JRE MMA Show #171 with Brendan Allen

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Alright, what's happening brother? Thanks for having us. My pleasure. So Jamie, what were you just saying? I stopped you because it sounds so crazy. Trump said there's going to be eight to nine title fights at the White House UFC event and that there are I guess in quotes withholding. Okay, first of all, there's only eight weight classes. So how's there going to be nine title fights? The BNBBMF fight, maybe you had to be a MF. Maybe you have all of them in the BNBF. I guess, but that's kind of a crazy thing. We're going to have 20 title fights, all the title fights it's ever been. Did he say any matchups? No, he didn't say who. He just said they're going to, I'll see if there's even like a tweet about it. I just thought I was talking about it. There's like a, I don't know, press conference or something? Well, if they don't do John Jones at the White House, I think it'd be a travesty. For sure. They have to do that. They have to. Come on. Dana's like, you can't count on him. You can't fucking count on him. Come on, stop. When he wants to, he's going to make a half. At the White House, come on. John Jones versus, let's see, what does this say here? Donald Trump predicts eight or nine championship fights. Okay. It would literally have to be every weight class fighting for the title, which would be nuts. Everyone's a championship fight. Everyone's a legendary type of fighter. He's actually holding back fights right now for six months so he can do it in the 15th of June. Trump seemingly meaning 14th of June. Yeah. Arena's going to be 5,000 or 6,000 seats right in the front door of the White House. 100,000 people in the back where they're putting up eight or 10 very big screens. What kind of fucking security are they going to have for this? It's going to be insane. Yeah. Are you trying to get on this? I mean, not really. Not really? I can't imagine, like you said, the security behind the scenes. How much stuff's really going to happen? Yeah. A lot of weird pressure too. Probably. Because it's like all the security and the protocols, all that extra shit in your mind before you have to go out there and fight. Yeah. It just seems like a lot, like a lot more than what it needs to be. I'm sure it's going to be cool to watch. Kind of like what was that? The spear? Yeah. Kind of cool to watch like that. Also, you're fighting outside. Yes. That's what I'm like, what are they going to do? Put a roof over it? What happens if it's early in the morning? What if it's hot and muggy? That's going to affect people. I've watched them do outside fights in Louisiana. Oh, man. Oh, God. Louisiana's the, you can cut that air. You got to see everyone slipping and sliding. It's so humid. Oh, that's terrible. Did you ever see that King of the Cage fight that they did where it was raining? I've seen the highlight of it, but I've never watched the whole thing. Yeah, it was called King of the Cage Wet and Wild and it rained out. This was in the day when we used to have to put on fights at Indian casinos. I'm pretty sure Eddie Bravo was doing the commentary back then. It rained out. They were like, what do you guys want to do? Everybody was like, well, we want to get paid, so I guess we have to fight. They fought in the fucking rain. It was crazy. How do you do that? I don't remember what the canvas was made out of. It might have been slick. It might not have been a canvas like the UFC's canvas, which is actual canvas. It might have been a jujitsu mat type situation. That's what it was in Louisiana with the humid. I can't imagine the rain. The rain's got to be crazy. It was pouring down on people. See if you can find some highlights of King of the Cage Wet and Wild. It's got to be worse than blood on the canvas. Blood on the vinyl. It has to be the worst. It just doesn't stop. How bad are those fucking logos? Do the logos get problematic when they get wet? In the middle of the octagon? Here it is. Yeah, look at that. It's hard to tell what it actually is, but it looks like vinyl. Got rubber shoes on maybe? Yeah, these guys are fighting with shoes on, which helps a little. See, this was back when there was like zero rules. Your man's a poncho. My man's a poncho. That's hilarious. Look at these. Oh, these guys are barefoot. Look at these guys sliding around. This is so crazy. They throw punches and slip it. This is like a total like, like whinos. Imagine everyone didn't know it was raining. Man, you got rocked like 30 times. No, bro. I didn't get rocked. It was wet. Right. How do you judge? Like what shots do damage? This is like so silly. Oh, look, they got a guy come out here with us. A thing to slide the water off the side. Yeah, that's not helping. This is so crazy. They're doing this. Look at the fighters are helping. The fighters are moving towels around. That is so ridiculous. You get an extra 30 seconds break if you wipe off the canvas. Yeah, right? That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. So who knows what's going to happen? I guess they'll probably have to have some sort of a roof over it. But what if it's like 98 degrees outside? It's going to be crazy. It's June in Baltimore or in Maryland, rather, and, you know, DC. Yeah. Whatever that is. It's like DC is, it's not even a state. DC gets hot. It gets hot in the summer. It's going to be crazy. Yeah. I always wonder like how much behind the scenes work goes into like for the sphere, for example, because obviously they have everything else down to a science, but. Maybe redo that. That's going to be crazy. Abu Dhabi. That's right. We did a live one outdoor in Abu Dhabi. I remember that. That was when BJ fought Frankie Edgar. Wow. Yeah. And Anderson, God. Damian Maya. Damian Maya. That's right. That's right. Oh, that's right. That was, that was like Damian Anderson and Damian had real beef. And so Anderson was like yelling at him in the first round. And then he kind of ran out of gas. And so you just kind of coasted for the remainder of the fight. And Dana was really pissed because he just coasted and won a decision. I could just put that back out there. I guess. That wasn't good, dude. By the way, in Abu Dhabi, they had these bugs that were flying around the side of small birds. It was, it was crazy. I was like, this is, because you know, you're in the desert. Yeah. It's very weird, very weird having an outdoor fight in the desert. It's like mosquitoes in Louisiana, man. They come out of them swamp water and I don't know what they're doing, but they're huge. Well, back in the day, they used to have fights like that in Vegas. They used to have boxing matches outside. Seizures Palace used to have them outside. Yeah. See, even find some of those, I know, I want to think like they had some good fights outside like some world championship fights that were outside Seizures Palace. I think it'd be cool to say you did, but I don't think I want to do it at this level. If something does go wrong. You're too close. You're too close. Brandon Allen, you're knocking at the door, dude. You're right there. You're right there. It's crazy. I just saw what Chamiah made up of today saying that he's only going to do one more at 85 and then he's going up. What? Yeah, my wife said it. He's going to go to 205? That's what he said. That's crazy. She translated it for me. It was in Portuguese. Oh, wow. Look at this. That's Seizures Palace. Dang. Yeah, that's crazy. I never knew that. Never. Yeah. They had big fights there, too. Look at how big that is. Oh, my God. That's so crazy. But again, Vegas outside must be so hot. It has to be. That dry heat is something. That's crazy. Imagine being all the way in the back of that thing. You ain't seeing nothing. They don't got no screen up for the TV or nothing. Who is that right there? Who is there? Oh, Tommy Hearns fought there. Brutal DeRan. Tommy Hearns or Brutal DeRan was outside? Dang. That's crazy. In 1984, wow. That's way before my time. I guess that was they probably didn't even have an arena back then that could keep those guys in it. I wonder when they started putting arenas in Vegas. That's a good question. It was probably started for those big boxing matches. Yeah, as perplexity. Yeah, as perplexity our sponsor. When did they start putting an arena in Vegas? I would say 90. I think Vegas in the beginning was just all about gambling. If there was a show, it was at a showroom in Vegas. If you went to see Sinatra or something like that, it was probably just a couple thousand people. Probably wasn't that big. It's crazy to see how Vegas is growing. Before my time I see pictures. But even since I fought amateur worlds in Vegas, I wasn't even old enough to go into the casino. They had to walk me around in the Flamingo, I believe. That's crazy. You couldn't go in the casino? You couldn't do nothing. If I walked on the floor, they were on me. I'm like, bro, I don't ... How old were you? 18. Oh, wow. 17, 18? No, 18, yeah. 18, about 10, 19. Man, they were on me. I'm talking about they must have had a watch on me. I stepped on the floor just to go across to get to the drink machine. There was probably a big concern that if you have underage competitors and that they're wandering around the casino, they could lose their license. Yeah, because we stayed at the link. It was brand new at the time. And then we walked across to Flamingo. We fought there every time until the finals. The finals was in the UFC Expo in the middle of the Expo, which was cool because they had the Hall of Fame ceremony going on. You were there, I seen you. Yeah, yeah. So it was cool. But yeah, it's crazy just to see it from there until now, how much it's growing and changing. Wow. It's pretty crazy. When did you first start training? How old were you? I was 15. And what did you start with? Jujitsu. I didn't even really mean to, to be honest. I was playing football. I love football. My brother came home because he switched schools and his friend was like, hey, you want to do Jujitsu? And we was watching UFC on the weekends. That was like Randy Couture, Chuck LaDell Trilogy, all those guys. So we watched them on the weekends. He asked, so we went there and looked. And I was still playing football. It was football season. My dad was like, you want to try it? I watched the class. And I was like, dad, I want to do it. And he's like, okay, we'll use the trial gear. I was like, dad, I don't want to borrow a gig. Can we buy me one? My parents didn't have much money. My dad was just starting to do okay for himself at that point. He's like, if I buy you this gig, I promise you for the rest of the year, you're coming three times a week at least. I was like, yes, sir. So started and never look back a couple months later, my brother and my dad joined me and we did it all together for a little while. Then my brother found girls and he went his way. So yeah, it's been a long road. Just derailed a lot of young prospects. It definitely got him. It definitely got him, man. That life took him elsewhere and I don't know, luckily I stayed. He would have been better than me though. He was a lot tougher. Yeah, but it's a lot. Is he the older brother? It's usually the younger brother that winds up being the real good fighter. Yeah, he beat people a lot. That's the thing. That's the thing. You learn resilience. You learn how to be the nail. And the older brother oftentimes is too comfortable being the hammer. Yeah, but my dad would put him in his place. Luckily he was used to being in hell a little bit too. You know? My dad's a big man. So yeah, man, life is crazy. So when did you start striking? Well my dad boxed when he was younger and his grandfather taught him how to box and he was like, he did something like won a Golden Gloves in the military or something back when they had the boxing gloves that were made with horse hair. Oh wow. Yeah. He taught my dad to box. And so my dad boxed in high school. So he was kind of teaching me a little stuff here and there growing up. But you know how it is, man, who listens to their father? Now I look back and I'm like, man, I wish I would have listened more. And I say stuff that he was like, what I tell you 10 years ago. But I started striking probably like 15, maybe 15 and a half somewhere around there. But it was all grown men back then, especially where I came up at. There's no like beginners classes or anything like that. Right. So I started to fight for 24, 25, 26. I mean, there's been a couple of times, man, I got hit and I thought my jaw was broken. I start crying. I mean like smack and then it was just like, I couldn't open my mouth. And that's the problem with a lot of boxing gyms in particular is that when new guys come in, they just beat them up. Yeah, they did. They beat me up. They don't box you like spar you rather. They fight you. Yeah, they beat you. And they know how to fight and you don't know how to fight. You know, one of my best friends who was with me, like I started with him was Kurt Hallibah. And him and Dustin Poirier were the two biggest where we were from at that time. So I remember Tim Crater reached out to Kurt. Crazy Tim. Yeah. And he was like, hey, why don't y'all come spar? We got Dustin. I think Dustin was just about to go to WEC or he was right around there at that time. So we're like, let's go. Kurt's like, hey, you want to go? Yeah, let's go. So we go over there for sparring. And I'm sparring this guy, man. He had to be like five foot one. He was tiny, short. And Kurt goes with Dustin and I'm sitting here trying to watch them go because I mean, they're throwing. They're fighting. They're not sparring. And this guy is hitting me and I'm like, get off me. Like trying to watch. And the same day, like so we sparred like, I don't know, four or five rounds. It was nice. And then I'm only like 14, 15 years old at this time. Then it was start on the ground in your guard. And I go with Dustin because everyone like said my jujitsu was good. It was for that time, but I was still just a kid. Dude, he hit me so hard when they said literally when they said go, it was like, boom, right in my mouth. And I was like, well, I guess this is what we're doing. I hurried up and grabbed and tried to sweep and all that kind of stuff. But man, I never forget that moment to this day. Like last time I tried with Dustin, I was like, hey, you remember that time you beat me up? Like I'm not little no more. Like three weight classes above. Yeah. Yeah. So I see all the guys like that. There's one guy in particular. If I see him, I told everyone, I'm whooping his ass. One guy, you don't want to name him? His name is Jay Mort. Oh, okay. Great guy. Nice guy. But training, I never forget the day he hit me so hard and thought my jaw was broke. I'm like, and I was little like now I'm a grown man. It is so hard to find like reasonable sparring. So hard to find people that are like willing to not hit you full blast and like preserve each other. You know, like, hey, we're all in this together. You help me. I help. And if you can get that, my God, you progress so much faster. If you're in there just, there's something to be said for going through the fire and understand what it's like to be in a war with guys. But there's something also to be said for like learning how to recover and like having more training sessions and not getting concussions all the time. Yeah. It's like Sean Jordan was the first to tell me that was like, he came and trained and obviously, you know, Sean's huge, super athletic guy, heavyweight, you know, and I'm talking about I watched him and this other big man, they were sparring and it was literally like touching each other. So I asked him after because everyone else is fighting and I'm like, man, what? How come you don't spar so hard? He looked at me and started laughing. He's like running at this time. I think it was like 270 to somewhere around there. And he's like, I'm 270 pounds. I fought some of the biggest guys, like biggest names in the world at the time. He's like, I know how to fight. If I, if I go full blast or he goes full blast, one of us is going to get hurt and then we're not going to fight anymore. Like we're not going to make money for our family. So I always, I always took that in and obviously I'm not like a huge guy like they were, but it's like, even like when I was training in Florida, I knew when me and RoboCop go, we're fighting. Like I know it. That guy is scary. You know, both, both of you guys like, how the fuck are you making 185 pounds? And you're on a smaller side in comparison to him. Yeah, dude. It's my weight cuts way harder than his. Is it? Yeah. He walks, dude, surprisingly, I asked him before because he has, you know, he has a great like physique, right? He's big guy. When I see him, I'm like, bro, how much you weigh? He's like, oh, like 205. I said, no way. No way. He's like, I'll step on the scale right now. Steps on the scale, 206. I was like, no way. I've seen it a little bit bigger. How long was he? Got bird bones? That doesn't even make any sense. I had no idea. I thought the same thing, but me, I stepped on the scale. I mean, right now I'm probably like 225, but I haven't done nothing since I fought, but I stay around 215, 220 and I'm the rent of my family. So like my body wants to get bigger, but I'm like, I got unfinished business here. So yeah. Joe's a big 85er. Joe Piper. Oh yeah. He's a huge 85er. He's huge. He has a hard cut. That's why I'm like, when he gets. Yeah, like how is that guy? How is that guy 185? When I stand next to him, I'm like, how? Same. I can't believe he walks around 205 because that doesn't even make sense. That's what I've seen him. Hey, if it's a lie, guys strike me down now because. I think you rigged that scale. He might. Well, we were all using it. He probably has heels on the ground. He was, I was super surprised. My boy too close with me. We was all in the room. I was like, because I called him out on everyone else wouldn't say it. I was like, no. Was it after training? After training. Okay. And both of you after training. Yeah. But it wasn't a hard day. Like that day was not a hard day. Like we weren't like sweating. It wasn't like a five, six pound practice day. Right. It was a pretty chill day into the week. Even if it was, it'd still be surprised. If it was only 211, I'd be surprised. But I know like when he had other fights, he was a little bit bigger because he wanted to be, I didn't understand, but still that, you know, but Joe, I think, well, the Ritter probably has to be the biggest 85 or like, he's enormous. He was, he was bigger than I expected. And I seen him, but I like in the gym, I never went close to him because I, I, I wrote with him like one time in a, in a quick thing. It was like a minute long, but like still I was surprised when, when we stepped in there, like we stepped up to each other at face offs. And I was like, I was expecting to be a little bit bigger. I don't know. Maybe I'll make everyone bigger in my head, but he was really long. Like even when we stood next to each other, his hands felt like they touched his knees. I was like, all right, it's going to be interesting. Yeah. I was surprised when I'm, when I first met him in the UFC, when he first came over, I was like, because I saw him fighting one and I knew he fought it. I believe he fought a 205 and 85 over there, right? Right. And when I saw him, I was like, how the fuck are you making 185 pounds? Like you look like a light heavyweight. This episode is brought to you by happy dad, hard seltzer. A nice cold happy dad is low carbonation, gluten free and is easy to drink. No bloating, no nonsense. When you're watching a football game or you're golfing, watching a fight with your boys or out on the lake, these moments call for a cold happy dad. People are drinking all these seltzers and skinny cans that are loaded with sugar, but happy dad only has one gram of sugar in a normal size can. 