JRE MMA Show #124 with Khalil Rountree

00:12so just tell me that again so you were you were doing what were you doing in finland in the first place uh i was there i was there with an ex training but aside from that i was just there visiting i was just visiting finland and so you decided to do a sauna in the motherland because that's like the home of saunas yeah it's the home of it so um yeah the people that were hosting us they were like hey have you guys ever done sauna in an ice lake like yeah but never like in the ice lake after and so they have like a shack that's the sauna it's a shack to the yeah it almost looks like a locker room right like and you just see a bunch of people like all age groups um there's a locker room where you get undressed and there's this huge box like i said it fits like easily 50 to like i mean 50 to 100 people and everyone's in there just packed there was actually a line to

01:02get in so when somebody steps out you step in and kind of replace them oh wow it's like bleacher seating so you're in there like packed tight and maybe three or four rows and it's hot as shit and a lot i don't remember the exact temperature but it was the hottest sauna that i've ever been in like my skin was on fire whoa after maybe a minute two minutes of being in there i was like this is probably the moisture they probably threw a lot of water on a lot of water and then right after fucking difference right after you just walk downstairs or you walk outside and there's a set of stairs where you walk literally right into the ice lake at night we did it it was like 9 or 10 p.m yeah and so they just cut a hole in the lake and you just walk there's like a metal like a walkway that you can't see so it looks

01:50like you're just walking into the water when at night but there's like a little walkway like a railway underwater and you can hold on to the rail and oh wow you know and do your lap and um yeah i think i did it like maybe four times like four sessions and it was the best like one of the best things at the end of the night i slept like a baby oh you definitely do that when i do it at night when i do the cold plunge and the sauna like back to back at night oh my god you sleep so good it just just drains you i do i love to do it before a podcast because it empties my brain you know because the sauna i put it at 189 degrees and today i did uh 15 minutes on and then i did three minutes in the ice bath and then i had to run here and that's so that's all i did today but most days i do 20 and then i do the ice bath and then i'll do another 15. got you yeah but in the morning is good man i feel

02:37like if i do that in the morning i feel like alive yeah like i don't have to do this crazy hard workout just like sauna and ice tub in the morning i feel like really revitalized yeah well it's you know that's something that i think more athletes and more fighters in particular need to concentrate on is the recovery stuff there's a lot of guys who just train like animals and just hope their body is going to recover just naturally you know just from hard work and eating well and but i think things like hardcore stretching yoga if you can get it in hot yoga and particularly sauna and ice bath they're so beneficial yeah my my conditioning coach who's like a gigantic fan of you um he what's his name his name is lorenzo pavlica shout out to lorenzo shout out lorenzo um no it's it's something that he

03:27has me do almost i'd say like three to four times a week is that's a part of our our training is sauna and ice and stretching and breathing um what kind of breathing uh it's i mean i think what he calls it tummo breathing tummo tummo i don't i don't remember that might be i might be saying it wrong but um how's it go it's it's a short inhale long exhale short inhale long exhale like a lot pretty rapidly and then here it is how to do wim hof tummo breathing fire pranayama activate your inner fire oh okay so one of the cool things too is um like doing sauna ice bath or you know like cold plunge but also um with this tummo breathing i feel like something that really helped uh elevate and like activate everything in my body was i took a small little like a chocolate microdose mushroom i ate a little piece of chocolate and then like kind of let that settle in we were like calming

04:37down and then got into this breathing exercise and when i tell you just they're like i just felt so full like my brain was firing differently just so many sensations that i felt that were just like they felt like they were very healthy and like very powerful like i needed those things it was it was a really cool uh cool experience to mix it with uh with the mushrooms a little bit i think microdosing mushrooms is the future i think if people did that first of all it doesn't affect your cognitive function like you're in a negative way like your ability to think or talk or or do work or anything like that but it puts you in such a good place it's like oh yeah it's like this elevated place but it's it's not medicated you don't feel bad when it's over exactly i love microdosing yeah you don't really like trip out

05:29into this like crazy headspace right it's yeah you're functional yeah very functional if yeah if anything clarity i feel like a bit more clarity and in a different realm like not so much clarity like if i have caffeine and i'm like focused on my project it kind of takes me away from a certain like aspect of my thinking and i'm more like in a little bit more in line with my with my body and clarity with like my body and my senses your body better right yeah yeah stretching is amazing yes yeah it is you know like stretching and breathing into stretches and yeah you know if you were to microdose and do yoga or something like that i'm sure it would be yeah something that's i haven't done that i've done a lot of weed and do yoga and it's kind of the same thing i'm sure it gives you like you almost like feel

06:14the fibers stretching out that's how i feel that's i think that's one thing for me i'm not like a heavy weed smoker but i love to smoke before i train or before i do any type of um running or stretching or because i feel the fibers it might sound weird but i feel like i feel more of my muscle fibers and i'm able to pay attention to those little things and i don't think it's weird at all i think i i think the whole thing is like the it's dose dependent like if you get too high you're like oh i can't even function like i've overdosed before and then try to go to do jujitsu and i i i was trying to explain an omoplata to someone like this variation on an omoplata and i was in i couldn't figure out how to set up the omoplata i was like so high i was like what am i doing your leg hold on i was just too gone that was oh that was too much you want to just just just to just to touch yeah just separate

07:10you from normal consciousness i totally agree i totally agree it's been yeah it's been it's been cool to be able to uh yeah just kind of bring new new um instruments and and and techniques and into training and and make it more exciting and more about fighting and you know focusing more on just like my overall health and yeah ability you know just like ability mentally physically emotionally right like yeah for sure but that's one of the things that mushrooms and and and low dose psychedelics and low dose marijuana can do for you it just like it makes you you you concentrate on like your overall being when you're training like you feel things that you don't know ordinarily feel and i i sometimes i dismiss it when i train sober for a long time yeah i'm like this is all who gives a fuck just go get the work done but then i'll get high and i'll go oh yeah yeah i forgot about this i forgot about

08:07this like it's like you just it makes you realize that like there's levels of sensitivity 100 have you ever uh uh tried doing like cardio or airdyme bike yes yeah i like it yeah same thing yeah it's it's great for a lot of things you know i think uh it's not the best for learning for whatever reason like i don't like it before learning techniques i think i learned it's way better for me when i'm rolling got you you know or like hitting the bag is the best getting high and hitting the bag is amazing i just put on some good tunes that's all you need yeah that's all you need and just feel it yeah you don't need a partner you don't need anybody like yelling at you just put on some music and and let it flow i bet usually i have i use my round timer and i have a wu-tang playlist and i put wu-tang clan on and just fucking gravel pit get into that you know i that that makes that it actually

09:00brings me into that i feel like i totally connect with you because there's a whole another level of training to wu-tang like if you specifically put wu-tang on to train yeah like i kind of get your mentality and that that internal yeah you know feeling that you get because yeah that's one of my not my last fight but the fight before i walked out to protect your neck yes and like that just that mentality like and that the beat and the drums oh yeah you just feel like this this i don't know like a badass martial artist like a street martial artist when we drive to shows like when we leave the hotel and then we go to the arena when whenever i'm doing comedy we listen to protect your neck that's the first thing we listen to we get in the car either gravel pit or protect your neck a gravel pit's crazy right that era of hip-hop to me is just like i mean obviously i'm old

09:59so like that era was when i was young and it was like when i was really getting into hip-hop but there's something about that era of hip-hop because it was hip-hop was only a couple of decades old then yep you know really didn't i mean sugar hill gang was like what 1979 78 like when when was um rapper's delight who i mean way before my time i was born 90 so like i think it was like 78 or 79 it could have been remember it could have been do you know 80 okay so yeah so that's that's when rap was essentially modern rap was essentially born and then you know 10 years later 15 years later you know you got cool g rap and dj polo you got all those 90s hip-hop guys yep you know correct that's officially released on september 16th 1979 there you go did you get to see the uh wu-tang saga at all on hulu no joe rogan you gotta watch it oh my god yeah okay i hadn't been excited about a show

11:05in a long time i saw the wu-tang saga and some people have certain you know whatever their opinions on it but i think to be able to see the background of every single member of wu-tang right so it follows like each character individually and how they all came together and um ashton sanders saunders who plays the the rizza and just there is a scene in season two where he's sampling the music and it takes him into this like all black room where the i can't even remember the uh the group that it that that he was sampling but they pop up and they're each playing their instruments and then like as he turns it down on the keyboard or on you know as he turns it down on the board then like the guy still singing but like you can't hear him anymore oh yes this scene this is like one of the best scenes in in film history wow oh wow oh wow that makes me crazy watch them your love is for me don't take it away

12:31no no no something about love look turn the voice up oh wow like let me hear the drums oh the guitar yeah right there that's probably the way a person sampling and creating music like that would see things right you think about separate it yeah absolutely riz is a fascinating guy oh my god apparently he was on set for for a lot of the like scenes and stuff just kind of overseeing everything or giving his input on like you know this is how it is but yeah being someone who loves to make music and produce beats and stuff it when i saw that scene like i had to rewind it i had to replay it because i'm like yeah exactly you when you're listening when you're trying to create music and maybe if you're sampling you might just hear the guitar and you don't want the drums or you don't want the sing so you like turn that down and you're like ah that's the feeling that i want to sample so when i saw that i mean

13:38that was season two but i was already sold on the show before you know how many seasons are there i think only two and the third is coming yeah the third one's coming out the interesting thing about hip-hop is that it was the first musical genre at least a popular musical genre that sampled stuff like in that they and they it what you know it made the songs more interesting because you heard a little bit of an old song in there and you're like oh i remember that beat but then it's all these new lyrics over that beat yep that changes what that beat is and it's like there was this you know there was like a lot of debate in the early days of sampling like is this stealing like what is this it's like no because the other song still exists and it's obvious that this is a piece of that other song but it you know like but it enhances new music yeah exactly it's a totally

14:32different thing like taking little pieces of stuff and combining it together is an art form in and of itself personally as as it's a it's a uh it's an appreciation yeah right it's like someone created this masterpiece already and i took my favorite part from it and maybe just looped it or sped it up yeah and then kind of made a version of it not to like compete with yeah this other song but it's like an appreciation like thank you you've just made this amazing you know piece of music that i can now listen to on repeat or listen to in a way that you know translates to me in a certain way and to millions more i don't know i don't see a problem with it i think it's cool yeah it's not like they're pretending they didn't do that you know what i mean like stealing is like there's there's been bands that have gotten in trouble because they have a riff that sounds exactly like an old

15:20riff that's on a record and they don't give the other band credit it's not a sample they're just trying to copy it and then they wind up losing all the royalties like do you remember that song bittersweet symphony yeah yeah that song i believe they had to give all their money to the rolling stones oh no way yeah see if that's true i'm pretty sure that's true because uh i remember that song being like really interesting but i but the the beginning of it was too close to a rolling stone song and they lost in court like the like orchestra sound like that that melody yeah yeah the you know but the lyrics obviously were totally different yeah a different vibe to the song i forget which song it was stones but but they took them to court and but the thing about music is like i can't read music but can you read music no not read just listen like i can play by ear yeah when you read it

16:13like if you write the music out they can see like oh this is the same fucking song yeah like you could see like and then if you listen if someone listens to it that really has an ear for it they can tell you well this is clearly the you know the same breaks the same this is basically the same music yeah it's just they added different lyrics to it and they made you know but they weren't trying to pretend they were sampling they're just copying it yeah i think there's definitely two two different uh this is a very confusing story it's almost too long to get into oh yeah they as of 2019 the rolling stones gave money back to the verb what oh really yeah oh let me see that article oh not bitter just sweet the rolling stones give royalties to the verb shout out rolling stones they had originally had permission from the original orchestral recording of those strings apparently or

17:08something it's in the area here we see permission from deca who released the album okay so the verb received permission from deca the record label that released the orchestra orchestral album to use a few notes of the string melody from the andrew oldham orchestra instrumentals in exchange for half of the verb's royalties on bittersweet symphony what was the song that was uh the rolling stone song that was uh probably the last time is that it let me hear that oh what it sounds like what was it we're on spotify see what happens oh yeah i get it yeah i hear it oh my gosh the same song yeah it's the same song well so that's the well that's sort of the issue i think is if they had permission to they had an agreement right already in place and then something in that agreement changed i was going to give you a better example before you brought that up is the uh i'll be

18:15missing you when puff daddy took that from the place oh yeah that's right he's never apparently puff daddy's never gotten any money from that interesting 100 gone to sting not even the police sting wow wow look at that 730 000 a year what what click on that so i can see it says click in the the bank account of mr mr who still sting probably mr gordon matthew thomas sumner that's stings real name is that real that's his real name what a goofy name i no wonder why i changed the name to sting there's too many words in that gordon matthew thomas sumner come on bro it's two full names mixed into one gordon matthew and thomas sumner you can't have four words in your name that's ridiculous sting is living in a mansion and benzes but he isn't giving ends to his friends yet he undoubtedly feels dependent what is this it's just someone's like sort of adding their opinion oh i get

19:11it oh someone bitching about sting not giving money off uh sumner said quoted having said the song is the major ripoff of all time he sting uh sampled my guitar that's what he based his whole track on stewart's not on it said sumner's sting's not on it i'll be walking around no that's not sting that's not correct yeah so it's a different person oh according to celebrity network sting and sting alone fattens his pockets with a cool two thousand dollars a day in fact every penny of royalties that are generated by both every breath you take and i'll be missing you seven oh good okay so he gets seven hundred thirty thousand dollars a year in that from both songs yeah nice but who the fuck is gordon matthew thomas sumner is that sting i think this article was just written poorly it's a shitty article come on double x yeah it's sting so yeah i just i read this even through a different article

20:06where he was being interviewed with one of his bandmates from the police and that guy was bitching about how he's not getting any money from it it's one of those deals things taking all of it and the way he's like he's like uh complaining about not having a chateau in italy or something like we don't have chateaus in italy we have them in france yeah it's the wrong word bro he's in french words for an italian country oh man yeah well you know that's the business of the business yeah you got to get your cut too though right you can't be mad at the other guy that music business is a weird business you know like guys who are in a band together the band could be massive but two guys are like the head guys in the band and they make all the money yeah and then the other guys get pissed you know yeah i mean kind of going back to wu-tang i feel like that there was a little a

