JRE MMA Show #9 with Jeff Novitzky

00:01four three two one ladies and gentlemen Jeff Novitzky how are you buddy what's up Joe doing good I don't have to ask you do you mind the nickname the Golden Snitch it's the first thing I was gonna bring up this Golden Snitch I just want to say it's not my nickname it's Brendan jobs he came up with it a hundred percent on his own who's gonna ask you it's all good though it's it's all good so a couple funny stories about that so when do you come up with this about a year ago at least yeah so so people in the office started coming up to me saying hey Golden Snitch and what the hell is that I did a little research I see something about Harry Potter or some character name there I'm like what the hell does this have to do with me so about a month ago somebody lets me know hey check out Wikipedia so for whatever reason there's a Jeff Novitzky Wikipedia page you go that page now it says says

00:58actually my formal name Jeffrey John Nowitzki aka the Golden Snitch so last week Donna Mark aleni you know Donna long 15 year employee of the UFC now works with me and talked about her little laters a great asset to what we're doing she sends me a text she says check this out so she's got one of those Amazon echoes Alexa I think so she says Alexa who's Jeff Novitzky and Alexa's name says Jeffrey John Nowitzki aka the golden snow so thanks a lot job that's a love Donna she's amazing she's awesome so she's over there yeah I mean you know about kind of her history she's more the five original ploys of the UFC was Dana's assistant to start out with went on to become VP of event operations so basically you know she got everybody to the event set up hotel at the event ran the crew you know the blue shirts backstage that run the event you know I think after doing it for many

02:02years she got a little burn out on it so went to Dana midsummer and says look I don't think I want to do this anymore but I'd really love to do something else and I've seen kind of what Jeff's doing in his program I realized to go the over there and work with him and kind of learn you know what he's doing and so Dana pulled me into the office and said hey what do you think about this idea and it took me literally a half second to say 100% on board this woman as you probably know is about his attention to detail and passionate about her work as anybody and really my positioning unlike the the name the Golden Snitch is an advocate to our athletes to make sure our athletes are successful under the program not that they fail under the program it's definitely the wrong nickname is just catchy it is unfortunately catchy again I'm all good with it better rolling her back but the

02:55real Golden Snitch is Victor Conti he's the Golden Snitch right yeah he's actually I can see that because he was a guy who was giving guys steroids you were a guy that was always catching people correct so it's the wrong moniker yeah correct giving them steroids and then talking about it after right Jensen yeah that's a snitch that's the golden stache not you man but it's all good I was hoping job would be good I don't know what I could do anything to him but interesting to look at him in the face I'm sorry bro yeah well anyway back to Donna she's awesome I'm so I'm super psyched that she's with you so what exactly does she do for you guys again her you know when I sat her down the summer I said look your role here is gonna make sure that the athletes are successful under the program and in a program like this there are so many land mines you know whether it be making sure

03:45your whereabouts filing is that time is on time making sure you saw the knows where you're at so they can come do a collection from you at any time making sure you make safe supplement choices making sure the medications you're taking are correct so she you know works hard for all those things I give you the prime example of what she brings to this program so every three months every quarter every single athlete on the roster is required to file what's called quarterly whereabouts can I pause right here just just so this can be a standalone if people don't know exactly what you do sure Jeff is in charge of making sure that all the UFC athletes are clean and free of performance-enhancing substances and it was a huge issue before you came along a huge issue in the sport and and continues to be in other organizations particularly overseas I mean there's just rampant

04:40speculation about companies that literally encourage people to take steroids it was always the case with pride in Japan that was one of the the big things about pride and sin anyway who fought for them many times came on the podcast and literally was saying in the contract in like capital letters it says we will not test you for steroids like they wanted everybody to take steroids they I had friends who went to fight over there they told them to take steroids and move up a weight class so it was always an issue in the sport that this was a dirty sport air quotes right yeah but since you've come along and since you guys started instituting this incredibly strict testing we've seen some pretty radical changes we've seen some amazing fights and amazing performances and I don't think the performance levels dropped in fact I think it's escalated and elevated rather

05:28which is something that people were really concerned about but one thing that we did see is some people that you suspected of doing stuff their bodies radically changed is really mean that became a meme pre asada and post you sada I mean and there's some comedy memes out there because of it because people's bodies change so radically yeah it's interesting you know the last time I was on we talked about kind of the smell test you know looking at somebody and you know it's difficult to say definitively whether or not you know changes in bodies or due to that or not but you know you can't help but look at some of these pictures before and after you something I think that's the case that's something I always struggle with how do you judge the success of a program you know do you judge it on numbers of positive tests I don't think that's necessarily the case you know

06:15maybe maybe you're not catching everybody maybe there's no one to catch do you judge it on before-and-after pictures I don't know I mean that that could be you know one factor I like to judge it a lot anecdotally you know a big part of my job is getting out and building relationships with our fighters with managers with coaches and just you know chewing on their ear and and figuring out what they're seeing and what they're hearing and almost universally the feedback I get from from them is this is making a big difference you know one thing I brought with me today and really the coolest piece of data I think I've seen in any anti-doping program are some really objective measurable statistics and the UFC anti-doping program you sada so you saw it as the United States anti-doping agency they're the official anti-doping agency of the United States by an act of

07:10Congress they're in charge of all drug testing for US Olympic sports back in 2015 we made the decision to outsource the administration of our program to you saada the primary reason being the independence factor you know when you look at all these other professional sports leagues some have you know better programs and others none really have any independence in the administration that program and what that means is there's no way of telling whether or not you know when an athlete is sanctioned it's done for business reasons or done for favoritism so in our program you know no one can say that that any of the administration of our program is done for that reason it's a truly independent authority so what you saw - did recently as they went back and they've been in existence since I think about 2001 on the US Olympic level they went back and took a look at every single doper I

08:04think for steroids everyone was caught for steroids in the existence of the asada program and took a look at each of those athletes biological passports and biological markers and they looked at what was the most common factor for the doper versus you know the non doper and what they determined was what stood out the most was large variants in testosterone excretion in the urine and we think about it a common-sense point of view that kind of makes sense and that someone who's using steroids at that time presents a sample their testosterone excretion is probably going to be on the higher end and if they were to catch a doper on an off cycle what happens when you get off steroids as your body suppresses production of testosterone so in that case you're going to see a very low excretion of testosterone so they looked at that and plotted it out and saw hey

08:58every doper has a very large variance and testosterone excretion then what they did is they took all the UFC samples and they plotted him out by quarter and actually brought a graph along with me and it's some really drastic I think visual evidence of the success and the impact of this program I don't know if you can throw that up would you take a look at it so what what year exactly did you saw to take over yeah so we can't you saw it came into play July of 2015 so you saw has been in existence for two years so you see here that first quarter quarter three of 2015 a pretty decent variance there which means in any given test an athlete you know was up and an average a little bit 30 a little you know in the mid-20s and then look it as you plot out that graph that variance becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and more in the the medium range as it gets out to you know

09:58quarter 3 of 2017 that's very interesting you don't you don't this is you don't usually see statistics this is the first I've been involved in anti-doping world since 2002 and I can unequivocally say that this is the strongest visual objective measurable evidence of success of a program that I've ever seen well one of the things that's so fascinating about this and this this goes to this Coast credit to the UFC 100% is that they decided to do something about this they didn't have to this wasn't like someone coming after them because you know so many people had been caught and someone said hey we're gonna put a program on you guys to make sure you're not doping of the UFC said we gotta clean this up and there's there's only one way the one way is to go with the very best testing possible and the most rigorous the most mean check in everywhere you go we're gonna

10:51give you random tests it's six o'clock in the morning knock on your door like the whole the whole full gamut of tests and the results have been pretty amazing and that alone that speaks volumes when you see the size of the variance between the the test when first started movies now definitely hey it's a credit to two people Lorenzo Fertitta and and Dana white that you know made that decision that's a hell of a risky decision but done for all the right reasons you know anybody that contends that you know Dana doesn't care about his athletes need look no further than this program this program is of tremendous risk to the company into the bottom line when you're testin athletes 365 days a year unannounced no predictability of when the test is coming there can be some very severe consequences and there have been several main events there has been I mean UFC 200 yeah the land arguably is

11:46a landmark event in the history of the UFC we lose our main event the Wednesday before UFC 200 millions if not tens of millions into the marketing of that you know the success of the pay-per-view probably hinges on that great main event between John and Daniel and we lost it three or four days before and that could happen it you know at any given moment now we talked about this before the podcast what you could or could not talk about with the current state of John Jones investigation so where's it at right now yeah so you know generally we don't talk about on the case so so how the process works when an athlete tests positive you saw it and will notify me I usually pick the phone up right away and call Dana and let him know and the UFC puts out an announcement they say you know in the case of John John tested positive and then in an in competition test on this date you know more

12:47information will be provided at the appropriate time that's generally all we'll talk about now if the athlete chooses to talk about you know scenarios of what happened and they're free to do that at that point you saw it in the UFC can comment on it so there's been some things talked about in the John case by John particularly he had to clean tests on July 7th and July 8th before his positive tests on I think July 30th which was way and day and the positive test was for two hydrochloric Oscar owner world tour in a ball this is a substance that was used by these Germans regularly in the late 60s and then came into the fold a little bit more with what's come out recently I'm out of Russia so I know you had Brian Fogle long for the Icarus movie I think he talked about a little bit about this Gregory the head of the the Moscow on a laboratory that this drug became kind of

13:47part of his protocol with his athletes he then ironically enough developed a test for the long term metabolites of the drug so previous to that the detection window of this drug was a couple of days so it was a drug that you know even if you run a strict program an athlete may gamble with taking because it had a quick clearance time after he discovered the long term metabolite test that changed it went from the detect and when detection when to have a couple days to a detection window of several months and this was widely known you know it wasn't a secret initially they kept it quiet they went back and retested some samples and there was a whole you know a bunch of positives and then it got out 2013 around it there was his new test so right up front you know I've said this a while now is would not make a lot of sense for an individual UFC athlete that knew you know

14:41especially you know a champion contender like John Jones that knew hey I'm tested quite regularly in this program would not make a lot of sense that that would be your drug of choice if you were intentionally trying to cheat I think it's come out after the fact that you saw - did another test on John a month or two or a couple months after his positive test and he was negative during that test so that would be indicative that you know the prohibited system entered his system or the prohibited substance entered his system you know sometime after July 7th or 8th and was likely you know a pretty small amount and that it cleared his system pretty quickly again you know who knows where it plays out but certainly on the surface of things I have said you know at this point in the game with that type of information out there it wouldn't indicate intentional use now that could be wrong

15:37I don't know that definitively and and we'll see how this plays out right now where the process is is John and you sada are working closely I'm aware that there was a meeting a week or two ago pretty lengthy meeting which I was told was productive I wasn't given details of what productive meant but I think that's an important thing right now and that John's falling through with is to retrace all of his steps between that you know just last July 8th positive test and our negative tests and the positive test on July 29th of July 30th it certainly seems like based on what you just said that this is something that was accidentally taken but if you can't prove that something was accidentally taken like if you can't nail it down what do you what happens yeah it's it's difficult and that's you know that's kind of the nightmare scenario that a lot of you know that an

16:27athlete can face and a big role of what Don and I do to prevent that from happening to show them what type of care and consideration is needed to make sure you don't get into a scenario like that you know under a program like this you have to be careful about everything that's put into your body everything and if you're not there can be you know severe consequences so yeah we'll see where this plays out I tell you the one thing that I can say about this is you know this is obviously John's second time in the program with testing positive and in the first time he went through pretty lengthy appeal process and there was a publicly issued decision 50 60 pages that went through all the evidence that that the independent arbitrators heard and and decided on and what they said definitively in that case was John there was no evidence that John intentionally cheated however he

17:27operated with careless reckless disregard so we ended up getting the maximum for that for those substances you test deposit for a year and that was for some gas station viagra type not well it was actually a couple of anti estrogen drugs but what was shown and what the evidence pointed to was that he took a pill that was manufactured from a website by the name of all-american peptide the pill was purported to be a cialis pill so an erectile disfunction pill that was tainted with these two drugs now the problem what the arbitrator said is if he would have gone to that website and the arbitrator's did and I did you would have seen that that same website offered you know tons of performance enhanced prohibited performance-enhancing drugs and the website said you know not for human consumption for research purposes only so it really was careless disregard that

18:22being said however John's you know second time through the program now the second sanction this time for you know an anabolic type steroid would have you know a starting point potentially of before your suspension that's a starting point that could be a starting point right unless there are mitigating factors now I don't you know again the beauty of this program is it's not the UFC or not me deciding right you know what the sanctions going to be no one can accuse us of you know operating for business purposes or favoritism or whatever but that being said you know when we put this program together and figure it out you know what sanctioning would look like I don't necessarily think that we put up a four-year sanction for a second term offense when the first term offense was shown that that person didn't cheat intentionally just operated with careless disregard so