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So they drink a whole bunch of water and then they go, they don't pee. They don't do nothing. They drink that water and then go cut the weight. It stays in their stomach. So when they piss, piss it out, it's clear. It's all good. So they, they, they test that hydration. They test that they're hydrated, but they're really not. They already went and sweat out a whole bunch. So they drink it. They just hold it. That's all the guys do it. Some guys mess it up, but that's the majority. How everyone does it. And so they, so you just drink a whole ton of water and just hold your piss as long as possible. Yeah. They make sure like they probably drink like two cups and then they're just going to hold. And then they'll go cut for like an hour, like sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat. And then they say, when they show up to the hydration, that's, I've heard that from like four people that have done it. And they said, yeah, bro, I learned from this guy and I learned from this guy. I was like, wow. Interesting. I knew there had to be some sort of a catch to it. Yes. And they say it's a lot, it's, it's more unhealthy than like cutting weight over here to like really make the weight because I don't know how I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but they, they, my friends that are into all that stuff or like explaining like how it works. And I was like, man, that's crazy. And, but he was a guy that never made a true 186. So they were worried. And then he did. And I know, like, I know for a fact he's come in, I don't know what he came in on my fight week, but I think the one before that he, he came in Monday, I believe it 210, 210 to fight week. So I was like, I come in at 206 and I'm stressing. I'm like, ah, 203 is like my number. Well, I think that contributes to the fact that he gases. Yeah. I just, I think it's just too much of a strain. And he's, he's talked kind of vaguely, not, not real clearly about problems that he's had with his health. And, you know, I've got to think that has to do with weight cuts. Yeah. So many guys have kidney problems. For sure. For sure. And it's weird because like in the fight with him, like I knew, like in the first round to feel like obviously adrenaline is flowing everything. So you're even, everything's intensified, right? So I could feel how tight he was squeezing. I mean, he was squeezing like his legs, everything. He was trying to where I couldn't move. So I just make little adjustments and make him move a little bit. He'd punch a very rarely, but I was like, there's impossible. It's impossible for you to keep this up for 25 minutes. It's impossible. I know you're not going to do it. So just by my time. Plus I didn't want to gas either because it was short for me. Short notice five, five rounds, you know, there's a little worry some, but I knew he couldn't, I knew we couldn't. And I'm like, we did a lot of prep for him specifically. And we saw the Russian that he fought in one. And I was like, we had our game plan before we watched it. And then we watched it and was like, here we go. Yeah. That's why everyone asked me, like, what's going to happen? I'm going to break him. He's, he's tough. He is tough, but you know, like, well, if he comes out with that mentality, if he's trying to go full blast, 100% in the first round and a five round fight, like, we, right, exactly. Nobody can really do that. Yeah. And like I told the guys, like, because obviously he trains where I was training and they all know, they all know me, you know, so it's like, if you think you're going to come out here and he said in his interviews, like, I'm a front runner. I'm not good long, but I approach a three round fight differently than I approach a five round fight. So I was like, all right, we'll see. And it kind of backfired. Well, it was a big win for you. Thank you. Huge win. You look fantastic in that fight. Thank you. You know, it's like there's just so many talented people in the division. It's so hard to stand out. And sometimes, you know, you take a guy like Derritor, who just got done stopping bone nickel and a lot of, a lot of momentum on his side. He looks real good. You beat Kevin Holland, submitted him, looks real good. And then you came along and stole that momentum. Yeah, it was, it was weird, to be honest, because like when he got there, I was like, I want to fight him just because like things of like, he fought one of my friends, which now I guess they're best friends, but who was that? Uh, Ong Laung and Sen. Okay. He took both his titles from him. Right. So like there was no animosity, but it was like, I want to test my, you're a ground guy, like I'm a ground guy. Let's, let's see. Um, and then it happened. He got there to UFC and I was like, I want to fight him. Like I was obviously, I think at the time I was like 12 ranked somewhere around there, but I was like, let him get one, two. And obviously his name's going to carry him, you know? So that came and I never forget. I was, uh, leaving an LSU game. I was, uh, in the parking lot. My manager called and I was like, man, can we just get a fight, please? I've been asking him for like three months, like, please, I just want to fight. Cause I'm very like, I get in this mode to where I just want to fight and I don't, I'll just keep bugging him, bugging him. Like, you want me to call me? You want, you want me to call a hundred? Like, and he was like, no, no, no, no. But anyway, so I stayed on him. He called me. I was like, uh, Hey, what about, uh, uh, uh, the Ritter? He was like, oh, come on, man. He had just fought. I think he beat Gerald. And, um, he was like, I think I can make this happen. He texted me back a couple of minutes. Hey, they're good to go. The next day they called back and they were like, no, they're not going to get the fight. Like they don't want this fight. It's, it's not the right time. I was like, all right. They're like, what about Fluffy? I was like, I asked for him two months ago. So that's when I ended up fighting Fluffy. And, um, it just so happened. He fought the bone nickel, got all that hype and, uh, I don't know, man. Again, I was at an LSU practice and, um, they called me and they were like, Hey, uh, my manager called me and he was like, um, just want you to know Fluffy's out, I threw your name in the hat, but you're not the front runner. It's Paulo Costa. He's, he's the front runner, but I'm pushing for you. Cause I just saw Paulo yesterday. I don't know how he's going to make 85 in four weeks. Yeah. He needs a lot of time to make weight. There's not, he's another guy. Yeah. 185. Do you think that it could ever be possible for guys to just fight without cutting weight? Wouldn't that be, but wouldn't that be better? It would be nice. Just wouldn't it be better? Like overall for everybody. I think so. Yeah. For sure. Like here's like, if everybody just was honest about what they actually weigh, you know, like find, let's find out what everybody actually weighs when you're in shape, like when you're ready to fight and make a contract to fight it that way. Because this whole weight cutting thing is just legalized cheating. It's, it's so hard. And some guys are so good at it. You know, like how a perrera dude, I don't know how he made 85. He would weigh 226 when he would fight for the 185 pound title. Crazy. Doesn't even make any sense. I don't get how you can put on that much weight. The most I ever put on was this last fight. I was two or seven. Bro, he gained 40 something pounds. I don't get it. 40 pounds in a day. Blows my mind. This, what does that feel like? Like, what does that do to your body? I always wonder that because like this one was, this was tough for me. A one month full diet. Like I don't usually have like, you know, a couple of cheats and ease into the diet. Like I'm starting to do now because I'm hoping to fight in March. So I'm already going to start, you know, being cleaner. Are you concerned though that you could get another of those last minute calls? Like, do you think like that? Like to not get too heavy? Because if somebody calls and says, Hey, the big paramount card, somebody fell out. It's January. Can you fight? I think where I'm at, it would have to be like an interim title or something like that outside of that right now. Plus like the reason I'm so big and I was out, like I had fractures in my foot. So I had to, you know, did you have fractures in your foot from the fight or just you had them before the fight? Oh God. Yeah, which we didn't know. I just knew it hurt. Like, and to be honest with you, like I had them before the fight before that, but I didn't know. Like I was just like, man, it hurts. Like I thought it was just like a muscle. So I just would roll it out there, gun it. Like, you know, that's what that was what I would do. How many fractures? They said they, they saw three, but they're small. It was like different, like right where like the toe meets the base of your foot. Is it from elbows? I don't know. I don't, it was on my lead foot too. So I was like, I don't even know. Like I don't tip a lot because I'm scared of like stuff like that. Yeah. Um, yeah, but I fought with crazy stuff, man. I tore my whole like ACL in half, uh, calves, everything when I fought Paul Craig. Did you really? Yeah. One of that niece, that, uh, calf slicer. Uh-huh. In half. It just blew your ACL out. Yes. Oh, I didn't know. So like in the second round, when I go to throw the punch, uh, I think it was Dominic Cruz, he was like, Oh, they clipped each other and they showed the replay and he hits my hand. He never hit like my face or anything. But your knee just buckled. Yeah. It gave, and you can see me reach down to my knee in that moment. Oh, wow. It was crazy. So afterwards we got that, but I was lucky. Like when it healed it, like, um, it fell to the bone. Like if they attached like up, up here, mine just reattached here. So I just have a little bit more play and it's still attached. Luckily. Really? Yeah. That's how you never got surgery. Never. I was very lucky. Insane. There's like three different MRIs that show like fine, torn half, rehealed. So it was a partial tail. No, they told me in half it cut in half and then like fell. And when it fell, I got lucky and it fell on the bone just lower at a lower point. And it healed on the bone. And it fused to the bone itself. Wow. Yes. How long did it take to do that? I don't know. The doctor said it could, it says it looked like it was torn maybe like a slight tear before and that one finished it. And the last MRI was probably four or five months ago because I had to get it for something else. Fused to the bone. Perfect. You can see it clear as day. The doctor showed me, I was like, that's pretty cool. Did you get stem cells or anything on it? Yeah, I did. I did do a lot of stem cells like through the UFC and stuff. They sent me that. That probably helped. It was going to go to Iwana. No, they sent it to my doctor. No, they just sent it. It was nice. And they just sent a whole bunch. Like my doctor was like, man, look how much they sent. I was like, I don't know what it's supposed to look like. Fill it up. Let's go. So we injected that. But yeah, I'm not fighting all crazy stuff because it's like, I don't know. I don't know how to pull. That's the thing that people need to realize that watch. Nobody fights at 100% or very few people. Very, very rarely. And I just don't know how to how to pull. Like I've never pulled from one knock on wood. I haven't pulled on one fight in my career. And I've been pretty, pretty messed up. I think my worst was when I fought Ema Volk, to be honest. Physically, I was like, like as far as like how my body was, was pretty good. But I didn't realize like how much of a toll because I like have a thyroid problem. And I went years without getting it checked. And for like a while, I was feeling like real sluggish, real tired. No sex drive, nothing. Like I didn't want to get out of bed. And my weight was just steady growing up for the first time in my life. At that point, I hit 220. And I was like, what is going on? Like I'm still training. I'm eating clean. And anyway, I went to a specialist in Florida and they tested everything like T3, T4. And I never had T3 checked ever. And it was like seven times the normal value, whatever that was supposed to be. I have it on a paper, whatever. They gave me that and they're like, hey, man, I'm going to let you know, I was I was fighting in three, three or four weeks in France. And they're like, hey, this is going to take a month and a half, two months to regulate and fully settle out. I was like, I don't got that kind of time. Just give me enough to where my where my weight will come down because I wasn't losing anything. They're like, it's going to do that. Don't worry, within a week or two, that's going to happen. I was still pretty tired, but I just kept pushing. We get to we went to London first, stayed there a week because it was cheaper for us than going to France because he had my friend had family there. Then we went to France and then I was still feeling like tired. That was the first camp in my life. I couldn't do more than two and a half rounds. The whole camp. Really? I I was a bisoner was the only person that I had to train with. Greg was hurt. Other guys were out. So I had bisoner every day. I paid him to to train with me every day whenever I wanted sparring anything. And ask him I do good for the first round halfway through the second. After that, I was dead, like dead. And I'm still hitting my runs, my lifts, every training session. I'm doing everything normal. But man, it was terrible. So the fight comes and they the the commission kind of like did super weird stuff, like I made weight and then like, oh, you're getting drug tested. I'm like, OK, no problem. They're like, no, no, no, you're going to get drug tested now. Not the night of the fight, like normal. I was like, what? I was like, I literally just cut weight. Like I don't got a pee. I'm just now drinking fluid. They're like, doesn't matter. You can go to your room. I was like, all right, I'll wait for a couple of minutes. I waited for like 10 minutes. I was like, hey, man, I'm just going to go to my room, try to sleep. And they were like, now we don't have enough people. You need to stay here. I stayed there for two hours. They did finally I peed just barely peed and they did two vials of blood. And they got mad because they did that one they put on and press. The gravity one and they couldn't get enough. Like, and they were like, you dehydrated exactly. Do you think they were fucking with you because you're fighting in France against a French guy? It was me and Moicano. We were the us two and one other person, American. Was that when my kind of was fighting Benoisse and Denis? Yes, sir. He bitched about the same thing, but somehow we're fucking with you guys. Them two were up sleeping in their room, chilling. But it's not an excuse. It does not have to be excused. That's so dirty. It was it was it was frustrating. But that's why like when I still think you involved a cool guy, you know, like he's deserved his title shot. I think he's fully earned it. Don't get me wrong. But I want to fight him again where it's like I sparred him like a month after that. He was at the gym and I showed up at the gym and we sparred. We had a good time. But I still think he's a nice guy. I think he deserved his spot. But I just want to fight him where everything's right equal. And like you said, we're not going to come in 100 percent. He's not. I'm not fine. I don't care if I got a messed up hand, foot, whatever, but just an equal plate. Well, it just sounds like you were compromised. Look, a good example. That was Piotr Jan's first fight with Marab. Man, he looked great this week. Fuck. What a masterclass. He looked great. I was surprised when you're going to fight a guy like Marab, like that is the masterclass that you put on a clinic. I didn't honestly like I didn't think he was going to be able to do that for five rounds. I thought you'd have one, maybe maybe Max, too. And I thought Marab was just going to do what Marab does. I was so wrong. His training camp must have been hell. Had to. I had to be hell. Had to. I mean, he must have been on some. I mean, it looked like it. I saw some videos of it. He was doing some wild strength and conditioning and plyometrics. And he knew what he was in for. That's the thing. If you're going to fight a guy like Marab, it's like, you know what the mountain is. You ready to climb it? For sure. And the first time they fought, apparently he had a fucked up right hand. That's what he couldn't grapple with it and he couldn't throw punches with it. So I rewatched the fight after he said that. I was like, oh, he's barely using it. Like barely using his right hand. Makes sense, right? Totally makes sense. And then also psychologically, if you only got one hand, everything, now you have to think, right? You can't really throw combinations. You have to grab. We'll know how tough you are. Faber is a right favor. When he fought Mike Brown, he broke both hands, both hands. I remember that. And he was throwing elbows, both hands. Here's one of my favorite fighters. I'll never. Here's a guy that I wanted to be just like, I even you could ask my dad. He'll laugh to this day. I was like, dad, I don't want to be like my dad's tall. Everyone's tall. I don't want to be tall. I want to be like him. He was like, what? Because that was the fight. He was a beast. He was a beast back in the day. You know, by the time he was fighting in the UFC, I kind of think he had had some of his best fights already, like in the WEC days. Dude, amazing fights. Oh, he was a killer. I still remember the Mike Brown coming out party. Josie Aldo. That was another example of how tough he is. When he fought Josie Aldo and Josie Aldo killed his leg, dude, killed his leg. It is the worst after fight leg I've ever seen in my life. Other than Austin Hubbard. You ever see Austin Hubbard? He got compartment syndrome and had to have his whole leg sliced open. What? From the top to the bottom to alleviate pressure and drain some of the fluids. No way. It's the nastiest injury I've ever seen. I'm going to ask him. Excuse me. Look up Austin Hubbard images of I forget the fight. Oh, there it is. Look at his leg. That black thing, that's his leg open. No way. Yeah, that's his tissue. Oh my days. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at that. Oh my gosh. How insane is that? Dude, he trains in Chicago with me. Oh, when I ask him. Look at that image. I got to ask him. How fucking insane is that image? That's his tissue underneath there, man. Oh my days. Look, you have to like mature content. You have to click a link in Instagram to be able to see it. Holy cow. How nuts is that, man? Dude, that's gnarly. So there's a drain, that tube that you're seeing right there. What that is attached to is that drain that's letting liquid drip out of his leg. So compartment syndrome is so bad that sometimes people, when they don't get it treated, they have to get their leg amputated. Really? Oh yeah. So that was just from leg kicks from a fight. Just from leg kicks from a fight. I'm trying to remember who he fought. Jesus. Can we find out who he fought? Oh, more than a year ago. It was 325 weeks ago. Yeah, but the fight was more than a year ago. It was quite a while ago. But what? Is it like a big bruiser? Well, it says 325 weeks ago. 300 down fucking. 325 weeks ago. Yeah. So it was quite a while ago. But I see if you find out who he fought. Boy, it's just like your leg just stays bruised and swollen. And then you're like. Not just bruised. Like your tissue breaks down. It fills up with fluid. Yeah. And then also what happens, I guess, when you get that much damage in your tissue is like your whole body has to process all of that. So it's cow propolyc. I don't remember that. So it was UFC Vancouver. Passed out on an elevator. How'd he rush to the hospital? That is crazy. I never knew that. Yeah. See him at the gym all the time. He's a nice guy. So they had to cut his leg open to reduce the pressure. So that's what that image is. Nuts. That is crazy. Yeah. That was nuts. And then Uriah's leg, honestly, in the fight looked worse than that. I mean, Uriah might have had compartment syndrome and didn't get it drained. Because I know he spent a lot of time in hyperbaric chambers after the fight. I want to try that. It's great. I want to try that. It's really amazing. If you have an aura ring and you go into the hyperbaric chamber, it will tell you that you're recovered more. Really? Yeah, than a normal day. Yeah. Oh, you have a very high level of recovery today. Yeah. I want to try that for sure. Oh, it's legit. Yeah. All my friends have been like Jared Gordon got one for one of his fights. And he was telling me how different it makes him feel and stuff. For me, as far as I go, I just started really using more supplements. I think the deal that Thorn made with UFC really helped me. I started using there. And what really helped is I was always scared to go on creatine because growing up, my dad would get so big. And he would like, back in the day, they'd have all these different things like, oh, if you use too much creatine, it's bad for you, bad for your kidneys or whatever. Turns out all that's bullshit. Exactly. And creatine is fantastic for you. And that's been the main thing. I can really feel how different my body recovers, like how more almost energizing away. I wake up and when I go to lift and stuff, I feel like way better. Well, it's even great for your mind. Creatine is fantastic just for cognitive support. I need everything for that. I've been getting hit in the head since I was 13 years old. So yeah, sometimes it don't function properly. It's funny, me and my wife were just joking the other day. We were like, I was like, babe, you do that on purpose, don't you? She's like, what? I was like, you try to use memory against me. You'll wait till I forget something. And then you're like, oh, remember you said this? And I'm like, I didn't say that. I have to die on that hill because it's like, oh, remember. But I don't tell her that. I'm just like, no, I didn't. I know I didn't. But yeah, that was a great relationship to tell. UFC's done a lot of good partnerships that's helped athletes. But for me personally, like the Thorne relationship. Yeah, Thorne makes great stuff. Yeah, and they're so tested. If you get in a hyperbaric chamber, it'll help your memory as well. Hyperbaric chamber is just good for overall recovery for everything. There was even a study out of Jerusalem. It shows that Lankton's telomeres. They did this process where they had, you took 60 sessions of 90 minutes over the course of 90 days. So 60 hour and a half sessions of the course of 90 days. And it showed that lengthened people's telomeres. That was really? Yeah, that was equal to a 20-year age difference. So it's like your telomeres as you get older, that's one of the clear marks of biological aging is how long your telomeres are. That's good to know. Yeah, it indicates as you get older, they shrink. There's a few things that they've shown that will increase telomeres, but nothing as dramatic that I've ever heard other than the hyperbaric chamber. That was probably the best one I've ever heard of. Man, I've been trying to learn more about recovery because I'm kind of like, how old are you now? I'll be 30 in a couple weeks. Yeah, that's when you got to start thinking about it. When you're 22, you're just a wild man. You wake up in the morning with rock hard boners. Like everything's fine. You just show up to training. You don't even stretch. Now I'm like, wait a minute, guys. Wait a minute. The thing is, even if you're 22, you should stretch. That's just useful ignorance. God, there's so many guys that can't. I remember I was talking to, I don't want to say his name, because he's a good guy. But he's like a world class MMA fighter. And I was trying to show him something. We're talking about like guard technique. He's like, I'm not flexible. I can't get my leg like that. And they go, what do you mean you're not flexible? I go, why aren't you flexible? He goes, I don't stretch. I go, how do you not stretch? You're a world class fighter who tries to kick people in the head and you don't stretch. That's so crazy. He's like, it's boring. I'm like, OK. A lot of things are boring. Like that you don't stretch is so crazy. Because anytime someone says, I'm not flexible, I'm like, how do you know? Right. Like you don't know if you're flexible until you start stretching for a long fucking time. You can get flexible. I was like, I don't have any cardio. Well, you can get cardio. That's a choice. Fucking work. Get do cardio and you'll have cardio. This is crazy. Yeah, but you're really flexible. I'm not flexible. Yeah, but it's like I'd never stop. But I started when I was little. I developed flexibility while my body was still maturing, which is very fortunate because you're not stiff yet. It's like you can get flexible. But I'm 58 years old. It's not easy to stay flexible. I just keep fucking stretching. I didn't know you was 50. I'm old as shit, dude. I didn't know that. I thought you was younger than that. You older than my dad. I'm old, dude. You in good shape, though. Thank you. I keep up. I'm scared of death. I'm not scared of death. Death is inevitable. What I'm scared of is being feeble, like where you can't do things anymore. You can't go on a hike. You can't use your body. I work out just as hard now as I did when I was 30. I make my wife always worried because I'm like, I don't honestly know if I mean it or not. I'm like, I don't want to be eight years old. For instance, like. You cannot not say things like that around ladies sometimes. They don't like it. She's like, she's like, no, I'll say that. I need you. Like we're a team. And I'm like, babe, look what I do for a living. Look what I've done. My body's not like that. And I don't know. Maybe I say that. But then I get out of working out for like, I haven't worked out in like two months. And I'm like, I'm itching. Like a freaking fiend. I'm like. So when you say I haven't worked out, you don't do anything for two months? I haven't done anything. I went to the gym twice. I went to the gym twice. I did one run and one lift. And then we found out my foot had fractures. And they sent me this