20:51bit little bit of that wasn't you know yeah so many members in wu-tang at one point in time right yeah absolutely but i think one of the things was um the guys didn't really understand the music business rizza was like the brains behind it he was the one who like you know had all of the kind of like business decisions and like hey i need you guys to sign this i need you guys to sign these contracts so we can get this money to make this music and um you know they kind of trusted him and and did it and uh i guess it just it didn't end up really being like a good deal for everybody um they go over it a little bit in the show but i think there's another documentary that kind of goes a little bit more in depth you know with all that stuff but yeah man this is dirty business is dirty it's a dirty game business ah yes it is with so many people and so many different you know

21:39yeah man we all got to get paid yeah that's just the fact that they brought those dudes together though is so interesting that the wu-tang climate existed at all and it's so iconic you know like wu-tang is probably the most iconic hip-hop band of all time yeah i mean off the top of my head i really can't think of someone else to that to compare no that doesn't no one compares it's a different thing yeah like wu-tang is like a mindset yeah like when dave chappelle says wu-tang is a punchline sometimes like they'll say something just go wu-tang you can't use any other band you really can't yeah you really can't and they're i mean they're they're their logo their symbol they're known everywhere yeah you can go to you know jakarta indonesia and it's like they know who wu-tang is or they've seen the symbol or something and the people in it vary so wildly you got old dirty bastard

22:35who was just fucking crazy yep and then you got the jizza who's like he's an elite chess player yeah and i think he's done like ted talks and shit no the guy's a genius yeah like a legit genius is a genius yeah i think he actually he studied and has a degree in something like very like yeah like physics yeah i think he has like a physics degree or something like that yeah the guy the guy's a genius what was his ted talk see if you can find out what the jizz's ted talk is but because i guarantee he did a ted talk yeah look at that the genius of science the jizz and the science genius said tedx teen yeah i mean what the fuck man that's incredible yeah i mean when you listen to some of his bars you're like wow how exactly how do you put those things together that's the other thing about 90s hip-hop and like that era and wu-tang clan in particular like the lyrics were so good there was

23:28you would hear lyrics and you would just go oh like how did you put those together yeah make to make that yeah you know scenario happen and yeah lyrics to me are everything i mean the beat is everything too i mean it's all together obviously but it's like man just something about like sharp lyrics it's it's exciting yeah there's there's still uh there's still a good number of um of hip-hop artists nowadays that still kind of produce the same type of stuff um one like one of my favorite um artists right now his name he goes by navy blue and he's kind of like an underground guy but he's just got lyrics and like poetry and you just kind of you can get lost in just listening to him speak because you have to kind of put together the things that he's saying so you listen to the song a couple times you're like oh wow okay like that makes sense have you ever seen there's a video from like the 1930s

24:20and it's like it says the it's the quite the i saw it on youtube there's a question mark like is this the first ever rap and it's these dudes rhyming to music on some television show and like yeah would you folks like to learn everything in five easy lessons yes well send for our free booklet this isn't what i saw because what i saw was a video well that's it that's it click on that watch this this is 1940s oh hey children stop still and listen to me god walked down to the brandy sea he declared that the aim of the sent the man and then he decided to destroy the land that he spoke to noah noah he said noah i want you to build me an ark i won't do the billy three cubits long i won't do the billy big and strong i wanted fifty high and fifty white so it will stand the wind and time this is kind of hip-hop

25:55yeah i mean it's it's hip-hop with like a back melody going right with a back melody and dudes with nice suits on on television in 1940 and acapella and they're singing about the bible you know but it's a completely different kind of music than what you think about from that era yeah 100 like 1940s that's that's not what was happening what happened there were they adding a beat yeah you want to hear it yeah yeah and wild right you gotta think about people back then i mean television was only like 10 years old right yeah like when did they was it even when did they maybe about if i think in the 30s i think i'm pretty sure i mean they came up with that right you know what i mean like they weren't getting inspiration from anything they weren't like yeah let's try to make something like this guy they were like let's just make authentic music and that's what happened they just created something that's

27:14something like that's something i would sample yeah like i'd put this into my npc and i'd like try to make a cool beat out of it just like the people did in this video because people should definitely sample it i hope they do yeah that's make different versions of it yeah i want to hear it i mean and then you think about it you go 50 years later then you have 90s hip-hop which is that that whole era 90s hip-hop was you know like nwa popped in the 90s iced tea i mean there was so many so many artists became prominent in the 90s it became like a whole different thing like and then gangster rap became like a whole different thing it was like this whole if you look at the from the beginning of these guys in 1940 to today you're still looking at 80 years yeah it's such a small if you look at every other

28:03genre of music has had a longer span of time time moves fast technology advances i mean yeah man it's it's it's it's it's a beautiful thing to see i i've been yeah very inspired by a lot of just evolution of music of like finance right yeah oh yeah man what are you in terms of finance so i've been really really focused and like intrigued in this whole bitcoin thing lately i've been doing a lot of research and just like trying to get my own understanding i went to the bitcoin conference in miami this year and just got to see and hear some really really cool things and the people who are like pioneering this and and really believing in in bitcoin specifically not just like the whole world of cryptocurrency but bitcoin itself um i haven't been excited about something like this in a really long time and i'm not a finance guy you know like i'm not a guy who grew up knowing about

29:06you know financial systems and and networks and stock markets or anything and now i'm finally at a point where i'm starting to be able to like see a future for myself and also a way to like people like me don't really have like generational wealth right and i don't understand i don't see how you know i can really create that through fighting alone so lately i've just been trying to understand more of like the the advancement of technology and kind of where we're headed right like for instance you know when i was a kid in the 1990s and and early 2000s when the internet came versus now like in that jump in my lifetime it's night and day difference like i'm living in the sci-fi compared to what was in the 90s you know so now just you know listening to people um really like really smart people even like uh you own me park who you had here yeah and hearing her and how um she spoke about

30:09how like bitcoin is actually helping save uh some children from like so in north korea this is what she said in north korea when women are are are taken as sex slaves and shipped over to northern china where these guys are buying them because china has this um this one child rule in in certain areas right so if the woman if the if the sex slave has a child then that child is half north korean and half chinese and the chinese won't accept them and they can't go back to north korea because the women kind of like escaped right so because of that there's actually what she said are pretty much millions of stateless children who can't get birth certificates who can't get schooling who can't get anything and they're either like sent to prison camps as children or killed because they're what are they going to do with

31:09them china doesn't accept them and they can't go back to north korea so what happens right so there's like underground church groups that are actually taking these kids in and because they can't use chinese money and they you know because it's happening in china because they can't use chinese money the only currency that they can use right now is bitcoin and so people are able to fund them too so that they can at least school these kids and feed them and things like that so from like a from like a currency and like money standpoint there's like a small fraction where i'm like okay i see how this works but then trying to uncover and like dive more into the whole system of how this can be implemented into just like daily society i'm seeing more and more possibility and it's making me more and more secure on hey man i can actually finally have something that i own that's mine like whatever i earn

32:07is going to be mine and you can't touch it no one can touch it every from and there's a guy uh adam curry who's a good buddy man yeah yeah you know like uh uh podcast index like his now they've created this thing where um if you want to have your own platform and not worry about being taken down or censored or whatever and you can also get paid in satoshis which are fractions of a bitcoin from the supporters so you can stream your sets you don't have to buy bitcoin you can create a platform where hey i'm speaking if i wanted to start one and i'm like you know i don't have the money to actually buy bitcoin but i do have a lot of stuff that i want to talk about subscribe to my podcast and then my fans and my followers are streaming to me satoshis just like they would on instagram like likes right you get what i'm saying so likes and replays and all that stuff is also a currency that people don't

33:04really look at it that way but like yeah a lot of these a lot of these like companies that want to do business with me it's like oh how many followers do you have what's your twitter engagement what's your instagram engagement oh this video only got 70 000 plays that's a form of currency because that's like looked at as you know my value or my worth on whether or not you're going to work with me or not well that's why shadow banning is so sneaky yeah man it's shadow banning is so insidious because you're you're limiting a person's ability to grow exactly and they do that all the time with people exactly i think of bitcoin the same way i think about the early internet i think they they didn't see it coming and now it's a viable form of currency you can actually buy things with it and i think the government is freaking out i think what they're going to try to do is they tried to they try to

33:49do some shit with the internet during the obama administration where they were going to try to censor the internet and it fell apart because people were furious in the uproar and they thought the political repercussions of it were not worth it like the the juice wasn't worth the squeeze so they backed off of it but i feel that there's going to come a time where some government whether it's the united states or another government might try it first they're going to try to implement i know they already do it in china but they're trying to going to try to implement a digital currency a centralized digital currency that they can control yeah what's scary about that is they could say khalil you know we we've looked at you know your behavior online and uh you have some some marks against you yeah and so

34:31you're not going to be able to buy this yeah or you can only buy staples you can't you know you can buy food and and shelter but we're not going to allow you to travel yeah because like that could be a real thing where they literally limit what you spend your money on one thousand percent joe and like that's the things that like the more that i the more that i hear and the more that i see just the world evolving and you know governments you know getting more strict or people getting censored and you know the more that i see like parts of freedoms getting stripped away the more that i'm like okay how what can i do to kind of get a little bit more like control over what's mine you know for the for the sake of my own future and so um yeah just like the the currency exchange in in north korea where like hey it doesn't matter if you're a millionaire or billionaire or if you have zero

35:22money in your account starting you know next week turn in your money and get exchange for you know for what for our currency right which you know me also says like you know when that happened if you were then you had to trade in your money for the amount of two bags of kilos of or two kilos of rice is what the money that the government gave you that's that's the amount that you could buy no matter how much you had to start with right you know what i mean when that currency exchange happened you know so i speak of that too because like north korea is like it's a it's a it's just an idea of like how far a government can go not saying that america is that way or anybody's that way i'm not pointing fingers but like it just shows you how far you know in 2022 yeah yeah they can you can still have a military dictatorship

36:16that is full domination over its people and they're starving to death yeah a hundred percent and so um yeah man i've been just trying to find different ways to like secure myself outside of fighting you know and so like yeah i went to um i went to the bitcoin conference and i met a lot of amazing people um a lot of people who kind of saw and hear my vision and where i want to go um trade station i don't know if you saw the the crypto bull that they that they built no the new version so there's there's a company called trade station that wants to make miami the new finance hub and their whole like like like like their whole thing is they built the brand new like wall street bull you gotta pull this up oh wow and and it's like robotic futuristic like transform look at that thing oh that's dope that's like things like showing like hey dude like we're like you know so oh wow i love that what is that

37:16made out of i don't even know but i think the same guys that did like transformers and stuff like they made it how big is that thing it's pretty big you see the guys like oh wow it's about the same size as the the wall street bull that's pretty sick so like i'd never been interested in anything like that before you know and like like i think this was one of the biggest things that that really just kind of like helped me just pivot in my thinking and like really wanting to like secure a future for myself like moving forward you know what i mean well you're an interesting guy man you're you you you know you're a great fighter but you are like when you talk if someone didn't know you were a fighter and they just talked to you they'd be like oh he's probably an artist or something yeah you know you don't see you like you don't seem aggressive you don't seem like but you fight like

38:03you got rabies you know it's crazy it's interesting like your last fight in particular i felt i felt it was really fascinating because against roberson you were you were um fighting with a low stance that was a totally different thing like when you fought eric anders you you're standing up straight and you were very tie style light on the front leg and in this fight you're like hunkered down low and almost like a wrestler yeah but still firing off strikes from that stance yeah what were you doing what was the game plan there i i don't know if there's ever really a game plan joe like really like there has been in the past and i think just game plans for me sometimes require a bit too much thinking when in reality like yeah there's some thinking in fighting but i don't want to like i think it's it's good to have an idea of you know where i can finish the fight and where i want the fight to go

39:04and kind of stick to that but if i get too attached to a game plan then i might miss opportunities to do you know certain things in the moment right so is the game is there a game plan involved in training like training for well carl is very i knew well-rounded i knew that he was going to be a great striker yeah and he fought in glory right he fought in glory but i also knew that he was training at glory kickboxing with james kraus and for me i think that was my biggest um that was my biggest concern is that he had kraus in his corner if i'm being honest kraus is a wizard yeah i know and so like i wasn't necessarily i i respected that i had to fight carl and and he was a great fighter um but i was really if i'm being honest i was nervous more about him having kraus and i was like kraus is going to do his homework and he's going to you know he's going to find out

40:00any and all ways that you know any type of possibilities on on how to beat me um i think the lower stance was just um it was more like instinctual really uh so that wasn't something you prepared for no i didn't prepare for it at all it was just it was really a mood i've been training a lot differently lately man like yeah yeah i i have a different approach right now to fighting i think it feels more like my duty as if i'm in the military you know really as if like as if when i'm not fighting i'm enjoying my family and i'm figuring out new ways to you know create a future for myself and invest money and you know get into you know get into more of a security mindset because i want to how old do you know i'm 32 so when you in your 30s as a professional athlete you start thinking okay this is my last decade yeah yeah yeah and i don't see any fighters that are like

40:55i don't have any really like role models to look up to as far as like how do i model my myself after this or like i think i want i want to be wealthy man you know like if i'm out here fighting and putting my life on the line and like like for what we do i mean we all know it's no shot at the ufc i'm very grateful for my what i get paid but man it's not enough right and so i have to figure out like ways it's not enough for the rest of your life and you can't do it forever no man and so like i have to figure out ways to to you know have security for myself but also to preserve my own life and my own body because i'm going in there with another guy who's a trained beast right you know and like my face could get broken and you know so many different things can end my career at you know i don't know what the other guy's thinking so i've got to do what i've got to do so that's why i feel like lately

41:48um i'm fighting for more my life than i am for a sport you know like when i go in there when i fight you're facing me like the man the the person who like you you kind of have to kill me to beat me in a thing in a way when did that shift for you i think uh uh uh before the bucacus fight the uh the oblique kick before that one um i lost and my ufc contract was pretty much on the line like i had lost uh in abu dhabi and i wasn't a sidekick to the knee yeah why do you call it it'll be oblique i don't know that's what people call it oblique isn't oblique kick the one where you're uh your big toes up and you shoot it to the body or to the legs i have no idea you know who's the shit at that lorenz larkin yeah i trained with him for this last camp he's sick he throws that thing to the body like like a front kick he's made me like a lot of times when he fought neil magny see if you can find that fight