19:11who makes that distinction then you saw them you saw that makes that distinction they you know they have a whole team looking at it they compare it to other cases under you know the Wada Olympic type umbrella similar cases I will say this that you know I think we've had a few over sixty positive adverse events in this case and those that have been adjudicated I've been comfortable every time that they've made a fair and balanced and reasonable decision and that's part of my job is to be the eyes and ears for athletes to make sure not only is the program being administered properly and has strength but also that they're being treated fairly and that they have due process so I'll have all the confidence in the world however this does come out that it will be the right decision the other really cool thing about the program is the transparency the program so you know won't just be me

20:02saying this however it does come out whether it goes to arbitration or whether John and you saw to reach a settlement it'll be well spelled out about why that sanction was determined now you say starting point meaning that it could potentially be more it could so when there's something called aggravating circumstances so more than just knowingly taking the drug liking the drug and lying trying to cover it up taking multiple drugs one trying to hide the other yeah you could you could get double the sanction amount so you know in a second time anabolic steroid for years is kind of the starting point you can go lower for mitigating factors you can go higher for aggravating factors up to eight years so yeah I mean it would have to require something you know really severely just to get one to get up that that high has anybody ever gotten that hit not in the UFC program

20:57no what is the biggest hit that anyone's ever gotten in the u.s. I think thus far it's two years and who was that I think a few people Chad Mendes comes to mind and Chad Mendes his was some sort of psoriasis cream or something his was an insulin growth factor 1 so igf-1 and did he say that it came from a psoriasis cream thinking that said that yeah that was never proven or no I mean there was nothing and you saw his reasoning or their announcement of why it was two years about you know any type of mitigating factor coming from as I know here processes and someone had said or at read I didn't really investigate very deeply into this but I remember reading that he had put some sort of cream on and then that cream was responsible for him testing positive was that yeah I don't know that's the case I do recall him saying that but you know hey an athlete can say anything they weren't

21:47about why it happened if there was something mitigating they are afforded that right to share with you sada that look I didn't do this on purpose it wasn't on the label the cream usually in those instances where the evidence does show that you will see you know a mitigating factor come into play in a reduction in a sanction that wasn't any in that case it was the two years and there have been some guys that have gotten pretty low sentences like Tim means is a good example right Tim means did take something that was tainted and you guys or you sada got some of those samples from independent stores if anitha's were also tainted yeah Tim means took a supplement was a creatine and you know after he tested positive and again this is where Donna and I come into play quite a bit you know when athletes test positive we reach out to them right away saying look we're here

22:36to help you here if there's help to be had we'll believe you tell you give us a reason not to I did that with Tim Tim said I'd never heard of this substance Jeff I you got to believe me I didn't take it said all right well let's start doing retracing steps what have you been taken he sent me you know maybe a half dozen supplements did some research on them worked reached out to kind of contacts I still have in the in the industry from my law enforcement days and said hey any of these kind of raise suspicions and there was one that did by a company that made some other kind of sketchy products we narrowed in on that one pretty quickly sent it to you sada to a lot of laboratory tested it sure enough it had the substance in it then what happens is you sada will independently procure some themselves so outside of the kind of touch of the athlete to make sure the

23:28athletes not contaminating with it for a broken excuse they were able to get some that was sealed and unopened and sure enough it it had that substance in it and had the same amount of the substance in it that kind of matched up with how much was in Tim's system and when he said he had taken it last so there's a lot of detective work that comes into it and I get I get this question a lot from fighters saying hey the the supplement excuse is a excuse that you know there's athletes using stuff and they have supplements in their closet that they know it's are tainted and then BOOM if they tested positive they just have that built-in excuse and what I tell them is it it's it goes deeper than that there's literally detect scientific detective work that's going on from the asada side making sure everything matches making sure they independently procure the product making sure what

24:17turns up in the athletes system based on when they say they were taking it matches exactly the level that's in the product based on you know metabolism timings so it's much more than that and I do have a lot of confidence when you saw it it says hey it does match that this is you know came from an unknowingly or unintentional ingestion that really is that now but in the case like Tim means why is he suspended is if someone does give him a tainted supplement and he takes it in good faith thinking that it's just creatine right so there's strict liability in the program and you know they look at all the factors so you know creatine is a relatively low-risk product however the creatine Tim took was not third-party certified and that you know get a lot of questions about man the supplement industry is dangerous and you know this sucks for at for athletes there's

25:09nothing they can do there is something that you can do and it's actually pretty simple to do we were talking earlier about about on it company you're you're involved with and and you guys third-party certify a lot of your product and what that means is you outsource random testing of the product and sampling of the product from these independent companies to make sure they contain no prohibited substances and you know what Donna and I educate our athletes to is you can go to these third-party certification companies I think you guys use Catlins grooming banned substance control group there's that group there's informed choice there's NSF for sport and you can go to their websites and they have lists of all certified products and there's hundreds of them so there's there's no excuse that you can't find as you know UFC athlete products that are tested and independently certified as banned

26:06substance free and if it were the case and it's not saying that it couldn't happen because those companies aren't testing every single bottle of product but if you're an athlete you take a third-party certified product you record it you log it and it turns out to be from that product I think then you're reaching you know a level where the mitigating factors maybe do get you down to no sanction you know a public warning or something hey you know maybe shouldn't use supplements at all type of thing right so his error was just taking something that was not third-party correction just not doing his home squint company there seems like a lot but in reality most fighters it's really he's really only got about three months off because most fighters are after a fighter going to take a few months off any probability I mean it seems harsh but there is there is an obligation that fighters need to

26:53do their homework and you need to have a bit of a deterrent there to make sure they do it and and that's that deterrent now one of the things that I thought was really cool about the UFC Performance Institute which is just that's a there's so much cool about that place but one of the things that was really cool is that you guys have a station where an athlete can go in and check any sort of substance any cold medication they're taking anything type in the name of it and it'll tell you on this like giant tablet whether or not what you're taking is bad yeah it's so it's view sites a kiosk so as you saw the kiosk and we have like a little iPad in there and it's between the locker rooms and the recovery room so it's you know you've got your hot cool and your cold pool and your sauna and your cryo and all that stuff so it's a constant reminder as our athletes are in that

27:40flow between that area because they all walk through there every day that you saw it as a part of this sport that were a clean sport that you have an obligation to check on medication supplements and you have an obligation to file your whereabouts they can also file whereabouts at that kiosk and we get athletes all the time walking down that corridor saying aw I forgot to tell you SATA flew out to Las Vegas at the P I boom they can get on in a minute or two and update where they're at so you just have an app they do so so they can update by a hep so it's on your phone as well so every quarter athletes are required to get on through a web browser what's called the quarterly you saw to whereabouts filing they usually have to watch an instructional video most of the time reminders about smart supplement choices things like that and then they tell you saw to where they're gonna be

28:28for the next three months and most of the time hey I mean I do Don and I do the whereabouts filing as well we both say hey who knows where I'm going to be next week yet alone two three months from now but you make your best guess at it and then all that information you put through the web browser is downloaded to your mobile phone app so that as your plans change over the next you know a couple weeks couple months you can do 45 second to one minute updates through your mobile app so the convenience is there there's really you know no excuse and and not letting you sod and know where your ask there are repercussions if you don't let them know where you're at because you want to avoid somebody you know ducking and dodging a test but I know cowboy had a situation where he was actually in Vegas at the fights and they were mad at him because he didn't say that he was gonna

29:18be in Vegas he's like I'm at the fights I'm right here I'm on TV Don and I do everything we can to try to let you saw to know that when we know that a fighter has a UFC obligation so whether they're a guest fighter on the road whether they're you know at a competition we're always passing that information launch you saw that but we also tell them that ultimately it's it's your responsibility as an athlete we'll try to but you know we can't guarantee it ultimately is gonna fall on you if you don't update now the good thing about this is you're afforded a couple mistakes under the whereabouts program so it's not until three whereabouts failures and any rolling 12 month period that there can be sanctions because honestly I mean things happen in your life everybody's human sometimes you forget I'll give you the perfect example so again getting back to Donna the most

30:05attention detail person that I've ever worked with him at working career she comes over joins kind of our program here we get her signed up for whereabouts she's like this is great like I can talk knowledgeably about how to do this we went out to Anaheim for UFC I forget what number that was we take a trip down from Anaheim to San Diego we went down to this clinic here that we were checking out for brain therapy she forgot to update that she was going to San Diego she was more than two hours outside of where she was supposed to be where you saw the new she was gonna be she would have gotten to whereabouts failure again one of the most responsible people that I've ever been around goes to show that it's challenging and so she has to notify where she's gonna be we do it voluntarily just so we can talk knowledgeably to our athletes so this may say oh this is too hard or you know

30:56we say well we do we do it right yeah here's there's a little trick that I have to remind myself you know each day where I said I'm gonna be at things like that now when you have later like Holly home I think said she was tested nine times in preparation for this fight against cyborg when when that happens is there a I know you can't say when the test is gonna happen because it won't be random but is there any consideration about the sleep cycle of the fighters yeah I mean that's you know you sodded never lets me know when a test is coming I have zero input in terms of who's being tested and that is the reality a lot of times they show up 5:30 6:00 in the morning really suck your fighters there is no doubt about it the bird and just a urine this is just a urine test or it can be blood as well I mean imagine you're dead asleep 6:00 in the morning someone's knocking your front door

31:47that's scary to begin with you go downstairs you know you're trying to get ready for a fight prepare yourself sleep wise mentally and you gotta have the needle stuck in here to get to draw blood wait til you gotta take a pee could be you know some fighters wait hours you know I don't think enough attention is being paid to the burden that's on the athletes and the credit they should be getting a holly home I think I stall it's just a statistic that she's the most tested athlete since the inception of the program I think she's around 32 or 33 samples that she's provided I mean that's crazy but that I think she should not enough credit is given to her know why they test her so many times because she no I haven't heard any suspicions of her being know neither of I and you know I think as you look at the testing statistics and that's another cool thing about this program I don't know if you

32:39know that but all these test numbers are publicly available so the transparency in this program is unprecedented unparalleled as it comes to professional sports there's no other professional sport on the planet where you or I is a fan of the UFC could say let me see how many times Holly's been tested how many times cyborgs been tested that's unparalleled but if you look at those numbers and I'll occasionally look at them I think those athletes with staying power those athletes that are at the tops of their division have more tests directed to them versus you know athletes at the bottom that are jumping in and out they want to make I think you saw a good use of their resources to make sure that they're directing most of those tests those athletes are gonna be around for a while and I mean we saw what a badass Holley is on on Saturday night that woman's incredible and you

33:28know I think Sauter probably realizes that too and she's gonna be around for a while and wants to set you know an example and I tell athletes a lot I say hey we're this is a badge of honor you know I know it's a burden but man that makes you even more special of an athlete that you you know take that burden on and embrace it and and show the world that you're you know not only a badass athlete but you're doing this clean now one of the things I thought was really fascinating about the UFC Performance Institute is that machine will you lie down and it scans your entire body and it shows where your muscle imbalances are and look what are what are all the different details that that thing focuses on yeah I mean we talked about this when you toured it but you got to get you got to get some of the personnel from the PI and there they can really talk knowledgeably and have you know

34:13yeah education make some bring those guys in yeah they're gonna come on not only is that as you saw at that facility world class but they staffed it with the perfect world-class personnel so that machine is called a DEXA scan and you know I can't give it the justice that the personnel can there but it yet it measures body composition so it'll measure you know fat hydration levels bone density bone density yeah and now is it is it how they're doing that some type of low-level x-ray again you got to get those guys in there to describe it specifically but you know I'm sure as a topic we'll cover today the whole you know weight issue being in the proper weight class and weight cutting the both the equipment and now the personnel is in place of the Performance Institute that there's no excuse for an athlete to not a find their weight right weight class and be you know safely efficiently

35:07you know meet that weight goal when they're fighting everything is in place now therefore that now when a fighter comes to you guys and and lies down on that machine and you read their hydration levels and say they're slightly dehydrated and yet there's still 10 pounds above the weight class how do you handle that so we have a director of sports nutrition guide by name Wattenberg and clint was a Division one all-american at Cornell Ivy league-educated smart as hell went on to wrestle with Team USA it's actually wrestled with a lot of our fighters have had several conversations about with guys that had wrestled him before Clint came here so he's got you know a ton of pure respect for that super smart guy but yeah he works you know he'd be the guy to ask he's you know Ivy League educated in sports nutrition and in a situation like that yeah he's you know giving advice to the

36:07fighters about how the importance of hydration and trying to change that around so that they can meet those goals yeah there's the Machine right there what is it called dual energy x-ray absorptiometry how do you say that we call it Texas can absorb geometry that sounds like something that like someone would say in a cartoon like make a fake word the measures body composition including lean mass muscle tissue fat mass and bone density measuring and tracking all three of these components is important for weight class sport athletes and helps guide nutrition recommendations fascinating stuff so it just sort of scans over you how long does that test take you know I've never gone through it or actually never seen it I got to get over there and check it out I don't know was interesting what Forrest was doing Forrest Griffin was telling me that when he had it done he

