Transcript of JRE MMA Show #178 with Dan Hardy New

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day! Oh yeah, we're rolling. My man, good to see you, brother.

Great to see you, man.

What is this around my neck? What is that?

Oh, this is moldavite. Have you heard of moldavite before? No. So a meteorite hit in the Czech Republic millions of years ago. And the, the particular tektite that was created from the earth matter falling back down to the, the ground, uh, became moldavite. And it's— most tektites are like a black or a brown, but moldavite's green. Let me show you. Oh, it's really interesting.

It's just— hold up, Jamie's got some on the screen.

Oh, there we go. Hold it up to the light.

Oh, that's fucking dope. So it's basically like nuclear glass.

Exactly that.

Yeah, same type of Wow.

And then that's the case my wife had made for me, and it's wrapped in an old chain that belonged to my dad.

Oh, that's so dope.

Yeah, keep with me all the time.

That's fucking cool, man.

I used to have a piece in, um, you know, the old Thai amulets with the little, little bronze? I used to have one in that, took it out, um, I put it— I put the— took the Buddha out and put a piece of moldavite in it wrapped in a piece of UFC canvas, and I wore it just all the time. But then my wife upgraded me, as she tries to do all the time.

So the UFC gave you a chunk of canvas?

I have a whole canvas.

Yeah, nice. You remember which fight?

Um, it was Vadim Volkov from UFC London, and it's just— it's covered in Vadim's blood. He got his nose busted pretty badly. So, but it had to be in quarantine for like 12 months until they gave it me.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, because the blood— it's a biohazard.

So does it all die after 12 months?

I guess so. I mean, I guess so. It was kept in a warehouse and then they, yeah, they dropped it off for me.

Do they have to check it to make sure it's not—

I don't know.

What would be—

I mean, I wouldn't lick it, but it looks fine to me.

What could possibly be in the blood? I mean, doesn't everybody get tested before the—

That's a good point. That's a good point. Maybe there's just some kind of rule. I think they incinerate them all now, don't they? I don't think they keep them. Do they? I mean, they keep the— they've got the pieces with the names, but I think the rest of it gets, gets disposed of now.

Huh. Yeah. I wonder if there's any logic to that.

I don't know.

Or if it's just people being scared.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. It's a cool thing. I've actually got it on the wall of my house, believe it or not.

Oh really?

Yeah, I had it in the gym, but then it's on the wall of my house now.

Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's just a nice thing to have, you know?

Dude, what happened with you in the UFC? Like, I don't know the story.

I don't—

I know you got into it with Herb Dean.

Yeah.

About a stoppage, a late stoppage. Yeah. And you, you were upset. This was during COVID right?

Yeah, this was— I think it was Fight Island 3, um, and it was, it was the second fight of the night where it happened. There was a heavyweight that had gone down and just took a bunch too many shots before the fight was stopped. But the, the Jai Herbert-Francisco Trinaldo one was the, the one where you heard me shout up and yell, "Stop the fight!" Um, and it was just, it was a weird circumstance. And look, you know, Caveat: Herb's a great referee, he's refereed me a lot, but every now and then people do make mistakes. And in Fight Island, everyone was tired, it was quiet in the arena as well, so you can— I mean, you can hear me yelling. It wasn't the first time I'd done it though. I yelled at him in Moscow for a CB Dollaway fight. And it's— the thing is, there's a point where I'm there for the knockouts, I'm there for the blood, but I'm also there to make sure that once it's done, it's done, and those fighters are protected, right? You know, and the way that, that, that Jai Herbert fell, it was just— you do, you get the reads, you know it.

Yeah, you see him falling, you're like, man, there's something not right about the way that he's falling. And then as he landed, he was looking up at the lighting rig, but his arms were kind of stretched out.

So he was gone.

He was gone. He was out of it. And then there was this— and I think, of course, because it was Quarantine times, it was silent in there. The time, it was like you could hear a heartbeat in the air. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. And there was just this moment where Trinaldo stood over him and looked at Herb. And Jai's still on the floor, kind of not fully conscious. And Trinaldo just started cracking him with more shots. And that was the point where I stood up straight away and I'm yelling, and Paul Felder was doing the same thing next to me. You actually see Herb look at me through the cage and point at me and tell me to shut up. The thing that annoyed me about it was the miscommunication about what had happened, because the message that got back to Dana and everybody at the top was that I left my commentary desk and went over and I was stood outside the cage, and I wasn't. Herb came to me. So like, I'm at my desk, we've got this piece of plexiglass because it's all COVID protocols, right? Hilarious, plexiglass. That stopped everything, didn't it? And then, and then we had another desk in front of that So Herbs basically— and Herbs doesn't move very quickly most of the time, he's a big old boy— but he was moving at pace towards me.

So I stood up, took my headset off and put them down, or had them in my hand, and he came over and he started yelling at me and, you know, you stay out of it, can't be shouting and this and that. And that's where you see me go, that was two times, that's the second time of the night. Um, after the— I mean, as it's going on And this was when we're not doing interviews in the cage as well, right? So I'm standing up. Also hilarious. Also hilarious, yeah.

Guys just breathing on each other, sweating and bleeding on each other.

And we're shaking hands in the hotel and everything, and it was kind of odd. But because I'm not going into the cage, I'm now turning around and my interview camera's behind me. So basically what the UFC wanted me to do when Herb's marching over to me was to stand up, turn my back on him, and put my headset on. Me as a martial artist, I'm not going to turn my back on someone when they're moving at me with the kind of pace that he was. So I, I, everything got a bit delayed because I was having an interact with interaction with Herb. As soon as the event was over and I was on my way over to the ESPN desk, Herb and I bumped into each other and we had just had a brief minute conversation. Everything was cool. I said, look, I respect you as a referee, you left that one too late. There was no doubt, and it was the second one the night. And there are other instances where it's happened, right? Nobody's perfect. I would make mistakes as well, of course.

Very difficult job.

Very, very difficult job. The thing that annoyed me though, and for me it was done then, when I got backstage, someone from the production team confronted me about approaching Herb. I tried to make sure that the narrative was set correctly, that he actually came over to me. Um, but that never got escalated up the chain. So it was always, you know, you approach an official, etc., etc. And it just so happened to coincide with where someone had approached Mark Goddard and pushed him at another event, UAE Warriors. So the whole thing kind of got convoluted and bundled into the same thing.

Was that the Conor situation?

No, that was in Bellator, but there was another one. It was UAE Warriors, and I think someone had kept hold of a choke too long and then Goddard had separated the fight, and then he came over to Mark and he's trying to push Mark and stuff. And when Dana actually made the statement about if you approach an official, you'll be gone, that was actually in reference to the other thing that happened, but it was linked in with me as well. The thing that pissed me off is when I got to the— back to the hotel or to the airport or whatever, Herb had posted this video and he was like sitting at the airport, you know, trying to justify what had happened. And but it was just like, if he was saying things like, if you think you're the smartest guy in the room, and just like poking at me just constantly. And I'm like, hmm, I've got a bunch of hours sitting on a plane on the way back to the UK now, and you know what I'm like, I'm pulling this apart. And I'm like, did I, did I step out of line?

Did I say something I shouldn't have said? And, and I'm, I'm assessing it, and then I'm going, no, hang on a minute, Like, my intention is to protect that fighter that needed protecting, right? His family are at home sitting watching that. They don't want to see him getting smashed in the face unnecessarily. They know the risks of the job already. So I kind of sat on the plane on the way home, and I'm like, how am I going to deal with this? So I dealt with it the way that I would always do. I get all the facts on the table, I try and organize my response, and but what I did was I created a video that I put up on YouTube, which the UFC actually contacted YouTube and had them delete off the back end.

Oi.

And it was about, it was about an hour and a quarter long. It was a decent chunk of, chunk of information. But I went through what had happened on the night, other circumstances where Herb had maybe not pulled the trigger quick enough, or times when he'd been indecisive, like Cowboy Masvidal. Not sure whether you remember that one. Cowboy went down at the end of the first round, and they actually helped him back to his stool and sat him on the stool, and Greg Jackson's going, 'Hey Cowboy, you're okay, everything's fine.' Then he went out and got TKO'd at the start of the second round. But if you remember that, Herb jumps in and waves the fight off at the end of the round and then decides to restart it in the second. So I pointed out a bunch of things where he could have maybe done a better job. I I also gave him the benefit of the doubt in like the Robbie Lawler-Ben Askren fight, where to me that wasn't stopped early. You could see Robbie Lawler's arm fall for a second. I think he went out for a split second in that moment.

And then came back.

Yeah.

And then complained about it.

So in that moment—

Hard to tell.

Very hard to tell. But you can see Herb in that situation going, "Oh man, I'm sorry, I thought you were out." Like, those things are gonna happen. I would always rather the fighter be protected than just kind of leave it for the benefit of the doubt just let them take them. It's different with a submission, of course. But the point is, I was trying to create something that was quite balanced. And the other thing as well was, you know, it was Fight Island. Like, we're getting tested every other day. Like, we're quarantined in our rooms sometimes. We were doing fights at weird hours of the day, so people were kind of foggy and fatigued, and it was just a weird environment. So I gave Herb and all the officials the benefit of the doubt that you know, you're not going to be at 100% at 4 o'clock in the morning. But it was the way they responded to me which pissed me off. And then the way that the UFC kind of pulled all their support for me, you know. And, and they contacted me and they said, hey, we're going to organize a conversation with you and whoever.

Um, and I said, I just want to let you know I've got this video ready to go and I am going to post it because it, it vindicates what I did in in my opinion, but it also offers some understanding of what Herb was trying to do and the job that he has and how difficult it is. And unfortunately, I mean, it got a couple of hundred thousand views before it was taken down, but it's just, it's still on the channel now. If you look at it, it's just a little gray square with three dots and there's just nothing on the back end. They literally went into my channel and took it away.

00:11:01

That's so weird that they could take down something that doesn't violate any laws or rules. I mean, no, that's kind of weird.

I don't know whether they contacted YouTube and said, hey, you know, he's used some UFC footage. But did you? Yeah, I did. But at the time, I had permission to use UFC footage. They were allowing me to make War Rooms and all kinds of stuff because it only helps them. That's it. I mean, I was an ambassador for Europe as well as being a commentator, so my job in my mind was, was to spread the word of MMA, right? I'm trying to educate everybody as much as I can, and I could make a lot more content through my channel than I could rely on the UFC to make content. So I was just trying to churn extra stuff out to keep drawing attention to it. So they'd given me permission to use footage on my channel and I'd built a company off the back of this. I'd employed my Raptors. I think you remember meeting those guys. Mm-hmm. And all that was gone, you know? And the thing is, it was like, I understand that the UFC are not gonna fire me for, shouting up to protect a fighter. But I knew on that day my card was marked, you know, and I knew that my card was marked on that day because I was— I was too stubborn.

I didn't wait for the UFC to tell me what I should have said and this and that. I posted my video. I wanted to clear my name, and I wanted to back up the reason why I'd said that, because it wasn't the first time I'd done it, you know. It was the first time I'd done it in a quiet, empty arena But if you go back to, I think it was Moscow, with CB Dolloway, and he was fighting a guy called Murtaza Aliyev. And for about a minute 15, he was just curled up in a ball on the floor, and he was just getting pounded. He went from fetal position to completely belly down to fetal position on the other side in the space of that minute. And at the end of the round, Herb just stood over him, and he's lying there like a corpse on the floor. I'm like, this fight should have been stopped easy 30 seconds ago. Even CB Dalloway came out and said that he didn't feel protected by it. But the difference was that we've got 25,000 people in the arena, so you can't really hear me shouting, 'Stop the fight,' in that scenario, right?

You know, it's just an awkward situation because I like Herb. I would never have him referee my wife. I always make a request to make sure that he doesn't, but that's more because of the history between me and him. I don't want to put him in a position where I'm going to get angry at him again for not doing his job, right? You know, but I was just— I was disappointed that the UFC kind of pulled all support for me and backed Herb in that situation.

Was there a situation backstage where you got into it with someone else from the staff? Because that's what I had heard, that someone said something to you and you yelled at someone backstage.

I did, yeah, I did. But in this— in the scenario, I just left the ESPN desk, and this is like 5 o'clock in the morning or something now after the broadcast, and I'd walk backstage. I won't mention his name. I, I love him, he's a lovely guy, but everyone's kind of ragged and tired in Fight Island, you know what I mean? And as I'm walking back to my dressing room, he came flying at me and he's like, hey, you can't ever approach an official and blah blah blah. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a fucking minute. And like, just the intensity that he came at me with just spiked my adrenaline again, right? And I'm, I'm already kind of like, I'm heightened because the fights have just ended. You know what it's like with adrenaline. I'm like, yeah, 3 days, I'm like excitedly shaking after a good event. And it was just the energy that he came at, came at me with just pushed my energy up. So then we had this back and forth where I'm like, hey, you need to get your facts right, he, he approached me and blah blah. And I don't know whether that information had already been passed on to people above him to say Dan Hardy's just approached Herb Dean after the fight, when in actuality that just never happened.

And because that was the perspective that the guys in the, in the truck had got Like, I've— I automatically felt like I'm gonna get in trouble here. Like, I've done something really wrong, right? You know? And I mean, the thing is, it's like that— I've been working with, with, with that man for, for a long time. The guy, the guy backstage I'm talking about, I love him. He's a lovely guy. We've always got on. If I saw him now, we'd have a good conversation. It was just, you know, you know, it's like, yeah, heightened experience. And, and just the energy that he came at me with, especially with the misinformation of me Now, you know, being the guy that took my headset off and marched over to the door to wait for Herb as he walked out.

Right, right.

I just didn't do that. Like, I'm there to do my job, but ultimately, above my job and above everything, UFC and everything included, I'm there to make sure that MMA is stable and the fighters are safe. Right. Because that's my instinct, you know? Everybody that gets in that cage is someone's son or daughter or father or brother, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

And in those moments, the people in the cage, they go from being the best fighters in the world to a very, very human victim that is not being protected by the referee. And from a fighter's perspective, I want to feel that warlike feeling when I step in the cage. I want to feel like I can throw everything at my opponent, and I also want to feel safe that they can throw everything at me, right? I don't want to have in my mind, oh, hang on, Do I need to pull this punch? 'Cause the referee's not gonna jump in. Like there are 3 people in there and 1 person's got the job to protect both of us. Neither of us have a responsibility to protect each other. We don't have a responsibility to pull a punch after a knockdown. We don't have a responsibility to stop when the bell rings, right?

Who was the referee with Anderson Silva and Michael Bisping?

Oh, that's a good question.

'Cause that was a weird one, right? That fight should have been over.

Yeah.

Anderson hits him with a flying knee and then hops on top of the cage. And they didn't stop the fight. Was that Herb?

It might have been. It might have been. Look, the thing is, Herb's refereed me a bunch of times, and I like Herb.

But that obviously was Anderson's beef.

We make mistakes, right?

That was Anderson's issue. Anderson should have followed up until the referee stops.

Absolutely.

But you could have easily said, this fight's over. I mean, yep. Yeah, that's a crazy situation. So Michael, I think, had lost his mouthpiece.

Yes.

And this is also when Michael was blind in his right eye.

Yes. Right?

So you have to take this into consideration. So Michael loses his mouthpiece, and at some point in time, he points like that he wants his mouthpiece back.

And look at the time. We're into the last 20 seconds.

Right.

And it's a beautiful knee that Anderson lands as well.

Yeah. So he—

There's the mask on.

He loses his mouthpiece. Yeah. That's you, buddy.

Uh-huh. One of my favorite fights to have called. Bang! Right on the bell.

The buzzer has sounded. Okay, the fight's not over. He's saying the fight's not over.

In this situation, that's—

that actually makes sense because he was still conscious and he was still up and he had his hand down. Yeah, but that was Anderson's fault.

Oh, for sure it was. For sure it was. And unfortunately for Anderson, he had the adrenaline dump of thinking he'd won the fight, right? Got up on the cage, started celebrating, and had another 10 minutes. And this is where Michael Bisping is just a gangster.

He's pointing to his mouthpiece and he's communicating with Herb, but Herb didn't stop the fight.

I mean, the thing is, this, like, this seconds left, Anderson Silva's got no responsibility to No, pull any punches.

Perfect fucking form.

It was lovely, wasn't it?

God, he was a master in his prime. And this is post-leg break too. Yeah, this wasn't even prime Anderson, you know. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. It's good to be passionate about something. Exploring what interests you adds more color to your life, makes it more fulfilling in a way. And that's not just limited to your personal life. If you run a business, you know how much of a difference it can make when the people on your team are excited about what they're doing. And if you don't, well, it's time to find out with ZipRecruiter. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. It's been rated the number one hiring site based on G2, and that's because ZipRecruiter is always looking for ways to improve the hiring process, including its newest feature that lets you see the most qualified and, more importantly, most interested people for your role to make sure they're some of the first you start talking to. Find candidates who really want your job. On ZipRecruiter. 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. That's ziprecruiter.com/rogan. Meet your match at ZipRecruiter.

Still one of the best fights I've ever called. This and Max Holloway, Calvin Kater, one of the best fights I've ever called. It was a privilege to be sat cage side for it, but like Bisping's, you know, coming out now with 10 minutes left and stamps his authority on this fight, which was very, very impressive. But it was just— this was just a messy situation, and I kind of didn't really mind this because of the circumstance that had played out. I mean, Herb was very clear in him saying, I didn't stop the fight, right, right, right. But then if, like, if you remember the, um, the Cowboy Cerrone Masvidal fight—

I do remember that one, that was different.

Yeah, and Herb's bad habit at the end of the round, if there's an engagement, he steps in, he waves his arm. That's a signal the fight's off, right? Right. You don't wave off the round, you wave off the fight, right? So, so at the end of the round, the referee's job is to get in between the fighters, right? Right. See, Cowboy was on the floor, Masvidal was already wandering off. I mean, this is like— that's— and watch this. So, so this is the problem, right? You have to leave the fighter to get back to their stool. You can't touch him. Herb's holding him up there. Right, and then they come out, they come over, they put the seat down, the stool down, he sits down, and then Greg Jackson's saying, hey cowboy, it's okay, this always happens to us. Like, he's just not conscious for this whole minute. He goes back out and gets TKO'd almost immediately afterwards. But, but Herb has a habit of waving the fight off.

Yeah, but that didn't look like he was waving the fight off. That looked like he was signaling the end of the round. He didn't do this.

Potentially, but then if you've got one arm in between and you're waving with the other one, you know, I just don't— you don't need to— you don't wave at the end of the round.

I think by his hand movements there, I don't think that qualifies. I think he's saying stop, stop, stop. I think he's putting his hands out. He's got a hand on and a hand out.

Now the other hand's waving, that right hand's waving.

