In my mind, I have to tap everybody else.
Winning is not enough.
The following is a conversation with Hajir Gracie,
widely considered to be the greatest
Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time.
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors
in the description.
And now, dear friends, here's Hajir Gracie.
Let's start with possibly the greatest match
in Jiu-Jitsu history, your second match
against Buchesha.
Let's go through the details.
Let's go through the whole thing.
So the walk leading up to it.
You always do this walk, this epic walk.
You post that on Instagram.
Hands up, post that on Instagram.
This calm walk towards the mat.
Well, let's go to that match in particular
was going through your mind.
You've been away from competition,
facing probably one of the greatest.
And at that time, many people considered
the greatest Jiu-Jitsu competitor of all time in Buchesha.
Here's the old man, the old timer,
getting back out there.
What were you thinking?
Yeah, I think that's the first time
since probably I got my black belt
that I was in the favorite walk into a fight,
I have to say.
Like a lot of people thought, consider him the favorite.
I mean, understandable, you know,
I was out of competition for a while.
He was just winning everything.
So, you know, saying about the walk,
like for me, you know, the fight starts
way before the referee say go, you know.
It's all the focus and concentration
that I think is very important for me to start before,
like, you know, I almost walk blind to the mat.
Many times I pass like great friends
and I couldn't see anyone, you know,
they're trying to talk to you and I'm like,
I'm 100% focused on my opponent already,
even though that I cannot even see him in front of me.
So I think that's for me was always very important
to try to clear my mind out from everything.
Are you visualizing the opponent or just clearing?
Not at that time.
Right, is there, what's in your head?
Is it like a calm river with birds chirping?
What?
It's the blank, just blank darkness.
Yeah, darkness.
Okay.
And that's what we see in that calmness is just blankness.
How hard is it to achieve that blankness?
It's difficult to say because I think I don't remember
when I'll say probably as a black belt,
I try to focus like that, not to think
because it's probably something you learn
is the more you think, the more nervous you get.
And there's nothing that you're gonna gain
by thinking of the fight or the possibilities,
what you can do, what can go wrong, what can go right
because it's unpredictable.
You have absolutely no idea.
It's impossible to predict the fight.
And you discover that if you just let those nervous feelings
go and empty your mind, it actually is pretty effective.
It is, it makes you feel better.
It's, you know, you kind of control your emotion,
control the adrenaline on your body up to a level.
So it absolutely helps you, you know, focus in the fight.
I've learned that in jiu-jitsu and in general in life
that whenever something feels really shitty,
you can just like take that thought and not think about it.
Like I do that like on long runs or like a fast run
or yeah, in jiu-jitsu, especially when I get an older
out of shape, like that feeling of exhaustion.
Well, you can always get to the feeling of exhaustion.
You could just not think about it.
Not think about being exhausted.
Just, and that somehow relaxes you.
I think maybe in the face of exhaustion,
all the fears start to creep in.
Maybe your muscles tighten up.
I don't know, this is for the amateur jiu-jitsu person.
But it's kind of funny how you can just take that thought
and let go of it.
So you get, as a black belt competitor, you get used to,
you get good at letting go of any thoughts.
Yeah.
When you mention to exhaustion is,
I mean, that's another good example of it.
It's, you know, there's a lot of times in the fight,
you're getting tired and you're getting pretty tired.
So it's like the last thing you wanna think of it
is how tired you are.
It doesn't matter because it doesn't.
But you're gonna look quit.
I mean, it doesn't matter.
It's how tired you are.
It's-
Yeah, there's no value thinking about it.
There's no value.
You just have to go through it.
So when you're like, you know,
many minutes into the match
and you're slowly moving as you sometimes do,
tying your belt, catching your breath,
you're not thinking about anything.
You're trying to let go of thinking.
I'm trying to like to save everything to the fight.
Like nothing goes to waste.
It's, you know, every move unnecessarily,
it's just gonna make you more tired
or it's gonna take something out of you.
Like, you know, I try to calculate every single move I make,
save as much energy as I can.
So I can fully, you know, be focused 100% in the fight
with no waste, especially energy wise.
And that's instinctual.
Like minimizing the amount of moves.
You're not like explicitly thinking,
should I do this or not?
It's just, don't move unless it's absolutely required.
Yeah.
Cause fight is, you cannot really,
there's not really time to think much, you know?
So it's your instinct to play in is like, it's,
you know, you already have your weapons, let's say,
you know, the things that you do at,
it's just the wait for the perfect moment.
The beauty of it is, you know,
there's the right moment to everything.
If you feel one second too late, it doesn't work.
No, you get messy.
So it's, you know, you're trying to catch that moment.
That is, you know, and for that,
you have to be fully focusing on what you're doing
because one second you out, it won't work.
But you're not exactly known as somebody
that moves super quickly.
So the, so the moment,
it's not about how quickly you move,
it's about the right moment.
So you move slowly.
Yeah, yeah, it's not like it's speed.
It's not like you have to move the speed of light.
It's the move itself at that precise moment.
It doesn't have to be super fast
because your opponent's not moving super fast, you know,
so it's a combination of moving between you and him.
I mean, the same thing happens in judo
and the movement can be really small.
Yeah.
I think judo is a bit more explosive, you know,
it moves on slightly faster.
So it, you know,
it does require a bit more explosiveness in judo.
But even just the right timing for an off balance,
just a little tough.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not that the, you know,
moving the speed is not going to count that much.
Yeah.
It's the timing that you initiate that move.
You see that with foot sweeps.
There's nothing more beautiful than not,
like a Olympic level athletes going at it
in the Olympics and a perfect foot sweep.
Somebody whoosh.
And it's just,
and you see one man's life flashed before his eyes
and realize, like I'm supposed to be the top three person
in the world that I just find,
and they don't, they have this look on their face.
Like, I don't know what just happened.
It's beautiful to see.
You don't see that.
I guess you see that in boxing, knockouts and stuff like that.
You don't know what the hell just happened.
Yeah.
Is that precise moment of movement that you get caught?
Like is that one split second?
That's it.
Do you get that in jiu-jitsu at all?
Cause judo has, because of the explosiveness,
because of the points scoring system
that incentivizes these giant throws has these moments
where everything just turns on a single moment.
Do you have that in jiu-jitsu too?
Not really because then it's points.
It's you get like, you know, two points.
So it's, because I think regarding the submission
is not just one precise movement that changes everything.
I think judo is the takedown that counts as a submission
like hip-hop, fight over.
Jiu-jitsu don't have that.
So you will score points.
But I think in terms of submission,
you need to get to, you know, dominant position first
and then the submission will come slowly.
It's a process.
Yeah.
Okay, let's go back to that guy with his mind.
So actually in the weeks leading up to it,
in the days, in the hours, in the minutes,
is there some fear in you leading up to this?
I mean, I'm not going to say, you know,
that I'm fearless because everybody fears something, you know?
The fear is there, but it's like,
how much you let that control you?
I think I was a lot more confident than fearful
at Fusher walking to that fight.
Like I was pretty confident that I could beat him.
Where's the source of that confidence?
My belief on me is I can take the world.
You can take anyone in the world,
but is there a specific strategic,
like, you know, talking to Donna here,
he believes that there's no such thing as confidence.
Like, or rather, the way you get confidence is through data.
Like that you have proven yourself effective
in previous situations, but with Buchacha,
you don't have much data.
It was a very, the first time you faced them
was a very tough,
that was also one of the greatest matches of all time.
It was very tough.
So doesn't that creep in like that doubt?
Because, you know, you don't have enough data
to be confident based on.
Yeah, I mean, okay, if I never had fought before,
you know, suddenly walking into a fight
with someone like that, then would I be that confidence?
I mean, probably no.
You know, so that history or, you know,
what we've been doing or being achieving
does give you confidence.
If that was my first fight ever,
I wouldn't, probably I wouldn't be that confident.
But the time off?
It doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
You don't have the fear or the actual physical experience,
the psychological experience of being rusty,
of being out of the competition.
That will come on, on training.
So you, okay, so you simulate some aspect to that.
Yeah, I mean, the training will tell you how you are.
Okay, did you increase the intensity
of the training leading up to this?
Yeah, I mean, I train normal.
Let's say compared to the first fight,
the second was a lot more confidence
because, you know, like I say on training,
the training for the first fight, it was terrible.
So, what do you mean?
I think I was focusing on MMA for a while
for a couple of months,
and I wasn't really focusing the ghee.
And, you know, by the time I accept the fight
and start training, like all my responses on training
were off, like all my training partner
that I used to train with that I destroyed.
I mean, now they're like, they're beating me.
You know, it's like I cannot beat them
the way I was used to.
But, you know, so I knew something was not right
for the first fight.
But then it's, you know, no points,
it's submission or draw.
So.
Yeah, for people who don't know,
I was in modern Morris, which is a 20 minute match,
submission only, so there's no,
the winner is determined only by submission.
Otherwise it's a draw.
So, physically, I wasn't myself on the fight.
I was tired, my body wasn't responding.
Anyway, so that, so the comfort that was different
from the first to second,
I think I was confident enough
that I wouldn't get tapped out on the first,
that I was still gonna fight
because he has to talk me out to beat me.
And I trust on my defense.
I'm confident enough for my defense
that he will not talk me out.
But in terms of winning, you know, walking to the second fight,
I was a lot more confident.
What can you say about that feeling
when something's not right?
Isn't that a thing that breaks people?
It is, it breaks, it's weird.
Like people crack, they give up, you know, this, it's,
it's a big test because it's like being really tired.
It's the same thing.
It's like a lot of people crack
because they just feel the kid not giving more.
They're having nothing more to give.
So they just like give up.
It's too hard.
So what do you do?
Just again, take the thoughts out.
There is no giving up.
I mean, I don't, I don't care.
Like you just giving up is not enough.
It's not.
That's always the way you thought.
Yeah.
The bar jujitsu.
Yeah.
I'm never give up.
I mean, I tapped.
It's, you know, not giving up.
It's not, not tapping.
That's just stupid.
Especially, you know, doing training.
Like it's, I get caught, I tap.
I've never, ever hurt myself by not tapping.
I get, you get angry, you know, it's trying hard,
you know, improve, make yourself better.
You go caught, accept that you made a mistake,
give up, tap, then try harder.
So, you know, the not tapping, it's,
you're sacrificing your body and, you know,
you'll never be the same.
Like if you let your elbow popped,
the elbow will never, ever be the same, ever.
You let yourself go to sleep, your resistant drops.
So, it's, everybody has a, has a limit of resistance
until they, you know, you, to resist a choke
before you pass out.
The moment that you, you, you, you, you go to sleep,
that resistance will dropped.
I've never heard anyone say that.
That's awesome.
That's true.
So, tap this.
So, that's the reason, cause people usually say it's.
No, it's the same or you get it knocked out.
You get knocked out the first time your resistant dropped.
Your drop gets weaker.
So, just for the record, I've never got to sleep again.
Which means my resistance is high, right?
I don't know.
Must be.
All your difference is pretty good.
I don't know about that.
Cause it doesn't make sense to me.
Or maybe in my case, I think my understanding
of when I'm screwed is pretty good.
Yeah.
Like there's no.
You know, you're in trouble.
Yeah.
One of the things that I regret the most about
my jiu-jitsu journey is not having given enough time
to being in really bad positions.
Like the better I got, I think the less I started
being in bad positions, which is terrible.
Because you spar.
That's like the, that is how you train.
Yeah.
Because you used to just spar.
When you spar, like it's difficult to, to being bad
positions a lot.
You train with better people, but I mean,
I say five, six minute rolls.
How long are you going to be in a really bad position?
Not long, right?
So you don't really have time to develop.
That's why people, they don't, you know,
they don't train being bad positions.
Cause you have to start there over and over again
to be used to it.
Yeah.
Or put yourself there.
I just didn't have that mindset.
I think, I think you start, I mean,
part of the fun of jiu-jitsu is as you get better and better,
you have certain people you go with.
You have these puzzles that you've figured out
that you're playing very specific details.
You're working out, you're trying to improve your main
like techniques and so on.
But yeah, just the percentage of time you spend
being submitted or being, or trying,
even going against like lower ranks,
trying to escape basic submissions is low.
I don't know if that's true for most people.
Probably is, right?
Most people have very bad defense.
Yeah.
Because they don't allow themselves to be there because
I mean, who wants to get tapped?
Because you will, until you work on your defense,
of course you're going to get tapped.
Or, you know, you're not going to escape.
You're going to struggle to escape.
So people, they don't want to be there.
I regret it most because of the effect it clearly had
on how I competed.
It was clear that my competition was constantly driven
by a conservative thinking, like don't take risks.
I think because of a weak defense, honestly.
And I think a lot of the, any of the fear,
like for example, exhaustion was accompanied by fear
because of weak defense, I think.
If I were to psychoanalyze myself,
and I regretted it, I regretted it a lot.
But speaking of which, I don't think anyone's ever
submitted you in competition.
So you're...
Well, I was a juvenile, yes.
Yes, so it's when you were a young person.
Yeah, six.
That still haunt you?
No, it's, first I was winning that fight by a large,
I mean, I think by six points or four, something like that.
But I was like, I was...
I don't remember it though, huh?
By the details.
Yeah, that's funny.
Yeah.
You ever beat him again?
He never competed again.
Yeah.
Whoever you are, please, let's do a podcast again.
We'll talk a bit about Hajj the whole time.
No, but what do you attribute to that too?
You're saying you're confident,
you're confident that the top of the world,
the number one Buchecia would not submit you.
So where's that confidence grounded?
And what do you attribute the fact
that nobody was able to submit you?
First, it comes on training.
I train a lot, bad position.
My defense is good because I practice over and over again.
As much as I practice all my offensive position.
So it's, you have to train both equally,
not just being in a good position, you have to be in bad.
So I think that's a very strong part of my game.
To be a complete fighter,
a complete martial artist,
you have to be good in every single position,
every single one.
Those that you know, you have a weakness.
So to be complete, you should have no weakness.
So that was always my,
I was always very particular on that,
like it's where my weakness,
where I don't feel good at it.
If you put me in a position with struggle,
how to escape, how to get out, everything.
Any submission locked, penny position, you know, back mount,
everything.
It doesn't matter which position I practice over and over again.
So that when I, if I get there in a fighting situation,
I will know how to get out.
At least I'll have a direction.
You know, I will know this is my way out.
Do you practice both escaping the bad position
and the transition into the bad position,
avoiding it?
Because that's how it happens.
You know, jiu-jitsu, you start in a neutral position.
The transition then becomes the fight itself.
You see, it's being there is the most important.
It's when you're there, then you have to know how to get out.
That's your weakness.
Stopping the person getting there is something different.
There are two different things.
Either you practice one or the other.
So both are important, I guess.
But the stopping the person is easier to practice
because that comes naturally in training.
What was the actual process?
Like what was your biggest weakness throughout your,
like just remembering what was annoying to you to figure out?
I mean, outside control is always.
Bottom of second.
Bottom.
It's regardless how much you practice.
It's not ever easy.
You'll never be easy.
But.
It's so annoying.
It makes no sense.
Yeah, someone pins you down, doesn't want to move much.
It's a big and strong guy, regardless of who is not going to be easy to escape.
So some situations are just hard.
That must be the, sorry to interrupt.
I'm interrupting Haja Gracie's discussion.
But you just made me realize, if you're really good,
if you're going against like the perfect jiu-jitsu competitor,
probably side control might be one of the hardest positions to escape.
Is it the hardest position to escape?
It's one of them.
If the person doesn't want to progress, he's just concerned about the whole thing.
Yeah.
Like the best pinners in the world.
I mean, partially because I've just seen judo people that know how to pin.
Yeah.
They go skip their side controls at night, man.
It's a nightmare.
It doesn't matter how much you practice.
Yeah.
It's a nightmare.
And it's also just frustrating.
Yeah.
I think, I guess it is also frustrating because a lot of people in that position will be about maintaining control, not progressing.
Yeah.
And usually people, when they're a mile in a back control,
are usually trying to progress towards the submission,
which opens up opportunities for escape.
Yeah.
So what's the actual process of just time and time again,
putting yourself in bottom of side control?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Over and over again, starting there, escape, get back, escape, get back.
If you mount, you'll get back.
Any situation outside that stops that again, stops that again.