42:51find um lorenz larkin versus neil magny he's a wicked striker very interesting strike he there's a guy lorenz larkin's a guy who didn't get the credit he deserved yeah man but he felt like he's still doing his thing he's still doing his thing but i felt like he went over to bellator and i wish he kind of didn't because i think he was in the hunt at 170 in the ufc i mean i think he was one of the elite of the elite and he was still improving and growing and the problem with you going over to bellator is i'm sure you're getting good money i'm sure everything's great over there but you got way less eyeballs yeah it's just that's just how it is yeah yeah i mean it's uh watch how he throws this to the body look at that shit man that is why who fucking does that watch that yeah who does that it's like your whole foot to the midsection dude i wound up practicing that on the bag afterwards and i was

43:43like that is so interesting because it really does work is that considered no oblique kick that's an oblique kick okay i don't know why they call it i mean i guess you're hitting him in the obliques right there yeah i guess i guess you're right yeah i mean that is the the part of the body but when people call it the oblique kick all the time when you're doing it to the thigh thigh yeah which i don't know why they would call it the oblique kick i mean it doesn't have another name yeah that's that's the name that i see so that's kind of why i repeated it that way but it's in jeet kundo you know like bruce lee used that shit bruce lee threw that kick a lot really yeah yeah and some of his uh jeet kundu texts i think it's it might actually kick yeah it's not a sidekick really because it's it's utilized in

44:23a way who see like see like that john jones they call it the but it's not really i guess because the foot's pointed outside you know like versus john jones well john is doing an oblique kick right there where it says in text the oblique kick on the screen yeah that is that is the oblique kick got you but when you throw it sideways like when you have a sideways stance like when you threw it it was essentially like a front leg side kick to the knee yeah right yeah it's a different technique like right they're like that dude knee stomps where it says knee stomps mma uncensored yeah that's a fight that's a sidekick got but where john's throwing it you see the difference his big toe is up that guy's big toes down got you well they know that it's a weird look why can't you do it i mean this is the thing

45:06and and to do caucuses credit when when you um when you stopped him with that he was like look that's a legal kick that's that's legit as which like respect on on his behalf and like i i definitely like even now to this day like it's it's it's hard to watch i understand like you know yeah for me it's i mean the caucus is in insane pain yeah it's and the knee twist see if you can find that we'll watch that oh come on dude i just said it's hard to watch and you're like let's pull it up let's not watch it people at home yeah if you want to see something sick no but i think that's that's kind of one of the things and that's also when i kind of put the target on my back as well right but do you think by doing that you put a target yeah yeah for sure because i think that when when people now go to fight me it's kind of like okay we're gonna like we're gonna fight however it's not necessarily

45:54going to be this like what everybody considers just like good clean fight right although it's been doing that yoel romero did it to robert whittaker it happened to me did it to him who did who did you um uh marcin pracneo the fight that i lost in abu dhabi part of he kept doing it to my knee and in between rounds i'm like dude my leg is fucked i cannot walk i don't know how i'm going to get to the second and third round but i did and it was because of that kick so that's kind of another thing where i'm like this is a useful tool did i think i'm gonna snap this guy's like no absolutely not but if in if it's in a fight i'm gonna do it yeah you know i'm gonna do it with with my full strength because no no different than kicking the out of someone's calf right exactly you eliminate their ability to move yes did you have long-term damage from that kick from getting

46:42kicked like that in that fight in abu dhabi i'd say like not long term because nothing was like torn or anything but um it was like there was like a stiffness for a good like two months yeah because it was like right on the top of my knee right you know like right above the patella and it was just like it just for me to bend it all the way or stretch i had to do a lot of you know stretching and things icing stuff to really fix it yeah i mean i talked to a lot of guys about this and their thought is like why is it okay to do an inside heel hook and you can't stomp the knee like of course like heel hooks are fucking devastating they mang i mean remember the paul harris days yeah exactly well he would hang on the guy's knees and not let go and rip their shit apart exactly so i mean that was like the the mentality switch kind of happened knowing that i was on my last ufc you know fight on the

47:33contract and i knew that i just i'm not done i still want to continue to um make the best run that i can knowing internally that i gave my best efforts you were thinking about being done at one time yeah fairly recently right yeah like um i think that the kudalabra fight the after that fight was it after that fight yeah i think it was after that fight um it was before the pracneo fight the one that was in abu dhabi why were you thinking about ending uh because after i had spoken to you from being in thailand and having that performance with eric anders all that um i had reached a place where i felt like i was just happy with my life and i was in thailand and i saw just the quality of life there and i had you know i had this idea that i was going to live there forever and um i would have been happy just like serving coffee at a you know at a cool spot and you know in sukom vid bangkok you

48:31know because like just the people there are so cool and so nice right i love thai people and i feel like there's a part of inside of me that's thai you know and i'm like i belong here wow and so um i just i came to a point where i'm like i think i'm striving for too much like in america like just i want to have all of these things i want to have a big house and i want to have a lot of money when in reality like i don't absolutely need it all because i'm i'm my heart is full right now right you know so i just and i wanted to fight muay thai and the ufc we're like no you can't do that i want i wanted to fight in the stadium at you know at rajadhamnarn stadium and my friend who's like one of the biggest promoters in thailand was like yeah i can do it and we can make it for the wbc heavyweight belt and i was like

49:18you mean the green one he's like yeah we can make it at the stadium and i was like okay but i had to get the clearance from ufc and obviously that's a hard no yeah and so i was so passionate about wanting to stay in thailand and wanting to fight muay thai that i was willing to give up my my i was willing to fight my last fight on in the ufc and kind of become like a sensation in thailand wow yeah man i and like even to this day there's a part of me that still wants to do it but now like i said i'm i'm worried and i'm not worried but i'm focused on like just creating something out of all of this you know for for myself for my family you know something like some type of generational wealth man but what made you make that adjustment and instead of saying i'm gonna live in thailand live a simple life amongst these happy smiling friendly people to i'm back in the hunt uh so

50:15during the pandemic uh i was in thailand so i was locked down there um for yeah for all of 2021 or 2020 and um my fiancee and i were there and we decided like we have to come back because at that time it was very hard to get any type of paperwork from the embassy and um and debit card my debit card got lost and it couldn't like the height of the pandemic phone lines were tied up embassy was not taking anybody to get like visa renewals it was just such a pain in the ass process for me to still be there because of the pandemic and um i just we decided like i have to go back to america for a little bit and then once i came back here um i got booked to fight and it all kind of unraveled from there and so why did you choose new york city uh well my girlfriend lived there my fiancee now she lived there before and we were just in thailand together um during the lockdown so

51:20we both went back to new york city and that was the first time that i'd spend like a good amount of time in new york city and i was like oh i like it here a lot it's chaotic you know people are loud i'm more chill so every day is like an exciting experience for me and so um yeah we just kind of did our thing to be able to have a place there together but i also have a spot in vegas like a training camp oh really yeah one bedroom apartment right by the by the pi so so is that where you do your camps yeah so like if the ufc were to call me and say hey we want you to fight in august then i would go back to vegas pretty shortly and everything all like i have a place there that i just one bedroom super simple it's got all my belongings all my training camp supplies stuff like that and does your girl go with you or

52:10do you do like the monastic thing like it was like she'll come from like from time to time she'll come out for a couple weeks but if she has work she'll come back uh to new york um last camp i did it solo she was like i think you should just like focus and so like i'll let you go and be alone and we just did like facetime movie dates every night which worked that's the thing about camps and fighting it's like there's two different schools of thought some guys are more comfortable with their family and they they sleep better they can just deal and then they could just turn it on when they train and then there's guys like marvin haggler who used to go to cape cod yeah in the winter time yeah and just be he would wouldn't he didn't see some of his kids getting born he was just over there just training he wouldn't

52:58talk to anybody you know he put a hat on that said war and he would just train like a wild man i mean that's me man i mean like i i'd love to have it that way that's why a lot of the that's where i plan to also spend um a good portion of my money to moving forward is being able to you know fund a trip to the mountains or big bear or something where like hey or even build something like you know cowboy's ranch something very small that hey we're in camp and for the next eight weeks we're in camp and if you're my coach you're here and if you're my training partner you're here right and the world doesn't exist yeah cowboy setup is beautiful yeah that's such a smart man such a smart thing he did and putting that together legend yeah he's got a crazy sauna that he built himself yeah with firewood yeah old school no hot stones in there that's like straight firewood barbershop my friends were

53:54just there like posting stories i was like wow he's got like he's got a setup that now needs joe rogan's got the new setup guys just want to tell you be on the lookout for those videos i think he's got a number one training facility it's a dope spot right it's amazing i can't wait i got to come back and try oh for sure yeah definitely i'd love to see some of the shit you learn in thailand because you were telling me that they taught you to kick differently kick differently what was the different so there's different like um they added the how do i put this balance is something that's very focused on in in real muay thai like you get judged on your balance if you have shit balance when you throw a kick when you you should be able to throw a kick check a kick and land back in your stance and fire another kick knee and elbow seamlessly you get what i'm saying

54:52like that's real muay thai like being in full control being able to throw a full body kick check mid air you know so just it shaped my perspective um on kicking um something that yeah i feel like i'd have to show you it versus like explain it to you um also i know how to clinch i know how to properly clinch now and i if if you if you talk to anybody who's trained with me you know over the past year i i love my clinch game i'm so like confident in in my clinch and it's not just grabbing behind the head and throwing knees like i feel like i have some techniques that if you can get out of it like like i'll give you like a lot of props if you can get out of my clinch and so you mean you're like just a straight plum or you're talking about just any kind of clinch like my my tie clinch like yeah so like um like if i were

55:50to tie up with you and not even go for a body just we're just playing a stand-up clinch game and i'm controlling your entire body by just like from the shoulders up and arms up um very confident in that and i feel good about it and i owe it to you know being able to clinch for 45 minutes a day in thailand for a couple of years you know it's a real underrated aspect of muay thai the clinch game and then the trip game yeah sweeps like trips and sweeps are like some of my favorite things to do now and it all comes from being able to be a student of the game and see like one of the one of the guys um one of the trainers he didn't even really talk to me much but one day i was training and he was like if you don't have defense you don't you like you're not a fighter like you don't like you yeah you can

56:39have all the offense in the world but like your defense sucks so like work on your defense and that's like checking kicks blocking kicks being able to identify you know you know offense and defense yes like deliver full strikes and then defend fully right um so they have a very like simple way of putting things but it's all for like a reason and yeah so now i i i think yeah i can i can show it more than i can explain it like from across the table you know what i mean but i'd love to be able to show you a few things i would love to learn some stuff um defense is it in almost every elite martial artist if you talk to them about like the cornerstones one of the big ones is defense and people don't think of that when they think you know like a good offense is the best defense you know like a good example of that they were talking about that this weekend when

57:34cheeto guerra fought rob fun incredible right bro cheeto's on fire rob's on fire too dude i know which is crazy i was rooting for rob that whole entire fight the fact that cheeto did that to rob that's that shows how good that motherfucker is getting he's obsessed yeah he texted me afterwards i congratulated him he texted me after he goes i'm obsessed he goes all i want to do is train constantly i just want to train and and constantly grow and he's like and jason perilla has to like kick me out of the gym yeah like bro get out of here that's good i mean like it's it's nice to to kind of catch that bug for a bit you know what i mean and like capitalize on like hey when you have that emotion when you have that feeling take it yeah and run with it because a lot of us don't really have that we gotta like we gotta grind for it but he's finally there so yeah like yeah just shout out to cheeto

58:22keep keep doing it i'm so impressed with him i'd love to see what comes out of that obsession you know what i mean but his his off i mean he's he blocks a lot of with his hands too you know he's really good at like the punches are coming in and some of them are landing but a lot of them are getting blocked and then he's firing back that standing knee that he landed to the chin holy man how about the the hook kick the sidekick to the to the orbital yeah the one that actually made rob font's face like yeah i think it was a hook kick was it a hook kick i think so it might have been a sidekick but but it was like a high you know in in that regard oh yeah no amazing what a beast though man shout out rob font yeah he's incredible wow rob's got one of the best jabs in the sport yeah his boxing was on point it's always on point yeah i mean he he's in that same camp as calvin

59:11cater also has some sick boxing got you but um i'm just so impressed with cheeto i mean cheeto is like now like one of the top guys in that what a shark tank of a division too yeah that division is filled with animals you know and so who does talking about coming back so who do we got so who do peter yon yeah sugar sean o'malley or sean o'malley peter yon al jermaine sterling yeah i mean fucking cody sanhagen yeah there's gonna be a lot of sanhagen and then uh tj dillshaw and sanhagen's a fucking killer too man that fight with yon yeah that i mean they're there it's it's definitely an exciting time for that division yeah yeah it's very exciting time especially it was like all those guys want that top spot right so yeah yeah what's just so talent rich it's it's fun when these divisions get to this boiling point of like talent rich divisions where someone's got a breakthrough

60:08and rise and you're seeing everybody get better like clear difference between al jermaine the second fight with yon than the first fight the first clear difference clear and you know he said something that was probably accurate he said the first fight he didn't eat he was all freaked out and just fired up and just just thinking couldn't wait to get in there and he didn't fuel his body and he started fatiguing in the fight you know and then he got hit with that illegal knee but in this fight he made the proper adjustments and damn his back taking is off the charts absolutely back control and ability to take the back it's crazy yeah and once you're there if you got somebody who has you know good back control it's not fun it's not fun yeah it's frustrating you know what i mean yeah it's tiring you got it did you see the shakur stevenson fight i didn't holy shit no holy shit good

61:00fuck he's good he's on another level right now man he's on another level i mean he is so smooth and his movement his ability to like punches were coming at him and he just lets them get right there oh yeah like just right to there they touch him and then fires back ah his accuracy his technique his efficiency yeah it was beautiful we were watching it in between shows when i was uh i was in colorado this weekend doing comedy and we were watching in between shows and i was like god damn he's good he's so smooth he's so efficient and technical like everything was on point yeah i'm gonna watch it for sure it was awesome dude what do you think there there's him yeah and valdez is undefeated in this fight too and i mean shakur basically won if not all rounds most rounds wait where was this way he did it this was at mgm okay this is in vegas but this was like a big coming out party for shakur because a

62:00lot of people were aware of it it's on espn yeah oh bro i'm telling you he was on fire and it was just the smoothness and a lot of people were saying it's like floyd mayweather-esque and you could say that you could say that it was just it was so but it was you know it's stevenson-esque it's just stevenson coming into his prime and and letting everybody know because it's such a high profile uh venue i mean he's at the mgm and he's fighting on espn yeah also yeah let the man have his own name like yeah this is the end of the fight he ran around with his biceps off yeah smooth no it was it was amazing it was a very very very good fight joe let me ask you this i've never asked anybody this in my whole entire life who who would you like to see me fight like what would be a matchup that you'd be like wow

