Gordon Ryan versus his actual name is I believe you pronounce it Abreu how do you get scarred Oh a Brancato cyborg the broom yeah just a lot of cyborgs in the jiu-jitsu world there's a male cyborg in MMA there's a female cyborg here we go I think cyborg and pitbull is host calling me so we're watching in here now and you see cyborg who is this tank of a man and Gordon Ryan who's quite a physical specimen himself but much younger guy hasn't how long's don't Gordon been doing jujitsu I believe it's between six and a half and seven years total no that's crazy and immediately he dives under gets low using butterfly guard and so his what he's trying to do Gordon is trying to do what with cyborgs legs the first thing that goldenrod needs to do is establish inside position with his

43:25feet if you probably the single biggest starting point for any kind of Oishi gourami based game if you want to remember anything about this Joe remember this whenever you go into leg logs the person whose feet dominate the inside position will always dominate the Oishi gourami game that's the heuristic that I teach all of my students called and Ronnie's just established inside position cyborgs just pulled them in which is interesting cyborg literally pulled him in with his feet inside he ever caught his field position in a way where they could only end up in the inside position so that's the first thing he's got to establish inside position with the feet he knows damn well if his feet occupied the inside position wherever they go he's going to get to the the Oishi grummy and his opponent what about a stop now can we freeze it there yeah pause ok I guess you can you go back a

44:17little bit with with overshot to still at all ok right about here ok initially there's a battle going on here for inside foot position cyborg is an extremely well trained and knowledgeable opponent and he's doing a good job of trying to back state with his left leg he knows that if he keeps both of his feet on the left hand side of Gordon Ryan's body he will be able to prevent his opponent getting inside position so he's doing the right thing he's doing a good job here cyborgs not naive he's as he said before he's a multi time world champion he's very very good it's not like locking somebody doesn't understand what's going on he knows what Gordon Ryan wants there's a battle here for inside foot position cyborg is doing the right thing he's going into a back step he's gonna post his right hand on the floor and try and back step out let's go just a little

45:03further forward into the video good freeze I'd go back just a fraction just a little more okay what is Gordon's front right foot his his right foot it looks like it's hard to see here but it looks like he's got he's got inside position one foot he's got inside position with one foot the whole question is what's gonna happen with cyborgs left leg now we've got a battle between Gordon Ryan's left leg and cyborgs a left leg okay how the battle goes from here we'll come down to one thing who wins that battle okay go forward just a little more hook slot right away okay Gordon Ryan just won the battle essentially at this point the fight is over the only question is how long is it gonna take why am I so confident am I am I an am i saying this because I'm an no I'm saying so as I know what's happening I gave you one of the key notes of the league locking game

46:14already I'll say it again because it's so important a man whose feet dominate the inside position will always dominate the Oishi gourami game now the second whenever you go to attack someone's leg 90% of the resistance on the leg you're attacking comes from the other leg that's so important I'm gonna say it to you again whenever I go to attack my opponents right leg 90% of the resistance is going to come from his left leg we talked about control the foundational principle of control and leg logging is a principle I referred to as double trouble double trouble is a simple idea that if I control both of my opponent's legs he don't no longer has the opportunity uses second leg to defend the first so the amount of trouble that you've put him in is literally doubled in a matter of seconds Gordon Ryan has a hold of cyborgs right leg with his left arm and he has a hold

47:20of a cyborgs left leg with his legs why was I so the match is over at this point because both of cyborgs legs are now controlled by Gordon Ryan he has just attained Double Trouble hmm now let's slowly advance the video do you see how cyborgs legs are in a straight line he's having a very very hard time holding his base here's the cot can you go back just a fraction right about here freeze okay our whole approach to jujitsu is based around the idea of putting wedges around our opponent's body so that we can inhibit movement a wedge functions just as that door stopper stops the door from moving in a breeze okay the only thing better than a wedge is a reinforced wedge that's where the wedge is locked in place by another part of your body Gordon Ryan currently has inside position with the right leg he has control of sidewalks other leg with his arm so both legs have some degree of

48:32control but he's about to massively reinforce that control by locking a triangle or a Senkaku around his opponent's leg in order for that to happen he's gonna have to lift his hips slightly off the floor so that he can elevate over sidewalks left knee watch the video there's the elevation there's the lock freeze freeze now he's got cybox two legs in a straight line that means sidewalks only mechanism of posting or saving his balances his left arm that's all he's got left at this point the fight is done cyborgs right leg is controlled by Gordon Rhines left arm side box left leg is controlled by a reinforced wage to strength of both Gordon Rhines legs it locked up in a triangle cyborg is actually a weight division heavier I believe than Gordon but it doesn't matter at this point both hips are controlled this is a full state of double trouble both legs controlled and a breaking

49:31mechanism in place listen I should go round me on the leg you can break someone from there cyborg knows his only method of not being finished just to keep his hips over Gordon Ryan's hips so the next battle is how is Gordon Ryan gonna put cyborgs hips on the ground what's saving cyborg is his left hand let's see how the battle goes the battle has got lost the hips went down why was it so easy stop why was it so easy I don't know tell me do you see that right knee yes that's what pushed him over the right knee went into the pocket of cyborgs left hip hmm that meant a directionality of force was slightly away from the one base of support that cyborg had left which was his late game so he got sat on his hips now go forward just a little and freeze what do you see Jim in what do you want me to look at what do I see both legs are wrapped up it'd be more precise well

50:43he has incredible control with his right leg the way he's got his right leg in his left leg triangle he's got the cyborgs right foot tucked deep under his arm and he also has the left foot in there as well so he's completely wrapped up with his legs and his arms very good okay let's bring in a few points in first if you want to immobilize a human being and prevent them from moving what are the best things you can ever do it's locked their legs together you get a dangerous prisoner what's the first thing you do handcuff his feet together and handcuff his and hands together he's no longer dangerous okay here cyborgs one of the most dangerous who plays in the world but with the two of his feats locked together he's he's effectively neutralized um perhaps most importantly we've got a very interesting distinction here between what we call a primary and a secondary leg which leg is the Oishi

51:32gourami locked up on well he's got the left leg is with triangle due to sound to it that's the a sheer a melee we call that the primary leg the Oishi gourami is locked on cyborgs left leg that's the primary leg the other leg remember our principle for 90% of all resistance comes in the second leg the arm controls the secondary leg and the legs control the primary leg so the resistance from the secondary leg is pushing off and trying to separate the lock these numerous things he could pummel the foot he could put his foot on the floor and turn he could invert his body there's a thousand things he could do but he's not doing any of them if you control that leg that's the important theme so gordon-gordon ryan's upper body his left arm controls the secondary leg and his lower body the Oishi gourami controls the primary leg as a result what do you think of cyborgs ability to move he's

52:34he's completely nullified yeah okay let's go a little further freeze now cyborg is doing all he can do movement has been taken away from him so his only option is to fight the hands Gordon Ryan understands that he has control of the secondary leg but he needs to make a transition to the primary leg in order to break cyborg he's gonna have to release the secondary leg now that's a that's a scary thing if you release the secondary leg then your opponent cannot defend himself again so he's got to measure how he releases the secondary leg so there's a battle for angle here cyborg is battling for the hands but Gordon Ryan hasn't even started the hand fight yet he's still in a control fight his only interest is in holding the position go a little further freeze why did Gordon switch his right hand to the knee well that's the leg that can control the secondary secondary leg which can defend

53:52I would imagine he's distracting him mm-hmm why is golden Ryan's head leaning to the right-hand side because that society needs to take cyborg if cyborg turns his head to the other side when Gordon Ryan releases the secondary leg there's gonna be a problem there's a battle for angle now that no one sees Gordon Ryan's head tells the whole story here let's go a little further freeze warden Ryan is already beginning the transition to the primary leg it's a way he's got it locked up it's just so horrific - yes the two of them crossed over each other now at some point he's got to uncross the legs to get to the primary leg let's go a little further cyborg still engaged in the hand fight now Gordon is about to make his transition to the hand fine freeze Gordon Ryan's made the critical release of the secondary leg this is where things start to get interesting

55:13cyborg has perhaps tragically set on his right hip which means he has no ability to use his secondary leg to escape and because he's holding Gordon Ryan's arm he has no ability now to invert his body and go into a turnin escape now Gordon rynders needs to release the right arm let's go further freeze go back just to here okay Gordon Ryan is about to release the secondary leg freeze right there now very slowly take it forward watch Gordon Rhines left elbow freeze why did he put the elbow there no no it's a wedge it's immobilizing the leg he really wants to attack he switched his arm position from controlling the secondary leg which he hasn't yet fully released but he's put his elbow in front of the toes of the primary leg to keep that primarily from extending correct and to be out of transition effortlessly enter the lock all he needs now is to release the right arm cyborg

56:40knows if he loses the right arm the fight is lost continue Gordon goes back to elbow position freeze freeze go back just to here why did Gordon Ryan win the hand fight barrel freeze good cyborg is one of the strongest people in jujitsu he's got two hands on a guy in a weight division lower than him why can he hold why did he lose the arm why watch Gordon Ryan's right elbow what did you see simple MC there young he's just lifting it up and pulling it away what is he doing he changed the angle through the elbow there's a grip over and a grip under if you just pull you'll never release the arm right he changed the elbow position so that one grip was lost and then a push pull with the elbow and a slip once continued forward now he's got the left arm set as soon as the hands touch and Cyborg just taps before he even gets a chance to extend it because he knows the game's