foot boot. And then the doctor was like, you don't have to wear that. Anything that puts a lot of pressure on your foot. Then I've been traveling. Like at the end of the year, I travel a lot going hunting and stuff. And you know, like your meat eater thing. Like I love that kind of stuff. So I'm not on that big of a scale and that nice of like animals. I'm just like just a simple white tail kind of guy. But you know. I love hunting white tails. I love it. I got a little property in Illinois. And oh, that's great, man. So I can't believe you could take a whole couple of months off with nothing. Just don't do nothing. Crazy, right? Yeah. I'm very blessed. Well, it's probably smart. It's probably smart to do. It's good and bad. A few people do that. It's good and bad. So like I only do it this much at the end of the year because it's hunting season and holidays, my kids' birthdays. And you know, kind of my kids' birthdays are right now. Or back to, well, shit. I guess all the time. They're back to back to back. So it's like, all right, we'll do that. We travel. But it's only end of the year. Usually I'll take a couple of weeks off, maybe a month max, depending on my injuries after a fight. But then I'm back at it. But it's hard for me at home. I'm a full-time dad and a full-time husband at home. Right now, I've got so many kids. I'm away for so long. How many kids do you have? I'm about to have five. Wow. Five? And you're not even 30 yet. Yes, sir. I have two with my ex. I'm about to have two with my current wife. And she has a son from her previous, so step son. Wow. Yeah. So and he's 14. My daughter's just turned six and four. My son's about to turn one. And then we'll have another one in about a month and a half. So you've got a lot of work to do. Yeah, but it's nice. It's hard right now. Kids have schedules. And now my little girl's do-jujitsu. My step son was playing football for the first time this year. And he's a basketball player because my wife was a pro basketball player. So he's always got something going on. But at my new house that I'm working to build, I have two gyms, full gyms. So I don't have to leave. So that's nice. I could bring people in to train. I have my full cage that I used to have for my promotion. Well, even if you only realize, I only have 40 minutes before I have to leave, but I can get a half hour work out on real quick. And you can really burn it out for a half an hour just to keep the machine oiled. Exactly. But the argument about taking time off, it does reset the brain. Like, you know who used to do that? I know he's not a fighter, but Ronnie Coleman. Ronnie Coleman is crazy as he used to lift when he was Mr. Olympia. And he was one of the heaviest lifters of all time. I mean, he would do. He's a freak. He's a freak. Ronnie, when he would get done with Mr. Olympia, he would be like, I don't know. I'm not doing shit. He wouldn't do anything for a couple months. Like, no training at all. And they'd be like, nothing at all. You go, nope, nothing, nothing. Yeah. He goes, I've got to reset. Got to reset. But imagine being so driven that you could train the way that guy trained. And yet so wise that you're like, I'll get it back. Let me just like, let me just chill. Yeah. Let me just chill. And it wasn't like it turned him into a lazy person. Like, that's what everyone's afraid of. Oh, I'm going to lose this momentum. I'm doing so good. Everything's going so great. I'm working so hard. I want to keep working hard. Because we've all had, if you live a life, you're going to have ups and you're going to have downs. And like you were going through your thyroid issue. There's going to be times where you don't have a lot of energy. So when you're feeling good, you want to keep going. Right. And this guy gets to Mr. Olympia. But he has the wisdom to go, you know what? I can get that back. Right now, let's just not do shit. And let this mind recover. Let this stress just go away. Let it slip out of my life. That's what I try, man. I kind of learned, because I always have traveled for camp since I was probably three or four and one as a pro. Three or four fights in as a pro. I was traveling. I was going to Rufus Sport for a long time. I stayed there for a long time. Then I went to Florida for a long time. And now I'm not in Chicago. And always. Where would you be on a now? Valley Flow. Oh, OK. And like War Room with B'Lol Mahamud. B'Lol, yeah. And that's been a great change. Yeah, man. He's so good. Both the brother. He got a little brother. Oh, really? He's a stud. He's a stud. I believe it if he comes out of that family. Yeah. Mahamud is a beast. He's a stud. The little brother is a stud. He helped me for Marvin's fight, I think. And then Nacho helped me a little bit for this one, this last one. How did you choose going to Chicago? I've known B'Lol since Rufus Sport. And obviously, we stayed in contact. You know, when we see each other, we never haven't seen each other. And he's always told me, like, bro, just come down. Just come check it out. You don't have to stay at nothing. Like, stay at my house. But you don't have to move here or nothing. Just come check it out. So I watched his rise and what he does and his work ethic and his team. And after the fluffy loss, I kind of sat back, had some conversations with people that are really close to me and explained what was going on with me, like, mentally and where I felt. And B'Lol was one of the people. And he's like, I know what the problem is. And everyone that I talked to, which wasn't a lot, they all said exactly the same thing. So I was like, B, can I come with you? What's the problem? What was the problem? Complacency. I know, like, who I can train with and I go hard. I'm the coach of my own thing. Like, I'm running my whole camp, basically. I go to a vagner. Oh, you were running your whole camp? Basically. I'd be like. You go to vagners for Jiu-Jitsu? Yeah, I'd go to vagners for Jiu-Jitsu. I'd be at Kill Cliff. But I'd be in the corner doing my thing because we had the Russian coach over here teaching some crazy stuff that don't make no sense. What do you mean? Like, they'd be teaching some stuff off the wall that would never work. Really? Yeah. But the Russian kids, they were in the classes. They got young guys like Ansar, Nikita, Byshengar. He wasn't even there. Like, those guys, they were like, come over here. Let's do something else. They have real MMA knowledge because they fight and they've learned from all the guys from where they're from. But yeah. So who are these Russian coaches that are teaching? One, man. You don't have to say his name. Yeah. He's not there no more. But he was a legit coach? He never fought. OK. Did he fight in anything? Kickboxing? Nope. Nothing? I don't know if he even competed in wrestling, to be honest with you, ever. I don't know. OK. Is he like, does he spar with people? Nope. How old is he? I would say in his 30s, I would say. What? Really? Yeah, I would guess. And he's a coach? But he's coaching unorthodox stuff? Like, what kind of stuff? He's coaching stuff against the wall. But it was like, for instance, I don't remember what it was. It was against the wall. I was going with my friend AJ, Aaron Jeffries. And it was some take down off the wall, right? AJ couldn't get it. I was like, bro, this. And I don't say it out loud because I don't want no problems. You know, like, I'm going to just go with the flow and mind my business. But I've been doing it long enough to worry. It's like he realized this move is probably not going to work for my body type or my game. But I'll try it. And so anyway, he was doing it. And AJ's like, bro, I don't get it. I was like, yeah, because this shit ain't going to work, bro. He was like, what? I was like, it's not going to work. I'm telling you. So he calls the coach over. And he was like, how can you do? The guy looks at me. He goes, he's telling him. And then he looks at me and goes, stop it. Me? He's like, yeah. I was like, bet. He tries to do it. I literally grab his wrist, grab his head, and throw him. Boom. Is he your size? He's bigger than me. Oh, wow. Throw him. And so it didn't work. No. He's like, let me try one more time. Let's go full speed. I said, shit, that was full speed. Do the exact same thing, but do it the other way now. Boom. Throw him again. AJ looks at me. He says, the coach says something. I was like, then I get agitated, right? Then I'm like, man, that's because this shit ain't going to work. I told you all you all don't listen to me. I just walked off. Oh, that's not good. You know? So I just walked off. And I was like, I ain't taking this damn class no more. So how does this guy become a coach there? Sticking around and translating? Oh, no. You know? Oh, there's those weird guys like that. I'm not saying that this guy's like that, but there are some weird guys like that become parasitic. They're like friends with a guy who's a really good fighter, and then they're always there. And then they want to be a part of the team somehow. And then they start contributing. Or this time maybe running conditioning drills or something. They're like, why is this guy running conditioning drills? That's exactly how it went. Oh, that's the worst. Exactly how it went. Literally, different. There's weird parasitic relationships in any elite-like thing, whether it's sports. I see it in comedy. There's some comedians that have weird parasitic friends that wind up becoming a producer on their thing. And there's just some guy who just like a lamprey clinging to the bottom of a shark. It got weird for a little while, especially at the end. It did, like when I was still there with that whole thing. Because even some of the other coaches started to catch on. Because at Kill Cliff, sometimes we have a lot of guys fighting all over the place. So coaches would be gone. And you try to figure that situation out. So he'd step in and try to help. It just got weird. But again, I'm not the kind of person that really caused a conflict. I'd rather just, for instance, if you're causing something, some type of energy with me, I'm going to just move over here and just stay out your way. That's smart. The world needs more people like you. Well, my younger self would have, I want a conflict. I'm going to show you. Right, of course. But now, as you go wiser, you realize, what's the problem? Also, you're in a lead professional mixed martial arts fighter. You ain't got shit to prove to somebody. That's kind of how I feel now. I see some of these younger kids. I see some of these younger kids now. And I'm just like, let me just stay over here. It gets people hurt. It ruins your life. And that's what it'd be for me. I don't want that to happen. Because I have kids. I have a wife. I have a good life. I live very nice as far as my lifestyle. I'm here with you right now. You know? Also, it's pointless. I've seen bar fights where there's young guys, and they just see an opportunity. They want to prove something. And I'm like, I just want to tell them, like, hey, man, one day you're going to be 35. You're going to be looking back on this day. And maybe it's the day you got stabbed. Maybe it's the day you got shot. Maybe it's the day you got knocked the fuck out, and your head bounced off the concrete, and you'll never be the same person again. Yeah, exactly what you said is just not worth it. You know Kevin James, the Canadian? Yeah, he's come to the gym. Oh, that's awesome. He trains a lot. Good friend of mine. I've been friends of mine for 30 years. When I first met him, he told me a story when he was bouncing. When he was bouncing in a bar on Long Island, one of his friends there was a bouncer, and some drunk kid was starting shit, and he knocked this kid out, and the kid fell down, and hit his head, and died. And he wound up doing time. He went to jail for manslaughter. One of my best friends got stabbed in the face in New Orleans because he didn't even know. He was talking to this dude's chick, and he didn't know. Right. He didn't know. Like, she didn't say nothing. She came up to him. He was just at the bar. Dude came and stabbed him in the face, broke his jaw, stabbed him, and ran. He has a nice scar. He's older now, so it's kind of went away but like through his beard. But why is his jaw shut? He was messed up for a while, you know, in the face. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. If you've got something to say, sell, or share with the world, you need a legit online presence. Me, I use Squarespace to power my website. It's easy to use. And with their AI enhanced website builder and built-in tools for booking payments, email all of it. You can actually run your business, not just build a site. Go to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use the code Rogan to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And someone trying to stab you in the face is easily trying to stab you in the neck. Exactly. Yeah, you just got lucky. So it's like- You just got lucky to hit that jaw and not your fucking carotid artery. Oh my God. I watched a video of these guys in London and they're yelling at each other and squaring off each other back and forth and back and forth. And then finally they get out. And one guy just pulls out a fucking knife and slices this dude's neck. And this dude is just squirting out of his neck. And he tries to fight for a second, then he just gets woozy and he's just squirting as he goes down. I don't know what happened. I'm assuming he died because I'm looking at the amount of blood loss. If someone didn't jump on that and compress it. And even if you did, the carotid artery is like such a significant amount of blood that's going through there. Depending on I guess the damage. Dude, I think I had like- So stupid. I've always heard the story. Obviously, you know how stories are, but I've heard from a couple of different people. I have like a great uncle somewhere along the line. He passed away before I was alive. He was in a bar. I know right where the place is. Everything, the building still there to this day. He was in the bar. He was sitting down having some drinks with a friend. Don't, I don't know the relationship between him and the guy. The guy walked up behind him, slit his throat. Oh God. He missed the carotid arteries, both of them by like not even a quarter of an inch. Like not even eighth of an inch. He missed both of them. So it was just here. Oh shit. He chased the guy out, almost beat him to death and then almost died because he couldn't breathe. Like- Oh God. But almost beat the guy to death. Almost, almost died. So two people almost died. Bro, night clubs are so bad. I've never been a club. I hate like a group of people. I hate it. I get very offsetting. There's too many people on Coke. There's too many people that are stupid. There's too many people that want to like, bro, I fucking see red. And you know, there's too many dummies. When I was a kid, when I was 21 years old, I was at a bar and I watched this guy hit a guy in the face with a Heineken bottle. At a no, at a nowhere over nothing. I was standing by the bar and there's just two guys. They were as close as Jamie is to me and they were talking to each other like a loud voices, but nothing crazy. Like no physical shit. And this guy just takes a Heineken bottle off the bar and smashes it on his face. And there was blood everywhere. This guy was just leaking all over his face. I was like, the guy's face is destroyed for the rest of his life over literally nothing. Literally nothing. It's crazy, man. It's just, there's too many people out there that are fucking stupid, man. And you get sucked into their gravity. You know, you're like the guys that like, they're like, if they know who you are, they'll be like, oh, you can fight. I can shoot. I'm like, all right, so can I. Yeah, congratulations, man. Let's not fight each other or shoot each other. Hi, my name is Brendan. That's my thing now. I'm like, bro, I don't want to fight or shoot. You just leave me alone and leave my family alone. We're good, bro. I don't want no problems with nobody. Well, the problem is there's too many people out there that haven't proven themselves. They don't have a thing in their life that gives them a challenge all the time where they're proving themselves. So every time they go out, they're trying to prove themselves. Every time they go out, they're trying to puff their chest out and be Billy badass. And it's so dangerous. And here's where you don't see that. Trained fighters. I used to bounce a little, like something small. And I needed the money, obviously. And I will never forget, man, this little dude, he had to be like this tall, short and fat. I don't know how tipsy he was. I don't know, right? But all the guys know that I was fighting. I was LFA at the time. And they always told me, hey, man, don't worry about hitting nobody. If someone swings at you, I got you. Or just hit them and say I did it. And I was like, I'm good, bro. I'm good. I'm just smiling. So it doesn't get you in trouble? Yeah, they were super cool, right? Who knows if that would have really been hugged. I don't know, you know? But anyway. If you really fucked somebody up and there was a lawsuit, I guarantee they'd have dropped your name. Dude, there was this bartender there. He freaking, I watched it with my own two eyes in the front. This dude and him got into it. The guy slipped, cause he pushed him and he slipped. It was a little wet. Dude, he soccer kicked him so hard in the face. So hard. I was like, he got arrested for that. Oh, god. But that little kid, he swung at me. And I don't even know if he hit me or hit my hand. He hit something, right? And I'm laughing. I'm laughing. I'm like, I couldn't believe it. He had that cocaine courage, son. He must have. I'm laughing. I'm literally doing this. And cause I was going to stick him with the right, but he was so little. Like I was like, no way. And how I saw the punch come, I was like, don't do it. There are some people out there that have no idea how to fight and yet they still try to fight. They have no weapon. They don't have a good punch. They don't have a background in wrestling. They don't have a damn thing. And yet they'll still decide they want to fight someone and just hope in today's day and age, how can you hope that people don't know how to fight? I think if you run into 10 guys, one of them can fight today. It's probably the most in human history in terms other than like Spartan days, most in human history. And even back then, how good was their technique? Very exactly. You know what I'm saying? It's crazy. I don't know about calf kicks. Ha ha ha ha. It's like my dad grew up boxing, right? So my dad, he would always tell me like growing up, he was a little bitch. He was like, I used to get my ass kicked until he had to move in with his grandfather. His grandfather, World War II vet, shot twice, grew up boxing. Probably the most rugged man that you'll ever meet. I met him once before he passed away. His voice was so gruff. Like he's a man's man, you know? Like one of those doesn't say nothing really. And so he raised my dad and he used to step outside, like kind of mess with him, box. Like he put him in boxing, but he knocked my dad out one time. And my dad was like, you know, well man, come on, let's test it. Stepped on his foot and slept him. And but anyway, so like when he was in high school though, that's a fucked up thing to do to your kid. Dude, he said, my dad said he didn't care about nothing. My dad said he'd literally watch this, smash his finger flat with a hammer. The nerves flew out. Like they were still attached, they flew out. Oh my God. Hit his head on throwing a bales of hay in the loft. Smoked his head on a railroad spike that was in the wood. Cracked his skull. He didn't know till two days later. They said if he would have waited a couple, like 12 more hours, he would have been dead cause all the swelling on his brain. He had to cut his brain, his skull off to let the fluid come out. Oh God. Crazy old, just stubborn old man, you know? That's crazy dude, your grandson though. Sleeping like that. Dude, he said, my dad said. That's so crazy. My dad said, he said, we were messing around. He's like, all right, like quit messing with me. He always told him that, leave me alone. He kept on, he kept on, he stepped on his foot. And my dad said, quit stepping. He said, that's all he remembers. Old school trick. Slept in, my dad said when he woke up, he had the worst migraine. And he was on the porch drinking a thing, I think tea. And he was like, hey, get your ass up and go clean the dog pin. Get to work. What the hell was? Those dudes who came up through World War II were, that's a different kind of human being. Yeah, you know, so it's like, that's just kind of like how my dad was. So like when he got into high school, he wasn't the kind to go look for trouble, but he was the kind of person, my dad told me as well, you stick up for other people that can't stick up for themselves. Or if someone fucks with you, do what you gotta do. Just don't, nowadays he's like, don't put your hands, like don't punch at them first, unless they get an arm for each. Then you throw a punch first. Don't ever let someone hit you. Well, kind of like you too, you could just choke somebody. Yeah, now, but it's like. You could just put them to sleep. And that's more, I'm a good hugger. So it's like, I prefer that. But my dad's like mean, man, like he's different. Like he was in the military and he boxed when he was overseas for like 75 bucks, cause he'd send all his money home to us. So it's like, like, I don't know, like people don't know. Different kinds of human beings, man. I come from something like, that's what I feel like when I fight, like I'm different. Like I honestly, I was telling myself that in the Marvin fight in between rounds, like going into the third, cause my dad and my brother were both there in attendance for the first time. Like my brother hadn't been in any of my fights since probably my second pro fight, cause of his injury. And so like my, I watched my buddy Costello fight for the PFL belt. And he said after the fight, like he said word for word, he's like, I was, I was raised by a warrior. He raised two warriors. I'm a fucking warrior. And he's like, that's what I told myself. And so like that stuck in my head till the fight, like till my fight. So like in the third round, like everyone was like, oh, he falls off in the third. And that was something like my corner was, cause that was my first time in Chicago. So like Horacio looked at me in between rounds and he was like, Hey, let's go. Like let's restart it. He said something else. And I was like, I'm good. Just get out of the way. Like, you know, that's, it's kind of one of those moments where it's like you're living in the moment, but I don't know. Well, I think just having a coach is really important. It's really important, especially having an elite coach, having a coach that's really on top of it, you know? I guess a safe Sayud, you know, Farazahabi, Duke Rufus, having someone who's like really on it, really watching you, really knows what you need, really knows when you need to back off. Cause the fact