And it has to be, I'll say, five minutes because it's the repetition that will teach you.
You know, if you train like three minutes on top, you have time to, you know, one thing and then time out.
It's the repetition there over and over again.
You know, when you try the same move over and over again, then you'll see what can go wrong.
And is it understanding the details of the movement or actually doing the movement and feeling it?
It's both.
First, you have to understand the movement and then practice.
But most important thing is defense.
Escape coming second.
Because, you know, he's attacking you.
The one thing is if he's not trying to submit you, but the other one, if it is, let's say, if a person is very good,
has a very good attack.
The first thing is defense.
Not just escape and expose yourself to an even worse position.
Because that is very risky.
When you're trying to escape, you'll always expose yourself to a worse position.
So avoiding that, it's, you know, first is defense, not getting caught.
And then when you're escaping, don't be in a worse position.
So defense in jiu-jitsu when you're wearing a gi, what does defense entail?
Is it mostly grips?
Is it mostly the positioning of your hips and legs?
It's everything together because it's a whole body movement.
It's constantly moving your arms, legs, body.
They have to, everything works together.
Going back to the mind of that guy.
So confident.
No fear at this point.
Is there a bit of ego in there too?
Yes.
Like I said, I'm not going to say I'm fearless.
Of course, there's concerns.
That fight, I would have to say, was probably the fight that I got nervous the most, walking in.
Because I knew what that meant, that fight.
I mean, everything for me, all my legacy was on the line.
Because if I had lost that fight, I would forever be number two.
Forever.
And I mean, Busheshe is a great, great guy, great competitor.
Jujitsu is very good, but I'm better than him.
I knew that.
But he's competing nonstop at that point.
He's a great competitor, taking nothing out of him.
He's super tough, very tough, very good.
He's probably the best competitor in Jujitsu.
He won 13 times the world championship, I won 10.
So as a competitor, he has more titles than I do.
But in terms of analyzing the game, I consider it technically better than him.
So knowing all that, everything that I build, all my legacy, it's, if I lose...
I was riding on this match.
If I lose this fight, I'm forever number two.
And none of that is going through your mind.
No, I knew.
I mean, it's not at that moment that I already knew that.
I remember just before the curtains opened, I'm standing in before they called my name.
And I mean, my legs were like, I feel the adrenaline kick in on my legs.
And I'm like, you know, I'm hitting the legs.
I'm like, wake up, you know, get off, get the adrenaline off me.
So it was intense.
It was intense.
And this was in Rio?
That was in Rio.
So...
My hometown.
So this is...
Rio is not exactly known for its calmness in its fans.
So this is like wherever they hosted the Olympics the year before.
So this is like...
I mean, the whole basically martial arts community is watching this.
I mean, is there some...
Was Hanzo there?
Yeah.
Yeah, he was there.
So people are just...
I mean, there's attention.
And it's also...
I mean, I don't know if you felt that in part, but you're also fighting for the Gracie name.
Yeah.
In our hometown.
The greatest where the Gracie really established.
Gracie competitor of all time, arguably in the hometown.
Yeah.
I mean, okay.
All my family, my best friends, my friends, everybody watching everybody there.
There was a lot of pressure.
A lot.
And then were you thinking that you would be able to submit him?
No.
It's at that point, like I don't predict how the fight will go.
That I never did because it's unpredictable.
It's...
I never tried to set any strategy for any fight.
I think, oh, okay.
That I did.
But that was the only time that I set any strategy into a fight.
There was a 15-minute fight there.
And I said, first five minutes, I'm going to play defense.
He's bigger, stronger, younger.
I don't want to play his game.
And I know he comes in very fast every single fight he had.
You know, he comes very aggressive.
So my strategy, walking to the fight to say five minutes, I'm going to play defense.
I'm not going to try to attack.
I'm not going to try to match his pace.
I already expected, you know, maybe I'm going to start losing the fight because, you know,
if he comes in, there's a risk of me maybe getting takedown or something happened.
I'm like, I'm going to stick to the game plan.
Five minutes, I'm going to start picking up the pace because then it's 10 minutes to go,
which 10 minutes a long fight.
So I don't need to start fast, but I'm going to start being more aggressive.
And then, you know, try to take him down or pull guard, you know.
By then, I'm like, that's as far as strategy goes.
So no specific stay on the feet.
Were you comfortable being both bottom and top?
Yeah, strategically.
I'm always comfortable being both top.
I prefer to be on top because being in the bottom, the person on top dictates the pace of the fight
because he's on top over you.
So I always prefer to be on top because I can dictate the pace.
I can implement my own pace.
And being the bottom, they can slow me down.
So it's harder.
So if I can choose, I will always be on top.
But I think by then, I was like, it's, you know, five minutes hit it.
I'm like, he's pretty big and strong.
I'm going to spend a lot of energy taking him down.
I pull guard.
How did it feel?
So here you're stepping in.
By the way, puzzle maths.
This is old school as old school as it gets.
So calm and relaxed here for people just listening.
We're watching the early minutes of the match.
So just feeling it out.
He seems pretty calm too.
He must be nervous too.
I wonder how, did you ever talk to him?
You guys are friends.
Yeah, we're friends.
Did he ever say how nervous he was?
No, we never spoke about that fight.
No?
No.
He probably lays late at night thinking about it.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Bad SOB.
Yeah.
I mean, so you see the first five minutes, you know, he kept,
I knew what he was going to do in my study, his game.
His stand up is most basic in takedowns.
Leg attacks.
Double leg.
So he goes single or double and he charges in.
That is pretty much his stand up game.
So you try, you get a grip.
Yeah, we got penalized.
So do you like to use the, do you like to pose with your left?
You have a right foot forward usually?
You're righty, right?
I'm righty.
But I know he wants my leg.
So I'm playing my stance just because of his game.
All my grips at the first five minutes was to kind of try to neutralize his attacks.
So he wants to get your left leg?
Yeah.
Yeah, right there.
Yeah.
So how hard is that to stop that?
I mean, he felt pretty strong coming in.
So, you know, pushing the head down, trying to play with his balance.
Yeah.
Wow.
If you, if you see it, there was a pause.
Go back there.
He charged in.
There's a pause, me standing in front of him.
Yeah.
I did that on purpose.
What do you mean?
Just, just in front of him because, you know, he tried.
Yeah.
And I'm like, you fail.
I'm here.
There's a, okay.
So you could feel the frustration.
I could feel his frustration, his frustration, not be able to take me down.
Okay.
So now, and this is just psychological battles.
And you see me walking straight into the middle of the mat and he's circling out.
Yeah.
See, I'm going very slow, recovering.
And he's computing like shit.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because he just made a, you know, effort, tried to take me down.
He needs to recover.
And I mean, you need to recover.
The other guys, they are waiting for you.
Yeah.
Do I, do I go for another take down?
Cause this one failed.
Yeah.
Do I need to recalculate the strategy?
Yeah.
And he kept trying over and over again and keep failing.
I think that frustrates him a lot on that fight.
I felt, I felt him kind of slowing down suddenly because he was getting nowhere.
So we're five minutes in.
Yeah.
He keeps, so he never got that take down in the, in the early.
No.
Let's see.
So at this point, do you pull guard?
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's when I felt like he's, he's mentally, he's, he's not, he's worried now.
Did you try to pull close guard here?
No.
I knew he was going to bring Danny in.
Okay.
Cause that's the defense against pulling close guard.
Yeah.
But I liked that.
See, I like people bringing the knee between my legs.
Cause see, I'm going to close my guard even with his leg in.
Cause he's, he's, he's stopping the club.
Well, this is, this is awkward, but I guess I was holding his arm.
That's why he felt he had no hand to post.
Got it.
But still it puts a leg in, but you're able to close your guard around.
Are you okay with that?
I do that really well.
I sweep people from that position a lot.
What's the sweep?
I just, just pushed.
Okay.
Like to your left side.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because he has no, oh, it's almost like a, you mean you're basically around his back
a little bit.
He knew that, like I swept a lot of people with that sweep.
So you, you see, he kept leaning to his left, to my right.
Yeah.
So I want to push them to my left.
So you see him leaning over to my right a lot.
What's the right answer for him to like roll or something?
No, I mean, he's stuck.
He does not really, he's stuck.
He's stuck there.
Great.
But the one thing he did, he kept off me completely.
See that he's leaning to, like he's too afraid of my attack now.
Because he, you know, he should lean on me.
You know, you should bring the fight to me.
So when I fell him, you know, it's like, I knew he was like, he's too worried about my
attacks now.
Oh yeah.
That's right.
So he can't.
Yeah.
He comes back to the center.
You know, at that time he's a hundred percent just defending.
So I failed that.
I'm like, he's, he doesn't want to engage.
And he's looking, I knew at that point he wants my foot because our first fight, I had
the exact, the same position.
I wasn't holding his arm and he went to attack my foot, which he did.
You know, he got it.
Like a toe hold or what?
Okay.
Yeah.
So I knew he's looking at my foot.
Which foot?
Sorry.
The left.
My right foot.
Okay.
But I'm holding his arm.
I'm holding his arm.
And now you're going to the back as an arm drag type of thing.
So the moment that I came off, now I'm holding his arm so he cannot come up.
So you know, I'm holding his left arm so he cannot post a hand on the floor and come
up.
And he's holding your right to try to get you, basically to prevent you from attacking.
Yeah.
Oh, that's an interesting, and he rolls.
Yeah.
So he tried to get me off balance.
So see now I'm switching, I switched the grip on his arm so I can free my left arm.
Can I ask you a question like, was there a chance he sweeps you here?
I mean, there's always a chance, but very hard.
Like that.
Yeah.
But see my left arm is free.
Oh, so you can post.
Yeah.
Why was your left arm free?
Oh, because you were using it.
You got it.
Got it.
Okay.
And now.
You try the hook, now you will see.
Still got your arm.
Yeah.
But when I knew he's panicking because he didn't move, that he completely opened himself
up.
Like I'm holding his left arm.
So by holding the arm, he's, that prevents him from defending the hook on that side because
his arm is being held across.
So the arm cannot block the hook.
And I mean.
The hook with your left leg?
Yeah.
So you see when he come up, but I would say, I mean, that's my guess, but Busheshe's, he's
a big guy, you know, he's like 110 kilos, 112, something like that.
Which is 245.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
So what were you at the time?
Less 220.
Yeah.
220.
A nice slim 100 kilo, okay.
So in hits, his defense are not amazing.
He's good, but you know, he's not known to have amazing defense.
So by being the big guy in the room when you train, you used to get out of situations because
of your size.
You shake people off, you know, it's because of your size, you shake them off, you get
off some bad positions.
You can, I mean, I could feel in the first fight, I'm side control, you know, something
he explode out.
So you know, I've seen him doing that, a few of his fights, not in the most technical
way, just I'm getting out and he did because of his size.
So and he did the same thing, like he tried to stood up when I'm on his back, he completely
opened up the hooks.
He will see the next move, his head going to come up and he's going to try to get off
the floor.
So basically come up, shake you off kind of strategy.
There was no defense for the hooks.
I put both hooks in straight away.
His arm is.
Yeah, I'm off balance.
Yeah.
See, I didn't bring him up.
He came up.
Yeah.
And now I'm attacking his neck and he's worried about the hooks.
That's fatal mistake.
That's like defense always come first.
Remember what I just said now?
Defense first, capes second.
So he's not worried more about the points than his neck.
So he was like a progression of mistakes.
That's why I think he did, he got frustrated when he couldn't take me down.
And then when I pull guard, he was, he was, he was frustrated that the fight wasn't going
his way.
You know, he's, he's very good about taking down.
He tried over and over again for five minutes.
And here he was frustrated about the hooks.
So he's like, it's almost like the frustration, things like, no, no, no, these hooks shouldn't
be here.
I pull guard on the grips that I want.
He's not comfortable inside my guard.
He's not in a position that he wants to be.
He's over leaning to his left, you know, to, to, to, to not, he's not engaged, you know,
trying to pass.
He's trying to get the foot, but his arm is trapped.
He's going to get nowhere.
And then when I swept him, some of his words are collapsing, you know, he couldn't take
me down.
I pull guard.
I'm swept in.
He tried to roll me over.
No, he didn't get me anywhere.
The first movement that he tried to escape, I'm on his back.
I mean, not his loss.
Yeah.
That, if you just go back to him standing up, see, both hook goes in no defense.
Like there was nothing on the way of those hooks.
Because he tried to come up.
I think as he's coming up, you're, you're high enough on him to where the weight was
just probably immense.
He just felt too heavy, I mean, you got, you already got, you're already, you're already
going for the choke.
There's no time to lose.
Look at that.
Yeah.
So you're not like worried.
I'm going to get shaken off.
You're going for the choke.
You got your right hand.
No shaking off.
I'm on your back now.
We're in this together.
And your, your right hand is opening up to lapel.
My right hand is holding his arm.
I still holding the sleeve.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
But I'm holding the sleeve and I'm already going for the neck because it's timing.
At which point do you let go of the sleeve and open up, help with the upper or do you
not need it?
No, I did that, but first I want to try to make a grip like, then I need to establish
control before I let go of his arm.
Got it.
So I kept holding that a bit longer.
And then when I fell, okay, I have a good control over the back, then I let go.
Do you, okay, so you have like a light grip on his lapel, but you're thinking you need
that.
No, I need to adjust that.
You need to adjust that.
You're like holding it there and you're thinking, okay, at some point I need to adjust this.
All I need, all I want is to get under his chin.
Then I know it's, I mean, it's, now I can go for it because if it's over, there's no
choke, right?
The wrist needs to be under.
Can you choke Buchesho over the, no, I can't.
That's just not right.
Okay.
It's not right or it doesn't work.
It's not right, it doesn't work.
I mean, would you tap to a choke on your chin?
No, it's just pressure.
You hurt, but it's not going to choke you out.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm not, let me argue this.
I love this.
Arguing with Roger Gracie about jokes.
This is great.
Okay.
Like clock choke.
It was always interesting to me because in Judo, it's illegal to have the gear on the
face.
And so it was kind of liberating for me to be allowed to have a gear on the face.
No, it's just.
It's liberating.
No, you don't have to worry about it.
Of course, it's more effective to go under the chin, but I'm surprised just because
the amount of pressure.
It's all about how much you can take it.
You can take a lot.
But it feels like.
No, it doesn't feel comfortable.
I mean, sometimes on your mouth, it cuts your mouth, now you're bleeding.
It feels horrible.
No, but it feels, that's not the feeling.
The feeling, it might not be a joke, but the feeling like, it's a pressure that everything's
just closing in.
But it doesn't take you anywhere.
Like you're not going to go to sleep.
You might not go to sleep.
So it's just pressure.
So pressure, it hurts, it's uncomfortable, but it's not going to break your face and
it's not going to put you to sleep.
So if I don't get the neck, I don't go for the kill.
I'm like, I'm holding the, the, the, his collar, you know, my wrist is almost under.
It's, you know, I'm trying to kind of dig in.
If I can't dig in, then I would adjust the collar, but first I need to dig in.
I dig in first and adjust, but can you do all that with one hand or no?
I did.
So you can tighten the choke with just one hand.
No, I need the second one to open the lapel.
To open the lapel.
But you're like digging in with one hand.
No, I'm digging in under the chin.
Under the chin.
Under is under.
Now I need to go deeper.
But that, the going deeper requires a second hand.
You does.
Okay.
You does.
And, but that requires you letting go of the other hand.
Yeah.
I have to let go eventually.
Yeah.
See.
Yeah.
Well, that's over.
Yeah.
Because I'm already under his, like the first hand got under the chin.
Do you need the hand on the second lapel?
Yeah.
Of course.
Otherwise he turns and he's out.
That's the control, the turning versus the tightening of the choke.
Yeah.
It does both.
It helps tighten the collar and stop the person rolling out.
Were you feeling pretty good about this position?
Yes.
I just felt it's getting tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter.
Because he wasn't super tight from the beginning.
He wasn't like the perfect choke.
So we're still, I mean, I knew it was like he's very close to the end, but you know,
I still need to adjust.
There was still the risk of maybe he's escaping.
Is it possible for his head to slip out?
Possible.
Yes.
He's closing that gap, yeah.
Right here.
What did that feel like?