36:55found out that one of his legs has two pounds more muscle than the other leg because he had had some knee injuries and he really had no idea yeah that's crazy I mean so so force is a big part of that performance Institute was a big part of you know touring other facilities around the world I think him and James Kimball who's our VP of operations at the P I went to 61 or 62 facilities throughout the world and took what they believed were the best parts of these facilities and put them all to one and force's role there is you know I'm kind of similar to my role in the anti-doping program an advocate for our athletes he's there to make sure as a former fighter knowing what works and what doesn't work we're looking at a video this thing right now and it looks like Star Trek what does it say anything Jamie very end of pans over and shows what shows up on the screen

37:43there's a come on I like bunches of different data points this is amazing yes I mean I talked to you I thought maybe last we can get you out there earlier but you got to come I'm gonna next next time an exception to come day or excuse me they really just do this I'll put you through the whole thing I get you get your DEXA scan done your body composition you then have a meeting with Clint talk about nutrition and goals maybe you'll see the physical therapist talk about any you know issues you have and therapy you need go work out with our strength and conditioning coach both sand of all put you through the the ringers and the equipment there then do a little recovery after that really give you the full experience yeah that place is amazing how you guys get it set up and it's it's really a massive resource for fighters that if because there's a lot of great gyms out there

38:31but I don't think I've ever seen one that's that well equipped that you guys have everything you have a complete strength and conditioning system area then you have a complete area for with heavy bags cage boxing ring and then you have a complete recovery area you have cryo machines you have that what is that light machine yes like low-level laser light there yeah yeah that looks like a giant tanning bed that you get in and I've seen that thing before and what is that supposed to do it's supposed to somehow another stimulate recovery and not the cellular level again you need to get these there's these P I personal I'm here to explain it in detail you guys even have sleep pods which I thought was the craziest thing ever he was so like if a fighter just has like an hour to chill they can just get in there and recover and relax yeah I mean the idea is you come to the performance Institute

39:22yeah they're there and okay and I hear this all the time they see the the the equipment the personnel that's available to them they see when it's time to unwind that they have a room like this to relax in they see they have free use of the cafeteria and custom cook meals they don't want to leave the place they're there all day long Francis and Gahan oh yeah lives has lived there the last six months there's a running joke in the office that Francis is constantly walking around the office in between workouts it's like Francis we ought to get you an office you're saying right now what are you doing yeah that's Akane who thought I mean the dude moved to LA he saw the place and he moved up and moved everything he had I don't think he knew anybody in Las Vegas or not any friends there cuz he's he's just walking around the office all day long when he's not at the P I from France from France

40:12yeah from another country said exactly but you know a perfect example of seeing what that place could do for him and that's available to every single fighter on the roster yeah I mean there's nothing like it and my prediction is that the UFC is going to be the hub or most people live the only thing that's wrong there is the altitude that's the only thing that's wrong and I know you guys have a hypoxic room where you can stimulate or simulate a high altitude yeah I think 22,000 feet but isn't the way you're supposed to do it you're supposed to work at sea level but sleep at high altitude isn't how it's supposed to think that's what it is you know what is beso 2500 3000 feet so I think it is yeah I thought it was a little I thought it was like sea level because it's like desert no no no it's got a little bit altitude I know Nevada has some good mountain areas though just outside where

41:03guys can run and do things like that yeah does the Performance Institute take people on any treks or anything like that I don't think we've gotten to that level yet be a good thing to do right could make the Red Rocks four runs there you go it's a good idea I mean I just think that if really high level coaches start moving there and obviously we just lost one of the best Robert foulest which is a huge huge loss and what a great guy and say I mean universally the nicest guy ever always a great demeanor they loved very few people that are fight coaches that are universally loved and Robert really was but you know Vegas has some good coaches but I I anticipate more and more gyms moving and relocating there and bringing fighters there because I just think high level fighters gonna see that place and go how can I recreate this anywhere without millions and millions of dollars I think

41:49so I mean we'd love to see that happen it's you know good low costs relatively low cost a living area so it's a place that's affordable and yeah I think you spend a little bit of time at the PI and see what you can do what it can do for you as a UFC athlete and then I was good I think the cool thing and I know Duncan French he's dr. Duncan French he's our VP of performance there and which he explained a little bit to you about is that not only are we looking to influence the UFC athlete but also influenced positively MMA to hold the entire sport and what you're seeing is UFC athletes can come in there and use it but they can also bring along with them training partners coaches and you know we're only seven or eight months into this but what we've already seen as you know training ideas proper nutrition going back out to these gyms not only across the US but across the world so we

42:45definitely hope to be a positive influence throughout all of MMA and and really really grow this sport yeah I saw that with Bobby Green Bobby green who was there I brought a couple of his training partners and just on random day Wilson Hayes was there Angela Hill was there there's quite a few coolest thing ever I love I'll go over there when I'm in the office multiple times a day just to see who's in there yeah and have you know that 510 minute conversation with a Wilson Hayes that he knows me going forward the future and that Jeff's a cool guy and when that medication or supplement question comes up he's talked to me before he knows who I am is not afraid to pick up the phone and ask me that question versus hey this Golden Snitch character I don't know I don't know who this guy is I'm gonna call him or trust him it's a big part of what I do is try to develop those that trust so

43:32thanks to shop for setting me back about two and a half years worth developing that trust it's a nickname that doesn't even make sense it literally doesn't make sense but it's funny is there any other plans to expand or do more things with the Institute there is so we didn't show you this but there are other areas upstairs for that very reason they thought about hey technology in a couple years there may be new machines or devices that come on the line that we may want so there is additional room for expansion there I talked to you guys and I talked to Duncan about a tank about you guys getting tanks in there sensory deprivation tanks I think that would be massive I know a lot of football teams are using them now and it's starting to spread excellent source of magnesium because you're absorbing it through the skin but just for relaxation or recuperation I would be

44:18fascinated to see if you guys had those like what kind of results yeah bounded to me and I was there when you're talking about it that Duncan was open to it and was talking about some research and he's the ohio state university is conducting some research on the benefits of that so I know there's tanks in Vegas now I know there's a place in Vegas so I'm sure whoever runs that tank thing is gonna reach out to me so I want to get you in touch with them and just have you try it just see if you you know just just to get a beat on yourself it's a freaky experience and it's really good for your body just everything like in your back will just sort of just loosen up because you're a essentially zero gravity you're floating and it's just everything sort of pops and loosens up and it's amazing it's cool I want to try to saw yours a little bit ago it's a little little intimidating or scary and

45:01looking weird version yeah my wife made me move it out of the basement I had one in the basement I was like people come over they think you're a freak I'm a freak but the idea behind it I think it's pretty sound and I think there's a lot of benefits for it for fighters as far as concentrating on technique as well I think it's an amazing place to focus on strategy and game plans and movement and things along those lines we can visualize one of the most amazing things with a sport night you know coming over the UFC I call myself a fringe fan I mean I would follow it a little bit but I'm I'm hook line and sinker into the sport now and the most remarkable thing I find about the sport is the mental game it is the most incredible mental game of any athlete in any sport in the world when you're walking out into an octagon and facing one of the baddest mixed martial artists

45:55in the planet and you know I know you've seen a ton of fights over your career but I think one thing that that I've seen in the two-and-a-half years that you may not is that progression through fight week so when I go out to these events or events or in Vegas I'm they're check-in day Monday or Tuesday at fight week and typically as we're on the road on their you know every day and the same hotel I'm watching these guys and girls eat breakfast I'm watching them at the gym prepare try to make weight on Friday I'm watching them Saturday morning with the prospect of the fight ahead of them what an incredible mental journey it is to know that you're about to get into you know a cage with one of the baddest fighters on the planet and even if you win probably come out you know with a little bit of damage I mean everything to fight night I mean fight night these

46:44these athletes are in a locker room typically with three or four other athletes and especially if you're one of the last athletes on that card one by one your locker mates are walking out and then coming back in and you see you know damage on even the ones that win and unlike other sports where you get out on the field and you warm up and you get a little sense of what the atmosphere is like these athletes are walking out you know into the Lions Den seeing it for the first time and the sensory overwhelming sensory things that are going on when doing that and to be able to you know control your emotions and and you know compete against somebody is just absolutely the most incredible thing that that I've ever seen I'm so amazed and you know very few of these fighters and I talked to a lot of them that doesn't get to them in some way or form that is you know talk to

47:36Forrest often about that in force its light says he equates it to if you've never jumped out of an airplane the whole time you're on the way up saying what the hell am I doing this is crazy and then you know when the bell rings and you start fighting then it kind of calms down you're back in here you're kind of zoned but just what an incredible mental game this is and I just have so much respect for our athletes because of what they have to go through and they're able to do it time and time again and control those emotions you bring up an important point and mental training is something that a lot of athletes are really concentrated on more over the last few years then I think ever that I could recall and a lot of them bring in hypnotists and a lot of bringing in sports psychologists is there ever been any talk of bringing that to the performance instance yeah

48:21you know I've talked I talked briefly with Duncan about it who has it you know a ton of resources in the athletic performance field and so we've talked briefly about that but nobody on the staff you know currently it's you know it's it's kind of a give-and-take look we want to provide all these resources to our athletes but we also want them to retain their independence I mean you don't if you notice in the performance Institute there's no MMA coaches there there's no strike lling wrestling coaches Jiu Jitsu coaches none of that that's for the athlete to bring in because there needs to be some level of independence you don't want to train the entire roster you know the same ways itself exactly I saw early on in my tenure here with the UFC I saw one of the most incredible things that I've ever seen I've only seen it once but I saw a fighter show up Fight Night outside the

49:16locker room and basically said I don't want to go in I don't want to do this at the arena real and I mean I was just blown away and actually Sean Shelby went up and thought it was awesome had a great conversation with the fighter said look you're not feeling anything that everybody doesn't feel every single fighter on the roster feels what you're feeling right now you're just letting it get the best you you know you're a badass fighter you know you've kicked ass before you've gotten beat before you know what's the worst gonna happen you're gonna you're gonna get beat you're gonna live through this thing you're just letting it surface everybody feels what you're feeling and for a second you know if the fighter came back a little bit and then don't left the arena whoa crazy but I think that must enter into the head or the prospect of that of every single person every single fighter that

50:08comes the arena I'm sure there's just a little bit of that and the back of the head it's just an incredible journey to see them mentally overcome that amount of stress the pretty fight is in credits why it's so interesting you see a guy like Connor who's so relaxed in there it's kind of weird you know like when he does that rubber arm strut just walking around the cage he's kind of like letting you know how he is dealing with this better than you are you know the one fighter that because I pay really close attention after having seen that early if you really close attention just to see that fighter on the walkout like to sit you know pretty close to the cage and just look at that fighters eyes and I I tend to see a little bit of nervousness and fear and every one I think it's probably healthy one person that sticks out that I looked at and I saw nothing in this dude's face

50:56I saw like a little smirk like he was so happy to be in there and it's the first time I've seen this guy fight and that's just engag when he fought Michael Johnson I remember look and he walked in first and I was sitting on one side and he was on the other side of the cage and looking in his eyes and I had never seen him fight before and I'm like who is this guy he looks like he's happy to be in there like this is you know some parties at and that fight was incredible well he's crazy wasn't it he's legitimately crazy he said that getting knocked out by Eddie Alvarez the greatest thing that ever happened in his life he's a different breed yeah well he's got a mindset and that mindset is I'm coming to go to war and he said it when he got signed he said the next couple years I'm gonna get knocked out someone's gonna knock me out he goes but I'm gonna knock a lot of people out and

51:43I'm gonna break people you know and the only way to stop me is to shut me off and he goes I'm human I can be shut off I wanna watch that guy fight every time every time yeah it's mean that's an incredible mindset and I don't know if you can teach that I think a lot of people say you can't teach mental strength and I don't I think that's horseshit I think you could teach everything I think the mind can be can be trained I mean this is what they do in boot camp right I mean and it works to varying degrees of success I think the mind can be trained it's just a matter of what's your baseline where are you coming in at are you a total scaredy-cat or are you a pretty stoic rugged dude to begin with and what can they do and maybe maybe you're too stuck maybe you're you're too non-emotional and you're too non vulnerable and you you're delusional in your perceptions

52:34it's amazing seeing the different ways that different athletes deal with it so Saturday night give you a perfect example so Fight Night you know you saw it is the one doing the testing a lot of times Fight Night there's not a lot going on in my world I'm there to put out fires in case something does go on I like to watch the fights close just to see those things we're talking about here so but occasionally I'll pop in backstage just to make sure everything's going good so I walk back there before the Holly cyborg fight and so Holly was out in the hallway getting ready you know to do that long walk for the championship bout and she was there for probably about 10 minutes cameras getting ready and she was doing that Holly pacing back and forth jamming her hands together firing herself up but she did it for a good 10 minutes back there and then you see once she gets out in