that you did so well and that you were coaching yourself is kind of fucking crazy. Well, when I say, I had coaches. Yeah, exactly. But I didn't have a main coach. Yes, sir. Exactly. That's the difference. So for people that don't know, okay. If you're listening to this and you're just interested in MMA, generally there's a striking coach. Usually they have some sort of a Muay Thai or kickboxing background. You generally have wrestling coaches. You generally have jiu-jitsu coaches. And if you're a really good gym, you got one guy who knows how to put it all together. Right. And those are the maestro's. Da, da, da. Those are the guys who are like conducting the entire orchestra. And they know you. And if a good guy knowing his fighter is like an artist, and I think you can only have a certain amount of people that you're working really closely with, because it's a very involved and intensive job, like Eric Nixick. That's a guy, he gets down into the nitty gritty of every fucking thing you guys are doing. Well, he's watching you. He knows what you need. He knows what you don't need. You know, it's like, it's also you got a guy who could just push it off to him. He knows what to do. He's gonna give you game plans in between rounds. Okay, this is working, but we need more of this. He does this all the time. When he does, the reason why he's getting away with it is because of that. Get it in your head, go out there. When I hear guys and the guys losing and they get no technical advice, and they start getting, go fuck him up. You gotta fuck him up. You gotta put hands on him. I'm like, oh my God, tell him what to do. He knows how to fight. Get on top. Tell him. Get on top. Tell him what to do. Stand up. And I get it, you only have a minute. I get it. And I get it, everybody's panicking if things are going wrong. I get it, but my God. It's been different. Having a good coach, having like a Ferasa hobby type dude in your corner who just really understands what you need to do. So fucking important. It's been one of the best changes that I have because I ain't gonna lie. I'm not the easiest person to deal with. I like to be very in control of things that I can control. And I know myself. I've done a lot. I've been around a lot. So I know, amen, I'm feeling it today. My body's kind of done. No, no, no, no, go, go, go, go. 100%, you know? Do you monitor all your shit? Do you monitor your resting heart rate? You like Jones? Now, usually I have my whoop on because I used to have the aura, but I couldn't train with it. Right, right. But I just took it off because I was training jujitsu. Or is a little bit of a problem when you lift weights too. Exactly. I pinched my finger so bad. Well, have you ever seen sheathing injuries? You ever seen those? Uh-uh. What is it? Where it rips the skin of your finger off? The first time I ever saw one. I never saw one in person. But the first time I ever saw one, it was somebody who did jujitsu. And they did jujitsu with a ring on, like a wedding ring, and just fucking mangled their finger. Well, it's called sheathing because it pulls all your skin off the bone, like a sheath, you would stick it nice. Oh, I've seen that. Yeah, I didn't know that's what it was called. That's what it's called. It's like a sheathing. Here's some of these injuries. I felt like that. Bro, look at that. Dude. Ew. The first time I ever seen it was someone in a gi. A gi. It got caught in the gi. Oh my God. Really? Like you said, it took the skin off. Yeah, he had the red ring, and I think he made the grip on the sleeve. And when the guy pulled, it caught that fat, that little muscle, or whatever right there. It ripped his fucking skin off his finger. The whole skin. I've never seen that. Dude, it was so nasty. Like you said, I was like, oh my God. So now I am 100% sure that I don't wear my wedding ring. That's why I tattooed on my finger because when I go to camp, I don't wear a wedding ring. She knows when I get to camp, I take it off, I put it in my truck. When camp is over and I get home from the fight, I put it back on. I don't have mine on now because I just came from the gym, but I used to have a silicone one. Well, I'm not used to. I have a silicone one that I use all the time that I can work out with it. I can do anything with it. Oh, interesting. Yeah. What is that company, Ridge? Is that what it is? No, that's the wallet company. Is that what it is? They make it all kind of stuff. They got luggage and everything. It's a good one. It looks like an aura ring too, but it's made out of silicone. So even if you catch it on something, it's no big deal. But even that, I forget which coach it was. I forget which coach. It's like an elite jujitsu coach. He goes, I refuse to let a guy even train with that. He goes, I've seen too many injuries. Too many injuries where your finger just gets mangled by having that fucking stupid thing on there. That's nasty. That's like groove ring. Groove, that's it. I feel like that with knee injuries and dislocations. Oh, dude, you know what creeps me the most is broken shins. When I see that shin check, when the shin snaps, I'm like, ah! There's ever a fight that I think a guy should have pulled out that didn't. If I was his friend, I would have told him you cannot fight. It's Connor, when he fought Dustin. The second fight with Dustin, excuse me, the third fight with Dustin when his shin snapped in half. They knew that he had some sort of a hairline fracture on his shin. Really? I never knew that. He'd already had MRIs and everything. They knew something was really wrong with it. Yeah, screw that, no, no. And he didn't even go shin to knee or anything like that. Like it usually snaps. That's how compromised it was. If you watch that fight, there is one time where Dustin checks it and he checks the kick and he looked at it. He pointed at it. I'm like, I know that hurt you, bitch. Like he got in his head. And that was also after Dustin had just KOed him in the last fight. So this was the third fight. And it was weird, man, because in the first fight, it was like nice guy Connor. It was like nice guy Connor, even after the fight. Like after the fight, he was being cool. He got KOed. His leg got fucked up with those calf kicks. And after the fight, he was so respectful. I'm like, look, Connor turned a corner. Not the third one. Not the third one, bro. You're chosen, my Gems. Oh, bro, it's so funny. But it's like, I know where Dustin, he comes from like a same vibe that I come from and like same things probably bother him. So when he said that, you could see Dustin, like even though he just whooped him, he was like, like, you know. It's crazy to even say why you're lying there with a broken leg. For sure. You know, he took it well though. You know, who took it the best that I've seen personally. Tyrone Spong. When he snapped his in half, he's just sitting there. We talk about this too. I'm like, bro, how'd you sit there just like, he's like, to be honest, I think he said like, to be honest, I was losing shock at first. And then I was like, what am I gonna do? It is what it is. Yeah. Like, what am I gonna do? Like it sucks. That's wise. Yeah. He was a G. That was against Gokonsaki too. Yeah. That was a kickboxing fight. Yeah. I remember to this day. It's rare in a kickboxing fight. It's an interesting, it's way more common in an MMA fight. I've only seen it a couple of times in kickboxing. I've seen it. God, thank God, thank, because of Instagram. Luckily, I get to see every fucking horrific injury that's ever happened. I've seen, it seems like I never saw it until one, who was the first time? Was it Corey Hill? I think it was Corey Hill was the first guy who broke his, and Corey was like a real tall, thin guy. I believe he fought at 145 and he was something crazy, like six three at 145. Yep. It was real tall and skinny. And who did he fight? Jamie will fight. He passed away, right? Yes, he did, unfortunately. He fought in Louisiana, good big. Cause I remember when he passed away, they were doing some stuff for him there. So that was also the referee didn't notice it. Dale? It just says Dale H on the thing. Oh. Oh. Bro, that gets me. So during the fight, the referee didn't notice it. So they kept fighting and I put my headsets down and I got up and I was screaming, stop the fight, stop the fight. The referee didn't notice it. He didn't notice that the guy's leg broke. So they were still scrapping on the ground. I hope that was the end, cause I did not notice that. His leg is literally in a U. It's just a bad angle, you know? You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Looking at where the referee's standing, there's actually kind of no excuse. This, oh, there it is. Oh, I see it falls back. Look, it's his lip. His leg's broken, his leg's broken. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. The fight is all over, Corey Hill. Dang. He's suffered a broken leg. Whoa. Dale Hart. You saw it instantly on your monitor. I saw it instantly in the cage. Dang. I wasn't watching the monitor. I don't even think we had monitors back then. I was just about to ask that question. I don't think we had monitors back then. We didn't have monitors for a while. The monitors were my idea. Really? I was like, we have to have monitors. I want to see monitors. I want to see replays. I want to see shit. It was early, early in the UFC. I was like, we need monitors. And also the judges should get fucking monitors too. Yeah, now it's nice. I'll sit behind you sometime to see it. Actually, now that I'm thinking that, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we did have monitors. Maybe I was asking for other things. Because maybe I was asking for monitors for the judges. Like, when did they start having monitors in the UFC? I don't know. But I always try to watch the actual fight. I want to see the actual fight. I mean, I like, you get a better view of the cages there. But I mean, fuck man, you're five feet away from the best fights on earth. You want to see it, see it. I don't want to be watching TV. That's crazy. Yeah, you got the best seat in the house. Oh, it's the craziest seat ever. So when did they start doing it? 2011. Is that for judges? Yeah, that was definitely my idea. Or, well, there was other people that had that same idea. But I'm like, you need to do this. Because there were some of them that were so bad. Some calls that were so bad. There's no way these guys are seeing everything. If there's a pillar here and a guy lands an elbow and you're judging and you don't see it, what do you do? What do you say? That might have been the most pivotal moment in the fight. Like, what are you doing? You have to see it. The judging thing is crazy, man. Because there's judges that don't even train. They've never trained MMA. They don't have any jujitsu skill. They don't know what's going on. In the middle of a fight once, this lady leaned over to my friend who was also working for one of the commissions and said, what is he doing? No way. It was an Americana. It was a normal move. It was like, what is he doing? That's crazy. It was either Americana or Kamura. I'm not sure if I remember. I don't know. He's trying to bite him. What? I don't know. But imagine this is a person that's in charge. So the really horrible thing about it, a bad decision, it's not just that you get a loss on your record, but you get half your paycheck, which I think is really fucked up. I think that needs to stop. I think you should have a designated amount that you're fighting for. And if you want to have a stoppage bonus, or you want to give someone some sort of a bonus for an excellent performance, that's great. That incentivizes them to try harder to stop somebody. But a bad decision that can cost you half your purse is crazy. It's crazy. I had a... I'm getting older, so I try to have a little bit more wisdom. So after I lost a fluffy, I went back and watched a fight like six times and I'm like, I really don't see how I lost on a decision. I can see your point if you use this frame of mind, but based on the unified rules at the time, how? So I reached out to a lot of people that I knew that are in the high up in commissions, and I had really deep talks with them about it, like explain my perspective, listen to theirs, the rules. And literally it came down to, it's your interpretation. It's your interpretation of the rules. And it was like, it came down to, is his effective grappling, even if they're holding, they're still, you know, whatever, does it outweigh me almost knocking you out and me putting a cut all the way to your skull on your face, and you holding me? Which one outweighs what? That's how I explained it to him. And they were like, oh, but he just had more time. I said, and look, don't get me wrong, I love fluffy. I think he's a great human being. I really do. I've known him, we fought twice already, and he's beat me both times, both decisions, you know? And, but I don't think I lost the last one. I still stay, I'll still die on that hill. Well, it was a very good fight. It was a very close fight. I see what you're saying though, and it was one of the things that we brought up during this past fight with Marabh and Piotr Yon. And I'm like, if you're looking at it in terms of just damage, Piotr Yon is clearly doing more damage. He's hitting Marabh with shots that rock him. He kicks him in the body, he's got him screaming. There was never a moment where Marabh did that to Piotr. Even when he hit him with good shots, Piotr was firing back. Damage is huge. It's what the sport is really about. The sport is really about either damage or coming really close to putting someone out, or submitting them. That's what the sport's about. And when it's just holding, when a guy holds and doesn't do anything with it, it's like that, it's an effective strategy, and if you're fighting a guy who could fuck you up standing and that's all you could do to survive, I understand. I have no problem with boring fights. I really don't. And I know the fans are like, fucking separate him. You know, fucking separate him. I have no problem with boring fights because I think if you can let a guy just hold on to you, that is a part of the game. If a guy takes you down and holds you down, I think you should be there around only five minutes. I don't believe in stand-ups. And I know that sounds crazy, but even if it's boring as shit, and sometimes I'm happy when they stand people up, I really am, but if it was my rules, if I could make the rules, I'd be like, never stand a person up. Unless there's a violation of the rules, never stand a person up. Because it's part of the sport. If it's boring, it's boring. You know, we talked about it after the fight. Like, I went in the back and I was frustrated at myself, really, to be honest. I was super frustrated at myself. Well, at first it was, I was like, fuck, they just let him fucking hold the whole time. Like in the third, I literally almost knocked him out. Da-da-da-da-da, like I'm talking shit, right? And Robbie looks at me, Robbie Lawler, and he goes, should have just got up then. I went, you're right. Yeah. You're right. You're right. That's some Robbie Lawler wisdom right there. And from there, I was like, all right. But then I found out after, one of Fluffy's coaches is, he used to be in the commission, so he knows, they explained his pedigree or whatever, and he's very, very, very knowledgeable about what the rules are and all these things. So he strategizes, I guess, certain things around that. So he strategizes certain things around the rules to try to get the other guy. That's what I heard. That's what they told me. I've been a lot of guys do that. He canceled, he was in the commission, like part of it, I guess worked for him, and he pulled out of working there because he wanted to be for Fluffy more, which is admirable. But he didn't want to have conflict of interest. Conflict of interest, yeah. So I thought that was pretty cool, but I will say, what Fluffy did really good that I was prepared for wrestling like crazy, but I wrestle with guys that are like, folk-style wrestlers. What he does very well is, he don't shoot normal shots. He doesn't shoot like a double or a single. He shoots, it looks like it's gonna be a double, but he's only at your hips. He's just trying to get your hips. Then he's circling right away if he can, or putting you to the cage and working his sequences from there. But he has very awkward shots. They're so weird. I could see them and I was like, oh, I'm about to stuff it, but I'm the kind of guy like, you gotta touch me and then I'm gonna go, I'm not just gonna react. That way you can set it up for something else. But as soon as he touches me, like in the second, I didn't know how, but I watched it back. I went to catch a wizard. And next thing you know, my feet came out from under me because we were both circling so hard. I was trying to get the wizard and he was trying to go to my back. And my feet came out from under me and I just landed on my shoulder. And I'm like, in the fight, I'm like, what the fuck just happened? There's no way. This is where my head's at. I'm like, no fucking way that he just did this. I'm like, what the fuck just happened? And my corner's yelling at me, his corner's yelling. And I'm still in my head like, what the fuck? Like what just, dude, it took me like probably a minute and a half to like transfer into something else. And then I was like, he's not doing nothing. So I'll just get him next round, which terrible frame of mindset we've worked on. And then the third, but yeah, man, I was like still, like after the fight, I was like, yo, I asked my boy, like how do you get me down there? Like he went for a guillotine. I said, go for no goddamn guillotine till the third. And then I swept him with it and stood back up. I was like, I didn't do that, I swear. But yeah, man, but like I said, beginning out of savage. He's got a clever style. He is a savage if he's a mid-day. And he also has a crazy gas tank, man. He melts guys. That guy melts guys. The delizé thing when he grabbed his neck and just like a bouncer at a nightclub, just dragged him back to finish him, that was crazy. Yeah, man. That's one thing I wish I would have gave, like put more output, like, cause I wasn't, everyone's like, you're tired. I was like, bro, I was having a full conversation like this in between rounds, right after the fight, I wasn't tired. I was just complacent. Like, I was like, oh, like I'm already gonna, cause I beat Malcun like that. Cause all he did was hold, literally just held. And I'm hitting him. Bang, bang, bang. How am I supposed to improve my position? You literally just holding. You're not even moving at all. You're not lifting your weight. You're not doing nothing. So I won that fight cause I did more damage and I had fight ending intentions. I felt I had that with Fluffy. So in the third, I was like, I'm L-born him and he's gushing blood. And I'm looking at the ref and I'm like, yo, he's just holding. I tried to get up. He just picks my ankle and I go back down. I elbow him some more, try to get back up. He got on top for like a minute, but he didn't do nothing really. Anyway, that's where my frame of mindset was at. And it was just terrible, you know, looking back, but I would love a third, you know. Well, it'll probably happen. It'll probably happen somewhere down the line cause it'll be a great fight. Yeah. That's where, well, that's where the kind of the holdup is, I guess right now of like, obviously, you know how politics work in this game, but it's like the top five is the champion, Drickus, champion, Drickus, Emavolv, Sean Strickland, Fluffy Me. And it's like, all right, Sean, they just announced Sean and Fluffy. Emavolv, yep, that's cool. And then Emavolv's waiting. They've all, they both said they're gonna wait for that one. So it's just me and Drickus. And then right behind me is Izzy. Who knows when Izzy's gonna fight or if he's gonna fight or what. So it's like, we're waiting on Drickus and Drickus always has a lot to say when I'm losing, but when I'm winning, he don't really have enough to say. And then like, I just saw it interviewed like the other day and it was like, he was like, yeah, I'd love to beat his head in or something. About you? Yeah, about me. And I'm like, well, you have the opportunity to do so and it only makes sense unless you wanna wait forever. So. I wonder what he does after that Hamzad fight. Cause when a guy dominates you like that, where it's so clear, it's just like one of those gaps that it looks like, oh, you're never gonna bridge that gap. And that grappling gap. And it's never gonna, I don't know if you agree, but that should never happen at that level. It will never does happen at that level. That's the reality, except Islam and Jack De La Madalena. That's another similar situation. Very similar situation. But I think there's guys that you get in there with and if you're used to a like B caliber guy or a high level guy, there's only a few real A's. And like Hamzad is a real A. Yeah, well, he's good at, he's a savage. I talked to DC about him and DC said, dude, when that guy grabbed me and he goes, we were wearing street clothes and everything like that. He goes, I realized like, I'm gonna have to wrestle, wrestle to keep this guy off me. He goes like, he's fucking strong, man. And it's also because, first of all, how the fuck did that guy make 170? I don't know, but I don't understand how he talks about going up to 205, cause like you said, you got guys like Pereira and don't get me wrong. I know they're stylistically different, but I think. I think he can do it. I think he can do it. I think he could do it if he takes the time and puts weight on. Yeah, if he puts weight on, I think he has a high chance. Cause he's tall, you know, he's tall. And it's also the thing is this like these gaps in wrestling, you know, these gaps in grappling. When a guy's a really good grappler and then you're taking on a guy like Drickus, he's really a striker. Right. He's a good grappler, a good jujitsu guy, but there's levels, you know? And the kind of guy like Hamzad, man, you gotta be a fucking Olympic halber wrestler to scrap with that guy. Yeah. And it's like, I tell people like, I'm not going to go out there and straight beat Chamiavin, peer wrestling. Like it's not going to happen. I'm not stupid. I'm not stupid, but it's MMA. Could I take him down? I mean, yeah, I could. But there's other ways to approach the fight that I think I have the upper hand. Like you see how other people have approached him and done well with him, but it's like. You also have very good submissions too. You have real solid jujitsu game and you could strike. You know, you've got a very complete package. And I think, you know, the thing about his grappling is that like you have that hole. If you have that hole, he's going to find that hole and he's going to smother you. For sure. And you're in Foxville. That's what freaks, that's what like makes no sense to me with the Drickus fight, right? Like you're the champion of the world. He took you down. No problem, man. I totally understand. I get taken down a lot, you know? But I mean, I know our