Relief?
Relief.
Awesome.
Amazing.
Somebody on Reddit asked him about the cross grip he used to sweep followed with the genius
grips, which when Buchesce was inverted, did you use a cross grip when you sweep?
I guess the cross grip in the arm.
That must be it.
Oh, that's the cross grip.
Okay.
What's the genius behind that?
Or was that just the, do you like that kind of grip?
Yeah, because I always like close guard.
And no one wants to be in anyone's close guard, right?
It's open guard is the step to pass.
So everybody, when you try to close the guard, they bring the knee in the middle.
Like if you're not standing, if you're lower on the ground and the open guard, if you're
close to me, you need that knee between.
So it's a must.
That's when I start developing the attack.
You know, I managed to have long legs to close my legs around people, even with that.
And then I just developed that sweep.
When did you start developing that?
I don't remember when, but I would say before black belt.
Okay.
So your answer to that is not to figure out how to prevent them from putting the knee in.
Is there an answer to that?
No.
The good guys will always try to get the knee in.
Move their leg out of the way.
That's not possible.
Well, maybe off balance them enough to get the knee in.
No.
No.
Okay.
I mean, you can try, but like it's hard.
If you can off balance them, you sweep them.
All right.
So that knee is going to, so you're going to have to stop that.
That's a full sweep.
Yeah.
Because that's, it's extremely common to have that.
I mean, if I'm on your guard, open guard, you know, if you have your legs, if I'm from
between both of your legs in the open guard, my knee will be between your legs, because
it's a must.
My knee cannot be on the floor.
Since Henzel was there, what did he tell you before?
I think just motivate you.
I think that Henzel always did that fantastically well to motivate me.
Like before in fight, a match.
I think that, you know, the confidence, you know, his, you know, his energy being around
you.
It's, I think that's the, it's, it's the great thing to have hands on your corner.
It's, it's the motivation that he gives you.
What did you learn about Jiu Jitsu and life from Henzel Gracie?
We got to hang out with him in Vegas a little bit.
He's a character.
Yeah.
He's one of the, uh, historic coaches and Jiu Jitsu competitors, but also personalities
in the martial arts world, in, in the world in general, there's very few like him.
Henzel is a fantastic person.
It's, it's, you know, what I've learned most from him is like, it's, you know, you can't
take any challenge.
It's, you know, it doesn't matter when, where, what, you know, who it's, you know, you have
to be ready and, you know, with that warrior spirit that he has, he's, you know, he always
took any challenge, ready or not ready.
Was it you that said it or he said it where, uh, not until you go in, uh, you know, to
do something difficult, do you discover the strength that you have?
So like, like, if you really think about it, you might think that you don't, you're not
good enough.
You don't have the strength to take on something difficult.
I fully agree that I think we are measured not when we're on the strongest, but when we
are on the weakest.
That's when we truly measure ourselves or character, who we are, not when in a position
of power or when in a position of weakness.
Have you surprised yourself like how damn good you are?
Like is this, is this really how good I am in the situation where in retrospect you might
think how the hell was able to accomplish this?
Not how good I am because otherwise I wouldn't be there.
So, you know, being there in the first place, it's, it's already not a great thing.
But I say, you know, every single time I found myself there, I was super proud that I've
never cracked.
Like I've never gave up ever, any second, any fight, never.
Never been broken in competition?
Never.
Even, it's not about winning or losing, it's about you giving up.
I've never doubted myself.
I always fought to the very end, always.
But I'm most proud of, because there was moments, you know, you're in a terrible position,
you know, mainly like there was moments that I was super tired, but like exhaustive tired
when it was easy to give up.
Like I had nothing more to give, but I pushed, I took energy out of my soul, I would have
to say, because when my body had zero, you know, my spirit, my soul, pull it out.
Is that in part just not allowing yourself to have, to ever, ever quit?
Yeah.
I have one other thing I regret.
I remember like a blue belt match.
I remember, I'm not going to say who it was against, but I remember it just being extremely
exhausted and just constantly fighting.
A guy was really good mount, really good guard passing, and I just remember him passing
my guard eventually.
It was just like a finals of one of the IBGJF tournaments and then right away going to mount
and just, I don't know, the level of frustration, I mean, I quit at that point, so I remember
that still.
I, it's not about losing, winning or losing, but I just remember I was like, I was like
teary-eyed, frustrated, and then I knew there was a lot of fights still left in there somewhere
and I quit and I regret that to this day, because I think the reason I regret that is
because it gave me an option to now quit in every other aspect of life, like, this is
an option.
Yeah.
It is.
It sucks.
Yeah, it teaches you, you know, it makes us stronger.
It's like I said.
I think it made you stronger.
Yeah, it makes you stronger that you did that to learn that don't do that again.
But still, like you said, just going to sleep and training, I do think it made me weaker.
It did make me weaker in the rest of my life, too.
Those, you know, I've quit a few times in my life on small things and you realize, okay,
it's not that big of a deal, it's fine, like who cares, but what you learn over time is
that voice always comes there, like, obviously, maybe it does for you, too, even at the highest
level of like, it's not that big of a deal, like, it's okay to quit here, like, it makes
sense, everybody would understand, you know, in some sense, like, you're, you know, many
people would say you're past your prime in this match with the predecessor, like, it
makes sense, you've been focusing on MMA, it makes sense, it makes sense to lose.
Yeah, I don't know, that's a weird voice.
And in some sense, it's that voice and a voice that says, like, why are you doing this?
Like, this is silly, doesn't make any sense, just stop, just stop, just stop.
And shutting that voice down and never allowing yourself to quit, that's a really powerful
thing.
Like, I've met everybody that's successful, yeah, down to the, even engineers, CEOs, Elon
Musk, just never quitting, like, when everybody around you says quit, never quitting, it's
weird, I don't know what that is, it might be genetic, it might be like, using the stubbornness
to just never allow yourself to develop that, it's basically developing a callous to that
voice that tries to tell you to quit.
You never quit, huh?
What would your tribute be that too?
It's like, how much you want to get to the destination you chose, like, you know, it's
how badly you want to get there, it's, if you quit, you're never going to get there.
And you always wanted to.
I always wanted to.
Is there some thing you remember from that match, some things that happened before and
after the standout to you?
Just since then, Rio?
Yeah, there was an interview, you know, like, prior to the fight, you know, there was a
big fight, we were doing like media every day before, we were, you know, me and him,
we were meeting for media.
And it's like five days before, you know, five, six days before, I'm quite chatty, it's,
you know, the closer we get to the fight, the more focus I get, the less I start, joke
around playing, you know, with people.
But I remember, I think it was maybe three or four days before, we were doing an interview
together.
I think my cousin, Keir, was there, she was doing one of the interviews with us.
And I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but I just remember, we were
talking about the fight, of course, and then it was, you know, we were standing beside
each other and I'm like, and then I, you know, suddenly I chop in a grabbing by the
neck, I say, I'm going to tap you by the neck, and then he's like, you know, very shy.
And then I let go.
I say, you know, I'm going to grab, tap you by the arm.
And I could feel he was like, he wasn't comfortable, you know, with being there.
It was, you know, me saying that I'm going to tap him out, it was like, I was so relaxed,
joking about it, but I'm joking that I'm going to tap him out in a fight that we're
going to have him for this time.
And yeah, I felt he was like, not comfortable at all.
Do you think you got in his head a little bit, to give you a little bit of confidence?
You've said that jujitsu is a reflection of your personality.
So both your jujitsu and your personality, there's a calmness.
What is that?
Why are you so calm?
Is there like an ocean underneath that's boiling?
Is this developed or is this your personality?
Are you basically leveraging who you are already to develop a game around the jujitsu or the
jujitsu to make you calm?
I think both.
I was always very calm since I was a kid, you know, since very young.
I was never very, you know, fiery person.
So that is a reflection.
You know, you reflected on my jujitsu, my life, on my fights to where I fight.
So it's a direct influence of my personality.
And I think it's also in the day, you know, you develop the more you practice, you know,
the more you fight, it's like, you know, you don't want to get nervous, you don't want
that adrenaline in.
So you just learn how to shut that off from your mind.
So the less I thought about it, you know, it's like how many times I fought, you know,
let's say the week before the fight, that's when you start more, when you're concerned
the most, because now it's getting very close before it's just far away, you know, it's
normal to think of the tournament, you get a bit nervous, but it goes away quick.
But the fight, you know, the week before, now you're constantly thinking of that day.
And every time you think adrenaline pumps in your heart accelerate, you know, it doesn't,
you know, it makes it, it's like, why am I feeling this?
What different will it make?
So you kind of, you're shutting that thought out of your mind because you don't want to
feel that adrenaline, your heart accelerating, it's not going to add you anything.
So it's, you know, it's the practice also that I think it helped me to shut that off
my mind.
Has that helped you in regular life?
Yeah, of course, it's, you know, it's suddenly when you go into any, any situation that might
be stressful, you know, like an important meeting, no super, whatever it is.
It's like, how much would you worry about that before worried it's not going to help
you anywhere?
It's the opposite.
Just going to make you more nervous, your heart accelerates, your ability to think clearly
is going to be damaged by that.
So it's like the more calm, the more relaxed you are, the better you can think of.
You ever get angry?
Yeah.
Like in traffic?
Yeah.
Do you ever, do you ever get like not calm?
Just like you're screaming?
No, not in a screaming seat, no.
But just angry?
Yeah.
What does angry look like?
Is it still calm?
Yeah.
Like, you know, a few seconds of complaining, but then it goes away.
Have you ever like thrown a cell phone at a wall or something like that?
No, I never get that angry because that's just silly.
It's like it's, it's, if I would have done that, I would not be able to control my emotions
prior to a fight.
Yeah.
Reflection.
Yeah.
Letting yourself lose.
Yeah.
Losing control that will reflect other times.
Do you think it has made you, in part, made you more emotionally closed off from the world?
Like you're, it's harder for you to be vulnerable to others?
Probably.
Yeah.
But I heard that a few times that I'm emotionally closed.
It's, yeah.
I think that influenced it.
Yeah.
Have you ever cried in a movie?
Yeah.
For, not for many years, but for, I think maybe I'm getting older.
You remember the movie?
Something.
No.
There's a silly movie.
I mean, it's, no, I mean.
Is it the notebook?
No.
I mean, I would say the last few years I've been crying more than before.
For some reason.
I don't know why.
Like silly movies.
Like nothing.
Somebody brings tears to my eyes.
Yeah.
I've already just, having met you and interacted with you, I can see that you're kind of opening
your heart and mind to the world.
You could see like, here's this historically great athlete.
Now like the wars have been fought and you're now like waking up to the world.
It's cool to see.
Probably.
I'm bringing my guard down now.
I don't have to.
Yeah.
Kick it up all the time.
You can even do some podcasts.
You said you watched like movies beforehand, sometimes mentioned Braveheart.
What were you doing?
Did you watch something beforehand?
Like the day before?
I used to.
Yeah.
That was like, I think Braveheart and Gladiator.
I mean, there's a few others that I've always watched the day before because the day before
is to do nothing.
I just want to be at home in bed watching TV, like saving, you know, energy, stretching
by myself.
So it's like, it's just want to save energy.
I don't waste my energy going out, going around.
So you know, those are the movies that I always like to watch, kind of trying to bring someone,
you know, hyper, excitement, like, you know, I'm getting ready to war tomorrow.
So I'm like, let me watch some movies that like brought that, you know, some, that warrior
spirit into me.
Yeah.
What is that about human nature?
Braveheart, I love even more.
Would you put your life on the line for a thing that matters or run away just so you
can live?
It's like, running, you may live, but like years from now, when you look back at this
moment, would you trade all the days just to come back to this moment?
And tell the English.
You could take our lives, but you can't take our freedom.
I mean, oh man.
What is that about human nature?
Um, is there some aspect of like the glory you were able to achieve being more important
than anything else?
There's some aspect of that that that's, that's greatness.
You know?
Yeah.
I never pursue glory.
So it's, it just came, you know, it is, it came with it, but that was never my goal.
I never care for glory.
Were you able to experience like, like I'm at the height of this thing, whatever, whatever
humanity is able to achieve in various things, holy shit, I'm flying.
I felt like no one can touch me.
I can destroy people.
Yeah.
Prolonged periods of time or just momentarily?
I always knew, you know, from before I got to a black belt, the like, I, you know, it's
I can be great because my pro, you know, I used to train with the best in the world.
I used to, you know, for many years and I used to see my progression with then everybody
else.
So I knew I was getting somewhere.
I knew I could be the best.
And that was, that was always my goal since very, very young.
And I always believed that I could be.
And that over the years that kept telling me over and over again, because I'm getting
better and better, faster than everybody else.
So it's, I just need to carry on with what I'm doing.
But I think you've said that you wanted to, and maybe you thought you could be the greatest
of all time, like at the very beginning, like when you sucked.
Yeah, not the greatest of all time because, and I never really thought about that.
But I thought I'm going to be the best in the world when I sucked.
When I sucked.
Okay.
So what is that, what is that like that self-belief?
Is there a component to that self-belief being a prerequisite?
It's difficult to say because that was a decision, I think.
Like why did I believe that I could be?
I can't tell you that because I don't know.
But you think you decided to be?
I decided to be.
I decided to be and I believed I could.
You think there was like a day somewhere when you were young where you're like, huh, you're
sitting on a couch eating Cheetos.
I don't think it was a day like a moment because for many years, I wasn't really training much
as a child.
I mean, I've done a bit of, I used to train and then stop, done a bit of judo, never stay
away from it much, but until, you know, like from 10 to 14, I barely trained Jiu-Jitsu
much.
I used to, there was no great school near where I used to live and I was doing, there
was a Jiu-Jitsu, a judo school I used to go twice a week.
I went to a Jiu-Jitsu tournament.
I lost in five seconds.
Left crying.
The guy, he pulled me in five seconds anyway.
So when I was 14, I went to the South of Brazil to see my uncle Helium, to spend some
holidays.
I was there for like four weeks, I think.
And when I got there, my cousin Hollis were living with him.
Hollis, like, bigger than me.
It was, I think it's four years, four years older.
So I was 14, it was already 18, 17, 18, purple belt competitor.
And I think that was the first time in my life that I felt what it meant, what it meant
to be a Gracie in terms of having a school, teaching, training, you know, living that,
you know, Jiu-Jitsu lifestyle, what a Gracie meant to be.
And I've just, I've loved that.
I was out of shape.
My uncle was like, you know, incentivizing me to lose weight, to train, but you're not
training.
Why?
You know, it's like, you've got a shape, you need to diet.
So I used to run every day, I was eating super well.
I started, you know, I started that when I started changing.
So when I got back to Rio, I was super motivated to follow up, carry on.
And he, you know, he invited me to go back there to live with him.
But I couldn't, it was too soon to change schools and everything.
My mom said, no, but maybe next year if you want to go, you can.
So I kept that in my mind.
Next year, I moved to the south to live with him.
I was 15.
And it was him, my uncle Helion, and my uncle Carlin.
They both used to live very close to each other.
They also have their own schools close to each other.
So I was with both.
And I stayed there for almost a year.
I mean, I was the youngest in the academy.
There was some, you know, blue, purple, bears, normal guy, but they were already competing,
training ahead of me.
And I just joined the group of training.
I didn't compete while I was there because there was no competition that then.
And I wasn't really ready, but it's not about competing, it's not about the training.
I start training every day, start improving, and year after that, when I came back to Rio,
I was already on a mission.
I was like, I love this.
I'm just carrying on training every day with my uncle Carlos, Carlos Gracie Jr., Gracie
Baja.
And the one I got there, I was training a little bit there before, but just 14, 15.
But when I got there, there was one of, that was one of the most competitive, one of the
biggest jujitsu schools at the time.
There were so many high-level world champs, competitors in every single belt.
And I've kind of joined in with that.
And I've carried on.
I don't remember when, but I remember, you know, looking and saying, I'm going to be
the best in the world.
But I used to be, I was at the bottom of the stairs, you know, no one really believes me.
I didn't shout, you know, to disguise, but, you know, I told a few people, I'm like, I'm
going to be the best.
And that's, I think, I was just losing, but I've never, ever doubt, I've never diverged
from that mission, I would say.
Did anyone believe you when you said you could be great?