62:49that's one that i really want to see well i want to see you fight who you want to fight i got you yeah you know like i mean i'd like to see you fight anybody in the division i mean i was so impressed with the fight with carl and but i've been impressed with a lot of your fights it just i feel like there's two yous yeah there's you motivated and prepared and then there's you who's like not really sure if you should be doing this anymore yeah and i've seen a couple of those fights too yeah but the motivated prepared khalil is a scary motherfucker absolutely you're a scary motherfucker absolutely when you were coming after carl with that low stance and i didn't call that fight i was at home watching i was like holy shit man he looks fucking lethal yeah absolutely and i i think i'm at a point right now that like

63:30the motivated and prepared is is here to stay until it's over yeah you know like i i'm not one foot in one foot out right now i know exactly what i'm here to do and like i said when i go fight now it's more like it's my duty it's active duty man so in between i get to like you know i'm enjoying my life i'm in new york city i'm i'm learning i'm doing this and and then when i get that phone call it's like it's just like i'm going overseas like vegas going to the desert you know i'm going i'm going to war let's lock down let's what's the mission okay this is it you know i have somewhere that i look back and say like okay i gotta i gotta get back to my girl i gotta get back to my home you know and i'm and i'm where are you training in new york city uh recently i've just been doing jujitsu at marcelo garcia that's it yeah really and i do like i do like fitness stuff at like chelsea piers like just

64:25fitness gym but but no no striking wow no that seems kind of crazy why well because i would think you would want to constantly be tuning up your striking i mean you don't do any of it like you don't even hit the bag i hit the bag a little bit a little bit yeah i hit the bag a little bit it's hard to believe for anybody who watches you fight because you're so heavy on strikes yeah you know your strikes are so devastating you would assume that you're constantly working on them nah i mean not like that wow like i i think what's gonna help me stay motivated and stay passionate about being here in the ufc and kind of going into this new run is having an equal balance in my life and when i'm training i'm training and i give myself enough time to you know live life to live life and i don't fuck around i don't drink i don't party i don't you know like i i literally i'm

65:24serious when i say that i'm i'm focused on just like making something out of my life you know like i acted in my first movie i don't know if you saw oh yeah anderson me anderson rampage tretch from naughty by nature oh no yeah we're all in a movie together crime drama called lord of the streets um that was good yeah uh okay i was gonna ask you is it terrible it's not terrible here how here the movie's not terrible it's definitely like it's watchable and it's enjoyable there are some parts in there that's like holy that's cool i didn't hate it i haven't gotten any lord of the streets lord i haven't gotten anyone that's like yo dude that movie fucking sucked like no one said that i haven't even heard it like through the grapevine like through the grapevine i'm sure people think it but they might say it on the internet they're not gonna say it in front of you

66:11nah it's it's definitely something that i watched and like there's some cheesy parts but overall like the storyline and the fact that all of us really did go in there and like give our best i think it shows you know what i mean i think it shows and if you're a fan of oh yeah here's the trailer can you rewind it really quick with the sound is that possible okay and this is out uh it's on tubi yeah streaming through tv he wants you to throw the fight trey goes down no later than round two if you go down for good baby girl i told you to throw the fight what do i gotta do to walk out of you with my daughter of no hose bar fight i gotta fight him he an inmate he's my fight five five in a row that's suicide good to see you on the outside convict thank god for corruption you don't know how good you had it man wife daughter championship belt i'm washed up

67:31i'm gonna win these fights spend my life on me and stacy coming home getting in the ring by fighting all the ghosts on the road with one swing i didn't even know treed the train see what he's done he's turned us into monster fight or death you choose it was so fun to make man it was how long has tretch been training uh so he didn't train like mma he was just training to like stay in shape right he obviously had like a double oh so he had a double do the fight scenes yeah for sure okay but all the other guys like chet congo me oh chet congo that's who i was like breaking the stool over his back oh wow yeah we shot it you know shot it in 12 days um yeah we did it had fun and so like but now i'm already working on uh my second film where it's like it's it's actually like it's more serious and there's like more there's more funding behind it

68:41oh is it a fighting movie as well uh yes part partially um i can't say too much but um it has a lot to do with um how athletes and fighters and celebrities are always like we are often looked at in this light where people see us as like stars and like larger than life but don't really realize and remember that we're human beings and that we have the same you know struggles and things as any other person we have families we have families we have worries we have bills just like everybody else right um and oftentimes when we hear about drugs and sports we think peds right we don't really think about drugs that uh like painkillers you know stuff like that so there's a big element of that um also uh sexual abuse in men and men who are athletes you know so it's very heavy it's very real um i would say uh that i'm the uh

69:51well i'm the lead role in it but um yeah i'm very excited about it and i'm serious about acting yeah man i think i think it's something that i've found uh i found a love for and i'm just just like fighting you know i didn't have a plan to be a fighter i never had a plan to be an actor but when i went into fighting i went in with it with an open heart and a willingness to to go to the top and i feel like it's the same with acting i have the same like dedication and whatever it takes um but all in all it all kind of goes back to um being able to make something out of my life that's long lasting and i don't necessarily see fighting being that yeah it's certainly not it's not something to pull your eggs in one basket i'm sorry bj penn said it best he was on the podcast last week he said uh fighting's an opportunity it's not a career yeah and then he said but don't tell that to andre orlovsky

70:49because that motherfucker made a career yeah he's made a career yeah crazy wait did he win he won i thought jay collier won nope oh wow andre won oh man okay i was doing laundry during that fight yeah it was close fight split decision yeah that guy's yeah wild what is he how old is he he's a thousand years old yeah he's a million i don't know man he was uh the champ in like 2002 or some shit huh 43 that's amazing he's only 43 6 3 2 46 43 that's crazy that he's only 43 i mean andre what year was andre the the the ufc champion click on that because i want to say it's like 2002 or 2003 2005 does it say 2005 okay he went on to defend his interim title 2005 so okay for motorcycle injury frank mir tim silvia so somewhere 2004 2005 yeah hold on yeah yeah so he made his debut at ufc 28 wow that's crazy yeah so i mean that's almost 20 years ago

72:03still kicking dude still kicking and still fighting with heart like you know like he goes in there like he's he's still determined like he's trying to get better he's still trying to get better still in it yeah it's that's crazy it is crazy respect but there's only a handful of guys that you know that that can do it and that love it like they're those are the guys that are going to go down in history for like being fighters being fighters he's andre orlovsky is a fighter you know like he's he's that guy there's you know there's a handful of those and i mean like unfortunately i'm just not that guy that wants to continue to go in there and go to war with people you know to hopefully hopefully win and hopefully make a living out of it well you have a lot of potential to do a lot of different things

72:47and one of the things that i think you could do and you could be really successful at that would leave you independent is being a podcaster i think i really think you could do that i thought that from the first time we did it together and i was like yeah a hundred percent because you have an interesting take on things and you're a very smart guy and you've been around the world you've seen a lot of things you've had a lot of wildlife experiences and you know you have your own individual unique take on things you know it's like you know you talk to some people and you're like oh i've heard these kind of opinions before but you you have a very specifically khalil viewpoint on things wow i guess i've never looked at it that way and it feels like i'm i'm almost like mind blown because like coming from the podcast god he's like you for you to see that like that that means a lot that's

73:35cool being who i am i could tell you how easy it is yeah that's cool it's not hard to do in terms i mean it's brain surgery is hard to do this just requires effort yeah there's a difference right like you don't you you'll you're already a good conversationalist you're already uh you you're very good at talking to people you listen you know you're attentive you're you're curious you're you're perfect for it and i've always wondered why more fighters don't have them while they're fighting you know like some fighters have podcasts afterwards like michael bisking bisping has a successful podcast josh thompson and big john mccarthy do one together and that's successful but like while they're fighting it seems like it doesn't take up a lot of time and you really don't need much i mean fuck you could do it on an iphone it doesn't doesn't require much damn that's actually i'd never

74:27really like it's probably crossed my mind before but to look at it after you've kind of described me in a certain way i i'm like oh okay yeah that kind of makes sense totally makes sense yeah maybe i'll do it and that'll be one of the things that i use to earn satoshis man yeah well next time you come here i want to promote your new podcast yeah well i gotta talk next time we come here even better let's promote a podcast it's up and running it's been going for a while and doing well and that accepts bitcoin yeah yeah well adam curry if you want to talk to him i could arrange that yeah he's the shit i love that he's the original that's the pod father the the podcast was created by adam curry and every time he comes on i want to let everybody know that really he's the guy that's that's patient zero in the podcast epidemic okay yeah i'm gonna have to uh i'm gonna have to talk to him then yeah he

75:17created it i mean when steve jobs went on stage to demonstrate podcasts on uh apple music i think it was at the time it was on itunes the podcast he pulled up was no agenda he pulled up adam curry's podcast it might have been a different podcast at the time was it no agenda back then do you remember because it was like he did he gave this speech uh a conference and when steve jobs was talking about apple podcast like how to get podcasts he pulled up adam curry's podcast wow it was that's the original man he he 100 is the original yeah interesting guy super cool like just listening to him speak yeah yeah just listening to him speak and and talking about you know how the future of podcasting pretty much i was like wow like this guy's awesome i want to i want to know more about him yeah he's several steps ahead of everybody else including me he's uh he and he's also very several steps ahead of

76:17like internet censorship and government surveillance and so that's it wow look at the throwback 90s photo so was it called the daily source code oh okay that was so that was his original podcast yeah that's a 90s photo but you got to remember he was like 80s pretty because he was on mtv in the 80s yeah i didn't know that but wow so they're on you know old school imac and they're pulling up his podcast like early early in the day this was 2005 so he had a podcast four years before i had one wow at least at least four years because he might have had one even before that well damn yeah well it might be that might be one of the things joe you could totally do it yeah yeah i think it would be great and now that i think about it i'm like oh cool that means that i could have guests yeah and i don't have to be the guest because that's why i don't do many podcasts is because i

77:13kind of don't like being the guest i have a lot of questions i'm the guy with the questions but if you have questions and you're a guest you can always ask questions i don't give a shit you know we're just talking yeah i mean i don't think of this as an interview i just think of us as talking yeah i have questions for you but i mean if you have questions too i don't give a shit but like you could like sit down with a notepad and just any subject that you would like to discuss like bitcoin because you went to that bitcoin conference yeah and just write out some stuff about bitcoin and maybe have someone on that's a bitcoin expert and you could ask them about you know like how did this get started are there other other crypto coins that you're interested in like there's so many different angles you could take and then you could take that with music you could take

77:57that with i mean you could have all kinds of different people on your podcast you have all kinds of different interests right you have different interests in art and interest in culture interest in yeah yeah i mean there's so many different things you could talk about well i see it as an extension because so many people are so concerned about social media right and like social media like we're talking about like likes and engagement and everything like that that's a big thing with people well what is a podcast other than like the ultimate form of social media it's that's what it is it's the ultimate form of social media it's like i have social media i have facebook i have twitter i have instagram but this is my real social media you want to know who i am you listen to me talk that's this is and people engage with that and then they get to know you the real

78:42you not just the you that's fighting the you that lands brutal leg kicks and ko somebody but the you that you know talks about fucking gardening or whatever on a day-to-day basis yeah whatever you're into food whatever you're into wow you know i mean and people love to hear people that are engaged in things with people that are curious about things whether it's uh your engagement about music or your engagement about you know new york city or thailand or anything people like when people are passionate about stuff and that's clearly an element of your life you're a passionate person yeah and very curious yeah yeah yeah no i know you are yeah and i mean just your journey in going to thailand and and and training over there and and the big adjustments and leaps that you've made i mean if you watch some of

79:29your early fights to post thailand training you know you changed you know change your mindset like that's interesting to people people like when people do things and talk about them and get excited because we all feed off of each other's energy and passion and we all gather inspiration from other people you know and that's one of the things that makes podcasts interesting it's like i get to listen to the way another person thinks and it can flavor the way i think and maybe enhance the way i think maybe give me a different perspective that i maybe didn't have before i love it that's very very inspirational and you've just thrown like yeah you've thrown more inspiration at me because you're always around with audio anyway right you're always around with music music or like yeah just trying to do my

80:20own like video editing and layering music over video yeah just a lot of a lot of just you 100 can do that like that and you don't even have to have somebody visit you you can start off doing zoom calls which are not as good you know it's like there's an element that's missing when two people aren't in the room together yeah but it's not hard to set something up man you know it's not hard i think i'm gonna do it i mean i think it's definitely gonna be on the list of things to uh to start to build yeah and again you can do that forever and you could do that completely independent you don't need anybody's help you don't need anything you know you could do it all by yourself and you can have it where it becomes a successful career and it's one of those things if you just it's like a plant just keep watering it

81:10and feeding it and it'll grow yeah and the episodes stay yes yeah and you just keep adding to them you know and then each one you learn a little bit more like you go over that one like well i was a little clunky on that one or that was good because i did this i'm gonna do that more often and then just keep building on it that's i wish more fighters did that because there's a lot of interesting guys that are fighters you know san hagen's another guy i think he could have a really good podcast too he's an interesting guy but there's i mean i he's just a name i threw out there there's a lot of names so you could bring up guys who would be really good at podcasts you know yeah joseph benavides sure benavides could totally do a podcast yeah maybe he will maybe next time i see him i'll bring it up he's retired now it's um the life of a fighter is a life of extreme intense action in brief

82:03moments in time and arduous training and discipline and drive for months on end for one intense moment in time one intense either 15 or 25 25 minutes or one minute yeah it's so crazy right yeah it's so crazy yeah and it's a crazy way to live i think that's one of the things that um my last fight the reason why i kind of just like just had all this emotion and just kind of burst it out like i don't want to wait until i'm champion and tell my story is because it's like man when we go in there and we fight we're both equally putting in the same amount of time and energy in camp and in theory in theory you know and it's just it kind of sucks sometimes at least from my perspective it kind of sucks that the only way to really move forward is to win you know what i mean or for anybody to really want to talk or offer this type of sponsorship or something you got to win and sometimes like that's

83:14out of our hands right like sometimes something just might happen and it's like damn right no matter how prepared i was tonight just wasn't my night and now i got to go back right five six steps and i got to put in the same amount of work if not more to then create the result but by then kind of like things have already moved forward for you know so you kind of get left behind right there's so many fighters yeah and it almost it's it it sucks because when we're champions it's kind of when all of the opportunities and things like that present themselves and people want to tell me about your backstory tell me about the things you've overcome to get you to be where you are today a champion but it's like nah man like there's a lot of fighters in here right now we're busting our asses and we've been through crazy shit and we're not champion yet but we can help