styles are different, but you didn't try to hip bump. You didn't try to hip escape. You didn't try to scoop the leg and lift and elevate. You didn't try to do nothing. He didn't literally, he didn't try to do nothing. He literally waited for him to establish his position. He'd roll side to side, maybe one hip bump around. When he did, Tremayev did great knee sliced or just stepped over past and went crucifix. Do you, how many times have you put in the crucifix, by the way, that was crazy. I only had to be like once around because he wasn't getting out. I mean, how many times did he put him into crucifix? In a world championship fight, has there ever been a fight where a champion has been put in a crucifix that many times? Insane. It was over and over and over again. We were like, how is he doing this again? This is so crazy. And that kind of blew my mind. So that's why it's like, when you- I just think Tremayev's gap is just so good. And I think also with a guy like Drickus, and you would be the guy to speak to this, when you're down and you realize, okay, it's the first round. He's taking me down, he's on top of me. Let me just conserve my energy. There's a five round world championship fight. I'm gonna knock this motherfucker out. He's gonna get tired doing this. He always gets tired, but you know the difference with Hamzah in this fight. He's trained with Sam Calavita. Do you know that guy? Uh-uh. Okay. I just already hired someone good. Yeah, Calavita is a real elite strength and conditioning coach and legendary guy. And he runs this, he just calls it the garage, okay? It's in Orange County, California. And it's just a fucking garage, and not even a big one. Just a small two car garage with no cars in it. And it's all just machines and equipment. And he's got Armand Saruki in training down there, TJ Dillishaw, when he was in his prime, he was training down there. The reason why TJ's conditioning was that such a fucking high level when he was in his prime, was he was training with that guy. He has everybody that I know that's trained with him. It's like, bro, this guy puts you to fucking hell, hell. This is, that's TJ when he's trained in there. And again, this is like, if you see, there's Sam, if you see it, like, and when you listen to the guy talk, just extremely fucking knowledgeable. But he gets you to the point, it's called the train, it's, if you look at it online, training lab on Instagram, T-R-E-I-G-N lab, Ing lab training, but training is T-R-E-I-G-N, like train MMA. Yeah, I know that name, the training lab, because I was like, man, what a weird way. That's it, so you see Aaron Pico's there with him, there's Hamzant, so, I mean, he's got so many elite guys that are training inside of that gym. There's Juan Archuleta. I wonder how they work. Global innovation is accelerating, but how are businesses staying in the fast lane? AWS AI is how? Like Formula One, turning race action into real time insights, and the AI momentum doesn't stop there. From energy companies using smart grids to prevent surges, to educators personalizing lessons to move at every student's speed. Across industries worldwide, AWS AI is how industry leaders stay ahead. That obviously they have their coaches and stuff dealing with it, but like how they operate is such intense. The issue with Hamzant was over training. So one of the things about Hamzant is he's, apparently you can't kick him out of the fucking gym. He won't stop training. And you gotta literally stop him from training. He's a maniac. And when he got COVID, that's what really fucked him up. So he got COVID and you would think, well, healthy guy like that who gets COVID, that ain't gonna be shit for him. This silly motherfucker was training like an animal two hour sessions with COVID. So then, he's never getting better. So instead of saying, hey, this cold is not getting better, he's like, don't be pussy, I kill everyone. He shows up again, training again, two and a half hours. Sick as a fucking dog, coughing. And then he broke his immune system down to a point where they had to fucking hospitalized him. Yeah, I remember hearing that. Just from training while he had COVID. That's all it was. He just refused to stop training. And look, if you, I don't care what it is, the flu, whatever you have, you're trying to train two and a half hour days when you have a serious lung infection, you're gonna fucking die. There's DC. And DC told me he did one session with him. This is recent. He's on the bike. What's that? The resistance band's on the bike. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He uses elastic bands along with a fucking rogue echo bike. Yeah, so those rogue echo bikes, they suck enough. And to have resistance bands while you're doing it too. That's crazy. Yeah. Now, Sam's an animal. And again, super knowledgeable. Like, knows what your recovery should be, where your resting heart rate should be. And also super knowledgeable in terms of like supplements, diet and all that stuff. He comes from the endurance cycling world, which is like, so cycling you would imagine like Tour de France style cycling. This is probably the most endurance dependent sport on planet Earth, cause it goes for so long. Like you have to be, you have to really understand how to peak in order to compete at a real insane endurance event like that. So he's got this knowledge from that sport that he's transferred over to MMA. But everybody I know that's trained with him has said, man, it just changed everything, changed my whole game. Because now all of a sudden you've got an incredible gas tank. Yeah, he's doing good. Chamaev, like I said, he looked good, but... I think that was a factor though in that fight because there's no fade in that fight where you saw like the Usman fight, there was a fade in the third round. Usman won that fucking third round. And after that third round, he was like, fuck, I wish this was a five round fight. Yeah, but it's like also like Usman made him have output. He didn't really have to, he had one explosion to take him down. But Usman can fucking wrestle. That's the difference. Like he was in there with a guy who was real strong, even though he's a weight class below him, like it was Usman that had been competing at 170. And Hamzad had already committed to 85. He's a bigger guy. But Usman can really wrestle. And that's the difference. It's not like a guy that doesn't know what to do and you take him down, you ragdome. Usman's like, okay, you got me down, but this is a long ass fight. And I'm gonna get back up and we're gonna figure this out. And in the third round, he was figuring it out. And he started tuning him up. He was landing good shots. I have a friend that trained with Tremayev. He goes and helps and he's told me, he's like, man, his wrestling's really good. I was like, how good? He was like, is good. I was like, he whooped you? He was like, no, if he whooped me, why would they bring me in if he whoops me? I was like, Touche, good one. But you know, he is good. But you're still gonna watch that. You gotta watch to see what does he consider whoop. Yeah. Let me watch. Show me the video. Let me see it. Let me see what they got. Let me go in the room. I wanna see in the room. But I like his demeanor too. The confrontation he had with Ian Gary. He's similar to me. I don't understand that because I had heard there's another angle that shows that Ian slapped him on the back pretty hard. Yeah. Oh, he did. Yeah, but Ian's that guy. He's trying to get a rise out of you. That way, when you do get a rise, he's like a big brother, nitpicking. He's that guy. He wants you to get a rise out of you so then he could be like, what are you doing? I didn't mean that. He's like, that's why I don't really like, that's why I don't like Ian at all. That's because he's- You guys were in the same gym for a while. Yeah. And he's, but like, I don't know. Like, I know like other things and like things that happen. And he's just that guy. Like he's talked shit to me through another person. Like we're at a, me and my boy are at a fight and he's talking shit to me through his phone. The bro, shut up. Take your, stop letting your wife tell you what to do, bro. Shut up. You know? But like, yeah, he walks over there and he says something. Dude, he hits him hard on the back and Chamayov just looks at him. And then he did what he did back or whatever and shoved him, whatever the case, however that you saw the confrontation from there. But yeah, he did. He hit him hard and he told him, he was like, you hit me, I'm gonna fuck you up. Like if you hit me like that again, he tried to like big brother him. Like fuck. Because the clip that everybody saw was after he slapped him on the back. It looked like Chamayov just got really aggressive with him for no reason. This is the other angle. Like keeps hitting him. Then shakes him as he walks away. Yeah. And then he's talking a little shit. Yeah. Oh, we're fine. He's not gonna do nothing. So it's a little weirdly aggressive. It ain't that bad. It's passive aggressive. It's a little weird. Taps him. It was like a little like grab his clothes and shove him a little bit. Yeah. It wasn't like a guy that's, hey brother. Exactly. And that's what he said. Good luck to you. I have to give it to him. Like some things Chamayov says are like, he fought my boy G and he talked shit to him in the hallway. I didn't really like that. But hey, y'all two are gonna fight. Y'all are grown men. Do what y'all want. Some things he might say or do. I don't like or agree with. But hey, as long as it's not to me, we good. But that, like and other things he does, I fully agree with. I stay as a man, I stay behind him. One of the things I like about Chamayov, like after he fought Gilbert, Gilbert and him went to war. And then he was like, you're my brother now. You know what I mean? He was like, he was really cool with them. Yeah. You know, there's a young kid, Ansar, that trains a kill cliff. And he is so much like demeanor wise from what I see of Chamayov. He's so much like that. Dude, I'm telling you this kid's like 18 years old and he is a stud. He's 18. He fought for me on my promotion. His, I think his debut. Dude, he goes and gets in the guy's face. The guy's coming down at weight class. He's going up a weight class. Ansar's going up a weight class. Dude, he don't care. Matter of fact, he's in that streamer's video neon or whatever they post about it. He's the one like throwing RDR around him. Really? Yeah. Dude, he's- 18 year old kid? Dude, he gives everybody problems. Gilbert, was throwing RDR around. Isn't it wild when there's like some weird young phenom that is just so much better than they're supposed to be when they're young? Dude. It's real odd when you're around those guys. There's three or four of them that, dude, I miss them a lot. Like when I'm not, like when I left Florida. One, they are such loyal humans. Like you barely find that nowadays, as you know. Like you don't find too many loyal guys. And when they say like my brother, they don't care if you're white, black, Indian, what your ethnicity is, what your religion, they don't care. They care about you. And dude, when I got into it with Marvin at the casino, Ansar wasn't even old enough to get in. So he was like, brother, if I had been there, I hit him, no problem. But there's like Nikita, Umran John, which is Ansar's best friend. And there's like Islam, there's a couple of them. That's a lie of, there's like three to five. And I'm telling you these guys, especially like Umran John, there he is. Whoa, that's a hell of a shot. Oh my goodness. Dude, he is so good. Oh my goodness. Look how smooth he took that dude's back. He just, he just fought a couple of weeks ago. He knocked some dude out in the first round. That was so smooth, man. Oh my goodness. Oh, he is on that back so quick. Ansar's so good. You know, there's one thing that these guys have in common, is they're all from a hard part of the world. A fucking rough part of the world. Him and his best friend, Umran John, they left home at like, I think he was 17, 18 years old. They just left home. We asked him like, hey bro, why'd you leave home? How'd you leave home? Like how'd you get here? They both said the same thing. Look at, he's out, he's out. Referee. He's a savage. He trains 100%, he don't know anything other than 100% every day. Multiple times, but we asked him like, bro, how'd you leave home? How old is he now? I think he's 18, 19 max. Wow. Dude, he's a savage. He looks good. He's very good. He looks good, man. There's another one. If you're that good at 18, my goodness. He's gonna be a stud. What's he gonna be like when he's 30? Dude, I tell him all the time, like man, if you just learn how to just take a breath and just be a little bit patient in certain positions. Well, that don't come. Exactly, but man, he's fighting good guys already. They all wanna fight him. Umanjahn was fighting one or two weight classes up and he had a draw with a guy and he thought it was like, you would've think he lost the love of his life. He had a draw, because he was two weight classes up. And like, bro, why don't you fight at your weight class? Brother, I just smash. I wanna fight everyone. Everyone. And they can't get fights. They can barely ever get fights. It's hard for phenoms to get fights and amateurs and the lower organization. So a lot of people don't realize that it's really hard. Yeah, they come to me to match him and you gotta pay the other guy more to fight because they already know what it is. And it was hard. It was very hard. And so what weight is he at now? I think he's at 45. Damn. 45? That's his last one right there. I think, no, no, that's not. This is just another big take down. Bro, look at the dudes hair he's fighting. That's what he does to everyone. Oh my goodness. That is a crazy take down. He's so exciting. I can't believe dudes are still holding on to guillotines when people get into side control. How many times they watch Oven St. Pro Fight? It's crazy how many people still do that. They still keep that guillotine while a guy's in side control. That is a death sentence. And some people don't cash in on it, but if you just cinch those hands together and he can't get that ham out, that's it. Turn on your side, that's it. It's almost like giving up your neck. If someone gave up their back, everybody would be like, what are you doing? That's what you're doing. If you're holding on to a guillotine and a guy's in side control, it literally is giving up your back and exposing your neck. It's kind of crazy. It is. But I see these kids like this and I'm just like, I used to be that kid, but these guys are even better. You know what I mean? It's scary how evolution is. But like I said, man, I asked these kids, I was like, man, why'd you leave home? How'd you leave home? How'd you get here? Him and his best friend left together. Their story, both? Same thing, different times. Like, brother, we just left one day. We told our parents we were going to the store, never came back. What? You know? And just moved to America? Yeah, they somehow got here and they've been here and dude, they work during the day. They move stuff. They work for a moving company. And then they train, so they train in the morning. They train, train, then they go work all night, all through the night, moving stuff, whatever they have to do, whatever their work is. But most of the time I see them moving stuff. And then they come back, train the next day. And they do this every single day, working their ass off, man. It's super impressive and it's super motivating too, but it just lets you know, like, like for me, I used to be that young cat. Like, everyone was 24, 25, I'm 17, 18. And I'm doing what I'm doing. And now I see these kids and I'm like, damn, so that's what it was like when the older guys were looking at me. But these guys are better. Some people forget when they get complacent in their career and they become like a journeyman and they forget what it's like to be young and hungry and then they'll train with someone and that'll either make them retire or it'll reinvigorate them. It's awesome. Because if you're around people that are that driven, it becomes contagious. It really does. Especially if you know that a guy is working all day and training that hard, you got no excuses. Right. And it's also like, when you're around people like that, there's an energy, it catches you. For sure. It moves you when it's awake. It does, you're right. 100% because I get in my moods where I don't wanna do nothing. I'm just like, man, screw this. I've done this long enough, like whatever. But then I go back and say today, for instance, I went and trained with Nicky Rod. They whooped my ass. I ain't gonna lie to you. They whooped my ass. And I told them after I was like, this should be illegal. They all just whooped me that bad. And they're like, yeah, but you ain't done nothing. You don't do peer jujitsu anymore. Like we're the best in the world. Like some of the best in the world at peer jujitsu. It's true. I was like, yeah, but still, I shouldn't be getting walked like that. And but it just makes me hungry. That's almost everybody. I love it, man. It is. He's so big. He's such a freak. Dude, I told him today, I was like, how are you this big and move like this? This is should be illegal. Gordon told me there was a position once they were doing where they were working from the back. And Gordon had his back and Nicky flipped over the top of him and wound up behind Gordon. And Gordon turns to John Donahur and goes, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Like what do I do with that happen? This is like, well, Donahur was like, well, nobody could do that other than Nicky. Dude. That's how crazy that is. You know how that nuts that is do a back flip from your knees? I couldn't. And go over the top of someone who's got your back? I can't even visualize it. Separate the hands. Somehow know that he separated the hands and flipped over him. And Gordon was like, okay, because Gordon would be the first to tell you, even though he's the best in the world and the best ever at no gauge you just to. He's not an explosive guy. He's not, he goes like, I'm not a good athlete. He's intelligent though. Super, super intelligent. Super smart. Yeah, he's super intelligent. Super smart. I've listened to some of his like, instructionals before. And like, I know he did one at Rufusport a long time ago. And the guys told me after, cause I was obviously at home. And they're like, bro, he was in a wheelchair. Cause I guess he had a surgery at the time and he was in a chair and his lady was teaching like she was teaching for him. And he was walking through every single position. They all everyone said that was the best seminar they ever been to. He didn't get down there and teach one move. That's incredible. That's incredible. I was like, that's impressive. Well, if you could do a seminar from a wheelchair, Jesus Christ. Dude, impressive. You know, Wagner says the same thing. He's like, bro, he's the best guy I've ever trained with. Learned from anything. He's amazing. So I've heard it from a lot. I've heard a lot of good. He's another guy though that's 365 days a year of training. He goes, period. There's no days off. Fuck your Christmas. Fuck your birthday. There's no days off. Which is so crazy. I think of, but the way they put it and the way Don and her put it is like, if you are training 200 days a year, that is a lot, but you will not be able to beat a guy who's training 365 days a year. Because he has 165 more training sessions a year. So over the course of two years, now he has, you know, 300 plus, then 400. It keeps going and going. So over the course of five years, like he's trained so much more than you. It's true. And it's not just training. It's like when they're not physically training, they're going over tape all day. Right. Like, which is like, it's hard to do that. And to keep your mind focused on that. They're writing things down. They're going over positions. It's not just all hard physical work. It's intelligence. It's a lot of breaking things down. A lot of like the finer points of technique and positioning. It's funny you say that because it's like, for me, like when we were talking earlier about how time off, it reinvigorates your mind. It's like, that's what it does for me. Like, I probably do 100 reps in a day of things that I've screwed up on, like throwing a jab wrong or leaving my hand down or like in my head, my mental reps. And then somehow when I do go train again, it's just so weird. Like my body just automatically does it. Like, say I throw the jab and I just bring it back to my chest. I don't want it there. I want it on my chin. I do so many mental reps of this for like a week or two weeks or however long I'm out. By the time I spar again, I'm not doing it no more. Like I do so many mental reps, focus on such little details. But then outside of that, I really take my time. I try to take my time away from fighting. Like when I'm not training for the most part, like especially like the month after the fight, I don't want to hear about fighting. I don't want to talk about fighting. That's why I stay away from like most people that don't know me. I don't want to talk because anytime they see me, oh, what do you think about this fight? What's next? I don't know, man. You just want to let your, I just want to motivation return. Exactly. I just want to be with my family. I want to be a normal person because one day fighting is not going to be there for me. It's always been there for me since I was 13. When I had anxiety about something, stress, heartbreak, whatever it is, it's always been there for me. And that's when I always grew. But it's not, the end is a lot closer than the beginning. Right. That's where I'm at in my life. And I know that. So I'm trying to make the most of it and try, but... You think about like high end, you got 10 years, if that's really possible. Maybe. It's not usually. And usually the last few are rough because the last few, like Anderson after he broke his leg. Right? So I say there's like two Anderson's. There's Anderson pre-Wideman and post-Wideman. For sure. There's the knockout or Wyden caught him at the left hook and then there's the leg break in the rematch. And then from then he's never been Anderson again. Correct. And I think the injury has a lot to do with it, but it's also father time. I don't think we got Anderson in the UFC until he was 34. It was a while because he was already big on the other scenes. Huge, bro. That was one of them fights where people didn't really know Anderson that well. And he was fighting Chris Lieben. And the odds were Anderson was the favorite, but not by enough. And I was telling my friend, I'm like, bet the house on the Brazilian. I go, bet the house. Because he was coming off of that, remember Cage Rage? Yeah. So he was coming off of the Lee Murray fight. He was coming out. Who did he fight over there as well? He fought Jorge Rivera. That was a big fight. There was a Tony Fricklin one where he did that crazy step in elbow. Oh, yeah. That's all the highlight of that. I didn't know that was the name, but I know the