Nobody.
Didn't matter?
Didn't matter.
I don't care.
I don't need.
Even people that, like, love you.
Everybody, my mom, my dad, I mean, no one thought, no one in my family thought I was
going to be here today, nobody.
Because I just started late, you know, I've never had any star that people, oh, that kid's
going to be really good.
Yeah.
No, I was a chubby kid that didn't barely train.
I mean, people used to look at me, he's just another greasy, there's, you know, one more.
What do you learn from that?
Do you think most people lose that self-belief they quit when everyone around them doesn't
believe?
Yeah.
Like, if those that need approval, yes.
Right, so you shouldn't have approval?
No, I'd never need approval from anyone.
I don't care if you believe me or not, if you're not my problem.
It's tough.
It's tough.
I don't need approval, but you're surrounded by people older, wiser, better than you.
And they're kind of directly or indirectly saying you stop being silly, kid.
No one ever told me that because that was not something that I used to say all the time.
I've maybe said this very, very few times.
Oh, I just, well, you know, maybe that's the secret, is don't say it.
Of course.
I mean, if you start shouting, then you're just being silly.
Then it's not what you really want.
Then you're saying that for not the reasons.
If you say it over and over again, because you shouldn't, I mean, why?
Well, to push back, one of the reasons you might want to say it is to find the right
people that believe in you.
Yeah, but no, if you say over and over again, then it's just, then you're just bragging.
Sure.
Because one thing is to say it, but the other one is to do it.
So it's, you know, you say that once or very few times, but now you have to do it saying
it's not helping you getting there.
Was there sacrifices you had to make?
Everything.
Everything.
That was my priority in life.
Everything was secondary.
Like social life, career paths, everything.
And from 14, 15, 16, as you get better and better and better and better, it was just
becoming sharper the focus of this thing.
Yeah.
It's just over and over again.
Over and over again.
It's, you know, it's just training, training, training.
And I mean, how many times I lost, I have no clue.
So on the mat, you were getting beat up.
I'm getting smashed by everybody.
People my age, I was chubby.
I was physically weak.
I mean, I'm tall, but physically, I'm not physically strong.
I'm normally strong for my size, but physically, if you want to measure strength, I'm weak
because, you know, we can measure strength, living with, living with, I'm weak.
I don't lift, I lift weight same as people much lighter than me.
And my weight lifts heavier weight.
And then people that train with you often talk about how strong you are.
They become super strong because I generate a lot of strength.
I can create, I put myself in the right angles so that I can be strong.
I'm not strong.
And the only person who I listen to saying that is a compritor, one guy that I fought,
Rodrigo Medeiros, I fought him a few times.
And he's the only one that I heard saying about me, there's like, no, Roger's not strong.
He's not, he's technical and he can create strength, but he's not strong.
He meant that as a compliment?
Yeah, I think so.
No, I think he was honest because I think he's the only one who could see that.
So I think that's a compliment.
So he's technically really strong, so you had an incredible match with him.
Is there a insight you have about how you went from a person who was not very good,
but had a dream, a confident dream, a vision to somebody that was actually good?
Was there something to the practice sessions, were you getting reps on a specific techniques?
I'd never done anything special because I'm in a GM training equally with everybody else.
But I've never did anything on the side different than anybody else.
So I was in the school training the exact same way as everybody else.
In terms of schedule, yes, but what was, can you reverse engineer what was going through
your mind?
Because there's so many different ways to actually mentally approach the same exact
training session.
I'm going to try to be.
So in some part it's competitive.
At the core of it is I want to be better than these particular people.
You're going to keep beating me.
I'm going to keep coming back at you.
And to do that, I have to solve problems.
I have to figure out how to do stuff.
You catch me once, I'm going to keep on coming, trying to not get caught on that.
At which point did you develop a game that was basically the famous white belt game
of the very basics, the very fundamentals of jiu-jitsu?
Like saying, I'm going to beat you.
There was never a conscious decision to try to have a basic jiu-jitsu.
First, I think there's a big misconception there.
Okay.
My jiu-jitsu is not basic.
Mr. Haji Gracie, it's not basic.
It's not basic.
It's not old school.
I think people, they just don't see that.
It's extremely complex.
In a way that is people they cannot copy.
I teach people, you know, I can teach you the cross-collar choke.
But the one thing that people, they don't realize is not the move is you need to practice
the movement you learn is the practice over and over again.
Like it took me years.
When I say years, I'm like years after I was a black belt, I was able to choke people
out with the cross-collar choke in the mouth effectively, years after I got my black belt.
So that's something that you learn first day, first week.
So I can teach you, it makes no difference.
You know the theory, but until you apply it in them, you help you.
Of course, the more details you learn, you know, the more tools you have to practice,
but it's still very complex because it's not about the move itself.
It's about how can you control the movement of the other person.
He's resisting, you're blocking, you cannot predict what you do and he's doing a whole
bunch of moves to block you.
Every single move you do a step of the way because it's a progression of move from beginning
to end till I apply the choke.
It's a progression of move and there's not one way to get that.
There's many ways because how many ways can you block?
You can put your arm in every single angle, we have both arms, you can bridge.
So it's dealing with all that, that is the complexity of the position.
But that goes for everything, like every single move, my strong moves outside, it took me
years developing them, years.
So it's, and you're going to tell me that's basic, so go try and do it.
What the other person is defending, that's the thing because most of the things that
I do, I've been doing them for years and they know that I'm going to do and I can still
get it most of the times.
That's the hardest is when they know what's coming and you can still do it.
And you said that the way you're able to do that, you just have to do it right.
What do you learn by doing all the steps along the way and just for people who don't know
cross color choke from the mount.
So you just start in a neutral place, there's people on their feet and then you either,
then you get to the ground somehow and then there's the person on top and on bottom and
then there's a guard with the legs between the two people and then you can get past the
guard as you get past the guard and you into side control and so on, you get more and more
and more dominant positions.
So mount is considered to be one of the most dominant positions.
It's when you're past their legs sitting on top of their stomach, putting pressure on
them and cross color choke is using their jacket to, how would you explain that, to
choke them with their jacket?
So you have the collars, I put my both hands on your collars and when I squeeze, you press
your neck so it blocks the venue, you go to sleep.
So you choke people with your hands in the wrist, you put them, you know, you grab the
collars to get the wrist around people's neck and you squeeze.
Yeah.
The discovery of that is fascinating.
I mean, cause it's interesting.
It's like, you know, you can imagine there's all kinds of ways to choke a human being.
What animals do it with their like mouth, right?
They put like their jaws around the, and the fact that you can kind of discover this methodology
of the right kind of positioning and then it becomes an art form, like of why this,
why not this, right?
Or why not this or something?
Like to figure all that out.
I think we practice, that will come easy.
Over time you figure out what works and what not and then, and then more further and further
details and subtleties start to emerge.
Anyway, on that process of beating, of being able to beat some of the best people in the
world and the thing they know is coming, what is, what's the difference between the white
belt doing that and Hydro Gracie doing that?
The thing that's so hard to explain.
What do you think you're picking up?
Is it some tiny, tiny details and muscle movements?
It is.
It's many tiny details because it's the whole movement itself.
It's the perception from beginning to end.
Like every step of that movement, it's important and precise.
So it's, you know, you miss once one detail on the way, it collapse.
So when I say that with the black belt, the black belt has no control over the whole movement.
It's thinking beginning and end.
So he goes straight to, you know, straight to the neck, regardless, he cannot read the
other person.
If it's, you know, if it's time to let go, if it's the time to go for a neck, it should
I be pushing here before I get my hand in?
You know, is this the right time to go deep or should I deal with this first before the
second hand?
That's at the beginning.
It's at the white belt.
Yeah.
At the very beginning of the journey.
Yeah.
But to just think, finish.
And then as you get progress, you see that there's like this giant tree of possibilities
that you're almost feeling your way down.
I mean, would you be able to teach?
Do you even know what you're doing?
By the details.
Okay.
But it's hard to convert into words, probably.
No.
That's possible.
Then you don't know what you're doing.
So what is, what is some most important details that you could say maybe positioning of the
hand to the gripping?
Is it the positioning of your body, the posture?
Is there some interesting like insights?
It's a combination because first you have to put your body in a very strong position
that you don't require your hands to hold them out.
So the choke is that first because I can always use my hands on the floor to stop you
escaping.
Yeah.
So if I have to, my body has to handle that.
The way I position myself, I have to do it in a way that don't require my hands for
balance.
Okay.
Why is the mouse at your dominant position?
It doesn't make any sense, right?
Like you're just sitting on top of the stomach of a person.
It makes all sense.
If you think, forget fighting, forget jujitsu, like you've never trained, what's the one
position, the most dominant position you can get over another human being?
One.
The most.
For you.
Which one it is?
Like the most dominant position that you can get over another human being.
So if we were just, because the way I think about it is putting myself in like a six,
seven, eight year old self without knowing any martial arts and adding all the brother
who would beat the shit out of me.
Yeah.
It probably was Mount.
It, what?
But well, yes.
Okay.
So we both didn't know, but if we knew something, it'd probably be back control.
If in the back control, you're under the other person, the thing being under is the most
dominant position.
It can be over another person.
You mean like a back control?
If I'm on your back.
Oh, like that.
You can move.
You can roll.
I cannot stop you rolling.
Yeah.
Maybe you can even stand up.
How dominant is that?
Yeah.
But if we're the same size, both untrained.
If I don't, it doesn't matter.
Have you seen kids do, they do that?
Okay.
Mount looks and feels like dominance when you're a two, eight year old's fighting.
Okay.
I don't know.
I don't know why it feels that way.
It could be some animalistic thing.
Maybe it is actual dominance.
I don't know.
It feels like if you're untrained, you can just buck your way out of it.
It feels unstable.
It feels unstable to hold them out unless you know what you're doing, right?
No.
No?
If you want to put both of your hands on the floor.
Yeah.
Just your hands.
Do you think it's easy to take somebody off?
Yeah.
Maybe not.
Do you think it's easy to remove the hand and bring them out?
The hands on the floor.
I'm straight.
I'm leaning in.
Yeah.
You're right.
It's hard.
I mean, you don't need to know fighting to hold yourself down.
Yeah.
But you're right.
When you take the arms off and balancing, then it gets tricky because when you're trying
to, I think what happens, I'm thinking back to eight-year-old because my brother's five
years older than me and he would do the usual, like stop hitting yourself thing.
I think he would be in mount, like hitting me with my own hands out of place of love,
of course.
I love him deeply and it was very formative and positive experience for me.
Okay.
I think, yeah, the weakness is when the person who has you mount takes their arms off to
do something.
But even if you keep your hands up in there, when I'm falling, when I'm falling, I'm speaking
about untrained people.
I feel like they get greedy.
They try to do stuff.
The other day, I watched my nine-year-old daughter win a friend's house.
There's a whole bunch of kids there, they're playing.
When I looked, she's mounting a boy, her aides, her thighs, he cannot escape.
Wow.
She probably has seen some footage.
No, she trains.
She's been training for, I'll say a year and a half, but she's not much.
I mean, she's a nine-year-old daughter, a girl, over a boy.
Has she seen footage of you?
Maybe she picked up from that.
No, but she's been training for a year and a half, so she has an idea of what mount is.
But I mean, in terms of our skills, I don't never taught her the mount.
She has lessons at the academy, like any other kid.
Did she make him cry?
No, but he couldn't escape.
Which other position would she be able to hold that boy?
In the back, he would roll it out.
That's true.
He couldn't come out from underneath, like they're kids.
There is no other most dominant position that he can pin the other person.
Couldn't you argue from that perspective, side control?
No.
No?
In side control, you have to hold the other person, and you're not free.
You cannot release them.
But inside control, your hips are not on top of theirs, so they can't buck you off, right?
You're holding them a little bit, and then you can hit them with one hand.
His head is here.
You're going to hurt him here.
But the time you're doing that, but then he has his arms free.
And if you turn towards your legs, then he's away from your arms.
You don't even have the perfect angle.
I mean, it is a good position.
You can hit, you can dominate, but it's not the best position to be over the other person.
He can knee you in the head.
At the same time, you punch him, then there's a knee coming to your head.
I love playing devil's advocate with Roger Gracie, about two eight-year-olds fighting.
Your head is closer to his head.
Maybe he can throw you a punch.
Would you choose to be in side control of a mount?
Getting in the head?
Well, for a person who in competition prefers neon belly over a mount, but that's my weakness.
That's my failure as a human being.
Holding mount can be tricky.
It's very hard.
Of course, it's hard.
But what is easy?
Side control in neon belly is easier.
But to submit...
Neon belly is easy.
I'm not saying black belt level.
I'm saying, well, maybe even black belt level.
Easy for what?
To hold somebody?
To make them squirm and hurt, to create openings.
Yeah, but go do that with a big guy.
Yeah, you can't.
You can't.
Yeah.
He's going to push you back and come up.
In the mount, he can't sit up, not when you mounted him.
The thing is also about mount is people on the bottom of mount panic more.
So they fight harder.
They panic, they expose.
It's the most exposure you have.
Because the post arms are free.
You cannot touch him.
His head is too high.
There's nothing he can do.
His legs won't get you anywhere.
He might touch your lower back.
It's like nothing.
Most exposed being in the mount.
Already you hold me side control a thousand times.
The mount told me having to look up.
Your face come down on me.
Side control.
I hug you.
You cannot hurt me.
Okay, you hold me, but I'm hugging you.
If I hug you tight, what can you do against me?
It seems maybe it's just from, and again, I'm arguing just for the fun of it, but it seems
like a more difficult skill to learn to apply a huge amount of pressure and weight from
mount.
Just apply pressure and weight from mount?
Not apply pressure, but be heavy.
You don't necessarily need to be heavy.
You don't.
No.
Why do you, as people say, you feel extremely heavy?
If I'm being heavy, I cannot attack.
I have to choose.
I can be heavy just to pain them, take the energy out to make them suffer, but the moment
that I decide to attack, I can only be heavy if I'm sitting up straight.
That's when all my weight can drops down.
If I'm high, then I'm sitting on your chest and on your solar plexus.
That's the worst position to be seated on the person because that's where he breathed.
In a high mount, sitting up straight, I can be very heavy.
I can make people feel my weight and be very uncomfortable, but I'm not in a position to
attack.
The moment that I want to attack, my body has to lean forward.
I have to approach the neck or the arms.
The moment that I do that, my weight comes off, my hips, it goes to my knees the way
it is off you.
But at that point, if you have...
Now I'm attacking.
I'm no longer heavy on you.
But you want to be at that point to remove any of the defenses they have or some of the
defenses by getting their elbows with you.
Now I'm either trying to get your collar or bringing your elbow across to attack the
arm lock.
What are some interesting details along the way that are tough to get to figure out?
What were the big leaps for you from white belt to the best in the world?
You're trying to attack the neck, putting one hand in the collar, you're priving yourself
that hand to pace it on the floor.
So now you're vulnerable to get bridged, to get rolled over.
Because if your hands are free, trying to roll you over, you stopped.
The moment that you put your hand in the person's collar, now you have to be very careful with
your body positioning, very careful.
The distribution of the weight.
And how high you sit, how tall your upper body goes.
And then the biggest challenge comes as you're trying the second hand.
That's the, for the choke, that's the biggest challenge, the second hand.
Because you already have, you already don't have one hand.
Now you are trying the second hand.
If one of my hand is in, you are defending yourself, you have two hands.
One hand is already on one side, this side is getting attacked.
You have two hands blocking that.
I have one hand, there's no help for that hand.
I cannot remove anything.
That's the biggest challenge, getting one hand getting past two and not getting rolled
over.
I also have two hands on bottom, I have two hands and it can also turn and do all kinds
of stuff.
And my whole mind and everything is focused on that second hand.
It's a big challenge, it's hard, very hard.
Is there an art to getting the first hand into a place where you...
It's less of an art because it's easier.
I'll say most times I get my first hand in is when you're trying some move.
You're trying to escape, you're pushing.
I get the first hand in as an opportunity.
And it's going to sit there for a while.
And I go as deep as I can, so the first hand, because the second hand is the hardest, I
have to compensate the first hand to be as deep as I can.
If I cannot get the first hand in deep, I won't try the second.
I need that first hand deep, then I go for the second.