84:06millions of people just based off of our own stories you get me and like there's different ways like there's there's a lot of people that can be impacted by these fighters that are going out and and putting everything on the line to become the champion there's a there's there's a lot of work that can be done now and a lot of people that can be helped now through listening to kind of like maybe what we have to say or what we've been through or you know some type of inspiration to help the people who are struggling because i mean we're all struggling but like yeah to just be of some type of like light to a lot of people but you got real emotional um in your post fight speech where you were talking about how at one point in time you were suicidal and and you feel like you have a message that you could reach out to

84:53someone that might be in that same sort of position yeah man i mean like i've sensed that i've gotten so many messages and i didn't know that it would bring this amount of energy and attention i didn't know what type of energy and attention it would bring um i just know that like i wanted to be able to use my victory to maybe inspire someone to stick around another day and not give up and maybe find some type of something to hold on to to just keep you from making a decision to like take your life right because i know that that's what it was for me is having someone like my family or a coach that's like hey man come back to the gym tomorrow like you're doing good you know um but the message is a little bit of encouragement yeah just a little bit can go a long way could actually save someone's life so the but since saying that i think for the first month my inboxes were flooded to where it became

85:53almost like uncomfortable because everyone was reaching out to me as if i was going to help them you get me so i'm going i'm getting these like i'm getting messages like dude i'm gonna take my life tomorrow i'm like how do i read this and just let it pass man right you know like how do i read this and just ignore it right so like there was there was one guy specifically that it was like he's like yeah man like thanks for the message and all that stuff but like you know this my birthday is on this date and like this is when i plan to make it happen but like i respect what you're doing and i respect everything he's like but like on the day that i was born is the day that i plan to do it and it was only in like three days joe and i was like dude and i fucking i picked up the phone and i just started

86:38sending voice messages out of nowhere just like just talking you know and i'm i don't know this guy but like i can't just let this pass and then yeah so there's just messages and and and and a lot of people that are reaching out yeah and it didn't sound too good he's like i think actually the last message i sent a voice message but i never got one back and i've just been on my own life journey to where i never reached back out but i'm now reminded and i'll probably reach back out today but like it's not just that one there's a lot and you know it's like and if i don't get back to the a certain message it's almost like well yeah you don't really care you know and i have to ignore these things too but so the attention that i've gotten now has been more like people have been reaching out to me right specifically to help them and me being who i am i'm just trying to find

87:36different ways that i can and i've got some things in play for sure um but where were you at in your life when you were thinking about taking your own life it was shortly before i started fighting could have been like a year before i started fighting um i was going on tour with my friends who were musicians um at that time uh i was living in a two-bedroom apartment but excuse me it was almost like a one-bedroom apartment because there was four or five of us in there and we had to use one of them as like storage right four or five people two bedroom we had to use one room was kind of storage for all of our stuff plus we had downsized from a home because in my in my life we moved a lot just from my mom kind of struggling to make ends meet for all of her kids a single mother trying to raise four kids so we had a larger place but then we had to downsize so one of the rooms like i said was a

88:41storage um i think rent was about 750 bucks and between the four of us we could barely even make that every month um and just really had no hope and no kind of like vision i was already overweight i'd been overweight my whole life um i had friends who played music so i joined them on tour but even then i'm in a i'm like this big black dude overweight touring with heavy metal bands across the world like across the country so like i already fell out of place in in a way i connected to the music and i connected to my friends but when we start going places and when we start going to you know alabama and the heart you know just we start going to places around the country i'm like okay i really feel out of place here um and not only that is like i almost felt like worthless because these guys were playing on stage and i'm sitting here like just selling the merchandise and

89:44i'm almost envious of them because they're following their passion their dream and they're excited every night to go on stage and i'm just kind of an extra well they they treated me well my friends always treated me well but just kind of comparing where i where am i in my life what do i have versus the things that they're receiving so i was about like 19 18 19 and it just like coming home from tour after just like being stimulated or being on tour just getting home kind of back to the same old shit back to my you know my apartment back to seeing my mom struggle back to seeing you know my brother struggle just everybody and there's just like the struggling hopeless type of place and i was very unhealthy and if i mean if anybody like you should know if you're unhealthy and your gut's unhealthy and your

90:36brain's unhealthy and you're smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and only drinking soda and eating fast food if you in that if that stuff's in your gut and in your brain like where what do you think your mind is you know like so um i just remember man i remember sitting on this on the stairs and just like just like smoking chain smoking and drinking at the same time and just being in this place of like fuck it dude i'd like if i had to wake up if i had fucking died a night of my sleep like i really don't care like i'd much rather that happen because tomorrow i'm just gonna wake up to the same thing right so um i think that might have been the night where i can't really remember because a lot is a blur but that might have been the night where um i was pretty high like on on just like weed and just

91:28a lot of a lot of alcohol and a lot of cigarettes and i remember going to bed like or trying to go to bed just kind of laying there just all fucked up and i felt like my heart was gonna stop like i felt it doing really weird things i felt my heart doing weird things and i was only 19 and it scared me and that's with the moment where i realized like oh shit i don't really want to die you know like i was kind of driving myself to that like i was purposely i'm gonna smoke two packs you know i'm gonna drink the whole bottle you know like things like that like just really trying to fuck myself up you know like so not doing anything like i wasn't swallowing a whole thing of pills or you know slitting my wrists or anything like that like physically doing anything to take my life quick but i was trying to fuck myself up you get me yeah like i was really trying to just like damage myself

92:24and i got to a point where um i tried so hard that my body kind of responded and it scared me and then that's where i started to kind of look at okay maybe i don't want to die maybe i just need to get healthy you know just that one night of excess yeah and it didn't just stop yeah it didn't stop like immediately but i was more conscious of my way like i'm gonna smoke a little bit today you know like i wasn't purposely trying to damage myself anymore right but i was already like i was already like addicted to cigarettes and you know everything else the food and i was already addicted to it but i wasn't with the intention trying to damage myself how did you transition from that into training and then fighting so i remember going on one more tour after that shortly after that and that's when i told everybody hey i think i'm gonna i'm gonna this is the this is it for me um i want to do something

93:26different i think i want to like train mma and fight mma and you had no experience zero you're 19 at the time 19 and no experience um no wrestling in high school zero i tried out for the volleyball team in high school i made it but my grades were shit and it was more of a joke like so when you tell these guys i'm gonna fight mma what did what was their reaction they were they laughed at me they were like they started pulling up pictures of like bob sap and shit and they were like oh this is khalil like he's gonna look like you know like they were passing around the phone in the in the van and like yeah when you fight you're gonna be like this guy and pulling up like pictures of bob sap literally because that was the the biggest comparison because like i wasn't ripped i wasn't shredded i was fat so

94:11they looked for a big guy who was an mma fighter and at the time it was bob sap so they thought it was like kind of a joke and i remember hearing a couple of comments of like okay like we'll see you next tour or like if it doesn't work out you know you always have a spot here you always have a job here right and uh so where did you go first van der lais really yeah man van der lais silva's gym so was that in vegas yeah at the time so when we when we started researching uh mma my brother and i we started researching together and we would look up certain videos and we got into pride because pride at the time that was like the best fights and i remember seeing van der lais silva and he's doing the yeah the hands and it said van der lais silva the axe murderer muay thai specialist and i was like what the fuck is muay thai and this guy's the axe murderer and i just saw his i saw his violence and

95:06that i connected to it in a way um and then we started researching him and realized that he had a gym in vegas and uh i'd use all the that last tour i used all the money to i collected all my tips and my savings and that was enough to get my brother and i a membership and then that's where it all unfolded i heard van der lais gym in vegas was crazy it was psycho i heard that dudes would just like fight full blast pojada pojada pojada every day pojada yeah i mean that was his mentality right like it was like you go and you go and you go and you don't quit and if you get knocked out like you'll be okay just you know get up there take a break and go back out there yeah we sparred twice a week full-on every sparring session was a fight and with everybody and it was kind of like like top dog mentality almost but like we all loved each other we all cared about each other we were a unit you know

96:07like that gym we all beat the living shit out of each other but we were a family it like nobody could take that from us um until things just kind of like towards the end kind of started to fall apart what's in like what fell apart uh i think they were just like there were just some bad eggs man bad seeds you know and just kind of broke like i think i don't remember i wasn't too connected but it might have been on the business side or even on the team side and just kind of started to break things apart spoil the batch and we all kind of split and went separate ways what was the technical training like there the muay thai was phenomenal yeah michael costa yeah okay yeah he trained shoot the box with under cordero and same eras van der late and anderson all them he was just like the younger prospect guy

96:59um and i would say it's at the same level it was like a king's mma you know muay thai it's the same same philosophy same concept you know they have their like muay thai like belt system it's very technical a lot of combinations what was it like though starting as a raw beginner and going into that like how quickly did they have you sparring uh probably within a couple of months you know one of my first training uh sparring sessions with was with daniel cormier before he even started training mma what yeah dude he came in i was still overweight i was still big and daniel cormier came in before he even fought mma he was just thinking about it he came to vanderley's gym him and i sparred he wrestled the shit out of me i went home so pissed off that day i was like fuck this i'm over it he was throwing

97:52me around next day i come in my coach gives me a piece of paper and it says daniel cormier he says hey after you leave today's session he's like quit being a little bitch and go research this like go look at this on youtube and i typed in his name and i saw that he was this collegiate fucking gold medal wrestler and then i came back the next day with to the gym feeling a lot better because yeah daniel cormier had like thrown me around and he like i said he hadn't even competed in his first mma match yet he was just kind of testing the waters wow yeah i gotta find that laptop that has it like has that video on it man this was like this was before i was even an amateur so how long did it take for you to shed the weight and to get in shape and to get to the point where you felt like you could fight 11 months exactly yeah 100 pounds 11 months wow 100 pounds yeah holy shit yeah and so that must

98:46have been wild to feel like it's almost 10 pounds a month yeah it was just through i think it was through the training that we were doing right like that like the shoe to box style muay thai training and and the hard hard hard sparring and taking our body to its physical limit as much as possible and even to this day i'm thankful for that because that's that's what's kind of made me who i am today too right like when i train now in my conditioning if i'm on the airdy and bike i'm pushing i'm not just coasting you know i'm like how many seconds can i burn 50 cows and if it's you know like like i'm really trying to push push the limits because that's where the real like success is you know yeah that's where your body really starts to make a difference you go to the gym and and and bullshit for 30 minutes

99:38a day for two years you're never going to really get anywhere right but if you go and you push 100 percent every time you go to like your mental and physical limits like you'll see some results really really really fast for sure you know and that's it wasn't a secret diet and anything like it was hard work and it was like it was vision and it was like the wanting to really just make a change in my life yeah and i think that that's what the people like people who want to lose weight or who want to change need to hear it's like don't go and look for this secret diet and this secret you know way of doing things just work hard man you know david goggins like he's like people feel how you but the guy's a fucking beast he's an animal and we do have something inside of us that tries to stop us from everything but you gotta you gotta fucking say fuck it and get up some days and really go hard and really

100:31go hard and push yourself and you'll see results and goggins has a very similar story yeah he was kind of lost and overweight and the first time he went on a run he could couldn't even run a mile yeah he was he was a mess yeah he turned himself into a fucking machine i'd say like re after reading his book and and listening to a lot of what he went through i've i saw so many parallel like so many similarities and i think the the main thing was like goggins went to the military military and i found mma you know like the military is a lot different it's like it's a bit more serious a bit higher level of of just not only training but just the people that you're surrounded by and the duty that you're you know attached to um but just from a lot of the traumas that we had the very similar um life traumas as as a kid teenagers things like that so do you remember

101:28specifically when you realized as you started training that this was for you do you remember like when you realized it was changing your life and that you were like so in the beginning were you still smoking and still drinking and still doing all that shit when you first started training i quit smoking after the first day really yeah my first day of muay thai i quit um because you got tired quick i felt it yeah you know i knew i was like this is enjoyable but i can't fucking breathe right you know right i was like this is cool i'm hitting i'm kicking the pad like this guy's holding it for me he's screaming at me to go harder like he's actually trying to get me to hit harder right that's cool but i just can't fucking breathe man you know i'm like i if i could only breathe then i could enjoy this you know if i could breathe then i could enjoy this like this could actually be something cool

102:19how long did it take for you to quit like before you feel like you didn't want another one oh i mean that took forever yeah yeah i mean that took forever i think i think i became it became more day-to-day after i'd say the first month you know after the first month then the the urges and the cravings were were a bit different did you go cold turkey at that moment yeah i did but there's another time too like i'd say within that first year i quit cold turkey but there was other times that like as already too like as like an amateur where i like i'd pick up a cigarette smoke it or i'd like smoke for a week and be like i'm stupid what am i doing you know in thailand they smoke a lot right yeah isn't that crazy like a lot of thai champions smoke yeah it's more more of the trainers from what i've seen um but the guys who are like active champions and who have like a lot of money riding on

103:11them like if they were caught smoking they'd probably get like like hit with a stick or something oh no kidding yeah yeah yeah they might sneak it you know just because when you're in thailand when you're a part of a thai camp like you know like you're under like ownership right and uh so they might feel like it's a bit of like rebellion like we're gonna sneak out and smoke cigarettes you know because it's the only thing to really do what else are you gonna do right right yeah so you you quit the cigarettes essentially almost right away and then when you it was the first thing that you did really in your life that was like physically engaging that way right yeah absolutely i'd never done anything that called for me to like run or breathe hard or you know like or punch or lift weights or any any physical activity i'd never really been dedicated to anything like that in my life

104:08when on a daily basis when did you notice that you felt differently uh i'd say about three months in is when i saw my face slimming and my neck but did you feel differently like even originally like after training you know that feeling after training where you feel calm and peaceful oh that was after the first i'd say the first day first week it's shocking right yeah i've like after let's say let's just to be safe let's say the first week which would be three days right within the week i went and trained three days because of that we only had enough gas to get to the gym for three days so every single time but the third day was like confirmation that i just felt so much peace and like i'd slept so good in between or like you know that night because i'm like wow i just went and like out of all this like bad energy and got so much good energy back and i'm tired my muscles are