58:15lost he knew the game was lost long before then that's pretty goddamn impressive hmm yes and you'll see this with almost all of my students I have seen that was almost all your students which is so bizarre now how many people are recognizing this system and trying to mimic it or trying to find out some sort of a counter-attack to it that's a interesting question I'm I'm told there's actually kind of like an industry of people who try to break what we do down and mimic it I know there's people putting out numerous instructionals they they watch what the squad does and tries to break it down that's that's good and it's natural I'd be doing the same thing if someone else is coming out and raking people with a give me a lottery to studying what they're doing too so yeah there does seem to be an industry of that the question is how successful are they do you see any other groups of people

59:15coming out and just exclusively finishing people with the same moves time and time again four years at a time at all levels of competition no you're seeing more tenth planet guys do that now tenth planet guys have and given you all the credit in the world by the way that they've started transitioning to a lot more leglock attacks leglock defense mmm concentrating on that yeah it's um what we find is that most people definitely struggle with defending it and you know this is being around for quite a while now it's been five years since the squad really started pushing this publicly and it seems that there's still going to be some eventually people will figure things out it's just the way progress works but I think at this point it's pretty clear that people have changed their minds about leglocks people I think you're recognizing that there's something different going on here that

60:13this is a control based approach to leglocks rather than you know a speed and power based approach to lay clogs and the evidence for its success really comes from the nature of the squad itself if you look at the three founding members of the squad Eddy Cummings Gordon Ryan and Garrett Onan all three have very very different body types all three have very very different personalities and yet all three use a very similar game two of those three athletes came from nowhere they had no competition record before they started training with me at the hands of Gracie Academy one of them had a competition record he was a garret Onam was a brown belt competitor and Nicky and but he had no leg lock game he was a guy who was essentially known for scrambling from bottom half guard and using rear naked strangles and out of scrambles strangles out of scrambles my god that was a tongue to us thing so

61:13gary tom was a particular interesting case because he came to me is an already developed athlete he's trained under a very good friend of mine Tom DeBlase and completely changed his game so that showed something very interesting that showed that someone could already have a developed game and then take on this and change their game so that was a particularly interesting case with the case of Eddy Cummings and Gordon Ryan they came to me early in their development so they they took it on wholesale as it were I think this style and approach and one of the things that's so fascinating about it is it really requires someone like you to systematically break it down the way you have it described it I've done jiu-jitsu for 20 years but I never stopped and thought of all the positions in the system all the steps in the system take the fight to the ground can't pass the dangerous legs

62:08achieve some sort of a dominant position go for the submission mmm I knew what I was what I find with most UT supplies is that they know what they're doing on your unconscious level yes my job as a coach just to make it conscious okay now for me the most interesting thing when I when I first had to think about jiu-jitsu as a system okay I did that when I wrote a book for my for my sensei hands or Gracie he asked me to write a book and I started thinking deeply about you know what is this thing that I study I spend all day on the Manns what am i doing exactly and when you start consciously thinking about okay breaking it down two steps you see presently it was a step-by-step system my question was can I go further than that if jiu-jitsu is a simple single system what about if he divided jiu-jitsu up into niche areas and instead of having one overall system you

63:05had an overall system with many subsystems within it so he had a lake system a bag system a front headlock system a Kimura system my approach u Jitsu is that I had recognized that much of the success of early percentages who came from its systemic nature the fact it was a systems-based approach to jiu-jitsu and I took various niche areas and created systems within systems then things start to get interesting when I started integrating the system so that one sub system failed you could transfer to another that meant that my students could put opponents who had trained much much longer than they had into a niche area which my students had so much knowledge of so much training in that isolated niche domain that they could take someone who had trained three four times longer than themselves and had more knowledge in that one domain then they're much more experienced opponent

64:06did and so what you saw the squad was incredibly speedy progress where they were getting wins against people who trained two three two times longer than they had and this idea of what I call integrated sub systems instead of having jiu-jitsu is just one simple single-system you keep the overall system of unity but you have subsistence within it each one integrated with the other so that one's one system fails you can pass off to another and go back and forth until you get the win that was my approach to jiu-jitsu that's what I want to do as him if I can innovate you to it so in any given direction that's probably the one I would push the most now throughout this time you're dealing with some pretty significant injuries and physical limitations that you've had tell me about those what those were and what and how those hindered you know when I was in my early teens I was

64:58involved in a rugby injury where my my knee was massively injured over the next six years I would dislocate my knee the ligaments appeared to be severely compromised every six months or so I get a fresh injury which would be severe and I'd be on crutches I spent a significant amount of my teenage years on crutches around the age of 19 I had one last injury and my knee just seemed to have no power and things like I walk with a limp and you must remember this is in the 1980s in New Zealand and this is pre MRIs pre arthroscopic surgery the doctors said well we can do an operation will be shortened the ligaments so there's less looseness in there and hopefully your knee will be strong again an operation was performed and unfortunately the ligands will cut too short and as a result mine my leg never strayed and again I developed a severe case of a thorough fibrosis where my

66:11knee actually became deformed and doesn't straighten simple actions like walking kneeling are extremely painful for me and have been my whole life just walking around just walking is painful kneeling is extremely painful and you know it's not easy to do there's a lot of kneeling and yeah also there are other kind of structural problems as they got older I walk with a limp and one leg significantly bent and one straight I tend to be completely out of balance out of synch with my body so I soon developed a considerable hip and back pain so this is something I carried with me my whole life and when I started you did - at the age of 28 there was a there was a concern you know am I gonna better do this or fortunately ground grappling as a rule it's generally easier on your body then standing martial arts this I don't think for example with my leg I could even become moderately effective

67:12at my trial Taekwondo is something we have to add a jump and laned I just couldn't do it whereas jiu-jitsu because it's on the ground you can you can become pretty good so I battled through that and I'm i developed a satisfactory degree of competence I I got a black ball from hands of Gracie and I became one of his main teachers so how would you train with such a compromised knee and you just figure out a way around it you just you know you never thought well boy I my knee up I don't want to my other knee up - you know I think at that point you you just got to go forward and you got a choice you're gonna sit down and feel sorry for yourself where you're gonna do the best you can with what you've gone and how limited was your game because your knee I mean were you able standing position was difficult for me but will you ever do triangles and all sorts I mean I had

68:09you know every week or so I would tweak it nobody's in pain for a day I developed a strong need for ibuprofen throughout my life and other problems started to emerges we to the lower back lower back is a big issue and gave me problems my sister father you know at least oh now I have a machine I have to show you okay that's a called the reverse hyper have you ever heard of it I yes I believe they were used by a guy called Louie Simmons yeah yes a life changer yeah yeah I can't use one now because I have a hip replacement and when you go up it puts extreme shearing force on a hip replacement so I can do it with bodyweight but I can't do it with a weight so um I'm aware of what they are that they I know many people speak very highly of them yeah but so yeah I had this problem and things didn't really become critical until my mid to early 40s when as a result of walking my whole life with a

69:09limp my left hip started to become completely bone-on-bone so then the problems doubled because now I had a completely screwed up knee and a hip but I couldn't get any kind of operations because George st. Pierre was fighting Chris Weidman was fighting they both had great goals and I so I delayed the hip operation as long as I could until George had his first retirement and Chris Weidman became a world champion and then moved further away to Long Island wasn't training with me so much at that time I I started training the squad and my first school active competitive grappling student was Eddie Cummings and I was able to work effectively with him as best I could with my hip problems and of course the original leg problem and then at some point I got to a point where I literally if I walk down in New York City block I would have to stop several times and

70:11just stand on the side of the road and wait for my hip to stop hurting so I could walk and it just became impossible to work with and I ended up getting a full hip replacement and so that's when they shear off the top of your head yeah they screw a bolt down in there with a new hip and that's correct and how does it feel now um it's pain free which is a wonderful thing for me like any fake hip it's never gonna be as strong as your real help this limitations on what I can do there the only problem was that shortly after the hip replacement went and then my knee finally collapsed after 30 years of problems and so I'm gonna have to get a knee replacement on the same leg so yeah who and how do they do that one knee replacements a little bit tricky because you don't have as much bone mass to work with and general generally the longevity of knee replacements as not as

71:02because there's much more movement in the need and there there wasn't a hip there's much greater range of motion and this less bone to a fixed who they generally don't have the longevity of a hip replacement so I'm 50 years old so ideally you would want a replacement that outlived you but I would probably have to get a second knee replacement when I get older to replace the first which is not ideal but I'm probably gonna have to do it who knows what kind of crazy technology they'll have down the line I hope so I hope they give me some kind of superhero leg that turns things around for me yeah well you never know I mean it's just the the nature of the hip replacement is so it's so brutally invasive the sheering off the top of the hip and then the rod that's inserted deep into the bone of the hip and then all that jazz you know it's a lot it's a lot going on there so

72:02to answer your question in the early days it was it was an impediment that I worked around but as I got older I had to do a first operation and now second but believe it or not Joe I was actually scheduled to get my new replacement tomorrow but I didn't do it because Gary tonin is gonna be fighting his first MMA fight and March 26 now is he fighting for 1 FC 1 FC so I if I got the knee replacement now I would not be able to help him get ready first first him MA fine which I thought would be there's not fear on my part of it right and so I delayed it until after that fine why did he decide on one FC that's an interesting question you'd have to ask every tone - to be certain but he I think one of his main fears was that if he went through the amateur route and then worked his way towards the UFC there would be problems because he's already an established name in