And it's deep and everything is super tight?
Super tight.
The first hand has to be super tight, otherwise the chance of failing is very big.
Does the opponent usually feel like they're screwed at that point also?
No, as you put in the first hand in, the moment that I position myself just prior to
attempt the second hand, I think the way my body is positioned, the way I'm collapsing
with my weight and they feel it's like I'm...
This is terrible.
Yeah, how long did it take you to figure out how to reposition your weight once the first
hand is in?
Very quickly, because I got bridged out.
So that there's a good feedback?
Because one mistake you out, one off positioning you out.
But you still have to do that against the best people in the world.
Where's the way out for most people?
If you were in Mount against Brescia or some of the best defenses in the world?
The way out is to obviously defend themselves and prevent the first hand to get deep.
And I'll say the best thing that they could do is try to change my positioning on the
mount in a way that pushed me to a very low mount.
Try to change the way I'm dominating you, not to be...
Get me off the high mount pretty much.
Are you always...
Is it a slow?
Is it a fast thing to go from low to slow?
Fast mount, slow.
A high mount.
Slow, very slow.
Because I need to beat your arms, because you're holding me down.
And then the arms need to come out.
It's a slow process.
Okay.
And you just...
Is there like a...
Yeah.
So I use my legs against your arms.
Yeah.
So it's my legs pushing your arms.
But how do you get your legs into the elbows?
As long as it has to come under the tip of your elbow, because now the legs will start
forcing your arms up.
So your legs are like spread out there?
No.
They're in.
Your elbow cannot get inside my leg, because that means I'm in a very low mount.
And then I cannot attack, because I cannot ignore that, because the moment that I attack,
that will...
You will start pushing my leg to push me up.
What's the secret to getting the second hand in?
There's two ways.
Either you go for fingers inside, which is the hardest, because the moment that your
two hands are defending, you'll be blocking the way.
And I cannot clear and attack two hands against one.
So I go thumb and I go behind a year.
So my grip goes because for you to defend, you need to get there.
And when you get there, your elbow will expose the arm lock.
So it's hard.
You put the thumb in, and then there's the dreaded, like the other person just waits
for you to loop the arm over.
Yeah, but that, this over.
Once you get the thumb in, it's over.
Okay.
No.
But when I'm there, if I get that, because they're bridging, they try, I'm not using
their hand to post.
Now your head is...
My head is very close to the floor when I've tried to bridge, and my forehead will touch
the floor that would be used as a hand.
But it's not on the floor.
Not necessarily.
Because if it's on the floor, my body collapse over you.
So there's no place for my hand for me to work on your neck.
So I need some space between us.
So I don't completely collapse.
Or maybe you can bob up and down, kind of bob up and down.
I try to keep a gap between us.
So that pursuit that takes many, many, many, many years, I don't know if you've seen Jiro
Dreams of Sushi, the doing the simple thing that's not so simple, but it kind of looks
simple, over and over and over and over and over and presumably getting much better over
time.
It becomes very simple.
But you're picking up details probably along the way.
There's wisdom along the way.
What is that?
Is that there's like lessons that you just kind of accumulate over time, like one training
sessions, you'll see maybe like the positioning of the thumb, like this detailed positioning
of the thumb or something like this.
And then you like, okay, you like load that in.
There will be very basic because there is not that many different ways.
Maybe one, two.
I just do one.
Any other is not as strong because it's about getting a strong grip on your collar.
I mean, the thumb goes inside or is it the thumb in or four fingers in, but it's getting
a strong grip on the collar as long as this is just holding and feeling strong.
So that's just two options.
So it's the dynamic stuff along the way.
And then some of that is timing too.
It's timing.
Are you also like making people like faking them out, making them think about something
else?
No, not at that point.
It's because I cannot fake anything else at that point because I would have to change
my positioning to, you know, maybe to fake an arm lock.
Then I have to move out from that.
So then I will lose that control I have.
So what's the process towards mastery?
If you were to convert that to something that generalizes beyond jiu-jitsu, how can you
get that good at a simple thing?
Practice.
And what?
That simple.
The same exact thing over and over.
It's just a matter of how long it will take you.
So all...
That's true.
That's true.
I mean, like I said, that's true.
Look how long it took me.
People give up along the way.
There is intricacies to that journey towards perfection.
There's a lot of people that do jiu-jitsu for decades and don't get better.
No, because they don't train the way they should.
They don't train to get better.
They train to get tough.
That's a big difference.
Most people, they train to get tough, so they are tough.
Like we were talking before, they don't practice the weakness.
You want to be good at, you want to be really good at jiu-jitsu.
You have to practice your weakness, not your strength.
You have to practice everything, but you have to be equally strong in every position.
They all are exactly the same.
Your guard top bottom, side control top bottom, turtle, half guard, mount, back.
I mean, you pick, take down.
And then you get into details of escaping triangle, applying the triangle, escaping
arm lock, different scenarios of, you know, the one thing is defending the arm lock when
you have your arms very close to your body.
The other thing is to defend the arms when your arm is almost getting.
And then when he got your arm.
So there's so many things to practice that you need to repeat them over and over again
until you confidence enough that when you get there, you have a chance.
And you can do the same kind of thing for even the final stages of a cross choke for
a month.
Everything.
I mean, of course, like you don't practice escaping the arm lock with a full arm straight
because, you know, that's gone.
I mean, you practice, you know, you practice escaping the arm lock.
When he takes your arm, you have, you know, you have a chance of trying to escape, but
you don't practice.
You know, okay, take my arm.
When I say go, go.
I mean, you got, you know, you put the arm that is like, you get injured doing that.
Escaping the cross collar choke, it's, I mean, escape not letting the person get there.
You can escape.
You can practice escaping triangles because, you know, it's like, it's, you have a way
better chance of escaping triangle than, okay, mount to me, put both hands in my neck.
I mean, it's over, you know, don't be there.
What's the best submission in jiu-jitsu?
Choke, I would say.
From which position?
If I gave you a billion dollars to start in a position, like in a submission and you
only get the billion, if you get the submission, which one would you start?
Cross collar choke in the mouth.
Cross collar choke in the mouth.
Not from the back.
No, you have a better chance of escaping from the back.
Really?
Yeah.
Even with the hooks.
Even with everything.
Do you think some people disagree with you?
I don't care.
I have a better escape.
I have a better chance of escaping from the back than if you mount to me, put my hands
on my neck.
So, if you were facing yourself and I will give you a billion dollars to escape, you
would pick from the back a thousand times over.
Really?
No comparison.
You have like a, with hooks, with like a triangle.
It doesn't matter.
You can do whatever you want.
Like a body triangle?
Okay.
Okay.
Really?
A thousand times over.
No questions.
But you, the mount is a super controlling position.
It's not just.
Because cross collar choke in the mount, the moment that you put both hands on my neck,
you know, you have to, your arms need to be very close to your body to attack.
So that means there's very little space between us.
So that means there's very little scape space for you to work on your escape.
And the moment that you can not bridge, let's suppose I have, you know, the person has a
good mouth so you can not bridge them off.
What else?
You don't have space to try to work on your defense.
Being in the back, I have all the space around me to work on my defense and my arms.
I have the mobility to bring them anywhere.
So I, because of that, it gives me a much better chance.
And you cannot, I can move my body.
You feel my back, you cannot pin me.
I cannot take you off my back.
First I need to defend the choke, but you have no control over my body.
So that means there's still a lot of movement that I can try to use to escape.
In the mount, there's no movement.
I'm pinned down, I cannot move, and I have no space between us to escape.
Well, the argument against that, this is great, is that on the bottom of mount, I do have
my hands between.
So you're saying they're pinned, there's nothing.
Between where?
I mean, you could get them in theory.
You could somehow, you could.
But there's no, you can, but then there's no space.
They'll be squeezed between our bodies.
If it's an incredible, if it's an incredible mount.
No, it does not mount.
How standing?
If I put both hands on your neck, if I'm going to go for the cross collar choke, after I
get my hands in, the next step is to pull you close to me.
So it's this, my arms need to be close.
But I can put, there's the hands that could do something.
They can come in, but they are very limited space between us.
Yes, yes.
No, I mean to push your body away.
Only if we're standing, not if your back is against the floor.
Sure.
The argument against the mount is, or the argument for back controls being the most
dominant position is even though I have hands, I can't really use them effectively as effective.
Not in the mount.
There's no space.
In the mount, there's no space.
There's no space.
You can try.
I mean, you can squeeze your hand in.
I mean, there's still things that you could do, but they're so limited.
So if you pulled the 100 best competitors of all time, what do you think they would answer
to that?
Do you think most would agree with you?
I don't care.
It will show me their skills, their ability to see.
Okay.
So the perfect mount versus the perfect back control.
There's no question.
Okay.
There's no question.
For me, I mean, argue with me, like show me, because I'm not being stubborn because I'm
being.
Scientific.
Exactly.
I mean, so explain it to me why the back, it would be harder, it would be better to your
position to finish the mount.
If you can explain it to me why, I might change my mind.
I was trying to, but I don't have the cred.
I'm like a middle school science student trying to talk to Einstein here.
Okay.
As you, who do you think is the greatest jiu-jitsu competitor of all time?
Can you make the case for some of them, Marcelo, Buchecia, Leandro Loh?
I'll have to go with Buchecia because look at the, how many titles he has.
I mean, he has by far more than Marcelo.
Marcelo stopped quite early, Leandro Loh has eight, but Buchecia is better than him.
What do you think makes Buchecia so good?
He's a heavyweight.
He moves like a lightweight, he moves very fast, but he's very agile for his size.
So the agility combined with aggression?
Yeah.
So it's very hard to control him because he moves fast and he's 112 kilos, 115 sometimes
or 110.
I'm not sure, but he's about around that.
So 240 in pounds.
So when you are agile, 240 pounds, that makes it very hard to control you.
What about making the case for some others?
What about the little guys?
What about Marcelo?
If you were to make the case for him being the strongest, what makes Marcelo good?
Marcelo is extremely technical.
I mean, I think he's one of my favorite jiu-jitsu fighters because in a technical way, I think
he's probably one of the best.
His raw technique and a bunch of different positions for submissions.
He's not very powerful physically, he's not very strong, but he can make himself very
strong and his technique is very, very high level.
Have you ever trained with him?
No, I fought him twice.
Yeah.
He's much smaller than me.
What happened in those matches?
The first fight, I tapped him, I think, five minutes.
In which submission?
Choke from the back, call a choke from the back.
In the second time, I bit him by points, but a very large, I think 12-2.
Actually, just to continue, I wonder if John Donahue would agree with you about mountain
back.
I can't wait to, this is a bare versus lying conversation, but I'm looking, there's statistics
about, I'm not letting this go.
There's statistics about, oh, look at that, Hodger.
What do you know?
Looking at Hodger Gracie statistics for most successful submissions.
Choke from the back is the most, so how do you explain that as a scientist?
Because people panic when I'm out.
They turn the back.
I choked him out.
That's one explanation.
But for people, it is interesting that, of course, this doesn't capture, this captures
a lot of your major matches, and we should say that you've submitted most of your opponents,
so you rarely win on points, usually wins submissions.
Choke from the back is most of them, then cross-choke from mountain.
Arm bar is a lot too, so 18 from choke from back, 12 cross-choke, 10 arm bar, five RNC,
rear naked, it's for no gi.
So 2000 and Ezekiel is very powerful, I took, is a strong weapon.
Also from mountain.
Also from mountain.
That's when you can't get the one hand in.
No, because the Ezekiel most times I use against people is the attack that as soon as I get
to the mountain, when they're trying to escape the open up, and I get them.
It has to be at that initial timing.
So it's not a thing you used to bother them in order to create?
Either I get it right away or I don't bother trying much, because you need to keep one
hand behind the head, and you're naturally on that position as soon as you mount, most
of the times.
And the moment that you mount someone, no one accepted, they go mounted, they're going
to explode to get out.
So holding the head, it gives you a better way to dominate them initially, to deal with
that explosiveness on the initial, on the beginning.
And then, but then you have to let go to try it.
You're very limited holding the head.
In terms of Goats, Shanzhi, I feel like he doesn't get enough credit that he deserves.
He had extremely dominant performance in competition.
What about Salo and Shanzhi Hibero?
What are your thoughts about what makes them so good?
You had a bunch of tough matches with Shanzhi and Salo.
Eight times.
Eight times.
Yeah.
Eight times.
Shanzhi.
I fought Salo once.
What?
I think I'm bringing up a sore point.
Oh, did Shanzhi tap when you, or did the time run out and that was the last time you guys
faced each other?
Yeah.
2008.
That was incredible to watch.
So, I think you pulled guard with one minute left, working towards attacking.
I mean, it's probably very tough to get anything and for people who don't know, time ran out.
You had something that looked like an arm block and Shanzhi looked like he may be tapping,
but it looked like he might be just celebrating, which is most likely.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
It was, I'm not sure, because I think his arm just straight is on time finish, so I'm
not sure if he was tapping to let go, time is up, or because of the outside, most likely
the time was up.
Yeah.
And also, there's a thing where you realize there's only three, two seconds left.
You used to kind of start celebrating.
You realize that Haji's not going to be able to finish this arm bar in the time left, so
you start celebrating.
No.
I think he tapped to say the time is up.
The time is up.
Anyway, what do you think that the longevity especially is impressive with Shanzhi?
How long?
I think he doesn't get credit as much as he deserves because he pushed his career very
far and the last few years he was on his best.
So if you were to stop before, people would remember him on his highest, but he kind of
pushed more than his peak, let's say.
How hard is it for you to walk away?
We'll talk about the journey into MMA as well, but you basically, especially with the second
match against Pichai, she basically walked away on top, beating arguably the greatest
competitor of all time and just walking away.
It wasn't that hard to be honest because that was something that I was considering for a
while because the last few years of my career, let's say, it was fighting MMA at the same
time as fighting Jiu Jitsu and it's very challenging to do both.
There's not another person who ever did that because the training is a conflict with the
Waii training.
Everybody who starts doing MMA, starts focusing on MMA, the Jiu Jitsu gets worse because they
stop training with the Gi.
Everybody, no exception.
Was your Jiu Jitsu also getting worse?
No, because I made sure I kept training with the Gi and I kept fighting at least the World
Championship once a year.
That was my goal.
I'm like, I'm going to go for MMA, but I love Jiu Jitsu and I still want to fight at the
highest level, so I kept fighting once a year for a few years.
It was a challenge, especially because the two or three times when I competed at the
Worlds, it was right after I MMA fight I had and no Gi, you don't have the grips, so my
grips, it made a big difference on my grips, so I was weaker grip-wise, so I felt that,
so I knew it was unnecessary risk because if I cannot be 100%, so what am I doing this?
I'm stubborn, I love Jiu Jitsu, that's like I love fighting Jiu Jitsu.
I never loved MMA, I've liked it, but I think for Gracie, I wouldn't have done it.
So the thing you felt the most is the grips?
Yeah.
Because you went to a Gi World Championship without gripping?
No.
Like just pretending it's no Gi match, they get to grip you, but you don't.
So grips are essential?
Of course.
I mean how can you choke someone?
Like if your grips are weak, your forearms will fatigue and then you will have no power
and then you cannot do anything.
Yeah.
You could still arm lock, so I meant more not for the submission, but for the control
of the game of the dance.
But do you need to grip to get there?
To get there.
And if your grips are weak?
But you also have grips in no Gi, can't you use those grips?
No.
It's a thought experiment.
So I'm trying to understand how essential...
Get a no Gi guy, go fight with the Gi.
They panic.
They panic?
Of course.
Everyone panics.
A bear panics when they're in the water with a shark, but that doesn't mean the bear
can't still win when it stops panicking and relaxes.
It's not possible.
Oh, that's another discussion.
Can a bear beat a shark in the water?
Actually, I need to put maybe a polar bear because they're pretty good at swimming.
Okay.
It's not possible for the no Gi guy to win, but the bears is a further discussion.
What was to you the biggest difference between mixed martial arts and jujitsu?
What are some interesting differences, some interesting insights, even just about the
grappling within both sports?
So the biggest difference for me between MMA and jujitsu is first is the speed.
Like jujitsu, you know, like a 10 minutes match, I can take my time.
There's no dangers that forces me to move fast.