Yeah, but I think he's— well, yeah, I just—

it's just— it's an unnecessary motion, and I'm okay with the debate about it, like doing the breakdown of the Jai Herbert finish, I learned something really important, which I don't know is— I've asked lots of referees and most of them have not heard about it. Fencing response, right? Have you heard of this?

No.

It's a concussion symptom, and it's a weird thing. In a newborn baby, when you turn their head to the side, their arms come up like a boxer.

Really?

Right, it's a weird— I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it's something that happens when people get concussed. Like, you will have seen this before in K-1. There was a really famous one where a guy gets kicked in the head And as he's going down, you see it in football a lot. Oh yes, you see it in football a lot.

So there's one with Marlon Marat.

Yeah, yeah, look, see, arms go out straight.

I have seen that. Yeah, you've seen a lot of that.

You want, you want the judges, you want the referees to know about fencing response, to be able to recognize all of the different, um, uh, tells of a concussion, right? So, and I didn't know about fencing response until after the Jai Herbert fight, but I had in my video that was taken down, I had lots and lots of different versions of fencing response, from K-1 to football to rugby, all kinds of stuff. It's a tell of concussion, right? Like, consciousness is not removed immediately with every punch, is it? Like, you've got a— everything's on a spectrum. You're either completely conscious or completely unconscious. But the window in which the fight needs to be stopped is probably 5 or 10% towards the end of that spectrum, right? The point where someone's unable to defend themselves or not intelligently defending themselves.

It's very subjective.

It's very, very—

the problem is, like, when a referee stops too early, it's very frustrating. And we have seen many instances. And then we've also seen some instances where it looked like a fight could easily be stopped and the fighter comes back and wins. Frankie Edgar, Gray Maynard.

What a— what, I mean, what fights. Crazy fights.

Crazy fights.

Yeah.

Crazy fights. But in the one where Frankie won, where he KO'd him, that it looked like he was out before—

He got hit 3 times in the first round.

Oh my goodness. I mean, Gray Maynard was a beast. He was a big, strong, powerful wrestler. Really big for 155, and Frankie famously did not cut weight. Frankie was one of the rare guys that fought at 155 and essentially weighed like maybe 160, if that, you know. And he was just fast, and because of that, he was very durable. And this is a thing that we need to— I mean, I fucking hate weight cutting. I hate it so bad. I really do. I think it's— I think it's sanctioned cheating. I think we should have figured out a way to eliminate it a long time ago. But you know, honestly, when I watch ONE FC, I don't think they figured out a way to do it either. Like, it's not— it's almost like it's ingrained in the culture to the point where I don't know, other than like random USADA-style weigh-ins, you know what I mean? Instead of a drug test, like, hey Dan, get on the scale. Oh, but I've been eating. I don't give a fuck, get on the scale.

What do you weigh?

You're fighting 155, you weigh 190. This is crazy. Oh no, I'm just 4 weeks into camp, you know, the next 5 weeks I really tighten up my diet. Get the fuck out of here, bitch. You're huge. Yeah, you're way too big for 155.

Yeah, I mean, well, look at Anthony Johnson, you know, one of the— right, Rumble. Like, he was 214 on the night when we fought. We both weighed in at 171. He was 214. That was before the days of IVs.

Yeah.

But like, you have to wonder what it does to people, you know?

Oh, it destroys you. It probably had some sort of an impact on his health problems that he had.

Yeah.

Because he was an enormous guy. I ran into him once, one time at a lobby at the hotel, and I go, how much do you weigh? And he goes, 230. I'm like, bro, get the fuck out of here. That's crazy.

Why?

You're gonna lose 60 pounds? 6'0" is nuts. And he was, he was 230, built like a house. I mean, he was a fucking stacked dude. It was crazy. And unfortunately, those big muscular guys can cut more weight because muscle is more water. Yeah, but it's horrible. Like, I, I mean, look, Izzy landed a perfect punch on Pereira, but I feel like Pereira at middleweight just could not take the same kind of shots that Pereira can take at light heavyweight. It's just you're dehydrating the shit out of yourself. He would weigh in 40 pounds more than he weighed than like on fight night. Fight night, he would be 40 pounds heavier.

That's crazy.

I think it was 41. I think he was 226. Yeah, which is bananas. That's just bananas.

I mean, even if I think about it, I was getting up to like, like 186, 188, and that felt like a lot for me cutting down to 170. Yeah, I mean, at the time I was fairly big for the weight class, you know what I mean, compared to some of the other guys around, but It just didn't work for me. You know what I mean? Like, I invested too much in getting bigger and stronger. And 'cause when I was fighting before the UFC, I mean, I was fighting, you know, 10, 12 times a year and I needed to stay close to weight. So I was always within about 10 pounds. There were very few fights before the UFC that I cut a lot of weight. And even, and then when I was fighting out in Japan, because I couldn't use sauna, like I just didn't wanna, you know, put myself in a position where I was having to trash bag and, you know, sweat out in the streets of Tokyo. So my weight was always—

Why couldn't you use sauna in Japan?

Because of my tattoos.

Isn't that crazy? I got kicked out of a gym in Japan.

Did you really?

Yeah, I had to go back up to my room and put a long-sleeve shirt on.

That's crazy.

That's nuts. The gym in the hotel. I'm like, I'm staying here.

Yeah.

They said, no, you can't have exposed tattoos. I'm like, oh my God, that's so wild. Do you have a Yakuza gym that I could go to?

Yeah, right.

That's what it is. It's all about Yakuza tattoos.

Yeah.

I'm like, look at me. Do you think I'm Yakuza?

I know, right? It's crazy. I mean, I think it's changed a bit now, but I don't know, man.

This was not that long ago. I mean, I guess it was. Maybe it was 15 years ago. What was the last time the UFC was in Tokyo?

I'm not sure.

I think it was more than 15 years ago, I believe. I want to say it was like— shit, it might have been like 2009.

Yeah, something like that. Mine was 2007. I was out there fighting for Cageforce.

Yeah, yeah. Crazy. Yeah, I mean, that was back when they didn't have those options, like those small portable sauna options. That they have now. Like, there's some of them, they have these hot boxes where it's like they have a little tiny heater in there and you zip it up and you're in this little thing and you can kind of carry it with you on the road. You can check it with your bags.

Yeah, the blankets are really good. Veronica used that for her last couple of cuts. They really are great. But people use hot baths now. No one was hot bathing in my day, right? Like, if you were sweating, you were, you were working out, you were running, you were in a sauna. You know, they were the only ways people were cutting weight. Hot bathing came in kind of towards the end of my career.

What's better?

I don't know. I mean, for me, I never used the hot baths. I tried it one time, I didn't really like it. And, and that's, that's partly a psychological thing, I think, because for me, the, the hot bath was the reward after the fight, you know?

So interesting, right?

I didn't want to feel like I was relaxing the day before the fight. I want— I was cold showered. I wanted to feel like a feral animal, to be honest, right? You know, so I would, I would cut weight on my own. I would like— it was a process of me preparing for the fight. I always imagined it like It's like, you know, you grab your shield and your spear and it's the march to the battlefield, you know. You don't, you don't walk out of your tent and you're on the battlefield. There's a process of getting there. And the weight cut for me was a part of that. It was the suffering to get to the fight. So the, like, for me it was hot sauna, cold shower, you know, treadmill, pads if I needed it. I mean, Tokyo, I didn't even have a treadmill. I just put trash bags on, cut the corners off. The old-school Thai boxing way.

How much did you weigh before that fight?

I cut 7 pounds, and that was, and that was one of the reasons why I changed the way that I was doing it, because like I should have stopped that guy in the first round and I didn't have the power to it. And that was his last fight. Like, he went, he passed out after the, after the fight, went to the hospital. He had a bleed on his brain and he, he retired completely after that. He was—

who was that?

His name was Daiso Ishige.

Oh, I remember.

Yeah, he was the king of pancrase. He was like 20. He was the favorite to win the Cageforce tournament, and I pulled him in the first round. Um, and I, I went out there just with the intention of doing a normal weight cut, you know, 6 or 7 pounds, exactly what I would normally do. I had a little bit more to cut because of the flight, but I honestly, hand on heart, believe that if I'd either not cut the weight or I'd cut the weight in a better way and rehydrated, I would have been able to stop him and he wouldn't have had the brain damage that he, he ended up with, you know, because like I look back to that third round and I just, I just didn't have the power It was like a bad dream where I'm just punching him and he's just bouncing around. He's a bloody mess.

So he just took repeated subconcussive blows.

Way more than he needed to.

Oh yeah.

You know, and I don't know whether he cut weight as well, but certainly the thing that played into the damage that was done to him was my weight cut, you know.

That's crazy. Isn't that crazy to think of?

I just didn't want to— I mean, and it— but again, like, I have no guilt associated with that because we knew what we were doing when we got in there, and I would not hold it against him if that had happened to me, you know what I mean? But in But in hindsight, pulling the whole thing apart, like, I could have been a better version of myself as a martial artist, and it would have actually probably saved him some of the damage that he ended up taking in the third.

My position is that the UFC, and I think MMA in general, PFL, all of them, they— we need more weight classes. I don't think there's nearly enough weight classes. I think the gaps are enormous. I think the names are stupid. It's very stupid to have welterweight 170 when welterweight has been with boxing at 147 forever, for 100 years, and all of a sudden the UFC comes along and decides welterweight is 170. Like, why is it called welterweight then? You know, imagine if you go to another country and you buy a hammer and it's a sandwich. No, I wanted a hammer. I need to build a house. What the fuck is this? It's like a totally different thing. Like, why is it 170 welterweight? Why not just call it the 170-pound division? That's what wrestling does. They just, they have divisions. It doesn't need to be like a name. The name seems silly.

That's a good point, actually. I'd not thought about that. I actually developed a system of introducing weight classes over the next several years for the PFL. I mean, obviously, the problem that we have is that some weight classes are just not filling out because the fighters are just not there, unfortunately. Right. You know? But I also think that's a bit of a— that's a result of the monopolization and the kind of killing off of the grassroots of the sport because the sport's not growing like it was in my day. You know what I mean? It's very, very different now.

What do you think's the cause of that?

I think— I think the control and the monopolization of the sport by the UFC, unfortunately.

How does that stop small organizations?

Well, because anything that starts to gather some momentum, they buy them out. They got rid of them.

Well, they certainly did buy out a bunch of organizations back in the day, right? They bought out Strikeforce. They bought out Pride. But they sort of bought out Pride. They got fucked.

Yeah.

Like, they thought they were buying out Pride. Do you know the whole deal behind that?

They, they—

all the contracts are bad.

Is that right?

They got a fucking DVD library. Look, over time I'm sure it's been worth it, right? But I believe they paid $60 million for Pride. I might be wrong about that number, but that's what I recall. And they didn't have any contracts. Like, you know, the contracts were all fucked up. So like, they thought they were gonna get Fedor, they thought they were gonna get everybody. And so they got a lot of the guys to come over and sign new contracts with the UFC, like Cro Cop and Nogueira and a bunch of other people, but I don't think they got nearly what they thought they were getting.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I mean, obviously, you know, I, I love the UFC and I, I've, I've always held Dana and the UFC and what they've created for us in very, very high regard, but there has, in my opinion, we've passed the tipping point now where now we're starting to see some of the negative effects of them kind of locking down everything because Like, there are certain organizations that are— they are connected with the UFC and they're enabled by the UFC through Fight Pass, and then they become almost like the feeder leagues.

Like LFA.

Exactly. But then a lot of these— a lot of those shows are now starting to get dropped off of Fight Pass, right? And the reason for that is because Contender Series is replacing them.

So which shows have been dropped off Fight Pass?

I think LFA's just been dropped, hasn't it?

Oh, has it been?

I think so. I mean, Invicta was on there a long time ago. I think they moved away themselves, but Like, there are— Ares was dropped a period, you know, my wife's commentator on Ares, they, they were dropped a while ago.

What was Ares?

Uh, it's the French promotion.

Okay.

Ares, I always say it wrong. Ares.

And they were dropped from Fight Pass?

Yeah, yeah. I think they've been picked up again now, but you know, but this, this is the— this is my, my thinking behind it, right? And I remember back in the day when I was fighting on Cage Warriors in, in the UK and the UFC were coming over once or twice like it started to kill off all the other shows because everyone was like, I'll just save my money, I'll wait for the UFC to come. Before the UFC came over and started like state to claim in, in the UK, we had a lot of shows that were kind of, you know, popping up on weekends. I was up and down the country and across Europe all the time. But then when we started having 2 or 3 UFC events a year, a lot of the smaller shows just, just dropped off, died off.

Do you think you— so you're saying save your money, meaning as —an audience member? Yeah. Yeah, but you can't fault the UFC for that. Oh, no, absolutely not.

And look, and what they did when the UFC landed in Europe, they legitimized the sport. And then, you know, so we— the perspective started to change very quickly. Like, when I was doing— when I had my title fight in 2010, I would say at least half of the interviews that I did was trying to justify the sport and why I was allowed to do what I did, right? That was 2010.

So this is back when everybody thought it was human cockfighting still.

And I was getting into debates with journalists about the— the human cockfighting thing and trying to—

Ew. I know. Those debates are so—

ew. But like, and imagine trying to like attach Power Slap onto the side of UFC when it was then. It would have just buried us, you know?

I do not like Power Slap.

I hate it. I hate it. I do not like it. And the thing is, and I'm very much, you know, as long as you're not hurting anybody else or you've agreed to hurt each other—

Right, I'm not up for your ability to Power Slap each other. Just separate yourself from MMA. And I've watched a bunch of clips. I've watched a bunch of people get flatlined and bounce their head off the podium and fall back backwards, and yeah, I don't like it. My whole thing about martial arts is it's human chess. It's high-level problem-solving. It's— you're, you know, you're working up to a moment and you're doing your very best to not get hit and hit them. And a flawless performance— like, it's one of the things that was most impressive about Khamzat during his first few UFC fights. I think he fought like 3 or 4 fights where he took like 3 punches.

Yeah, Rhys McKee, John Phillips. I can't remember the other one.

I called a couple of those. Gerald Mirchardt, he took nothing. That was one, one punch. That was flatlined with one punch. I mean, it would— that was the craziest thing about him. It's like, look at this guy, he's not even getting hit. Like, this is nuts. And when you grab guys, they'd be helpless. I like skill. There's no skill in having a big hand and a fat face. Yeah, and putting— and I don't even understand why you have chalk on your face. Why do you have or your hand.

Why? I don't know.

Is that what it is? Is it just to like— the powder flies through the air and, you know, I don't get it. Maybe dunk your head in water. I don't know.

Hey, they used to do it in the kung fu movies, didn't they? Used to put talc on people so when you hit them you get a cloud of—

did they do that?

Yeah, yeah. And hitting the watermelons with the mallets to make the noises. But again, like, power slap can be its thing and exist just away from MMA, you know. And what I hate to see is the likes of Herzog and Mark Smith and Forrest, like, catching these unconscious guys as they're falling. It just— it attaches the sport that we've worked so hard to develop to something that is gonna— it does an injustice to the MMA fighters and how hard they work and how much of human chess MMA is.

Yeah, it's literally like taking— what are those fucking smash-'em-up derby racing events? Where they crash into each other?

Yeah, demolition derby.

Demolition derby, yeah. It's like a Formula One driver and being involved in demolition derby. Like, that's fucking crazy. There's actually a reason for the chalk. Oh. So that they can see where the hit was made. Oh, indication of where the precision strike lands. Well, can't you see that though? They're not like moving at the speed of light. They're also not allowed to have excessive chalk and they can't use water. There's no excessive water, as you said. Put your head in water. The idea that they have rules— the idea they have rules is so crazy.

It's so crazy. But it is a reflection of how solid the UFC is right now, right? Because you go back to 2010, they couldn't have done that without having a real negative effect on the sport.

I think it has a negative effect on sport now. I agree with you.

I just, I just think it's not gonna— the UFC is so powerful and so strong now that it— like, they can even take a liberty and advertise power slap off the back of it. Well, and get away with it.

It's that, and then it's also we're in the TikTok era where It's just really all about clips. I mean, is Power Slap— does it air anywhere? Because it aired on television for a while, right?

Didn't they force it into the Paramount deal in some way?

Did they? I don't know. I don't know. I think it's much more digestible in these very short clips. You know, I don't think there's a person— like, there's some fucking hardcore MMA fans who can tell you about guys that are competing in the amateurs and Tough Enough, and they're making their way to the UFC, and they're fighting in the LFA. There's, there's guys who are coming in in their debuts, and you can watch YouTube videos of guys breaking down these guys' skill sets, and you never even heard of these cats. Guys who are fighting in Russia, guys who are fighting in Brazil, and there's no power slap hardcore fans. There's no like, this guy, fucking, you gotta see him slap. You gotta see him take a slap. You gotta see the way she stares down her opponent before she gets slapped. Like, yeah, it's not the same, man. It's not. I mean, you can watch it You could do it. I don't have a problem with it. This is America. I believe in freedom. Don't do it. That's what I'd say. I'd say don't do it. You come to me, I'm saying don't do it.

As a recommendation, you wouldn't do it, right? Like, don't— like, you know, whatever you would recommend.

But like, I'd also say don't do Jackass. And yeah, I have those guys on my show all the time. Yeah, every time I talk to Steve, I'm like, don't fucking do it, man. Why are you doing that?

He's a special type, man.

He's a special type. Yeah, Johnny Knoxville told me he's been knocked out 16 times, out cold. Like, that's way too many. That's way too many. That's nuts. Absolutely. I mean, you have zero fights on your record. You've been KO'd 16 times.

That's, that's real bad. Hey, he's got well paid out of it though. He's, you know, yeah, you find someone else that got knocked out 16 times and, uh, yeah, right.

That's a good point.

How much did they make from it? That's a good point. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing with these power slap guys is like they're making pocket money. How much do they make? I know, 3 and 3, 5 and 5, 3. Yeah, I was chatting to someone in Vegas and she, she didn't want to do it, but she was like, I don't have a choice. I can't get MMA fights. Why? No, she just couldn't get MMA fights. She was too big for most of the weight classes.

Oh yeah, you know, but that's a problem. Yeah, look at poor Kayla. Yeah, yeah, and they gotta make 135 every time I see her in between fights. I'm like, how? How do you get to 135? You're as big as me. This is crazy.

Crazy. Yeah, I saw her the other week in Pittsburgh, and she's— I mean, she's huge.

She's gigantic. Yeah, she's got phenomenal genetics. Yeah, she's got that neck scar. Yeah, she got an artificial disk, which is— it's really interesting that they could do that now. And guys go, look, Aljamain did it and came back better than ever. I mean, that was— I mean, everybody was so upset at him the way he won the title with Petr Jan. But he had a legitimate neck issue going into that fight, and that illegal knee that he took to the head really did fuck him up. Yeah, and then he went and got an artificial disk put in his neck and then came back and dominated in the rematch. And then did you see him in his last fight? Yeah, fucking dude, man, that guy has the best back control in the game. His back control is so elite. He's— it's, it's really incredible. Because he gets a hold of your back, man, it's like, my God.