53:25the cage she was the first one in there pacing back and forth for ten minutes right hitting the hands together every between every single round she'd get off that stool back and forth pacing hitting the hands together that's the way she fired herself up she Carla Esparza walk out she walks out with like zero emotion on her face like is this girl ready to go she gets in the cage walks over one side and just stands there there's a bounce around at all but you know hey you see both of them you know can have success doing that way do you anything you know yeah it was amazing to see it there's a groove that they get into they get they get in the comfort zone they just like this is what I do every time I've compete and everybody's is different and you know some people don't like to bounce around but I remember when Holly did that during the Ronda Rousey fight I remember how I was

54:14looking at her I'm like wow this girl's got some legs I was like I'd seen a fight before and I knew that she was and substantive I'm not a tween 10-minutes backstage before she walked out the five minutes after she was in the cage and cyborg was walking out the 10 or 15 seconds between every round she probably you know ran a mile the equivalent of a couple extra rounds and she was yeah she was as fresh at the end as she was in beginning tremendous cardial in that girl well Jackson's camp you know that Michael excuse me Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn camp they spend a lot of time working on endurance training strength conditioning and they do a lot of Hill running you know they have this famous mountain that they run mmm that they all did and just Holly's been known for not just her cardio but like I said in the Ronda fight her legs the way she could

55:02move yeah that's one of the things that I thought was gonna be a big problem with her with Ronda was like Ranas got to catch her mm-hmm you know like the way she's bouncing and moving I don't think Rana can move like that I'm like watching her bounce and move and that crazy kickboxing style that she had for all those years or ability to do back flips and stuff she's really athletic she's a different different level of athlete yep yeah but cyborg is just too big too big too skillful too tough so she showed a lot she showed a lot of skill in that fight I was you know her previous UFC fights she was just kind of coming at people and mom I thought she was really skillful in this fight very very patient too you know I mean a lot of people want to say that she's just a brute but she's not like she's she's she knows what her skills arm which is big power and an excellent Muay Thai but she also

55:52administered that power the way she delivered it was very skillful very very methodical very professional and that was a workman like it really was it was interesting I talked to somebody in her camp and they wanted to see a little bit more that brute power come right at him they they thought she was holding back a little bit maybe a little too skillful but I thought it was great well they want to her to stop you know Holly but you run in a risky getting head kicked sure you know you got to be real careful with Holly Holly pull stuff out of her ass like you saw in the terrain Germain to random ePHI he saw it and obviously the Ronda fight she's very sneaky she knows how to especially that left high kick man she knows how to sneak that sucker thought it was a great fight love watching that fight yeah yeah the women's MMA talent level has risen and risen and it's I mean I remember when it

56:41will first came on the scene and Ronda was the champ and she was just kind of steamrolling these girls who really didn't belong in the ring with her it how yeah it has and you know interesting bringing back to the performance Institute you know talk with guys a lot over there that what they're finding out is you need to train a female athlete in a much different manner than you train a male athlete you know you see a lot of times when female athletes cut weight difficult difficulties they have cutting that weight because of you know menstrual cycles potentially and you also see in a lot of cases a rebound effect where a female will fight get down to wait fight and then bounce way back up you just lose the ability the body's ability to regulate where there will be cutting down on calories working out like crazy and they're still putting on way so I mean I think got something that

57:31you'll see the performance and Institute doing is try to you know figure out and then knowledgeably disseminate information about how to train the female athlete that they may need a little bit more time off in recovery between fights than a male athlete will but one thing I say time and time again is every time we have a female fight they come to fight and you often see cards that are you know kind of lagging a little bit and you look down on the list okay there comes a female fight and boom turns a card right around because you know inevitably they they give ultimate maximum effort and that's at least what I see there's a lot of that well there's the the excuse me the talent level is rising they're very hungry and they're they're looking to be that next person they realize like look Ronda Rousey's gone no one has really filled her place I mean there's some

58:22very popular fighters you know like Rose nama unis obviously now is gonna be one of the most popular fighters after the knockout of you Ani and Jay check cyborgs obviously very popular but there's plenty of room for more and they realize that look this is the time to go for it and I just think that you know the women that get involved in fighting in the first place it's not there's a lot of men that get involved in fighting that are not going to fight after a while but women that get involved in fighting they tend to be crazy you can play kit in in a good way you know like these are wild women you know like cats and goneö type characters you know they're just wild and like when you watch them fight I mean you're gonna see some chaos I mean they're they're not gonna be playing it safe they're they're gonna be going for it yep I love that about him now cat is

59:03an interesting example because she was telling me the exact same thing that you were saying them with a lot of women their body responds very poorly to the weight cut and then immediately wants to gain weight afterwards yeah do you think that that's some sort of like an evolutionary feature because of their the fact they carry babies and mother need they need fat their body freaks out I've definitely thought that sure you know response like your body's like hey I don't know what this crazy person is doing but we got to put some fat on absolutely and that's you know that's something again going back to the performance Institute that they're they're deep they're diving deep into and Clint wattenberg specially on the nutrition side that you know seeing those indica and profiles after a fight you know what can you do both and cutting back in training and you know

59:45through your through your diet to help you know control and regulate that and cat was telling me about a program that you guys were just you were just mentioning briefly in San Diego where they're using some sort of magnetic frequencies on fighters that have had brain injuries like what what is this yeah well was something that the dr. Duncan French kind of brought into the mix here so previous come into the UFC he was director of sports performance at University of Notre Dame in Southend Indiana and they were looking into you know traumatic brain injury and football and possible therapy and they came across a clinic in San Diego that was using this therapy an fda-approved device it's basically low-level magnet therapy in conjunction with that they do some EKGs or reading of the electrical waves in the brain and you know initially we're finding that this

60:39therapy was bringing some of those readings back together and I think very early in in the process of figuring out whether this can really work or not but you know certainly with the UFC wants to be as ahead of the curve in terms of potential therapies out there for you know for treating the brain and so yeah cats been going there for a while and you know as said she says she's experienced some positive results yeah she told me she got some outstanding results and what's interesting is there's been a ton of research and studies done on transdermal stimulation all these different ways to increase the the brain's ability to learn and there was a radio lab podcast on this I think it was called something 9-volt see if he could find it 9-volt something another but it basically detailed how they use this for a sniper simulation and what they did is they took this woman who was

61:36a reporter they put her through this sniper simulation game took a video game she scored poorly and then yeah 9-volt nirvana Thank You Jamie and so then they attached these electrodes to various areas of her head and stimulated her brain with small charge and she went through the exact same thing and she said it felt like the 20 minutes went by in two minutes and her score was perfect and this is being echoed throughout like many different people that have done tests on these very and there's a lot of like home hacking where people are literally going a radio lab and making their own setups but I'm curious to see if the UFC has looked into some of these things like some like maybe perhaps there's a way you could stimulate the body's ability to learn certain techniques or like carve pathways by stimulating areas of the brain yeah man another great reason for you to get

62:35Duncan in here because he can talk real knowledge would be about this therapy he told me when at the University of Notre Dame you know they'd have they've had football players that would you know have migraine headaches for long periods of time that underwent this therapy in a matter of weeks they were they went away when Donna and I visited the facility down in San Diego they talked about employees of the facility bringing in their kids a kids that had some levels of autism that after this therapy were more engaging with people they also talked about kids that had tests or finals coming up the day after where they go in for this therapy the night before and did their test scores were improving well as a result there was a lot of they deal with a lot of Special Forces soldiers down in the San Diego area that have had traumatic brain injuries because of you know IEDs and

63:25I've seen some success there so I mean I think some real exciting potential there that again you know the UFC wants to be at the forefront of and you know be the first to you know to suggest some of these things for our athletes and you know potentially even looking getting some of these devices at the p.i and be able to treat some of our athletes there yeah that would be amazing and I think that we're in an interesting time now where because so much research is being put on CTE and traumatic brain injuries that we're looking at potential ways to mitigate those problems and maybe even rehab some of the issues that fighters of having yeah so one thing we didn't show you and your tour is we now make part of the onboarding process at the P I the C 3 logic testing which is this you know 25 30 minute neuroscience tuddy and it's an iPad based tests it's a mix of memory shape

64:24recognition balance you actually you know put the pad on your onto a belt you stand on this unstable surface and close your eyes and it basically gives you measurements or readings after 25 or 30 minutes and then you know over time you can compare those readings if they're declining maybe it's time to take a little bit of time off from from training and fighting if they're staying stabled and you know maybe you know you're doing all right the California Athletic Commission requires that for all fights so all fighters in any car in California the Wednesday or Thursday before the fight goes through the c3 logic testing all that's uploaded to a cloud so you know after a period of a couple years a fighter can have access to some real objective data on you know what the neural cognitive capabilities are looking like that would be a great way to find out I mean maybe one of the only

65:15ways to find out without a fighter to disclosing it whether or not a fighters been knocked out in camp because that that's a common occurrence that fighters get knocked out in camp in Harts barring them and then a week two weeks later have to fight and their ability to take a shot is gone sure yeah it's interesting you know often asked about that and comparing it to other sports leagues and the one thing I will say you know with MMA now this is excluding things are going on in a gym but in a fight that's regulated by Athletic Commission I think MMA has some of the most conservative return-to-play policy I know it does of any sport we're in if you're an NFL quarterback and you get knocked out on a Sunday yeah you're in a concussion protocol but they're trying to get you back playing probably the next Sunday or the same day thereafter which is crazy a big concussion in MMA

66:04as you know is like a 4560 mandatory 45 days no activities 60 days before you fight I mean we've seen suspensions out to six months mandatory medical suspensions so and some of them I think are very warranted I mean there's some brutal brutal knockout this where you like Alistair in Francis and Ghana like I don't want to see Alistair fight next month you know I mean I don't and here's a question about a guy like Alistair Alistair we looked it up one day on a podcast has been stopped or knocked out somewhere the neighborhood of 13 times in MMA and then three times more in kickboxing what what's the number where you like that's enough yeah I don't know the answer of that I know you talked with Alistair and see how those wits about him that's what's crazy Alistair doesn't even seem remotely punished I mean he is not only that he doesn't seem deterred like it's crazy

66:57like he gets knocked out he's like whoa we go back to the drawing board and we'll be better next time I think it's an unknown now but you also look at you know the UFC has been the largest contributor to the Cleveland Clinic fight or brain health study so we you know made I think multi-million dollar commitment we've upped it once so yeah we're looking to invest resources into finding out what those answers are definitely and be at the forefront of any innovative therapies that are out there innovative you know testing it's out there we want to be at the front well the issue with CTE is that you really can't test for it until after a fighter's dead correct but haven't they recently figured out a way to test people while they're alive yeah and I've read some of that I've also read that scientists arguing that that you know that's bunk and that's not right so I

67:44don't know where we're at on that hmm yeah because boy it just seems like I don't want it and it also affects people differently right depending upon what genes they have some people are more predisposed to CTE yeah and that's that's my understanding of it again a lot of unknowns but you know I think that the UFC has shown a dedication to you know contributing to areas where we can find out some of those answers yeah like I know that you guys recently had Mark Hunt come to Vegas because Mark Hunt had talked about suffering damage from fights and the UFC said you know what we can't just hear him say that we're gonna pull him off this card and he was furious and they said look like we love you don't get it wrong but we want you we want you to be safe and you say that you're slurring your and then he changed and said well it's after a few drinks and then they were

68:37okay well come by let's give you the full gamut of tests yep as exact would happen and we're always gonna act at him in abundance of caution and in a scenario like that and so now he's back on the roster and back with a fight schedule yep he's fighting in Perth and yeah in February so when a guy says something like that you just kind of have to you're hot when a guy says I'm slurring my words I've been taking too much punishment like okay we got a red flag here you have to yeah absolutely I mean that happened I looked back to I don't remember when Cain was gonna fight at the end of last year I think he came out a week or two previous saying man I'm in so much pain from this back issue I'm having to use medical marijuana CBD leading up to this fight it's the only way I can train I'm gonna have this surgery directly after the fight it was actually a Nevada Commission that saw

69:26this and said wait a second if you're really in that much pain like and we can't with good conscience license you to fight and sure enough they didn't do that and the end of the patent the surgery and hopefully is back pretty soon but it's been like a year now yeah he's a guy that is almost too tough for his body or maybe is too tough for his body if you watch Cain fight particularly early in his career when he's in his prime you just couldn't believe the amount of endurance that a 240-pound man can have the the just the pace that he would put on guys and you'd see them just drowning in that pace but the only way you get you mean you have to have some physical gifts cardiovascularly and I think Cain will admit that he has some some natural cardio but unbelievable work ethic and mental toughness and that mental toughness also makes you push through injuries yeah