In MMA, you have to be 100% sharp in fast from first second of the fight because punches
are coming.
You can get knocked out anytime.
One mistake, you're out.
Jujitsu don't have that.
Like it's, I don't have to worry about quick submissions because it's all about the way
my body is positioned.
You know, my grips, it's easy to avoid, it's easier to see it coming.
It's like a quick submission, a surprise.
It only works if you make a mistake.
If you're not correct positionally, otherwise it's impossible.
It's extremely difficult.
MMA is not, I mean, one split second mistake and when the person comes, you have to respond.
You have to match his pace.
I mean, you can't slow down, but it's like you're forced to respond.
So it's a much faster, it's a lot more physical, a lot more.
And you need to be physical, much better conditioning, faster.
It's explosiveness.
It's much harder.
Is it possible in MMA to calm things down?
They change the rules, yeah.
Five minute rules now.
Ah, I see.
So like, I just meant actually technically speaking, is there a way to take an opponent
that's being exceptionally aggressive?
You can, clinch.
But then he takes you down, he keeps moving, something is hard to control that pace.
You can.
You don't, if you play defense, you save more energy than if you try to be the aggressor
and respond.
And even getting to the clinch is very difficult.
Yeah.
You have no way to hold yourself there.
So that was the biggest challenge for me in MMA is the speed, because I'm a very slow
start fighter.
If you look at my matches, I start very slow, because if I go hard, I fatigue faster.
So for me, that was the hardest part of, is to start fast.
What about on the ground?
Is there something different, more challenging on the ground?
Being in the bottom, yes.
There's punches, punch callings.
How fundamentally different is jiu-jitsu with punches on the ground?
Changes everything, everything.
Which parts?
The distance that you allow your opponent to be on you, the techniques that you choose
to apply, you have to, your body has to be aware of the punches and you are a lot more
limited on your attacks.
So you're known for your closed guards.
How does your closed guard have to adjust?
How does the positioning of your hands have to adjust when you're on the bottom of closed
guard?
So in the guard, especially in the closed guard, you have to either keep the person very close
to you or you have to kick him away.
That's in the guard, is either I'm hugging you or get away from me.
And in jiu-jitsu, you're allowed to have a middle...
Yeah, in jiu-jitsu, there's a lot.
You can allow the person to be.
What about getting an arm lock or triangle submissions from the guard?
Is that fundamentally different because you don't have the middle game?
It's much harder.
There's barely no open guard in MMA, very little.
Because the open guard, there's a distance between you and him.
There's a distance.
See how you cannot control, it's much harder to control that punch coming.
And I have to position myself away to block that and it limited my attacks, my options
of attacks.
Is there a reason, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you do open guard much in
jiu-jitsu and no gi.
Is there a reason for that?
It's harder with the explosive person because when they're moving fast, then you have to
try to slow them down.
So you let guards that allow you to control the person and closed guard is the ultimate
control.
It's not ultimate control, but closed guard puts you in a position that I'm attacking
and you're defending.
You cannot attack me from my closed guard.
We can argue that there might be one or two attacks, but it's very, very, very limited
and depends on what you're fighting against.
I hate the closed guard, like being on top, well against a good closed guard is very...
No one likes.
It's terrible.
It's horrible.
Yeah.
It's one sided.
Yeah.
So even the guard and it's one sided.
The person, the bottle has the advantage.
I can be completely relaxed in my closed guard and I cannot be completely relaxed.
Know what the most annoying thing is, is somebody who is both good and extremely confident
with the closed guard.
Yeah.
Because they have that smug energy about them.
They know how much unpleasant, how much work it takes to pass this anyway, especially people
with longer legs.
Is there something you wish you did differently in how you started training at MMA in that
trajectory and figuring out how to train, how to get good?
What have you learned about getting good at MMA from having done it?
If you were to start now, for example?
I think I would have to dedicate it more.
I didn't dedicate enough.
Both like literally time, number of training sessions, but also mental.
Training wise, physical.
Yeah.
I think a lot more of the physical part of it.
The strikes, everything.
The strike from the beginning, it's because, I mean, I love Juju too.
Like I truly love all the aspects of it, fighting, training, you know, the practice, the competition.
I don't have that for MMA.
So it's hard to give your heart to it, something that you don't have the passion to it.
Like Jujitsu, you know, I gave my heart to it.
Like I did everything that I had to, MMA, I never, I didn't do that.
So that's why it was, I won't say it was wrong for me to do it because I don't regret doing.
I always, you know, looking back as a kid, when I decided to, you know, to be, to take
Jujitsu for life, I already knew that at some point I would have to do MMA.
There's almost like that's the path of a Gracie.
You know, when you're ready, you go do MMA.
So that was like a duty versus a love.
That was not a choice.
That was like, I have to, that's just the life I took.
He will lead that way.
Are you proud of that stuff?
You know, go against the natural love and towards more duty.
I think I don't regret it because if I hadn't done it, I would feel there was something missing.
So I don't regret doing, I would regret not doing.
The tricky thing is the choice to go to MMA could have compromised your ability to win
against Pachesha and it didn't and it's a fascinating case study.
It still doesn't make sense to me.
After all those years, you're able to come back and go against the best person in the
world and beat him.
And I had to because the first fight we had, I had something stuck in my throat for a long
time.
So you think about that?
Oh yeah.
I'm like, as soon as that first fight finished, I had that got stuck in my throat that I already
at that point, I knew I'm going to have to fight him again.
I knew.
I always knew because there's no choice.
I have to.
Oh man.
All right.
Well, in terms of Nogi, who do you think is the best Nogi competitor of all time?
There's no question, you know, his Gordon is, I mean, it's, I don't think it's right
to say the best compared to of all time because he's still very young.
I think that's something that he can be angry in the end of when the person, you don't want
him to get lazy.
You know what I'm saying?
No, no, I mean, but you cannot pray someone in the middle of his career, you know?
So you cannot call him the best ever.
He's 26 or 27.
So it's, I mean, he's, he's great.
He's very good.
He's ahead of all of other competitors, I think.
And I mean, he's having an amazing career, you know, he's doing amazingly well.
So I mean, when he's, when he finished, when he finally retired, then you can argue with
like,
You know what?
There's wisdom in that.
It matters how you finish, right?
Of course.
It's very interesting.
I think that Nogi is relatively new, that Nogi's scene, that was not, that wasn't a scene before.
I think he started now on his generation, you know, his time, because before, like when
I was competing, Nogi was just ADCC, there's nothing else.
Every two years.
But first was only in the Emirates, you know, you had to go there to compete.
So there was not even a scene that was like this one tournament that gives a lot of money
to, you know, to competitors, to fighters and brings fighters from other modalities,
you know, Mark Carr, Van Arsdale, you know, some wrestlers, Greco Roman, you know, they
can compete against each other.
And they, you know, they create that set of rules, try not to favor anyone.
So that was it.
So you cannot be called the greatest Nogi of all time if you only have one tournament
every two years.
Only in the Emirates they have to be invited to.
But I think now, you know, it grew a lot.
Now we have so many different tournaments, now we have a scene, you have people that
only train Nogi, they're fully dedicated to Nogi, and you have supervised different tournaments.
So now it's, you know, now it's professionally.
You can do just Nogi now, which before was unheard of it, because you have one or two
tournaments.
If you cannot be called a Nogi fighter, fighting once, once, seven, two years, twice, every
two years.
Yeah, now there's entire systems that are optimized for Nogi that could be fundamentally
different.
Like, what do you think about the body lock?
Like this passing with the body lock, I don't, I don't know if you get an understanding
of it.
Yeah.
I think it's okay.
It's a, it's a popular way to, what is it, to maybe to apply, to stay tight, to stay
tight.
Very close to your opponent, so he can't push great distance, he can push away.
But somehow it shuts down the hips as well.
Yeah.
Makes it more difficult to, yeah, kind of trap your legs, you see, your back is stuck
on against the floor.
Are you like, scientifically curious about these new developments?
Do you think, do you, do you have answers in your head to them?
Most.
The body lock is one interesting one, obviously foot locks is another, and that'll mean just
the foot locks, but the whole like, control aspect of foot locks.
That's interesting.
And there's other, there's other interesting stuff.
That is really into the wrestling aspect, but not wrestling, wrestling, but wrestling
everywhere.
Jiu-jitsu at all levels of the plane.
That's very interesting because, you know, obviously Jiu-jitsu has not really been, you
know, unlike like freestyle wrestling and so on, has not been this, like a systematic
scientific rigorous exploration of wrestling.
It's like you're on your feet and you're on the ground, not, not intermixed.
There's a lot of interest.
John is academic.
He tried to, you know, numbers, mathematics, everything.
You kind of are too.
Yeah.
I mean, I am, because you have to understand what you're doing, you know, there's a, everything
there's a step-by-step, like logistic, like details, every single move, there's a reason
for it.
You know, there's things around that happens.
It's, the more you know, the better you are, right?
The more knowledgeable, compared to whatever.
So I think with the foot locks, with the no-gi, like if you look back, you know, if you think
of, used to be seen as a really bad thing to attack the foot, it wasn't seen as a good
options of attack.
Mainly.
What is it like, respectable gentleman don't attack the leg or what?
No, no, because if you look back, you know, the tournaments, the, when they were created,
all the rules and everything else was to simulate a real fight with no punches, when I was having
a gi.
I mean, if you ask, what is Jiu-Jitsu?
Like what are you trying, what's the main goal of Jiu-Jitsu?
To dominate your opponent.
What's the main goal of fighting?
Is we fighting?
It's, of course, submission is the ultimate goal.
But the, you know, before that, the main goal is to dominate you.
Like we're fighting, I have to dominate you.
And then the submission comes.
And foot locks, it's, I don't require any domination on you.
I don't, I don't need to be in a dominant position to attack your foot.
And is this, if I attack your foot, you're still free to knock me out.
If your body goes down to my foot, I can still come closer, you'll stand up and I'll punch
you.
It's not a good position to be in a real fight, to attack in the foot.
I mean, how many times you've seen that going bad, that going bad in a MMA fight?
I mean, of course, you had some sort of success with the hook.
It's no questions, but how many times went wrong?
People go knocked out attacking the foot.
So you can't say it's the best position to be.
It's okay to go, but it's a very high-risk position to go.
So that's why it's not in a real situation, it's not seen as a good thing.
So when you translate that to Jiu-Jitsu, when attacking the foot, it's not seen as a good
thing because when you reflect that to a real situation, it's not going to go down well.
So it was always seen as a, as an easy way out, you know, easy cut.
You're trying, you're trying to do the easy path.
You can't pass my guard, you can't dominate me, and then you're trying to attack my foot.
That's why it was always seen as a, you know, not as a best, a great submission, a way to win.
But the sad side effect of that is it was completely underdeveloped because of that?
Exactly.
Of course.
So people never really developed that.
But now, the determines, the fighting, it got completely, not completely, but it got
some, it's no longer seen as, you know, as a simulation of the real thing.
Now it's a sport.
It's only seen as a sport.
So now it doesn't matter if you attack my foot, you cannot punch me.
So why is it bad now to attack the foot?
It's just not seen as a bad thing anymore.
And it, it, it now, it got really developed.
I don't know.
That's another bare versus sharp question.
But you know, there is, in a street self-defense situation, it's possible to imagine where
footlocks would be effective for highly.
But I guess if you invest 10,000 hours, it's better to invest it in jokes.
Yeah.
To dominate.
If I'm, you know, if I were fighting, it's way better for me to be on your side control
on the mount, where I can pin you, be completely safe than to stay inside your legs, trying
to attack your foot.
What people would argue that there's a lot of very dominant controlling positions in
the whole football game.
Right.
It is, but you can go bad very quickly.
Yeah.
No, I mean, there's some great ways to control someone that he cannot escape, but he can
go bad very quickly.
That's the thing.
Well, even back control can go bad very quickly on the street.
So mount, I don't know, is mount a really good position?
But then there's no good position then.
There's no good position.
There's no, there's no.
Every position, there's a risk, okay?
When the foot is a way higher risk than side control mount, back.
As I'm saying, the back is not the best way to pin someone unless you underneath me.
Because I, if you try to rotate, I can sacrifice the back and just allow you to be in the mount.
Okay.
There you go.
Would you prefer mount or back mount where they're flattened?
Like a...
Like a back mount.
That a gitch.
So yeah, going back to Gordon, what do you think makes that guy so good?
We were just a ADCC, you got to see him historically dominant performance.
His dedication, the way he trains and how much he trains.
And of course, you have to add his mind, his belief to really try to be good.
The best, so I don't know what his goals are, but I know he's tried to be better than his
opponents.
So his belief are very strong.
His dedication, he probably trains more than everybody else.
I mean, I haven't seen firsthand it, but from what I hear interviews with him and everybody
else training, the way everybody trains, trying to, for my little knowledge I have, I'll bet
he trains more than everybody else and most important, how he trains.
When I...
I kind of already knew, but when I heard John podcast with you the other day, John was explaining
the preparation, the training for the ADCC and that kind of gave me a very strong idea
how they've been training all this years.
So when we said, you have to work on your weakness, so you have no weakness, he trains
a lot on his weakness, which not everyone does that.
You know, if you look other, I'm not going to name, but you know, other main schools
when like very strong competitors, great competitors, super tough people, but super tough, not great
because they train, they spa very hard.
That makes them tough.
If you want to be good, you have to work on your weakness because when you spa, like
we're saying how many times you're going to practice escaping a bad position, like a submission
hold or a pinning position, side control, mounts, it's very little the amount of time
you get to spend on those positions if you don't start there, so that he's very smart
the way he trains.
And part of that is also cerebral.
It's not just putting yourself in those positions, but talking through different ideas.
Yeah.
They talk, they like experiment, it's very like at first glance, it's like philosophical
almost, because you're trying to create systems constantly, you're trying to understand how
this fits into this big picture.
And then he goes back to what is fighting, is fighting for dominance, you know, is fighting
for their ultimate dominance positions, which is back amount.
There's no others.
And from that you finish.
So if you look back at his, you know, over the years of his past fights, before he used
to mainly focus in legs, and over the past few years, now he's mainly focusing in finishing
from the mountain back, but that's when he became really good.
So part of that is Mr. John Donahar, what do you think you've known John for a long
time?
He's a guy, interesting, special, and good.
What have you learned about Jiu Jitsu and life from John Donahar?
He's super smart, I mean, eccentric, and he lives through Jiu Jitsu.
He's 24-7 thinking better ways to teach, how to make his competitors better.
And that as a coach, when you have that dedication as a coach, that it makes the most difference
for your athletes, like, which other big team you have that coach with that motivation?
All the other schools is either someone that competes, that push the training, like André
Gauval, he's one of the competitors.
So he brings the hype in everyone else, but he doesn't have the time, he doesn't spend
the time working individually.
I mean, I'm sure he does, but it's limited because he's also a competitor.
And looking most of the other big schools, like, you don't have that, now all the leaders,
the main coaches for the other big schools, they have other things in their lives, they
don't fully dedicate it to the athletes.
John does, look at the interview, he spends hours and hours a day studying how can await
the system to make his athletes better.
Look at the results.
I enjoy just sending back and forth.
You can actually just get him, you control him essentially by sending interesting videos
and you could just see his mind.
He's going to do research on that.
Because I kept sending him videos of bears because he claimed that a lion would beat
a bear because I'd love to get your take on this.
Okay.
The bear is much bigger, much stronger, but his take is that the bears don't have experience
of fighting to the death.
That's not part of the culture, they're more scared.
In fact, he keeps sending me footage of like even like a small mountain lion scaring a
bear away because they don't want to fight.
So his idea is that it really matters your life experience, how much you fight.
It's not necessarily the skill, like the dimensions, the characteristics you have.
But then I send him, yeah, I'll show you.
People should Google this, it's bears fighting of any kind and it's pretty much the most
epic thing ever.
Here, I'll show you.
Look at these guys.
The cardio though is interesting.
You know, it's funny, I was going to mention that because I was flipping to internet, I
came around that video.
Look how big these guys are.
No, they don't buy each other.
You think it's just play?
No, they try to intimidate me because they don't want to get hurt.
So they try to size each other up, you know, they'll see the whole fighting is sizing each
other up.