Yeah, absolutely. See that? And I don't, I don't mean to keep picking on officials, but that is a— that's another situation where I actually feel quite bad for Aljo, that he had to put on that performance and damage his brand in such a way because he didn't want to continue fighting. Right, right. Like, and, and the officials are put in a circumstance where they don't have the confidence to just go, no, hang on a minute, that was bad, fight's over, fight's done.

Right, right, right. Well, you want to give a guy the opportunity to fight still. So you don't— this is the thing about damage. You don't know looking. Some guys can take a shot like that and then they bounce back and they're fine. Look, Bisping. Bisping came back and won that fight after that flying knee, you know? And you really gotta kind of like let the fighter— if the fighter's conscious, you gotta let them decide whether or not they can— 'cause you don't know. It's not possible to tell by looking at someone what kind of damage they've got, especially Aljo with the neck. Neck situations are so bad, man. But, but the crazy thing is that with these artificial disks now, like Weidman got one, there's quite a few guys that have gotten artificial disks in their neck now, and then they go back to fighting, which is crazy.

I wonder how that changes the way that the head twists. One thing I noticed on Yoel Romero, who just doesn't twist, but he's got his neck fused, right?

His neck is fused to the back, the base of his skull.

So like, how do you, how do you turn his head to cause concussion?

I don't know. Well, there's a good argument that it makes him more durable. Do you remember when Derrick Brunson head kicked him? Yeah, he hit him with a neck kick like right here. He didn't even budge because you're hitting a steel bar.

So then, so then think, didn't Tiger Woods have some kind of eye surgery so his eye was 20/10, so he has better edge and better depth perception for golf? I'm pretty sure he did. Really? Yeah, I'm sure he had something done to his eyes.

Put that into our sponsor Perplexity, Jamie.

Perplexity. What did they do?

He got LASIK. He got LASIK. So did he have bad eyes and he got them better, or did he have good eyes and said, what can you do? Can you make me have fucking superhuman eyes? Uh, to correct nearsightedness, it improved him to 20/15 vision. 20/15.

Okay. So he wasn't improved to 20/20.

The problem with that is with these surgeries, if you have macular degeneration and it continues to progress, you are going to need it again, or it's gonna get worse. Like Ari Shaffir got LASIK and he's like, oh, it's amazing, I have 20/20 vision, because he had terrible vision before. And then it started going to shit after a while because it just kept deteriorating, and now his eyes suck.

The thing is that, you know, athletes Like, if— I mean, and I think it was a poll done a while ago with Olympians, like, if you can win a gold medal but you're going to live to 30 or 35, would you take the gold medal? And a good portion of them said yes, they absolutely would. Most athletes, in order to achieve their goals, would do absolutely anything, right? So if I, if I all of a sudden discovered that having your neck fused like your Romero means that you've got a 30% chance of, uh, you know, less chance of getting knocked out How many fighters do you think would have their neck fused just to get the advantage, right?

How about that Tommy John surgery that people get electively so they can pitch better? Before surgery, he was extremely nearsighted. He had an 11 prescription. I don't know what that is— -11. Essentially legally blind without glasses or contacts. Whoa. And one of the greatest golfers of all time, if not the greatest. First LASIK was done after his 1999 PGA Championship win. Um, yeah, here you go.

Results and impact on his golf. Woods reportedly achieved about 20/15 vision, better than the standard 20/20, meaning he could see more detail at distance than the average person. Interesting.

He described the cup and ball as looking larger and said his ability to read greens improved, and he went on a notable win streak, winning 5 PGA Tour events in a row right after the surgery.

Wow, that links into the stoned ape theory though, if we're going in a massive circle, right? Because microdosing mushrooms gives you better edge and depth perception. Yes. So then the theory was that you would have better chances of surviving. Yes. Either as, you know, not becoming prey or finding prey. Yes. Right. Yeah.

Better vision would make you hornier, so it'd make you more likely to breed, and it also makes you more creative. And, you know, um, Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna link it to the creation of language. Fascinating.

Oh, it's very fascinating. I used to remember when I was in Vegas, I had a room in my house which I think we talked about before, which was the mushroom. And I would like, once a week I would like clear the day and I would have ceremony on a Saturday in the evening. Then I'd get up on Sunday morning and go out into Red Rock and I'd do trail running. But like, at the point where, you know, I took 6 or 7 grams the night before, so now I've probably got the equivalent of 2, 3 grams in my system. But I'm, I'm running in Vibrams downhill and I'm, I'm like, like a cat. I can, I can see the ground in a much different way to how I would if I was completely straight. So Oh, you know, and I— exciting. There are some fighters that have been microdosing through fights as well. I won't throw them under the bus because—

oh, I know a few. Yeah, yeah. Joe Schilling talked pretty openly about it.

He's got a fight coming up. Does he?

Joe's back fighting in Brussels. Is he doing PFL? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, interesting. How old's Joe now?

I'm not sure, I'm not sure. I sparred with him at, uh, Frank Mir's gym in Vegas a few years ago. Suffer. Obviously I knew Joe Schilling, who he was, and, you know, the gym that he created in LA had a real reputation and all that kind of stuff.

42. Damn.

Wow. But he was just— he was standing outside the back just smoking a cigarette, came in, put his gloves on, and just beat the snot out of me, you know what I mean? Such a good fighter.

Yeah, he's a beast kickboxer. Yeah, I was at the Last Man Standing event in LA when he fought. Like, that was really crazy because you had to fight multiple kickboxing fights in a day. And, you know, this was Glory. This was like— who used to run Bellator? Was the guy who ran Bellator Not Scott Coker.

No.

Yeah, no, it is Scott Coker because there was a guy before Scott, right?

Yeah, Bjorn, Bjorn Redmond.

Right, so he left and then Scott took— and Scott was also involved in Bellator. Yeah, or excuse me, at least Glory, right?

Was it Strikeforce? Strikeforce.

Scott Coker ran Strikeforce?

Founded Strikeforce.

So who ran Bellator?

Yeah, Bjorn founded it and then Scott Coker, right?

Okay, right, so that is correct. Okay. I think he was involved in Glory 2, right? And I think I remember I went up to him and I said, this is awesome, but don't do this. Don't have people fight multiple times in a night. It's just like, because you get a concussion and no one even knows about it. Like, there's been a lot of fights where guys got concussions and they didn't get knocked out, and then you have to fight again in an hour, and then you fight again 45 minutes after that. Like, man, that's a recipe for people getting fucked up. I know they did it back in the old days in hardcore and all that stuff. It's all great, but man, don't do that.

But you look at some of those first-round matchups when they were doing that and you're like, hmm, okay, I can see what you're doing here, you know what I mean?

Like, give people easier fights in the beginning.

So they're all sometimes, but it's—

I think it's kind of random, you know, sometimes, especially with the heavyweight K-1.

I mean, you know, like some of those guys, you fight Hong Man Choi or Bob Sapp, no matter how confident you are in your skill set, just the sheer size of them is a problem.

Yes, those had the fucking K-1 tournaments were bananas. It was so good. Whoo, they were so good. Especially like a friend of mine in Canada that used to get me VHS tapes back in the day. I don't know, I think he had like a satellite dish or some shit. I forget how he was getting them, but he was getting them and he was sending them to me. K-1, Heroes, all these like real obscure events he would send me. Awesome. Oh, I had a— I don't know where the fuck they are now. I think they might even be in my LA house, but I had a giant box of filled with VHS tapes. There were all kinds of old school fights.

I used to have a, I used to have like a CD, like a zip CD thing that used to take with me. And I had a guy at my gym and he would, £5, he would burn me Pride or K-1 Heroes or whatever. And he was finding them online and just ripping it and, you know, selling them in the gym. But I had a whole database of stuff, IFL and yeah, all those old shows. K-1 Heroes, I loved.

You know, that's kind of partially how I got the job with the UFC. When I first met Dana. Like, he just— he got me tickets because it was the— I was on Fear Factor and the UFC, they just purchased it. So this is 2001, this is right post-9/11 when Tito Ortiz fought Vladimir Matyushenko, came out with the American flag, everybody went crazy. And I started talking to him about like Japan Valley Tudo, and do you know about this guy, do you know about that guy? And I was just like, rattling off all these fighters that he had never heard of before. I was talking about all these guys that are fighting out of Russia, all these guys in Japan, and then we started talking, and then next thing you know, he's like, do you want to do commentary? I was like, oh, I just want to—

I just want to watch. And you never thought about it before, commentary? No, no, no.

Well, I worked for the UFC before that. Yeah, as the post-fight interviewer, but that was in '97, UFC 12. And so I did it from '97 to '98, and then it was costing me money. 'cause I would make way more money if I'd go work at a comedy club for the weekend than I would doing this. But it was fun, so I did it for a little while, but then it was like, I think it was UFC Japan, they wanted me to fly to Japan, and Frank Shamrock was fighting Kevin Jackson? Is that who it was? Um, I think he won by first-round armbar, and I was like, I'm not going to fucking Japan, man. I can't, no. I'm done. So I quit. I was like, I love you guys, it's fun, good time while it lasted.

Did you feel like it was gonna go where it went though?

No, I thought they were fucked. Really? It was funny because, you know, Eddie Bravo and I were backstage at one of these events, like, way— you know, I met Eddie way back in the day, so it was like, this is like '97, '98. Eddie and I were backstage, like, we were like, you know what this fucking sport needs? Some crazy billionaires with a ton of money who love the sport. We just did because we know it's so exciting and we know people would think it's so exciting. It just needs to be in everybody's face. And then who comes along? The Fertittas. It's like we manifested them. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy because like, you know, one of the first events that I did for the UFC, I did for free. I did like the first 15 events for free and I just said, just get my friends tickets. So it was like Eddie and I would go and, you know, we'd be like, bro, what's fucking happening? It's actually happening. But even back then, it wasn't famous. It was just— it was in Vegas, and it was, you know, it was kind of getting a little bit of attention.

It wasn't until 2005 that Forrest Whitaker— that the main event of— rather, excuse me, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar, main event of The Ultimate Fighter— that one fight changed everything. It's really crazy where, like, the stars align with one fight, the whole sport takes off. Yeah, because it really was that. I can't believe I called him Forrest Whitaker.

But yeah, I did the commentary. I called Robert Whitaker Forrest Whitaker live on commentary.

I've called people— I fucked up Juliana Pena's name once. Yeah, I've fucked people's names up. It's like you have so many names in your head. That's what people don't understand. Like, we— you and I, between you and I, we probably have 500 fighters' names in our head, and then plus jiu-jitsu guys, plus wrestlers, plus boxers. Like, oh my God, there's so many names in your head.

Yeah, and then project that into the history of the sport, right? Because we've got the history of the sport and the history of boxing on top of that as well.

The way I describe my memory, it's like I have a whole bunch of boxes of folders, and if I find that box, I can open that bitch up and talk to you about Marvin Hagler versus Juan Roldán, and I'll tell you like the knockdown was fake and this and that, and Hagler went on to stop I'll tell you details, but if I don't have that folder in front of me, I'm like, uh, I don't know why. I don't know why I can't like immediately remember sometimes, but sometimes I could pull that box out and it's right there and I can just get that folder out and boom.

Do you remember the first time you sat down at the commentary booth and put the headset on?

Yes, yes, that was UFC 37.5. London? No.

Oh no, because It was just after that though, right? UFC 38 was London.

Well, it was 37.5 because it was like a fit. It was an event they put together for Best Damn Sports Show, right? So remember Best Damn Sports Show, which was on Fox Sports, I think, Fox SportsNet? And so what it was was they had this opportunity to do a show, and this is when Dana asked me to do commentary, and I just did it as a favor. He goes, it'd be great if you did it because it was the Fear Factor days, and it was Chuck Liddell versus Vitor Belfort. I said, oh fuck, I'll do it. And I think I remember who else. I think Robbie Lawler might have made his debut. Berger versus Robbie Lawler. That's right. Thank you, sir. Yeah, so it was, it was fun, and I did it once, and then they asked me, would you do it again? Like, okay, I'll do it again. But it was really just— I just kept doing it. It wasn't a job. Like I said, I didn't even ask for money. Yeah, I did like 15 of them, and then finally Dana says, look, I want to Sign you to a contract. I want to pay you.

I was like, okay, all right. I was like, reluctantly got dragged into being a commentator.

Yeah.

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That's kind of cool. Yeah, it's similar to me though, really. I mean, I was— because I've been sidelined because, you know, because of my heart situation, and they wouldn't clear me in California, so then the UFC just wouldn't match me anywhere. Um, and I'd had a, I'd had like a month or two of just kind of wallowing and being depressed and, you know, avoiding MMA gyms. And, uh, um, Lorenzo had invited me into the offices on Sahara, and, and I, I'd gone and sat with him, and we were chatting through, and he said, hey, you know, I'm going to send you out to California. I want you to go and see my specialist. You know, my family specialist, and get a second opinion, and etc. But he said, also, we've got another plan for you. Uh, he said, I won't spoil it. At some point you'll see Dana, and Dana will tell you what the plan is. And as I was— it was like a movie— as I was walking out of the offices, a stretch monster Hummer pulled up. Literally, I'm like, what's going on here? And Dana got out, and, and he was like, oh, just a fucking blah blah.

I just wanted to see He was like, I want you to go to the UK, I want you to be an ambassador, I want you to do commentary. And I said, that's great, you know, let me know what I need, media training. He's like, no, none of that, I just want you to be you sitting cage side. And I remember getting to the first UFC London event and sat down at the desk just fighting imposter syndrome bad and seeing all the, all the fans starting to trickle into the arena. And then someone on the, on the, from the truck came through and said said, oh, I've just realized we've not practiced any post-fight interviews. I said, oh, I'd not really thought about it, but it's just talking to fighters, I'll be fine. He said, no, no, I'd feel better if we practiced. I said, okay. He said, okay, uh, Brad Pickett wins by knockout, go. I'm like, how did you knock him out? It was my first question. And it was weird because it was like I'd not even thought about it up until that point, but when they raised the— when they, when they, they asked me to do the kind of practice rehearsal with not any scenario that was realistic, then all of a sudden I started to panic because— but I, I remember sitting there feeling like a, like a 14-year-old, like someone's gonna tap me on the shoulder in a minute and throw me out.

It's really so weird. Yeah, that's funny. It felt really weird. That's interesting. I don't remember if I felt imposter syndrome. I think because I wasn't getting paid, I probably thought it was just fun. Yeah. I probably didn't think it was a job, so I probably thought like, oh, they just want me to do this because I'm famous and it would be good for the sport if the Fear Factor guy is enthusiastic about the sport. So that's how I thought about it. And so like, I would go on like the Howard Stern Show and stuff, and we'd wind up just talking about the UFC. And this was, again, I wasn't even working for the UFC. I was there to promote Fear Factor, but I was talking about how much I loved UFC, and I just, I think it's awesome. And back when I was competing, no one knew what the best sport— it's so hard for people to recognize that today because it's not that long ago, you know. Like, when I was— last time I fought was like '88 or '89. You would think like we kind of had it sorted out back then, but you didn't.

No one knew. No one knew like what was the best thing to study. I remember I went to this gym A friend of mine was teaching at this university, and I would go and train with him and his students sometimes. And I would go there, and they had a judo program there, and I'd be like, look at these suckers practicing this stupid judo. Like, this is useless. You can't even kick anybody. Meanwhile, those guys would have killed me. They would have just grabbed me and fucking thrown me on my head. But I didn't think that. I was totally delusional. I thought I was gonna kick them into the fucking shadow realm and no one knew what the right thing to study was. If you took kung fu, you thought kung fu was the shit. Bruce Lee, right? I'm wearing a Bruce Lee shirt. He was really the only guy that was wise enough to realize you just got to take a little bit from everything. And having one style, whether it was his initial style, which was Wing Chun, or, you know, whatever it is, karate, that's not the way. The way is the right way to win.

In close-quarter combat, you need to learn how to grapple. You need to learn boxing. You need to learn how to block correctly. You need to learn how to kick correctly. Back then we didn't know, and we always wondered like, what would happen if they did like a fucking— put a bunch of guys together? And I knew Benny the Jet had competed in some weird stuff in Hawaii, but no one really knew. So when it was finally happening, to me, I was like a little kid. I was like, oh my god, it's happening. It's really happening. Yeah. And I was like, please let this work. Please let this work. And then to watch the evolution of it from the beginning, which is just Royce going in there and dominating everybody because no one knew jiu-jitsu, and he had the gi on, so he had all this friction. It was amazing. And then everybody took jiu-jitsu, including me. I'm like, I gotta learn jiu-jitsu. And then to watch the evolution, like these giant juiced-up fucking wrestlers come along, like Mark Coleman, Matt, and Mark Kerr smashing everybody. They're like, oh my god, you've got to get on the sauce.

And so everybody, you know, Vitor got up to like 240 pounds and his fucking neck started to pop. 18, you remember? 18. Oh yeah, bro, I was training at the same gym as him when he made his UFC debut. Scary. So I was training at Carlson Gracie's gym.

So you kind of knew what was coming then?

Well, I didn't— I knew he was awesome, but I didn't know how good his hands were because I only saw him doing jiu-jitsu, right? But I knew he was a beast, like, and he was a black belt in jiu-jitsu at the time, and you know, a phenomenal athlete, just so fast. But then I saw a video of him. He fought John Hess in Hawaii. You remember John Hess? Yeah, dude. Saffta fighting. Yeah. So John Hess was this giant guy, he's like 6'7" or something like that, and Vitor just fucking took him to the ground and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, hit him with like 30 fucking unanswered punches in a row, like in 3 seconds, like brrr, and put him away. And then they're screaming, "Jiu-jitsu! Jiu-jitsu!" I was like, wait a minute, this is not I mean, I get it, you know jiu-jitsu, but that was boxing. Yeah, you used, you used striking. But it was like to be there at the very beginning and watch this evolution. There it is. There's Vitor. Look at this.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I mean, my God.

And look how thin Vitor was back then. Yeah, that was Vitor at like, you know, 199 pounds, maybe, maybe 190. Oh, he was so fast. And so that was there for his UFC debut. So that was UFC 12. So he fought Trey Teligman, and Trey Teligman like had no idea that this guy could box that way. Like, no one did. They thought he's a Carlson Gracie jiu-jitsu black belt. I was like, okay, you know, avoid the takedowns. This guy's really good on the ground. And he just starts tuning people up with his hands.

And Teligman was Lion's Den, wasn't he? One of Ken Shamrock's guys. Did he have a missing pec?