105:06sore but i want to go back but i can't move and i was like man this is like this is awesome and that was really my my take on it when when i first started is that it was just it was an amazing thing and i just got addicted to like that feeling of feeling exhausted but being proud you know i had something that was like proud of i was exhausted because i was actually applying myself to something that was good for me and i was surrounded by good people so a couple months in you start physically feeling better you start to feel your face slimming and then you knew you're on this good path but did you think that you were going to fight it wasn't it wasn't until i went to an actual uh mma event amateur mma event when uh i felt like okay i can do this now like i've been training a bit i've been sparring and we went

106:00to an event to support a teammate and i saw the heavyweights going at it and i told my coach like hey man i'm ready i want to do this and he's like nah you got to lose 100 pounds because i was still heavy 205 was the next weight class down right and you were like what i'm still like in the 300s yeah or like like high 200s you know 285 something like that right so yeah i think and he felt because your frame you should be 205 yeah he knew it you know like i was only three months in right i'd only been training for three months and i'm like yeah i want to do it he's like you've been trained three months you know like for one you're out of shape too like you don't really know right you know so i think if if little did he know that i was gonna like lose that weight in such a short amount of time but he probably would have he probably thought at least a year i think him

106:54saying lose 100 pounds was more like next year right right it's like saying a white belt you know like going into third week in jujitsu and they're like i want to compete right you know you're like okay give it a little give it a little time yeah you know did did you change the way you ate yeah uh so i went from eating fast food and like sugar and stuff in boxes and all that to kind of just what i saw people in the gym eating chicken rice broccoli steamed fish you know things like that stuff i never even would like think twice about and um i kind of just i saw what the people at the gym were eating and the fighters were bringing their meals to the gym and eating lunch right after training i just kind of was just a product of like influence right i'm looking at these guys i'm okay he's eating chicken and rice and that guy's got a bunch of broccoli so that's what i

107:53would go shop for and then i'd so that i could kind of feel like i fit in and then i'd you know cook at home my brother and i'd cook eggs and chicken and broccoli and bring it to the gym so we can eat with the guys and kind of eat the same stuff because we'd never been in an mma gym before we never knew the culture you know my brother played like high school football and basketball where afterward they'd go to 7-eleven and get like hot cheetos and put cheese in it and like drink soda you know like that's where we come like where we come from that's what we did so um yeah like i think being in the environment of an mma gym just kind of started teaching us how to eat so i we started just eating more whole foods right real stuff did you you feel the change in your body from that yeah the that's where that's where like the bloating in my stomach started to like go down and energy levels

108:42started to increase um i that's where i picked up my addiction to coffee i would actually brew i'd brew black coffee and um i'd put the whole thing in the fridge the next day and then the next day in the morning i'd pick it up and just chug it straight out of out of the oh boy the coffee container thing and i'd be like i like hyped and then i'd go running and then come back and then yeah and then that became kind of like my new addiction i couldn't smoke cigarettes so i'm like i gotta find some coffee yeah you know and i'm like jump bro put on music like that whole thing so yeah it was it it did a it did a huge a huge turnaround for me man like i'm and so how long did you stay at uh vanderlei's gym uh i'd say like two years two or three years yeah all the way up until i transferred over to black house mma and so when you were uh at vanderlei's gym and you're training uh you said about

109:41a year in you had your first fight yeah and was that a local smoker in vegas it was uh tough enough oh yeah sure yeah so like tough enough great shows there amateur shows that were selling out the samboid stadium you know like where we got to fight in front of thousands of people as amateurs fighters no shin guards you know no california like camo rules it was like the only thing we couldn't do is like knee to the head and throw elbows but every it was everything else was was full on the only thing is the rounds were two minutes instead of five how many amateur fights did you have i had seven i think i went six and one and i had two uh i had the 205 title and the middleweight title because i went down to 185 how was that oh look at that dude that's crazy oh wow that's post no job vanderlei too oh that's vanderlei after he got his face fixed yeah were you

110:36there when he had that done he i think it was right after look how young you look dude oh man you're fresh-faced look at you with your title wow yeah when he got his face fixed it was so bizarre he showed up at the ufc one day and we're all like who is that yeah and we're like oh my god that's vander like it did it looked like a totally different human like he got a new nose and his nose was bigger it's like they made him a bigger nose yeah because before it was like smash it right yeah it was completely flat he had this like kind of like prime like primal like yeah yeah it looked cool i thought it was a caveman yeah yeah he couldn't breathe out of his nose yeah it was completely useless it was flattened i'm getting there is it yeah it sucks it sucks yeah i had mine done it's nice was it like a septoplasty or something like that deviated septum surgery i forget what they call it

111:29but this one yeah i had the exact same thing exact same thing exact same nostrils yeah i had my right nostril well maybe it was the other one i think my left one was one quarter of it was open and the right one was completely useless yeah yeah that's how i am right now i can't wait to get it fixed it's so nice um but vander they took a piece of his cartilage from his rib and they made him a new nose wow yeah they cut a chunk of cartilage out like a little thing and shoved it in there and stitched it in place and completely changed his nose and then they did some work on a scar tissue and pulled his face back but the end result was like he's a different guy we're all kind of freaked out about it like oh he looks so weird yeah he's like a different human yeah his face was more like yeah yeah it looked like more like pulled back oh they did plastic surgery i mean it was for fighting but

112:25it was you know they removed some of the scar tissue around his eyes and tightened it up because he would you know you would breathe on him and he would cut yeah all those guys like the nate diaz is those kind of guys has been around a long time they have all that scar tissue around their eyes and they get that heavy lid look you know that's a very specific to fighting look yeah i gotta stay away from all that shit man yeah well you've managed to avoid it you look beautiful you got no problems at all with that in that department yeah i just got a modeling contract you know did you yeah i did yeah look at you out of nowhere i was like wow cool so you got a lot of things going on outside of fighting yeah so back then so you uh you win some amateur fights and what was what organization was your first pro fight in i want to ask you about 85 so you'd made it all the way down

113:11to 85 i made it down to 85 what was that like uh hell what do you walk around at right now oh right now 230 230 yeah how many guys at 85 are that big like yoel romero's that big isn't probably that big probably paul acosta right yeah he's big yeah but at the time too i was only like 21 22 like i would never be able to do that now never and i was only cutting from i would at the time i was walking around up maybe like 218 and my body wouldn't go above 218 um so i'd cut to 85 from 200 on the dot i knew that if i was 200 that i can make 85 uh it was painful man it was hell i hated it did you do it with like a mike dolce type guy or a lockhart no i did it the worst way possible i thought i i thought i knew what i was doing oh i was listening to idiots like not even nutrition i was listening to other fighters

114:06oh no other amateur like idiot fighters i was eating literally joe i was eating like spinach and nuts that's it yeah oh so you just starved yourself starved myself oh and i'd eat like half a can of tuna and like you know just like really dumb shit no seasoning not really nourishing my body at all right um yeah i think my first professional fight was at 85 my first fight out in rfa i didn't start fighting 205 until the ultimate fighter wow yeah and so your first professional fight you were eating that way like nuts and spinach and just barely feeding yourself yeah barely feeding myself yeah i did not get to two i didn't fight at 205 until ultimate fighter wow yeah and how much relief was it to fight at 205 well it was cool because on the ultimate fighter i was like well i usually fight at 85 so like i'm gonna

114:58eat steaks every day and lobster and right you know we were just like eating and then i got knocked out of the competition a bit early so then i was just like just grubbing and i was like wow this is really nice life and and then uh when it came time to fight i only had to cut a little bit of weight like you know like five pounds or something like that that's not bad at all but until you fight a guy who's cutting a shitload of weight and he's a good wrestler yeah those are the guys yeah um but now like i think just with age and everything uh to get to 205 now it's not hard but it ain't it ain't easy you know what i mean like any weight cut is is not easy but you got to do it right yeah and i can i can get there consistently every time and do you adjust your diet um like at the beginning of the camp or do you wait until the

115:50very end when you know you're gonna cut the weight like how do you do it i keep a pretty consistent diet just like in life and in training camp i there was a time a couple years like while i was in thailand and a little bit after that i tried to um i tried to do a vegan thing and like that was just causing for me like some gut inflammation because i was eating like the beyond me and all that stuff and i was just like so it wasn't good for me and then i actually energy levels feel energy levels felt great yeah yeah energy levels felt great um but it was just uh no matter what i just wasn't like i felt like inflammation in my gut i didn't know what it was coming from until like my coach started telling me like a lot of the like beans and plants and stuff that i was eating contain lectins which are like uh almost

116:38like toxins that plants and beans and stuff can release um as like a defense mechanism so if i'm eating them uh it's not too good but um i went from that to pretty much like a carnivore type keto you know diet where um like my last training camp my my daily meal would be i'd probably eat within a day like four burger patties um yeah four burger patties eggs steak elk like just primarily like meat and and and fats you fought like a predator yeah and then uh at night i would have i would have a bowl of oatmeal just for like you know for my brain did you eat any fruit um yeah i love blueberries i'd snack on blueberries um but i'm not really like a fruit guy anyway so i like fruit before i work out but uh that's basically how i eat now i eat mostly meat and i eat fruit like i like fruit before i train yeah you know it

117:50seems to when i was doing trying to do like strict carnivore what i would notice is when i would work out really hard i just didn't have that extra gear i would fade off and then when i added fruit to my diet i changed that yeah i think you know some car i i subscribe to paul saladino's um way of doing it he's the carnivore md guy and uh he essentially says like if you look at the most cherished foods by hunters and gatherers number one is meat number two is fruit and honey and raw dairy and he he believes that to thrive to have your body opt operate optimally that those are the foods that your body's most comfortable with yeah i think it varies you know because jake shields doesn't have any problem and he's vegetarian he just has eggs for protein and occasionally some other things but most of what

118:42he eats is vegetable based and he seems fine i think but everybody's body is different yeah man you know it's just that's why it's hard to say what's the right diet for a certain person very you know what i mean but like what what helped me was that like yeah i just i never was like oh i only eat keto or i only eat a carnivore corner carnivore like man i just know that like i want to eat a lot and i'm like if i like cheese i'm gonna throw some cheese it's like some raw cheese on my burger right and you know will you um do you work with the pi do they uh help you at all if i ask them for any help they will but i just i don't know man i try to do my best to just kind of do things because they'll meal plan for you and everything right they'll do all of that um that's an amazing resource the ufc's putting together the performance institute i i think it's a huge resource for fighters i mean

119:40when i went there i was really impressed i was like this is a lot that they did to put this place together yeah it's beautiful it's they that i mean yeah they they do anything and everything to help us um i don't know i think i just tried to i'm just very stubborn and i try to just yeah i try to i think i have this like this thing that like it just makes me cooler if i do things my own way you know like i'm just an idiot like that in some areas of life but um i definitely love the pi for everything that they've done for me every time i go in there they treat me great and like if i need food if i need any advice at the drop of a hat there you know they're they have usada approved supplements there too right so you know everything's third party tested you don't have to worry about contamination yeah that because that is such a fucked up issue supplement contamination it's real

120:34you know i know a lot of people think that people are using that as an excuse to do steroids like oh there's just my supplements were tainted no a lot of fucking supplements have bullshit in them yeah i know that for a fact because at on it when we started putting together um alpha brain and we were what we would do is we would have a third party that would mix all of our nutrients for us we would test it independently and we'd find stuff in there that's not supposed to be in there yeah it wasn't steroids but there would be like certain vitamins that were supposed to be in there like why does this come from it comes because they mix it at the same vats they would mix like some other stuff in ah yeah and that's what they do a lot of the stuff like people were buying creatine from china well you're getting the same lab that's putting it together might also be making steroids yeah so you can get

121:18tainted creatine or tainted supplements yeah yeah i mean it makes total sense to me and i think i definitely make sure that any subs that i take are they have that like stamp of approval on it i take some from the pi but i take another one um what do you take you really want to know no uh i like no i use a i use a company called x endurance extreme endurance um they sponsor and like work with a lot of crossfit athletes but i love every single product that they make yeah uh what kind of stuff so um damn i'm like giving you my secrets i hope no one's listening to this do you have real secrets i mean like i feel like it's a secret what's the secret do you take beta alanine not really i don't like the tingly the tingly the tingly is sign it's working now i don't like it's good for you um now they have a product um called fuel five um it's just like any other um like carbohydrate drink that you would

122:20drink like pre-workout pre or uh during or intro workout um they have hydration supplements they have uh lactic uh lactic acid buffers um they have like focus stuff like nootropic nootropic and nootropics um but i like when i look at their ingredients i just like what i see and i like how things taste and i like how it makes me like feel i feel clean although i'm taking supplements i feel clean you know if that makes any sense it does make sense yeah like when i'm sweating when i'm working out just like i feel like this energy like in my body i'm like your body's fortified yeah i feel great i feel clear here i feel like i don't have any toxins in my body you know so i just i i take you know their stack and it works for me every time what's the name of the company again x endurance x endurance yeah extreme

123:17endurance but i think it's just like x x endurance so when you first started fighting professionally were you supplementing were you doing any strength and conditioning training or you just uh i was just kind of training doing a mix of everything man like i didn't really know what i was doing i was always that like guy that like hey i'm just here right you know and some coach would be like i'm gonna take you to the next level you know that that fucking saying that every coach has like i'm gonna take you to the next level i'm like all right what are we doing and he's like you're gonna take this supplement you're gonna work so i've i've kind of done everything um i was training mma i've trained jujitsu i've trained just strictly boxing i've done it all i feel like um and now i'm just at a point where like i'm back at syndicate mma with john wood i love john yeah he's a great guy good guy great gym

124:09too great gym there's been a good good amount of people coming through there like the traffic's been nice uh great training partners the environment of the gym is like let's work together like let's not kill each other um and it's been cool man and like that was the old system that i had going on before uh before i'd start traveling so i'm back home i'm back in vegas for training camp i got my old coach old coaches and uh let's see what happens for me do you have a fight set up next nah but i they they called me and asked me if i'd wanted to fight in july but i want to fight more like around august um i feel like i'm just i'm up to a lot right now and i know that like i know that i'm not like putting off fighting but i want to make sure that i'm you know that i got some stuff done so that when like i'm after the fight i have something to come back to you know i see what you're saying so like

125:06yeah i'm still in it i'm not like running away from it but i think august would be a good a good time for me to fight i like your approach i like what you're doing you because you're thinking about the future you're thinking about life but then you're also recognizing that when it comes down to training camp you're all in yeah yeah 100 well i mean the results speak wonders because it speaks volumes if you look at the the roberson fight man you look like a fucking machine thank you you're on it right whatever you're doing it's it's a it's a good thing i just can't believe that you're not strike training it's like i have a hard time imagining because you're so striking oriented you know it's like it seems like there's a lot of good gems in new york city are there yeah i'm sure striking gems has to be please send me recommendations i mean um isn't the watt still in new york city is he still open