73:01grappling and I think he was concerned it would be difficult for him to get people to fight amateur and and then eventually make his way to the UFC whereas one if see as a fairly well-known organization and they were pretty open that they he did a grappling match for them and they loved it they were like you know are you interested in MMA and so he could as it were go into a fairly high level of MMA right from the start as opposed to do a long circuitous amateur route and in battle his way into the UFC I believe don't quote me on this but I believe that was the logic behind it hmm now are you able so when you're demonstrating techniques are you demonstrating them verbally or you after the hip replacement I could only do it verbally and I had to trust and my my students Eddie Cummings Garrett Aaron Gordon Ryan and others Brian glekas and no no somebody's one of my great

73:59students I would point with a stick and they would do the moves for me since then I've gotten a little better and I like to demonstrate a space that I can this days when I I can barely walk and on those days I'll have the students go through sometimes they certain standing techniques that I a little risky for me to do you know I have students demonstrate those but I I do what I can on the days then did I teach it is quite fascinating that a guy who has catastrophic injuries of his leg is one who is known for being an innovator and crushing people's like their there is something kind of strange about that yeah joking around about it being revenge yeah this is missing my revenge against the world if God took away my leg I'm taking away everybody else's so yeah there is something ironic about them now when you're teaching this system and you you're showing all the guys in the squad

75:04the Danaher death squad do you have like do you have it worked out to the point where it's like you have a curriculum like you have like I never liked the word curriculum because that kind of implies that it's all worked out in advance and you know it's done step by step I come in on a given day and I'm there seven days a week I watch all of my athletes every single day they don't do anything without me watching them do it so I know at the end of every day what they need to work on tomorrow because I'm there Wow so it's not like a sit curriculum well you know I know that on April 13 I'm gonna do this and it's not like that right it's like I saw you train yesterday I saw where you up and I saw where you were good so tomorrow we're working this what an amazing resource for those guys to have someone like you standing over them watching them and analyzing their

75:57positions and techniques and progress that's that's generous of you to say but I always feel that my students are more of a resource to me than I am to them I've been placed through my entire coaching career to have some truly remarkable students some of whom famous and known to you and many others who want and whatever did they owe to me I feel I owe at least as much to them my students literally give me everything I'm a notoriously difficult person to get along with I'm demanding I'm a perfectionist I can be downright unpleasant one of my body's in pain I'm short-tempered and yet they're like angels they a stick in there and they tough it out and they they give so much time so much effort so much thought and as I said whatever resource I am to them they they give it right back they're a resource to me well that's that attitude is why you're such a fantastic coach in

77:00the first place I remember one of the first times I've started talking to you is when you were working with George now what's interesting is you had a very interesting approach and even the way you described things you would talk about shoot boxing hmm describe that because you you didn't talk when like I remember I think one of our first long conversations without some weird Denny's or something somewhere and one of those weird road shows like we just sat down where you're absolutely right that was the first time we met yeah we had a long conversation and you were talking about the principles of shoot boxing please explain one of the strange things about the sport of mixed martial arts is so young that it there's still so much to be done okay even the way people understand mixed martial arts to me it's interesting 99% of people who look at mixed martial arts see mixed martial

78:03arts as an eclectic sport in other words it's a conglomeration of different martial arts kind of banded together and then you've got mixed martial arts it's a mix of martial arts and there you have it you get two guys in a caging of mixed martial arts I never saw mixed martial arts as an eclectic sport I see it as a transcendent sport what I mean by that is there are four distinct skill areas of mixed martial arts any one of those skill areas always goes beyond the component martial arts that make it up in other words the skill area transcends the various martial arts that make it up and create something bigger and different from the core components that originally built it when you look at the sport of mixed martial arts you see there are four dominant skill areas the first occurs when they first come out and the two athletes have no connection with each other and they're dancing

79:07around the cage this is the so called shoot boxing phase which involves skills drawn from Western boxing Muay Thai karate freestyle wrestling and various other martial arts where the two athletes are jockeying for position and typically they're trying to determine the direction of the fight will it go down or will it stay up that's one skill area the second skill area is the skill area of the clinch where the two athletes are both still standing but now they've got a hold on each other you're no longer moving around at will this has its key components coming drawn from my greco-roman wrestling freestyle wrestling judo etcetera etc then there's a third key skill area the area of fence fighting fence boxing where the two athletes are in a clinch but they're locked on the fence which dramatically changes the skills required for success then if you're in the open

80:14and then you have a fourth skill area which is the ground and of course that's divided into top and bottom position so there are four skill areas of mixed martial arts you could add more or less for example you could add and the idea of the geography of the cage can add in new areas but let's stick with that fundamental four for now if you show me any one of those skill areas yes you can derive skills from those component martial arts from muy Thai from judo whatever you choose but that skill area is going to have other elements that are not part of those original martial arts there is something different something unique and something above the various component martial arts that made it up when you're fighting on the ground a lot of what you do is derive from besson jujitsu and modern mixed martial arts most of the athletes come from a jujitsu background when they work around skills

81:16they they work on in a kind of a jiu jitsu framework but many of the things going on down there are a mix of things that are far outside of your daily training in Brazilian Jujitsu you can bring in things from muy Thai oh you're throwing muy Thai elbows on the ground but on the ground they always have a very different feel from the standing position their mechanics behind them is significantly different your throwing hooks on the ground but the mechanics of throwing hooks on the ground are very very different from the mechanics of throwing hooks in the standing position so yeah you're you're bringing skills in from boxing but you're adapting them to okay so the way to look at the sport of mixed martial arts it's not just like okay I'm gonna rope together some race lanes and boxing and see what happens rather you're developing skills in four distinct areas

82:04a minimum of four and the skills you altima leda velop go beyond and it's significantly different from the core components that you started with and so ultimately the skills of a mixed martial artist at the highest levels transcend the various core martial arts that made the sport up you're going to something you're going further when you fight in a mixed martial arts fight you're a dirty fighter use and a lot more than just jiu-jitsu and the various other boxing styles that Sara Sara that you use in the case of shoot boxing in George st. Pierre everyone always talks about George's wrestling now George is a very good wrestler he's wrestled a long time with very good people but 90% of the success of his ability to take people down goes far beyond wrestling it has to do with the precursors to the shot what wrestling teaches he drew a mixed martial eyes how to finish a shot it

83:06gives you the body mechanics to finish to Shawn but the setups are completely different from wrestling I can show you endless examples of good wrestlers who went into mixed martial arts competition with no background in mixed martial arts and couldn't take anybody down the distance is different the stance is different the motion is different the setups are completely different the context is different being punch instead of grappling George in my opinion throughout his career had a level of skill and technical insight and the the art of boxing kickboxing into takedowns that no one else has even come close to much of what he did in that area came from himself did he have good wrestling coaches absolutely did he have good boxing coaches absolutely great Moya coaches 100% but the skills he was exhibiting went beyond any one of those teachers or even them as a whole

84:17the act of tying together all of those disparate skills came from him the integration of skills and so you have someone who had a wrestling background had a boxing background had a muy Thai background but ultimately what he was doing with something bigger than all of those put together there's a synergistic effect here whether the the some was was somehow greater than the components that the individually made it up and that's what I mean when I talk about a transient sport George st. Pierre was largely responsible through individual experimentation starting in his late teens and going through his entire career and their development of Chute Boxe now when you work as a coach for George you weren't just working as a jiu-jitsu coach you were working in almost like a mastermind sort of a position you I mean I saw some conversations that you had with him where you discussed various

85:21things and in fact one of the things you came to me about was you asked me if I knew anyone who was proficient at the spinning back-kick and that's how I got to working with George you're you're you're coaching with him was not just simply like these are the principles of jiu-jitsu this is what I want you to work on when the fight goes to the ground you were working on a lot of different aspects like you are a guy that sort of put it together now when you don't have a background in striking and you know you or you're looking at all of these various disciplines and trying to formulate a strategy for a guy who's just such a supreme athlete like George how did you how did you formulate that did you do it based on the individual based on their physical strengths and limitations and sort of formulate what you think would be the best approach did you work it out with him in conjunction

86:20the wooden when George comes to train with me there's a bunch of considerations first of all George lives in Montreal I live in New York so time is always an issue but he does go down there it goes down a bit quite often but but it's not like a squad squad seven days a week three times a day George's never like that so in the time available we'll work on on what we can so everything's always done with Georgian okay how much time is available and what is the scenario that's coming up for George almost always it was an upcoming mixed martial arts fight okay so a lot of people often ask me say you know how come you didn't teach teach Georgie and PLA clogs why wasn't he leg locking everyone in MMA oh that's a good question first off leg locking as you saw from the Gordon Ryan clip requires if it's not done well leg locking is one of those things where if it's done well

87:18it's amazing but if it's done badly it's the worst looking thing in the world a disaster so secondly George's game because his takedowns are so strong it's almost always done from top position on the ground it's rare for George to be in bottom position on the ground and in a fight situation if you're already on top of someone and you've got the striking prowess of George saying p.m. I was happy to to coach him more in what we call a grapple boxing this the the skill of grappling - punching on the ground of this made more sense for him he's competent inlay clunking but he's not like Gary Turin Eddie Cummings or Gordon Ryan he could he finished most black balance he absolutely but why would you stake a fight with literally millions of dollars I mean for these a legacy on the line why would you take that risk when you could just stay on town just punch him out if you did

88:07would say John fetch for example you know right so it didn't really make sense to push that hard on George your question though was okay what about these other skills what about standing position well I'm fascinated not just by judges about my martial arts in general and I've always believed all the various sport martial arts in the world have areas where they are particularly strong for example I've always people make fun of Taekwondo you know there are you don't want us talking on him or me you'll back me up on this joke there are some type on there players out there at Olympic level who can kick with a skill level that most people can't even imagine I've seen people like her Perez kicking demonstrations where if you're looking at this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in my life and this is the guy who if he hits you is gonna take your head off it's