Yes, he was in a car accident, I believe, when he was a child. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And he— his pec was not attached. Patched on one side, and he was fucking jacked, dude. And then he fought Scott Fierroso after that, who was like a giant fat guy who was also like a tank, you know, like a huge fucking knockout artist. And Vitor tuned him up too. Just the speed he had. So this is like, you know, 1997, and it was, it was wild. And that was in like a high school auditorium in Dothan, Alabama. It was like really weird. Crazy. Like, this is so— these places, these are so strange. These events were so bizarre. You know, I was hanging out with the Lion's Den guys. We go drinking together and stuff. It was fun, but it was just weird. It was like, what is this thing that we're doing? This is it, the Dothan Civic Center. That's what it was. Look how small it is. Look how little that place is.

'97. Yeah. So that would have been the time when I was— I was at art college. Yeah. And I would— I went to— I went to Virgin Megastore. There you are.

Look, Jeff Blatnick, he was the fucking man.

I went to Virgin Megastore and, uh, look how you're beautiful, man.

Look how beautiful you are. And no one taught me, no one told me what to do, no one gave me any instruction, nothing. They gave me a microphone and then said, we're going to come to you backstage. I'm like, what do you want me to say? Like, literally, it was fucking nothing. It was nothing.

You probably knew better than everybody else though.

Well, luckily I was a huge fan. So it was pretty easy. I got the job because they had a guy that was doing it before and they got rid of him. And Campbell McLaren, who was one of the producers, was good friends with my comedy manager. And they were— he was just casually talking. It's like, we're looking for someone to do post-fight interviews. And he's like, Joe loves the UFC. He's like, you think you'd do it? And so they called me up. I was like, fuck yeah, let's go! I was like, this is— and this is— I was like 97, I guess I was 30. Yeah. Is this how the judges used to announce their picks? They just held up the whiteboard? I guess so. There was a bunch of rules at the beginning that seemed very strange to me too.

I saw they had overtime rules.

Ooh, I forgot about that. They called them laws of the octagon. Valiji. Valijishma.

He was a lunatic. Oh, he was a mad dog. So intense.

Mad dog. Yeah, it says no biting, no eye gouging, no fish hooking. That was it. You could hit people in the nuts. It was—

that's it. I've got a— I tell you what, I've got a piece of my gum missing from someone trying to fishhook me. Oh God, they took a piece of the gum away with their fingernail. I'm gonna have to get it. I'm gonna have to get something done. I've got some teeth that need fixing at some point.

Jesus Christ, not nice.

Aye, aye, aye. Fishhooking, dangerous. Yeah, that's nasty.

If someone's fishhooked you, you should bite their fucking fingers. Oh, I think so. You should be able to bite them like, fuck you, get your fucking fingers out of my mouth, motherfucker. You know, there's That's interesting about commentary.

I've always wondered, because you— everybody came after you, right, when it came— when it comes to MMA commentary. So like, like in the early days when I was first doing the job, no one knows what a color commentator or a play-by-play commentator is back in the day. I think there's more of an understanding now. So, so my, my response to everybody is I'm going to try and do Joe's job, you know what I mean? But you'd set the bar so high. I think partly that's what fed into my imposter syndrome. I'm sitting in look, I know the podcast that you did with, with Dustin. I appreciate all the kind words you did. I want to throw it back to you though, because you were the person that raised the bar for everybody else to reach, you know. So, and I didn't realize because I never had an intention of being a commentator. Like, it just came off the back of my career because my career was ended abruptly. So then anyone that ever says, oh, you, you're actually pretty good at this, the reason why is just because I listen to you religiously. Like a lot of people watch the fights and don't pay attention to the commentary.

Like, I tuned in, I was paying attention to everything that you said. So even, even the delivery and the cadence and stuff, what you did laid the foundation for me to learn. So I very, very much appreciate that.

Oh, well, thank you, thank you.

It was accidental. Same for me. But, but it can't have been accidental because I had somebody to learn from, you know. That's why I asked you, because you didn't have anybody that kind of kind of, you know, well, it was weird because I think I was one of the first people to do it that had a real understanding of jiu-jitsu.

So when the fights would go to the ground, the play-by-play guy would have, you know, like Goldberg, great guy, didn't train, didn't know what the fuck was happening. So I would have to— and also people at home, what's going on? So I'd have to walk them through exactly when someone's in danger and why they're in danger and how they can get out of it and when they're free. Okay, see his elbow? He's free now. He's good. And so my mind is spinning like 100 miles an hour. I'm like, now I don't have to do that as much because people kind of understand things much more. But there's certain situations in certain positions where I would have to say, no, this is a submission. Like, he's, he's very close here. Like, okay, now he's got to cinch it up. He's got to put his ankle behind his leg. That's got it. And you'd have to like talk people through it. So it was, it was different than any other sport because it was you're kind of like educating people on what's happening. Like, I couldn't use obscure— even though I use the obscure term like, you know, crackhead control or something like weird stuff like that, that Eddie comes up with these fucking ridiculous names for submissions and positions.

But I would have to explain why this works and what's happening and what's going on and what's, what's in danger, you know. And it was weird because I felt like this obligation to jiu-jitsu that, that was the one thing. Like, you could— someone kicks you in the head, you get it. Someone knees someone in the head, oh, you hit him with a flying knee, you get it. But explaining someone like what, like, you know, a calf crusher is, like, that's, that's a weird fucking position. Yeah, like, what is going on there? You know, explaining to someone, you know, why a triangle works and why it doesn't work and why someone's safe you know, with a head and arm choke. Why? Okay, he's okay, he's got his hand over his ear. There's— it was all this weird stuff where it was partially trying to be entertaining but also trying to educate. And I had to kind of figure it out as I did it, you know, as I called— I don't know how many fights I've called, probably thousands.

Yeah, I've called a lot, and you've been doing it a lot longer than me.

Well, I don't do as many now, you know. I only do North American pay-per-views, and I don't even do I don't even go to Canada anymore, so fuck them. I love Canadians. It's the government that fucking creeps me out. But the, the amount I was doing back then, I was doing like 20 shows plus a year, 22 shows a year. Yeah. So I was doing a show almost every other weekend. I was flying somewhere. Yeah. And it was exhausting. It was a really— it was a problem. But it was— and at one point in time, it became really my main job after Fear Factor was over. And I loved it. But the traveling was brutal. You'd go to Australia, you come back from Australia, and now you're going to Dallas, you're going to Dallas, you're going to New York.

It's like, whoo. Yeah, I was in— the first time I went to Australia with the UFC, it was a 56-hour round trip, and I was on the ground for 30 hours. You feel like you're on drugs.

I was— yeah, you feel like, like someone gave me a drug. I don't even know where I am. Yeah, I loved it though. I loved being there. I was like, wow, what a crazy country. You guys are on the other side of the planet, and you're all cool, and the food's great. Yeah, it's fun.

And I got all the gigs that most people didn't want to do. So like, I was being sent to all of the farthest reaches, you know what I mean? Like, I did— I mean, Singapore, I love. Japan, I love. Yeah. You know, going out to Australia to do those events. I did a lot of the Russian events, you know. I was even back at one time in case Bruce Buffer didn't make it. I was going to be the— Really? MC as well.

Yeah. Oh, wow. That's crazy. That's a hard job. Absolutely. That guy set the bar, right? He almost dies every event. Really? We're looking at him like one day is gonna be loud because he, you know, Bruce has got to be like 70 years old now, right? Yeah. I'm like, one day that motherfucker's gonna stroke out in the middle. "Alassanya!" Just fucking pop, blood starts leaking, that's it.

But if you ask Bruce, that's the way we'd like to go.

Yeah, that's how you'd want to go.

One of my craziest experiences— I remember coming down a slide like a metal slide from the Great Wall of China with Bruce Buffer in front of me and Uriah Faber behind me. And we're going down on these like rugs on the way down from just weird experiences that you have on the road with UFC. Oh, wow. You know what I mean? Yeah, that was good. I've always, always loved Bruce.

Yeah, he's a great guy.

You know, that's another thing as well is like, and you'll remember this from back, you know, back when I made my debut, like I would get into it with Bruce. Like I'd be like calling Bruce on and like, and he always used to come to me. Yeah, you loved it. I loved it. Just the idea of hearing Bruce Buffer say my name was just wild to me. The Outlaw Hardy! Dude, I'll get goosebumps.

We always talk about like whether or not it's a jinx to fist bump Buffer. Can't be. You know, like me and Anik were talking about it, but I was like, no, Khabib fist bumped him every time, so it can't be a jinx. Yeah. Because you look for jinxes. Of course. You look for things that are a bad omen or a bad sign. You know?

Yeah, weirdly superstitious, aren't we? We like to hang stuff on things that aren't our responsibility. Isn't that weird?

It is strange. Especially with fighters. Fighters are super superstitious. Yeah. They get real weird about the things they do, their rituals before fights, what they eat, where they— like, what they wear.

Yeah, yeah. And like some of the things that they do, like, I mean, like Ben Henderson with the toothpick.

Mm-hmm.

Like, crazy.

Crazy. Yeah. I was interviewing him post-fight. I'm like, yo, toothpick in your mouth? And he got in trouble for that.

Yeah, dangerous though, especially if, you know, you get knocked out and that toothpick's going down your throat.

I just didn't understand why he did it.

No, like, it seems like a bit of a, bit of a safety blanket almost. It's like a familiarity that it's there.

It's the weirdest one of all time. Yeah, a toothpick in your mouth, like, okay.

Yeah, very strange. I like a toothpick, but not during a fight.

That dude's still at it. Yeah, it's crazy.

He's got a fight coming up in Brussels. Wow, it's It's a rough fight as well. How old is he now? 44. Wow. Yeah, fighting a kid called Patrick Haberoro, good Belgian fighter. Yeah, it's interesting though. I mean, you know, you've got a former champ with all that experience.

Oh yeah, I mean, he's still in great shape. Yeah, he still can compete at a high level. It's just, wow, these guys when they're, they're competing for that long, it's so nuts.

Yeah, you know what I, what I've, and I suggested as well as a thousand other things that I've suggested to the PFL, but a Masters division right? You know, the likes of Cowboy and Tony Ferguson, and, you know, the guys that you, you want to keep fighting, but you don't want to see them just get smashed by Chimaev. Sure, you know, sure. I would love to see some of those fairly matched fights, you know, like, like when we had— it was Nate Diaz against Chimaev, wasn't it? And then, then Chimaev was taken out of the fight and Tony Ferguson was put in the place, and Nate won the fight. That, to me, was the perfect matchup. Like, the Chimaev one would have made me feel really uncomfortable comfortable to watch. Yeah, I, I would love to see a Masters division, especially now we could accommodate it with some of the older fighters around. Yeah, because most of them, they just kind of bounce over onto, you know, bare knuckle or whatever else is out there as options. Whereas like, they've still got so much to offer, and if the fights are fairly matched, I think we get some more really real good ones.

Yeah, that it is a problem when you see those old veterans that still have something to offer, and then you see them getting thrown in there with some 27-year-old assassin. and you're like, good Lord, don't do this.

I mean, I'm what, 43? I'd fight someone this weekend. Like, I love it, it's still in me, but I know I'm physically— like, I mean, even if I was at my athletic peak, I won't be competing with these guys now. They're terrifying. But, you know, like, to, to know that I'm getting into a fight with someone that's as game as me, right, but has also had the experience as well as the wear and tear, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, evenly matched. Yeah, like, look at Pacquiao's about to fight Mayweather. Yeah, makes sense.

Yeah, right.

You know, like fighting Terence Crawford, you'd be like, 'Eee, don't do that.' Exactly. Yeah, like, 'I don't want to see you get stretched,' you know what I mean? But like, you guys are both in your late 40s, like, 'Okay, yeah, all right, I'll pay for that.' Yeah, it's— as long as they're not gone, you know. There's some guys that they get to a certain point and they're like, 'Why?' Why is their family letting them compete? Why hasn't anybody stepped in? Doesn't anybody recognize their skills are gone? Doesn't anybody recognize they get knocked out way too easily now? There's a bunch of fighters like that that I just really wish would not be doing it anymore.

Yeah, and the thing is, it's sad about it as well, is— and this is where I feel like the, like, the, the community around MMA has probably changed in the last decade or two— is like, the old, the veteran fighters were just carried in such high regard, whereas now you are the highlight of somebody else's, the start of somebody else's career, right? And, and a lot of the fans, I mean, certainly what I see online, they're very dismissive of fighters that at one point were great and are now not quite where they used to be. And, you know, they start throwing around words like washed and stuff. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta respect where these guys came from. Like, no one lives forever, no one is at their athletic peak forever, but we also should still be celebrating what people have achieved. You know, and I feel like that's something that we're not— we don't get as much in the sport, and that's partly because the young fighters get matched with the veterans to, you know, like, you know, bring Ken Shamrock back out of retirement and dust him off for Rich Franklin to fight him because no one knew who Rich was and he was so close to a title shot.

Do you know what I mean? Like, that was one of those moments where I'm like, that's kind of a— I don't, I don't like that fight, you know what I mean? Because, because I can see what, what's being done there, right? And I mean, not that Chimaev needed it, but the boost that he would have got from smashing the hell out of Nate Diaz, you know, that, that was kind of part of the benefit of throwing Nate into that fight, you know. And that— they're, they're the fights that I would like to not see anymore because I think we get more fights out of some of these guys towards the end of their career where they— maybe their athleticism is not where it was, but their knowledge is way ahead of where it used to be, right? We go back, you know, we were talking about, about the old days and when we're first getting into it and when MMA first became a thing. Like, me as a 17-year-old sitting— I wheeled the TV in with the VHS and I put the tape in and I watched UFC 2 and 3 and I had this feeling of— I'm like, now I'm questioning myself and everything about me as a martial artist.

Like, I have to do this. And if I don't do this, I'm gonna be questioning myself my whole life. But at the same time, I'm looking at this going, well, I know one martial art really well. Taekwondo, and I know probably 4 or 5 other martial arts. All right, you know, Wing Chun, uh, I'd done some traditional jiu-jitsu, I'd boxed quite a lot, you know what I mean? So like, I had a decent handle, but I also have a library of martial arts books, and I would sit in front of that, that library and think to myself, like, how am I going to consume all of this information? And it wasn't like, okay, I need this bit of information and this and it wasn't a case of absorbing what is useful and rejecting what's useless. I had to absorb everything in order to go through that shedding process, and it just felt so overwhelming. Like, I remember going into fights feeling like I have no idea how this is going to play out. Like, I don't, I don't know half of this guy's skill set just purely because I haven't had the time to learn all of this stuff.

And it's like, the more you pick at it, the more, you know, it's like, it's like you're hitting a rock and all of a sudden falls in and it's a massive cave inside and it's just full of information. And I'm like, how am I going to consume all of this knowledge? You know what I mean? And it was— I remember feeling very, very overwhelmed by it all. And, and that fed into a lot of anxiety during fight week, which was, you know, something that everybody always manages. But if I look back, that was where my anxiety came from. It was the, it was the over-analysis of the sport and the feeling like I was never going to be able to learn all of this information. Whereas now in actuality I feel very, very opposite. I feel like now if I was going back, my training would be very, very focused and very, very streamlined. But that's because I've had years and years of experience of watching the sport and knowing what works and what doesn't and pulling things apart, you know what I mean? So it was almost like— and I said this, I've said this to a lot of young fighters— if I, if I in my career at one point could have stopped and taken 6 months out or a year out just to be a student and just to learn and absorb, that would have been a real benefit for me.

When I stopped fighting, I was doing commentary and doing Inside the Octagon and stuff, like, my knowledge was growing on a daily basis. I felt it. And, and I just, I thought to myself, man, I could have done this when I was in my career, but I, I didn't because I was, I was partly scared of the, of the, the over-analysis of it, you know, and partly, partly concerned that I was going to show myself so much that I didn't know that I was just going to feel like it was endless. It was a bottomless pit of knowledge, right? You know, whereas when I started doing Inside the Octagon and I was, I was watching fights in chronological order from the beginnings of people's careers all the way through, and then I was going back and I was watching prelims of, of fights that I wouldn't have watched in my career because I only want to watch this guy and this guy because I don't want all of this. Sometimes I watch somebody and feel like I'm getting worse when I'm watching them, you know what I mean? So I'd be very, very specific about who I would watch.

Whereas in actuality, if you watch the whole card start to finish, the fight IQ increases generally as the card goes on. So the guys at the top make far less mistakes, and they're the guys that I'm watching. So I'm watching people that are, you know, way closer to flawless than I am. But if I watch the prelims, I can see the same people, the same mistakes that people are making. They're just making them far more regularly on the prelims. So it was almost like watching the prelims was uncovering problems and, and bad decisions much quicker than it was when I was watching the few specific guys that I was trying to learn from. So there was a real benefit in just absorbing all of it. And then the next stage was— and it was specifically Robbie Lawler against Rory MacDonald— it was the first time I realized I was watching a fight without putting myself in the cage. And, and it was, it was like an epiphany. I was like, oh, I'm, I'm just watching these two guys as a fan. I'm not comparing Robbie Lawler to me and Rory MacDonald to me. And my process of preparing for an opponent was very similar to what I would do for, for an analysis.

I would, I'd get into him, I would watch it as much as I could of that person, but then I would go back and watch my fights that I knew were available to them. So I'm now watching my fights with their skill set in mind, right? So now I'm I'm almost pretending to be that person to watch me and go, okay, well, I can do this to him and I can do this to him. But there's always a bit of ego involved there. So like, say with Carlos Condit, an incredible fighter, right? He's great at everything, but he's not gonna be able to take me down and there's no way in hell he's gonna be able to knock me out. You know, mohawk flapping in the wind, you know? And it was like, and that was my ego getting in the way. Right. 'Cause if I was looking at Carlos Condit versus Robbie Lawler or Carlos Condit versus GSP, I would've respected his counter-punching, right? But my ego was a block in that scenario. So by watching two fighters and being able to remove myself entirely, I just saw things differently, and it took my, my shit out of it, took my drama out of the way.

That's interesting. Your ego really can get in the way, and it really makes you make terrible decisions. Like, how many people have taken fights they shouldn't have taken just because of their ego? Their ego just gave them a distorted perception. Absolutely. There's this guy that was training with us that was really good at jiu-jitsu, and he had no striking, and he was gonna take an MMA fight. And I remember saying to him, you, you have to understand that, like, what you can do to people on the ground, right? You could make a person feel helpless, right? Someone could do that to you standing up, and it's way scarier. It's way scarier. Like, you have no idea. Like, you have no— you think it's this this weird Dunning-Kruger effect, right? Like, you think you're really good, so you think you're good at that. Like, you've this distorted— you don't know anything about striking. Yeah, like, his striking was like, pap, pap, like rudimentary, like nothing. I'm like, someone's gonna set you up and boom, right? And head kick you. They're gonna— and he got TKO'd. He got beat up badly, and I think it really fucked him up too.

Really? Yeah, well, it's almost like you pull the curtain back and you realize there's a whole other world behind the curtain that you, you're not anticipated was there.