elbow. That elbow, do you know he had a practice with his wife because his coach wouldn't let him try it? Really? His coach was like, stop doing that. You're not going to do that. He goes, I'm going to hit him with this. He's like, no, you're not going to do that. Stop training that. So we didn't want to train that. So he told his wife to hold a pillow. So his wife was holding a pillow at home. And he was going like this. Saa. Saa. Saa. Over and over again. He was just practicing it. No way. He wanted to do some un-box shit. What a great story to have. That was Anderson. Like people didn't, people saw him in his prime for sure. Obviously, because he's one of the greatest of all time, but for sure. They didn't see that transition to him becoming in his prime. And that was in cage rage because he had some really good fights in pride. But then when he went to cage rage, like something flipped, man. You know how it has like Olivera when it happened to him after he had his kid, you know, something flips sometimes when a fighter just locks in and then they become who they really are. Yeah. Who everyone in the round them knows. Because they've seen it in the gym, but no one else has seen it. It's weird. Like I always say that about myself. Like I still haven't. I'm still not the guy that everyone knows in the gym. I show a little bit more every time, but I'm not even that guy. Well, maybe this changing of environment and coaching will allow you to hit that spot. The coaching, like you were talking about earlier, right? It has been the hardest thing for me to let go, like of control, and give it to someone else. But it was kind of one of those things. I met Horacio and Mike and I have obviously a lot of trust and a lot of faith in Balaw. I've known him for a long time and I see what he's done. But I met these guys and Max too. I met him for five days when I was with Balaw. And to sit back and watch them also have my own interactions with them. It just felt like, you know, one of those things, you just feel like your friends instantly, like you know each other forever. And that's kind of what that connection was with them. So honestly, it was a little bit easier, the normal to let go of like the control of like controlling what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do, the strategy. Did you think about other camps as well? Did you think about? I didn't think I was going to leave, to be honest with you. I didn't think I was going to leave Florida. I was just going there to help my friend and just kind of see what I could do different, like what I could change in my own thing. But then obviously my goal after being there, because he was getting ready for Jack, Balaw was. So I watched everything, I helped him for a few days. And then I went back, I fought Marvin. And I was at, I did two or three weeks with Chicago. Two weeks, I did two weeks. Excuse me, I did two weeks. And then I did like four or five in Florida. So I was like, OK, next time I'm just going to do, split it four and four, you know, spend my time mixing match. Because it was a great time, like for me. Then I fought the Ritter, he was there. And I was like, I don't know, it didn't sit well with me how all that stuff went, like how he got there and everything. And everyone was like, oh, why is he fighting him? They're teammates. And I told everyone from the beginning, like you can ask Gilbert Burns, because he said it on his little podcast thing he did. I always said, I'm not going to train with him. I'm going to fight him one day. I'm good. No animosity, I just don't need no more friends. I just don't. I have enough guys, the guys that I know that I'm friends with, I fight for Gregory Rodriguez, Bison Gore. Those are guys that are going to be at the top or at the top that we have agreements only for a belt. I'll fight anyone on this planet for a belt, anyone. And I expect the same in return, because it could change their lives or my own, you know? So they know that about me. But no matter what the time frame is, if you say yes to me or you say my name, we're going to fight. That's it. Like that's how I feel. But those guys are the guys that I have with. And now they're all coming to the top. So it's like, someday it's probably going to happen. So it's like, I don't need no friends. Dana hates hearing that kind of shit. Like, guys won't fight friends. Yeah, but I'll fight for a belt though. Anyone on the whole planet. Godzilla, I'll fight for the whole belt. I don't care. And Gano, I'll fight him for a belt. I don't care. You know what I mean? It could change my whole life, like my family's. Sure. So I'm very realistic. Because obviously, even if you love to do this, at this level, it's about the money too. It's about making intelligent choices, because one slip up could set you back two years. Yeah, I'm learning that. I learned that the hard way. Well, that's also important to learn. It's also important to have those setbacks. Those setbacks are some of the most important growth points in your career, in anybody's career, if you do it right. Like those setbacks are when you feel that ugliness. And then you really have to assess what could I have done differently? What am I doing wrong? Is there something about my mindset? Is something about my diet? Is there something about my recovery? Am I doing too much of this or too little of that? You have to have that pain. If everything is just going great, the thing going into the fight was Aspenall's every fight other than the Curtis Blades fight was a one-round fight. It was him blowing guys out. And so no one really knew what was going to happen if we got into round three, round four, round five. So that question's always hovered over the head. When a guy like you who's been in those wars, and been in the trenches, you've already had, that's a blessing. It really is a blessing because it gives you not just the motivation to return better than you were before. Like look at Bo Nickle after he lost, right? He loses to Derritor, comes back and smokes Hedolfo Viera, looked like a different guy. Looks like a different guy. Why? Because there's a blessing in losing. There's a blessing in failure. There really is because if you can swallow it, it will give you a fucking furnace inside you to come back stronger. If you can swallow it, but some guys can't swallow it. They choke on it and they cry and maybe their confidence gets shattered and they're never the same again. Or maybe they go, why am I doing this? I could be a carpenter. I always wanted to play drums. I thought of that. I thought of that, but I don't want to go back to being a carpenter. I'm good with that. A guy like Tom Aspenall, when he gets to a fight with a guy like Ngano or a guy who's going to be there, those questions, and I'm not saying that he wouldn't succeed. I'm not saying he wouldn't win, but those questions might be in your head because you haven't been in those high profile wars before where you came up short. You know, I still get those questions. I'm such a perfectionist and I know nothing will ever be perfect, but I want as close to it as I can get that still, I find something. I will always find something to be negative. But what's helped me is I had a sports psychiatrist for a while, he was great. And I learned a lot with him. And for me, it's been about, I'm very open with people that I care about, and I know care solely about me, they're not worried about if I win or lose, or all that stuff, the fame, they're not worried about that. They care about me as a person. And that was something that was great with Belal and Horacio and all the guys in Chicago, Mike, Max. You know, we talk regularly, how are you, man? How's the family, everything good? But I'm very open with them leading up to the fight. There's a clip from behind the scenes of the last fight where I'm open and they catch it. Like, this is me being vulnerable of who I am. I was too manly or whatever, trying to suppress it before where it just grew into something bigger. And I would mentally shut down. Malcun was the worst fight for me for that. I was shaking in the bed the night before. Like, I thought, like I was freezing, but I wasn't. I was so nervous of like, I can't lose to this guy. He's not on my level. And then I go out there and perform not that well. So your mind was fucking you. Yeah, because I find one negative thing and I just focus and I make it huge. I think it's good sometimes. I think it's good sometimes, but it's like, almost like you have to be critical, but yet also confident. Right. And I would take my confidence away by focusing on it. But being able to talk about it, like, again, they have that moment. I have it on my Instagram. They made a clip or whatever for me. And it was just, literally, it was two nights before the fight, three nights before the fight. And we're talking and I'm telling them, he could get me down. He could finish me. But if he finishes me on the ground, he's got to be just that good. But I'm nervous, man. I'm nervous that I'm not going to go out here and perform to what I know that I can do. That's, to me, that's the worst. I don't mind losing to someone that's better than me. I can take it. I haven't found that man yet, but I know it's going to happen. But to lose to someone truly better than me, I can accept it. But to lose to myself, oh man, to look in the mirror, it eats me alive. But think those things that can creep into your head before a fight where I don't want to lose, I don't want to disappoint people, I don't want to do this. Then that is a really bad time to have those thoughts. It's not a bad time to have those thoughts when you're working on stuff. It's not a bad time to have those thoughts. Like if you're really trying to motivate yourself to get up in the morning and run or whatever it is, like to really get after it in strength and conditioning. But when you're fighting, like you have to have a strategy of how to squash those thoughts when they come up. And it gets, I mean, it's not just fighting. Anybody who's listening to this, anything in life that you have to do that's really difficult and scares you, you got to know how to squash negative thoughts before they burn your house down. Like when you see the fire, stop that bitch out quick. Stomp it out quick and then make sure that you're starting to really only focus on positive things and never let it get, those little creepy demon thoughts, they'll get in and then they start running around. They start running around. They start screaming and taking over your brain. You're like, get out of my head, get out of my head. But they're already in there. You let them in, you let them in. And sometimes they have to burn your house down before you realize what the danger is of them getting inside your head. And so then the next time you've got to come up with a strategy to squash it before it gets too crazy. We did a lot of like, at the beginning of like sports at Congress, like that was one thing, right? Like I would suppress it right away and suppress it. And it tried to creep back through and I'd suppress it again. But then it just gets bigger and stronger to where it can just come out. And you don't know when it's gonna come out. It could be the night of the fight. It could be the day before the fight. Could be in the fight, you know? So it's like taking it in, whatever that emotion is for you, dissecting it, like literally get to the root of why you think this. Like, oh, I think he can knock me out. If I dissect it, well, yeah, he's knocked a lot of guys out but anyone can knock anyone out. Anyone can. So what are you nervous of? You've done this like for me over 30 times. Like, what are you worried about? You've fought on the biggest level. You've made a vented. You're ranked in the world. You fought some of the best in the world. Like, what are you worried about? You let a demon sneak into your brain. Yeah, you know? And once I dissect it, I've worked on it like that so well and being open and honest with my coaches and like the people that I care about and they care about me has been such a great like thing for me. I'm kind of the guy like sometimes like just, I've learned about myself is just like, just let me talk. Sometimes I'm not a big talker, but just let me talk. If you don't even say nothing, but damn, that's all right, bro. That's why Tuko, who always see me with normally, he's always with me. Bro, he's the best at just like listening to me. Like, it's not very often, but when I do want to talk, like I'm like, bro, like he'll ask me, what's wrong with that? I don't think you want to hear it today. Like, I'm good. He'll ask me that a couple of times. Eventually I'll just let it out. And then I'm good. I'm good. Like it's almost like you have to tell somebody what's going on inside your head. And if you keep it inside your head. There's the wings. The wings are coming. Flying monkeys. Throwing fire bombs inside your head. The launch in them. Wizard of Oz. Launch in them, bro. So it's like, that's been great for me. That's really helped in it. I've had a couple of younger kids that like have asked me, oh, how's that? And I turned them on to my god that I used to use. What did you do with the psychiatrist? Like, what were the sessions like? We would talk about things like this. You'd have worksheets and stuff like this. But you know what really, really sunk in? So first we worked on like learning to catch emotions. He called it something, but learning to catch different emotions before they grow. So you can dissect it. Stop the fire. Stop the fire before it burns your house down. So like recognizing. First is recognizing. Anything you have to recognize. If you recognize it 30 minutes the first time, all right, let's try for 25 the next time. Don't let it, like you thought on it for 30 minutes and you're like, fuck, why am I thinking about this? Let's do 25. So keep until you can get it like right away. Then we dissect it. And then we move on about our day. Things that helped me at the beginning were like. Does it help you talking with a different person or another person about this rather than just bouncing it off your own head? Yes, for sure. Something about talking to another person makes it real. Yeah. And it just like gets it out. Like I'm holding it in, holding it in, holding it in. As soon as I talk, it's like it's literally like leaving my body. The stress just kind of like, and sometimes they have like good things to say, like things like that. My sports psychiatrist was the one that told me those things. Like bro, you've done this how many times? You fought these guys? Did he ever work with fighters before? He was working with a small team in New Orleans. And now he's got other guys in the UFC now because they would ask me and I turned them on. He's great. His name's Eric. He's really great. He's from New Orleans. Because I would think of a guy who was like a sports psychiatrist like tennis. It's like some things would carry over, but it's a very different thing. And he trained as well. He grew up wrestling and stuff. Perfect guy then. Exactly. And it just, it worked out great, man. I learned a lot. Like I kind of figured out what worked for me. So I was like, all right, and I get so busy. But another thing he gave me was you read it the day, like after you weigh in, you read it. And then you finish, like it has a part where it says read up to this point. And then you read the rest of the section, the date of the fight. And it's, I forget the author, I have it in my phone somewhere that he sent me a long time ago. And I would read it before every fight, everyone. Like the apex, when we were in the apex all the time. I'd weigh in and we had to wait that like two hours until like we could face off if you weigh in first. And I'd sit there and I'd read it. And it was like an author. And he talks a lot about like different sports and like, like one of his main basic things is like hope. The word hope, hold on, possibilities exist. Like don't ever think it's over, it's done. Don't ever say, I have to do something. I want to do something. I don't have to. The moment you start putting, I have to, is the moment you start like, he says like, put like change, you hit the emergency stop button, the emergency brake on your car. Like you got to let it off. You're not performing at your best with all those things. So like stuff like that really like sets in and I try to remind myself. So like reminding myself of those things, talking about it is really like what helps me. This book, is it a book? It's like a little pamphlet. Yeah, kinda. Do you know who wrote it? Ah, it's in my phone, I could find it. Well, just like so other people can look at it. Cause it sounds pretty powerful. It was great, man. And if it helped you, there's a lot of like hokey sort of self-help stuff online. Being a fucking man, go out and get it done. And there's a wolf inside of you and all that hokey shit. But the reality is, there's a lot of wisdom out there too. There's a lot of, like you could read meditations by Marcus Aurelius and literally learn how to live a better life. Like there's a lot of stuff out there that's very beneficial. So when someone like yourself has something that really helped them, I think it's probably good to put it out there so other people can get it. You know, it's so crazy. Now I'm looking through like the documents and stuff that he sent me like mindfulness was the word I was looking for when you catch it. Like mindfulness, like stuff like that. But it's funny. Mindfulness is one of them co-opted words. It's been co-opted like gratitude and spirituality. It's one of them words that like too many kooky people use. Yeah, exactly. Too many wooden beads. The first time he told me, I was like, bro don't tell me where I think this is crazy shit, bro. I'm not that kind of guy, you know. Don't you hit me with no mindfulness, son. Yeah, man. But look, I'm literally going through right here, right? And he was sending me stuff, right? Before a fight or like. He'd send me quotes. He'd send me YouTube links. Look at the second one from the top. Who is it with me? Who is it? David Goggins. Oh, that's hilarious. He sent me that. Like stuff like, he'd send me stuff like this. Goggins is a perfect example of that. He says things all the time that I think of. Jocko. When I'm working out and I'm really tired, I think of this one Jocko video where it's called Good. Have you ever seen that video? No. You want to get fired up? Yeah, I want to see it. You get fired up. This is one of my all time favorite videos. You know Jocko, right? Jocko was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jocko was a Navy SEAL and he's got a book called Extreme Ownership. One. And it's just the way he thinks, the way he carries himself is it's so beneficial if you can adopt this, that there's sometimes where I'm training, where I'm fucking really, really tired and I want to quit. I think of Jocko and I go, good, you're tired. That means you're going to get stronger. Listen to this. This is fucking amazing. One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problems, some issue that was going on. And he'd say, boss, we got this and that and the other thing. And I'd look at him and I'd say, good. And finally one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having some problem. And he said, I already know what you're going to say. And I said, well, what am I going to say? He said, you're going to say good. He said, that's what you always say. When something is wrong and going bad, you always just look at me and say good. And I said, well, yeah, when things are going bad, there's going to be some good that's going to come from it. Didn't get the new high speed gear we wanted. Good. Didn't get promoted. Good. More time to get better. Oh, mission got canceled. Good, we can focus on our own. Didn't get funded. Didn't get the job you wanted. Got injured. Spray my ankle. Got tapped out. Good. Got beat. Good. He learned. Unexpected problems. Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution. That's it. When things are going bad, don't get all bummed out. Don't get startled. Don't get frustrated. If you can say the word good, guess what? It means you're still alive. It means you're still breathing. And if you're still breathing, well, now you still got some fight left in you. So get up, dust off, reload, recalibrate, re-engage, and go out on the attack. Oh yeah. That's a good one. You know what I'm saying? That's a good one. Play that one when you're in the fucking dressing room. This is what it is. Getting ready. I don't know if it's like the document. So these are the things he sends you? Yeah. So it's called House Sports Psychology can help you do your best when it means the most unedited copy. Who's the author? So let's say. Oh, Rob Gilbert. Rob Gilbert, PhD, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey. Okay. It's pretty cool. God, I'll ask you to send me that afterwards. Yeah, of course. I love shit like that. There's little things like that that you can carry in your toolbox and they can help you. And not just if you're a professional fighter, but in basically everything in life. It's been, it really helped change his perspective. How's Bilal doing? Who fucking gets poked in the eye more than that guy? Jesus Christ. Nobody. Nobody. That guy has had, I think he's had something insane, like nine eye surgeries. I know he's had three of the hard ones. Like of the, he literally, he told me the story. He had to drive home six hours. His, excuse me, his wife came and got him and brought him home. But this is a while back. He had to drive six hours with his head like that because something with the pressure, you can't send straight up with it. It's crazy. He explained it to me, but it's like, it blows my mind. I couldn't believe he got poked again by Ingear. I couldn't believe it. The moment he got poked, I'm like, I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe it's happening. Dude, I thought the same thing. Oh my God, look at that. I was the Leon one, right? Look at that finger in his deep, in his fucking eyeball. That is so crazy. Yeah. That's so crazy. So he's had major surgeries on his eyes. Yep. And then Ian poked him, like right away. I was like, this is crazy. I don't know how you feel, but I feel like it should be an instant one point deduction. At least. Every time. At least. At least. I like what Tyler Aspenall said. He was like, no, you poke me in my eye. You want me to continue? Okay, no problem. I get to poke him in his eye. Right. I was like, yeah. Well, a lot of people are talking shit about Tom, but he apparently still can't see. Yeah. Like his eyes still fucked up. Like no one knows. Here's the thing. The eye, the other eye got hurt as well, but not as bad, but it looks way worse. The finger goes way deeper in the other eye. Dude, I poked her crazy. Bro, he went straight three stooches. Boink! And you know, it's crazy that everyone that talks the most shit has never been poked in the eye. Not even a little bit, like accidentally. Oh, it's horrible. You know? It's like a bolt of lightning in your brain. And then you can't see. And the idea that you can't see, and then you're supposed to fight a guy, also you're fighting a guy in Ian and Gary who has a fucking nasty left hand. So if you get poked in your eyeball and you can't see that punch cut, well, he's got a nasty right hand too. I mean, Ian and Gary can strike. Oh, God. There's a left spinole right there. Look at that. So look at the right one. The one, excuse me, the left eye. That's deeper. And that one didn't get hurt as bad. It's his right eye that really got hurt. The left one is like finger knuckled deep in his eyeball, man. Dude, it's crazy. You know, like Balal's like one of those guys you talk about, 365, 24, seven, he's ready. He's doing something always. I'm even like, bro, take a break, bro. You've earned a little break. Take a week off. Be with your family. You know? He won't. Well, at his stage of his life, it might be the only way to keep going because he's at like 38 now, right? Yeah, something like that. He's like, that's the same age as Usman. And you know, you can still be a world class fighter at that age. You could clearly see that with Kamaru against Joaquin Buckley. A lot of people counted him out because Joaquin Buckley was fucking a lot of people. Yeah, he was. Joaquin Buckley, bro. Woo, that guy's a problem. He's a fucking problem. I've known him for a minute, man. He's wild and fast and he keeps getting better. And he's really fucking, he's really fucking intelligent about how to land shots. He knows how to set things up. And he likes to fight. He loves to fight. And he's, you know, he's just a dog, just in the fight, man. He's always dangerous. That Wonder Boy fight, you know, he's having a little bit of a problem solving that distance in that range until he didn't. Until he didn't, man, bro. That dude's got hammers in his fist. Yes. So when watching Kamaru just ragdoll him like that, I was like, god damn. Impressive. Fuck yeah. It looked like Kamaru World Champion level Kamaru. Like a lot of people have kind of counted him out because there's this narrative that he puts out there openly about his knees. Yeah. Oh, he talked about it on this podcast openly. His knees are fucked. He's like, I gotta go downstairs backwards sometimes. Yeah. Because they hurt so much. I heard he went and did like a lot of stuff to like redo him. And now he says they're good, but I don't know. I don't know about that. Well, I know he went to Columbia. He went down to that bio accelerator place in Columbia. I don't know if he's been to the place in Tijuana that the UFC uses now, the Cellular Performance Institute, but they're all very similar. We're being held back to such a fucking ridiculous extent in this country by the FDA that you don't realize how many people with neurological conditions, how many people with severe injuries, how many people could be helped by stem cells. And there's no evidence that they're damaging people. There's no evidence. I mean, look, anytime you have any invasive procedure, anytime you have a surgery, there's always some risk that something can go wrong. There's always a risk in any medical procedure, but there's no outstanding risks versus reward to stem cells. On the contrary, the evidence is outstanding results, including like some of the things Dr. Neil Reardon has been doing down at Panama with people that have like severe neurological problems. Guys that have had CTE, like real bad fucking, other than just injuries. And then even injuries. My mom had a really bad knee and I sent her down there and it got a lot better. I sent her down there twice, a lot better. Mel Gibson, his dad couldn't walk. He was like almost 90, he was like 80 years old. And then he went down, got his hips done, got his, Neil did his shoulders, his hips, a bunch of other stuff and did Mel as well. And he's like, no, my dad was like up and walking around like five years later still. Like he was 10 years younger. He's a great actor by the way. Oh, Mel? He's the man, he's the man. I love that guy. He's crazy too, he's so interesting. He's such a, that guy's got like a fucking tornado going around in his brain all the time. Really? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why he's such a good director, man. Do you ever see Apocalypto? Yeah, one of my favorites. One of my favorites. I fucking love that movie. Same, it's one of my favorites. That's such a good movie. I love that movie too for sure. Such a good movie, man. Such a good movie. And that's Mel. He plays some great ones. That's the movie where nobody speaks English. Exactly. And it's a blockbuster. And it's amazing. It's fucking incredible. Dude, I love that one. But I like his old stuff too, like Braveheart. Braveheart was amazing. Everybody loved Braveheart. The passion of the Christ was really good too, man. The patriot was good. Yeah, dude, he's the real deal, man. Mel Gibson's the real fucking deal. What's the one he, you're gonna think I'm crazy, but I think it's Think Like A Woman. You ever seen that one? I did not. Bro, that is freaking hilarious. What is it? He gets trapped in like, he can like read a woman's mind. And so, cause like, he's basically a guy, he works, he's a journalist, or like a publisher or something like that. And he's very like a womanizer. Like he gets women and just like whatever. And they always like talking shit about him behind his back like everyone else. So now like he's trying to move up the ranks. He's supposed to be next in line for a promotion. Well, he has his daughter come in and she leaves the blow dryer. And he trips on it and falls in, the water gets electrocuted and he wakes up and now he can hear all women's thoughts. And it like changes who he is as a person. That's amazing. Like she gets his promotion. So now he- 2000. Bro, great news. 2000. Funny as hell. Oh, Helen Hunt. Now he's been great in a lot of ways. He was great in that conspiracy theory movie. What's that? Was it Julia Roberts? Yeah. He was a wacky conspiracy theorist guy. I don't think I've seen that one. It's pretty good. It was called conspiracy theory. Oh, was that what it's called? That's hilarious. I didn't see that one. And I think like a lot of the things that he talked about now, it's like people openly discuss online. You know, cause this was all before the internet. What year was that? The 97. 97. Yeah. So there were no like conspiracy theory websites back then. He has another one. He has another one where like his wife works, I mean his daughter, I'm sorry. His daughter works for this company. She comes home. And it's like this, one of those rich companies that like hide stuff, but you never can tell cause you never have proof. And she's working in like a secret department. She comes home all frantic. And the dude yells something, shoots her with a shotgun right on the, right on his front door. Boom, kills her. So obviously then he goes and starts trying to figure everything out. And he starts figuring out like through the way what the work was doing. And it was like poisoning or something. Well, anyway, he finds the guy and ends up killing him, but he ends up dying too. Cause he got the poison from wherever he went into the workspace. Like he followed it. He was doing all kinds of shit, but it was super cool too. What movie is that? I don't know. You know that movie? Where he shoots his daughter on the front step. Like that's one of the, that was one of the things that sold the movie. Like that was one of the previews. Well, how about Lethal Weapon? First time we ever saw anybody do a triangle in a movie. True. Right? Yeah. Dude, he's a, I like his movies. I'd love that scene. Like that scene, I was like, what is he doing? I didn't even know what a triangle was back then. Cause I think that was in the eighties. I wasn't even alive. When was, when was Lethal Weapon one come out? Edge of darkness. That's it. I think it's like eighties, seven or eighties. Yeah man. So back then no one knew what a fucking triangle was other than the crazies. People in Brazil knew. Brazil was so far ahead of the curve, man. They were having MMA fights in the thirties. Dude, I was, I went there for my boy Tuko. He fought in the favela, right? And yeah, look at this. He was Gary Busey who he's fighting in the end. Who was the guy who was fighting in the end? I don't remember. I think it's Gary Busey, right? Yeah, it is Gary Busey. You know he had a headache. Movies in the eighties were so wild dude. We don't need to watch the whole thing. Let's just cut to the triangle. This is silly. Thought I was coming. I thought so too. Oh, Gary Busey tried to take it to the ground. Outrageous. Mel got swept so easily. Oh, Mel's on top. Everybody was doing cocaine when they were right move. Oh, look at that. He goes right for an arm. Oh, sloppy. Terrible technique. Terrible left hook. The left leg like barely held on there. That was some, there it is. Wow, there it is. That's not bad. That's not bad. That's pretty good. I like that. He got a good angle. Oh, that's not bad at all. Everybody at home was like, what is happening? Another man put his legs around another man's head. I remember when Hoist Grace, he did that to Dan Severin. Everybody was like, what's going on? Like what is happening? And then all of a sudden you see Dan Severin tapping. You're like, what happened? What did he do? Put him to sleep. My friend would know better the lineage and stuff, right? That's where he's my intelligence. But we went to Brazil, right? He was fighting in the favela at Josie Aldo's gym. I don't know. Novo Unho? Yeah, it's like right on the edge of the favela. It's nice though. Yeah, Andre Pediniris. Yeah, he was there. He was super nice. He's awesome. He was super nice, super hospitable. That guy's a pioneer, dude. He was fighting in my main early days, Baron D'Avo. Really? Andre Pediniris, oh my God, man. Yeah, he's a legend. I just know him. We were at a lot of great guys, but we were there with Daniel Gracie. I think it's Hendo's mom. And then his dad, the whole lineage was there before he passed away. He was there. We went over there and we were sitting on their couch, chilling, hanging out, talking, meeting all of them. And again, I absolutely got all for with names, but I knew as soon as he come out of the stairs, he was going somewhere, he had a nice jacket. Oh no, he was doing an interview with, he was doing an interview, like a little podcast or something. It was all in Portuguese. I couldn't understand what they were saying, they would met him super nice. And then like, I think it wasn't too long after they passed away, but like, that's like one of the starts of Gracie Jujitsu. Was it Elio? Or was it Carlos? Who was it? I think it was Carlos, I think. I don't, it doesn't matter. It was one of them. Right. I could figure it out though. Okay. But dude, super nice. Like they were all explaining like the lineage. And I started with, What's that Jamie? Oh, sorry. I started with like Gracie Jujitsu. So like, I used to know that lineage fairly well, but then you know how life is. You just get away and kind of forget you're not around it as much, but. Yeah. Well, it's a crazy lineage. I mean, that one family's responsible for changing mixed martial arts. Dude, they were telling us so many like cool stories, like things that I had heard through the great vine, you know, from other people when I was younger, but they confirmed it. And like, they were even like asking like, where the beef comes from in the family, you know, like what started that exactly what started? Cause obviously he was in it. He, dude, he, they translated for us, but he was saying like how it all got started. But beef between what parts of the family? Two beefs that they have. No, it was Carlos and who's the one, one of the brothers went out on their own cause he was like, I don't want nothing to do with this part of the family. Was it Horian? Maybe it was, I know that name. They were saying the name. Horian started the UFC. Yeah, it might have been. And Horian also trained Mel Gibson. Okay. For this lethal weapon fight scene. There he is, Horian Gracie. Yeah. Horian Gracie in Playboy magazine challenged Mike Tyson to a no rules fight. See, I don't want to sound stupid. So I don't like to say too many names, but you're gonna make me call my friend and ask him when we leave here. Well, Ilya was his father, you know, Hickson's obviously his brother, Hoy's his brother, Hoyler's his brother. I think Hoyler and Hoy's are half brothers. Yes, I knew that. They were saying that, but they were just kind of like going over like old times and stories and like, they were talking about that. Cause apparently like, they were saying like, well, Daniel was saying like within the family, cause he's a Gracie, but I think he's like, it was his mom or something like that was, so she's still a Gracie. But anyway, or no, his cousin was a Gracie. So technically like, he's not a real blood Gracie. I don't know. They tried to explain it. It's very weird, but anyway, we were there and they don't talk about it. Like why there's a divide between this side of the family and this side. And they explained to like, even when they were kids, like they would go in and get into it. Like say you'd go in and you're getting a fight in the street, just like maybe you're 12 years old. It started, they said like basically that young that like there was a divide between whatever one and this one. And because they would go get in a fight and he would come back and rat on them. And he was like, bro, come on. You know, so it started as that young and he said it was a lot. It wasn't even like, oh, it was just one time. No, like multiple times, you know? So it was just interesting to hear like these stories that these guys had of like when they were young in the streets, like fighting in Rio. Oh yeah, I mean, Hickson, there's a video of Hickson fighting somebody on the beach. Yeah, they talk about it. Some Luta Libre guy, he smacks them on the beach. He talks about it. They were talking about it. They're fighting in the sand, scrapping on the beach. Daniel was there for that. Daniel was there. He was the one that brought it up. He was there, right? He said he, they showed the picture of it and he was right in the back. Hickson has a little surfer shorts on. Yep. He even, Daniel explained how it started. I don't remember that exact details, but dude, it was like. Well, they would dojo storm each other. They would show up at places and challenge like Luta Libre gyms and Luta Libre guys would show up at the Gracie dojo. Dude, it was like. Yeah, here it is. Look at Hickson with them beautiful colored shorts on. He just smacks them. Like, come on baby, it's on. And the dude's like, take your shoes off. Come on, let's go. Like they're holding my shoes. Bro, these were wild times. Especially when you take into consideration Hickson's widely considered one of the absolute greatest jujitsu practitioners of all time. And that he was willing to have these kind of fights on the beach in Rio, these no rules fights just surrounded by dudes. And man thongs. Yeah. I mean, and not have any striking. Look, see how Hickson's wing and punches? These guys had no striking at all. It's really kind of crazy. I mean, not ever saying there's anything wrong with anything that Hickson ever did because he's one of the greatest of all time. But if you look at the difference between a guy that is just a pure grappler like Hickson, even when he fought in Pratt, remember you come out with this, throw those little stomp kicks, just try to get. He's just getting you to the ground. It's all getting you to the ground. There's no one like that now. No one has very little stand up. There's no one who fights like that. And it's crazy because there's so many stories about, Hoyce wasn't even supposed to be the one to fight. He wasn't even supposed to be the one. They were supposed to have the other one. Well, Hickson was always the champion of the family. And Hoyce had always said that. That Hickson was 10 times better than him. He said, Hickson, Hickson tap me every day. Every day I go to the gym. Hickson tap me. But it's just like that's just how it was. But there was a lot of rumors. One of the rumors was that, so this is the narrative. Hoyce says it's because he's so beautiful. It's like, look at his face. Of course they picked me. That's what he said on the podcast. It was hilarious because he's so handsome. But Hickson's handsome too. So it didn't make any sense. But it was, I think it was because Hoyce could show that it was the technique. Because like Hickson was shredded. He was pretty jacked too. And he looked like a world champion athlete. Whereas Hoyce looked like a 170 pound guy who was like, not that muscular and it was just technique. It was him using beautiful Jiu-Jitsu technique that nobody knew what it was. So it was like the best advertisement ever for Jiu-Jitsu. When you see a 175 pound guy tapping out Dan Severin. You know, it was this huge wrestler and Ketcham, or Kimo when he got him in that arm bar. Like all the shit that Hoyce did. Ketchamrock when he tapped him. Crazy to watch a guy that's like so much smaller than everybody else dominate everyone. And everyone was afraid of him. So it was like the perfect thing. And the thought was, okay, well if he ever does lose, we always have Hickson. Right. But Hickson went off to Japan and he did Japan Valley Tudo. And then he did Pride. And you know, there was talk at one point in time of Hickson fighting Fedor. They were throwing money around for Hickson after he fought in that Coliseum show, which I think was in 2000. When did he fight Funaki? When did Hickson fight Funaki? I think it was the year 2000. And they were talking about Hickson fighting Fedor. They had made him an offer, Japan for him to come over and he wanted to do it. It never came. I wish you could have heard like again, cause I'm so bad with names and my memory is not as good as it used to be. But it's one of my favorite memories from fighting. 2000. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of my favorite memories from fighting. Just sitting there and listening to these guys. Cause the history was fricking insane. The stories were awesome. Like it was a, but like I said, I'm terrible with names. I'm very bad with like a tree. So look at that. Andre Pedinaris on that card versus Genki Sudo. Sure is. Ended in a draw. And Genki Sudo was a bad motherfucker. That's how good Pedinaris was. I didn't know that. Oh yeah, Pedinaris was legit, man. Damn. Very legit, very legit. Damn, I knew he was a great coach. I didn't know he fought. Fought in the early, early days. He might have even fought in extreme combat. Did he fight in extreme combat? He might have, like that was back in the day when Mario Sperry first burst on the scene. He fought back then. Igor Zinoviev, all these dudes that everybody forgot about. They fought and that was John Peretti's card. So John Peretti, who was the commentator for the early days of the UFC, then John Peretti went over and started his own organization for a while. It's crazy. Like, I think like sometimes, well, I know. Like I said, I'm bad at names, right? But it's like, I went and fought in Seattle last year. Or this year, I fought in Seattle this year. And they did like, there was Amanda Nunes, Robbie Lawler. And there was one more. They got inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. And nobody could give like really any fights for whoever the other person was. And not many could give too much for Robbie Lawler. I was like, bro, how have you not heard about Robbie Lawler? Oh, you mean they weren't clapping? No, like, uh. So here it is. Let me just go over this real quick. Pedinaris, his debut fight, Vali Tudo Japan. That's what it was. He defeated Rumi No Sato. And then Pat Melitich for the UFC welterweight title, UFC 21. We lost in the second round, technical knockout. Then he fought Kao Uno. Here's a savage. I remember him. That ended in a draw. So Genki Sudo and Kao Uno, two savages. And both of those fights were draws. And the last one with Genki Sudo was his last MMA fight. So how many fights did he have overall? Four fights. But shit, they're all good. Oh yeah, he fought legit guys. He beat Rumi No Sato. You know, Rumi No Sato, man, was fucking terrifying back then. Kao, soccer kick Kao. Ooh. Damn. But yeah, it was like, it was just different, man. That time frame was just different, you know? Well, it is the birth of the sport. And it's kind of amazing to have been there at the very beginning and to be able to watch it. You know, when I first found out about it, I couldn't believe it was real. I had a bunch of friends that told me about it. I think I heard about it from dudes at, do you remember Benny Urquidez? Do you know who he was? No, I don't know. Benny the Jet was a famous kick boxer. Now I'm really going back. I feel like I know that name though. He was one of the best kickboxers of all time. And this was like way back in the day, like in the early 80s. Benny the Jet was the fucking man. In the late 70s and the early 80s. And he had this gym in California, in Van Nuys, California called the Jet Center. When I first moved out to California, there's two places I knew I really had to go. One was the comedy store and the other was the Jet Center. And so I got to work out at the Jet Center. And Benny was there and his cousin Blinky. He was there and Blinky Rodriguez, who was another elite kick boxer, who actually knocked out Jean-Yves Terrio, who was like one of the best kickboxers of all time. So it was like this incredible gym. But Benny the Jet, or Kitas, was like, he was early like a pint, like the Bill Superfoot Wallace days, like back in those days. And I forget what I was just saying, what I lost my train of thought. What were we just talking about before that? Yeah, you moved to LA and you moved to New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I had a point. I had a point about these early MMA fighters. Oh, you were saying it's the birth of? It's the birth of the sport. So watching that, this is what my point was. Watching that where there was not even leg kicks. To watching all of a sudden you see Rick Rufus and he fought that dude from Thailand. Like one of the most important fights in the history of martial arts. Cause you get to see that dude from Thailand just chop Rick Rufus' legs apart. And then Rick and Duke both learned from that and said, okay, we gotta incorporate that into our game. Duke becomes a World Muay Thai Champion after that. Which is like it changed, and then Duke becomes one of the best MMA coaches ever. So it changes the entire course of the sport when I got into it and started watching it. And that's what it was. So the Jet Center, one of the guys from the Jet Center was like, you gotta see this thing. It's called the UFC. This is in 94. I was like, what? What is it? It was a UFC two. Like I didn't even see UFC one. I saw UFC two, cause that was the only one that was available on VHS. So I watched UFC two and I was like, this is crazy. I'm like, how is this guy doing this? Like this is, and I was like, oh my God, like how is everybody so vulnerable to this one guy? Like this is nuts. So I was like, I gotta train Jiu Jitsu. And watching all of