88:57impressive too but I was there when her Perez was in his prime I watched him ko quite a few people I watched him ko one of the u.s. national champions with an ax kick some of the worst ko is have ever seen in my life came from Taekwondo hmm like they tend to involve a jump spinning kicks but it's just huge amounts of kinetic energy but you know you see the same second point fighting karate see some terrible knockout some point fighting come on people make fun of these sports like doing it on their own is the issue that's the issue as years on their own they've got problems but if you can integrate that to a well-developed complete skill set they could be incredibly effective and I always saw tremendous potential for Taekwondo jump spinning banking thing no one does spinning back kicks better than Taekwondo yeah that's one of the main things and they do it incredibly well

89:45the setups are fantastic the application the mechanics everything is super impressive so I always thought that would be a you know George had a good spinning back-kick but I thought that would be a nice addition you always want to be building new skills into opponent you know you don't want to be that predictable guy where everyone knows what you're doing and and I know you came from Taekwondo backgrounds and so I thought that would be interesting for you to work on with him well it was a funny conversation because that was my specialty yes and so when you brought in I always wanted to talk to you I was found you a fascinating guy so when you came up to me and you said do you know anyone it's almost like a trick question it was a trick quiz I don't know anyone besides Joanne that what I said I was like I was hesitant I was like okay you're not gonna believe this but the truth is I

90:32knew you had a good jump swing pancake I was trying to subtly did you know yeah how did you know would gets around town okay I thought you were just with me I mean yeah but I felt like when I was telling you like man I don't even want it I wish I knew someone who did it as well as me you should it's been like yeah I got the best jump spinning back in the not really I did jump spinning back-kick quite a bit but I prefer a regular spinning back yeah I want my foot on the ground because I just dropped that foot yeah there's a significant amount of force in the left leg forcing pushing off that back interestingly you've seen some some guys out there now having good success in MMA yeah same back because I've never seen Michael page had a beautiful one he's got everything that guy can very impressive he's another guy who came from that point fighting background wins you know you see Raymond

91:20Daniels and him and a lot of these guys from that background but Raymond Daniels worked with George for his last two fights very very impressive got phenomenal yeah and and again it's he had just the point fighting skills and now he's developing real boxing skills and he's you know you've seen him in Bellator kickboxing you know you see the integration of the two it's and phenomenal I mean he could just do things physically that most kickboxer just really don't know what he's doing you know he'll he'll jump up and do what's called like a touch spinning back-kick like he'll jump up and touch you with the front leg yes I saw that he hit in a glory flying I believe yes yeah he's phenomenal he's phenomenal but again when you see that it's like those things by themselves you're just gonna get taken to the ground and smashed and most people it's unless you land one of those

92:16catastrophic spinning back-kick right away the odds are you you need all those other things as well in order to be particularly effective which is why George George get away with anything yet yeah but that was a that was a fun moment it was interesting because like I've always wanted to like show somebody this it's because it's a weird little thing that I know how to do going back to your original question the idea of George and shoot box you'll see that George's entire methodology and the standing musician is built around the concept of a dilemma the dilemma is always between his jab and his takedown people always talk about proactive and reactive takedowns okay this guy's a reactive T this guy's a proactive takedown guy the thing about George is he would use his jab proactively but he would use his takedowns reactively now that's interesting because George would

93:15literally provoke people you're saying as shakedown I just want to point this out past tense you're saying this like you know something I don't know no it's George just won the middleweight title relinquish the title and then the great speculation is will George fight again yeah the truth is that no one knows because comes down some medical problems George it's got a problem in his stomach and it's like colitis yeah and what what is that exactly it's I'm not gonna claim to be a medical expert but it's one of the most frustrating things the George's had to deal with where there are certain parts of the human body just out of your control and the stomach is one of them just things happen in your stomach you can't control it things like stress seem to make it worse and the truth is that no one really knows at this point so wherever this doubt my instinct is to think well

94:10you really want to come back George you've done all this and what a great way to cap off a career - it was amazing was embrace and I gotta tell you when he came back this is what was really interesting about that fight George had said I'm better I'm a better martial artist than I was before and he looked better yeah I mean he definitely looked like he was a little out of competition like there was a mole for years he's yeah sure yeah how many fighters you know came back after a four-year layoff very few but skill wise he looked phenomenal I mean his striking looked incredibly smooth and I think you could see it in Bisping's face like pretty early on him like this guy is this is not a rusty George st. Pierre it's not a small welterweight who's you know making his way in a middle way he looked huge he looked phenomenal his technique the way he was landing leg kicks and his sharp

95:04jab and then ultimately that left hand that he used to stun Bisping and get him on the ground I mean he looks sensational yes you were there the night George went into his first retirement and you'll recall the whole retirement thing was kind of this speech was vague it wasn't yeah it was confusing and because he didn't intrude he didn't know if he wanted to retire the whole thing was actually contrived in the Octagon right there in front of you there would be a hard fight as a training camp hadn't been the best game though the fight for Hendricks was George was unclear if he wanted to fight at all there was all kinds of controversies involved in the fight and then when the fight was over it was it was a very close fight and he wasn't sure he wanted to do there was a language miscommunication and ultimately he essentially he walked away from the game

95:56and he walked away for four years that's a long time to be out of a sport as young as in Maine which is evolving all the time every year the sport changes and the bells tend to change hands very very quickly so when George started talking to me about the idea of okay I want to come back I think I've still got convey I want to come back lissa desire passion my point to him was first off you sure you really want to do this like you know the last two five camps stuff you didn't seem to have the same kind of drives he used to have he's sure you want to do this is this like a middle-age fantasy he's going through here and he said no no that I feel this I want to come back so my question to him was if you're gonna come back are you just gonna do the same thing you're just going to come back to welterweight and do what you always did which is come out and beat the best welterweights and

96:50just hold it tight or it's gonna be doing the same thing I thought if you're gonna come back let's do something significant something you haven't done before and so the way I put it to him was what are the three most persistent criticisms you always hear about George st. Pierre number one you never fought up a weight class you never went up number two you fought so tactically sound was such an emphasis on strategy and techniques or what have you that mattress could become dull that the average fan was like well yeah he's winning easily installment but doesn't go for it's not exciting no drama and the fun's gone gone so he had this idea that on the one hand he was very technically sound strategically deep but the the fights weren't as exciting as they ought to be the idea that he'd never gone up a way category in the third most persistent Kris and we didn't finish fights okay he

97:54was a very skilled fighter it wasn't finishing fights so my point is okay if you're gonna come back let's do it in a way where you address those three things okay George's is always concerned about its legacy as a fighter and if there were three persistent criticisms of George NPS legacy accessories things you're not finishing fights you never went up a weight class and you're to tactical okay you know you're not providing the drama that a fight should so I said let's change things we got in there four years previous to that whenever I was training George I was training him for a fight he was going with fight he's fighting Nick Diaz is finding Carlos Condit is fine you know whoever and it was always getting him ready for a fight you finding Matthews in two months let's get ready now you're retired I'm not gonna train you to fight some dude I'm gonna train you and Judah

98:45to Freddie Roach it's gonna train you in boxing in this sense we could we had the time now to start working on finishing skills a significant change occurred where my primary emphasis in training George in that four-year layoff was in submissions now happily that happened at what time the time of squad was coming out so I had a group of some of the best submission peoples in the world for George to work with so his submission started getting better suddenly George st. Pierre he got on your back is a problem he's submitting people in the gym I could run off some names I won't do it cuz it's not the thing to do but I could run off some names of people he submitted in the gym they would shock you like well-known jujitsu people and for the first time he's our primary versus wasn't on grapple walk scene it was a submission Freddie Roach was working on with on the mechanics of

99:44punching George always had good in out movement it was head I get karate movement the the ability he always had a strong jab but now he's teaching him how to sit on a punch suddenly George had a left hook okay a guy who can integrate left left hand between jab and left okay that's a dangerous man everyone was worried you know there's so much overreaction to George's jab this suddenly left hook opportunities working out but now he was sitting on that left hook and people getting hurt so now for the first time you got a guy who's got submissions and he's heading worth of genuine power as he came back there was a question of who's gonna be the opponent and the next thing I say it is well you never went up a weight division go up to 85 now was any consideration about going up to 85 because the fact that Bisping was the champion no George was trained with the best percent

100:44decision was made before Bissman was the champion reel him how far in advance was the decision made because Bisping a defendant against Henderson remember this is one against Rocco a project okay I just know during initially initially I couldn't make that decision because another student of mine Chris Weidman was the 185 pound champion and Chris and George would never fight each other but once that was no longer an issue then we're saying hey this this could work this could be interesting so deep during the entire four years he was talking about eventually coming not the entire four years no okay but he was training the whole time mm-hmm and I was pushing him okay you don't fight anymore let's do some submission grappling right okay he stuck with Freddie Roach he loves working with Freddie Roach and so the training was was going in different direction who is this my coach mostly he

101:36works at ferocity hobby in trice now but that's more integrated mm for us is a black belt of mind so he often does jujitsu was for us we had I teach for us and trust that does a good job there but for us ties things together that's his principal function and I know he trained with film nurse for a while as well yeah then he trained with a lot of guys who came out of Thailand itself from Tiger Muay Thai Yod that's a shortening of his actual name they all have very long names but yard was one of his trainers they trained him prior to Condit and Diaz did a fine job so there's never been a shortage of coaches in his life but there are certain things that seem to gel with them more than others interestingly during that four-year period George had a strong rebirth into karate and worked with a lot of specialized karate people including Raymond Daniel's and others they came