70:20and pushing through injuries is how injuries become chronic and that's how injuries become unmanageable and require surgery I mean you would know I'm out was an athlete and went through my share of injuries but you know I played basketball and ran track and and in those sports you know depending on your injury you can control I think your exposure and protect your body I mean how do you do that in fighting you can you can't you know yeah you can't prevent certain positions that your mom you're gonna be in and if you're not completely healthy you're gonna be probably exposed from the only thing you'll injure is drill I mean if you're really injured and you have a good opponent or a good training partner you can drill on certain things and say hey man you just can't touch my shoulder but there's no way you can spar and there's no way you could really prepare for a fight without

71:04really hard training and hard training with with injuries is virtually impossible I mean with some injuries you know I mean some of them you can work around there's ways to figure a way around things and that's one of the things I found was really interesting also about the UFC Performance Institute is there's a lot of different things that you guys have devised or have you know you guys have brought in and implemented that other people have devised to help people with injuries that are trying to still train hard like that Gravity treadmill thing yeah that's in our in our altitude chamber so you strap that around you and you're getting not you know I don't know what the ratio is to you know if your true weight to what you know type of stress you're putting on your body but it's much less and going out and running on the regular treadmill of the street and also have

71:48the underwater treadmill what you saw so that was on that was like what's that like she's like it's weird yeah it's like it's like it just seems like the floors moving you got a jacket you know basically it's a rising floor so you rise up to the top you step on it and then it drops down and it works like a regular treadmill because you're but because you're underwater you're putting less stress on obviously your lower extremities and if you notice also there's cameras underwater with a TV screen right in front of of the person using and the idea there is if you have an ankle injury or a knee injury you could take a look at how your foots coming down and are you favoring it and what your your gait looking like it's a really cool piece of equipment Conor was using that quite a bit and in the run-up to to Floyd he put a lot of stuff out there on social media on that thing I

72:36think you liked it yeah well he's got a bum knee right he's got an ego that has had he's had some issues with in the past or there it is there it is that's done there's a Duncan French off there to the right thing just drops you down and then you run on that thing yep yeah oh man I'm not a hundred percent sold on that to be honest well that's why you should come out and get it get on it I mean I'm sure it's difficult but I think that like actually carrying your and running on hills is a winner yeah probably now look if you're coming off an ACL surgery right and you know you're taking baby steps to get back to running mm-hmm it's probably there otherwise if if you're healthy and you know training for a fight coming up in a couple weeks I don't know if that's necessarily the quitting it for you he's a guy that I'm puzzled by Connor obviously I'm a gigantic fan but man his cardio it seems

73:25like there's a thing there there's something there whether it's the style that he fights the explosive sprinting style that he fights it's unsustainable you know or whether or not there seems to be some sort of an issue that that needs to be addressed some much more radical approach to strength and conditioning and I would love to see the guys that Performance Institute try to tackle that and try to figure out I mean I'm sure they've run vo2 max is on them and but yes he did most of his camp there but you know he had his own team around him it was kind of directing and but in his defense this was a very quick camp sure you're getting ready for a 12-round fight with the greatest fighter of all time in boxing Jesus Christ it was like six or seven weeks I think Floyd knew what he was doing I tell you one of the incredible things about that and there wasn't a lot said about it

74:10going back to kind of my world anti-doping world so Floyd does this for all his fights he basically hires you sada to do testing it's not you know it's not the same as a UFC program where you're subject to testing year-round in boxing once the fight is made you saw it then comes in and does collecting so it depends on how far out the fight was made but Conor and Floyd signed that contract was it seven weeks out maybe they were each tested 16 times in that seven weeks and I guarantee you they are the two most tested athletes in that period of time ever in the history of anti-doping so not only was it a incredibly cool event but I think incredibly clean cool and clean for the fans to know that you know how out of the way those two guys went to ensure that that fight was fair and clean that is amazing good enough credit for that it's too bad there's not two performance

75:04Institute's you could have one right next to each other or opponents could train at very you know like you could film things at the performance Institute in at a level Forrest Griffin was showing me how the octagon is set up with 360-degree cameras and you could literally film and then rotate angles up down you can you can move around and show oh when you're throwing this punch your back foot is coming off the ground when you are leaning to your left you're dropping your hand yeah it's like it's like the John Madden telestrator you stop action and draw on that huge big screen next we got to get around exactly when Floyd was shown or excuse me when Forrest was showing me how you can move it around I was like this is insane like this what a tool this is for technique development it really and I think we're at the infancy of these coaches coming in and figuring out how they can use these

75:55things is that that they can benefit their players I mean that there it is right there yeah this thing oh there's my tour well did somebody put that up on yeah oh yeah put it on my in stories but I didn't put it on YouTube somebody put it on YouTube here so what what force was showing me was how they can pause it in slow-mo and back it up and then change angles and that all the fighters sparring sessions are filmed there filmed from an overhead they're filmed from the sides and there's cameras all around the Octagon I mean it's just what a facility man yeah I mean I really think we talked about this is just bringing this sport the whole new level yeah well Francis is going to be your first test tube sort of child yeah you know you talked about wouldn't it be nice to have two opponents working side-by-side but the PI has that capability I mean as you saw it it's set

76:52up specifically so you have certain things downstairs and certain things upstairs so you'd have to schedule so steep a says hey man I want to come out and use this it is it is open to steep a we could schedule it so steep Bay's downstairs doing a strength and conditioning while Francis is upstairs it's a lot of what force does force you know could be the intermediary to make sure Francis goes out one door steep it comes in another never run into themselves but that definitely has taken them and they are there but yeah but what if I was T pay I would not want to be doing strength conditioning and then in between sets you just like have your ear and you hear Frances is hitting the heavy bag and scaring everybody you've styled you tried that that punch thing machine yeah he's got the world-record punch on that there's a what it is is like for folks it's a path

77:40it's adjustable it moves up and down and you punch it and not only did he break the world record he broke it by several thousand pounds per square inch yes I think his reading and I don't know what the reading is was a hundred and twenty-nine thousand something and his tariff it is you hit it a couple of times man I thought you were hitting pretty hard now what did you register like a thirty five or forty thousand I got forty six as my hardest one tire man you kind of put gloves on to do that too I would imagine that being wrapped up and that's an argument that I've had many times when it comes to MMA in general I like how you can angle it so you can throw an uppercut as well that's an argument that I've had for MMA in general I think it's weird that we are allowed to elbow with no pad knee with no pad kick with no pad on the shin but the knuckles are protected and I think

78:36that it really probably allows people to deliver more damage with the knuckles padded I don't think padded knuckles helps your opponent as much as it helps you and especially wrist protection like when I was trying to punch that thing with just my bare hands which is stupid especially when you haven't warmed up right but you're you realize like your wrist moves around you slam into that thing if you're hitting it hard your wrist moves around well that's the case when you're punching a person to it you have to be much more precise with where you're targeting and what you're hitting you can't hit foreheads and elbows you'll break your hand like very easily and I wonder it's just it seems barbaric to people to fight bare knuckle which to me is kind of crazy because you're kicking like you're shinning people in the head like I don't understand like we have this weird sort of childish view of

79:28like what should and shouldn't be legal elbows are some of the hardest I mean you can just do that with an L and it doesn't hurt at all you know your knees your shins those guys that aspire Muay Thai for years and years their shins develop calcification all over the top where they can kick baseball bats like there's trees yeah there's a great one of bull cow kicking banana tree just going crate and he's one of the greatest Thai fighters of all time but he's he's chopping at this banana tree and cuts it in half and like Jesus like how is it okay that that guy can kick someone in the face with that but you have to have pads here he is right here like give me some volume on this it's not doing that with his bare knuckle I'll tell you that that's insane getting hit in the face with that but see the difference like that's hard bone yeah it's no padding why do you

80:39have to have padding on your knuckles but you don't have to have it on your chins and your knees and your elbows that seems to me to be a silly way of approach yeah yeah I mean maybe we could pad up everything then people get mad yeah like we're Pusa for the sport I think you go the other way I think you don't pad up anything I think you pad up your dick and that's it that's what I think pad up your teeth pad up your dick let her rip I really think they should fight bare knuckle I just don't think it makes any sense whatsoever especially considering the fact that I pokes are one of the major considerations right you're not going to mitigate that with those gloves you just yeah you know unless they develop some sort of a new design where the gloves are much more curled in yeah there there's the the eye pokes always going to be an issue it would be the

81:24exact same issue if you had bare knuckle well yeah I mean now you can take away with the new unified rules which ironically enough aren't unified yeah so we go from commission a commission and you know a fighter would have to inform them fight week hey what are the rules here that's so unfair yeah to these fighters that you know are training and developing that instinct to some of these rules but anyway the new unified rules which aren't unified anybody who's extending the fingers that the referee has to warn them first but if they continue to do that a point can be taken away I think they should take a point every time a guy gets poked in the eye and my thought process is even if it's unintentional the damage has been done and if you can see it on the replay legitimate I poke and you see the guy wincing like we've seen many many times that guy's compromised and I think that

82:13it's only fair that a point be taken away even if it was unintentional well it's like you know kicking or needing a down fighter to that you know you have to show intent to take a point away well how is the referee gonna get in the head of a fighter to say whether or not that was intentional right it should almost be I think that if it's done a points taken away I agree remove the intent from it because the damage is already done at that point yeah it doesn't matter whether or not it's intentional I mean we're not putting the blame on the fighter it's just it happened it's one of the unfortunate things but the fighter that got hit is the one who suffers the consequences of it there's no way it should be an even exchange like oh I'm sorry I accidentally need your eye socket yeah you know no point taken and now you can't go on that death to me sounds I think there's room to

82:57alter the rules and I mean I've I'm beating a dead horse with my bare knuckle thing because I've been talking about that for years because I just think people have a greatly exaggerated perception of the effectiveness of punching people in the face and I think that greatly exaggerated perception is due to the fact they wrap their hands you you wrap up your wrists and your wrists and your hand becomes a cast where it's not bending at all I mean get deep in there with athletic tape and gauze and they cover the knuckles and everything else I got it and you could just blast something with that but when you just have just your hands it feels very delicate I always tell people you should punch the bag occasionally at least bare-knuckle just go and punch the bag and you realize you can't really hit it nearly as hard yes interesting I just think that we have but like you can't tape the out of

83:48your ankles right right I mean we've stopped fighters from walking into the Octagon with fully tight aped up ankles you know yeah well some commissions allow light tape and then a neoprene sleeve over it others say no yeah again uniformity is again you know what talk about uniformity kind of bringing it back to the anti-doping world this is a big point of contention I have with athletic commission is really really frustrated and that's the marijuana rules so you're talking my language did you have to see he had thoughts up the UFC follows the wada rules world anti-doping agency kind of sets the world standard they have scientists that study these drugs and determine a is something performance-enhancing B is it a health and safety issue and over the last couple years they rise they raise the marijuana threshold used to be 15 nanograms per milliliter now must

84:39succeed 150 nanograms per milliliter which everybody metabolizes differently but you know from scientists that I've talked about the ingestion of marijuana or THC the psychoactive ingredient has to be pretty damn close to that collection in order to exceed 150 anagrams per milliliter which means you literally almost have to be high the day pretty much so if an athlete just takes a day or two off there they're most like no we shouldn't I suggest longer than that just because you never know how different people metabolize things differently as you're cutting weight whether you're releasing some from your fat cells I don't know I would suggest you know several weeks but the reality is it could be a lot closer than that well we're running into several athletic commissions Texas being one New York being another we had probably the most extreme one last month in Michigan that

85:29have lower thresholds Texas and New York have 35 or 50 Michigan where we just came from has a no-tolerance parrot policy for marijuana so any measurable amount of THC would cause a positive test and we lobbied them hard in anticipation of our event they're saying do you realize what this means I mean a fighter could walk through a cloud of secondhand smoke you know on the way to weigh-in or a fight and it's going to show up a measurable amount and you're gonna that fighter could win a championship on that and then you're gonna take that championship away and overturn the win we had in Texas a couple wins overturned for thresholds which I think we're a little bit of I think 35 it's 35 or 50 was theirs but there were slightly over that well under the you know established world standard and man I think these athletic commissions got to take a serious look at you know

86:25bringing those into uniformity you have you know in the u.s. you have certain states now where it's legal medically and recreationally but you know arguably federally still illegal but you have some countries where it's completely legal and you have doctors prescribing this for you know pain control or stress or anxiety and you know a commission like Michigan one of those fighters from one of those countries that is completely legally doing it under the care of a doctor and in lieu of doing a synthetic drug like an opioid or a xanax or something like that common sense would tell you it's much healthier and safer to do that you know you're setting up this barrier that you know could negatively affect a fighter's career or if they have any discernable amount in their system and you know not only from the unified rules but from from an anti-doping marijuana's perspective to