But the scariest world to not be good at is the striking world. Absolutely. That's the scariest world.

And I've, I've tried to quantify this myself because it, because it is an interesting thing, because often I find myself I'm explaining the nuances of feints and movements that are opening doors for other things to land. I mean, Adesanya was a master at this. Conor McGregor was a master at this. Yes. You know, and, and the way that they deliver their techniques, there's such a— there's such an elite level of intelligence to it that it's easy to just think that it's chance what they're doing, right? Like, like, take Conor McGregor Cowboy, for example, right? And, and the beauty of Inside the Octagon is I would download all the angles of the fight. I would watch every angle, the full fight from the whole, whole angle, so I'd see different things and there's a, there's a moment in that fight, and this is, this is the benefit of, of, uh, say Conor McGregor, say his brand is the left hand, right? Conor McGregor's left-hand brand was a very, very powerful weapon for him to take into the fight against Cowboy because Cowboy was so focused on it. And there's an angle from, from Cowboy's back to against the fence, and he sees Conor close his left hand and straight away Cowboy goes, "Left hand's coming," and he moves on to the head kick.

It was the threat of the left hand coming that had forced Cowboy to make that mistake. Anderson Silva, Vitor Belfort, when he looked at his leg and kicked him in the face. Yeah, like the idea of him being able to sell— and you look at that fight, Vitor's checking the inside low kick while he's got Anderson's toes in his mouth, you know what I mean? It's like he was able to sell a technique purely with his eye line. Purely with a feint. And Adesanya is another master at it as well. And that to me then shows that there are— we've got ranges in MMA, but in each one of those ranges there's dimensions as well, right? There's dimensions of understanding. Like, you could be a button-mashing fighter, and a lot of people have success with button-mashing, right? They throw the technique that they worked in the changing room warming up on the pads. But then there are people that understand that each one of these techniques and each, each thing that they do or piece that they have in their arsenal is a setup for something else, right?

You know, well, that's what's interesting about people that have a real system. Yeah. Dwayne Bang Ludwig, have you ever trained with him?

I haven't, but we fought, didn't we? So I've still— I mean, I was a huge fan of him back in the day. I remember him TKOing somebody in cage, King of the Cage, up against the fence.

Oh yeah, and he did that in love with him.

Yeah, that was kinky judo, wasn't it? Yeah. Great, great system of footwork, though, isn't it?

Oh, he has an amazing system. And his system is like— he has a giant notebook filled with like techniques where everything— his system is like very well thought out. And it's really interesting because he didn't fight the way he teaches. No, that's what's really interesting. Like, TJ Dillashaw is probably his greatest student, and TJ fought completely different than Dwayne. He constantly switched stances, constantly was like He was giving you so many looks. And, you know, it's wild watching when, you know, you watch, like, Dwayne's style versus what he would teach, 'cause it was just like, "Oh, if I had only known this while I was fighting. If I had only known this while I was coming up. If I had only known this early, early on in my career." Yeah.

And this is where I don't think we get enough people crossing over to coaching afterwards. Like, whenever I see a former fighter in the corner, Mike Brown, Robbie Lawler, whoever it is, like I'm filled with confidence that the sport is moving on because they're going to pass on information that they've taken on from somebody else and refined. You know, like my taekwondo teacher told me when I was a kid, if, if you're not better than me at my age, I've failed as a teacher, right? And like, and he always— Mick Rowley, his name is— he always gave me everything. There was never any restriction because he wanted to see what I would do with it and where I would take it. Because then same with Eddie Bravo, who's right— we were just chatting about it backstage. Um, you remember Sean Bollinger? Sure. He used to be able to heel hook himself, and he created the double bagger. And there's a few different things, but I remember being on the mats and watching Eddie Bravo listen to one of his 16, 17-year-old students to see what he could learn from him. And that's, that's such an unusual thing in a lot of martial arts schools, is the teacher being a student, right?

And, um, that, that's something that always stood out to me about particular people. Like, I would never want to train a fighter and hold anything back from them because I always want to be just a little bit better, you know. I want to, I want to give you everything, throw everything I've got on the table, and then see what you pick up, see what you run with, and see what you can teach me from it. Yeah, it'll make you better too.

And that's the thing. Absolutely. But you have to have an honest ego. Yes. Like, you have to be able to really say, okay, this is how good I am. I can't pretend I'm better than I am for these people. This is how good I am, and you have to be able to show it. Yeah, and that's one of the beautiful things about jiu-jitsu is like you have to roll. Like, if you're a teacher, you're rolling with people. But if Eddie gets caught in something, he'll tell people. Yeah, and we'll show you. Show me what you did. And everybody, look what he did. And he'll bring people around. He's like, he's like, he'll let you know, I'm just a human being. I just happen to be really good at this. And even if I'm really good at this, there's openings, there's holes, there's things that I don't know. And this is a constantly changing an evolving game where people are bringing in new things. Mm-hmm. And some of these new things, you know, you analyze it and you go, well, here's a simple way to stop this. And as soon as someone knows this, that submission's gone.

And so then you kill it and you put it aside. Well, we tried that one, didn't work. Sometimes you like try to stop this, you're like, I don't— I think that's legit. And then guys would get down, they would go, what if you do this? What if you do that? And you'll, you'll like— he'll have classes, we'll have like 15 guys come up with different solutions to these problems and say, okay, get him in it and put him in it. All right, now how do you finish it? And you grab here. Okay, what would you do here? And then like you have guys like break things down. And that's that honest approach. Someone told me that— remember when Royce Gracie tapped Dan Severn with a triangle? They were training at one of the Gracie schools, a friend of mine, and he saw that and he said, can you show us that? He said, you're not ready for that yet. I can't show you that. And he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, the guy, it's, it's a technique. Like, show me the technique. Like, he just did it. And he's like, no, we're not gonna— like, they were holding back.

Yeah. So in the early days, there was a lot of holding back, you know. This is like, what was that? What year was that? That had to be like '94 or something like that, right?

But then, you know, but then like everyone's reputation as a coach back in those days couldn't really be questioned too much, you know what I mean? Right. Because there was no way of them proving it. I just, I can't it's too deadly, right? You know what I mean? Whereas, you know, like the people that's— and those people stand out in my mind, you know. Eddie was one of those people. He stood out in my mind because of how he approached the sessions. He was always a student even when he was the teacher. Yeah. And the other thing as well that, you know, everybody wanted to name something in the 10th Planet system, right? You know, so everyone was trying to create something and make it stick. So like And it created this really, like, it was a thriving environment to be in. I loved being at Legends back in the day. And, you know, obviously Bomb Squad as well before that.

Yeah, what year did you start training with us?

It was Legends. It was after the Bomb Squad had closed. I went back to the Bomb Squad, well, what was the Bomb Squad to train with Paolo Tolccia of Bloodsport fame. Yeah. But yeah, Legends, and it had just opened when I arrived there. So what year was that, 2005?

2006, uh, probably 2006.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because before that I've been training, bro. That's 20 years ago.

Isn't that crazy? I know, two decades, man. That's when we met, 20 fucking years ago.

Yeah, and a lot's changed. Nuts.

Yeah, it's nuts how time just fucking waits for no one.

I was, I was just saying to the guys, the guys here, like, it's funny, like, the Joe Rogan Experience— if you'd have asked me what the Joe Rogan Experience was 20 years ago, it was getting crushed inside control. That was my experience of Joe Rogan, being on the mats during the class and watching you smash the bag with your back kick, and then stepping onto the mats and just— and you had, you almost had like the opposite game to most of the guys on the mat because all the 10th Planet guys were like pulling you into half guard or into guard and trying to wrap you up, whereas you were very much a top game player. Yeah, that's at least how it felt to me. It was like you were the different role on the mat to everybody else.

Well, I got obsessed with head and arm chokes.

Yeah, you know, felt it.

You know, it fucked my neck up. I think I wound up having bulging disk in my neck. It was either that or not tapping the guillotines. But I got a head and arm choke. I developed it where it was like if I locked it on, you were pretty much done, you know. And when I started tapping like brown belts and higher level guys with that, and then I just really concentrated on it, And it's one of those things where it's like, you know how it is, just like with a kick. Like everyone has strong legs, you know, you can lift weights with your legs, but like, how come some people can kick harder than other people? Well, it's the, the coordination, the technique, the refinement of it where it just, and there's something like that in a squeeze, like Marcello, like Marcello would get your back and his rear naked choke. Marcello Garcia was just like a master. He's not a big strong guy. Like, so what is it? And so I— that was like my number one go-to was the head and arm choke. If I could get that shit, I was pretty sure I could lock it up.

So I just developed this style of just crushing where I would just have my whole body would just lock on to something like a pit bull, you know?

Yeah, but that's interesting, the difference between striking and grappling. And going back to what we were talking about a minute ago, like there's something mechanical about grappling. Right? If you pull on somebody's head, their head's going to come down, or they're going to force back and their head's going to go back. There's a, there's a cause and reaction in grappling almost all the time that even a person that doesn't fight can see the basics of. Yeah, right. Well, if I pick one leg up and I throw you around, you're going to lose your balance, right? Even something as simple as that. But with striking, there's so many, so many things that happen with striking where no one touches anybody, right? Especially when you've got— and then this is where the dimensions come You know, you've got the button mashers at the bottom, you've got the guys that have refined their button mashing skill sets, and now they've got 2 or 3 combos that work well for them, or they've got a particular technique that they refined to a point where they can deliver it in 10 different ways. But then you've got people that understand that each one of their weapons is a different thing at a different time and serves a different purpose at a different time, you know?

Yeah, like, like with a jab, for example. Everybody in their game has got a jab, but if you strip that jab down into its core components and you go, you know, uh, you, you look at like a, like a secondary identifier, right, of that technique, there are going to be differences, right? If I, if I throw my right hand straight and I throw it over your jab, or I throw it when I split your cross, that to me is 3 different techniques. Yes, right. It's the same, the same weapon that you're using, but the delivery system's different, right, right. But then on top of that complexity, you've got all of the damage that you can inflict that draws responses to people, right? Like the calf kick. Now you can feint a calf kick and get someone to pick their leg up. Like, that's a very, very basic example. Or when someone's, you know, been hit with a body shot, you feint a body shot and their head's almost always open. There are certain things, I mean, headshot dead is another good example. How often do you see someone throw a punch followed by a kick and knock their opponent out?

Duke Rufus used to teach that. Is that right? Yeah, he taught me that. That was, that was his thing. He really liked the shield, the vision with a punch, okay, and have the kick come behind it.

See, that's, that's, that for me is, that's one delivery mechanism of one particular technique, right? And there are lots and lots of those, lots of them, lots of them. But that's where it— fine, I find it really interesting is, and how I sat one day and I thought to myself, I'm gonna, I'm gonna nail down the jab, I'm gonna start with that, because I have intended on writing a book or two about this at some point. And I started with The Jab, and I got to like 20,000 words, and I thought to myself, no one's gonna read this shit. Like, I'm gonna— I'm gonna sell one copy and it's gonna be to myself so I can criticize it. Do you know what I mean?

So it's like, well, you've always been a very thorough guy in the way you analyze things, which makes you a perfect candidate for someone who's a commentator, because you, you really have a very complex understanding of the mechanics of of all the different things that are happening. You're not just like, you know, oh, we hit them hard. Like, you're looking at all the different layers and you analyze things on multi-levels, which I always find fascinating. Like, you have a great commentary style. It's really excellent. You're absolutely one of the best out there.

That means a lot to me. Thank you. Yeah, you're great. I'm fortunate enough to have a bit of the tizm, you see. So it's like I see the patterns.

That's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. Touch of the tizm is good. Yeah. Oh my God.

Yeah, I don't think I have that. No, I don't know.

I have ADHD.

Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, my dad's ADHD, my mom's autism for sure. You know what I mean? We're a bit of both.

I don't have the autism, but I have this weird ability to lock in on things where the world goes away and I don't need food. Yeah, I can just— I could do something for like 12 hours in a row.

100%. Yeah, I forget to eat all the time. Yeah, all the time. In fact, Tom Hardy's just announced evidence that he's autistic. He's just collaborated with a brand and they've, they've created a whole line of, of, of, you know, no eye contact rash guards.

How convenient he's autistic. Come on, you know what was really interesting? Claiming autistic, like, unless you're coding in your sleep, shut the fuck up.

You know what was really interesting is I have a friend called Scrubious Pip. He's a rapper in the UK. Yeah, so he was in, he was in Taboo with Tom Hardy, and he told me a story when they were driving from LA to Vegas and Scrubious His, his record label's called Speech Development Records. He has a stammer. He has a speech impediment. And on this drive between LA and Vegas, he's driving. Tom Hardy's in the passenger seat. And Tom started to mimic his stammer but apologize for it. He's like, I can't, I can't help it. Like, he's— oh, wow. He's like absorbing parts of his character. Very similar to like it happened with Johnny Depp and Bill Murray when they played Hunter Thompson, right? Like, like you watch Jack Sparrow and Jack Sparrow's got a Hunter Thompson kind of move to him. And even Johnny Depp said himself he don't think he was ever the same after he played Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing.

Well, he was such a giant Hunter Thompson fan. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's interesting about like, like certainly method actors, people that can play a role. So like Jim Carrey is another good example, Christian Bale, right? Daniel Day-Lewis, oh my goodness, maybe the like their ability to absorb, like almost like Shang Tsung out of Mortal Kombat. They can absorb a bit of the person's character. Yeah. And then kind of become that character. Yeah. I met Tom a couple of times in HENZO's in New York, and he's, I mean, he's a lovely guy, but he's like kind of hunched over, no eye contact, and you know.

Oh, he is? Well, I think a little bit of that is fame as well. I think so. There's a little bit of fame that just weirds you out. Like if I go places, I try not to make eye contact sometimes. Yeah. It's just too odd. I was just like, hi, like, you, you might think I'm autistic, but I'm just fucking weirded out by too many people.

And I totally get that. You know, one of my favorite shows that you ever did was with Henry Rollins, the first one, and he said something that always stuck in my mind. He said, I'm very good being the party, I'm not very good being at the party. Yeah, stuck in my mind. I feel like that all the time, but I'm, I'm, I go the opposite way. I I've realized recently I, I hold too much eye contact. I, and I find it exhausting. I was walking through the park next to the hotel last night, and I'm no— I'm like having a conversation in my head like, stop looking at people, stop looking people in the eyes, stop making eye contact. I do it all the time. I like, I lock in. Like, I'm even doing it now. Like, we're talking, I'm kind of locked into you, and I even in your conversation, you, you like have a look away. I, I struggle to do that. I'm actually trying to—

I have to do it sometimes. I have to sometimes if I'm thinking of an idea. Yeah, I look away. My wife said that I wonder if that's autism because it's like one of my daughters has my recall, my ability to like— she'll talk about like, you know, whatever it is, like she can rattle off like information about the Titanic. Like, it's weird. She's like, you have your fucking dad's brain. Like, that's nuts. But I do— when I do it, I look away sometimes. Like, I look up like I'm talking about things. Do I really want to be clear about what I'm saying? I look up, and it's because I want to— I think it's because I want to take out the element of eye-to-eye and communicating with someone. Looking away while thinking, known as gaze aversion, a common cognitive behavior that helps people process information by reducing external distractions. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. By looking at an empty space or upward, the brain shifts from environmental input to internal cognitive tasks such as memory retrieval or complex thinking. Yeah, that's what I do. I don't even— I didn't know it was a similar— like when people turned on the radio when you're trying to find where you're going, you know?

Oh yeah, you have to like block it, whatever it is, right? Still see, but you have to like, you know. Oh right, or someone's yapping at you while you're trying to figure out where you're going and they're telling you. And I told her and they're like, we shut the fuck up. I don't know where I am. Yeah, we have to figure out where we're going.

You know, I find myself doing it when I'm walking through airports when I'm traveling. I've got my wife with me, Veronica. Anika. Like, I notice I constantly don't make eye contact with her when we're traveling, and I don't know why that is. It's like I feel a little bit like there's enough to be dealing with right now. If I then open a conversation with you by looking at you, that's another layer of— yes, let me just deal with the airport.

Yes. Well, you know, people don't think about that, but when you're involved in multiple tasks at the same time, you know, you're taking away your ability to concentrate and do a great job at any one of those things. If there's multiple things going on at the same time. That's why, like, I used to do interviews in my car, and I stopped doing them because I sound like a moron. And I realized it's because I'm thinking about cars, right? I'm going 60 miles an hour. There's a car to the left, the car to the right, car in front of me, car behind. This guy, this fucking asshole. Oh, this guy on a motorcycle, he's gonna get killed. Look at him zipping in between the lanes. And so I'm thinking all these different things, and then I'm trying to explain different stuff. I thought it would be a great way to multitask. Let me do this fucking stupid interview that I don't want to do anyway, and let me do it while I'm on the phone. It'd be kind of fun. Yeah, but meanwhile, I just sound like a moron because I can't articulate well because I'm thinking about too many different things simultaneously.

Well, you're already multitasking. Yeah, which is why I like the sensory deprivation tank. Yes, there's none.

There's nothing.

There's no tasks. Is that still a regular thing for you?

I got it right here. Oh, you really?

Yeah, got it right here. I've only done it a couple of times. But where you living these days? I'm in the UK. I'm right in the Midlands in the UK. But I mean, I'm getting a little kooky over there, isn't it? Yes.

You might want to bail before they lock you up for thought crime. I know, right?

I know, for real. It's like I'm conscious and cautious all the time. I feel right now like I'm kind of— I'm holding my tongue on a lot of things just purely because I kind of— I know that when I start talking, I'm just, ah, you know, because that's how I am, you know. I'm very opinionated, unfortunately. That's a good thing. Well, if I decide to start talking, then I won't I won't shut up, and I've not, I've not opened that floodgate yet, but I do feel like it's coming. But I also feel like I need to, I need to feel like I, I need to prepare for it a little bit, you know what I mean? Like, there's a bunch of books I need to consume before I'm, I'm in the right place where I can open up and fully express yourself about certain things.

Yeah, it's just where it's going right now is not in a good direction. It's going, it's tightening down on people's ability to express themselves. Yeah. And you've got so many issues.

It's happening everywhere though, isn't it? I mean, even like, you know, like, I mean, as a comedian, you know, freedom of speech is so important to you and to your industry, you know what I mean? And I feel like that's changed a lot, you know, across, across the world. It's the same in Europe as well, in a lot of places.

I think in America, in comedy, it was closing down and then people realized we can't have this and it's opened right back up, right?

Okay.

You know, there was a bunch of people that were trying to conflate jokes with your actual opinions. Yeah, you know, I talked about on stage once, I'm like, you know, Bob Marley didn't really shoot the sheriff, you know, just when Quentin Tarantino's filming a film, nobody's dying, okay? This is entertainment, and you say things that you don't really believe because it's an outrageous thing to say because it's funny, and there's this understanding of that as an audience member. You're supposed to be able to accept that, but then you have these cunts out there in the world that are just looking to find words that someone said and ascribe them as if they, you know, put it down on paper as if this is a statement. Like, this is what this person actually thinks and believes. Like, no, that's not what we're fucking around. We're talking shit. Like, you can't pretend. Yeah.