102:37from the mostly from the European point fighting karate circuit and he was working with them a lot and so summer the the across this certain period of time where you're dealing with a different athlete now this guy's had four years off and in the training had gone in different directions his finishing skills in both fisticuffs and grappling had gotten considerably better he was toying with the idea of going up to 85 and experimenting with diet etc to get his bodyweight up that's never an easy thing to do and tactically he was working more that got on the idea have been an exciting fighter through movement and pushing harder for the finish and and I thought those were three very very healthy directions to go and and this would as it were if he did come back this would be offer a genuine opportunity to address the three most persistent criticism of his career initially there

103:39was a lot of resistance from the USC I don't think they were fond of the idea at all they warned him to go to 170 and and do what he had done and but George pushed hard for the for the fighter 85 and ultimately it happened in a rather strange way tyron woodley had a fight at 170 which wasn't the most crowd-pleasing fight and George st. Pierre was supposed to fight Tyron Woodley and then the you know what fibers being it's on so they we chose the Madison Square Garden that's one of the great fight capitals of the world and it's how it happened so there was consideration in fighting 170 yes and so this was the UFC's idea but what about your plan for I thought first of all I'm not the matchmaker I'm not the main policy maker I don't want to say that I was the guy I was the guy that suggested those ideas and George seems to like the idea he said if I'm

104:37gonna come back if I gotta take the risk of a four-year layoff and company it's a big risk yeah I mean Muhammad Ali came back after three years and had to warm up fights and still lost his title fight yeah but Muhammad Ali really wasn't working out yeah that was that was when the Vietnam War thing it happens mostly doing tours of college gasps yeah it wasn't really we're just working out the whole time and improving you could see the difference in Muhammad Ali's body when he came back but still there's many other examples like Sugar Ray Leonard came back after layoffs he had one successful and one very unsuccessful yeah I'm back and he was working hard the whole time so coming back is it it's a hard it's a tricky tricky thing yeah on many levels to not just physical but also psychological so now this colitis thing is throwing a monkey wrench into the errors yeah actually it threw a

105:19monkey wrench during the camp really yeah I could tell you some stories about that that camp was as good as the four years was the camp itself and I can say it now because it's over was a disaster it's betrayed the worst camp I've ever been involved in really I was coaching of course the squad for a DCC so a DCC I believe was around six weeks before George's fine so I was in Finland and communicating with George and he's like feeling good let's get the moment I get back I was cook an owner a plane from Finland to Montreal and start the camp George sees a me I've got stomach issues and I was like what do you mean stomach issues what does that even mean now about two weeks into the camp the issues got so bad that George literally could not know this is a six-week fight camp it's a very short camp back in the day we used to do eight to twelve weeks but George

106:19thought a shorter camp would be better he is getting older he wanted to short again first two weeks were okay but I was in the aftermath of the Finland expedition even when I first went up George said I got a cancel okay I can't train my fines for weeks away and George took two weeks off it was a critical moment on a Friday evening where I said to Faraz a hobby this is the second time I've had to say this too for us I'll be the other was the Carlos Condit camp I said if George isn't training by Monday we're gonna pull the plug there's no other way everyone's got a four-year layoff and this camp just lost its dead in the water so four weeks out he takes two weeks off I I believe it might've been five did I'll check the dates later but very close there was a critical two-week period but during that two weeks what is he able to do essentially nothing nothing yeah just no

107:21training light drilling some movement and he was it occurred the worst possible time it wasn't at the start of the game was in the middle of the camps like the first two weeks were lost because then we had two weeks of inactivity then his two weeks left and I remember the first time I went up I bought Jake Shields Gary Turner and Gordon Ryan with me we came up and we went through some drills on the ground and I was happy you know George looked okay on the ground he did fine against the squad guys and we worked on some specialized grappling stuff and then the next day he went to a shoebox workout now I could sit here all day and tell you Adventures of George st. Pierre doing shoebox training with people I've seen him spa everybody okay I'm not gonna mention names but I've seen George st. Pierre take down effortlessly some of the biggest names and mixed martial

108:16arts in weight divisions far above his own so many times per round you just lose count again I I'm afraid to even tell you the stories because people don't believe me I'm used to seeing George st. Pierre shoot boxing that Babette bang down right again I've seen that since the start of his career I watched your st. Pierre to a shoe box workout where he couldn't score a takedown this is a fights two weeks away I'm just looking going like holy heck what is this he's getting hit he's getting frustrated he's getting tired and I said two for us you know this is this is a crisis this is one of the biggest UFC's of the year it's Madison Square Garden he's the headline the UFC had to pull some big things to get this fight to happen they didn't originally didn't want it if we pull out now it's gonna look like a disaster it's kind of great George let the UFC down and to his

109:20everlasting credit George said I'll be back on Monday and I'll be better we went up and he is he dug in deep what can I tell you he's a trouper he he trained every day those last two weeks and as each day went by there was significant improvement and I remember there was a distinct moment about five days before the end of the camp I saw him do a shoe box workout and he looked like the old George I was okay I believe in this kid again you can do it Jamie we please Google colitis I don't know enough I believe what the ulcerative colitis yeah I don't know it's so it's something to do with stomach ulcers I'm not gonna claim to be an expert yeah I can tell you what the symptoms were it's extreme stomach pain and inability to eat that screwed up his entire diet and when did it start it started early in the camp and got progressively worse and then so before

110:19the camp there was no issues he made all sort of colitis is usually only in inner most lining of the large intestine colon and rectum forms range from mild to severe having ulcerative colitis puts a patient at increased risk of developing colon cancer symptoms including rectal bleeding bloody diarrhea abdominal cramps and pain it sounds like a party yeah if you read the can you bring it back read the first fool treatment can help but this condition cannot be cured requires a medical diagnosis lab tests or imaging always required chronic can last for years or be lifelong it's incredibly frustrating for him to deal with and such treatments include medications and surgery yeah so it's a surgery but it appeared to back off a little bit in the last two weeks he came back he this is the kind of person George st. Pierre is the morning is a fight Saturday morning were in New York

111:19City in the hotel room for our Sahabi Freddie Roach and myself are at the breakfast table George comes down for breakfast he's weighed in he looks at his breakfast his were originally the plan because it was a fight at 185 was to have George come in at a at a higher body weight but he ended up weighing 191 pounds which is exactly the same as he used to find it at welterweight the same body weight so that was kind of a disappointment you know and he quietly excused himself and went to the bathroom everyone else went away to do their things and I said then realized he's in the bathroom for an hour he came out I was like George you okay and he looked everything I'm fine but I knew he wasn't and then he went out and fought and then afterwards he told me I was in so much pain and he was afraid to tell me because he would worry that if I cornered him and I thought he was

112:23compromised I wouldn't corner him the way I normally would that I would doubt him so he kept it all inside didn't say I would and he's a good kid you know you can't help but admire a kid like that Wow well that's what makes him a champion yeah it's one of the things it's in it's less than perfect conditions he could still rise to the occasion less than perfect it was a yeah very far from perfect now you said that during the Johny Hendricks fight during the camp for that fight when he decided to impromptu retire inside the Octagon yeah that there was talk during the camp that he didn't want to fight yeah what was that about I really sent it around two things one I can just I can not discuss because it involves a personal life Joe Sam PA there were some things they were not in his personal life that deeply affected him and he was deeply unhappy with some

113:17circumstances in his personal life and it's not appropriate for me to talk about those and the second was the whole idea that had become an obsession with George at that time which was the use of anabolic steroids in mixed martial arts and he was deeply unhappy with what he perceived as the prevalence of the use of anabolic steroids in mixed martial arts as a whole and among his opponents in particular and he wanted a testing program to be bought in for that fight there was talk about it but nothing came of it and it became like this psychological obsession during the camp and between those two issues there was a lot of unhappiness he he came in he did his training as a professional athlete it's not like he missed workouts or anything crazy like there wasn't going out at night or anything foolish but there was a degree of unhappiness where I'm looking and thinking how much

114:18longer can this go on now there was some talk about the tyron woodley fight and then Tyron had this bad performance but if George did get healthy and was confident enough in his health that he could get through an actual training camp would he be interested in considering a fight with tyron woodley absolutely I think Tom wouldn't he's a great champion I know he gets a lot of stick a lot of flack that kid is talented very good very very good and he doesn't think George wants to fight him he was on the podcast the other day I think people say that for reasons so that they can motivate someone different Sara says that there's there's a political aspect to it I think that both athletes have a deep respect for each other Tyrell Ramon is a very very difficult opponent to be his people criticized his style but people don't understand difference between regular fighting and

115:16championship fighting championship fighting is about winning and losing and you got to do what you got to do to win that's the first consideration it's nice to impress the crowd it's nice to do this or that but ultimately it's about what are you gonna do to win what are you what are you gonna do to beat the second base guy in the world it's a difficult difficult thing and it has to be done correctly this idea of fighting to entertain yeah this is a very complex thing and you talked about it with George addressing that or attempting to address that in this comeback and trying to finish and be more energetic and aggressive but the reality is that's not always the best way to engage there's is the right way to fight a person with a particular skill set and especially in the Woodley versus Steven wonderboy Thompson fights yeah I was like this is the only way to fight that guy you

116:04cannot mean unless you are what he is which is a very skillful traditional martial artist that has this very unique ability to bend at the waist like a snake and slide in with techniques and it does a lot off the front leg dangerous stuff off the front leg unless you can do that too you really shouldn't be on the outside striking with them it's just it's just too weird that Styles too weird so he kind of had the lay back and if you and I think again if you look at the results of the five the times in the fight where someone was hurt it was tyron woodley putting the hurt on wonderboy Thompson yes those are the only times in the fight where it was really exciting yeah other than that it was sort of Wonder Boy kind of trying to pick out them from the outside and it's a very difficult fight to look good at you know the whole like year of mixed martial arts fans there's always three