They don't want to push in and the fur is so thick, so the cloth doesn't really damage
much.
They're using the tree, so maybe they, yeah, they're...
I mean, there is bites, but see, there's very little.
So the whole time, they're trying to intimidate the other one, like winning the fight by their
size.
And mostly about like the way drunk college kids fight, which is like some kind of display
of dominance versus actual...
Yeah, they're not fighting to kill.
And Bear or Tiger, you know, they fight to finish.
Unless the other one runs away, like one will die.
Yeah, lines and tigers.
Yeah, I...
But look at the cardio.
Look how bad their cardio is.
I wonder how...my favorite part is when one of them just like stands behind a tree and
says, all right.
He's holding his...
Let me catch my breath.
He sits down.
He's like, all right, you can't, it's over.
It's like, it's the equivalent in the forest, like tapping out, all right, all right, you
got me.
Let me just...
Yeah.
Look, they're both like just shot.
And but see, the thing is that I was trying to make an argument for is that we get this
rare footage.
It's not rare, but it's like hundreds of videos, but it's not millions of videos because there's
a huge number of bears.
And I was trying to say that there's some badass bear we don't know about because he
just goes in there and just does work.
And we just don't know about it because he's like everyone...
See, the thing is, if you kill a lot of other animals, you probably have a territory that
nobody's going to mess with you.
So it's very hard to catch the, like the hydrogracy of bears, you know?
He's just going to be sitting there doing nothing.
So I don't know.
I don't know.
I feel like, of course, when you corner him, John will say that if you put a bear and a
lion in a cage, the bear will win if they're forced to be to the death, but I don't know.
Oh, let me ask you another ridiculous thing before I ask you serious questions.
So Joe Rogan thinks that a tie is an effective way to attack somebody.
I can't believe I haven't, in the time in Vegas, I didn't talk to you about this.
I think it's not.
Have you ever explored this as the best choker in the world?
Have you ever explored the use, because like Jiu-Jitsu has the jacket, but the tie to me
is a pretty shitty way to choke somebody.
Like intuitively, it thinks like it's a good way, but it can slide around.
It feels like, it feels like there's no, there's no way to really pin.
You would need to.
Right.
So you use it the way you use a belt, essentially.
Yeah.
But then.
I would guess so.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't think it's, and I think if it gives you, it actually has the reverse effect,
which it gives you the false sense of confidence that you can use it, and instead it will just
distract you.
So he thinks it's a stronger way than the collar, or just a stronger way.
Yeah.
Stronger than the collar.
Stronger than the collar.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't see how.
Maybe I just.
Well, in a street fight scenario, right?
Like.
But by the time you grab the tie, the guy goes, put your nose.
But what, what George St. Pierre thinks is the best use of the ties to actually like
a, what do you call that?
So basically to off balance them.
Which is an interesting point.
I mean.
That can be used to.
Yeah.
Well, you could use the jacket for the same kind of thing.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I haven't really fully dusted it.
It's a.
I'll say jacket or tie for that perspective of unbalancing, of balancing the person.
It can be, yeah, because you, you know, you have control of the person's neck.
The collar, you know, the jacket moves.
So for the purpose of off balancing the person, I would agree with George.
See, the thing is that's the thing about martial arts is you can say all kinds of bullshit,
but until you really test it in over a period of years, the competition, you won't really
know.
I think like that's where my gut says, just how easily the time moves.
My gut says the collar.
There is something really powerful about the jacket.
There's like the way it sits.
I mean, the fact that the arms trap it from rotating.
Yeah.
Like it's a weird piece of clothing.
It's a really dangerous piece of clothing that we put on ourselves.
Yeah.
Like, and it's kind of cool that we've developed this whole martial arts system that allows
it to use that to, to do a lot of damage.
It's very interesting.
So when we're saying something that you develop over the years of practice over and over again,
going back to deficiencies of the amount of back by experience of attacking people, they,
people always had a much higher chance of escaping from the back than from my mount.
So it's, I feel if, if I mount and you get both my hands on your neck, you cannot escape.
If my hands are deep, it's over.
Like that.
I don't remember anyone escaping, but I do remember if my hands are deep on your collar
or even the real naked choke is still a hassle, like not clean.
You have some data on this.
Is there some aspect to you, to how your body is, the characteristics of your body that,
that fits a particular set of techniques.
So if we just look at you just too broadly, do you see most techniques being able to work
for most people, like what you're saying about mount versus back control.
Is this, is it possible for a different body type of the mount is not as effective?
Yeah, of course.
I'll say very big people.
They should amount.
You don't think you yourself was big?
No, big.
I mean fat.
Oh.
They should stay off the mount.
Why is that?
That's a kind of mobility.
It's like, it's, I think, you know, you don't see any, you know, like there was few ways
like 160 kilos, like, you know, in pounds, I don't know, 270 pounds of a lot of fat.
It's, you need a bit of mobility and that wouldn't, it would play against you.
Even back.
A great mount requires mobility.
Yeah.
Okay.
So even though it doesn't look like you're moving very much when you're doing a mount,
that requires mobility.
Yeah.
Because you have to reposition and weight redistribution.
Constantly adjusting your body.
All right.
The legend goes, you got very good by training mostly with lower ranks.
What was your training like in that environment?
So when I first moved to London, I was 20 years old.
I opened my school there and I had nobody to train with.
I had one guy that was teaching with me a black belt mid-weight.
It was good.
And that's it.
Brawler was, he moved to England the same time as I did, but he was in Birmingham.
So we did go together, you know, maybe twice a week closer, you know, when we were preparing
for something.
If not, then not very often, as often as we could, but let's say not that often.
And I had just called about students.
There was no one high level.
There was no one world champion in any belt to train.
And you need to create a scenario that simulates, that can simulate, you know, like a realistic
fighting.
So I think on that aspect, you know, when people said, you know, people ask why do I
have such a basic game?
I think that also influenced me sharpening up all my skills when I moved there because,
you know, when, when, if you practice with people, you know, lower level than you, you
cannot, there's nothing to, to learn from them or, you know, you can learn things and
practice with them, but outside, very complex things on them, it is not the best.
So it's, I sharpen up all my skills.
So, you know, that when I really improved everything that I already knew to a higher
level.
If you can sharpen something, if the resistance is much lower level, then a purple belt can
make it very hard for you to skip side control.
It doesn't have to be a world champion for black belt.
It's, you know, if it's one is holding you, it can be very hard.
What about on the attack?
How do you, how do you become literally by far the best person at the cross choke from
Mount by training with purple belts?
It's sometimes purple belts defends way better than black belts.
Okay.
You see, a lot of people listening to that would be like, that makes no sense.
Hydro Gracie.
How does that make any sense?
Because like a lot of the black belts, even world champion, they get to the black belt,
they're really good in what, in what they do, let's say in the guard, you know, on top or
in the bottom position, but their defense are not like very, very few people high level
have a very good defense because they don't practice.
Then that goes back to how you train, you know, you can be very tough, very tough.
You'll make a terrible defense because you're not going to practice your weakness.
So your weakness is still going to be terrible.
You can have the best guard in the world, impossible to pass.
The day people pass your guard, you're nothing like it's your guard is high, the highest level,
but your side control defense are not your Mount defense are not.
So some purple belts, they practice this, you know, the, the, the Mount way more than
that black belt did.
So the naturally, the difference is better.
So they, they get to experience the defensive position much, much, much more and especially
training with you.
They get really good at defending and then over and over again, you attack them with the
same thing over and over again and they know what's coming.
They will block, they will develop a defense over that way better than most other high
level black belts.
So both put yourself into really bad positions with low ranks and just keep attacking the
same way over and over and over.
Yeah.
And with that, you're able to be at the top of the world, at the world championships.
Yeah.
I mean, can you give some, what was the preparation like to a world championship with lower ranks?
I mean, I did a lot of boxing, a lot of conditioning, no, but the conditioning is a big part of it.
But the one thing that helped me extremely living in England in London was training judo
at the Budokwai in London that helped me massively because it gave me the motivation to learn
something new because, you know, by then at the Budokwai, you know, the stand up was,
I'm sure today it is too, but by then was even higher than it is today.
Like there was some very high level judo guys training there.
And in the first time I went there, my stand up was terrible compared to theirs.
I mean, it was bad, but compared to them, it was terrible.
So I was getting thrown like a child.
And that motivated me to keep coming back and get better.
So that made my judo so much stronger.
I became my base got better, my top game improved, my pressure game improved.
Did Neil Adams train?
Ray Stevens.
No, I've never met Neil Adams.
Have you met Neil Adams?
He's the voice of judo.
I don't know if you watch the tournaments.
He's incredible.
Yeah.
Ray Stevens is a civil medalist in the Olympics.
He won a European.
He won a lot.
So you did some judo training.
What's your favorite throw?
Like a solo?
Uchimata.
I'll say Uchimata.
Your foul pick one.
So that made you better at judo as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And back then, like for the first, I'll say maybe three years, maybe four.
I went to Brazil for like two months before every major tournament.
Got it.
So I say, you know, I moved away from the school and I really focused.
So I was really well prepared with my judo and everything else, shopping up my skills.
And then going to Brazil to train with like really high level people.
So that way I would manage it to compete in the highest level.
What advice would you give to, let's start with a complete beginner.
So you know, a bunch of people come up to me and they still want to start doing jiu-jitsu.
What advice would you give them?
Try to absorb as much technique as you can and try to be as relaxed as you can.
Don't, you know, don't desperately try to fight so hard.
Like learn and move slow.
Move slow and relax.
That's the hardest thing to do, the hardest.
You know what I find with people?
It seems like it's hard to even know that you're not relaxed.
It's like the introspection.
They don't even know what it feels like to relax.
They don't even know they tense.
Yeah.
Right.
They try to relax.
They look at you and say, what?
What do you mean, relax?
I'm relaxed.
Exactly.
I was shaking.
You feel it.
And in terms of going slow, they're like, yeah, I'm going slow.
No, you're not.
Yeah.
There's a grace and elegance of movement that you can probably pick up from a lot of other
disciplines.
Like for me, I think that came from just learning piano at a young age.
It's for, I think any mobility thing to learn how to move efficiently, you have to know
how to relax.
It's just the fact that you can, like, the body can be tense or it can be relaxed.
Just knowing that fact.
Now, imagine you show the stance, just think you play piano well.
No.
Yeah.
Everything has to be relaxed.
I guess some of that is mine too, but just knowing that and being self-aware and you,
but see, like, even me, you know, approaching a thing, I'm not, I don't know anything about
being a beginner.
You're going to tense up and like, it actually takes a conscious effort to think to relax.
I mean, that's.
Massively.
So, why learning things as an adult is much harder than as a child, like it's very hard.
And as an adult, it's like to get to the highest level, it's not possible because you will
never relax the way you should.
Yeah.
Relax in the way that you become like water, but then you solidify in the right places.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is there advice you can give to an adult?
Also like somebody that has a job, like a hobbyist, like how to progress, how to get
there?
I mean, they train.
They just need to train as much as you can, not, you know, five, seven days a week because
you're going to get injured.
I mean, two, three times a week to start is the best way to, you know, to initiate your
jujitsu journey and practice the same thing over and over again.
When they don't work, it's just because you're not doing well, not because, you know, you
have to learn something else.
Do you see some value in just picking a set of techniques that seem to draw your heart
in?
Like for example, I'll give you an example, you're going to yell at me, but I never learned
the close guard well.
It just never connected with me.
You could say it's body mechanics, whatever it doesn't matter.
The point is it just like my heart never connected with it.
You know, the way I justified it to myself is I felt like when you're bad, you're using
the close guard.
Just think you could use the half guard to stall.
So I was really drawn to the butterfly guard as a beginner because I thought that I have
an open guard in general.
I have no options to stall, so I'm going to learn.
My thinking was, let me do the guard that enforces me to learn.
And then I fell in love with the butterfly guard and the open guard and so on.
And I never, I never really understood the close guard.
And the other thinking was, do I really need to understand the close guard?
Because it's always by choice that I go there.
So I can avoid not...
I mean, you can avoid anything you want.
I mean, you don't have to do anything.
But in this life, yes.
It doesn't make you complete.
That means you have a great man.
But you want to be complete as a...
This is the question.
How valuable is it to be complete to get good?
Depends how good you want to be.
Okay.
Let's go...
Well, there's several questions there.
Yeah.
Okay.
To be the best in the world, do you need to be complete?
Of course.
The best in the world.
Of course you have to be complete.
Otherwise, somebody's going to be better than you.
What about...
So to understand, to defend, you have to be also good at the offense and in every single
position.
Of course.
Otherwise, you have a weakness and someone can capitalize on that weakness.
Okay.
You have to be like a hobbyist.
And you don't have to.
But can you...
Or is it still bad?
I mean, it's not bad.
I mean, nothing is bad.
I mean, if you...
As a hobbyist, you start late.
I mean, it doesn't matter how far you're going to get.
As long as you enjoy it, just train as much as you can.
If it's twice a week, twice a week it is.
You'll be limited how good you will be training twice a week, of course.
Then the guy that trains twice a day, you know, is the more you train, the better you
get.
Yes.
But you have to select what you train.
That's what I'm asking.
I don't know.
Yes.
But for how long?
There's some point in your life that you might try something, see if you like it.
There's some point in your life that you might, okay, let me try close guard.
You might not like it now, maybe in two, three years from now.
Nope.
Still don't like it.
I kept drawing it.
Listen, because listen, it's very difficult to get any respect in Jiu Jitsu.
It's hard to get to black belt and beyond in Jiu Jitsu at a respectable place and not
have a good close guard.
Close guard is...
I mean, they don't do it.
It's not necessary.
I mean, I'm being a rebel.
No, it's not.
It's I'll say, because it's not a position that you want the pressure that if you don't
know you're being trouble, you're not going to be in trouble not to know the close guard.
You're just going to go straight for open guard.
I mean, there's not a problem.
The main limitation is if you don't do close guard a lot, that you don't get a full, complete
picture of understanding how to attack close guard when somebody puts you into a close guard
when you're on top.
So it's nice to know both sides if it's just to understand.
Yeah, but you can have a pretty good understanding of how to defend from the top and not having
any bottom.
I mean, some of it is also just like the length of legs and just the geometry of your body.
Nick, I'm sure Marcelo Garcia has a good close guard, but I don't I've never seen that.
That's the point I'm trying to make in theory, in theory, you can imagine it, but like for
a hobbyist, I think it's interesting to think of that like, is it possible to, is it possible
to focus on a small set of techniques that help you to develop?
Yeah, of course.
It's still into a good jujitsu player and still enjoying and still be able to be.
I mean, most people hobbies in the jujitsu world, 99%, I mean, people, they compete.
Even the people that compete.
1% max.
And you have high level competitors, have no close guard.
Okay.
Thank you for me.
No, I think you would say that most people don't have a close guard is such a such a difficult
position to understand for me.
Every one day we brainwash.
Yeah, good.
I felt it's too easy to stall versus attack.
That was my main concern is like, I want to be forced in every way to, to always be attacking,
to always be moving, to always be.
And it felt like if I got really good, I've seen it happen with half guard too, it's like
when people get really good at half guard, it just feels stally.
If you just look at the matches and so on, it's, you just slow things down to a thing
that's not, you don't get reps on learning, you don't get action in interesting ways.
So that was my worry that I'll get old and fat and just sitting in close guard all day
holding on to the white belts, trying to kill me because it's also, I mean, that's the other
thing for hobbies and for everyone is to like when you first start, I think you have to
relax in the face of the fact that you just get in your ass kicked and I'll stop.
That can also be really tough on the ego.
I think probably the right way to see that is you're growing as a person.
You see that clearly when they are like in a bad position, let's say side mount or mount.
Like a beginner, he will never relax on those positions.
The moment that you say go, they like trying to be pushed out and exploded.
There's no relaxation and work on the different is like, no, it's out and go until I have
zero to kill until I'm exhausted.
My arms cannot move.
It's kind of fun to watch actually.
What's the role of drilling?
Do you like drilling?
I do not like drilling, but I'll tell you why.
I think if you're fighting, it's mechanic, right?
It's very important to drill a move until you learn the mechanic.
Of course, it's important.
If someone want to teach you an arm lock, you want to practice that movement until you
learn the mechanic of it, but the guy is not resisting, so it's easy to apply it, right?