And then take a small clip and put it completely out of context on TikTok or something like that.

All the time. Yeah. All the time about all kinds of things. People— which is part of the game, you know. People love to do that. It's like, it's fine, it's okay, you know. What you're— it's fine for TikTok-minded people. The real problem is people that don't know you and don't understand you, and then they get an impression of you based off of that. This is their first introduction to you, and it's based off, well, the fuck, that guy. But, you know, that's just part of the game.

Yeah, it's gonna happen. I think comedians and satire is one of the last lines of defense against tyranny. I really do. Like, I, I watch Prime Minister's Questions every Wednesday and I listen to just the nonsense that comes out of it. And we've got Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch just going at each other over just nonsense. It's, it's not nothing real, no real, no real quality of conversation is coming out of that. But what I feel like is if we had a panel of comedians sitting in the gallery somewhere You know, you've got Robert Mitchell and Ricky Gervais and James A. Caster and a few others just sitting there just going, well, that sounds like nonsense, and then poking fun at it and making a joke out of it. It brings a reality to things that I don't think— I think we're lacking in a lot of ways.

Well, the Lakota had that in their tribes. They had a thing called the Heyoka, which they called a sacred clown, and the Heyoka would be able to make fun of everything, and as soon as you couldn't make fun of something, you knew it was bullshit. It. So it's like you couldn't make fun of the chief's wife, or you couldn't make fun of, you know, someone, some warrior, couldn't make fun of something. As soon as you couldn't make fun of something, like, hey, why are you so defensive? How come I can't make fun of that? That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, look, it had to actually be funny. Heyoka. Heyoka. It had to actually be funny, of course, or you'd probably get killed. But that's your new move.

That's your new move, Joe. You need to set up a heyoka for the world.

Well, I think That's what comedy is in many ways. It's a test. You test things. It doesn't mean it always works, and it doesn't mean that jokes are always funny, and it doesn't mean that sometimes people don't overreach. You know, Patrice O'Neal had a great statement about that where he was talking about something that happened on the Opie and Anthony Show, and he was on Fox News, and they were criticizing it, and he was saying, you gotta understand that all jokes come from the same place. They all come from the place of trying to be funny. And some of them you might find offensive, and some of them you might laugh at really hard, but it's the mindset, the place that it's coming from is all the same. And I was like, that's so wise, because that's really the best way to describe it, because that's really what everyone's trying to do. They're just trying to make people laugh. It's just sometimes it doesn't come out right, or sometimes it's a miss, like especially if it's an ad-lib. Like, at any moment in time, you generally don't know what the next word out of your mouth is gonna be like right now, right?

I don't— I don't know. I'm just freeballing. And sometimes you'll say something really hilarious, and sometimes you say something, you're like, cut that out, JB. It's like, you try, you swing, you miss, you know? You don't know. And people want to take these things that you're freeballing with and just trying to make laughs and call them a statement and think of it as like this well-thought-out, you know, like you sat down, you wrote this out, you went over it with a fine-tooth comb, this is my press release. Like, that's not what comedy is. It's jokes. You're just fucking around. And if you can't take a joke, you're probably annoying. And you really shouldn't be in any position to regulate discourse, 'cause you're not a fun person. Right? You're a person that's looking to take things very seriously. Yeah, we know a lot of people like that that are bad faith actors, and you know, they play gotcha. You just said this, like, you really mean that? So tell your position on that. Like, oh, fuck off. Yeah, like, you're not— I'm not interested in engaging with you because you're not real, you know? Like, this is not a real thing.

You're playing a stupid game. I'm playing a game of we're two human beings communicating with each other, and we're gonna overstep sometimes. We're gonna slip up, we're gonna— and every now and then you gotta nail it, knock it out of the park. And even if I don't like you, if you fucking make me laugh, I'll clap.

Yeah, you know, it's kind of similar with trash-talking, isn't it? I mean, and if somebody— I like one of the funniest lines ever was— and I remember Conor, as he was saying it, he was laughing at himself. And it was the back and forth with Chad Mendes, and he was— Chad was saying you can't wrestle, and Conor, he was on a live feed at BT Sports studio, and I remember it so clearly. Because he was like, as he was saying it, he was finding it funny himself. He was like, I'll wrestle my balls on your forehead. It was just— and then he's laughing and everybody in the room's laughing. Even Chad Mendes is laughing, you know what I mean?

But then like, funny dude. How about the Jeremy Stephens one? Who the fuck is that guy?

And that's become a part of MMA lore, right? Like, it's amazing how he's influenced it.

Oh, he's a— he was the master shit talker. Yeah. And also the master at emotional warfare. Yes. Like, you— like the Jose Aldo fight. I remember being there for that fight going, Aldo is out of sorts. Yes. His whole— he looked fucked up. His body looks smooth. He didn't look— he didn't look like he wanted to be there. And he just threw himself at Conor and got cracked. Wasn't crazy. He was so emotionally torn, and like, the moment was so big. And then Conor across the other side looks so relaxed and loose because he know— he knew he had won the emotional warfare. The emotional warfare was won, and that is a giant factor in fights, whether or not someone bites on emotional warfare. Yeah, I think that's a giant factor this weekend. I watched your War Room, by the way. By the way, I love your YouTube show. It's really excellent. Thank you. And this fight this weekend is a lot of emotional warfare. Right, Strickland has said some wild shit about Khamzat. He would say shoot him, he calls him a goat fucker. I mean, but it's interesting to me that it doesn't seem like Khamzat is biting on any of that.

He's like, this guy, he said this thing, but he doesn't believe it. Yeah, you're like, whoa, like he's not— he doesn't seem upset about it. It doesn't seem like it's under his skin. He's like, this guy says he wants war, but I don't think he wants war. He'd be dead That's how it should be.

I mean, Strickland would be the same. I don't think you could say anything to Strickland that would offend him. He's just—

he'll laugh.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he was like— say, like, when I had that fight against Marcus Davis coming up, like, I was surprised at how angry he got at me. Like, in the countdown show, I'm like, I'm laughing. I'm like, I can't— I literally can't believe he's this het up and wound up about it, you know? And like, you go back to the Conor thing, the— you remember the press conference where he stole Aldo's belt, the last one they did in Ireland? Yes, yes. So I was behind the, the stage for that one to start with when they were both being kept separate, and Dana was there. And, um, and then when they went on stage, I was on Conor's side of the stage at the bottom of the stairs, and the, the anger just emanating off Aldo the whole day was exhausting for me just to be around. And then after the, the, the press conference where Conor had taken his belt as soon as they'd circle back and they were behind the thingy again, Aldo was like beside himself angry. Yeah. And as soon as I saw that, I'm like, wow, that is— it's— that's, that's like a level of witchcraft that you see in like the feinting of striking.

And when you can start to pull somebody's emotions out like that. Yeah. And, and like, for me, I think, I think fighters should be completely impenetrable. Like, no one should be able to say anything to a fighter to upset I just— it's an immediate weakness that you throw on the table for someone to get their teeth into.

Well, it's one of the things that I really appreciate about Pereira, his stoicism. He's always just stoic. You could talk all that mad shit about him, you know, and like the Ankalaev— the rematch with Ankalaev— like Ankalaev had talked so much shit after that first fight. Yeah, you know, and then when he blasted him out in the first round, then he went like this. Beautiful, you know, the same thing with Jamal Hill. Yeah, you know, I mean, he, he's very stoic, but afterwards his celebration is even like, look, look, it's so cool.

I, I like the fact that his, his coldness is a part of his brand. Oh yeah, you know, yeah, he's very cold.

That stare down. Yeah, like him and Yuri Prochaska, it's so disturbing that Yuri thought he was using spiritual warfare Like Yuri accused him of using sorcery. He's like, no magic this time.

Yeah.

Yuri's so crazy. Such a crazy request. Yeah. Like, do not invoke spirits.

I had someone trying to get a witch doctor on me in Brazil once. Really? They thought I was casting spells. Yeah. They tried to get a witch doctor.

Casting spells is fun. Because if you believe it, it'll work. Right? If you really believe it. Voodoo works, right? Because if you believe in voodoo, it will fuck you up. If someone says, I'll curse you, you're like, oh no, I'm fucking cursed, shit. If you really believe that, it will work.

Yeah, if you can make someone afraid of something or sensitive to something, you know. And, and, you know, and I, I was always a big fan of Marcus Davis, and I knew how dangerous he was in the division, but I also knew that if I poked him enough in the right direction, I would get a particular version of him that suited me, right? And there were two versions of Marcus, right? There was the Marcus that showed up and he was like stacked, looked like the Hulk, and you're like, okay, he's gonna grapple. Or there was the Marcus that was a little bit slender and he just looked different. And that version of Marcus Davis was knocking everybody out, right? That's when he's coming into box. And, and I knew that if I pushed him enough, because that— it was easier for me to deal with the heavily muscled grappler version of Marcus Davis. Than the slick southpaw boxer version. So my thought was, if I can push him to be really, really angry at me, he's not gonna want to roll the dice on striking games. He's going to want to edge his bets and try and force the fight into the range that I'm not very good at.

So there was a, there was a purpose to it. But as soon as he bit on it, I was like, that was too easy. That was too easy. And like, there was, there was clips of him training, he's like, his nose is bleeding, and he just looks And then that's when I'm— for the weigh-ins, I made the I hate Dan Hardy t-shirts because we did a, like, a 10-minute countdown show for it. And I was training at Wildcard at the time just to try and get inside his head. You know, I'm training in a boxing gym. I'm, you know, I'm expecting you to be a boxer. And I played the game really hard on that fight. And, um, it was just— it was interesting to see how it played out because of what he expected from me and, and, and the version of him that I got, right? And he was so angry at me that his vision was— his mind was clouded. And even in the— was it the end of the second round? He went back and sat on his stool, and it always stuck in my mind. Mark Dallagrotti in his corner, it wasn't advice, it wasn't anything.

He said, "You're one round away from shutting this kid up." It was all about silencing me, putting me in my place. Interesting. You know? And then funnily enough, after that, the next fight was Mike Swick. And for the whole training camp, Mike Swick was like, he was waiting for me to start trash talking. So I'm like, I'm not gonna do it because he's expecting it and he'll find it funny, so it's not gonna have any kind of impact. So I just waited until the press conference and brought him a runner-up trophy, and he was like, I'm bringing this to the cage on, on fight night and I'm gonna give it back to you. But, you know, but it was— it's interesting to see what you can do, how you can affect people like that and, and make them act out, you know. Like the, the Countdown show, the, the very start of it, it's just hilarious still in my mind, is you've got this whole kind of— it's like dimly lit and Marcus is there and, and he's like, you know, when I was a kid, uh, my mom used to say you can't say you hate this unless you think a little bit about how much you dislike it every day.

And then there was a pause and the UFC nailed it with the editing. And he looked down the camera and he went, "I hate Dan Hardy." And then it cut to me and I'm just laughing like a prick, like, "Haha!" You know, like, I— and I totally under— I got so much hate mail for that fight, I can't even tell you. I think I've still got a folder in my old email account because I saved it all. That's funny. It was— I got death threats, I got all kinds of stuff. Of course. Like, people hated me from that fight. But like, as soon as I'm— I thought, you know, I'm gonna make "I hate Dan Hardy" t-shirts, surely to kind of like bring some light to this. I even made one for Marcus throw it back at me. But it was just like I wanted a particular version of him, you know, just like, like what Conor did with Aldo. He primed Aldo to run onto that counter left, and, and Aldo, a clear mind, training from a blank slate, not having any of that psychological warfare in mind, never charged like that. Would have been so much more dangerous for Conor, right?

He— and, and Conor was always heavy on the front leg, and Aldo was one of the best leg kickers ever. You know, he probably would have tried to kick the legs and piece them apart from the outside and find his motions. But Conor was always gonna be a problem for Aldo because he's so fast and he's so explosive and so big. Yeah, he was so big for 145. He— his weight cut was hell watching him weigh in. And that was the days where you would actually weigh in. This is before the ceremonial weigh-in. So he would have to make 145 and then stand there, and he looked like a dead man. He looked like someone from like fucking The Walking Dead. It was weird. And then he would just rehydrate, and the next day he'd, you know, he had to be a buck 65 when he actually fought. Easy, easy.

I like what they've done with the weight cutting. I like the fact that it's done in the morning and people can rehydrate and stuff. The only thing I miss is to see people facing off when they're in that feral, dehydrated state, right? That's the thing I miss, because like a lot of the time I'll be looking for reads you know, there's the picture of you kind of looking around, you know what I mean? It's like you want to see that face-off where people are in that state.

Like, what's one of my favorite things to do is see the guys head-to-head looking in each other's eyes because you just— there's a fucking smell. Yeah, there's a feeling in the air. You get a sense.

I wear the Meta glasses when I'm doing face-offs now, so you can see— PFL have made a little logo, Hardy's Hardy Vision. And you can see, and sometimes people are like face to face, it's palpable, you know. And, and, um, what I, what I always loved when people were cutting weight is you've got a far more genuine version of them than the version that was— I mean, even look at Conor, right? He was feral at 145. At 155, he was, he was cutting, but he was on point. At 170, he was like, right, feel great. Just a different— 3 different versions of the same person, 10 pounds apart. Yeah. And when I fought Rory Markham, that was co-main event in my second fight in London, um, UFC 95. He arrived at fight week on the Tuesday at 195 to make 171, and I knew that it was going to be a rough weight cut for him. He was a big guy, he was massive, and he'd never been the distance. 16-4 he was, knocked everybody out that he fought. And I was— remember when he fought, was it Brodie Farber? Kicked him in the neck, and like, as he went down, he like crossed his legs on the way down.

That was at the Palms.

And it was— yeah, no, I do remember that.

Yeah, it was brutal. But like, when we were— we did the weigh-ins in a theater in London, and obviously we're all on our own weight. I've been on weight since 2 o'clock, as most people have. We've journeyed into London on the bus, everyone's still on weight, no one's drinking. And like, you walk through the changing rooms in the back, and we're in like an old, like, West End theater, and like, you can see where people are at, what state they're at, how much they've cut weight. And I remember seeing Rory Markham just sitting there he would just look like he was broken already. He was just so drained and exhausted. So my thought to myself is, I'm gonna get right in his face as soon as I've stepped off the scales. And I wanted him to feel that I wasn't as depleted as he was the day before, because that would then be his memory going into the fight on fight day, is that he didn't cut as much as me. He didn't feel like shit like I did yesterday, right? And like, as I walked onto the stage, I, I'm standing on the scales and I'm looking at and there's never a photograph of me looking at the, at the crowd and flexing.

I'm looking directly at him. And as soon as they read my weight, I went straight over, I put my forehead on his, and I tried to push him back a step or two. And that was because we were on weight. If that was a, a morning weigh-in and we were doing it later in the day, it wouldn't have had the same kind of impact, right?

You know, he would have already been replenished, he would have felt much better. Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. He would have pushed.

That's why I always wore contact lenses as well. I always had the contact lenses on, on the stage, you know. I just didn't want people to see my eyes. I didn't want them to get a real version of me until fight night. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, emotional warfare, it's real. It's very important. I loved it.

I mean, I wasn't very good as a fighter, you see, so I had to lean on what I could get. Look, look, look at the guys in my division though. I mean, John Fitch, you know, Mike Swick was great. Josh Koscheck, a bit of a prick but great fighter, you know what I mean? Like, there were good guys in my division at the time. And man, I didn't have the wrestling to be competing with a lot of those guys.

That's a giant factor, and that's a factor that takes so long to catch up to. Yeah. God, if you can ever— unless you're like a real superior athlete, just a freak athlete, it's just like someone who's got a gymnastics background or something, it's like very explosive— it's so hard to pick up that, that wrestling later in your career. It's like, that's what's so crazy about Pereira. Is that he figured out how to just stuff everything. Like, from a multiple champion kickboxing career where he didn't do any grappling at all, lost his first MMA fight to submission, really couldn't fucking grapple at all. Gets together with Glover Teixeira and just figured it out. But I also think with him it's a freak athlete thing for sure, because there's the same reason why he hits so hard. I think he's just weirdly built.

But even, even a freak athlete though, you take him back 10 years and you take Glover Teixeira away and he's not supplied with the information where he can, he can apply that athleticism, right? And this is where former fighters passing on knowledge like we talked about. I mean, look, we went Bas Rutten, Duane Ludwig, TJ Dillashaw, right? Right. You know, like Glover Teixeira to Alex Pereira is probably one of the best relationships because for me Glover Teixeira he overachieved in his career based on his age and his athleticism compared to the people in the division. The reason why was because his game was so solid and so sound. Like, I say to young fighters, you need that Glover Teixeira base level where you can be semi-conscious, taking big shots, sweep to top position, take someone's back and choke them out. Like, like, he did that consistently. Yeah, dropped and come back from the dead and finish people.

So Glover also missed 6 years of his prime. Crazy, because he couldn't get out of Brazil.

You were talking about him constantly before he was signed. I remember that. I remember hearing his name a lot because you were— same with Pereira, you know, you were talking about him before the UFC signed him. But like, if you'd imagine Glover Teixeira— um, sorry, Alex Pereira walked into an MMA gym in 2005, they would have probably tried to teach him a whole system of jiu-jitsu, right? And then he would have had a wrestling coach that would have tried to teach folk style or freestyle wrestling, right? Whereas Glover Teixeira is like, there's a lot of this shit you don't need, brother. Like, yeah, first of all, I'm not going to teach you many submissions because you're not really going to need them.

But he does know submissions, he's a jiu-jitsu black belt.

But that's the thing, is like, is like, does he know the whole database of jiu-jitsu? Does he know everything that a normal black belt would learn? And I'm not discrediting his black belt, but what I'm saying is his game has been very specifically tailored to be effective in the, in the arena that he he's fighting in.

That's true, but it's also the relationship that he has with Glover too, where it's one really elite coach with the world championship level experience concentrating on a very special athlete. Whereas if you're at ATT, you know, you're— there's fucking Chechens and fucking Dagestanis and just a room full of assassins, and there's 5 coaches, and like, I don't know if you'd get that kind of attention there. You know, there's two different schools of thought. You know, there's the school of thought that you need to be around those people because that's a shark tank and that's how you get better. You'd be around all these killers. And then there's another school of thought is like, no, you're better off at a very small gym with a small group of people that really concentrate on you. I'm more inclined to think of the small gym. I think the small gym with elite trainers is a better option than being in a giant I mean, it's not that ATT doesn't create amazing world champion athletes. It certainly does. But I think if someone's coming up, maybe you're better off with someone like— first of all, you'd have to find someone like Glover who's really interested in taking the time and really working with you.