125:57closed down in the pandemic god damn where's he at now at home i talked to nurse a little bit we're gonna say something but like i don't want to be a great coach yeah great guy um fuck really he went under yeah so many gyms went under man so many gyms in la went under yeah it's horrific and the guys who didn't go under they they had to like sneak people in the back door they were worried about health department showing up exactly we had a health department show up at our podcast studio in la ridiculous yeah it's like shouldn't you guys be out there dealing with sick people test everybody here man get the fuck out of here seriously it was just such an intrusion and privacy and also the government was like stepping into the the most healthy thing you could fucking do go to the gym and they're closing down gyms during a time where you know you're worried about

126:52health it doesn't make sense it was bonkers yeah nothing nothing made sense but there's got to be a good muay thai gym i feel like i want to find you one yeah i would love that we'll find you i would love that yeah yeah i just can't imagine that it's smart to i mean you obviously have an amazing striking base but i just can't imagine that just doing jujitsu and then is getting it back polished up sure you you're at such a high level that when you polish it up it's going to be ready to go but would it be at the same level that it would if you were consistently training i don't know who knows who knows you don't even have to spar just pads with someone who's good you know someone who's gonna like run you through drills yeah i mean that'd be helpful i really like that yeah i'd love that all right we

127:40we put it out there in the universe yeah we'll find you jim i guarantee you there's a there's a place out there so your first professional fight was with what organization rfa that's now lfa but yeah at soros um yeah i was at black house i went out there to train okay i was i was working for scotty otm okay great love scotty too yeah shout out scotty so i was working at for scotty in vegas at otm and then he's like hey dude the numbers in the store look great do you mind coming out to california to do the same thing and i'm like yeah but i don't know where i'm gonna live or i'm gonna train he's like man you crash on my couch whatever like i can get you you know scotty's very like yeah you know welcoming guy so um scotty hooked me up at otm and he hooked me up at black house and then once i got to black house they saw some potential and ed's like yeah man like we'll find you a fight we'll get

128:30you a fight so ed got me a fight in the rfa and then um yeah it was is he still managing people i'm not sure yeah i don't know uh i think so but and jorge manages people as well right lenares join you yeah yeah i think so and then they have um i mean they have like a full program over there right like their whole thing in terms of uh strength and conditioning muay thai wrestling kenny johnson yeah with them forever um yeah man they have like they have a great great system tough guys if we're like in the days that i was training at black house i'm sure they still have it but what made you migrate from there uh work from black house yeah um so at the time uh i was only making like a thousand two thousand dollars per fight in the rfa and i wasn't fighting a lot um and i was like man i don't know if i want to do this like i'm training hard i'm living in california now like

129:35i'm paying a thousand dollars per month for somebody's room in their house you know wow um yeah i was living out jessica pennies like she had a guest bedroom downstairs and i was like yeah can i live here she's like yeah you know i think it was like 900 bucks for us to make rent so i was like okay i'm over this and so i went back to vegas and i started working construction and then construction i was bringing in a thousand bucks a week and i was like what the hell like i'm not gonna fight anymore like i'm gonna do construction man right and then that's when um uh i came i came in contact with john wood and then at an mma fight he's like what's up man he's still training i'm like hell no i'm not training i'm doing construction man like i was so proud to be doing construction because of how much money i was making and he was like i don't know man you should come and hit some pads with me

130:21he's like i know we never worked together but like i think you should come train at syndicate and i was like nah he's like please just one session like just come train with me one time and i did and i was like yeah i think so john wood is responsible for the resurrection yeah the first one yeah the first there's been a couple have there really yeah i mean like there was that one and then the second one was the one from thailand right where like i thought that i was just done right and i wasn't gonna fight anymore um so what how'd you get to thailand this is what i'm trying to get to johnny walker knocked me out in argentina using the muay thai clinch right and he elbowed me and first time i'd ever been knocked out and then doing reviewing the tape i realized like that that's what it was he clinched me and elbowed the shit out of me so a week or two after that i was on

131:12a flight to thailand to go learn how to clinch really yeah you didn't think that you could find that kind of training in vegas i mean there is absolutely not i don't think that you can find that type of training anywhere in america if i'm being honest really well now probably i mean some spots some spots you'd really have to search um but yeah at that time like people in america teach the clinch one way you like you grab the back of the head you know and you pull them down and you knee them and i was like no it's there's got to be more of that so i went there to learn it and i found out like yeah this is a whole nother sport and where did you go which gym it's called pet yindi that would be pronounced in english like pet pet chi and d but in thai pet yindi and they are the they have the most like active champions in thailand right now and this is in bangkok and bangkok

132:09thailand um the the family that runs pet yindi uh the father of of the family was one of the first promoters of rajadhamnirn stadium which is like like lumpini stadium right one of the biggest ones and now um his son boat is now like the main promoter so their family has a long lineage of thailand you know sagat sagat and d from street fighter too he was one of one of cnn who is the the the boss the name is sian now um one of his fighters like sagat fought under pet yindi back in the day um so it just comes from that like lineage of just like champions and like legends so this is like 2017 2017 i think the end of 2017 or the end of 2018 yeah the end of 2018 because then i was there wait because didn't you fight eric anderson in 18 i think so yeah and that was after you'd gone to thailand yeah that was after because it was a giant difference yeah i'd already been there because i

133:25remember me and daniel cormier were going crazy during your fight we're like holy yeah i came out full tie yeah yeah that's all i was really like doing but it wasn't just that you came out full tie it was the fucking kicks man holy shit eric anderson is one of the toughest motherfuckers that's ever walked the face of the earth on the planet that guy just ate those kicks like they're popcorn shout out and it was crazy how tough that guy is didn't flinch didn't shy away from him didn't even make a face bro yeah he's so tough because i know that hurt like hell he just dealt with it yeah he just dealt with it he's a beast man he's got the best nickname ever yeah boy i love i love seeing bruce buffer yeah when bruce buffer has to say it eric your boy but that fight marked like a real turning point for you like you you changed the way you were fighting

134:22you mean you you became one of the spookiest strikers was that before after you knocked out gokhan sake after gokhan was was was gokhan after thailand before it was before thailand right so it was gokhan johnny walker was johnny walker after gokhan yeah and and then and then you go to thailand so when you went to thailand was your initial idea to go there to just uh train for a little while yeah one month i'd only planned to go there for one month like the ticket that i bought was for one month and i only paid for like one month of membership at at pet indi and after being there man i'm like nah like i keep like i need to stay here forever yeah i really wanted to like stay there forever i start like just from the everything the the people the food the culture i love the muay thai yeah i love thai

135:17food you know just the way the way of life just walking and catching taxis like almost like new york city but just like on a whole different like everyone's happy instead of everybody pissed off how is everybody so happy over there i don't know man but everybody is and it's like the smiles everywhere and good energy and welcoming they call it like the land of smiles and the language to me was so beautiful that i just like had to start learning it and so like i'd never can you speak thai now ninoi it means like a little bit yeah enough to where like i could live there and take my taxis and order my food and you know introduce myself and can you read it do you know what it's saying that's the hardest part yeah is the reading but um yeah i was able to like live there on my own for like almost three years wow um and so like i picked up enough to where like i could live day to day and take my

136:08taxis and like i said order my food you were telling me once that the way they throw kicks is different in that they're like more relaxed as they're throwing the kicks like what in what way what do you mean by that so if you ever see the thai stance and you see them fighting like they look like it looks like they're like marching right and they're just like you it's more like a quick fire so like instead of being like like hunkered down and ready to defend and then your your whole body's engaged it's right it's more of like um imagine if i tell you like as soon as your foot hits the ground you have to lift it up and throw full force from there so like if that front leg is bouncing if that as soon as it touches you have to whip it right up so your leg has to be relaxed in order to do that if it's too firm it's

137:01going to be readable like you know your opponent will be able to read it and it won't have the same effect um so yeah most mostly everything comes from a relaxed position i cannot wait to the day like that i can just train with you and like kind of show you what i mean versus um like try to explain it to you yeah i would love that because it's very like i can explain it while you're trying it and that way you'd be like ah now i get it i understand what you mean they also throw kicks with a straighter leg than some other styles do with a straighter leg in which way like and on like even as they're whipping it across it's almost like a baseball bat as opposed to like it's chambered and then extends at the end because a lot of the uh a lot of the power and and everything is from the hip like your hip

137:51has it not it has to turn over you know a lot of people that throw kicks uh especially a roundhouse kick you'll see like the shoulders are still like ain't like angled this way right i know what you're saying throw the kick like you your body should be fully this way right right so in order to like it's it's because of the the force of the body and your leg kind of like it'll bend and then straighten out um yeah and it's it's full shin like you know imagine like you're trying to kick someone with like you're the full shin you want the whole shin to hit right arms and and attack not like your foot or your ankle because that hurts but if you kick someone with you know just the shin it's different and it looks different and so when you first went over there and you start your you was like an was it an immediate revelation that this is what you needed um yeah yeah because the first day that

138:59i ever trained uh i couldn't sleep i remember i got there pretty late at night so i couldn't sleep and i went to go train the next day and everyone was like really intrigued by my size because they'd never really seen anybody my size and then the some of the trainers put me into clinch with these guys who are no more than 145 pounds and they threw me around like a rag doll wow yeah guys pretty much half my size could throw me could trip me could sweep me could lock me to where i couldn't pick them up or break the lock and i was like this is exactly why i came here wow to learn this is pet ind are they known for clinch because like there's camps that are known for like various specific things pet ind is they have great clinchers they have great clinchers um it's not like they're not necessarily known for

139:56their clinch i think they're just they're known for having the fighters with the most heart and like and having very like skillful skillful fighters but there's a guy named uh pet dam who he fights in one championship but like he's known for his left kick and pet morocot it's from pet indi but he's also known for his knees and uh long cow he's known for his clinch he's got an unbreakable lock that he taught me that is like ridiculous so all of them kind of have their own thing prow prow is known for like this guy you got to kill him he's almost unbeatable like he's just this crazy guy where you know it's the fifth round he's covered in blood but he's just like he doesn't go down you know so all of the fighters uh sabas michael he's a pet ind fighter and he's from cyprus um one of my best friends and

140:48he's he's just very technical so they all have their own styles but pet ind is just known for like kind of buying and and and grooming the the best of the best they're very like prideful like they want to have like world champion fighters and how happy were they when you went on and fought anderson just showed that tie style dude they were so happy yeah when i went back to my room in the gym like they it's it's hard to impress the big boss right like he likes to keep a straight like straight face straight demeanor but he was very happy very proud well you impressed the fuck out of us that was in my opinion like the biggest leap that i saw anybody ever make in terms of like you were always a very good fighter you know when you knocked out go khan saki i was super impressed with that you're always a very

141:34good fighter but then you see that you're like holy shit this guy's a fucking contender it was like this switch had been hit and i mean i had to talk to you i was like yeah what are you doing because whenever i see someone doing something that's radical improvement i always i want to get that down i want to i want to talk to you i want to like go i want everybody to know like what are you doing because you did something i was doing muay thai real like the real way you know and and using the real system and my dream is to also like be able to like earn enough funds to where i can fly my thai trainer here and do what i was doing there here right so that i don't have to worry about finding a gym in new york city and i don't you know right because no one's gonna teach me what i learned there here unless i bring over someone you know right and like what that's gonna take for me is like funds

142:23and when you were training in thailand did you get any wrestling in uh yeah tiger so i would go to tiger muay thai which was like a 45 minute flight down to from bangkok to phuket and that's where i met the hickman brothers and that's where i'd get my wrestling in with them so you had to fly to get your wrestling in yeah but when i would you do that um i'd say like mostly when ufc would call me so just like how i do now ufc calls me hey you got a fight or what do you want to fight in two months and i say yeah and i would fly to phuket and i would just stay by tiger muay thai i would find like a hotel or something there and i would just train with the hickman brothers where i could still get muay thai and wrestling there at tiger muay thai right but now they have bang tao mma which looks so sick their gym their new gym yeah volkanovski is just up there like teaching and training and stuff

143:15like the hickman brothers they used to train and and coach tiger muay thai but now they've opened up like their own gym at the north side of phuket and what's it called again bang tao bang tao bang tao mma yeah so they've got real thai trainers them two are like great wrestling coaches and wrestlers themselves and um now they've got a bunch of people now coming in and checking out the gym and facility and their grand opening was from what i saw a success and i can't wait to go back there that's dope well it's it's such an interesting place for guys to go and train and so many people fall in love with the country and and wind up staying there you know mike swick yeah went over there and just stayed yeah it's very simple life for a fighter yeah you know you don't have to really worry about anything other

144:04than waking up and going to train and whenever you're not training then you can go and relax by the beach or like yeah you know just hop on a motorcycle and go well what's attractive to me is the nice people that's one of the reasons why i moved to austin i like when people are nice like makes your day you make your day better when i was in thailand like everyone's so nice it's like it's it's fascinating to me that a place that's known for its incredibly brutal and effective fighting style is filled with the nicest people yeah do you know how they like what it's like before they fight what do you mean like the fighters do you know what that looks like so in a muay thai stadium the locker room is about the size of this and all of the fighters that are even fighting against each other all in the same room and they're all getting like you know massages like with thai oil

144:52and stuff but then right before you walk out you sit on a bench and you're just like sitting next to the guy that you're about to fight and most of the time the guys are just talking like shooting the shit about life about like something that has nothing to do with fighting they're just like oh yeah did you see the yeah yeah i saw it and then like there and then they go and they fight and there's no even the fighting itself the the spirit of muay thai is it's it's beautiful man like it's it's crazy like it's not as violent as it is it's so non-violent you know like when they go in there and fight there's so much respect before a little bit of during and after that it's it's it blew my mind it blew my mind and they're there that's why like all i wanted to do was just learn and study it and be around it

145:46because i've never seen a martial art like that ever yeah it's very unusual it's certainly very unusual and it's it's also very unusual that it's so damn effective and if you think about the history of martial arts and you think about the history of kicking martial arts there's so many different countries that developed their own specific kicking styles but they were the ones who figured out how to kick the legs correctly they were the ones who figured out how to fight in the clinch correctly they're the ones who figured out elbows better than anybody they figured out knees better than anybody yeah it's really kind of amazing yeah i agree and i think that it's it's really cool to that like they have this pride of it and it's it's like a national like staple religion like you know it's like it's it's it's honored by almost everybody