these people from that era and watching the level of the competition at that era and what the fights looked like versus today, there's not another sport on earth where you could see a gigantic difference between 1994 and 2025. Like a gigantic difference where it's unrecognizable. Like that kid that you were talking about before, the 18 year old kid, what's his name again? Ansar. That would have been a world champion. Easy. A world champion. Yeah, like no one would have fucked with him. We were said, this is the greatest fighter that's ever walked the face of the planet. And he's a kid that's on undercards of small regional shows now, right? How crazy is that? So like when you see these guys in the Dana White contender series, some of these guys coming up, I'm watching them fight for their first fight in the contender series. I'm like, this guy looks like he'd be fighting for the title. Like they're complete fighters. They're fast, they have good technique, everything they do and is smart. It's like the level has changed so much in just a short period of time. And I feel so lucky to be able to see the whole thing. I saw the whole thing, like from the ground floor to today. It's crazy cause you probably hear it all the time, right? Like I was probably watching Fear Factor before I knew at the UFC. So when I saw the UFC, I was like, dad, look, it's him. He was like, he looks at me cause obviously my dad's seen it before. He's like, yes, son, he's been around a while. You know, he's been in the UFC. I don't even know if it was longer, but I'm sure it was. Yeah, I started working for the UFC in 97. So he was like, he's always been there. So then obviously as I get older, I start seeing history and looking at old fights and older fights. And I noticed you there the whole time and like me and my friend Tuko had these conversations. But I was like, bro, Joe's a real one though. He's been here the whole time. Like how awesome does that have to be for like you, Dana, Fratitas and probably a few others too that nobody knows that have seen this thing grow from what it was to what it is today. Oh, it's amazing. It's gotta be. It's amazing. Yeah, I feel so lucky. I'm so fortunate. Like it's one of the things I look forward to more than anything in life. And like you said, I'm like, oh boy, here we go. I get so excited. I've been doing this forever. I still, I started UFC 12 in 1997. That was the first fight that I ever did. Backstage interviews, that's what I did. Or post fight interviews too. I think I started doing interviews backstage and then I interviewed guys after the fight was over. That was early. But how'd you start there? It was a crazy fluke. So I was already doing Jiu Jitsu. I was at Carlson Gracie's. This is back before VTOR made his debut. I was training at VTOR's with VTOR's gym with Mario Sperry. I took lessons from Mario Sperry when I was a white belt. It was awesome dude. My real little boost to Monte was there all the time. There was a ton of the Carlson Gracie killers, the two bulldogs fighting each other. And Carlson was there every day. So I got to train there when I was on News Radio, the sitcom. It was just like 1996. And I just loved that there was, this was before VTOR fought in the UFC. So while he was training at the gym with us, he went and fought this guy John Hess. John Hess was his big tall, he fought in the UFC as well. I believe, I believe he did. John Hess was his, he had a style called Safta. I forget what it was about, but it was like, back then dudes would just like make up their own style, street fighting, artistic, finger fucking, you know, they would make up some sort of a fucking acronym. But VTOR blitzed across the ring. He was 19 years old and just lit this guy up like a machine gun, like got him down. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Like put him out on the ground. Like it was so crazy and so fast. The most ferocious display of ground and pound I had ever seen in my life at the time. And I was like, this is crazy. And so just randomly, they had a guy who was doing the post-fight interviews and they wanted to get a new guy. And they were looking for people and the guy, Campbell McLaren, who was the producer of the UFC, happened to be friends with my manager from the comedy club days. The, Campbell used to work at a comedy club with my manager. And they were just shooting the shit over the phone. He goes, hey, I'm looking for someone to do interviews for the UFC. Do you know anybody that'd be interested in it? He goes like, Joe is a huge fan. He's like, Joe watches every one of them. I actually got direct TV just so I could watch the UFC because that's when it was banned from cable. So I got my cable removed and I got direct TV put in my house just so I could watch the UFC. Because it was the only way you could catch it. And then it was no money. And I was supposed to fly to New York, but then the last minute it got canceled, they made it illegal in New York. And we had to fly to Dothan, Alabama on a fucking propeller plane. I shared a propeller plane with Randy Couture. And actually, that was later. That was in Louisiana. I shared a propeller plane with Randy Couture. Randy didn't fight that. But it was, VTOUR made his debut against Trey Telligman. And everybody thought he was a Jiu-Jitsu guy because he was from Carlson Gracie. He had a black belt. And he just came out just throwing missiles. Just missiles. So fast. And he was only like 200 pounds back then. He was light and fast and strong as shit. And then he fought Scott Feroso and took him out in the finals. So he won this heavyweight tournament. And that was 1997. That's crazy. That was the third person I was trying to think of when I was in Seattle. So basically what happened, UFC was asking fighters, hey, were these three guys, they weren't saying they were getting inducted, but obviously if you've been around, you knew. It was VTOUR? It was VTOUR. Amanda Nunes and Robbie Lawler. They weren't cheering for VTOUR? That's crazy. No, they were asking the fighters. They were asking the fighters, hey, do you know who these guys are? If you do, what's your most memorable moment of them? What was your favorite moment? Anything like that, right? Because obviously they put it on the montage when they announce it. And they told me that only me and two other fighters on the entire card could give a fight from VTOUR. I was like, no way. I was like, that highlight that you're talking about when he sprints across, even if you don't know the person, how do you not see that highlight? When he did that to Vanderlei, remember we did that to Vanderlei Sova? That's what I said. That was my, Vanderlei was that one. That was crazy, but I think the scariest VTOUR of all time was TRT VTOUR. TRT VTOUR was the scariest human being that ever stepped into that cage. If they never banned TRT, I think that guy would have been a terror for every fucking human being that weighed 185 pounds. For sure. The way he wheel-kicked Luke Rockhold, like what the fuck are we looking at, man? We never saw him throw a wheel-kick in his whole career. All of a sudden he's wheel-kicking guys in the head. He come into gym, like, because obviously they live in Florida, he come into gym and he is the nicest guy. Brother, brother, come here, come here. Very nice guy. Let's talk about it. Hey, I think you need to slow down a little bit. These 100% every day, no good brother. He said, why don't you come? We can have some coffee, have lunch, and let's talk about it. I love the science behind the sport. But super nice guy, right? Like, those are conversations that I had with him. And if I see him, great guy. Before this, I never had a conversation with him, only watched him on TV, you know? But that was like the first interaction I ever had with VTOUR as a person. I don't know if he knew who I was. He just watched me spar and then come to me after. That was it. That's very nice of him. Yeah, super nice guy. And for a real OG like him, that's been again fighting since 1997. 1997, that's almost 30 years. That's literally crazy. That hurt my heart when they said that people couldn't say fights for him. Couldn't even say a highlight. It's hard, you know, these young guys, a lot of them are 25 years old, 24 years old. They didn't watch this, Joshua Van 24, right? Like, didn't watch the sport a lot before they were involved in it. And the fights that they've really seen a lot of have been the last few years. Yeah, and that's what Josh Van, that's why I said his name, he's young. But he says the same thing, because they were like, why do you think Prentosa's the goat? He's like, I know Demetrius Johnson is, whatever one says, he was like, but I never got to see him, you know? Like, I was too young. That's crazy too. Go watch. It's all on. Go see him, Joshua. YouTube's free, bro. Be the champ now, Joshua. Go back and watch Mighty Mouse. Because that motherfucker was extraordinary. He was. Mighty Mouse in his time was extraordinary. He was so special when he fought that big Brazilian kid in one. Uh-huh, right? He lost one and then he beat him twice, right? He lost the first time in one championship, and then he got KO'd, and then KO'd him the exact same way. Really? It was the same way. Yeah, it both got KO'd with knees. And both got KO'd against the cage with knees. It was literally like almost the exact same, except Demetrius was more artistic. It was beautiful. The flow where he was like chasing him, he rocked him, and then he's chasing him down. He's like, not yet, there it is. And he just launches and catches him with this, you've seen it, right? Yeah, I've seen it. Oh my God. I didn't know it was the same way. What does that dude's name? Eddie KO'd? Just... Andre, I don't know. Search Demetrius Johnson flying knee KO one FC. I bet you'll find it. Yeah, Adriana Marise, that's it, that's it. And Marise is good, dude. He's really good, he's really big. And one FC's got that squirrely weight cutting jazz. So this is the second fight after Marise had KO'd him in the first fight. And also this is a DJ that's probably 35 years old, right? Right. I mean, and after a long career in the UFC, widely recognized as the greatest flyweight of all time in the UFC. And to me, he just didn't get the love that he deserved when he was in his prime because he was 125 pounds. And for whatever reason, I mean, it's not like it's not even more interesting to watch. But people have this weird thing, like a heavyweight could beat anywhere in the world. 125 pound guy will dump him on his head. Stop, watch him fight. Like it right there. Boom! Well, back it up a second so you can see the sequence. Look, right hand timing, boom, perfect. The timing is just so beautiful. That's so, look, that's fucking artistic, man. That is so artistic. It's perfect. And to KO a guy with the shit he KO'd you with in the first fight is wild. Dude, I don't know much about like Demetrius as a person, but from what I've seen of him, obviously, because you see more now that he's on like, doing his like streaming and stuff. He is like, He's the best. He's the definition of a martial artist. He cares about the pureness of being a martial artist rather than the views or the belt or any of that. So I respect that a lot. He's not like talking stupid shit just to get attention. He hates people that do that kind of stuff. He hates disrespectful stuff. He's such a nice guy, but also just so smart about his approach to the sport. Just so clever inside the cage. And also so fucking fast, man. Dude, he was so, one time I grabbed him just being silly at a UFC. He was in front of me and I put my arms around him, like from behind, you know, like saying hi to somebody. And he turned around and he looked at me and he goes, ta-da! He hit me with two knees to the body. Like just touched me with it. It was so fast. I was like, dude, that was so scary. You hit me so fast. I didn't even see them coming. It was like, ta-da! It was just like, just amazing. Like a cat. And you know, like you said, he was probably 35 or whatever there. He could still compete with the best in the world. With the best in the world. No problem. And juice-free too. Juice-free with the best in the world. And by the way, over there, I don't know what kind of drug tests they're doing, but it's probably multiple choice. This is a lot of them organizations where you're like, how hard are you testing really? Man, it's a multiple choice. You know, because like, if you're not testing all throughout camp randomly, you're not really testing, you know? Because we have to remember that Alistair Overeem, when he fought Brock Lesnar, was tested. And that is the juiciest man that's ever walked the face of planet Earth. The Alistair Overeem that fought Brock Lesnar is the juiciest guy I've ever seen fight. It was horse meat. And I wish he could keep juicing. I do. I think we would have seen, we've seen a different result. If you, you let Alistair stay juicy and stay 265 with world class kickboxing skills. And also he was so jacked that he could kind of hide from punches. Cause when he would shell up, especially in K1, when he had those big gloves, bro, when he would shell up. So he's got biceps and shoulders and then traps, everything's all protected. And he's got that high guard and he's coming in like this, throwing bombs. And he looks like a superhero. He looks like a guy from a fucking comic book. Yeah, let's just let everyone juice. If you want to juice, just everyone juice. Let's make it an even playing field. Instead of let's try to catch who's not, or let's catch who's juicing. Would you if they, if they just opened the gates? Okay. Okay. I'll start it off by saying yes. When I was younger, I was like, no, I never juice. I want to be all natural to show everything. Like show I'm just that good. Then I was like, is I got older and seen it? I was like, nah. I would. But that's like, I remember I fought Eric Anders for LFA, right? And they have pictures of him on the scale, the day of the fight, 222, 223, one of them two, right? I'm stepping in, I don't even really cut, I'm stepping in like 194. I'm young. I don't cut really anything. That time I did cut a lot that that was the first fight I cut a lot for because I was lifting like crazy. And I wasn't really doing nothing else because I was in Louisiana. I used to try with Rich Clementi. Okay. Yeah. So you know, he's crazy as hell. So I was training there, but I was lifting more than anything. But anyway, I was probably like 196 is 197. No more than 200 for sure. No questions asked. And they come in the back out that night and they're like, hey, we're drug testing you. I said, what? He said, yeah, we're gonna drug test you. It's random. I said, well, if it's random, is he getting drug tested too? They're like, nah. I said, whoa. So you're telling me the man who's weighing over 220 and just weighed 185 exact yesterday is not getting tested, but the guy who's only weighing like 14, whatever pounds more is getting tested. I pulled up my shirt. I said, does it look like I'm on fucking steroids? Does it look like it? I said, give me some credit, bro. If I was gonna take it, I promise you I would look like it. And they're like, I'm sorry, bro. This is, it's just a job. I was like, all right, let's go get it done. But it's just like- How could you randomly test only a few people on a roster? That has to be like- Texas commission thing. That has to be a budget thing. Texas commission. That's great, but that must be like, they don't wanna spend money on everybody. I don't know. If you, it tests one guy on the card, you should have to test everybody. Yeah, I think it was a total of three or four guys that what they said that they tested on the whole card. If you're testing a guy, you have to test his opponent. Dude. You have to. That's crazy. I still to this day, I laugh about it. I'm like, come on, bro. Every time someone asks me like, hey, we're gonna go to Texas, come on, bro. There was a few fights where they stopped, they wouldn't let a guy fight because they, in the TRT days, they did test to see what people's levels are. And one guy, I don't wanna say his name, but one guy was so high that they canceled the main event. Really? Yeah, they canceled the main event at the weigh-in. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know that. He was so juicy, they were worried that he was gonna die. They were like, you could, like your levels are, whatever you fucking did, you should not be fighting with this level of testosterone in your system. Did you have- Also on TRT. So it wasn't like, this guy's just some genetic freak. Like you all were narrow, coming out of the cube, in sports program. No, it wasn't- He's a special human too. That's a special human. Yeah. Do you ever heard of a guy, Clovis, I think Clovis Hancock, he died in the fight. No. I think it was for Legacy or LFA. I fought him, then his next fight, he died in the cage and they brought him back. Whoa. Yeah, CPR, it was all over the internet. I fought that dude, I was like, no way. I saw the next day, I seen it. Yeah, they had to give him CPR until the ambulance got him loaded up and taken to the hospital. So he's heart just stopped beating? Yeah. Wow. Obviously never allowed to fight again. Obviously, yeah. Yeah, man, crazy. Imagine if he wanted to. Oh my God. He probably did, bro, he was funny. I ain't gonna lie. Some guys just have that dog in them, they don't care. Cyborg wanted to fight again after he got his skull crushed by MVP. No way. Yeah, he thought he was gonna fight again after that. So here it is. Can you imagine being in the audience watching that? They're doing fucking CPR on a dude. Oh my God, that's so scary. Yeah, yeah, I remember, he was the cut man for it. That's so scary. Yeah, man, it's crazy. Well, thank God they have those EMTs on standby. And these organizations, they do the very best to screen people and make sure that they're as healthy as possible. The UFC does a real good job with that. He's dead for five minutes. Yeah, he's dead for five minutes. The cut man was the guy that was giving him CPR. It wasn't even the EMTs. Oh my God, thank God the cut man knew it. CPR, holy shit dude. Yeah, crazy. Well, you know, reminds you this is not a game. It's a crazy ass fucking sport. So what's next for you? Do you know, do they have you lined up for anything? No, I've been pushing, hopefully, Dracus, hopefully March, April at the latest. So do you need like that much time to prepare? Or is that like how you'd like to? Yeah, I just kind of, I started training again today as a matter of fact. So training, dieting. Maybe that'll get him excited about fighting you. Maybe that'll get him excited about fighting. Who knows man? Maybe that's a trap. If I was Dracus, I'm like, this motherfucker probably has a full six pack. He takes his shirt off. He's probably ripped his butt. Six pack of rolls. He's ready to go. He's just bullshitting, saying he hasn't been training to goad me into a fight. Yeah man, but I like. So Dracus is the guy that you're hoping for. Yes sir. And it makes sense. Like it's just the right time. Like I said, Ema Volv is gonna wait for the champion. He earned his spot. They just announced Fluffy and Sean. So what's left? It's just me and him. It's a good fight too. It'd be a great fight to watch. And a good fight, for you obviously, fighting former champion, and for Dracus, it's like that's the kind of fight you need at this point. You need to turn back the young Lions. I've been trying to fight him since he got into the UFC. I just just felt like, I still feel this way. I feel like he's the luckiest guy I've ever seen. Like don't get me wrong. He does have a couple fights now. But before he got the belt, I always said like, he's the luckiest guy. Like Marcus Perez was beating his ass. Marcus Perez wanted to do something crazy and went to throw a spinning elbow. Dracus was throwing a body shot when he was throwing the spinning elbow and he hit him right in the mouth. Dracus hit Marcus right in the mouth, out. I don't think you can call that lucky. I don't know. I know what you're saying, but he finds a way to win. The dude's a dog. He is a dog. He finds a way to win. Think about some of them fights that were just like, the oddest on your fight. Like he just kept coming and found a way to win. The Robert Whitaker fight, we took Whitaker out in the first round. You can't, there's no luck. You're right. That one, I don't see luck in that one. And there's a lot of his fights. I think that was a great strategy. He's a fucking animal, dude. Yeah, he, honestly, we can say whatever we want about each other. He can joke, talk shit, whatever the case. But I loved the fight because I know he's coming to fight. Like he's coming to kill. For sure. I love that. I don't want a guy that's, like, I've had him, but I don't like the guys that just want to hug. Like he's trying to hurt me. I love that. Like that nervousness brings out the best version of me. Cause I'm nervous. Like who's not nervous of another man that's gonna, he's trying to hurt me. And his, to me, one of his best attributes is exactly what he said. Like he, you describe it as he finds a way to win. Like that's a great way. For me, I'm just like, that dude can dig deep. Same exact thing. Look, even in the Hamzad fight, even in the Hamzad fight, remember the fifth round? Fifth round, he's on top, dropping bombs on Hamzad at one point in time. It was a little too late and he didn't get him out of there, but he was not giving up. He just was getting dominated. There's a difference. For sure. He was still trying to find a way to win. But I love that. That motivates me by itself. I love hearing that. I want a guy that's gonna try to come kill me. Cause what's the worst that's gonna happen? He knocks me out. Okay. Okay. Like that's what we came to do anyway. Any man could do it. I've been TKO'd before. Like, all right, cool. But I can do it to you too. You know, so that's what, I love that aspect of the fight. That's my favorite thing. That's what motivates me about the fight more than the number. The danger. Yeah, I like that. And I feel like I really truly haven't had that in a while. Like a true, like, some guys look at it as a sport and some guys really mean it. Like I'm trying to hurt you. And I like that. Like it brings that out in me too. Cause like I'm trying to hurt you. All right, you're gonna try to hurt me. I'm gonna try to hurt you. Or, you know, I don't know. But that's just how I look at the fight. And it really like excites me. Like that's that demonic side of me coming out. Like, let's see, I'm ready. Well, I love hearing that. And I love the fight. I hope you get it. Thank you. And thanks for being here, man. It was great talking to you. Let everybody know how they can find you on social. Yeah. On Instagram at BrennanAllen185 or be underscore Allen185. And that's really gonna be a, I'm just kind of chill. I'm low key. All right, brother. Well, hopefully next time I'll talk to you, it's after a victory. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. My pleasure, brother. It's such a pleasure being here with all you guys. Thank you so much. My pleasure. All right, bye everybody.