116:56kinds of people that watch mixed martial arts there's fans of drama there's fans of violence and his fans of strategy and technique guys like us when we watch MMA we fall into the technique and strategy great that's the guy to me I can watch Woodley fight wonderboy and I'm fascinated yeah see that's just like wow it's in magic yeah I can watch it all day many of the fans want to see violence that's what they're trying to do and it's a significant portion others like the idea of drama and athletes in a sense have to brand themselves according to one of those three choices George always branded himself as the technique and strategy going tyron woodley struggling with that now himself he's doing the same thing Chael Sonnen is the quintessential drama fighter he didn't really have an exciting fighting style and he was never really a technique and strategy going so he went with drama

117:51so obviously done vocally you know get it like a violent space fighter someone who's my pal yaris that's his appeal you know Rumble Johnson it's a violence okay he's not into drama he's not gonna stalk anything he's not gonna he's not no one who stuck his strategy and he need guy he's gonna come out do the same thing every fight and it's gonna be a violent finish so every fighter has to as it were identify what's his here what's he gonna do what's gonna be his appeal and work within that and you know Tyrone is learning it's not an easy thing to do you get criticism from certain as we said the other two elements of a of the mixed martial arts audience that seems like the big fight it's certainly the big fight for Tyron but it seems like the big fight for George as well yeah my only reservation when you say is this the big fight is it essentially it's the same fight that

118:46George did for a decade it's George against another very very tough welterweight what you did for ten years was life yeah but Tyron is he's especially dangerous I mean he's more I think he's more dangerous than Hendricks I think he's more dangerous than any of those guys I think his ability to put you away with one shot is but you could say hop in the food chain Trix was putting people away with one shelf years you know yeah he was its it Hendricks is a fascinating case and we should probably talk about that once the camera stops he's a he was a fascinating case and I can understand why he was so successful but you know there's a lot to maintaining that there's a lot to is one thing to get to a position where you are a world-class fighter it's like how long can you keep that up and one of the most impressive aspects of George's career was the fact that George is able to keep that up for

119:49so long yeah people don't understand this they say it's incredibly tough to become a UFC champion but however tough that is it's ten times tougher to stay then and on so many different levels too it's not just a physical thing the moment you come champion you become the most studied fighter in the world yeah everyone knows every little weakness they say every little strength and they can negate it and psychologically it's tough to you know every time the other guy fights it's the biggest fight of his life where is every time you find it's just another fine this is your 10th title defense video it's just another fine for the other guy across the ring this is the biggest moment of his life he's coming at you with everything he's got this is his moment of glory is literally gonna change his life and he becomes a USC champion whew it's just the next fight that's the question is like is it

120:42possible for a champion to maintain a challengers intensity through a ten title fight defect or do you just have to accept the fact that you're dealing with a completely different mind space I think ultimately you have to drop the whole pretense that it's about intensity because no I don't believe anyone can hold the same amount of intensity over ten years of preparation you have to start thinking in terms of I'm gonna defend my title with technique and strategy because if you go with intensity you can only hold intensity so long it's kind of diminishing time as you get paid more as you get tired as you get injured as years go by the intensity drops now when you analyze various fighters of today who stands out to you who yes a lot there's some very very impressive people a guy who impresses me enormous ly is Demetrius Johnson yeah I extremely impressed by

121:39this I think he's the greatest of all time it's it's hard to grace of all time is such a tough thing to say it's was Demetrius that the open question is always gonna be what was the level of competition right but that's not his fault right you can only fight the guys that give you well it's like Roy Jones jr. when Roy was in his prime yeah same sort of situation yeah he was so much better than everybody you know it's like how good were these guys I mean they were world-class guys but against him they just looked like they didn't belong in there what you typically find is that when you come to a CS who's the greatest of all time it's always going to come down to criteria and each guy has his strong point his claim to fame as far as you know I was the base guy of all time let's stick with just UFC champions guys always we could discussion would be too great if we go into pride and you know

122:33right sure yeah this guy's gonna get out of control but Demetrius Johnson's his claim to fame is is the completeness with which he's winning fights he's using everything beautifully he's knocking you know he's hitting people he's clinching people he's hitting clinch knockouts you know you didn't see those often in the USC he's incredibly good on the ground a few times he gets in trouble he seems to navigate his way out without a problem there's a completeness and his skill set which is incredibly impressive okay he's integrating racing and striking in ways that are just deeply deeply embracive you'll get someone like Jose Aldo who's right up there in terms you know is he wanted the grace of all time a sad thing about USC is that you see fans I should say is it people have very short memories you a guy loses a couple of fights and suddenly sucks and it's like dude well that was a killer

123:29I didn't kill him for ten years and obviously very very skilled he had that and he fought you know many tough opponents and just do you feel like when you see a guy like although you were just seeing the miles the miles pile up or do you think that max Holloway he's not dead is that good it's nothing at all 32 yeah so I'm reluctant say it's the miles and also Jose Aldo didn't really take a lot of damage and it's crazy East he's not like a guy that got knocked out five times and you know he came back so in terms of like the damage he took in his agent I didn't think it's a question of miles and his do you think it's a change good question the game just passing him by new levels of the game I that's that's a great question well I feel like max Holloway style was almost like the perfect yeah yeah a lot of it comes out the styles yeah and and you're right

124:22Holloway's awkward distancing and things that vary a distance but also phenomenal endurance unbelievable mental toughness extreme confidence in himself and he has the ability to break guys just puts a pace on them very Nick Diaz like in that regard it just puts that pace on him and you saw it with Aldo you see all those start to wilt because all those thought is strongly in both case yes very well that's his thing though he's so explosive and Sprint's essentially but you really can't do that I mean his style is highlighted by incredibly explosive fast movement and Max is not you know Max's is about avoiding and then accumulation of bombs of techniques keep it on you keep and also his well-roundedness his ability to submit you ability to absorb shots maintain composure when being fired upon all those things incredible strengths of his particularly matched up against although

125:23his strengths really shine yes yeah but that's a whole mock-up if you're gonna close him in the greatest of all times they have to be able to take on a wide array of opponents yes still be successful yeah which is why demetrius gets my vote I just feel like when you look at Benavidez when you look at just many different people that he fought showed him a bunch of different looks a bunch of different styles and he was able to overwhelm them all Wilson Hayes what's your assessment of his fight against Dominick Cruz have a weight division see I look at that as a learning experience a different era a different guy he had a full time job back then he was lucky thing happens if he finds Dominick Cruz the second time I'm fascinated by that I want to see him fight TJ Dillashaw yeah I think that's the big fight because TJ is willing to go down 125 so instead of fighting

126:17Dominick at 135 TJ's like I can make 125 and TJ feels like he'll be the guy to break the legacy he'll be far bigger stronger feels like he can match him speed for speed and he thinks he can make the weight comfortably I'm really fascinated by that fight I'm because also I think TJ is one of the few guys that's trained by I think Matt Hume is one of the great unsung heroes of MMA in times I agree with it you know he's a masked fascinating guy fascinating guy incredibly intelligent deep deep knowledge of the sport both stand up and on the ground and and integrating those two things together he's one of the few guys you can genuinely say his expertise across all areas of mixed martial arts and played a pivotal role and taking someone from being an unknown to a legitimate great whole champion all the time I see people who people often don't make a distinction between recruiters

127:16and coaches okay this this many fight camps out there that are very good at recruiting people that were already good and helping them to manage them etcetera and make them slightly better the world's full of recruiters but there's not many coaches out there Matt Hume took a kid who no one had heard of and took him from obscurity to arguably one of the best of all time okay and he he did it in a way with that that kid went from being essentially a wrestler to a genuinely well-rounded mixed martial artist with a complete set of skills that's an impressive accomplishment yeah and it's also his the way he does it the way he fights how little damage he did yes it's his movement is his ability to control like a good examples Dodson who fought John Dodson who's unbelievably explosive and fast and dangerous and just overwhelmed him if Demetrius Johnson didn't exist

128:19Dodson would have been a very good champion oh yeah highly regarded champion yeah that people don't realize how good some of these opponents are you know they say all was I see the level of opponent that Google Dalton's Dotson was especially a few years ago extremely dangerous he seems to be in a bit of a rut now whether it's a psychological rod or a physical rut it was not quite the same guy that he used to be but you know it's hard when a guy bests you the way that Mighty Mouse bests you because it seems like the level of talent is so far above where you're at that you it's like you left with a dilemma like how do I catch this guy and is it even possible for me to catch him because they had two fights and the second fight Mighty Mouse won handily he the first fight was closer the first fight was more dangerous he got hit a few times but in the second

129:10fight Mighty Mouse just showed leaps and bounds and it was just a rout he just ran him over the other arguments are Anderson Anderson is prime is one of the it's a great argument for the greatest of all time you know outside the UFC it's phaidor I think those are really the only arguments for the greatest of all times and George George is in there especially coming back and beating Bisping that puts him you know right back into the mix and in terms of argument of one of the greatest of all time yeah I think it was an important step for him because as I said that there were three persistent critters and he answered all three and one night so it definitely helps his case what's your thought on khabib nurmagomedov extremely embraced this kid is deeply deeply impressive I've he's come into the Academy a couple of times before fines I've never actually seen him train he after his