87:21these Commission's have got to come together and you know realize what the white thing to do is and stop you know a lot of instances stop governing or policing just because you can yeah we ran into that with the whole Courtney Casey thing and in Texas on have you familiar with that yeah just explain what happened so Courtney we fought in Texas had a great win against Jessica Aguilar I think was probably that you know the finding moment of her career she looked really really good a couple weeks later I was actually at our event in Stockholm Sweden I'm it was vividly on a Friday night I get a call from her and I can't even understand what she's saying she's just crying uncontrollably saying Jeff you know what is going on I didn't even understand what it happens it slow down would happen so there's stuff on the internet about me testing positive I've I've never even thought about using a

88:14prohibited substance I'm super careful about what I use so I said okay let me check into it and so I called a guy on the Texas Commission I said hey what's going on you know with this Courtney Casey thing and he tells me yeah she tested positive we just announced it and I said for what she said--oh her te ratio was elevated it was over a four to one and you know knowing what that measurement means I said explain yeah so te T is testosterone he is epi testosterone and every human being male and female have on average a one to one ratio naturally occurring in them and if you take antibiotics steroids it can have a tendency to raise that ratio where the T becomes higher than the e however what anti-doping has found out and evolved into the last few years that especially mildly elevated ratios sometime there are natural reasons for that happening especially in

89:13females especially females on birth control which is you know illegal medication and so what you do now in anti-doping when you have an elevated te ratio you go to a backup test and that backup test is called an isotope ratio mass spectrometry or herbs test and that reads the carbon atom in the testosterone in a sample to determine whether or not it's plant base which would mean a synthetic or it's naturally-occurring because testosterone is synthesized through wild yams correct right so that's how they find out this plant based that's correct so Texas tells me hey her ratio was a little bit higher than a four to one that means she's positive and they said they tell me we're just following your guys rules and I tell the guy that's not our rules I go you just announced a positive test for this girl and hey you know maybe she did do something I don't know but you're

90:07supposed to run the backup test for us and it was basically told me well it was a Friday goes well our office is closed Monday we'll get back to you on Tuesday and really thereafter it was radio silence so we were working with Courtney worked with you sada closely and you sought a stepped in said absolutely that is wrong we're gonna go back and look at her biological profile and we'll share that with Texas we'll take a look at these te readings over the time of the samples that she's submitted sure enough most of the samples were mildly elevated and sure enough you saw too did the right thing and they went and did that back up every time they did it she was negative so they reached out to Texas said hey we'll share this information with you and and our historical records this girl does have a naturally occurring mildly elevated te ratio then went through a

90:58several week process of figuring out hey is there some of that sample remaining because if there is Texas you have an obligation to go ahead and do this backup testing on it took them a number of weeks where poor Courtney was in limbo and finally Dana put them on blast basically said Texas Commission you know get your together we're not coming back there and we got ahold of that remaining sample or B sample how to test it out a lot of laboratory and was negative on the IR n now is that putting someone on blast warm works that's just no it's it's an ego thing like people are bitching at you you're gonna succumb to that yeah sometimes that's what it takes to get someone to do the right thing it does so this poor girl is living with the fact that she's labeled as a cheater for two to three months talked about she still will be yeah it's one of those things like once someone

91:53says you're a steroid cheater okay always she talked I mean she lived on she lives on Maui so small community she talked about going to the store and people pointing at her talking bad about her she talked about she's she's a coach and a gym their coaches kids about parents you know not wanting her to coach their kids when this was in later how many of those people heard that she was exonerated headlines on page one but at retraction on the back page right nobody pays attention to that and you know her performance since she found Detroit right yes was not a great performance for her and I can't help but wonder if that had affected her you know over those last couple months I think that was just stylistic you know I just think you do it the way she matched up with Felice Herrig was just those two Bulldogs just clashing heads with each other they just couldn't get anything

92:39done could be I mean that's again going back to the mental game a tremendous amount of stress to carry with yourself through you know these last six or so months well I hope she gets past that cuz she's a lot of fun she's she is I like her a lot and I got to tell you there's one of the most satisfying things again going back to the go snitch thing really my role here is as an advocate someone who looks out for athletes and situations like that there's been other things that we do is look when we put this program together the SATA program it was it's it's unprecedented and there's no other professional sport that has the comprehensiveness of the program there's also no other professional sport that's quite put together like the UFC what is in terms of you have individual athletes that you know are competing against each other it's not a team sport worth one

93:27person test positive you have another person you know to step on in so a lot of what I've done over those first you know a couple years is take a look at you know hey we took we think was a pretty good shot at the rules to begin with but look and see how those rules played themselves out as time went on and after about a year and a half there were a couple instances where I saw hey this isn't quite fair to an athlete we need to change that we did so after a year and a half there was a couple rules that we change the first one there's kind of a funny story behind this too was on if you remember when Nate fought Conor I think the second time he goes to the press conference after and takes out a vape pen do you remember that and someone asked him what he was doing he said he was with CBD and at the time the the rule was the in competition period where CBD was prohibited lasted until

94:18four hours after the conclusion of the fight and he was clearly within that time period so you saw two contacted me and said hey you know technically Nate was in violation of this and I said hey look this was not the intent of the rule this is you know and they never indicated that they were going to sanction him but I made it clear explain CBD for anybody that might not know what we're talking about sure so CBD is part of the you know the marijuana plant but it's not psychoactive part of it I know a lot of our fighters anecdotally use it for anti-inflammatory purposes I think I mean have you ever used it or yes what what other benefits is anxiety it's it's great for people that are under stress it it actually has a great response for that I know a lot of people that use it just for anxiety but anti-inflammation is is a big one that's the big one people

95:11use it for penny with arthritis you love it yeah again comparing to if you know a natural plant derived product versus a synthetic you know nonsteroidal antiinflammatory advils tylenols can be terrible toxic Anja yeah probably common sense would would you know in addition to science would say that the T V DS may be a little bit healthier for you nevertheless it was prohibited in competition is it still no so that was actually a rule change the wada prohibited list which we followed took it completely off the prohibited list start at the mains in 2018 so that's great so these take CBD the entire time they're training there's no it's obviously there's no performance benefit there's no psychoactive effect it just reduces inflammation and it doesn't a natural way way healthier and it was the case before if they could do it in training was only prohibited in

95:56competition so weigh-in day and fight day now it's completely been taken off the list and it's okay to use it anytime that's fantastic that's fantastic so it was good so but we identified a problem with with the rules in that when Nate finished that that fight with Connor you saw it came to the post-fight medical tent said Nate we need to make a collection from you and I don't know whether it was blood or urine but they got a sample from him he then went to the press conference after and was on you know took the CVD what I said is look you can't punish him you have the sample that shows what was in his system yes CBD was prohibited in competition but you have a sample to show whether or not he was using it right it's clear that you know he was using it after the fight we just put those extra four hours in there why with the thought of if a fighter finishes a fight and somehow you

96:42saw it is not able to get to him say gets an ambulance right away it goes to the hospital you increased that window just in case they can't get them come to find out as we started putting this program together you saw it can always get to that fight or after if they're transported they can hop in the ambulance with them it it wasn't an issue where we needed those extra four months so we changed that rule and now basically the rule is the in competition period ends with a collection immediately after the fight or you know you saw it has a reasonable amount of time after the fight so the funny thing is after we change this rule Nate and Nick Diaz come to a fight and they're sitting called the zoo for section you know kind of Danish section right there behind Danis table so I go over to Nick and Nate I say hey Nate man hey we changed that rule you know the whole CBD thing and

97:33actually we kind of refer to it as as the Nate Diaz rule and when the Diaz brothers ratified I mean it's pandemonium and chaos everybody's yelling their name and I literally I'm like I had the demon register with them he didn't look at me he was looking somewhere else so about a month later Nate I see him and I think it was in Vegas I'm in the kind of walk out tunnel and here comes Nate so he sees me it comes over me gives me a kind of bro hug what's up he's with Yancy Medeiros and so Yancy and I start talking and you an see beyond being just an unbelievably entertaining fighter is one of the best dudes on the roster great guy so I'm talking to Ganci all sudden nakos hey Jeff man tell you antsy about my USANA rule I got a solder rule named after me dog and so I thought man you're doing something right when Nate Diaz is like excited about a change and you solder

98:23rule right yeah that is a that is a very good rule I'm really excited about that what's the story with Nick he can't fight is he still have like some sort of oh so yeah well Nick was our first fighter that ran into the whereabouts issues so he got three whereabouts failures in a rolling twelve months so he's currently going through that process you know it's a tough one cuz I don't want to fight I think he does I think he does I mean we've you know I've sat down with him over the last couple months and talking about trying to resolve this whereabouts issue I mean the unfortunate thing there's look the whereabouts failure sanctions are meant to catch people that are cheating and trying to avoid testing and I just think Nick's lifestyle led to those three kind of whereabouts not that he was trying to avoid testing just like being Nick we're trying to yeah we're trying to work

99:12through that he you know he put he trusted certain individuals to do his whereabouts for him I think is what happened over time and those individuals would come in and out of his life and of course kind of unbeknownst to him that he was missing a lot of these things nevertheless you know that again there's strict liability here and it's currently under sanction but we're hoping to resolve that pretty quick now last time we you were on you talked about this new potential testosterone that was derived from animals and that there might be a way that people could take this stuff and go undetected yeah I mean I haven't heard much about that since then was it just a theoretical thing yeah no it's out there it's real but you know again some of the things that to combat that are the biological passport program where you're looking over time it's somebody's te ratio and even though that you know

100:06won't trigger a positive on the isotope ratio mass spectrometry if you see wild variances and te ratios over time that could potentially trigger would there be a more violation sorry there was a big way to mitigate that biological passport thing by making a specific time that you inject it every day and doing it on a regular basis like instead of I know it was one of the ways that some fighters have gotten caught is that they knew they were going to be in Vegas or something for a long period of time so they couldn't take any and they maybe would take it twice a week so they doubled their dose and took it in a one-shot and then they got hit with a random and then it showed that they had this massive yeah it's a potential I mean you know someone who has the resources and sophisticated and somebody has someone who's educated in chemistry it's it's definitely a cat and mouse

100:57game anti-doping and you know Vogel talked about that when he was on here I mean the premise of Icarus initially was right he was going to show that that anti-doping doesn't work and it was actually something I was I watched your podcast with him and watched the movie as well and initially I was a little bit turned off on that premise because he gave he gave the examples of Armstrong Marion Jones they said look anti-doping just doesn't work and I'm gonna go out and prove that well he says both those people got busted right that's the reality but look how they did they got busted through the investigative element of anti-doping and that's what's something that was learned and came out of I think the investigations I was involved in and all you know you saw to does this water does this the drug testing is not enough you know drug testing is a necessity you

101:46need to have that but you also need to have strong investigative element you have to liaison and you sada does this with law enforcement throughout the world so that if you can't catch somebody because they're sophisticated and the techniques they're using you know maybe you catch them through you know informants or other investigative resources pressure exactly now that documentary blew my mind was incredible for people who haven't seen it it's on Netflix it's called Icarus it's by Brian Fogle in the documentary the premise was he was a guy who was a cyclist and decided to compete in a race first clean and then come back and do it again under the assistance of a guy who was an expert in anti-doping that showed him like what's the stuff that you should take right along the line he makes friends with this guy Gregory how do you say his last name retching cough

102:36something like that yeah and during this time period it's discovered that the entire Soviet Olympic team is on steroids and that they cheated during the games at Sochi and he explains how they did it and then the investigation comes down and the guy has to flee Russia and then he comes to America he goes under protective custody and Brian Fogle just you talk about like just step it in holy smokes did he come across something he did an awesome job amazing on the story and this Gregory guy making him kind of the sympathetic character yet he was the kind of the evil villain that was doing all this over in Russia was just an incredible a movie the one thing that he didn't cover too much in the movie it was a little bit disappointed is who really the true heroes were of that whole thing so there was a husband and wife couple Vitali and Yuliya Stepanova and Yulia was an 800-meter runner for

103:33Russia and Vitali actually worked for resada the Russian anti-doping organization has a drug collecting officer and they were the ones basically that caused this German documentary to come out exposing what Gregory was doing and then at that point of time the heat came on Gregory because this information was out there and he was either forced to stay there and likely be you know arrested and put the blame on or flee to the US it was dealt with very briefly in that movie but those two you know I think we're the true heroes because you know they just did this because it was the right thing to do Gregory did it you know obviously with a lot of self preservation in mind and that he had one of two choices either take off and come clean or stay there and face the consequences but nevertheless man Fogle did I thought an awesome job in that movie it's just an incredible incredible story and it's