146:30do you think that that that gambling has anything to do with the effectiveness of it that they'd been gambling early on and for sure yeah because there's there's people that like they make a living off of the gambling right and they're passionate about the gambling and uh i mean yeah like like anything in life the there can be some bad you know like some bad parts to it but from someone who's coming from an outside perspective and seeing the type of life that it's providing for these people i think that there's like the gambling is a good thing and it also adds the excitement to the matches is there any fixed fights over there um because that's a problem it's hard to say right it's hard to say i know that they're like some people do get pissed off as far as like the gamblers being able to have the

147:14ability to sway the judges um so do they yeah because their their gambling system is very different um it's not just like um like you bet who's gonna win and who's gonna lose it's very it's like live betting almost right and it's like a lot of hand signals and shit and so so they're betting with each other they're betting with each other in the crowd so like the whole crowd there's one guy who's got the money he's usually the guy who's got the pouch and then he's got guys who are eyes on the crowd and then you see people like throwing like like this means something and like this means something and so he'll look do you know what it means it's like like this is like three to one like three to one odds and if it's your left hand or your right hand it's like red or blue corner oh jesus christ like three to one so it's like it's like this or like this means something and so they do like hand

148:06signals and then whoever is like taking the bets is like you make eye contact and you know that this is the guy that you made the bet with that's it yeah and so you got one like so if he says three to one like three to one like and then they do another they do another hand signal for the number for the number wow right and then um yeah so that the whole crowd is like there's there's guys who are there who are placing the bets and everyone's placing bets with each other and that's how they kind of collect their money but if if there's a if there's a specific fighter then they'll make a louder noise noise like people like oh hey like you always hear that this is the guy that right that's every time you score so sometimes they'll make the noise like or they won't make the noise right so a guy can land

148:55a clean kick but they'll be like they won't say anything because they're not betting on him because they're not betting on that guy so then they'll they're able to sway the judges or like a punch won't land but did you see during the tyson fury fight uh with dillian white that the judges were wearing um uh noise cancelling headphones i mean what 94 000 people or something like that yeah but in that wild i think that's a great idea yeah because you could just see the only thing that would that i don't like about that is i'd like them to hear the impact of certain shots yeah does that but does the impact of the shot really like make it score higher or no but i mean sometimes you hear the impact of a shot and you realize how effective it is you know you're real i mean if you're dealing with significant

149:42blows you can kind of tell but sometimes you could tell plus the impact sound adds to your understanding of what kind of force was involved in that strike do you think that they were wearing the headphones for like the noise reasons or for like the focus i think they were alluding to the fact if i remember correctly in the broadcast they were alluding to the fact they were doing it because of focus okay and and they were saying i think that's good so that people aren't swayed by the way the crowd is cheering and got it you know so they could just look at the technical aspects of the engagements hmm yeah that's interesting i mean sometimes i guess it is a little bit better to like watch a fight without the commentators or yeah you know and you just you're seeing it for what it is i would like uh fight uh fight

150:29judges to have the same setup that i have when i'm doing commentary though when you know dc and john annick and i are doing commentary we have all these monitors yeah so there's sometimes when shit's going down i can't see it right right in front of me i prefer to look right through the cage but sometimes i have to look at the screen and i don't think they have that option unfortunately no they're just staring right right into the cage no matter what angle you have right it's not good enough it's not good enough because then you miss certain things you miss certain impacts like the way people i would like for them to be able to call for replays too yeah that'd be great yeah like if they had like a specific person in the truck that was just for the referees or the just for the judges rather so they could say hey um show me that again so you could see like whether a punch impacted or

151:14whether it caught an elbow yeah i still don't understand how they're scoring these things um i know they say that it's like you know strikes landed cage control and stuff like that but i don't really see that being the way that they're scoring these fights it's certainly subjective you know people that are wrestling heavy prefer wrestling people that are striking heavy prefer striking i mean i don't i don't know how they call like near catches when it comes to uh submissions like how do you decide it's very subjective yeah very yeah it's it's a tricky game you know like here's a good example right brian ortega versus volkanovski remember that one round where ortega almost got him in a mounted guillotine and then almost got him in a triangle yeah but volkanovski got out and beat the fuck out of him like what how do you score that i mean it's hard hard to score that right yeah because

152:06if you look at it objectively i mean there was a moment in that fight where it was almost fucking over when ortega had that mounted guillotine and yeah man and volkanovski's face turned purple yeah he had to fight for his life fight for his life and then he caught him in a triangle afterwards that so it's like you got to give credit to volkanovski for having the heart to gut through it for having the technique to get out of that position and then for smashing him afterwards but is the smashing of afterwards more valuable than those two almost submissions i don't know it's tricky i think volkanovski if i want to look at the judges court scorecards i would assume rightfully so he won those rounds because he did get out he did land those shots and it was super impressive and at the end of the fight he's beating the fuck out of end of the round rather

152:51he's beating the fuck out of ortega and you know looking at and as a each round in its entirety he was imposing his will more and at the end he was dominating but boy you know look at like a boxing fight if a guy clips you and drops you that's a 10-8 round right how's it not a 10-8 round if you're almost going to sleep hmm it's tricky yeah it's tricky because i i do think volkanovski should have won that round but i also think like it merits some debate because fucking those two submissions are so i watched that fight again the other day did you yeah because uh you know i was so impressed with volkanovski's fight with zombie that i wanted to go back and watch his fight again with ortega ortega and i watched both of them like that motherfucker is on fire yeah man he's on fire yeah he's so good right now he's like he's in that conversation of top fighters on the planet yeah alex the great man

153:51he's a motherfucker dude and he's so driven dude very and that's what he talked about at the end of the fight like it's his mind he's like i'm it's drive it's all about my drive to get better and succeed i think that is a really good word that would like describe him right you can just like describe him one word like what's this guy's fighting style like it's like yeah he's driven driven driven but you know he's fucking he's technical too man his striking is super technical so many feints and setups and his ability to close the distance and move in and out it's very very smooth he's uh is eugene in his corner too um eugene is in his court well he's an australian guy right australian yeah he goes he is with city kickboxing in australia but i think he has different coaches on a day-to-day but you know does train with them as well i think during the pandemic though he

154:41basically just trained in australia i don't even know if they're allowed to train do australia had some of the worst lockdown crazy ever i mean they went full authoritarian yeah they do it crazy yeah people were going nuts i have some friends out there that were just completely over it and just they were shutting down the whole entire whole entire areas off like one case you know yeah it was it was madness i'm glad that everything seems to be lightening up a bit though yeah yeah yeah but boy that would make me move i have a good buddy man that moved he was lived his whole life in australia he's like fuck this country he moved he's driving people that way right yeah well he was like you can't tell me what to do like this is not what i signed up for it's like you you can't in in for like it's particularly people that already had covid you know when they were telling him they had his

155:28mandatory vaccination he's like that doesn't even make sense he's like there's all these scientific studies that show that natural infection is superior recovering from natural infection in parts superior antibodies and he you know and this is like he didn't have like a a fake version of covid like you know not i don't say fake but um you know um non-symptomatic asymptomatic he had fucking covet yeah and he got over and they're like you got to get vaccinated he's like fuck you i do like who are you telling me to this doesn't even make any sense this is not scientific like you could test me for antibodies you know i had the disease nobody wanted to hear anything at a at a certain time yeah you know it was just so much panic so many things were rushed so much money was spent on you know what i mean on these vaccines and just so much and so i think like you know in in

156:19of course it made sense to like if you got the virus then you know chances are like you don't need the vaccine but like no chances are yeah but like let's say just from like a from like a conservative perspective i don't even know a word but like so let's say chances are if you got the virus you don't need the vaccine like i said things were so panicked yeah and nobody was even willing to like do research in certain areas to try to prove it was also super authoritarian yeah where they decided money spent our way or the highway do this our way highway how do they deal with it in thailand dude it was it was kind of cool actually at first so um we heard about it um in december of 2019 so america hadn't even really like adopted the idea of covet until march of 2020 right yeah so we heard about it 2019 and had already started prepping in january my girl and i so we ordered we started

157:22ordering like boxes of masks and like alcohol and all this stuff just to prepare yeah man like no shit no bullshit and um our house or like her house in new york was stocked of of everything like just like cleaning supplies so then she came out she came back out to thailand with me and uh that's when thailand told us like hey guys you have about two weeks um we're gonna do a lockdown there's this pandemic happening it's starting to spread everywhere um so you have about two weeks to go to the grocery store and like get what you need to get but your area your your like neighborhoods were are going to be shut down indefinitely like we don't know when but we're just encouraging everybody to just lock down and stay put and at the time people were already wearing masks in thailand because of the pollution

158:10right pm 25 or pm 9.5 something like that it was like it's um there's a little particle that you can breathe in that was causing defects in in newborn children oh geez because of all the pollution and the barbecue stuff yeah just like yeah so masks were never like a problem um which was cool because we didn't have to hear about like just everyone's like okay cool put on a mask we'll go shopping we'll stay home we don't want to go to jail you know because ty please like you either do this or you get fined or you go to jail yeah so for like the first month and a half two months we were isolated at home and we couldn't go outside there was a curfew of like four o'clock so in between like you know in the morning time and up until four o'clock we could at least drive to the grocery store but even then there was like a police barrier where they would like sign a piece like they sign you off like you

159:00got 30 minutes to go to the grocery into the grocery store and back so um what that did is because everybody was locked down and stationary they were able to see where the sick people were coming from in what areas so like they're like ah this place in the past month there hasn't been one report like one case reported but down here there's been six so let's open this place up and give them a boundary like you can't go past this we're gonna open you don't have to stay at home all day but you can at least go this far but then like everyone down here because you have six cases we're gonna keep you locked down so they were finding where these cases were at and then letting other places open up slowly but surely until eventually it was like almost everybody was able to travel freely again through like phuket at least and then something happened how long ago was that this was in 2020

159:55so like from i'd say from march 2020 all the way until july is when everything started like you'd be kind of freely yeah freely moving as long as you had a mask and like the airport opened back up yeah so um people started sneaking over the border from um like uh myanmar or myanmar and um they kind of lost track of of like where it was coming from then you know like it started spreading again they were like how like we just we just pretty much like had a look and like we had it we had a grip on everything like how and they discovered that it was from people crossing the border and um so then they kind of like went into another lockdown but um there was a huge like political uproar going on at the same time in bangkok like the prime minister and stuff so it was it was a good time like i enjoyed

160:51being there for for the lockdown it didn't feel too bad were you allowed to train uh no we like the gyms weren't open but um we would train just like at home like george my my coach at the time i would hit pads with him he had access to like his father-in-law's um like muay thai stadium and we'd just go there and hit pads and have a group of like maybe three four guys to come and train so no the gyms weren't open but we had our own like personal team and so eventually shit got too crazy as you were saying before and you had to get out of there yeah because um as a foreigner uh they told us like if you're a foreigner you can stay here or you can leave like but we're shutting down the airport we don't know when we're going to open it back up we want to get this thing under control so that caused a lot of

161:48the people to go back to their home country instead of to stay so i was the guy who was like i'm staying so i went to the embassy and i got my stamps for extension but because of just the embassy being tied up and the pandemic going crazy and other places um it was just hard to to get through any phone lines you know so i needed to get an extension or i needed a certain piece of paper for my visa you know just for like that those type of documents and it was just almost impossible to get and so i started to get pretty like nervous and i didn't want to get like fined or banned from thailand and banned entry you know the next time i want to come um so that's kind of what what i was like i just have to go home for a bit then did you ever think about going back now that everything's basically opened up again yeah

162:45i want to go back now like my girl and i have actually been having dreams like i've had like reoccurring dreams the past month of like being there and i have a thai family you know and like she has a thai family too and we just we really miss it and we miss the essence of you know of thailand and and the training so we have a plan to go back soon um fortunately i've had enough to do and i've been busy since the fight and i'm grateful for that but i do have to go back to training soon so i don't know if i'll be able to do it in this break but uh it is my goal to be able to go there this year for sure and if you go there are you gonna stay and do a camp there are you gonna no probably not just go there for recreation yeah i have a pretty good agreement now with like my coaches and stuff that like i'll stay here and like we'll we have something like we got a two fight win streak right now let's

163:41just yeah let's keep doing what we're doing we got some you know some stuff planned out so let's let's stick with it and see so i think this is a very good place for balance too because you do get that good wrestling there too yeah wrestling it's got a lot of cool like outdoor stuff yeah you know yeah a lot of cool great places to run we run the mountain every weekend um yeah it's hot as hell in the wind in the summer but that's like it makes for better training like that goggins mentality yeah you know it's actually good for you believe it or not you know that's where you get those we're talking about with the sauna i mean um emmanuel stewart used to crank the heat up in the crock gym back in the day and it was hot as fuck in there that was a big part of his uh training strategy was the heat yeah he wanted people to be able to perform under that

164:29extreme heat and it made regular fighting easier yeah that's what my coach says man yeah you know in life it's like as if you look at yourself as a human and you're you're battling the elements you know he's like it's you versus the elements at the end of the day the elements strengthen you they really do cold and heat those that they have a giant factor on strengthening your your immune system keeping your body healthy reducing inflammation yeah man it's just uncomfortable yeah but that's what's up well listen brother uh thank you very much for coming in here again and i really wanted to talk to you after your last five because you were so emotional i'm like i know he's got a lot to get out but i also want to talk to you because i know you can do a lot of other stuff you're one you're a multi-faceted guy and i really do hope you consider doing a podcast because i

165:19think it would be successful i really do thanks i think it's been good i i didn't know specifically you know like or have anything to specifically talk about but i just wanted to come and catch up with you and yeah it's been a while it was great yeah man it's been for sure fun i appreciate it hopefully i'll be calling your fight in july or august well august right that's when you're hoping for it yeah august would be nice all right yeah we'll find out soon who it is right yeah all right well um please tell everybody how to get a hold of you on instagram social media whatever social media you use uh social media instagram is at khalil roundtree my name k-h-a-l-i-l i don't want to spell it but if you can look it up uh all of my handles are khalil roundtree um what else podcast coming soon yes podcast coming soon um yeah and i plan to also be i want to inform more people um and get more

166:15people excited about uh bitcoin and i want to thank you know the people who have been helping me out and especially like ledger people who are going to help me save my bitcoin and keep it off you know off the internet so yeah thank you guys and follow me on any social media platforms and let's connect beautiful yeah all right all right thank you bye everybody bye