So you apply as many times as you have to until you know the mechanic of the moves, until
you can apply the mechanics.
The moment that you know how to apply, there's no more point in drilling.
Now you have to practice.
Now you have to practice with resistance.
Of course, you're not going to practice with the guy fully resisting the guy's better than
you because he's not going to give you a chance to practice that move, but you have to practice
with resistance.
So when this drilling comes on that is most of people, they flow drill and everything
that thing, whatever you do, you condition in your body to do something.
You repeat the same move over and over again as your body is conditioning to apply that
movement or the technique.
Drilling is not realistic because the other person is not resisting, you know, the flow
movement or whatever.
After you go beyond, when you already know the mechanics, the drilling with no resistance
is not going to teach you anything because you will never know how to apply the movement
with resistance.
So it's pointless to carry on drilling after you learn the mechanics.
See, but you're making it sound easy to learn the mechanics, I would argue.
You can drill as many times, I'm not limiting how much you drill.
You drill as long as you had to.
I mean, it doesn't matter how long.
The benefit of drilling, I'm just playing devil's advocate with you, the benefit of
drilling is that you can more efficiently get a higher number of reps in.
So what are you going to gain with those reps?
Understanding the mechanics of the movement.
And what I would like to argue is you don't necessarily need resistance to deeply understand
the mechanics of something.
Now, I don't know, there's some, no, for some, there's some moves, like I bet you you could
drill your way to an incredible mount.
Like a mount is a good example of that.
You don't really need a resist.
I can imagine a world in which the resisting opponent is not essential for developing some
of the very fine details of the mechanics.
Which one?
Because I don't know any.
What?
You say mount.
Yes.
What, what are you going to achieve by resist, by drilling with no resistance after you learn
the mechanics?
You mount.
What I'm trying to tell you, the learning of the mechanics isn't a thing where you get
a certificate and you're done.
You're going to learn the fine details of the way you redistribute your weight.
You're going to learn how to move your, I don't understand mount.
At that body, like everything you do is a slow process and timing.
You have to understand moving.
It's the guy's resisting.
Like he's not, I'm not going to grab you and apply the movement.
I need to grab you and feel when is the right time to do.
Like that, he only comes with movement.
If you're not fully resistant, how would I know?
You couldn't infer through it.
It's like a...
With no movement, with no resistance.
Like arm lock.
There's some resistance.
Okay arm lock.
Let's see arm lock.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's say you've been drilling for a week.
Yeah.
Five hours a day.
You should be an expert with the mechanics.
But now, how are you going to carry on drilling with no resistance?
No.
Exactly.
Yes.
After that week, drilling five times, five hours a day, the arm lock, you still have
no clue how to apply the arm lock against a resistant opponent.
No clue zero.
Yeah.
So you don't know the movement.
You know the mechanic, which is like how long you have to drill and how...
That doesn't matter.
It varies of the person.
You can do for a month.
After that month is over, you should understand how the mechanic works.
You still have no clue how to apply the movement against a resistant opponent.
You will never, ever know how until you apply with a fully resistant opponent.
Yeah.
That's the only way to know, to really learn the movement.
Yes.
Well put.
But the question is, can you have a small percentage of time when you go against a resisting
opponent to get the wisdom and the insight of what it takes to perform that movement
and you spend the large percentage of other time just practicing the mechanics of it?
So like, do you need to, as you get better and better at technique, to basically drift
away completely from drilling and more into the sparring?
I'd like to...
I just...
You like drilling?
No.
I don't like drilling.
I see...
Well, yes.
I like drilling, I would say.
It always bothered me in the Jiu-Jitsu community how few people really saw the value of drilling.
I've seen in wrestling, especially in the Russian style of wrestling, like the value
of drilling.
I don't necessarily mean that it's like a dead body or like a dummy or something like
that, but just getting the reps in, really focusing on the high amount of reps.
I agree in wrestling and judo.
I agree the drilling is very important, the initial drill of a thousand times each move.
Yeah.
Judo is a really big one for that too.
It is.
It's the movement, the timing, it's the precision of the movement.
It has to be perfectly because it's one movement.
Then you learn about the timing of the movement when you're fighting, but during fighting,
you only need to know the time because your body movement is exactly the same when you're
drill.
That's really well put.
Yeah.
The mechanics is much more important there.
Yeah.
But it's completely different for Jiu-Jitsu because let's say from Jiu-Jitsu, like the
arm lock, for example, we use that as an example.
Let's say from the close guard, even my close guard, before I go for the arm lock, I need
to have a set of grips.
Let's say I have your collar and your arm, right?
And then when you're drilling, I'm going to grab your arm, I'm going to grab your collar,
and I'm going to drill my body until I can apply the arm lock and finish.
I can do that a thousand times.
Okay.
Now we're fighting.
We start with the grip.
The moment that I initiate the arm lock attack, you will defend the arm lock will not work.
So it's not the one movement that will get me to attack the arm.
There's a combination of other things that I need to do.
I need to feel about your weight.
I need to get you close to it.
There's so many other things involved that I need to feel that only comes with a fully
resistant opponent.
Yeah.
And so pretty quickly, it has to be live.
Yeah.
And then it comes how you practice, how you train, you're starting on that position and
just saying, let's go.
And the moment that we disengage from that position, we go back.
That's when you really learn.
Because everything that you do wrong, you're going to go back there and you're going to
try again, try again, try again.
And the repetition, it will teach you have a feeling of timing when to go.
If there's other combinations, which you always have to go with it.
By the way, for the internet that's currently yelling at me for arguing with Hydra Gracie
while drilling, that's called playing devil's advocate to strengthen, to explore ideas.
I'm not actually arguing.
Okay.
I forgot to ask you, if you had to fight against the bear, lion, gorilla, or anaconda
to the death, which one would you choose and would you be able to actually win against
any of them?
We'll have bear, a lion, a tiger, or anaconda, or a gorilla too, a gorilla, you can go gorilla.
I'll probably choose the anaconda.
I see.
I mean, you're not allowed to run away though.
So you're in a cage, do you have to kill?
Still the anaconda.
I think I have no chance against any other ones.
Zero chance.
That's what John thinks.
I think I have a tiny little against the anaconda.
Just wait it out.
You don't think it's possible to be, I just, it feels like technique can do something against
these animals, but they have so much strength, so much aggression.
I mean, you know, the real naked choke translating to Portuguese is kill the lion.
So everything's always a kid.
I always thought that maybe if I get behind a lion, the real naked choke, which, you know,
in Portuguese it says mataleão.
So mataleão means kill the lion.
So I always thought that that's the only way to kill a lion or to, you know, fight against
a lion, go behind and put the real naked choke.
I think you'll put him to sleep or the name mataleão is like kill the lion.
Someone came up with the name.
Why?
Somebody must have.
Maybe someone is going to fight with the lion, choke the mountain.
There you go, John.
There you go.
I honestly, do you think, or so actually, yeah, you understand controlling positions.
Do you think like animal, like a gorilla or a lion will shake you off?
If you had back full, you locked in?
Well, I would say the one that will have the biggest chance of staying there is a lion
because he's just in their body.
Yeah.
He's smaller than a tiger, I guess.
I think tigers are bigger.
Yes.
So, so do you think they can shake you off though?
I think I'll have a bigger chance of staying against a lion's back than any other animal.
Still not answering the question.
Do you think you have a chance?
If I start on the back, full locked in, full controls, let's say it's a small enough lion
you can actually have a full, I'll guess so.
I mean, I would like to believe so.
Okay.
Well, just like you said, somebody must have been able to do it throughout your journey
in jujitsu.
Have there been low points?
I guess there have been points where you really doubted yourself.
No.
I've never really doubted myself.
These low points in defeats, those are the low points when I lost.
How did you deal with defeats?
I just went back to the gym next week and said, I need to get better.
Every time I lost, I'm like, I need to get better because I need to choke them out.
I need to submit them because, you know, win by points.
It's as a black belt, I have very, very little lost.
I'll say, I mean, I don't like to sound like a crime baby, but I'll say most of those
lost was very, very controversial.
Yeah.
It was not a dominant, clear performance.
It has about referees and points and so on.
Everything was, since I was very young, I always fought against my opponent in the referee.
Like it's, if there was ever in my whole life, since I was a kid, there was ever a doubt
that you always go to my opponent, always, always, that was just something that I had
to deal with my whole life.
What's the motivation behind, what led to the fact that you win most of your matches
by submission or in dominance?
Like are you chasing?
Because that's the only way to prove you better.
And I never fought to win tournaments, that was never my goal.
That was the consequence of me trying to be the best.
Like I don't care how many titles I have.
I care about, I need to beat all my opponents and not win because win is not enough.
I have to submit them.
That's the only way to prove I'm the best, to submit them.
If I win by advantage or a point, that means I was better than them that day.
That does not mean I'm better than them.
If they top, if I take you down, pass your guard, mountain, submit you.
There's zero questions, who's the best?
Like there's nothing you can say about it.
If I foot sweep you, you put your butt on the floor, I get an advantage.
We carry on fighting and I win, means nothing.
Not even means I'm better than you.
And if that happened, that would haunt you.
It is for me, it's not enough, I wouldn't be happy.
What advice would you give to young folks who look at you, who are able to accomplish
from a place where you're not very good to becoming the best in the world at a thing?
What advice would you give them to have a journey like that, to have a journey where
they could be successful in their career and their life to such a high level?
Determination is the most important thing.
You need to know where you're going together, so you need to have a goal, whatever that
goal is, you need to set that goal for yourself, so you know where you want to go.
And to have the determination to get there and be sure that you will fail many times.
You cannot let your failures bring you down because you will fail many times.
Everybody does.
So you said you didn't look to external sources of belief, you just believed in yourself.
Is there something to that where you have to try to be your own source of belief, flame
the fire within yourself, was that something difficult to do?
That was just very natural for me.
I said you can surround yourself with great people that is extremely important.
Don't surround yourself with failures because they're not going to push you to, they don't
know what it is, how to get there.
I mean, everybody knows, but when you surround yourself with winners, you will know what
it took them to get there, use them as an example.
Yeah, there's a certain kind of aura to people that just achieve great things and being around
them, but it's still, it's hard to find people that, especially at that early stage.
Any area.
Yeah.
Any area.
That's right.
Yeah.
Greatness has a certain, I think it's almost humbling just to see, okay, any human, like
at least that's a lesson I learned, almost any human can do, can be great.
I mean, one, I've used Muhammad Ali as a great example.
Look at his belief, look at how much he believed himself before he was Muhammad Ali.
Look at the, you know, determination he had, the way, the confidence he had fighting even
on his loss, they never changed him.
Now when he fought, Foreman, George Foreman, not one person in the world thought he was
going to win that fight by himself.
He never doubted himself.
Everybody else did.
He won over all odds against.
So it's, I mean, when you look at people like that, you can, you don't have to be a boxer
to try to, you know, follow his example.
But see, those are like epic giant battles, but I feel like you fight the same kind of
battle when you're young and your parents tell you that, you know, just with their whole
energy that this is silly, don't be silly, don't, don't be silly to chase.
It's harder.
It is harder, but as a kid, it's harder to deal with that because, I mean, to go against
adults, special parents telling you otherwise, like the amount of strength you need is gigantic.
I don't even know how much strength you need because that was not my case.
So I can understand what you have to go through with the force of your parents telling you,
you know, otherwise.
But it's how much you want, it will dictate how far you're going to go, where you're going
to go.
So it's, you know, if you can break through that, you'll get nowhere.
It's that simple.
And actually, one of the really nice things the internet does that I would give advice
to young people is like you can find, even if your parents are not a source of that,
your teachers, your community, you can find people on the internet will believe in you.
It's kind of cool.
It's kind of cool how the internet opens the possibility of like a community of like
10, 11 year olds, like building shit.
I see this all the time, engineering, and they, I mean, they're fueled by belief.
They want to, they want to be like, they want to create the next trillion dollar company,
right?
There's that fire in their eyes and not for the money, obviously, but to do something
really impactful.
And I think that fire is extinguished often by teachers and parents because I think the
logic that parents have and teachers, they look at a kid and they don't, on the surface
level, they don't see greatness, right?
They just see kind of mediocrity.
And so to them, it's like, no, right, the world is more complicated than that.
In order to get great, you have to like, they somehow kind of always try to be reasonable
with you.
And in so doing extinguish the flame, it's weird.
I think most people afraid so to even try.
So you can call them cowards for not trying because you are a coward for not trying, not
putting yourself for risk, right?
So I would say a big part of society are cowards for never trying, never pursuing what they
really want.
So there is a weight, a pressure, everyone, most people, a lot of people, I'll say around
you that because they were afraid to try, they don't incentivize people to do so because
they want everybody to be like them.
Because imagine if everybody around you suddenly are not afraid and everyone is trying and
you look yourself in the mirror and say, I was too scared, I've never tried.
So you feel really bad about yourself.
So it's easier to have people around you that think exactly like you than otherwise.
So they reflect a lot on the kids.
That's society almost like pressed down to be like everybody else, to have a normal life,
normal job.
It's don't take risk because you can't lose at all.
I mean, that's the worst thing you can tell everybody, take all the risks, lose at all
a few times.
That's how you're going to build things.
Especially when you're young.
Yes.
You can recover much better.
Exactly.
What's the point of not trying?
You should try and you will lose everything.
It doesn't matter what it matters to lose at everything.
It does matter.
You will teach you.
Resilience.
Try harder.
Go after.
Don't live a normal life because otherwise, I mean, what we're here for.
Take big risks.
Take a lot of them.
Fail and fail and fail.
Fail you a thousand times until you succeed and then you're going to be the most proud
of yourself.
Like, they're not be priceless.
It's then we'll change the world.
It is true that most people are not necessarily cowards, but have cowardice in them.
It's most people just afraid to try it, you know.
And a lot of it comes from a place of love because if you try and you fail, you get hurt.
It hurts.
I mean, it's not a pleasant thing to fail.
I mean, you feel terrible to think, you know, when I lost any tournament was a good thing.
You know, when I think when I was getting beat up at the gym over and over again was
a good thing.
When I was getting there and getting smashed by all the good guys, I think I liked it.
Well, I hate it, but it's my resilience that, you know, make me carry on until I succeed.
I think I like to get tapped.
Well, having the most compared, one of the most compared persons you know, I hate to
lose.
But I accept.
I mean, I just need to get better.
Every single time I lost in the championship, I hate it.
I've never screamed.
No one ever saw me screaming, shouting that, you know, I got robbed.
You know, I should have won the referee app or, you know, screwed me over.
I mean, it's okay.
It happened.
Shit happens.
I need to get better because I don't want to be in that position ever again.
So when I fight, if I'm better, if I tapped him, there's no question.
I don't need to wait for the referee to decide those points or no points.
If, you know, his interpretation, that made me better because I was even more determined
to be better.
In my mind, I have to tap everybody else.
Winning is not enough.
It's just objectively speaking.
What you learn the most from is really wanting to succeed and then failing and doing that
often.
That's the reality from a parent, from a teacher perspective, from anybody, from people you
love.
If they really want to do something, help them do that thing.
If you think they're going to fail good, help them do that faster so they fail faster.
Of course.
They're going to learn.
The only way to succeed is failing.
There is no other way.
That's what people have to understand, without failing, there is no success.
Since you've gotten a little softer, a little more emotionally open, what's the role of
love in the human condition, Hydro Gracie?
Probably the most important thing.
That's the basic of everything, right?
I mean, love brings the best of us.
If we had more love and compassion from the other person, I think the world would be a
more evolved species.
The world would be a much better place than it is now.
Did friends, family help you along the way?
Yeah, a lot.
I always had a lot of love and help from many people.
That's why I succeed.
I've never got here by myself.
I had a lot of people who loved me, believed in me, and helped me get to be here today.
Well, I'm glad they did.
I'm glad you're here today.
I'm a huge fan.
It was an honor to meet you.
It was an honor to hang out with you in Vegas, to hang out with you again today.
I've just been a huge fan for a long time.
My pleasure, man.
Thank you for everything you're doing.
Thank you for this conversation.
It was awesome.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Hydro Gracie.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Hydro Gracie himself.
Jiu Jitsu is simple.
You just have to do it right.
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.