104:26it's really you know tough I'm sure four Olympic athletes to say god man this is what what we're up against when you're talking about state-sponsored doping and the KGB being involved there's almost a sense of hopelessness out there that you know how am I ever know that I'm as a clean athlete you know my rights are going to be protected again going back to what we're doing with the UFC the beauty of what we're doing is you you never see that because you have an independent authority you sada who's operating and administering our program so unlike the Russian government where they have interests of Russian athletes you know doing well and winning gold medals you know you saw the could you know in a sense give a crap about you know who's being who's being caught and he who isn't yeah so one of the things that came up in the film that was really disturbing was the collusion between wada

105:19and the IOC and that they really it was in their best interest to not sanction Russia yeah it's it's a con you have people sitting you still do on the on the water board and on the IOC board so there's there's a conflict of interest as wada is gonna come in and say hey this was clearly state-sponsored doping we're gonna exclude Russia from the Olympics for the next you know however many years well that's a hit to the IOC because IOC is getting money from these television networks putting on the games and Seoul are in you know Tokyo coming up so you know a conflict of interest there you saw it as a nonprofit organization so the UFC yes the UFC does pay them to administer our program but it's not lining the pockets of anybody they're CEOs not making more money because the UFC is here they maybe have a few more personnel to administer the program but you know if if we go away

106:09you saw us still in existence they're still doing Olympic testing and you know nobody's pocketbooks are hurting yeah that in pendants I think is critical and that's something that you brought up earlier I think that's so awesome and you know what a massive credit to the UFC they decided to do it this way and not do it in-house that's just an take on your approach a lot of courage to do that and it takes a real commitment to try to cleaning up the sport one of the things that was really weird was like they banned some some teams from Russia like not all the sports but the sports they banned were like nobody gives a about what the sports were yes well I think in real maybe you could find out what what they banned they were gonna ban the entire team but the outrage from that was just so strong and then they realized the economic impact of that would be literally in the billions of

106:55dollars yeah well I think they banned the track and field team from from real games which is pretty significant track-and-field they had a pretty big Olympic sport there was a new here Russia banned from Winter Olympics but clean athletes can compete so this is new right Russia athletes made that a little bigger for my shitty eyes Russia has been banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea over the country systematic manipulation of anti-doping rules however Russian athletes who can prove that they are clean will be invited in in quotes to compete in say that film Chang was degree in Korean the International Olympic Committee said Tuesday so that's fascinating so they'll they'll be literally competing under the Olympic flag which is like wolf it's the most wide-ranging punishment ever meted out by the IOC in a part on a participating nation let alone a powerhouse of the

107:51Olympic movement yeah I mean you're competing on the Olympic flag but everybody's still going to know the commentators are going still going to say the Russian athlete competing on the Olympic flag but that's bizarre right competing I mean is this unprecedented the someone competing under the Olympic flag I'm not sure whether it's happened before or not man them before I'm pretty sure I remember just random people I don't they might not have had a country to perform or their whole country might not have sent them but they were gonna qualify or something hmm okay Wow crazy but there was also certain teams that were were kicked out of or certain gold medals that were rescinded but that was the other thing that I thought was really interesting about you sadhus protocol is that they freeze samples so just in case the testing improves in the future yeah huge to turn

108:38again it you know there's no denying it's a cat-and-mouse game going on out there but a deterrent is that it's not all of them but certain samples can be frozen up to ten years and as new tests come online like the long-term metabolite test that Gregory developed after five or six years they may go back and you know retest those samples and you know when we go out and educate our athletes I tell them look maybe you're not in the UFC any more of your legacies around forever and you know that's a smear to your legacy forever and it's all about creating that my job I work for the UFC my job is not hey let's see how many athletes we can catch my job is to try to get out there educate develop relationships and create that deterrent saying look you don't want to do this it's going to catch it eventually if you're going to do something I'll give you every you know resource and bit of

109:28knowledge I have to make sure you're successful under the program but you know success in my eyes is very few positive tests I don't you know right I don't equate the program with success because we've had you know 60 or so positives over time I'd love to see you know none and see more that those graphs showing those you know common markers of a doper come more into line right you're not in the position of a detective or a prosecutor anymore your position is now an athlete liaison it is and it's a much different role that's a role I really I really enjoy it's probably a lot less stressful definitely a lot stressful a lot less stressful and you know dana says it all the time the importance level in the UFC and MMA is off the charts I I still have a strong belief in ethics and sports and believe sports are so good for kids and teaching them life lessons to transcend sports my I have

110:19three daughters that you know played sports growing up a couple of them still do and and I know when they get out into the real world in that work environment there's nothing they can't handle because they've already handled it in sports they've run up against a coach who's an they've run up against teammates that are selfish they've had great you know occurrences when they've worked well as a team all of that is going to come into play to help in their lives and when you introduce something and something is so pure and good that's breaking the rules that short-term mostly long-term is not healthy for you Sports is about to be you know healthy for you and at some level especially the way these performs dancing drugs are used they're not really being used in a healthy healthy manner and so yeah but I feel I feel very strongly and very positive about what we're doing in the role that I'm

111:07playing here well it's interesting that the UFC unlike a lot of sports the the history is pretty transparent and the history of doping is also pretty transparent like everybody's really aware of what the Wild West days were like I mean it's ever people talk about and laugh about it it's it's sort of an it's not a secret at all and particularly as we were saying about pride but you know I think that ultimately what sports should be about it should be about effort skill determination focus discipline and those are the lessons you could pass on not who has the best pharmacists not you know not who is the best team of scientists that can hide the results better and that's one of the more disturbing things about Icarus or or any of these other you know the things that have shown that you know there's systematic anti doping or doping or state-sponsored doping it's just it

112:01distorts the whole thing like what a victory is or why you've got some athletes it probably would've won anyway if everybody was clean they might have been the best athlete anyway and yeah they could have won Floyd Landis told me told me out all the time about Lance he said fat dude was the baddest ass bicycle rider ever and take away all the drugs that were taken in the sport he would have been the best rider ever he had something going on there but the reality was everybody was using something and it's a up sport yeah I think I talked about this last time but I really you know people were surprised to hear this but I had a lot of compassion and understanding for a lot of these dopers after they told me their stories I mean you're a young kid vulnerable kid that you know wasn't really worldly that all your you know teenage life you aspire to go over to

112:47Europe and get on a bike and compete in these awesome races and all of a sudden you're over there dropped off and a coach sits in a room says you want to stay here kid here the program that we're on yeah the meth I heard one I heard a dozen of those stories grown men crying retelling those stories so yeah I mean I feel good about you know change in the culture and in this sport radically yeah I mean I'd love to have a podcast with you and Lance sit down together and discuss this now that the dust is kind of settled and you know he's been pretty open about it and transparent about the whole process himself yeah I mean I think the difference the difference that he has with everybody else is you know again this is back to Fogle's contention that they didn't catch Lance as you look back at his history and they they did actually you know 99 I think he had a

113:33corticosteroid positive in 2001 I think he had a test that showed high likelihood of EPO use it wasn't followed on but what he did is he became very powerful in the sport and the the International Cycling Union was was corrupt and basically used that power and wielded it and they covered up a lot of those tests crazy yeah it is crazy and it's and the crazy thing about combat sports I said we're not just talking about crossing a finish line quicker we're talking about the ability to deliver more damage on your opponent and that's why it's so critical that people fight clean whole new level that's a completely different thing yeah there's just really there's no comparison now let's get into we briefly touched on weight cutting but I know that the UFC has recognized that there's a real issue and what steps have we taken to try to mitigate the problems that are caused by weight cutting yeah

114:33it's interesting and another one of the reasons why I love the performance Institute and the staff that we had there and that before them and really stem from the you sada program we're under the water code you ban the use of IVs and so because I was kind of the point person obviously explain why my visa problem yellow and you know goes back to the to the cyclists they were using IVs to basically flush their system of drugs to manipulate their bile biological passport so if there's blood doping or using EPO and it would have a tendency to or those and and normalize those biological passport levels and so why to learn that through some of the investigations that you know that were conducted and determine that IV use in excess fifty milliliters every six hours will be prohibited so when we announced that we were adopting the water prohibited list and prohibited methods

115:26there was some some blowback within the UFC community saying hey these things are used regularly because fighters are pushing themselves to the edge to make weight and do you understand what you're doing here you're going to put fighters and unsafe positions where they're going to get in and not be rehydrated so we took a look at that and spoke with you Saad and said hey you know maybe we should you know slowly roll out the IV ban so we actually delayed that by three months the program went into effect July 1st and we instituted the IB ban October 1st so we had three months of getting fighters prepared for it educating them why that they were banned nevertheless I mean real quickly the whole weight cutting issue came kind of into my plate and while you know I wasn't an expert in it I had to get out and talk to a lot of fighters camps coaches about IVs and

116:19give them you know alternatives to rehydrating the right way and so I again not being expert myself i reached out to what i found were experts in the world certain guy by name of dr. robert Kenneth ik who is a PhD exercise physiologist works at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine studies environmental effects on soldiers his expertise being dehydration so soldiers in the Middle East that are marching for hours days upon a time run out of water dehydrate themselves how do we get these fighters back were these soldiers back rehydrated and back into the fight and thought hey this is a type of expert that we need to talk to it's extreme dehydration not you know some kid that has diarrhea it's mildly dehydrated with some some Pedialyte so we brought him in had him actually the week of UFC 200 he was in town got a chance to talk to a lot of

117:14the the fighters coming in and analyzed the messes they were you using he recommended to us hey you know here's the maximum amount of weight fighters you know that you should recommend fighters are losing that fight week and that's how we came up with our weight guideline of eight percent so we recommend when those fighters check in Tuesday for Saturday fight they're within eight percent of their goal weight usually on Friday not a requirement a recommendation but you know we put that out there and educated heavily on that since then you talked I think last week about Andy Foster the executive director of California who's really taken the lead in terms of Commission's on you know combating dangerous weight cutting he worked with us pretty closely on developing his 10-point weight cutting plan or plan to combat serious weight cutting includes his commission making calls to fighters on

118:08the card thirty that is out ten days out making them a little bit more accountable farther out than fight week he's also got a provision where fight night he takes the fighters weight weighs them and their recommendation is you only put on ten percent of your weight back on plus a pound if they're over that California can recommend the fight or move up a weight class so really yeah I mean just a lot of you know education recommendations not here a lot of people talk about and I'm curious for for your thoughts on this hey we can we can stop this instantaneously and instantaneously just put rules out there if you lose this much weight or put this much weight back on you're suspended for six months twelve months you know whatever you're just not going to let you you fight my concern there is when you have absolute rules fighters gonna do everything possible to you know to make weight say

119:01you how to rule that if you miss weight you can't fly it again for 12 months you have to move up a weight class fighters gonna kill themselves to make weight my fear would be that you put an absolute rule out there and someone get hurts because of the rule that you put in place which is a you know I think it's a measured approach you have to continually really ate it but I think right now the rules that are out there between our recommendations California's rules or more guideline recommendations and then that in conjunction with we're doing at the performance Institute where I mean you saw last week there is no excuse if you have issues making weight or you're not sure what your weight class is at you had every resource available the best in the world to you to come in and find that out to be given a plan on how to safely and make weight so you know it's it's it's a

119:50multi-million dollar investment that the UFC has put I think toward that problem and you know hey maybe two or three years from now we say that was with good intentions but not enough we need to do more but I think right now that's our strategy on the issue well I think a couple things would have to happen to really stop weight cutting one thing you're gonna have to blow up these weight classes because there's gonna be champions in these weight classes that really won't be in that weight class anymore if you cut all the real heavy-duty weight cutting out of the picture I think what one FC is trying to do is they're they're doing hydration tests and I did they do a series of them I believe they do three leading up to the fight which really was it Benavides was telling me this someone was telling me this that they've essentially made it almost impossible for you to cut weight

120:39so they do in hydration tests on weigh-in at the weigh-in they're doing hydration tests five different times okay three different times leading up to the fight I don't know the exact protocol but what they've done is essentially made it so that you can't be dehydrated like you can't when you weigh in you have to weigh in and it's you know like if you're fighting at 170 but you know you you get on the scale and you're dying like they're like no you're not really 170 like and that that's really where it should be this idea that the best way to fight is to cheat and to drain all yourself of fluids and then pretend that you're 160 pounds then get back on the scale you know 15 hours later at 185 that's crazy that doesn't make any sense yeah as you're not really a hundred and sixty pound fighter you're 185 pound fighter who almost died yeah it's interesting you know I talked with

121:30Forrest a lot about this because he went through it and again why such you know a great asset to to the to the company but he says look there's certain guys and girls that have genetic ability that Kari you know they have good muscle mass usually that just carry a ton of water and it's not it's not difficult it's not dangerous for them to drop ten or fifteen pounds it's not but it would be if they fought fifteen pounds under see if they're fighting at 170 pounds they really weigh 185 and if they cut down to 170 they make that weight and then fought right then then it would be dangerous their performance would be radically diminished so we're lying when those people get on the scale when they get on the scale only flex and they say 170 sure you're 170 for about an hour yeah you know and then you're gonna go right back up to what you were before you dehydrated yourself this is madness