Yeah. And Glover—

and, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier, like, Glover's already gone through the process of learning jiu-jitsu and absorbing what's useful and rejecting a lot of what's useless. Yeah. So he's not giving Pereira the useless part of jiu-jitsu for MMA, right? Right. Now, how much of, how much of jiu-jitsu specifically is applied to MMA, right? There are so many positions that it just changes when you start to use punches. Things become a lot easier when you can start to strike as well, because you can force people to do things they don't want to do, right? Yep. So like, I feel like the refinement that Glover Teixeira went through to to be the great fighter that he was is the reason why Pereira has become so successful, because he's been given the pieces that he needs. And I would imagine that, you know, if you rolled with him, he would be a real problem. But I would imagine his game's still very direct, like he's not using crackhead control and he's not rolling for knee bars and that kind of thing. I just—

because— but neither is Rodrick Gracie, of course, you know what I mean?

But he's also gone through the shedding process, right?

Yes. Well, I don't think he ever really acquired all the crazy shit. I think there's a lot of these guys that like fundamentals are just like laser focus, like Hickson. Hickson was always just laser-focused fundamentals. Minotauro Nogueira, laser-focused fundamentals.

Do you think the, do you think the existence of Vale Tudo kind of forced them to go very specifically to what worked though for no rules contests?

Probably. There's probably some of that because obviously Hickson created and competed in vale tudo very early on. So it's like, yeah, yeah, I mean, a lot of stuff goes out the window as soon as you punch. Yeah, right, a lot of stuff. Yeah, but including some heel hooks and things like that. Like, there's certain positions where you see guys in jiu-jitsu tournaments, like, boy, you find yourself like that in a fight, that guy's gonna win. Blast you in the face. Like, you're in a bad— like, you're, you're grabbing ahold of someone's leg and your head is right here and you're hooked. Like, there is nothing stopping someone from elbowing you or punching you in the face. It's kind of nuts to even pursue those, but as long as there's no striking, boy, it's very effective.

Yeah, see, this— I often think that I'm quite— I feel very fortunate that I came into martial arts before MMA. And, and the reason for that is because the way that I learned martial arts was not for sport, right? And this is an observation I've had recently where, you know, a fighter just would fall apart if they haven't— don't have a particular person in their corner, right? My, my martial arts instructor back in the day, from when I was 6, was teaching me taekwondo— or teaching me martial arts, should I say— for him not to be there cornering me because I'm doing it for self-defense. There's no sport context. He's not teaching me techniques that I can use when he's there to coach me through a street fight. Right? He's trying to give me the techniques that I need so when he's not there, I know what I'm doing. Yeah, right. Same thing with like spatial awareness. Like, often, like, you know, when, when I was in clubs and I was fighting a lot back in the day, my awareness of fire exits and tables and that kind of stuff, it gives me a— it gave me a similar awareness to how I can use the cage against my opponent, which I feel is not necessarily used as much as it could be in MMA.

These days. Like, there are, there are certain fighters, they just don't— like, how often do you see two fighters up against the fence panel and the whole cage is there and they're like, they're not— no one's using the pressure that they could be using. Sometimes people circle themselves onto the fence unnecessarily. Like, the idea of being backed up against the wall is only if you don't want people attacking you from behind, was my, my perspective in a, in a self-defense context. So I think the way that I learned martial arts allowed me to kind of see it as a, um, in a more efficient way, right? Like, say, for example, if I'd have learned jiu-jitsu, I wouldn't have wanted to use jiu-jitsu for a street fight because a lot of street fights I got in, it wasn't one person, right? So I don't want to be in side control or choking somebody out while his friends volleying me in the head. Like, for me, it was the efficiency of, okay, here's a guy, here's a guy, you know what I mean? Like, how quickly can I get through people. Yeah, you know, and I feel like that's something that— this is maybe where the scoring criteria can be adjusted to so we keep getting what we want out of the sport, because there are stagnant fights.

They do slow down. People do start to think, okay, this round, this round, this round, and there's not— there's not an instigation for a conclusion built into their game necessarily.

But isn't that also dependent upon matchups? Like, sometimes people just cancel each other out skill-wise, and that's just part of the game.

Game. Absolutely. But usually the ones where they cancel each other out skill-wise are the actually the more interesting fights, because whether it's grappling or striking, it keeps moving. Almost always it's when there's a dominant skill set on one side and the other person just can't deal with it. Like, look at me, exactly. Look, me against GSP, right? Like, I, I didn't have the skill set to compete with him, right? But if I'd have been able to wrestle, I'd have forced him to strike. If I'd have been better at jiu-jitsu, I'd have maybe forced him to strike a bit more, right? But because there was a way of him to completely taking me out my game, there wasn't necessarily an onus to, to instigate a conclusion to the fight, right? So almost always when you see one person that is so dominant in wrestling and the other person can't handle it, that's when the fights can sometimes be quite stagnant. Yeah. My argument in those scenarios is, okay, well, yeah, you're winning this with wrestling, you're winning it with wrestling, but you're not concluding it, right? Like, you're going to get to the end and the judges are going to go, well, yeah, you, you know, you, you controlled him for more of the fight.

Like the Khamzat Drikus.

Yeah, like, this is— I mean, I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this. I think we should stop scoring control in MMA, right? Control is scored up against the fence, right? Defense is not scored in MMA, right? Defense is its own reward, right? Control, in my opinion, is its own reward. If you're a grappler and I'm a striker, it's on you to take me into the range that suits you, right?

But if someone's taking someone down and controlling them and working towards a submission, how do you quantify that? Because they might not get it, but they're working towards it.

So, so then if you consider top control as you would center control, right, when everything else is even You go to octagon control as one of the later scoring criteria is when the striking and the grappling, everything's even. Then we move into—

okay, well, octagon control is weird though because it's like— so octagon control could be you're in the center of the cage and you're pressing the action. But what if you're a counter-striker? Like, what if you're Tyron Woodley versus Stephen Wonderboy Thompson and you spend a lot of the time just moving away? Like, remember, they fought to a draw, right? Didn't they fight to a draw in one of their fights?

Yeah, but that was also— that was also— I mean, and I don't necessarily want to criticize Tyron, but I don't really think Tyron liked fighting. He spent a lot of time wearing his back heel down against the fence with the crowd booing in the championship rounds. I never got the impression that Tyron liked fighting. He was just good at it, you know?

That's interesting. And I don't know what— why you would think that. I just thought that was the style to beat Wonderboy. I think that's the smart style to beat Wonderboy because he didn't fight that style with Darren Till.

Well, Darren Till blasted him, took him down, and got rid of him quick.

For sure. With Wonderboy, you cannot stand in the middle of the cage and kickbox that guy because he's doing weird shit. He's doing things with his legs you can't do. Like, and you know, like, if you see a guy like Raymond Daniels or MVP, like, you can't wrestle him. You can't. Yeah, yeah, I can.

I hear what you're saying totally, but, but like, say for example, in the Damian Maia fight, he defended 26 takedowns in that fight, went the distance, right?

Right. But with the Wonderboy fight, he rocked Wonderboy and he had Wonderboy hurt, where Wonderboy didn't hurt him, which is because he forced Wonderboy to be offensive instead of countering. So by making it boring, by backing up.

Yeah, but, but I, at the same time, I don't necessarily think I don't know if that was a calculation of going out.

I think it was. You think? Yes, because he fought him that way the second time as well. I think—

but I think that was intimidation from what Wonderboy could do on the feet and him not wanting to waste energy trying to take him down. I don't think he was intimidated.

I think he was waiting. He was waiting for moments to explode because it's not like he was timid when he blasted him and had him rocked and hurt.

He never made a fan out of me, Tyrone. And the thing is, what was interesting is I had a similar—

you didn't think you weren't a fan after the Darren Till fight?

Oh, absolutely. Right. Like, and same with the Robbie Lawler fight, you know, that was an incredible knockout. And this was the thing that was frustrating, is that he had the capability to do that kind of thing. And sometimes I just felt like he wants to play king of the hill. He didn't want to be the smashing champion that the other fighters did, you know what I mean?

And, well, you know, you got to think, like, he had some— he had some fights that didn't go his way as well. Strikeforce, the Nate Marquardt fight. The Nate Marquardt fight when he got KO'd, where Nate hit him with like a video game combination with those elbows against the cage. Like, so there's consequences to just wait. And by the way, Nate Marquardt, boy, there's the guy that kind of— people forget how fucking good that guy was when he was in his prime. Whoo! When he went over to Strikeforce, he was a fucking monster, dude. In fact, that guy was good. He was good, you know. I had heard stories about him training at— in Colorado with GSP, with all those guys. Like, dude, Nate Marquardt fucked everybody up. He was that good at one point in time, man.

So many names of fighters that have just been kind of lost to time that people don't realize. Yep. There was so—

Yves Edwards, there's another one. I talk about him all the time. There's a point in time where Yves Edwards was the best 155-pounder on the planet. Facts. Yeah, it's just like people forget, people forget how good people were.

You know, interesting, the point you made about Counter-Strike, and I've always thought this about guard playing as well. If you're a guard player, you've kind of got to accept that you're losing until you win, right? It's like Machida was one of the best examples of a Counter-Striker. And then it, you know, you say Adesanya against Paulo Costa, Paulo Costa was in the center of the cage for most of that. Yeah. So if you're just looking at octagon control, well, you're going to score it to Paulo because he was in the center. But there was no doubt that Izzy was just toying with him and lighting him up from a distance.

Yeah, but you couldn't say octagon control because Izzy was landing all his shots.

But that's, that's the thing, is it— that, that was a very, very clear one, right? Where you've got one person moving back and giving the center of the cage but clearly winning on the striking. Whereas if— when it gets very even with the striking, you have to really have good judges to be able to pick apart who's landing what. Yes, even because like we had a fight the other week, Jakub Kosuba, uh, he was fighting Nathan Schulte and he was backing up the whole fight, but he was landing way more strikes than his opponent. But even when it got to the end of the fight, I'm like, are these judges going to score this right? Are they? Because they don't have the stats that we have on the screen in front of us, right? They should. Exactly, they should. But, but because they don't, are they gonna— they're gonna go, oh well, you know, he was moving forward. And we had a fight in Sioux Falls the other day where the female fighter Sharon Bowers was pushing forward and she was landing, but her opponent was backing up and countering a lot of the shots.

And the judges scored it to Sabrina. It was, you know, it was the right decision to make, but the crowd didn't like it because they felt like, like the Bowers was the one pushing forward and making a fight out of it. Yeah, but that's casuals, of course. Yeah, but it is, it is a risky thing to be a counter-striker and a guard player in MMA because you have to first of all credit the judges see what, you know. But who's left that's a guard player? Not many, right? It's kind of been cycled out. Oliveira is like the best at it, but even that didn't work out for him in some times, did it? There was a lot of time he'd spend energy guard playing. Yeah, a lot of the time why, you know, good wrestlers decide not to wrestle, well, the amount of energy it costs.

That's true, but I mean, like, look what he did to Gamrot, and that was super impressive. Gamrot's so good. So good. The fact that Gamrot was just lost on the ground with Oliveira Good.

Oliveira's debut against Guram Kutateladze, like both of those guys, he's in Karate Combat now, both of those guys are so elite. And then when they got matched up against each other in their UFC debut, I'm like, man, people aren't going to realize how good this matchup is, right? Yeah, like Sarukyan, I called his debut against, uh, against Makhachev. Yeah, like, and he was 5% behind Islam in that fight, but that 5% was Yeah, you know, incredible fight.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I am very curious to see how Pereira does against Cyril Gane. Yeah, Cyril Gane's a different thing.

Just moves differently for a big guy, doesn't he?

He's also a real heavyweight. There ain't a fucking time since he's been 15 where that guy's making 185. No, right? That's a big man, and he's an incredible athlete and a really elite striker. Like a really good striker, like, and a fucking big heavyweight, man. And I know Pereira weighs like 260 now. I get it, I get it. Yeah, he's a heavyweight. Yep, definitely. But he was 185. It was 185 just a few years ago, and he was a 185-pound champion, then the 205-pound champion. And I don't think Cyril Gane could even make 205. No, Cyril's big. Yeah, and he's big and fucking thick and And he's good, man. And I'm telling you, that Tom Hardy fight— excuse me, um, Tom Aspinall fight. Tom Hardy, my mind sucks. The Tom Aspinall fight, in that first round before the eye pokes were disgraceful. Like, first of all, I think still got to fix the gloves. Oh God, you know, my solution is mittens. Well, we don't do this anyway. Why are these out like this? Yeah, you're fucking—

it's a good point. The thing that annoyed me is like they went through all the, all that, the effort to fix the gloves, but they never asked a fighter or a person that wraps hands like what they actually thought. They were getting Contender Series fighters to, to grade them, and of course they're all like, they're great, they've got UFC on them, I'm so happy to be here, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like talk to Tate, for example. I'm like, they must have asked you about the hand wrapping, about the gloves and stuff, because the problem is, right, like when you get there on Tuesday and you try your gloves on, you're like, yeah, they feel good. And then you get to fight night and they put a quarter inch of padding underneath, right? And then you're trying to close your hand, right? And like, the difference between like the Pride gloves or the Rising gloves or the like the Fairtex— I always used to use Fairtex if I could— there's a, there's a curve in the glove, right? When you try your gloves on, what the pe— what the blue shirts backstage do, because they know the game, is they roll the glove up and then wrap it with the Velcro of the wrist so it stays rolled from Tuesday to Saturday, right?

And then when you get them on Saturday, they've kind of curved a little bit, right? But it's not— the curve is not built into the padding, right? And the, the, the new ones that they made, there was just too much technology and not enough common sense.

Have you used Trevor Whitman's?

I have. Veronica's just got a pair of them. The best. They are very, very good.

Absolutely. They're the best.

But that's, that's an ownership isn't it? It is.

I've tried to negotiate that and broker that, and maybe I still can be successful. I just talked to them. I talked to Trevor. Maybe it still can be done. But even with Trevor's, the fingers are still exposed, and I think there's certain guys who just have this fucking impulse to do that. And I think one point every time. Yeah, poke someone in the eye, one point every fucking time. Because there's a lot of fighters that have never poked anybody in the eye. Right, so how come? How come they've been in wild scraps, never poked anybody in the eye?

Yeah, I mean, well, I watch, I watch ONE Championship small gloves Muay Thai, and they are right in range, right? They're not poking each other.

No, they're not. And by the way, I love small gloves.

It's so cool. It's so good. It's so—

and it's so interesting. And for all these people that like hate when fights go to the ground, my god, that's the solution. And I've been trying to sell this to the UFC forever. I'm like, fuck all this slap fight shit. And I know you're really interested in Zuffa boxing. That's great. How about UFC striking? How about UFC Muay Thai? You know, like, cuz— and even kickboxing, what they're doing with ONE, you know, guys like Yuki Yosa. And yeah, you know, watch out for Ben Willis.

Have you seen this? Oh yeah, he's a beast. I signed him to PFL a little while ago. Just can't get him matched.

Just couldn't match. People don't want to stand by them.

Click on his, on his Instagram, and he's— I mean, in my opinion, he's one of the best strikers in the world right now. There's just— and, and I've, you know, he trained, trained at Renegade for a long time with the Edwards brothers, and I would watch him just play spar with people, and the level of trickery— like, that's where you, like, go back to saying about dimensions, right? There are ranges in fights, and then there are dimensions in those ranges. Yeah. And he's at like a Jedi level of dimension, of understanding, of striking. And, and to see him have the success he has, I mean, stopping John Lineker with calf half kicks. And, you know, yeah, just very impressive. You're gonna see him go.

How is one doing?

Are they not good from what I can tell?

I mean, yeah, that's what I've heard as well. And that concerns me because if we have more limited options, that sucks. Yeah, you know, this is why—

I mean, and I've, I, you know, I feel very much like I'm in the right place now with the PFL because we need more organizations. Yes, we need more organizations. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the he's not the custodian of the sport that we need right now, you know. What do you think they're doing wrong? I mean, I think, I think it's a variety of different things. I mean, underpaying the fighters, killing the sponsorship market. They, they buried a lot of growth of the subculture, you know. You remember the old UFC Expos that we used to do? I'd do like 5, 6 hours a day signing. Tapout over to Silver Star over to Zion's. And like, as soon as that was all killed off a lot of that subculture died off. And all those subcultures offer jobs outside of, outside of fighting, you know. It allows people to then start a brand and sponsor some young fighters. Like, Charles Lewis, Mask, paid me double what I was getting paid for my purse when I was in Japan. Double, just to wear Tapout shorts on a, on a, in a tournament and Cageforce. Like, he didn't need to do that.

But he was a fan of the sport. He loved it and he wanted to support it. And back in the day, like, I had sponsors like Eirik Records and stuff that was on my banner, just a heavy metal brand from like my local town. Like, the idea of being able to have these personal sponsors that would help you out was massive. Yeah. And then the other thing that— the other issue that we've got is that we don't have— we don't have enough events now for a lot of fighters to get experience. So then a lot of people that get signed to contenders are like 5, 6, 7 fights into their career. I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and there's good clear examples. Like, I was 19 and 6 when I joined the UFC in 2028. Conor McGregor had already built a brand and a— Wait, wait, you just said 2028. Sorry, 2008. Maybe there's a return on the class. 2008.

So I had—

I was like, are you a time traveler? I feel like I am here a little bit with the UFO. Um, yeah, so in 2008, like, there was— where was I going? I lost my train of thought. Uh, sponsors. Sponsors, yeah. So like, we had sponsors. There was a subculture that was growing around the brand, and there were, there were shows that, that would host you long enough for you to develop a brand, right? So like, I didn't have nearly as big of a following as Conor McGregor or Paddy Pimblett, I had a similar platform, right? I was Cage Warriors champ, then Conor was Cage Warriors champ, and he was an established fighter with a game and a following before he came to the UFC. Same with Paddy. We don't see that as much anymore, right? We don't see the fighters growing on their local scene and building a local fan base that really starts to grow the sport on a grassroots level, you know?

Right, but why is that the UFC's responsibility?

Oh, no, I'm not saying it— I'm not saying it is. What I'm saying is that unfortunately, I think the UFC is now kind of paying for the control that they took many years ago because the industry has been stifled around it. Like, the sponsorship industry, for a start, was massive, you know.

And the problem with it was there was a lot of sponsors that weren't paying, so that a lot of fighters would wind up in lawsuits, and there was a lot of bullshit that was going on. There, some of them were, and it was great. Yeah, you know, like, you know, I'm really good friends with Brendan Schaub, and there was a point in time where he was making X amount for a fight, but he's making like 3 times that in sponsors.