130:08fight in Madison Square Garden he bought himself and a group of his friends his training partners came into the Academy and trained in my Monday afternoon class khabib didn't train he just sat on the bench received to support on Saturday night so cause he's not gonna train but his his his training partners came in and trained with the squad there was a fun afternoon they rolled with I think mostly Nicky Ryan and it's hard for them of course because it's submission grappling that's not really what they do they do more the interface of of grappling combined with striking so they had a hard time of it but he struck me as a very very nice person he's shockingly big through his weight division shocker and one shot like all the people coming out of the Caucasus regions of Russia his wrestling is extremely good they have probably the best wrestling program in the world that

130:57whole area stretching from see sure through Dagestan Chechnya all the way down to Iran that that areas is the hotbed of wrestling in the world and it shows with all their fighters they're all strong and wrestling and then that is add to that the various skills and you've got a tough tough group of people yeah I was extremely I bet I've been impressed with every single performance he's had in the Octagon I mean he's undefeated which is a incredibly rare and of itself but in the 100 55 pound division even more impressive but the way he mauled Barbosa is just shocking she is Christ yeah and you can see the fight was essentially over halfway through round one yes yeah you could see it in barbosa's face it was drained yeah that was an incredibly impressive performance I obviously there's still you can't put him yet in the grace of all-time category but he hasn't won a title it

131:49hasn't even challenged for it yeah yeah but you definitely get the sense that if if he had had a title fight by now he probably would have been a champion by now him versus Connor Jesus Christ that's what I want to say him versus Connor and Russia or him versus Tony Tony Ferguson yeah it would be a very interesting night what's interesting about those two fights is you have basically polar opposites khabib nurmagomedov as a scramble based fighter and just that clash and styles is going to be fascinating with regards Conor McGregor and khabib them again of the feeling one gets is that if they did fight it would be a complete shutout in one of two directions it's either like a man beating up a child on the ground or it's just a flush knockout a guy unable to cover distance properly and walking into a left hand and just being catastrophic ko'd and you feel like there's potential

132:49for it to go in both directions and it's that's a fight I don't think goes the distance it's it's one way or the other yeah I agree I feel like what Conor presents it's interesting in terms of danger is speed and one-shot knockout power with his hands and could be has been heard coming in by Michael Johnson it's really the only adversity ever suffered inside the army and he dealt with it well yes that's a good sign for the beat it's the sliver of hope that every opponent clings to they watch that one moment where Michael Johnson clipped him like look look he's human yeah he'd be hurt it's like the terminator it bleeds okay I believe that was predator oh yeah what I say terminator yeah you just up your hog reference sorry I'm sorry yeah I did it up but I think that Conor has been overwhelmed on the ground though yes and he's been overwhelmed by Nate Diaz and he's been controlled in

133:46the ground by Chad yeah no one gets the feeling that whatever amount of control they were able to impose I would be nothing compared with what could be you could impose more over kabhi but it's a much more dangerous form of control yes babe has a program of hitting people on the ground which is substantially better than either of the two athletes you just mentioned yes and big differences when khabib gets you on the ground you're not getting up know you're getting mauled and it's almost like a spider like he's injecting venom into you and slowly but surely like weakening your body like you you see after the first round when Barboza gets up it's like okay you mean he's alive still but this is a different person and going into the second round I mean Barbosa gave an admirable account of himself and showed himself to be a true warrior he did try a couple of spinning

134:39back-kick so yeah some of them were relatively close Barboza's kicking heavy strategy though is very different than Connors Connors kicks are just the opposite his kicks are just probes hmm he's sort of poking at you poking at you and putting things out in front of you and he's just trying to do he's trying to drop that hard left hand on you it's a fascinating guy to watch fascinating interesting I always undervalued him when he first came in the UFC I said hype it's hybrid but the more I study the more I thought yeah he's seen he's very very skilled well he's also he mind people hmm he mind people in a way that but I don't think he's mind could be I don't think that works um could be I don't think that's gonna happen I just think that we did dealing with a totally different kind of human being those people from Dagestan are just so hard it's just a hard part

135:30of the world yes they're made of hard ear stuff I mean it's just like they have to deal with way more not that people in Ireland are soft they're hard people too I just think that with I've always said the most important of technique when it comes to mixed martial arts the base of the pyramid the most important thing is the ability to control the grappling ability to take a guy down if you can take a guy down and control him you have a significant advantage you can choose where the fight takes place and if you're competent in the standup which could be was definitely competent in the stand-up so you are adequate in the stand-up but overwhelming when it gets to the ground you can present problems with a guy standing up which which cases problems the guy has to deal with this striking aspects which open up the take downs I wholeheartedly agree with you but I'll go a little further whenever

136:27someone asks me what are the what what are the programs what do you look for when you see a guy dominating fights what makes someone go in the right direction squid their training and their fighting itself I always say there's three things if you show me a fighter who can one dominate the setups to dominate the pace of the fight and three how can any phrase this dominate the simple direction of the fight three things dominate the setups dominate the pace dominate the direction you show me a fighter who can do those three things and I'll show you a fighter who can win 95% of the fights he gets into dominate the setups dominate the pace dominant direction thinking about someone like a bee or anyone who comes to me a strong wrestling or judo jujutsu with takedowns base fighters they're always gonna better dominate the direction they determine whether it goes down to the

137:32ground or whether it stays standing to be always dominates the pace of the fight once you're on the ground you're on top the other guys is reacting to what you're doing trying to get back up to a speed etc etc you're dominating pace if there's one weakness that could be pears it is not as strong dominating the setups to get to those areas where he can dominate pace and etc etc if he's going to lose a fight it's gonna be in that area and corner more than anything else as a guy who dominates the setups you said it before the kicks at probes they're not kicks so I try to hurt you with the kicks he's probing he hurts you was this yeah okay so Connors skill is he's a master of dominating ourselves especially in the standing position but cab Eve's mastery out of those three critical areas for domination and all forms of fighting is he's the dominant he's incredibly

138:35dominant in determining the direction of the phone and the pace of the fight that's why he never gets tired in his fights he's got a very high work rate he never gets tired never see him just completely shattered despite the fact he's working hard the whole time and the despite the fact that he's significantly weakened some 855 pounds which apparently he's done far better now he had a real nutritionist heading into this camp and it was much easier for him to cut the way I'd be fascinated to see him fly at 170 well that's a plan apparently that was the plan and Whitley was joking around about it saying he'll send him nutritionist so I keep his psycho ass down at 1:55 with his exact yeah with regards your point before you saying this this core combat skill the most important one that you as a commentator look for when you look at fine it's you know can you determine you

139:27you put grappling skill is the number one saying whether it be wrestling with every some but to meet you it's or whatever I would go further and say yeah well there's three things that I look for who dominates the setups who dominates the pace who dominates the direction now what are your thoughts about strength and conditioning for mixed martial arts fighters that's a that's a huge question but the question is like what takes precedent the skill training take precedent like there's several schools of thought and one of them would be one of the more interesting ones is Nickerson and Marvin Marinovich that cam they believe that you already know how to fight and that what the camp really should be about is just radical strength and conditioning a point where let's let's that's a mixed question are you talking about a fight camp or he's talking about fight

140:15training over the year there's a big difference let's talk about a fight camp in specific okay okay average fight camp is around six to eight weeks and is the longest you over here it's like 18 to 12 weeks that's a that's a very very long so I came how much physiological change can you affect in the body in six to eight weeks you can you could tighten everything up you can you can certainly increase your endurance threshold your ability to work how much could you increase your vo2 max in six weeks good question a few percentage points I believe I think considerably less than that really yeah hmm how much could you increase your vertical jump in six weeks not much not much at all not a big believer in the idea that you're going to create big significant fight changing physiological changes in six to eight weeks it's not really my experience but I can show someone a

141:21single technique which can have a direct impact on a fight I can show them that in five minutes mmm okay I'm not gonna claim to be a medical expert who has a deep understanding of these things my experience in coaching is that physiological changes take time and you're not gonna get it done in a fight camp yes you can make physiological changes over a year two years absolutely George went up a weight division okay but it took quite a bit of preparation to do so didn't happen in six weeks what kind of strength training was he doing to do that I know he's very involved in gymnastics a lot of that George George's primary physical training outside of this gymnastics he loves it he also for a time did Olympic weightlifting less so now than before but there was a time that was a big part of it recently he started taking on training and water with various fins at

142:17Sarah Sarah to increase resistance he's quite a fan of that but the truth is George go through go through cycles and you know boredom was affected he get bored at a certain kind of physical activity and you want to try something new right and so he's gone through various cycles I can tell you this George's strength has not significantly changed despite the various changes in physiological training like when he did Olympic lifting he wasn't massively stronger than when he did regular weightlifting or when he did swim training I didn't I don't feel like okay one mate I'm stronger than the other yeah there's so many interesting questions and the one you just asked is that okay do I believe that strength is important absolutely okay anyone who says that strengths doesn't make a difference in a fine it's just straight up ignoring the obvious facts it's a reason why men don't find

143:15women because there's massive strength differences there's a reason why these weight categories because there's big strength are in heavy weight and light weight okay strength makes a difference the proof of that is simple easy to observe why do people take anabolic steroids because they know that strength makes a difference okay there's a reason why they're illegal because it they do change the outcome of fights so yes strength is extremely important the question is how are you going to build it and are you gonna do it in camp is your fight camp gonna be based around strains that's a risky strategy can you really get that much stronger in six weeks I've always believed the whole idea of fight camp is to prepare an already well-trained athlete to get around the problem of one individual its programming one individual to solve the complex problem that another individual