122:21to me well it goes against what fighting is supposed to be what we talked about before about discipline and focus and and and technique and training that's what competing is supposed to be about it's supposed to be about a fight or two equally skillful individuals try to figure out who's got the best strategy and who's got the best will and technique it's not supposed to be about who can do this legal cheating thing best because that's what weight cutting is well you know really the modern history of the UFC and the reason I think it's so successful is Lorenzo and Dana ran toward regulation right yes they said hey this is a no you know market it is and no rules no hold bar event they ran toward rules and so I think you know what you're talking I actually had a discussion with bob Bennett about this executive director at Nevada he's great last week and you know he's

123:10looking what California is doing he says look we have physicals after the weigh-in so you know we do the weigh-ins now at the host hotel so it's usually done in a ballroom fighter gets up on the scale makes weight immediately goes behind the curtain and has their pre fight physical right but do they have a hydration test I they don't I know California does some hydration testing fight night but what Bob told me is I have the most experienced ringside physicians in the world that have seen more you know combat sports events and everywhere I'm comfortable that these guys are evaluating these medical professionals or evaluating these fighters in this scenario and if they feel or see something's not safe for that fighter to compete the next night that they'll call them off I think that's wonderful but I think all that does is keep fighters from getting to the point of death

123:56I mean getting to the point where they're sick and Tara they're definitely compromised when they're making the weight they're not really at that weight what I would really love in a perfect world besides the bare-knuckle thing what I would really love is a weight class every ten pounds just have every time I mean there's just giant gaps the gap between 85 and 205 is 20 pounds that's a lot of weight I hear that but let me give you a scenario where it it shows that alone ain't gonna work female new division for the UFC 125 right because we had a 115 to 135 pound gap right what happened in our first championship fight so Jarah Eubanks couldn't make weight she wasn't even you know so there that in and of itself just making a weight class I don't think solves the problem yeah but she's also relatively inexperienced young to sport and this is a brand new weight class

124:49that they really didn't have much say any more weight classes wouldn't be helped but they're not gonna help by themselves you got it it's got to be a multiple Agron attack I think the hydration test should be along with that the hydration test and weight classes every ten pounds and then give the champion the benefit of the doubt like whoever is a champ in each division whatever whatever weight class you know what we find out what they really weigh and they have an opportunity to fight for the title in that weight class yes I think we talked about it when you tore through the the pie but we have on a couple of occasions used that was it by electrical impedance machine to determine is that the proper term I don't know but it basically can you know you step on the scale and you you hold all these handles and it gives you you know some type of hydration reading

125:35we've done that a few times on check-in day way and day we're not sure exactly what the numbers look like but that's something that you know we're looking into Clint also does a lot of specific gravity testing fight week on fighters where you know it'll be a Tuesday or Wednesday and I think he showed you that that chart he'll look at how much weight a fighter has to lose and then look at what their specific gravity reading is how diluted or concentrated the urine is and you know if you see someone with a bunch of weight to lose that is you know relatively dehydrated specific gravity wise then you know can alter their plan so yeah I mean we've got a lot of a lot of that stuff going on I don't necessarily disagree with you that that more needs to be done the right now our plan of attack is to use these resources use the facility at the PI you know in an ideal world I

126:24think rather than making these absolute rules trying to educate our fighters trying to show that my tell you one thing you can talk till you're blue in the face about things being bad unhealthy for a fighter they're like I'm bulletproof not only that they're fighters they're fighting that's bad for you anyway right like Oh cutting weights bad for me too okay where they start listening and I think this is where the performance institute comes into play when you start talking about the effect on your performance so if you tell them hey look if you can come to you know your proper weight and a more measured approach and not lose a whole bunch and put that what look look at the difference is gonna make on your performance 24 to 30 hours later cuz you see this I mean you see this occasionally when fighters go through you know tough weight cuts you see them how I'm just a stop turn around

127:14or two right oh good he's looked moving up 270 pounds mean it's just phenomenal I also think now it's interesting there's you know on one side of it the criticism will be well you're just encouraging even greater weight cuts and regains but I think this morning way and thing that we've we put together I think has had a positive impact in a couple of areas explain that for people no no we're talking yeah so actually Andy foster again California before UFC 199 came to me and said hey we've been doing this morning way and for a couple regional local shows would you guys be interested in it where we do it at the host hotel we do it you know we'd open the scales from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and the idea would be a fighter gets on weight in their hotel room upstairs hops on the elevator steps on the scale they make weight they start eating and drinking again right away with the idea

128:05of their knots wait till 4:00 p.m. and exactly with the idea of I think one of the dangers of you know weight cutting and being dehydrated is the amount of time that you're at a you know at a loss of that water and in the past when we'd have the weigh-ins at an arena it would be the fighter would have to check in downstair say they had their way ends at four o'clock in an arena the fire would the fighter would check in downstairs maybe two 2:30 the bus would leave a member in Rio we're and one time on a bus for an hour hour and a half to the arena everybody's depleted and dehydrated on the bus ride you step on a scale and a cold you know environmentally unfriendly arena you then get back on the bus drive another hour hour and a half you're talking multiple hours where these fighters are in a depleted State so I think the morning way and protects against that I

128:54think the other benefit we've seen out of it I think it's more of a long-term than a short-term benefit is we've seen a lot more fighters missing weight since we went to the morning weigh-ins and I think that's a product of timing in that in the past you had four you know four or five in the afternoon you had all day long to cut weight and you would see fighters at 10:00 or 11:00 saying I can't do any more and a 1 or 2 o'clock I said I can do a couple more pounds and just all day long now unless you're literally not sleeping the night before you fight you have a shorter window in the morning to do that and I think a lot of those miss weights has helped identify those fighters that I'm probably in the right long weight class I can't make that weight I've waken up you know five or six in the morning a couple hours and it's probably too much weight to lose and we've seen some

129:38fighters move up in weight class because of that we've also seen some fighters that have decided hey I got to take this more professionally and hire a nutritionist like khabib could be the number command off who made weight easily for his last fight and but the fight before that obviously fell out of the fight yeah because his body shut down and he had to go to the hospital to be rehydrated yeah I mean I again I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all solution you have to be careful hey be miss weight that last time went to the hospital you know a knee-jerk reaction would be you can't fight right this wait anymore what we saw this time he just changed the way he did things he came in he was on wait the night before he had a couple pounds to lose fight week yeah so it can be done and again that reverts back to the performance Institute I think there's no excuse now that if

130:22you're a new fighter and you're not making a hell of a lot of money and don't have the resources to hire you know George Lockhart who ever you know have Clint wattenberg who's an Ivy league-educated sports dietician that can provide you all that remotely if you can't get to Vegas he'll give you a full plan over you know over the phone over email if you can't get to Vegas not only will Clint plan things out for you but you have the kitchen and cooks and staff that'll provide you that meal throughout your whole fight camp that's why he's there for free so amazing the place is incredible and we will have Clint and Duncan on the podcast explaining all that what's in that little silver yeah so this is so one of the things that we want to do with this program again as you know first and foremost it's to protect the UFC athlete protect the rights of clean athletes but we also want to influence

131:16other sports influenced anti-doping as a whole so you sada came to us early this year and said we've got some new technology what what do you guys think about using your program to be the first to kind of roll it out and so the answer was well is the science good is it validated they said yeah it is I was actually at a at a conference midsummer back in New York and sat on a panel with Major League Baseball PGA Tour and the UFC and a bunch of anti-doping scientists there and they were talking about this technology and the other leagues were ass hey you guys going to institute that and they're like nah you know I don't I don't think enough there and they went to me I'm like absolutely if you saw the science tells me this this works we want to be the first especially if it's more convenient and more efficient for our program so what this is is it's a leeching device and

132:06you know until this came out basically to get any blood tests from you got some scissors I yeah nice that was ready for you and tell this came out basically any blood test done from from our athlete had to be done for the phlebotomist the full-on needle in the vein take out a vial of blood so with this leeching device it's got 30 micro needles in it size about an eyelash you put it up on your arm you hit this button and painlessly the micro needles reach into just the capillary so just the blood at the top of the of the scan and draw out a small amount of blood and this this light turns red when that blood is drawn out whoa the blood is then deposited onto an index card it's called dry blood spot testing so a drop or two of blood on the four corners the cards then sealed up placed in the mail and sent to a wada laboratory this is all have to be done

133:08on video so that no well you have a it's not the athlete doing themselves you have a collector doing that I mean that could be the future where an athlete is doing it themselves on FaceTime or something exactly but but here are the benefits of that hey and this is this is huge for me I want to make things that's convenient for our athletes as possible so you know you talk to our roster and ask them would you prefer big needle stuck in the vein of your arm and a vial of blood taken out versus a completely painless you know leech of some blood from your capillaries they're all gonna say obviously this you talk about cost so blood taken out of a vein in your arm requires a phlebotomist so in those cases where you saw it is doing a blood test they usually take a drug collection officer and a phlebotomist to take out of the blood to take out the blood I mean that's that's a couple hundred

133:54dollars they're a vial of blood needs to be cold shipped to the water laboratories here you're talking about dried blood on an index card that just needs to be sealed up it becomes tamper proof once it is and put in the mail for fifty five cents Wow so I think incredible efficiency convenience to the athlete for our program and again we want to lead and I think you know when you talk about mass's question regularly about local or regional MMA show so has is great what you guys are doing for your program but how much does this program cost you and it is a multi-million dollar program a year and they say hey we love to do something like that but you know we can't afford that something like this where now you cut your cost down from sending blood to you know from maybe thousand dollars to you know maybe a hundred dollars this device and one DCL going to collect it out and put it on a

134:46card I think it has some really great implications and some patience for the UFC but you know throughout the sport taisiya thing sure that's pretty badass Wow Wow credible anything else should we wrap this up we're good yeah man I think we're good listen you guys do an amazing job I mean it's just it's incredible the results it's it's so cool to see the the results on the biological passport that you get you guys could show it in a chart and I mean pretty much everyone agrees I mean it's it's really changed the nature of fighting it really has it changed the sport it changed its almost eliminated doping yeah I really applaud you I really appreciate the platform you have here literally every fighter and and campaign manager you know on our roster watches this so to be able to get in and talk about these things talk about that new technology we just used

135:38that actually I think Rose namajunas was the first fighter that you saw to try that out on so a senator attacks when hey Rose I heard they they did the leaching device and the blood the dried blood spot test would you think she said awesome didn't feel a thing and she said my mind is blown by the technical our technologies come here and that's a big part of anti-doping and that deterrent when you're now saying look at how the technology is evolving here and you get an athlete that thanks well you know I think I can out with them or out cottonmouths then they see like this they're gonna thing and perceptions almost as important as reality in a lot of these occasions and they start seeing things like this and that deterrent factor is built up I think higher and higher yeah it seems like at one point in time there was a race and the dopers were just like 1/2 step ahead but now it

136:25seems like it's even and with the possibility of freezing your sample and then looking towards it to the future you're it's not it's not worth it yeah I don't know if I call it even yet but that gas is definitely narrowing and you're you're affecting the the way that dopers are doping these days I think you know now the the you know micro dosing I think is big and it's difficult to catch micro dosing but you've altered the behavior of the doper from taking you know drugs really unabated to very small amounts so the benefits aren't going to be as great I think you got to consider that a win for anti-doping I think that gap continues to narrow and when they micro dose like what would it like say would that be like testosterone or something like that testosterone EPO probably the two most common very a window you have of detection matter of hours hours but you know again

137:15going back to I think I might have told the story last time I was on but the floyd landis lance days they were manipulating during the Tour de France an eight-hour window so from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. they wouldn't test them during the tour the thought was these guys are racing up the side of the mountain for five six hours a day we gotta let these guys sleep and they figured out hey if we do something at 10:01 by 601 the release of tester can come and be clear so you know yeah that prospects always out there that's why the UFC program there's no limits on the test now right it's just a bummer it's in terms of their sleep side it is yeah it's brutal but I think you know I think most appreciate that that's that's the price of you know a clean sport and try to ensure would there be a way to change that like would there be some sort of a wearable device that would detect

138:02changes in your body I've often thought that like a wearable device it was to sleep it collected everything 24 hours a day that you peel it off after a couple weeks and it's Innis tested yeah or give them the wearable device so when they're sleeping so you don't interrupt their sleep cycle so 10 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. or whatever it is that you decide would be the window that they need to sleep while they're doing that they must have this device on that detects any changes to their metabolism any changes in input and then they can't eat while they're on yeah believe me the anti-doping community is always thinking about things I talked to Travis tiger at the CEO of you saw last week and he you know he made it clear and that you saw it I think dedicates 3 million dollars a year grants toward research and anti-doping things like that so I mean that that race is always going on and there's

138:49always you know continuing beautiful great work mister Nowitzki I'm sorry about the nickname you're okay with right off the back alright beautiful thanks brother appreciate it Matt all right