Yeah, I mean, I doubled my show money on the GSP fight because of my banner. I only got $22,000 for that fight, but which is crazy, crazy. It's crazy, world title fight. But that's what I signed up for. I wasn't doing it for the money, you know what I mean? But in hindsight, when I look at it and GSP was getting— I mean, you get like $6 million. He spent quarter of a million on his training camp. How could I compete? Like, he would book out a whole hotel and bring guys in from New York. I had a I had Aldo in my corner, who at the time was a brown belt, you know. I, I, yeah, you know, and I had a Thai boxing coach that was telling him me to knee him in the head on the ground from bottom position, you know. Like, bless him, he just didn't know the rules. I didn't have the support network because I just, I couldn't afford what I would have really needed for that, you know. But if I, if I go back to it, you know, was, I mean, the sponsorship process was interesting because the first thing they did was they brought in the fees fees that the sponsorship companies had to pay.

So it was like, if you're a clothing brand, you have to pay $50,000 a year to sponsor UFC fighters, and that goes to the UFC. Now, before that, as long as it wasn't offensive and it wasn't a conflicting sponsor, the UFC would take it and you, you'd carry on. Condom Depot. Oh man, remember that? No, I turned them down a few times. But like, if you think about it, like, say Eric Records right? They, they couldn't afford to pay the UFC $50,000. They would pay me £300 to have the thing on my banner, right? Right. So then as soon as you bring in this, okay, everybody has to pay $50,000 to be a sponsor in the UFC cage, almost all of the sponsors then fell out the market straight away, right? And then you've only got a few that are lingering. And then if you're a, if you're a clothing distributor, if you sell a variety of different brands, it was $100,000 $250,000 that you had to pay. Yeah, right. So if you're MMA Warehouse and you're sponsoring Alistair Overeem and your sponsorship budget for the year is $250,000 and straight away $100,000 has been taken out because the UFC need it, just your pool's gone down, right?

So you've got less money to give to the fighters and then you sponsoring less fighters overall.

I get that. I get that argument and I definitely agree about fighter pay. Look, I'm always in favor of fighters getting paid more. It's a very dangerous job and it's the only thing that people are paying to see. They're not paying to look at the cage. They're not paying to look at the ring card girls. They're not paying to hear me talk. They're paying to watch the fights. Fighters should get the majority of the money, and it is a problem when they don't have leverage. And I think that it's great that you have things like MVP getting involved with the Netflix card. And I wish the card was a little stronger, but it's difficult. Like, like, Lin's fighting against Francis Ngannou. Like, you know, you need— like, who the fuck is even available? That's not signed to a contract that you can get Francis to fight. Yeah, that's not a goddamn execution, you know. You know, Francis is the legitimate heavyweight champion of the world.

Absolutely. And the thing is, the heavyweight division is always gonna be more of a victim of the underpayment than any other industry.

Is Francis no longer with the PFL? No. How did that— what happened there? I just think it was—

I just think it was a bad deal done by the previous ownership, by the previous CEO.

Oh, it was a previous CEO? Yeah. So I'm not aware. So He fought Henan Ferreira in that one fight. Yes. Is that the only fight that he had? That's kind of crazy.

Yeah, it was just— I mean, it was, it was a bad deal for the PFL, and we've done a lot of— we've done a lot of bad, bad deals.

Who's that guy that just knocked out Henan Ferreira? Oh, Sergey Belastany.

Woo! Used to train with Fedor.

And yeah, that guy is fucking legit.

Yeah, and very, very fast. Yeah, like him v. Tom Aspinall is an interesting fight. Oh, that is an interesting— anybody's interested in Cyril Gann, he moves a lot like Cyril Gann, but he's got sambo background. And that guy's legit.

I watched that Ferrera fight and I was like, holy shit, spun his head around.

Yeah, dude.

And you know, I mean, this, this cat— yeah, pull this up. Here we go. Look at this guy. I mean, moves like Fedor too. He trained with Fedor, which is interesting. Yeah.

Yes, you want to get through to the third. Yeah, that's that little body shot. So third round was the the finish. But it just was so dominant.

He looked so dominant like throughout the fight, man. Like right away, he's a beast. This kid is very, very legit. Oh my goodness, the speed. Yeah, so the world needs another fucking big heavyweight, man. Yeah, and this is, this is awesome that this guy exists. What's his name again? Sergey Bilestany. I just saw this yesterday. I'm guilty of not watching enough PFL. But the thing is, it's like the fights are legit, the talent is legit, but man, it's just not getting the attention that it deserves.

Look, the thing is, as a UFC fan, I get it, right? Because you want to watch one promotion where all the fighters are so you can find out who the best is, because that's what ultimately it was about, right? It was about finding out who's the best.

Listen, man, that guy can kind of compete with anybody.

Of course, of course. And we've got guys that can across the sport. I mean, you know, across the— across across the promotion we have. I mean, you know, Dakota, Thad Jean, you know, we've got some real, real good fighters. And even in, like, we are— if you've not watched Lewis McGrill and Dean Garnett, it is one of the best fights you'll ever see. There were 13 knockdowns in it. It was carnage. But then we're also seeing really interesting things like, like the Scottish Twister. Have you seen the Scottish Twister? Yes. So that was Stevie Ray who hit it against Pettis, and then he hit it against Lewis Long in the in Glasgow, and then he's passed it on to Jake Hadley, and then Jake Hadley's just submitted Mateusz Matos with it. And it's fascinating because it's kind of a twister. Uh-huh. It's like— it's— have you tried it?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I struggle with it. So here it is.

But look at this. The key is the foot in the thigh. It's like an offside triangle. You can see that that right foot is just hooked in, and he's going to threaten with an arm triangle. He's kind of holding Matos here. There's a bit of a hand fight going on. He's gonna keep hitting Mattos, and he's gonna— Mattos is gonna go to an arm triangle position. Then he's gonna start to try and force that, that right elbow down so he's not in an arm triangle and turn into the body triangle. But that right foot caught in his thigh doesn't allow him to turn fully into the guard. So look at this, how he turns in, clears the head, and there's the crank. Look at the foot on the inside of the thigh. That's nasty. So that is— I mean, I've had this done to me as well as I've done it. So you've got, you've got compression into the neck, pressure into the lower back, your hips being lifted off. It's a horrible submission. It looks horrible. And oh, this is the Cheesecake Assassin demo in it. Interesting. But like, and this is, this is what's fascinating still to me about MMA is that I still feel like there's technologies that we're not, we've not yet discovered.

The calf kick being a good example, right? Scottish twister being another good example. What comes next? Like, right, there's going to be some shit. I've got books and books of martial arts books, and I feel like if I dug, I might find something.

But yeah, I don't know what's missing. Here's something that I think might be missing: front leg roundhouse kick to the face. Mm, guys who are fast with that— I used to see that a lot in taekwondo. I used to see that a lot. There's guys like, it's just throw it out there like a jab, and if it hits you in the face, you're fucked. And we've seen it a few times in MMA. We've seen a few guys get dropped. We saw Rose Namajunas and Zhang Weili. You just don't see it very often. And man, if you're good at that, if you have a fast one, that is a devastating kick.

Yeah, see, that, that is a good example because that's a great technique and a great setup. Because the reason why the head kick landed was because she just landed an inside low kick. Yes. So Weili had pulled her lead leg back and pitched her head forward. Yeah, beautiful set. I totally agree with you. I think there's a lot that's still to be discovered.

It's just stunning to me how few people get cracked with that. Mm-hmm. I mean, I feel like that was a major weapon when I was doing taekwondo.

A lot of people use that. Yeah, crescent kick as well.

Oh yeah, a lot of guys that use that still. Anderson used that a few times. Yeah, there's a cat— I'm so sorry, man, I forget your name, but there's a dude who's got a video on Instagram where he knocks this guy out with an inside crescent and kick to the face. There's a few people that are pulling it off, you know.

Yeah, there's definitely more to come. There's definitely a lot more. There are a lot more techniques that I also think they're gonna be a lot more targets on the body that can be exploited that we're not yet exploiting, you know.

Well, a lot of the guys in, in kickboxing in particular, in ONE, are using that toe kick to the body.

Yes, Apchagi.

There's right, there's this cat. Yes. What is his name, Jamie? I've actually congratulated this guy. I apologize, sir, because I went back and forth with him. Jason Barry, is that what you just said? Back it up a little bit. Before that. Before that. Before that. See, look at those Cage Warriors gloves. Justin Barry. Justin Barry. That's it.

Look at the curve in those Cage Warriors gloves. Mm-hmm. So they're basically— they're either Fairtex gloves or they're a copy of the Fairtex gloves. Look how he does that.

I mean, it's crazy.

That's slick, isn't it? Crazy.

Very cool. Crazy. Yeah, Cage Warriors is another great organization that's really producing elite talent. It's just, I agree with you, there's not enough of them. But it's like, what does the PFL have to do to get more attention, you know? Because it seems like they're throwing a lot of money at fighters. Like, there's that— is that million-dollar thing still happening?

No, we've got rid of the tournament. We've gone to regular shows now. So we have main and co-main. We've got rankings now done by Combat Registry.

They don't have all the crazy point system where you're like, oh, that's gone.

That didn't make any sense. I'll be honest, I love the PFL, but PFL has been its own worst enemy for many, many years, right? We've got, we've got a new CEO, John Martin, who's— he's been on Ariel's show a couple of times. He does great interviews. He, he loves the sport from a fan's perspective, doesn't know it quite as much as, as other people, but he's, he's making the right moves and making the right decisions. Previously, I mean, I love Don Davis, but he was like Willy Wonka of MMA. He was like, I've got a great idea, let's do this, and blah blah. And then you had Pete Murray who just was consistently making bad deals.

Yeah, all the point things were like, hey, I didn't understand any of it.

So I was running PFL Europe for, for a couple of 3 years. I, I stepped in at the end of 2022 as commentator. In 2023 I became the head of, uh, head of fighter ops for Europe. So I was doing all the signing and matchmaking. I only had 4 shows a year, but But I mean, it was a passion project for me to sign all these young guys and match them. And my argument was every single— and I always used to say this to the fighters, because remember when Dana used to do this back in the old weigh-in days where he'd get all the fighters, no cornermen, no coaches, just translators and the fighters, and we'd gather in one of the changing rooms in the arena and Dana would give us this speech and it was stirring. Like, we're all there to murder each other, but for like, 5 minutes, we all felt like we were in it together. I love that feeling. I missed it. Even walking out, we're like fist bumping each other and we're hyped. And that's where he'd announce the bonus amounts and stuff. So I would do that with PFL Europe.

I'd gather all the fighters together and I'm like, look, there's not a single fight on this card that has been matched for one person to win. Every single person stepping into the cage has got a fair chance of winning. Your destiny is in your hands, right? And with PFL Europe, I was able to, to build a good roster and, and, and to, to— I mean, we had some fantastic shows, but when I first inherited it, we had 4 tournaments, right? So I had to sign 16 fighters— sorry, 8 fighters per weight class. So I had 32 fighters on my roster that was done already before the year started. And then I'm having to get loads of different flags. So we're going into a place and I've got a bunch of fighters on the card that I don't need, that I'm not going to sell any tickets. And it was just working against me constantly. So I pushed to go down to 2 tournaments and have just a normal MMA show for the rest of it. And that worked out well, but they, they just, they loved the tournament format because it was a distinguishing factor.

And the question is, you know, what do we have to do to, uh, to, to, to make a difference? Like, I mean, I think we are doing those, we are making those moves. We have to make more content, tell the fighters' stories better. For sure. Maybe you guys should start a fucking Muay Thai—

I'm down for it. Maybe like, like, UFC is fucking up with that. I sent Dana all these different fights. I send him all these— Iman Ghazalieff, that dude, Asadullah Iman Ghazalieff. Holy shit, is that guy good. I'm like, look at this. Like, this is what people want to see, man. Like, everybody boos when the fights go to the ground if it gets boring. This shit's never boring. Yeah, maybe you guys should pick up the slack. 100%.

Look, it's— I mean, I've, I've thrown hundreds of ideas on the table.

I always am, you know. That might be the move, man.

I mean, that might be what differentiates. Yeah, I think so.

But look how big it is with ONE. I mean, it's essentially become most of their fights now.

Yeah, and it's accommodating fighters that have got 200 or 300 fights in another discipline that don't want to learn how to wrestle or grapple, but they are the elitest of elite strikers and so easy to translate.

Everybody knows what's going on. Yeah, a kick to the face is a kick to the face.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I think— but I'm always throwing ideas at the PFL. The one that stuck was introducing elbows. Like, when I first started working with the PFL, we didn't have elbows because—

crazy, crazy, crazy.

Like, and I hated it, you know?

And I'm like, well, it's Pride. They didn't have elbows. Yeah, did Bellator?

Bellator had elbows. So what the fuck? Well, see, that was my— that was my selling point. That was the way I got— I managed to convince them. I said, okay, right, we've taken on Bellator now, we've inherited Bellator and everything, take the rules too, right? Yeah. How— but well, this is how I pitched it to them, right? One of my biggest opponents was Ray Sefo. Like, he did not want elbows added, and I could not get my head around it because he's always coaching elbows from the corner, right? Why didn't he want elbows? I'm not sure. I couldn't, I couldn't get my head around it. But, but the thing that pushed it over the line was me going, okay, right, we've just in— we've just taken on Bellator, right? We've got Bellator and we've got PFL. Imagine in a world where we now apply PFL rules to Bellator, what are the fans gonna say? They're gonna be like, well, that'd be terrible, they'd hate it because you're taking elbows out. I'm like, you've illustrated my point exactly. So clearly that's not the right way to go. So then we need elbows.

I'm glad they listened to you because that's ridiculous. Yeah, you know what really needs to happen is knees to the head on the ground. 100%, absolutely. It's crazy that someone could just huddle in a turtle position. Yeah, and not get pummeled. Like, you shouldn't be in that position.

The only thing I can do without, and I loved it in Pride and I wanted to fight in Pride for the soccer kicks as well, that's the only thing I would, I, I, I can reasonably do without. And the reason why— no ring.

The ring is different, you can move. Yeah. The problem with being planted into the cage and getting stomped or soccer kicked—

for sure. Remember Wes Sims, Frank Mir stomped him. Yeah, the, the, the thing with— and I've, and I've watched every single Pride fight that's ever existed, I'm sure. I only ever see people getting volleyed in the head when the fight's already pretty much done, right? Right. So it's Melvin Manhoof and Sakuraba. Exactly. It's like the— it's like the icing on the cake that we don't necessarily need when you can just hit them with one more shot, right? And they tried something in Cage Rage, if you, uh, when Cage Rage existed back in the day, where the referee would decide that you could stomp on or kick him in the head.

Let me ask you this: what do you think about sidekicks to the knees? I don't mind it.

The problem with that is it's one shot and you're out for a year. But then heel hooks are just as dangerous.

But they're not because you can tap. You can tap and you can hold on to the arms before it gets to that position. You could tap. The thing about the sidekick to the knee, like, what's his face, Khalil Rountree. Yeah, but the guy, Modestus, Modestus Bacchus. When you watch his knee go sideways like that, you're like, good Good Lord, you're done for a year if you're ever the same again.

I mean, I know, I know, uh, Shavkat's in a similar situation right now, but you can't hit to the back of the head.

But you do hit to the back of the head. Well, because if it's a roundhouse kick and it goes over the shoulder, guess where it lands?

Absolutely. Yeah, see, but the thing is, the back of the head is more protecting from the bottom of the base of the, of the skull downwards, isn't that? That's real.

Someone throws a roundhouse kick and it goes over the shoulder. Yeah, it's going And bang, right to the back of the head.

But then how many football players in a season are taken out with a low tackle? I mean, it's the same in rugby as well. It's like, for me, that is a risk of the sport. That is a part of the—

But it's a victory with an illegal move that we all allow.

It's only illegal because you can't strike to the knee. But then—

No, no, no, no. Back of the head kick.

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

You know what I'm saying? The back of the head kick, you win. By knockout, and you shouldn't have hit them there.

Yeah, but then, but then also you've got to go into, well, did they turn their head? What was the circumstance of it, etc., etc.? I mean, the thing is, like, you can't— in the rules, you can't strike joints, right? But then it was the same thing when we had elbows. And I'm like, we're doing shows in France, and I'm saying to the French commission, we don't have elbows. And they're like, okay, so where, where does the elbow start? And where does the, you know, where is it? Where's the forearm, right?

But the thing about, like, attacking the knees you would have to say, well, it's got to be a straight kick where you hyperextend the knees, because you can't say don't leg kick the knees, because you're gonna be able to leg kick the back of the knee always. That's— if you take that out, you're taking out a giant chunk of all techniques. Because— but the sidekick to the knee, the problem with that is you're gonna ruin careers. Like, there's a lot of guys that are just not the same. Thiago Silva, I don't think it was ever the same after the Jon Jones fight.

In my mind, it's the game we play. I agree, right? I see your point.

I see it.

No one's dying from a knee injury.

It's very unusual too. Yeah, it's like the Modestas fight was one fight that you can name, and Khalil's obviously a very elite striker.

Yeah, but yeah, I, I don't mind it. I genuinely don't. I mean, like, I'm, I'm more interested in making sure the fighters are protected when they can't protect themselves. That's, that's where we need to raise everyone's understanding of what's happening.

Yeah, you know, I agree with you. Well, listen, brother, um, always good to talk to you. We should do this more often. We should have said every 6 years. We should—

yeah, we're back in Austin soon though. We're back in Austin soon. Oh, when? July. Uh, Johnny Eblen's fighting Costello Van Steenis in the rematch. When in July? Uh, July 19th, Saturday. Saturday, July 19th. Is that the right day? Motherfucker. I'm out of town. I know where you are.

Damn it, I'm out of town.

Yeah, I know, I know where you are. I'll be there.

You'll be there?

Yeah, I think I'll be there.

Okay, well, we'll talk about it afterwards. Yeah, what we're talking about.

Well, yeah, we'll talk about it. Yeah, but, but that's— but yeah, Johnny Eblen, Costello Van Steenis.

That's too bad, I want to see that. Fuck.

Yeah, and I will say, like, for me, our middleweight division is probably the most competitive with the UFC's middleweight division. With Johnny Eblen.

Johnny Eblen's a bad motherfucker.

Like Costello Van Steenes, the current champ. Did you watch that fight? No. So Johnny Eblen, undefeated in 17, 18 fights, was beating the brakes off Costello. Oh, he got submitted.

Like last 10 seconds. Yes, I did see that. Yes, that's right.

So Costello's defended his belt. He beat Fabian Edwards. Travis Brown elbows. Yes. And then Johnny Eblen just ragdolled Brian Battle like it was nothing. I saw that. That was insane. Yeah, no, he's a beast, dude. Well, now those two boys are gonna rematch Austin at the Moody Center, middle of July. It's gonna be a good—

I wish I was here. Me too. All right, thank you, brother. Very, very good to see you always. Uh, uh, Dan Hardy, what's your Instagram? Dan Hardy MMA.

All right, bye everybody.