144:05presents it's kind of like preparation for an exam so to speak and for me the whole thing in every fight camp is motivated by two very simple questions how are you gonna win this fight and how are you not going to lose this fight the entire structure of the campus based around that and almost all of it has to do with tactics and techniques rather than changes in the physical body now when George is in off camp when when he's out of camp is that when he would that's a period of skill acquisition I'm trying to acquire new skills so that's when he would I know he's notorious for taking trips to like to Brazil to do your experimentation you know you bring in different perspectives a different person this is interesting is this has potential this doesn't really have much but then you you start changing things up now do you have that same approach with all the fighters that you've worked

145:01with it depends on the context that a mixed martial artist did they trained with me full-time right part-timers it would depend on the context I can answer with regards to squad yeah I mean I was gonna bring up his Weidman like Weidman's approach you know coming from that elite wrestling background and then developing a lot of significant mixed martial arts skills he is in an unusual situation right now where where is he stand in terms of like future opponents like where is he out right now that's that's a tough question to us to answer Chris I think head probably one of the most meteoric Rises into world championship level he literally beat twice in a row the guy that at that time was considered by most people to be the greatest of all time his run up to that was incredible you I'm sure you commentated many of those fights sure so this kid who that the timeframe with

146:00what she went from obscurity to world championship level was incredibly and undefeated not just is insane what he was doing so there was this incredible meteoric rise and then there was a short period after that way he appeared to be crushing great former champions like in the other mashita Peter Belfort it was just beating them he's smashing he's incredibly impressive and and then I think people were shocked by what appeared to be an unbeaten record and then suddenly three losses in a row in catastrophic tss getting smashed by Luke Rockhold getting killed by a flying knee from Yoel Romero and getting dominated by Gegard Mousasi and then all the controversy that led to the stoppage so it was it was three in a row that on a guy who never even experienced defeat right and say you go from no defeats to three catastrophic defeats in a row that that's that Stroh's

146:55everything off but then he rebounded with Calvin gasps finished one of the tougher cries in the division he's not and you saw what guess time went on to do is yes bhisma and Bisping and so yeah he's that was a great win it was a nice comeback and but the question is where does go from here yeah and I don't have an answer for you I'm so sorry how often you work with them not often Chris Chris came to me as a student he was a student of Matt Serra who's one of my great friends and training partners from the hens of Gracie Academy and Matt was having some medical issues and he said John you know can you take over this student of mine Chris Whiteman this guy's incredibly talented I'd heard of Chris cuz you know with linked schools fairly close by and people were telling about this amazing race those you know incredibly talented picks techniques up and you know I

147:50always take these things with a grain of salt cause people exaggerate and suddenly so Chris started coming in and it was all true this kid you can show him a technique on Monday and by Tuesday he's doing it better than you are and he has a gift for physical movement that you don't see very often and guys that big he's big agile highly intelligent and and had at that time a level of self confidence that was deeply impressive I would show Chris a guillotine variation and then five minutes later he would be using it in their gym and then a month later be using it in an MMA fight and he literally would see opportunities and immediately act upon them what I worry about with Chris is that in those three losses I'm not saying this has happened but what I worry will happen is that fighters who are typically very dominant and were confidence fighters when they experienced a feed lose

148:58confidence and a big part of Chris's success was that ability to see opportunity and have the conference to immediately act upon it so my concern if I if I love Christmas will that still be there will he still have the same confidence which was such a big part of his rise to the top will it be drastically altered by three losses and I'm very pleased to say that it didn't appear to be so in the fight with Gaston he he he actually took a heavy hit at the end of the first round and it fine and came back it looks like he's he'd gone through those I was those three losses and comebacks come back strong and everything was fine so I'm pretty confident Chris will go on to great success again at 185 knowing how good Chris is on the ground how shocked were you about the Luke Rockhold fight it was a hard one for me to watch Chris stopped working with me after the second

149:55Anderson Silva fight we did that most of that came together and then he started working with me moved further out on to Long Island he opened up a gym was very long ago and went back to train with Matt Serra and they those guys were incredible training camp they did a fine job getting him through the mushy defines etc etc I went I was at that UFC it was in Las Vegas Conor McGregor was the main event and Chris was the co-main event and the fight had interesting beginning Chris was doing well two takedowns but Luke Rockhold was doing a great job of controlling Chris's head with like fake guillotines to prevent any kind of damage on the ground doing a good job was standing makeup to the feet so there was no really significant damage then they got into an interesting kickboxing battle where it seemed to go in one direction in switch directions and then

150:54Chris seemed to be getting the better of it and things look good and then there was just one episode where everything just came unstuck in a second and I remember watching names like I like watching a bad dream you know and yeah it was shocking yeah Chris through an ill-advised wheel kick you know which is slow and telegraph and rockhole took him to the ground and what I was most shocked with was and I've seen it time and time again I saw it in the David branch fight suddenly lo Machida fight is Rockhold top game it's be tariff deeply impressive very impressive unbel I attribute that not just his skill which i think is considerable but also to training on a regular basis with Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez is just his wrestling his grappling is severely underrated maybe not so now but his ability to control guys on the ground it's just terrifying yeah he's done an

151:51amazing job I also got very strong submission skills yes people I don't think talked about those at all and he submitted good people and he said some of the best bring with that one arm guillotine in here some of some of his finishes like highlight reel finish yes they're beautiful now he's got tremendous skills he's big for the division he's a you talk about a guy who dominates the pace and and dominates the direction he's no one can hold him down for any period of time he's great get him a cup to his feet he bristles the fence very very well like all Daka guys there yeah but on the fence he's a he's a very very impressive fight him I'm impressed with him in a lot of ways but his ability to control top level guys like I just thought my thought was when he got Chris down like okay Chris is a world-class grappler he's gonna be able to get out of the situation would be

152:44scrambles there's a lot happening but there was none of that you know it was just total control and grounded you know and for a considerable period of time yeah it was rough it was rough to watch because it was one of those where you could easily make the argument for it of being stopped sooner yeah I think so too yeah it was a rough one and now Rockhold's gonna face Yoel Romero it's just very he's the freak of all freaks that's like that guy was made in a lab you know it's not your remember fighting David brunch no did this happen recently night yes III think Robert Whittaker got injured what happened the knee again most likely if I had a gas I don't think they released it but there's been an injury maybe it's a different injury but when did this happen couple days ago wow I've just flown to California and using the internet so yeah so Rock good for you

153:3232 days jokes I'll say that but Rockhold and Yoel now are gonna fight for the interim belt that's a huge development yeah big development Wow yeah that's I mean yo Romero that's that's a different vibe yo Romero is probably the most uncontrollable man in the universe he is a difficult difficult person to control in any aspect of the fight he's fighters some parts of what he does make no sense like that he's one of the greatest wrestlers of his generation yeah yet many people take him down yeah and gets taken down all the time but they can't control him he just springs back up he's not worried about being taken down I think that's part of it yeah because he'd come so hard with the upper body at least the lower body open and and you're right there's no consequence to it he can just get up whenever he feels like it he he has a greater propensity to change direction

154:31at speed than anyone else I've ever seen in my life people always talk about speed they're you know this guy's fast or that guy's fast to me the only kind of there's two kinds of speed they don't that impressed me in fighting one is the speed of decision making okay if you can make decisions good decisions faster than your opponent gonna win a lot of fights and the other is your ability not going straight lines at speed but to change direction speed of directional change is the most important kind of physical speed in fighting ok there's plenty people that weren't really that fast but they can change direction quickly and that's the kind of speed that counts in fighting so the two kinds of speed that you needed to be to be a fighter with speed of decision making and a speed of directional change and you see lots of fast people at Laser who st. bolt is

155:23fast but it's not fast and directional change it's not his thing but I think that you're Romero is there's a certain twitchiness to his movement where it's so hard to read where he's going where he's gonna be in the next half second it's it's just a handful the deal was yeah that is a very good assessment of what what's shocking about him you know his ability to go from 0 to 60 in just four this is him at 40 yeah Oh what was he like when he was 25 this doesn't look like a 40 year old man just everything's wrong like yeah he doesn't look like a normal person like you look at his body his proportions everything looks like something from a movie yeah it doesn't there is real yeah and that flying need that he hit Christmas was like Jesus Christ yeah now he could feel it in the audience it was it was it was terrible it's just the the amount of force that he can generate is just stunning but

156:17he's also a guy that's carrying around a tremendous amount of muscle and I wonder what kind of pace he can keep up you know and we saw that in the Whitaker fight he faded a bit in that fight wound up losing that fight we've seen it in several of his fights the Tim Kennedy fight he faded in that fight and eventually came back to win but he's got so much to feed there's so much tissue you know yeah yeah he's a fascinating character fascinating and again boy wouldn't you have loved to seen him in the UFC at 26 yeah I mean when he was just dominating everyone with wrestling scene you know he's as good as they get in Raceland meddled in to every single world-class competition he ever entered not only that but there's abyss wrestlers in his weight division at that time he beat all of them crazy that's as good as he get yeah hard to imagine yeah yeah all right John I think we've

157:15covered basically enough where it's worth three hours in here man oh my god we've already have longer than one of my Instagram post your posts are amazing by the way I'm a huge fan your your way you break not true I have a lot of friends share them they they send them to me and text messages occasionally that's right but uh you are breakdowns of technique and strategy and what is actually happening I think they're critical I think your voice and what you're doing like with the squad and what you're doing for for jiu-jitsu as a whole and the way you're able to articulate that and break these things down that's it's it's really really critical I think it's awesome thank you very much thank you I'm really glad we finally got a chance to do this it's better than meeting at Denny's yes Wow Denny's the meeting is fun too mom what is your Twitter for people is

158:05it just John Danaher on Instagram rather on what I believe it's Danaher John Danaher John yeah okay beautiful thank you brother cute